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

Category: Liberals suck

  • Tales from the Powell side

    The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Colin Powell is going on CBS’ Face The Nation to explain to the rest of us Republicans how we can be more like Colin Powell. Like Dick Cheney, I was surprised that Powell still considers himself a Republican after supporting the most anti-Conservative candidate to run for president from the Democrat Party.

    Some of the quotes from Powell in the article are staggeringly ignorant coming from a person I formerly considered fairly bright;

    The appearance will come just days after Powell, one of the country’s leading black political figures, told an audience in Boston that a new Republican Party is “waiting to emerge.” Earlier this month, he said the party is in “deep trouble” because “Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

    The party should realize that the country has changed, he said, adding: “Americans do want to pay taxes for services.”

    In April, he appeared on liberal host Rachel Maddow’s TV show, telling her, “I am a Republican, yes,” but saying the party should reduce its emphasis on cutting spending.

    But even if you think these quotes from Powell are based in ignorance, you can’t look away from that car wreck called the Republican Party as they plant their lips firmly on Powell’s ass;

    “We are not going to get to a majority if we weed out people who disagree,” said Rep. Mark Souder (Ind.). “I’m very conservative, but we need people like him, even if we disagree on some issues.”

    Sen. John Thune (S.D.), a member of the GOP leadership in the Senate, said Powell is “one of the greatest leaders of our generation, and he is at heart a Republican.”

    I’ll admit, I haven’t liked Colin Powell as a Republican ever since he coined that stupid “conservative with a heart” phrase. Conservatism is compassionate in that we think you can do better for yourself and your family than some heartless bureaucrat in Washington. For Powell, or anyone else, for that matter, to think that we need to qualify our individual conservatism with divisive labels, they’re missing the whole point of Conservatism.

    I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t join the Republican Party because it has a cool-sounding name. I looked at Jimmy Carter’s Administration, counted his lies to the American people and watched them drive poor people further into poverty and dependence. I decided that Democrats and government is not the Big Answer to our problems. A landslide number of Americans agreed with me when we voted Ronald Reagan to replace Carter and his band of ignoramuses.

    If the Republican Party isn’t about smaller government and lower taxes, it’s the Democrat Party with a different name. We don’t need Colin Powell in the Republican Party, we don’t need to drop to our knees every time he walks in the room. As Dick Cheney says in the Washington Post article;

    I didn’t know he was still a Republican.

    He’s not and we need to stop acting like he has anything of substance to add to the discussion.

  • Bush policies unassailable

    We, the Americans firmly rooted in reality, as opposed to those other Americans who live in a fantasy world where bombers magically stop bombing when you build them a road or school, are slowly being vindicated by current events. The Wall Street Journal notices in “Bush’s Gitmo Vindication“;

    Yet for all of his attacks on the Bush Administration, which he accused of making “decisions based upon fear rather than foresight,” Mr. Obama stuck with his predecessor’s support for military commissions, adding some procedural bells and whistles as political cover to justify his past opposition. For the record: Both the left and right, from the ACLU to Dick Cheney, now agree that the President has all but embraced the Bush policy.

    Mr. Obama also pledged to release at least 50 detainees to other countries — about one-tenth the number released under President Bush — and added that the Administration was in “ongoing discussions” to transfer them. Good luck with that: The Europeans who were so robustly against Gitmo in the Bush years have suddenly discovered its detainees are dangerous. Meanwhile, the countries that might take them, such as Yemen, can’t be trusted to prevent them from returning to the battlefield, where they can kill Americans again.

    In the Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer writes “Obama In Bush Clothing” ;

    The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them repeatedly, calling them an “enormous failure.” Obama suspended them upon his swearing-in. Now they’re back.

    Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he’s doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush’s moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

    Krauthammer recounts some of the flip-flops of the Change Administration which changed into the Bush Administration on national security;

    Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: “The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) — and now Guantanamo.”

    Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition — turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets — claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus — to detainees in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

    Harry Reid declared yesterday that there will be no detainees on American soil. Where then? Europe doesn’t want them, the countries in the Gulf region who are willing to take them are less than trustworthy in keeping terrorists from returning to their former lives and their former fights. Dick Cheney reminded the Obama Administration yesterday;

    The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism. They may take comfort in hearing disagreement from opposite ends of the spectrum. If liberals are unhappy about some decisions, and conservatives are unhappy about other decisions, then it may seem to them that the president is on the path of sensible compromise. But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed. You cannot keep just some nuclear-armed terrorists out of the United States, you must keep every nuclear-armed terrorist out of the United States.

    Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy.

    While Obama declared yesterday that the Bush Administration’s policies “created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained” and “has weakened American security” without examining the fact that there have been no successful attacks on American soil since the event that was the catalyst for those Bush policies. The Democrats are real good at campaigning, but they’re not real successful at actually accomplishing things. So their strategy has been to campaign as Democrats and fight for our national security like Republicans. We’ve recounted some of the reactions from the Left on the Obama policies here on this blog – but it’s not like the hateful rhetoric we heard against the Bush Administration for the same policies. That makes them kind of disingenuous, doesn’t it?

  • Biden is the smartest guy in the Democrat Party; proof

    Yesterday, I wrote a short screed about Joe Biden being a boastful braggart, like he usually is and telling the people at his table at the Gridiron Dinner how Dick Cheney’s “undisclosed location” was in a bunker beneath the VP’s living quarters at the US Naval Observatory in Northwest DC. Of course, the Left immediately discovered my post, especially since I disparaged the whole party by claiming that they’re dumber than Joe Biden. I can’t blame them, I’d be upset at that discovery, too, if I were a Democrat.

    So immediately, the first nutroot to weigh in was my old buddy TBogg at Firedog Lake who admits that we have an actual braintrust here at This Ain’t Hell, a fact that must really grate on TBogg. But not understanding the difference between speculation and confirmation, TBogg posts a Washington Post article from seven years ago in which author Nakamura guesses that there’s some construction going on under the Naval Observatory. Good catch, TBogg, but I don’t believe anyone actually knew what was going on there until Biden admitted it. Kind of like we didn’t know there weren’t WMDs in Iraq at the time of the invasion until we got there and looked around. See how that works?

    And then I got a link from the Village Voice. Somehow, my post was lumped in with WHOLE bunch of reaction from the Right on the President’s speech at Notre Dame yesterday as proof that we (The Right) make mountains of molehills. Kinda like the mountain that the Left made a mountain of out of the waterboarding issue.

    But, I don’t think comparing my post to the anti-abortion issue is quite fair, since I’m just talking about how stupid Democrats are for selecting Joe Biden while the abortion issue is about saving millions of innocent lives. But, since Joe Biden is the smartest Democrat, I wouldn’t expect the nutroots to understand without getting Biden’s opinion first.

    If my post about Biden didn’t ring true to the nutroots, they would have ignored it, like usual.

  • An Armed Forces Day message from the Left

    On this day, the day during which we set aside a moment or two to thank our Armed Forces for keeping us free and prosperous, at least one anti-war blogger published this message on his blog;

    Saying no to war is the most important way to bring it to a halt. If troops had the guts they think they have they would get up and walk away from the most blatant display of American arrogance in this Century.

    So I suppose that, since they can’t really blame Obama for the continuing wars without calling him a lying hypocrite, they can blame the troops instead. But that blogger isn’t the only one. On Alternet, some gumball named Jeremy Scahille starts another rumor about our troops in Guantanamo;

    …an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: “blows to [the] testicles;” “detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;” being “inoculated … through injection with ‘a disease for dog cysts;’” the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred “under the authority of American military personnel” and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

    His source? Human rights lawyers and former prisoners. Lord knows they never lie. Like this hilarious story;

    In April, Mohammad al-Qurani, a 21-year-old Guantánamo prisoner from Chad managed to call Al-Jazeera and described a recent beating: “This treatment started about 20 days before Obama came into power, and since then I’ve been subjected to it almost every day,” he said. “Since Obama took charge, he has not shown us that anything will change.”

