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

Category: Liberals suck

  • VoteVets is not a veterans’ organization

    Yeah, I’m pissed at VoteVets. Is it because I’m partisan? Nope it’s because I’m a veteran. I hate to see the troops and veterans get screwed by people who claim to want to help them. My feelings go back so far, that I remember running off Hari Krishnas in Atlanta airport in the 70s when they targeted GIs for “donations” to their cult.

    Today, the charlatans are veterans themselves. Veterans like those at VoteVets. Besides having a stupid name, they’re run by stupid people. They claim to protect veterans’ interests, but remember what happened when SGT David Aguina spoke up at the Yearly Kos two years back? Twink Jon Soltz charged him from the stage and got in the young sergeant’s face like so many other punk-ass LTs I’ve seen in my time. And what does VoteVets vice-chairman Brandon Friedman (also known previously as Angry Rakkasan) do? He writes a comment in the Daily Kos accusing SGT Aguina of being mentally ill;
    (more…)

  • Pelosi aide knew of EIT use in 2003

    You really have to dig this morning to find the Washington Post story by Paul Kane which reports that Nancy Pelosi’s top aide, Michael Sheehy, was told by the CIA that Enhanced Interogation Techniques were being used on certain detainees;

    Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.

    Previously, Pelosi claimed that the legal ramifications of techniques, but that she hadn’t been told the EITs were actually in use. In yesterday’s post, I wrote that the techinques were used before the briefing, and that it was unlikely she wasn’t told at that point. now we have a record that her top aide was told directly. Think he forgot to tell her?

    A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy.

    Yeah, me neither. of course, Pelosi use the language that she wasn’t told directly – but then why send aides to briefings? Pete Hoekstra is seeking any notes the CIA may have in regards to those briefings;

    In a letter to Hoekstra, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the classified memos describing what was said at each briefing would be available at CIA headquarters for review by congressional staff, according to an agency official.

    I’m pretty sure Hoekstra won’t find anything after the Panetta CIA gets done doing a Sandy Berger on those notes. CNN quotes Pelosi statement released to the press yesterday;

    “As reported in the press, a cover letter from CIA Director Panetta accompanying the briefings memo released this week concedes that the descriptions provided by the CIA may not be accurate.”

    Sneaky damn spies, taking inaccurate notes knowing that they’d need to beat up Pelosi four years before she became the Speaker.

  • CIA: Pelosi knew about EITs

    Last month, I got an email from Code Pink calling on Nancy Pelosi to press forward with the investigations of the Bush Administration’s use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) against terrorists;

    The Washington Times and the Washington Post both announced this morning that Speaker Pelosi knew about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques according to records of the briefings to Pelosi and Porter Goss on September 4, 2002. The Times;

    The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, indicates that a classified CIA briefing of Mrs. Pelosi included specific details of the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs, on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah.

    “Briefing on EITs included use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed,” the report said of the Sept. 4, 2002, briefing.

    The U.S. government acknowledged in the “torture memos” that President Obama declassified last month that the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah included waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning and is widely denounced as torture, 83 times in August 2002, a month before the Pelosi briefing.

    The Post reports that Pelosi is still clinging to her previous lie despite the evidence against her;

    In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi’s office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.

    “As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.

    Pelosi’s statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.

    So will Code Pink now demand an investigation into Pelosi’s involvement? Not holding my breath.

  • More on the $17B in cuts

    In reference to the post I wrote last night about Obama being so proud of his $17 billion in spending cuts, Don Carl sent me a link to a CBS Hotsheet article yesterday in which they report that Obama was telling the press corps how they should write the story for him;

    In his remarks today, the president sought to change that tenor of that coverage. He mocked the notion that smaller savings are considered “trivial” in Washington and stressed that “these savings, large and small, add up.”

    And he told journalists directly that they should stress the fact that the cuts are “significant” – a surprisingly direct appeal to reporters concerning which angle they should take in their coverage.

    “It is important, though, for all of you, as you’re writing up these stories, to recognize that $17 billion taken out of our discretionary, non-defense budget, as well as portions of our defense budget, are significant,” he said. “They mean something.”

    Of course, quick scan of the reports tells me that the media did do that as far as writing their headlines, forcing us to read the actual articles. Not that it really matters, anyway. The Washington Post writes that Obama’s party-mates are pretty much opposed to any spending cuts, anyway;

    The news releases began flying as Obama unveiled the long-awaited details of his $3.4 trillion spending plan, including a list of programs he wants to trim or eliminate. Though the proposed reductions represent just one-half of 1 percent of next year’s budget, the swift protest was a precursor of the battle Obama will face within his own party to control spending and rein in a budget deficit projected to exceed $1.2 trillion next year.

