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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Marines; No bolts in weapons for Inauguration

    bolts missing

    I’ve never been in an Inauguration, so I don’t know if it’s standard practice or not, but someone noticed that the Marines had the bolts removed from their M14s M1s during the Inauguration a few weeks ago – like in the picture above. See how the operating rod handle is forward? If there was a bolt in the rifle with that forward, you’d see the bolt in the ejection port.

    Like TSO said, I think it’s more of an overreaction by the perpetual pants-wetters in the Secret Service than from the Administration. TSO emails that he had to remove his bolt from his weapon when the Clintons came to Tuzla while he was there. The one time I marched for a President was Gerald Ford on the Army’s 200th Birthday at Fort Benning and we had bolts in our M16s, so it’s been a long while for me to chime in with any experience on the subject.

    I’m only mentioning this so you guys will stop emailing me about it. Others think there’s more to it, like our pals Gateway Pundit and Bob Owens, but I think I’ll wait to pass judgement until someone comes up pictures of the Marines with bolts in their M14s M1s at the Bush Inauguration.

  • Ambush at Hilton Hollow

    Wow! The commander-in-chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen walked right into an ambush with no cover, no concealment and no security at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton. Forced to sit at the dais and suck it up while a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Benjamin Carson, debunked the concept of Obamacare as well as pointing out the president’s seeming indifference to the national debt, Obama did his best to smile but he simply could not suppress that droned-out expression, the one, you know, that kills.

    Obama’s first frown comes a few minutes into the talk when Dr. Carson uses the term, PC, for politically correct, in his discussion of how difficult it is to speak these days without offending someone’s too-tender sensibilities. The doctor uses humor and evokes a laugh from the president but the presidential expression becomes somber again when Carver flat-out states that political correctness is a social evil in the way it prevents honest discourse and the exchange of ideas.

    Obama continues to maintain a somber mien throughout the remainder of the speech as Dr. Carson decries the dumbing down of education in America and undermines Obamacare with the offer of a simpler, funded from birth, medical savings account, much as George Bush proposed. I may be wrong but I do not think I saw the president join in the frequent applause a single time until the conclusion of the speech. He sat there primarily stone-faced and unresponsive throughout.

    Dr. Carson came across as an intelligent, self-made man of great common good sense who is neither a declared liberal nor conservative. However, that uncommon good sense and repudiation of political correctness and all those things that are wrong with this liberal-controlled country most assuredly make him a conservative thinker. To stand up there and speak his mind so openly in front of the president makes him a man of uncommon courage as well.

    Want to bet Obama’s praying he never gets another egg-on-your-face breakfast like this one?

    Crossposted at American Thinker

  • CNO sequestration guidance; the end of national security

    Someone sent us a letter that serves as guidance from the Chief of Naval Operations for that sequestration thing that we were told in one debate between the President and Mitt Romney wasn’t going to happen, oh so many lifetimes ago. Basically, the letter says that there will be no more flying time for pilots, no more ship maintenance, no more depot maintenance for the 3rd and 4th quarters of the year. I guess the world will come to a standstill while sequestration doesn’t happen;

    Sequestration guidance1

    Sequestration guidance2

    From CBS News;

    Late Wednesday afternoon, the 5,000 crew members of the aircraft carrier Truman got the word: they will not be leaving their home port of Norfolk, Va., for the Persian Gulf this Friday, as planned.

    Their deployment is being postponed due to the looming budget crisis. Vice Admiral Mark Fox says that means the U.S. will have only one — instead of the normal two — aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf.

    I may be sensitive, but I feel like I’ve been lied to – sequestration is certainly happening.

  • No money for military pay, but…

    Our buddy, Denise Williams, at Chicago Now read our post yesterday about Leon Panetta preparing us for cuts to military pay next year, and she noticed that despite our own cost cutting, there’s still money enough to arm the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

    This short-sighted, misguided and simply foolish aid package does at least have some strings attached. Not in how those weapons will be used, not in securing religious freedom or any other human rights for the people of Egypt, but only in how the aid package must be spent. Simply put, we are giving Egypt money which they then must spend on US manufactured weapons of war. And our elected officials and military leaders in the Pentagon say those strings are there to bolster our economy and ensure US jobs.

    Someone noticed in the comments yesterday, that there’s even enough money to extend benefits to same sex couples in the military – but none for our own readiness, and to keep the good warriors who learned the hard lessons of the last war – you know, the one that is still going on now (Associated Press link);

    Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has not made a final decision on which benefits will be included, the officials said, but the Pentagon is likely to allow same-sex partners to have access to the on-base commissary and other military subsidized stores, as well as some health and welfare programs.

    Panetta must walk a fine, legal line. While there has been increased pressure on the Pentagon to extend some benefits to same-sex partners, defense officials must be careful not to violate the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. The federal law forbids the federal government from recognizing any marriage other than those between a man and a woman.

    And then there’s that study to see if women can be manly enough. We can spend money on that, but not on retention, and the folks who have to pass on their lessons to the next generation of warriors – you know, like those guys who stuck it out after Vietnam to train my generation.

    It’s almost as if they want to destroy the military and make us vulnerable.

  • Panetta recommends pay cuts for troops

    On his way out the door, Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta takes a parting shot at the troops by recommending pay cuts, says CNN;

    Panetta will recommend to Congress that military salaries be limited to a 1% increase in 2014. The Pentagon has calculated that the Labor Department’s 2014 Employment Cost Index is expected to be above 1% but wants to still cut back on pay because of “budget uncertainties,” a department official told CNN. In 2013, a 1.7% increase was approved, based on the index, which has been the basis for military pay for the last several years.