    Um, did anyone notice that the guy is supposed to be in the most secure prison in the world, isolated even from the people on the same island – yet he supposedly called Al Jazeera? If he was being treated that badly, how was he able to get a call out, for Pete’s sake?

    Regardless, do these nutballs realize that they’re talking about the same kids they went to school with? The same guys they grew up with in their neighborhoods? The same folks who were on their Little League teams and at their summer camps? Why are they so eager to believe this about the people with whom they have more in common than they are to disbelieve the folks who have a stake in lying about their behavior?

  • What Fragging? Where?

    When the media and the Left learn a term, they apply it to everything. Today’s word is “fragging”. The first place I saw in relation to the incident at Camp Liberty was on a VFP blog of sorts called “Imagine” (recalling the John Lennon song) in which the author, James Starowicz, one of the chief crackpots of the Geezers For Peace writes;

    Yeah, just like Vietnam – well, not really. There were 230 deaths from the practice we now call fragging (some Leftist sites say 730 – but that’s including attempts) over the 10 years we were in Vietnam. Since the 2003 invasion of Hussein’s Iraq, there have been three, this one being the third. The second one is unsolved and the motives are unclear. That doesn’t stop the Associated Press from falsely claiming;

    There have been several previous fragging incidents in the Iraq war.

    Yeah, um, three, including this one doesn’t make “several” unless you call one incident “many”.

    During and after the Vietnam War, the Left used the fragging incidents as evidence that soldiers were unhappy with their leadership in particular and the war in general. I disagree, but for the sake of argument, I’ll continue.

    Since this one seems to have been targeted towards a counseling clinic and the staff and SGT John Russell actually left his unit with the firearm and went to the counseling center kind of disproves that he was unhappy with his leadership and more unhappy with the medical treatment he was getting.

    That doesn’t stop the media from mischaracterizing this one, too;

    An American Army sergeant shot and killed five fellow soldiers following an altercation at a military counseling center in Iraq Monday, officials said. The attack drew attention to the issues of combat stress and morale among soldiers serving multiple combat tours over six years of war.

    Um, Russell was an electronics technician who was transitioning out of the service after 21 years – not someone who was being ordered to do something that would get him injured or killed. So frustration with the war kind of gets tossed out as an indicator, too. He was leaving the war and the Army for the last time.

    He was just one guy who snapped and did terrible things. Are all of those guys going to do what Russell did? Not any more than all Georgia professors are going to do similar things.

  • Mindless Asinine BS

    The Senate is apparently coming to grips with the fact that the stuff they want to inflict on us is going to cost us real money eventually and they’re “weighing” ways to pay for their healthcare unicorn…er, reform. (AP link)

    The final package is likely to include a mix of tax increases and spending cuts in federal health programs. Among the possibilities: tax hikes on alcoholic beverages, tobacco products and sugary soft drinks, and restrictions on other health care-related tax breaks, such as flexible spending accounts.

    Yeah, what was that thing I kept hearing during the election about no tax hikes on families with incomes below $250,000? If a family is currently paying for their own healthcare with no help from the government with their own flexible spending accounts, the government is going cut their tax break – that means their taxes will increase.

    I don’t how much higher they can raise taxes on tobacco – seriously. I think it’s about $7/pack in Maryland now since we get it from the liberal state and federal government. It was just a few years ago that I paid that much for a carton.

    Sugary soft drinks? I wish. There hasn’t been a soft drink sold in the US with sugar in it for decades. But, guess what? That’s a tax hike on families. Are they going to include juice boxes in that tax? If they start taxing the food we eat (read that: the choices we make ostensibly to control our behavior) where do they intend on stopping? Are they going to bust in our houses and shoot us on the spot for hiding an untaxed Snickers bar under the floorboards?

    Oh, and another campaign promise falls by the wayside;

    On the controversial question of taxing health benefits, Baucus is staking out a position that could put him at odds with Obama.