    So much for campaign promises, huh? The Democrats need spending to buy patronage, just like the massive spending they’re doing on veterans’ benefits – they’re trying to overcome years of abuse towards veterans and the troops by paying us off. That’s fine, they can do that, I’m grateful, but I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  • Leftist Hyperbole

    Sometimes, I just can’t get past some of the crap I have to read. Today is one of those days. Last night, I ran across a missive in the Albany Times Union written by some guy named Matt Funiciello who has a pretty high opinion of himself for some indiscernible reason. Which is fine, in itself, but he’s unable to recognize the truth when it’s in front of his face because his big, fat ego gets in the way. But, he speaks from experience because, in the typical Leftist mold;

    …I come from a family of vets and I am very pro-soldier….

    Which means his neighbor’s nephew met a veteran once. That’s the Leftist response to every accusation that they don’tknow what they’re talking about because they don’t have the gumption to raise their hand and be part of something bigger than them. Oh, did I mention he’s also a truther?

    He’s writing about the “bravery” of “a warrior” – that brave warrior being IVAW’s Matthis Chiroux. Funiciello, reading from Matthis Chiroux’s press release, claims that Chiroux was facing a possible death penalty conviction or jail time but that the Army backed off because Chiroux faced off with them, the “military-industrial complex” – whatever that means.

    The truth is; Chiroux faced a general discharge under honorable conditions – the worst discharge that board could recommend. I knew that the day before the board when I talked to Army Public Affairs Officer LTC Maria Quon who works in St Louis. And that’s exactly what he got – the harshest penalty that particular board could issue. In fact, that’s the same discharge Chiroux would have received if he’d just sat in his plush, IVAW-subsidized apartment in New York City and not set foot in the hearing.

    But somehow, Chiroux, and therefore, Funiciello, who accepts press releases from Matthis Chiroux as gospel, claims it’s some sort of victory. In order to arrive at that conclusion, Chiroux and Funiciello ignore all of the facts, Funiciello also ignores all of the testimony I’ve recorded here from eye witnesses to the Chiroux legacy as hearsay. I guess that means everything he reads in his daily paper is hearsay, too. Or maybe it means that Funiciello is just tone deaf to everything that rattles his facade that he’s tenuously propped up to appear as some sort of journalist. In truth, Funiciello is just another of Chiroux’s tools.

    And the print media can’t understand why no one reads them anymore.

    In another glaring example of Leftist hyperbole, the blog, “History In The Making” writes a post “Big Protest Shuts Down Army Experience“. Notice the URL is hippiecommiemarine.blogspot.

    The “big protest” shut down the Army Experience in Franklin Mills Mall for nine minutes, all nine minutes are the YouTube video at my report on the event. So it wasn’t shut down for a month, a day, or even an hour. And since the reports of participation on the Left claim between 120 and 300 participants, it wasn’t even a “big” protest. Especially when you consider that participants included this clown who should be fired;

    A middle school teacher brought 4 of his students to the protest.

    I hope the parents of those middleschool students’ parents punch that stickboy in his nads.

    This isn’t hyperbole, but there’s this announcement;

    Please join your fellow Constitution Supporters on May 15th, 2009, for an up-close-and-personal evening with a charismatic, motivated candidate for Congress in New Mexico, Adam Kokesh, a former Marine whose participation with Iraq Veterans Against the War and at the RNC has landed him on numerous “lists.”

    Date: Friday, May 15, 2009
    Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
    Location: Home of Nick and Ericka D’Arcy
    Street: 416 Allison Drive
    City/Town: Dallas, TX

    Food and beverages will be served. Donation of $40 goes to TOPIC PAC.
    You may donate at the event, but donations in advance are appreciated. (Simply enter 40.00 into the amount field.)

    Paid for by Texans Organized to Protect the Integrity of the Constitution Political Committee (TOPIC PAC).

    Anyone is Dallas want to pay $40 for some Saltines, orange Kool Aid and conversation with “charismatic” Adam Kokesh? Sheesh, for 2 bucks I’ll let you look at all of my videos of him, but you have to bring your own drinks.

  • Specter slips into incoherency

    The Washington Times reports this afternoon that Arlen Specter has made the final leap into total lunacy. While on ABC’s Face the Nation, Specter responded to a question by Bob Schaeffer whether or not Specter felt he let down Pensylvanians who voted for Republican representation in the Senate, Specter yammered something about how he was let down by the Republican Party, then the cheese slid off his cracker right there on national TV when he accused Republicans of killing Jack Kemp;

    Mr. Specter continued: “If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.”

    Yeah, we’ve had three Democrat Presidents since Richard Nixon left the White House. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress with the exception of two years for twenty years after Nixon left office – so what the hell is this nincompoop trying to say?

    I guess it’s true that when you join the Democrat party, they suck whatever is left of your brains out.

