This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • White House determined to balance the budget on the backs of veterans

    The other day, Military.com reported that the House blocked the Department of Defense hikes to Tricare premiums and co-pays for retirees, doing their best to keep faith with veterans. Today Military.com reports that the White House has threatened to veto House Armed Services Committee’s proposed 2014 defense budget (National Defense Authorization Act – H.R. 1960) in the event that it lands on the President’s desk.

    “…if the bill [HR 1960] is presented to the President for approval in its current form, the President’s senior advisers would recommend that the President veto the bill.”

    The White House statement doesn’t enumerate the reasons that they’d recommend a veto, which is always helpful when issuing threats like that – since no one knows specifically what to change in order to get the President’s approval. But we can guess, since the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were up there the other day trying to screw retirees to the wall with Tricare hikes. And if we read the White House’s position on veterans’ benefits, we can read between the lines to determine their intent;

    The Administration believes that military retirees deserve an excellent, sustainable health care benefit. For this reason, the Administration strongly supports its requested TRICARE fee initiative that seeks to control the spiraling health care costs of the Department of Defense (DOD) while keeping retired beneficiaries’ share of these costs well below the levels experienced when the TRICARE program was implemented in the mid-1990s. The projected FY 2014 TRICARE savings of $902 million and $9.3 billion through FY 2018 are essential for DOD to successfully address rising personnel costs. DOD needs these savings to balance and maintain investments for key defense priorities, especially amidst significant fiscal challenges posed by statutory spending caps. The Administration strongly urges the Congress to support the proposed TRICARE fee initiative.

    Yeah, all I needed to hear was the fact that we deserve an excellent and sustainable health care benefit and I knew what was coming. Just like the president’s promise at the American Legion convention a few years back when I heard him say that he wasn’t going to balance the budget on the backs of veterans, while he was planning to do just that.

    If that’s what we deserve, then why are they raiding our Tricare surplus to spend in other areas of Defense? That’s a surplus of $708 million, which you would think would go a long ways towards providing an excellent and sustainable health care benefit. Wouldn’t you think?

    No, the Department of Defense see retirees as a source of income and our out-of-pocket Tricare costs as a tax they can use to splurge on their shit. If there’s a surplus, obviously we’re sustaining our health care program just fine and we don’t need a hike to keep the benefit running as smoothly as it’s currently running.

    The civilians at DoD don’t think that we earned that health care benefit, or at least that we haven’t paid for it enough to their satisfaction. And now they have the uniforms thinking the same way, or at least saying that out loud in public. Yeah, there were civilians at DoD who lobbied for this during the Bush Administration, but when Congress shut them down, they stayed down until the next year when they did the dance all over again.

    But this White House is so determined to make veterans pay, they’ll continue to take bites at the apple until there’s nothing left. I’d say “I told you so”, but I’m better than that. Well, almost.

  • The only winner in Syria is Iran

    The Washington Post speculates today that the only victor emerging in the Middle East wars is Iran;

    But after the Assad regime’s capture of the small but strategic town of Qusair last week — a battle in which the Iranian-backed Shiite militia played a pivotal role — Iran’s supporters and foes alike are mulling a new reality: that the regional balance of power appears to be tilting in favor of Tehran, with potentially profound implications for a Middle East still grappling with the upheaval wrought by the Arab Spring revolts.

    “This is an Iranian fight. It is no longer a Syrian one,” said Mustafa Alani, director of security and defense at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Council. “The issue is hegemony in the region.”

    Well, sure they are. Since 1979, the US, through six administrations, has been unwilling to face off with the mullahs. Our exit from Iraq should have happened in 2003 and the route should have been through the streets of Tehran. After 2003, our fight in Iraq was with Iran, or it’s agents. Our fight in Afghanistan is with Pakistani Taliban and Haqqani trained and equipped by Iran.

    And now, the fight in Syria is between the rebels and Iran-backed Hezbollah. We’re more interested in having Europe do that thing they call “leading” which is really nothing more than public masturbation just like we’ve done with Iran’s nuclear program (remember that?). Nothing gets accomplished in the world without US leadership, because the rest of the world is accustomed to diddling around until we do something. But since we’ve abrogated our leadership, the world gets worse. If it was up to Europe, Hussein would still be threatening his neighbors and his people would still be starving as a result of the “sanctions” – the same kind of sanctions we’ve placed on Iran, which unsurprisingly, aren’t work there either.