    The president adamantly opposed such taxes during the campaign, arguing they would undermine job-based coverage. Obama’s aides now say he’s open to suggestions from Congress, even if he criticized Republican presidential rival John McCain for proposing a sweeping version of the same basic idea.

    Imagine that. So why did you 52% vote for Obama again? Because he wasn’t like McCain how? Well, besides the obvious reasons that we know you really voted for him – that which can not be spoken.

    Many experts say that Congress won’t be able to come up with the kind of money needed to provide coverage for all unless limitations on the health care tax break are part of the mix.

    So why are we even going through this horseshit? Do away with tax breaks and incentives for those who are already paying for their own health care – the responsible people – to GIVE it to people who refuse to pay for it.

    And this is better for the country how?

    Added: And we’re going to get our healthcare from the people who are already doing a bang-up job;

    Medicare is in even worse shape. The trustees said the program for hospital expenses will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year and will be insolvent by 2017, two years earlier than the date projected in last year’s report.

    The trust funds — which exist in paper form in a filing cabinet in Parkersburg, W.Va. — are bonds that are backed by the government’s “full faith and credit” but not by any actual assets. That money has been spent over the years to fund other parts of government. To redeem the trust fund bonds, the government would have to borrow in public debt markets or raise taxes.

    At what point do we join together, give them a failing grade and shoulder the responsibility ourselves?

  • Carrie Prejean is still Miss CA

    As you can imagine, I’ve been saving that picture for a long time waiting for the appropriate post. Donald Trump just announced that Ms. Prejean will be allowed to remain Miss California even though she let some side-boob pictures be taken of her at 17. I watched way too much of the press conference which pretty much consisted of Trump saying “she’s a beautiful woman” about 70 times.

    The only reason I like her (aside from the glaringly obvious) is because the vitriol she faces from the sexual Nazis is so intense and she remains strong. The folks who want us to stay out of their bedrooms (believe me, I don’t want to know what goes on in your bedroom) want to change what we’re allowed to say in public.

    But, I did find a reasonable response to Ms. Prejean from a member of the gay community at GayPatriot, if you’re interested in a rational response. If more gays were like GayPatriot, they’d probably have a better shot at all of the goodies they want.

  • Obama: Keep those stinkin’ tourists away from me

    Rurick emailed me this link to a Big Hollywood story about the State Department demanding that France keep those pesky tour buses away from the Normandy landing memorials while he’s there next month. You know, those tour buses that might contain actual veterans of the conflict who don’t have that many visits left in ’em. Well, I had some thoughts on it, but Deebow at Blackfive did a much better job than I could have done. But I’d add this from the Big Hollywood story;

    Compare that with 2004. Security was tight as President Bush and other world leaders were in attendance, but the event was still open to all. A friend relayed the story of waiting in line to use a port-a-potty (a French port-a-potty no doubt, yuck, believe me.) She looks to her left and who he is in the next line waiting patiently? President Bush. Sure he had Secret Service nearby, but he waited like everyone else.

    Some of us miss President Bush – but I will enjoy the excuses the Obama crew make up for this one. Completely blog-worthy, I’m sure.

    While you’re at B5, check out the post Uncle Jimbo did about the Best Ranger Competition (he’s been doing them all weekend, if you hadn’t noticed).

    In the latest post, Jimbo writes;

    On a lighter note it will amuse many of you that the two Special Forces guys driving around in their pink Hummer spent approx. an hour and a half cruising Victory Drive incapable of finding the front gate of Ft. Benning or a BBQ joint. We are complete muppets.

    That reminded me of Mech Week at ANCOC (coincidentally at Fort Benning, too) when I tried to warn the SF and Rangers in my squad that reading a map from a moving M113 is different than when they’re on their feet. They laughed me off and told me to get my mech ass in the track and let the pros do the map reading. After driving in circles for an hour, they finally handed me the map.

    While I’m posting links, go read about tankerbabe’s day with Evan Pertile. Make sure you leave a comment so she’ll stop accusing us of not reading her blog.

    It’ll take your mind off of that arrogant prick in the White House.