    Added: I just remember that when Jocelyn Elders, Clinton’s first shot at Surgeon General, was asked why the Clinton Administration was shifting money from Heart and Cancer Research into AIDS research, her answer was “Everyone has to die from something”.

  • Front Toward Enemy

    To those who don’t know me, I’ve been messing around on political forums for the better part of 10 years now, including 5-or-so years as a moderator/admin on one very popular forum owned by some skinny blonde chick…Ann something or other, but I digress.

    During that time, I made a practice of lurking on opposing forums, mostly for material, but also for the sheer sake of trying to decipher what these people were thinking…and I use that term loosely. One of my favorite, most target rich environments for my recons was The Democratic Underground, profoundly referred to as DU, earning it’s denizens the title of DU’ers. In many cases, what was posted on DU could hardly be held out as fiction, much less categorized as an argument (last time I checked “fuck you” wasn’t exactly considered thoughtful debate), so I would package up these little nuggets and post them on Ann Whatsherface’s forum and we’d all get a pretty good chuckle out of them. Nice. Whatever.

    The bulk of these DU crossposts were harmless, amounting to a significant number of echo chamber rants, lithium fueled diatribes, endless bitching about Bush and Cheney (to which they had all manner of interesting nicknames) and some of the lamest attempts at humor seen this side of a Kathy Griffin “show”. On occasion, however, there were some rare gems, like the one from a particular DU poster named Magic Rat, who according to him, had his “girlfriend” up in his bedroom, her clothes half-off, when he suddenly decides that taking the tube-bus to Tuna Town wasn’t in the cards that evening…his bewilderment on why she suddenly left was comedy gold.

    Then there was the “guy” who got mad because all the chicks in his office would run out for lunch on Friday to his favorite pizza joint and wouldn’t invite him…or the epic “Liberal Historian & Nighttrain” hook-up, where DU’ers actually pledged gas and motel money via PayPal, only to have good ol’ Nighttrain bail when he figured out that his Dodge Omni probably couldn’t handle Jabba The Historian’s considerable girth. These were some of the better threads, chiseled into the internets for all time.

    But with the coronation of the Teleprompter-in-Chief, these outlets have changed a little…or have they? A quick DUmpster dive this morning revealed a significant number of threads dedicated to prosecution of Bush administration officials related to the “torture” memos. There were a few posts about the flu (and the magnificent way St. Barry is handling the crisis), but there was one that stood out:

    formercia (1000+ posts) http://journals.democraticunderground.com/formercia
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:40 AM
    Original message

    I was threatened again yesterday. They did it by threatening my 8 year old son. They’re such cowards that they sent a boy almost twice his age to do it. he’s still a minor, thus pretty much untouchable.They were sending me a message that they may not be able to get to me directly but my son is fair game.
    We’ve turned into a Third World country where the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

    I had to keep him home from school today because he’s suffering from anxiety. He’s borderline autistic and has enough trouble functioning at school as is, but this just pushes him over the edge. I complained before but nothing gets done.

    Ok…at face value, it’s a fairly reasonable response to someone having their kid bullied, but then again, this is DU…the thread continues:

    HarukaTheTrophyWife (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:42 AM
    Response to Original message

    1. Since you know who did it, just call the fucking cops

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 07:46 AM
    Response to Reply #1

    3. They won’t do anything. I even complained to the FBI a couple of years ago.

    They’re a bunch of Bush Gang connected Dominionist, Joel’s Army types. Their local gur-preacher is a State Senator who likes to push his weight around.

    Hm. Ok, so we’ve gone from our kid being bullied to the FBI and a state senator being involved. Interesting. But there’s more:

    HarukaTheTrophyWife (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:08 AM
    Response to Reply #3

    9. Wait, so this has been going on for years? Why are they doing this to you?

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:11 AM
    Response to Reply #9

    10. It’s Bush Gang revenge. I screwed with one of Poppy’s operations when I worked at CIA. This has been going on for decades.They can’t attack me directly, so they attack my son.

    Yeah…totally worth the wait, wasn’t it? To recap for those in the cheap seats, what we have here is an anonymous poster on a leftwing whack-job forum who is complaining that their kid is being threatened by teenaged FBI agents, and their state senator (who is also a pastor…gotta get that anti-Christian bias in there too you know), due to some clandestine operation they thwarted during Bush 41’s presidency while they were working for the CIA. To their credit, some of the DUmbasses have the audacity to question our intrepid hero’s veracity, which doesn’t go over too well:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:28 AM
    Response to Reply #12

    18. What is the ‘kool-aide’ reference? Are you trying to insinuate that I’m under-medicated? They already tried that attack. The shrinks say I’m ok.
    I do have severe PTSD as a result.

    Looks like IVAW could have a potential spokesperson here! But wait, it gets even more intense:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:20 AM
    Response to Reply #15

    16. They have been ‘messing’ with me for decades. I’ve been shot at, poisoned, electrocuted, assaulted. I spent a year and a half in rehab recovering from one of their ‘pranks.’