    Three Pentagon officials have confirmed details of the plan to CNN. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have also agreed to Panetta’s proposed pay plan. Final approval for the pay would come from Congress in the form of the 2014 budget.

    Notice that the Joint Chiefs have signed on to the plot, too. This from the guy who used to spend $36,000 every weekend to spend it with his family while the people he commanded were stuck in a faraway shit hole and wouldn’t see their families for months at a time. Now he’s suddenly worried about defense spending.

    Of course, it could be a ploy to make Hagel look good when he comes in and says something different. But, like I said when Panetta took the job two years ago, he was nothing but a political hatchet man for the Administration. It took them two years of “insider attacks” to finally decide to let the troops arm themselves in a war zone, and now he wants to cut their pay.

    I almost typed a bunch of shit that would have had the Secret Service pounding on my door, so I’d better stop here.

    Thanks to ROS for getting my blood pressure up this morning with her link.

  • Report: Rendition continues

    First let me be clear on my position; I like the idea of 6th century murdering swine getting the crap beat out of them without any women or children to hide behind. But this is presented as an illustration of the rank hypocrisy involved here;

    This is from the Huffington Post, sent to us by ROS about a group who condemns the Bush & Obama Administrations for their practice of kidnapping terrorists and sending them to other countries to have the snot kicked out of them. here’s how the article starts;

    HuffPo rendition

    You have to read a little further to get to the part where the Obama Administration is continuing the practice;

    When he came into office, President Barack Obama pledged to end the U.S. government’s use of torture and issued an executive order closing the CIA’s secret prisons around the world.

    But Obama did not fully end the practice of rendition, which permits the U.S. to circumvent any due process obligations for terrorism suspects. Instead, the administration said it was relying on the less certain “diplomatic assurances” of host countries that they would not torture suspects sent to them for pretrial detention.

    This decision, the OSF report concludes, was tantamount to continuing the program, since in the absence of any public accounting, it was impossible to measure the accuracy of those “assurances.”

    Like I said initially, I really don’t give shit what happens to these animals, but the people who voted for Obama in 2008 got a guy who hasn’t done anything that they voted for, and they’re not finding out until after they voted for him again. Do I think they would have voted differently? No, please, I’m not that stupid. They’re as much a bunch of hypocrites as the people for whom they voted.

    So let’s recap; He promised to close Guantanamo, and didn’t, promised to end torture, and didn’t, extended the PATRIOT Act, extended warrantless wiretaps, half-assed surged troops to the war he said was the real war against terror, expanded the drone war – all in contradiction to what he said he’d do once he was selected. All things that he (and the Huffington Post and the rest of the MoveOn/IVAW/Code Pink crowd condemned) complained about the Bush Administration. All things that he said his opponents would continue and things he vowed to stop.

    And the Huffington Post still runs a picture of Bush in the lead-in to the article.

    Again, I have no problem with pounding the snot out of these creatures no matter where it happens, my problem is with hypocrisy, personality cults and blind faith.

  • The height of preemptive war

    I remember the Left attacking President Bush for fighting preemptive wars claiming that they were illegal, but in a link sent by Ex-PH2 from NBC News, shows that this administration is involved in another kind of preemptive war – one that kills individuals they think are terrorists with no real evidence, regardless of their nationality;

    The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ll shed no tears for any real terrorist who swallows a Hellfire missile, no matter who kills them, but it sets a dangerous precedent. A suspected association with a terrorist organization doesn’t seem to condemn a person to imprisonment in Guantanamo, as we’ve seen with the appearance former Gitmo alumni in Syria, but then we can condemn them to death?

    Some military units have declared TAH an “extremist” website and block their members from us on their networks, what if they decide we’re a terrorist organization and start targeting us for preemptive justice? Yeah, I don’t expect it, nor am I that paranoid, but just as an example. I know we’re a long ways from being al Qaeda, but….

    In fact, I really have no problem with it, but how can we be all over the rhetorical map and be releasing terrorists from Guantanamo while killing others for whom no real evidence exists? Either the government needs to admit that Guantanamo is a solution or they have to scrap their Joe Bite Me drone operations. Both are viable solutions, and I support both, it’s time for the Obama Administration to stop being bi-polar while they fight terrorism.

  • Saturday steaming bowl of Skeet (Updated)

    WH skeet photo

    Old Trooper sent this photo from a link at Weekly Standard which says that the White House released this photo this morning. Is it just me, or is that a LOT of smoke coming out of the muzzle? And I’ve never seen a barrel ported that far back, or in that direction and the smoke coming out of the port doesn’t seem to correspond to the smoke coming out of the muzzle. He seems to be shooting a little low for a target that should be in the air, like a bird, not on the ground like Pauxatauny Phil.

    But then someone sent us a picture that might explain it;

    Skeeter&Daffy

    I’ve never shot a shotgun that cost a few thousand dollars or one that was designed for skeet shooting – all of mine were tools made for doing a job. So, I’m asking.

    UPDATE: Here’s a screen shot of a guy shooting at target with the Browning Citori, the same weapon the president is using;

    browning citori

    I took it from this video – I don’t see the amount of smoke pouring out of the muzzle like the President’s. I also see some recoil in the video that I don’t see in the picture of the President. So, either the picture of the President is photo shopped or he’s using blanks. In my considered opinion.