    Oh did you read yesterday how the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles that we gave the Libyans to fight Qaddafi are somewhere with al Qaeda in Mali now? But, yeah, let’s send some more arms to the Syrians like the Euro-twats want.

    We screwed this up long ago, but that’s not a excuse to continue to screw it up.

  • Did PRISM lead feds to terror plot in NYC?

    In the wake of the scandals plaguing the Obama Administration in regards to massive violations of citizens’ privacy, Reuters reports that the government’s data mining stopped a terrorist attack on the New York subway system.

    The sources said Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, was talking about a plot hatched by Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born U.S. resident, when he said on Thursday that such surveillance had helped thwart a significant terrorist plot in recent years.

    President Barack Obama’s administration is facing controversy after revelations of details of massive programs run by the National Security Agency for collecting information from telephone and Internet companies.

    The surveillance program that halted the Zazi plot was one that collected email data on foreign intelligence suspects, a U.S. government source said.

    Buzzfeed reports that might not be the case. That the plot was thwarted by good old fashioned police work that had little to do with PRISM.

    The path to his capture, according to the public records, began in April 2009, when British authorities arrested several suspected terrorists. According to a 2010 ruling from Britain’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission, one of the suspects’ computers included email correspondence with an address in Pakistan.

    The open case is founded upon a series of emails exchanged between a Pakistani registered email account sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com and an email account admittedly used by Naseer humaonion@yahoo.com between 30 November 2008 and 3 April 2009. The Security Service’s assessment is that the user of the sana_pakhtana account was an Al Qaeda associate…”

    “For reasons which are wholly set out in the closed judgment, we are sure satisfied to the criminal standard that the user of the sana_pakhtana account was an Al Qaeda associate,” the British court wrote.

    Later that year, according to a transcript of Zazi’s July, 2011 trial, Zazi emailed his al Qaeda handler in Pakistan for help with the recipe for his bombs. He sent his inquiry to the same email address: sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com.

    An FBI agent, Eric Jurgenson, testified, “I was notified, I should say. My office was in receipt of several e-mail messages, e-mail communications.” Those emails — from Zazi to the same sana_pakhtana@yahoo.com — “led to the investigation,” he testified.

    The release of the story seemed a little oddly timed to me anyway – at the end of a week in which the government was trying to downplay the whole data mining thing. I guess they found a terrorist that had used emails and that was close enough for them. Never mind that those emails had been found on another terrorist’s laptop and not gathered by the NSA. Who would know the difference anyway? Not the sheep, that’s for sure.

  • Media unhappy with Obama’s FISA abuse

    It started yesterday when the New York Times‘ editorial board disclosed their displeasure with the latest scandal to hit the Obama Administration when it was revealed that the NSA was trolling everyone in the rolls of Verizon users.

    The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.

    Yeah, everyone was worried that the Bush Administration would abuse their FISA powers, but then the Obama Administration comes along and just does it. There’s no real reason for it, it’s not “protecting America” as Dianne Feinstein said yesterday. We’ve all seen that, in the cases of Nidal Hasan and the Boston bombing brothers, even when the Feds have information to prevent terror attacks they won’t act on it.

    This morning the Washington Post, the sycophantic media arm of the Obama Administration turns on their masters, sort of;

    In the days after the Boston bombings, many asked why the government didn’t connect the dots on the Tsarnaev brothers. Now, many are asking why the government wants so much information about so many Americans. The legitimate values of liberty and safety often compete. But for the public to be able to make a reasonable assessment of whether these programs are worth the security benefits, it needs more explanation.

    Oh, by the way, if you’re feeling safe and secure because you don’t use Verizon, the Washington Times says that Verizon isn’t the only carrier that was subject to the data collection;

    A former NSA employee, William Binney, said other phone companies’ records have been seized routinely by the agency. USA Today reported in 2006 that three phone companies — Verizon, Bell South and AT&T — had been turning over data on Americans’ domestic phone calls to NSA, though lawmakers told the newspaper then that the companies’ cooperation was only partial.

    Oh, yeah, Attorney General Holder wouldn’t tell the investigating committee yesterday whether they had been monitoring Congressional phone traffic.

  • We’re all terrorists now

    The administration which refuses to call the Fort Hood murderer a terrorist now treats us all like terrorists with their FISA Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court according to Glen Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman writing in The Guardian;

    The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

    The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

    The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

    Their data mining may include other phone carriers, but reporters only uncovered one letter from Verizon. Me? I don’t do anything wrong, so I really don’t care, but it is a huge invasion of our privacy.