    Sounds like he’s been to Gitmo. I kid…I’m a kidder. No seriously:

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:44 AM
    Response to Reply #19

    27. It’s not paranoia. I’ve heard your meme many times. I would have taken offense to it at one time, but I’ve heard it so often, that I just write off such statements as ignorance. This has been going on for decades. It began when Poppy was VP and in charge of the Central America Program.

    I was one of the CIA Officers that worked on the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua program. In January of 1982, I notified my superiors that I felt the program was illegal. Apparently, Poppy took great offense to this.

    My quote:
    “You people are out of your fucking minds.” “When Congress finds out about this, they are going to cut our balls off.”

    This is what I said to my Division Chief, in front of his whole Division. (OTS/SAD)

    Rebubula (481 posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:55 AM
    Response to Reply #27

    39. So…for 27 years the CIA (an organization that routinely kills people in manners that seem natural or simply disappears them) has been pissed at you for transgressions against them?

    Sorry…if this is true (and honestly I doubt it), this (Democratic Underground) is NOT the forum. You should (as another poster mentioned) contact Leon Pannetta’s office (he seems an honorable man) and some of your old CIA friends (you should still have at least one friendly contact there) to get everything on the table.

    If this is true, I apologize and wish you the best at getting out from under these assholes.

    If only Jack Bauer were here…he’d know how to handle this…or Chuck Norris, but since he’s a fundie Repuke, maybe Ward Churchill? I hear Bill Maher is pretty tough as long as he can use his mouth:

    14. Can you move far away? Not worth risking your, or your son’s health.

    formercia (1000+ posts)
    Tue Apr-28-09 08:23 AM
    Response to Reply #14

    17. I’m safest in plain sight. They have too many tentacles to hide from.

    Google ‘hentai’ for more on these wayward tentacles…on second thought, don’t do that.

    And so this is how it goes. These are the folks that can nullify your well informed vote. These are the people who parade around in pink attire demanding peace at all cost. These are the morons who think that the preamble to the Constitution says “generally promote Welfare” instead of “promote the general welfare”. These are the idiots who join the military for “college” and then shit themselves when the Army has the audacity to actually deploy them into harm’s way. They are the ones who would be more than happy to sell out your grandkid’s future as long as they can sit in a women’s studies program for 10 years on your dime…and they all think you’re the one who is the problem. And hey, thanks to Janet Napolitano they have Federal justification for that opinion.

    Which brings us to the point of this rambling mass of whatever…battlefields are no longer limited to far flung shores, or wind swept sand dunes…they’re in your face. They’re in your neighborhoods. They’re in your kid’s school, and more importantly, they’re embedded in the collective psyche of those who command the reins of power. Think of that next time you see our Fearless Leader, his flawlessly vetted speech scrolling on his best pal, the teleprompter and think of this; on a claymore mine, it has printed in large text ‘Front Toward Enemy’. The question is, who has the clacker.

  • The mild discomfort of torture

    Last night, our President let us know that the discomfort of waterboarding is now torture. And how does he know this? Because of his vast experience of being President an entire one hundred days. The Washington Times quotes;

    “I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe, but I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure we are not taking shortcuts that undermine who we are,” he said. “There have been no circumstances during the course of this first hundred days in which I have seen information that would make me second-guess the decision I have made.”

    In other words, he’s been president for a hundred days and you haven’t – so who is smarter? Certainly not you. And since you think you’re such a smarty-pants, he knows stuff you don’t;

    He said he has read the memos former Vice President Dick Cheney has asked be declassified and that the Republican says would show the tactics worked to get critical information that prevented attacks. But Mr. Obama said the memos don’t prove the information couldn’t have been gotten by other methods, and said even if America’s job is harder, it’s worth the trade-off.

    There. See? He’s read the Cheney memos and you haven’t. When you’ve read the Cheney memos, you can have an opinion – but until then, shut up. You.

    Let me show you how much torture is involved in waterboarding. The regular readers of this blog know that IVAW’s Matthis Chiroux is a big pussy, right? If waterboarding is torture, do you honestly think that Chiroux would allow World Can’t Wait to waterboard him in front of the UN? See for yourself;

    You’ll notice that Chiroux’s hands aren’t bound, yet when he is waterboarded, his hands stay behind his back, entirely voluntarily. If Chiroux truly thought he was in danger, and if waterboarding was really a fear-inducing practice, his arms would be flailing around involuntarily. besides, if it was as dangerous as the Left seems to think it is, do you honestly believe a sissy like Chiroux would allow himself to be involved in it? I mean seriously.

    Thanks for showing us that waterboarding isn’t torture, Chiroux. I owe you a cookie.