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

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Mattis leaving early?

    Several of you sent me links to the news that General James Mattis may be taking leave of his duties as commander of Central Command at the request of the President, or his functionaries. Thomas Ricks broke the news in his column at Foreign Policy.

    Why the hurry? Pentagon insiders say that he rubbed civilian officials the wrong way — not because he went all “mad dog,” which is his public image, and the view at the White House, but rather because he pushed the civilians so hard on considering the second- and third-order consequences of military action against Iran. Some of those questions apparently were uncomfortable. Like, what do you do with Iran once the nuclear issue is resolved and it remains a foe? What do you do if Iran then develops conventional capabilities that could make it hazardous for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Persian Gulf? He kept saying, “And then what?”

    It’s no secret that General Mattis is popular among his troops. I’ve also heard that he’s an occasional fan of The Duffel Blog. But it looks like his outspoken criticism of the way the US is handling their foreign policy will be his undoing. He is known for saying things like “…no war is over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote…” and “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

    Ricks says about Mattis; ” I’d call him a tough-minded realist, someone who’d rather have tea with you than shoot you, but is happy to end the conversation either way.” Lord knows we can’t have a general who think that war-fighting is part of his job.

    It’s going to be a long four years.

  • Four years later

    We wrote our first viral story four years ago, when the president didn’t bother to attend the American Legion’s “Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball” – the ball which honors our Medal of Honor awardees. According to the American Legion, at least 25 of those heroes will be attending this year. The ball has been traditionally attended by the President since 1953 when it began – until 2009.

    According to War On Terror News and Military.com, the president will be skipping the ball again this year.

    There’s a pretty interesting story behind the last event, that I can’t recount for some reasons. I have been known to tell the story when plied with alcohol, though. But if I told you the story, you’d like our President even less than you might now, and some other fairly public figures, too.

    The Obama Administration has made a big show with words about how they support the troops, but their actions don’t match the rhetoric. From the time they tried to make service-connected injured veterans buy private insurance to the fact that they’re cancelling Tricare Prime for more than 100,000 veterans in the western part of the country in a few months, this administration has proved that they think that they can attract veterans to their banner with pretty words and leave us hanging out to dry when it comes to action, like all of the other special interest groups who cleave to the administration.

    When Obama skipped the ball in 2009, it was the canary in the coalmine for veterans. The next four years is going to be an overt war to retain what we earned, what our families depend upon, because we made the poor choice to depend on the government to keep their promises.

  • Biden wants new gun laws, but can’t enforce the old laws

    This is fairly unbelievable – if wasn’t that moron, Joe Bite Me, I wouldn’t believe it. According to the NRA, when they had their meeting with Bite Me last week, they were given five minutes to present their case to Plugs Mumbles, and among the things they proposed was vigorous prosecution of existing laws. Biden’s response was that the government doesn’t have the resources to prosecute existing laws;

    Vice-President Biden said, “And to your point, Mr. Baker, regarding the lack of prosecutions on lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.” That’s right: Biden said the administration just doesn’t have time to prosecute crimes (felonies punishable by up to a 10-year prison sentence) under existing laws, but is proposing a host of sweeping new laws.

    So, basically, that’s why they want to take all of our guns away from us, because they’ve created a system that they can’t manage properly, so their solution is to punish us for their incompetent boobery. And they put the biggest boob they can find to handle the punishment of those of us who have complied with the law.

    The whole gun control thing has revolved around keeping guns out of the hands of people who aren’t competent or otherwise shouldn’t be armed, but the simple form that we all have to fill out and sign, the stopgap to keep criminals from purchasing guns, you know criminals, people who don’t answer questions truthfully, and all they have to do is not answer questions truthfully. And the government, which makes us take the time to fill out the forms and do the NICS check, isn’t going to bother taking the time so see if the form was filled out correctly.

    Thanks, Bite Me. Any other useless crap you want to shove down our throat?

  • Biden tales

    Our country’s highest elected politician known to be a plagerizer and habitual liar has been caught in another lie according to the Washington Times which claims that Biden told some of the nation’s mayors that he was playing golf a quarter mile from the site of an Amish school shooting in 2006 in which five children were killed and five others were injured. So close that he heard the shots;

    But a search of maps of the area in Lancaster County, Pa., shows the nearest golf course to the site of the shooting, Moccasin Run Golf Club, is about five miles away. Rodney King, the golf pro at Moccasin Run, said Friday he was working at the course on the day of the shooting and never saw Mr. Biden, who was then a U.S. senator.

    “There’s a lot of things here that I find hard to believe,” Mr. King said. “I looked in my database, and he [Mr. Biden] is not in my database.”

    Even if Mr. Biden had played at the course that day, Mr. King said, “It’s very far-fetched that he would have heard it.”

    “I know he didn’t hear those gunshots,” Mr. King said. “They were inside the school. Even if they were outside, he wouldn’t have heard them.”

    A spokeswoman for the vice president did not return a request seeking comment Friday. Mr. Biden told the story as he was describing for the mayors’ group the Obama administration’s efforts to enact new gun-control laws.

    But, you know it COULD have happened, you know if they hadn’t put the golf course so far from the school and if the shooter had done his killing outside, and if Biden was in the same state at the time of the shooting.