    The NBC broadcast news tried to blunt the impact of this news by saying “Bush did it, too”, but that’s not exactly true. The Bush administration used it against suspected terrorists and only those calls that were international, but I guess the Obama Administration thinks we’re all terrorists since public opinion has turned against him, we’re all terrorists who bear monitoring. The calls being mined are even wholly made in the United States.

    Yeah, if Bush had tried this, they’d be marching in the streets. Funny how this administration can do what Bush was accused of doing with little repercussions.

  • Walter Reed caregivers furloughed

    More “not balancing the budget on the backs of veterans”. ABC, WJLA 7 in DC reports that among the furloughed DoD personnel will be caregivers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. If you watch the brief video, disregard the fact that the footage is of the old Walter Reed facility in Northwest DC which is why it looks abandoned – it is abandoned;

    Hospital officials have confirmed that some employees have already received notice that they’ll be furloughed without pay for 11 days – one day a week for the next 11 weeks.

    Other employees will be getting their letters soon.

    Walter Reed says it’s not yet able to say exactly how many hospital employees are being furloughed — or how this will impact patient care.

    No one is more aware of the waste and duplication at Walter Reed than me, but you can probably be certain that none of the furloughs will affect the waste and duplication. There are 68,000 Defense Department employees who are exempt from the furlough. Wouldn’t it make sense to exempt caregivers? I’m sorry but I spent today’s ration of outrage on the Hagel story below. I’m all out of outrage.

    Thanks to Cameron for the link.

  • Another salute faux pas for the Prez

    A number of you sent links to an article about President Obama disregarding a saluting Marine aside his whirly-ride today;

    I know a number of you will get pissed, but I just can’t. Sure, he should have been conscious enough to return the salute when it was offered, but he did make up for his carelessness with the young Marine. I’ve absentmindedly returned salutes when people mistook me for an officer, there have been a few times that I walked by an officer without saluting because I was thinking about something else. This president and his administration have given me enough reasons to get upset at him, this is minor in comparison.

    So call me names, but I think there are too many things to get legitimately exercised over and we don’t have to pick over every little thing Obama does or doesn’t do. And, I think he made it right when he came out of the chopper and chatted with the Marine. The Marine will probably remember that brief chat and handshake longer than he would have remembered a returned salute.

    But that’s me, and because I don’t ban people for disagreeing with me, do your worst.

  • The end of “perpetual war”?

    The New York Times, with it’s own little immature, retarded and stunted worldview, applauds Obama’s speech yesterday as “the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America” because Obama announced that the war against terrorists can’t continue;

    While there are some, particularly the more hawkish Congressional Republicans, who say this war should essentially last forever, Mr. Obama told the world that the United States must return to a state in which counterterrorism is handled, as it always was before 2001, primarily by law enforcement and the intelligence agencies. That shift is essential to preserving the democratic system and rule of law for which the United States is fighting, and for repairing its badly damaged global image.

    Yeah, the way “counterterrorism” was fought before 2001 resulted in those horrendous attacks that year. And, oh, we had a “badly damaged global image” before 9/11. Electing Obama was supposed to cure that. Our “badly damaged global image” goes back to the early days of the Cold War, and it really doesn’t matter, any-damn-way. Who cares what the third world thinks of us as long as they continue to buy Coca-Cola and McDonalds’ franchises.

    There’s no one calling for “perpetual war”, but what good does it do if one side says the war is over and the other continues to fight? That’s what we did in Iraq. the media and the pointy-headed imbeciles told us nightly that when we left Iraq the killing there would end. So tell me how it happened that more than 100 people died in bombings across Iraq on Monday.

    Terrorism doesn’t stop just because one side stops fighting. As we withdraw from Afghanistan, the war comes to our shores, like it’s done in the US (Boston), Great Britain (Woolwich) and France (Toulouse) in the last year.

    No, we don’t need a perpetual war, we only need one to which we are committed to being victorious without the domestic hand-wringing and moralizing press telling us how to repair our damaged image. And, oh, we need a leader – one who doesn’t weigh his actions with his popularity. Radical Islam has been at war with us since 1979, and I don’t hear them complaining about their own “perpetual war” with us. In fact they’ve done pretty well, since we haven’t even acknowledged that there’s a war going on.

    Thanks, New York Times. Don’t you have some military secrets to reveal, or something?