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

Category: Media

  • Scott Thomas Beauchamps; shithouse scribe (Updated)

    I’ve been reading the stories from Michael Goldfarb and National Review that The New Republic published from some formerly unidentified soldier named Scott Thomas who turns out to be named Scott Thomas Beauchamps. Since these stories been published and republished across the ‘net, I won’t bother to repeat the stories this youngster wrote. I kinda figured they were bullshit stories from the get-go, but I wanted to wait and see how this played out before I said anything. Well, it’s not played out yet, but I do have a few thoughts, especially since the young man supposedly happens to be in an infantry company in which I served during  the days of yore.

    The stories I read that he claims to have penned all seem false to me – some have defended the tales with their own brand of forensic psychiatry saying that young men pumped up with testosterone and ranging about a wild country with loaded fully automatic weapons have a tendancy to do things others might not think possible. Well, that’s just horseshit, too.

    These men we send to fight our wars come from our hometowns, they’re raised in our neighborhoods, they sit next to us in our church pews, they date our daughters. They know how to act – and none that I know would intentionally run over a dog.

    In fact, after Desert Storm, when we were still trying to bring some level of civilization to the areas behind the retreatng Iraqis, my battalion commander instructed the company commanders to send their snipers out to dispatch the roving bands of stray dogs. My troops were in an absolute rage about this – one of my squad leaders got relieved when our company’s sniper couldn’t seem to kill the dogs with one shot and the squad leader confronted him, fairly agressively – too agressively for the commander’s tastes. I can prove my story, by the way, Crotchety Old Bastard was a Platoon leader in the same company and I’m sure he remembers the incident. (Update note: He does remember it.)

    And any Bradley driver who can see up over the right side and drive that 26-ton monster with enough precision to catch a dog unawares – well, the Army better not ever let him out. 1600 horses are not quiet, and 26 tons are not maneuverable.

    As far as making fun of an injured woman because of a disfigurement beyond her control, resulting from an enemy action – bullshit. If she’d been a fat cow from the ambulance platoon whose rolls of lard were hanging out the bottom of her BDU blouse, I might make a different call – but not in this case. if there’s one thing warriors respect it’s those who’ve looked the dragon in the eye and lived.

    I had a friend, Tim Martin, whose memorial you can see on my website, who was disfigured since I knew him – 1974 until his death in 1993. The whole right side of his face was melted – you can see in some of the photos. I never knew why because I never asked him. No one I know ever asked him why – because it didn’t matter. He was a rockhard soldier with a heart of gold and it didn’t matter to anyone why he was disfigured. And although Uncle Jimbo is a bit confused about when Tim was injured, he can certainly attest to Tim’s injury and the way he was treated by the people with whom he served.

    And putting a child’s skull on your head – sorry, but infantrymen never know when their next shower will be – putting an exhumed skull anywhere on your body is just unsanitary and his squad leader would’ve knocked the troop into his next rotation. I know it seems trivial to most people, but anyone who has really been an infantryman, not the kind in the movies, knows the importance of personal hygiene – and the dangers of ignoring personal hygiene.

    From reading Beauchamp’s blogs, I get the impression that the little weasel heard some stories in the latrine while he was pounding his pathetic little pecker, blew them out of proportion and then marketed them to The New Republic – which swallowed them hook, line and sinker. I guess it’s not really their fault since they wouldn’t know a track pad from shit-on-a-shingle, what with them being a bunch of chickenshit civilian pussies and all.

    Even if it did happen, and I have absolutely no reason to think that any of these shithouse rumors did happen, it shouldn’t reflect on the outstanding work that all of the other guys who have the misfortune to serve with a lying sack of dung. Heck, I served in the same division as Timothy McVeigh in Desert Storm – doesn’t mean that I’m probably going to blow up a federal building, does it?

    This mealy-mouthed little pussy will get reamed by his First Sergeant and Platoon Sergeant real well – reamed so well that you could drive an Abrams up his ass before they’re through and the truth will then come out. But the damage to our troops’ reputations has already been done – which all The New Republic wanted to do anyway – all we can do is work to repair that damage.

    Hey Alpha Company 1-18th Infantry – the beer’s on me when ya’all get to DC. Count on it.

    UPDATED: Little Green Footballs and Ace of Spades have circumstantial evidence that Beauchamps is connected to The New Republic by marriage.