    The Times reports that it’s not the first time that Biden made shit up to place himself in danger;

    While running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2007, Mr. Biden said in a debate that he had been “shot at” during a trip to Iraq. Pressed by reporters, he eventually described three incidents on two separate Iraq trips in which he felt that he was shot at or might have been shot at.

    He ended up revising his description by saying: “I was near where a shot landed.”

    Yeah, well, whatever. Aides later said that Biden heard some outbound mortar fire once while he was in Iraq. That’s just like getting shot at, though. Well, except that the rounds were headed the other way from where he was standing, but, ya know, when you’re the smartest man in the world, you can’t be bother with ordinal directions and stuff.

    I can just imagine the media frenzy this will create. Day and night, 24 hours coverage of Biden telling a whopping big lie to influence legislation with what I’m sure he thinks gives him some sort of morale authority in the gun discussion. Oh, wait, Biden is a Democrat isn’t he, so never mind.

  • Baghdad Leon on Algeria

    I think I heard this same speech coming from a palace rooftop in Baghdad back March of 2003;

    “Terrorists should be on notice that they will find no sanctuary, no refuge,” Panetta said in his speech at King’s College in London. “Not in Algeria, not in North Africa, not anywhere.”

    Panetta said he is working very closely with the British government and other countries to determine exactly what is happening in Algeria. He met with British Prime Minister David Cameron after the speech for about 45 minutes, focusing largely on the situation in Algeria and Mali, where French forces have intervened to push back militants who control large swathes of the country.

    Well, as long as he met with Cameron after the speech, I’m sure Panetta will get this all straightened out before he jets back to California with half of the Pentagon for the weekend. It’s good news that they’re sending aircraft to Algeria to evacuate the hostages…the ones they can find, anyway. Depending on where you get your news, apparently some are saying that as many as 20 hostages are missing.

    Panetta on Wednesday called the hostage situation a terrorist act, and Pentagon spokesman George Little indicated it may be the work of al-Qaida.

    “If you’re looking at an attack in this part of the world of this scope and magnitude, then al-Qaida has to be near or at the top of your list of suspects,” he said Thursday evening.

    So, did Secretary Obvious check with the White House before he called it a “terrorist act” or is some State Department functionary going to go on the Sunday shows and say it’s too soon to tell? And I thought al Qaeda was in it’s death throes. That’s what the zombie ninja robot surge was all about wasn’t it? The drones cut off the head of the al Qaeda serpent, Biden told us.

    “No one nation can shoulder the burden for our collective security alone,” he said.

    Yeah, and they can send in the Algerian special forces to kill all of the witnesses. Maybe all of these attacks on our interests are the result of this administration acting like a bunch of pussies who think that words can defeat terrorism.

  • Obama’s gun plan

    So, his big anticipated speech was pretty much like I said it’d be – his executive orders threat turned out to be a bunch of stuff he should have been doing already, well, except providing incentives for schools to hire cops to patrol schools (I guess that’s only nutty when the NRA says it out loud);

    1. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.

    2. Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.

    3. Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.

    4. Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.

    5. Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.

    6. Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.

    7. Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.

    8. Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).

    9. Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

    10. Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.

    11. Nominate an ATF director.

    12. Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.

    13. Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

    14. Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.

    15. Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

    16. Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.

    17. Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.

    18. Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.

    19. Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.

    20. Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.

    21. Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.

    22. Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.

    23. Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.

    But I’m waiting to read the Executive Orders before I have my final say on those things.

    So, he wants Congress to recertify the Assault Weapon Ban and get rid of magazines over 10 rounds and I don’t think either will happen, unless those RINOs haven’t got the message yet. If they do pass, we’ll have no one to blame but the Republicans, because we’ve been expecting this from the Democrats for four years now.

  • NRA: Stand & Fight; America Speaks For Itself

    The NRA has released their second in a series of videos; America Speaks For Itself. Make sure you pass it around ahead of the President’s press conference.

  • White House admits US participation in failed French raid

    You may or may not have heard about the disastrous raid in Somalia which resulted in the death of the spy French commandos attempted to rescue, Denis Allex, and a missing French soldier. On the upside, 17 Islamists were sent to Allah. But yesterday, the Obama Administration, for some strange reason, decided that they should admit to the participation of US force air assets over the operation, though they fired no shots, says the Washington Post;

    Obama said the U.S. warplanes “briefly” entered Somali airspace but did not open fire and departed Somalia by 8 p.m. Friday, Washington time. He said he approved the mission but gave no other details.

    A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation, said the combat aircraft were based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, a small country on Somalia’s northwestern border.

    The U.S. military has based a growing number of armed Predator drones as well as F-15 fighter jets at Camp Lemonnier, which has grown into a key installation for secret counterterrorism operations in Somalia and Yemen. The defense official declined to identify the aircraft used in the rescue attempt but said they were fighter jets, not drones.

    I guess this was another opportunity for the President to present his “war president” image without having to take any of the responsibility for the failed mission. Of course, the failure of the operation doesn’t give the other seven French hostages held by Islamists little hope for their release. I think if we’re going to be giving support to the French in this regard, we should be giving them more than air support since they have little experience in these operations.