    UPDATED again: GI Jane at The Foxhole has an email exchange from Beuchamps’ First Sergeant who assures us these stories are false and that Scott Thomas has “other underlying issues”. I get the impression that the boy will end up pushing Schweinfurt to Paris from the front-leaning postion. 

    (Note: GI Jane graciously offered to reproduce the email here, but I’d prefer ya’all give her your traffic – she has a great blog and ya’all deserve to read her stuff in her own house. Thanks.)

  • Disfavor for President? Unpossible!

    The Washington Post’s Peter Baker astounds us this morning with a huge surprise – President Bush is unpopular – more than President Nixon, it seems;

    President Bush is a competitive guy. But this is one contest he would rather lose. With 18 months left in office, he is in the running for most unpopular president in the history of modern polling.

    The latest Washington Post-ABC News survey shows that 65 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush’s job performance, matching his all-time low. In polls conducted by The Post or Gallup going back to 1938, only once has a president exceeded that level of public animosity — and that was Richard M. Nixon, who hit 66 percent four days before he resigned.

    Imagine that! What Baker forgets is that out of the two of them, Nixon was the only one who cared whether he was popular or not. The subheadline of the story says that only Truman stayed “down” this long in modern histroy. That’s an apt comparison, I suppose. Neither Truman nor Bush cared what popular opinion thought of them.

    Of course, it’s not surprising that President is so unpopular – the lies and inuendo-passed-off-as-truth have gone on since the Bush campaign started in 1999. Before he was President, someone said he was a coke head and with no evidence it’s become an accepted part of history. He pardoned Libby, just like his predecessors have done, and suddenly it’s unConstitutional.

    But then the Washington Post wouldn’t mention this stuff because they were/are part and parcel of the problem. I wonder how long the Post would’ve ran a story about Haliburton selling space and defense technology to China? Or if President Bush had bombed an asprin factory in the Sudan and tried to pass it off a weapons plant? Or if Dick Cheney had been caught taking money from Buddist monks who had taken a vow of poverty but somehow scrapped up $5000 per for the Bush/Cheney campaign?

    But, anyway, back to reality. Bush’s (and Truman’s for that matter) unpopularity stems from the fact that they were/are leaders. Leaders make decisions based on what’s best for the whole, not on how well they’re liked. People who try to lead based on opinion polling are called politicians.

    (By the way, I know that “unpossible” is improper – I’m just having fun quoting Ralph Wiggens)

  • Associated Press and the minimum wage

    I just love it when the media celebrates completely useless feel-good legislation – like the minimum wage. The Associated Press is positively giddy about the $.70/hour increase scheduled for September, especially since it’s the only piece of legislation that the 2007 Reid/Pelosi Congressional session has been able to get signed into law;

    The nation’s lowest-paid workers will soon find extra money in their pockets as the minimum wage rises 70 cents to $5.85 an hour today, the first increase in a decade.

    It ends the longest span without a federal minimum-wage increase since the pay floor was enacted in 1938. The last increase came in September 1997, when then-President Bill Clinton signed a bill raising the minimum wage 40 cents to $5.15 an hour.

    Legislation signed by President George W. Bush in May increases the wage 70 cents each summer until 2009, when all minimum-wage jobs will pay no less than $7.25 an hour.

    Government figures show about 1.7 million people earned $5.15 or less in 2006.

    So who are those 1.7 million low-income workers scheduled to be rolling in dough in a few weeks? Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006, the number is actually 1.692 million out of the total workforce of 76.517 million workers – 2.2% of the workforce earn minimum wage or less. 1.2 million of that 1.6 number (3/4) earn less than minimum wage now – so how’s a minimum wage increase going to help them?

    866,000 of them (over half) are between 16 and 24 years old – high school and college kids. 1.24 million of the total work in service related industries, the largest occupational group of minimum wage workers, out of that number, 880,000 are in food service and preparation (um, MacDonald’s), 24,000 are security guards, 52,000 are janitors. Only 340,000 work 40+ hours every week (less than 1 in 5 minimum wage earners) at the job for which they’re paid minimum wage.

    477,000 have less than a high school diploma, 127,000 have college degrees (how many of those are grad students I wonder). 8,000 have master’s degrees, but there are no Phds making minimum wage – some kind of correlation there?

    Not quite the picture of sustained poverty that AP would like us to think, is it? And that extra $28 bucks is going to do a world of good for them, huh? In ten weeks they’ll finally be able to afford that PSP they’ve wanted for playing video games in class.

  • Sheehan and her tens of tens in DC

    The media has pretty much tossed Cindy Sheehan aside as their “ultimate moral authority” figure on the war against terror. She’s been on a whirlwind tour of the South spreading her ultimate moral authority over everyone who’ll listen. She finally made it to DC yesterday with her tens of tens supporters (about 300, actually) and the best coverage I’ve seen is from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank;

    As a retiree, Cindy Sheehan was the Michael Jordan of the peace movement.

    “I am going to take whatever I have left and go home,” she announced in her May 29 “resignation letter” as antiwar activist. “Good-bye America.”

    The retirement — and Sheehan’s attempt to “be normal,” as she put it — lasted exactly 34 days. On July 2, she un-retired after hearing that President Bush had commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence. And yesterday, bullhorn in hand, she led a march of demonstrators from Arlington National Cemetery to the Capitol, where she ended the day by getting arrested.

    Yeah, that’s what did it, Scooter Libby’s pardon. She probably heard in the local Starbucks (where she was panhandling) someone said “Bush can’t do that” and she accepted it as legal advice. Or she just got tired of not being on the nightly news.

    Sheehan then waded into constitutional law, and the little- known mandatory impeachment clause. “Impeachment is not a fringe movement — it is mandated in our Constitution,” she asserted. “Nancy Pelosi had no authority to take it off the table. If she takes impeachment off the table, what else will she take off the table — the First Amendment?”

    It’s funny how the Left always finds things that aren’t in the Constitution. There must be a broom closet somewhere of all of the rules the founders didn’t want to clutter up the one-page document and then gave the keys to the industrial-age equivalence of a moonbat who drags out the dusty unknown rules on cue.

    Milbank claims that the Sheehanistas were a bit paranoid;

    …by yesterday Sheehan even thought the planes departing from National Airport were conspiring against her. “They stepped up the air traffic,” she complained as a jet interrupted her speech.

    The paranoid also may have been suspicious about the low-flying military helicopter as the marchers crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge, or the man in the car with U.S. government plates who took pictures of the demonstrators as they reached the Tidal Basin — “for personal use,” he claimed.

    Yup, all of the airlines got together and decided to make their flights all leave while Cindy was speaking to the tens of tens gathered to hear her screech. Be sure to read the whole Milbank article – finally a fair treatment of Sheehan, replete with accounts of counter protesters from Free Republic and Gathering of Eagles.

    Aside from Milbank’s video, I haven’t found any pictures yet.

    But actually, Sheehan’s experience with the Democrats should serve as a warning to all single-issue voters, especially the Republicans (who tend to throw the party under the bus whenever a candidate doesn’t support our particular cause – resulting in eight years of Clinton). Sheehan was an icon of the anti-war Left, and now in the words of Bob Parks of Black and Right, she’s the Paris Hilton of the anti war Left – in just 34 days.

  • NIE: SSDD

    The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) seems to have all of the anti-war deepthinkers in knotted knickers. The Washington Post acts like this is truly news;

    The White House faced fresh political peril yesterday in the form of a new intelligence assessment that raised sharp questions about the success of its counterterrorism strategy and judgment in making Iraq the focus of that effort.

    Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush has been able to deflect criticism of his counterterrorism policy by repeatedly noting the absence of any new domestic attacks and by citing the continuing threat that terrorists in Iraq pose to U.S. interests.

    But this line of defense seemed to unravel a bit yesterday with the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate that concludes that al-Qaeda “has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability” by reestablishing a haven in Pakistan and reconstituting its top leadership. The report also notes that al-Qaeda has been able “to recruit and indoctrinate operatives, including for Homeland attacks,” by associating itself with an Iraqi subsidiary.

    Anyone shocked? Nope, me neither. Terrorists will continue to regenerate as long as there’s a chance they can get their enemies to let them have the run of the world. The Left and the anti-war-at-any-cost crowd give them hope for that chance. But anyone who is surprised that terrorists are still trying to terrorize need to go back and read the dictionary definition of terrorist.

    From Washington Times’ Bill Gertz;

    “Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” the report stated.

    Retired Vice Adm. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence whose office produced the NIE, said the United States will face a “persistent and evolving terrorist threat” in the next three years.

    What a waste of Bill Gertz’ talents – that “bug duh” moment. As long as  it’s possible that the US Left divides the country for purely policitical reasons, the terrorist threat will always evolve to take advantage of their naivete`.

    Contrast these two views from the Gertz story;

    “It is deeply troubling that more that nearly six years after 9/11, al Qaeda maintains a safe haven, an intact leadership and the capability to plan further attacks,” said Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat and 2008 presidential candidate. “It is time to act to correct those mistakes, and the first step is to get out of Iraq, because you can’t win a war when you’re on the wrong battlefield.”

    House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said the NIE shows that the United States must keep up the fight against terrorists.

    “Retreat is not a ‘new way forward’ when the safety and security of future generations of Americans are at stake,” Mr. Boehner said.

    Instead of deciding that fighting harder and more united is the answer young Barack decides that getting out is the answer. That’s just cowardly…and partisan. AT least we have John Boehner to call them wimps to their faces.

    Meanwhile, my new buddy Robin at Chickenhawk Express delivers deadly blows to that [d]ick Clarke’s “analysis” of the NIE.

  • Political theater; employing the unemployable

    Last night, while no one watched or cared, I guess the Senate tried to pull an all-night exercise in insanity – voting on the same measure again-and-again each time, amazingly, having the same result. Of course the Washington Post thought it was really good and important stuff;

    Earlier in the day, Reid had ordered cots to be set up in a ceremonial room off the Senate floor, and reporters were alerted when the beds, along with pillows, were delivered in the afternoon.

    The office of Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) dispatched interns to buy toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant for delivery to GOP leadership offices, with a note offering the “supplies for your sleepless night.” It added: “Help us bring an end to this war.”

    “Will the all-night session change any votes? I hope so,” said Reid. “Because it will focus attention on the obstructionism of the Republicans.”

    Not “it will end terrorism in our time” or even “we’re going to show those terrorists we mean business”, but rather “it will focus attention on the obstructionism of Republicans” – because, as we know, those Republicans are a dangerous bunch. They’re capable of killing millions of Americans while they sleep if it weren’t for the brave souls of the Democrat Party frantically waving their white flags in front of TV cameras.

    Sean Lengell from the Washington Times reports that;

    Some Democrats left the session temporarily to attend a candlelight antiwar rally across from the Capitol.

    Majority Leader Harry Reid said the unusual session was necessary because Republicans refused to agree to a simple majority to pass the bill and were intent on filibustering an amendment that called for pulling most troops out of Iraq by April 30.

    “If Republicans insist on blocking change of course in Iraq, we have no alternative but to keep them in session to have them explain their obstruction,” the Nevada Democrat said. “Republicans will need to choose whether they want to protect the president or protect our troops.”

    Yeah, if the Republicans insist on making Congress keep its word to wait until September, the Democrats will make them stay up all night. If Harry Reid cared a whit for the troops, he’d shut his chickenshit mouth for a minute and let them do their jobs.

    And all the while the grotesque hags of Tickled Pink and the assorted malcontents of the Left stood outside and chanted like the screeching harpies they are. From the Post, again;

    The group VoteVets.org called in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans to spend the night in the Senate gallery. MoveOn.org organized “counter-filibusters” in which protesters outside Senate offices and in other public places read firsthand accounts from Iraq war veterans and military families. “We’ll send a clear message to senators and the media that this isn’t about partisan games — it’s about people’s lives,” the group said.

    Yeah, it’s not about partisan games is it MoveOn.dorks – wasn’t it Move On that led the charge against Lieberman because he disagreed with their BDS-driven agenda?

    No mention, however, of the group Vets for Freedom who made the rounds of Congress all day yesterday urging Congress to wait until September like they promised. I wonder why? Probably because they wore boring tan polo shirts instead of garish pink boas and they didn’t chant mindless drivel or wave idiot signs.

    This was pure political theater – it was so Democrats could prove to their tiny minority of “anti-war at any price” crowd that Democrats are listening to their squeakiest wheels.

    Anyone for a minute think that Joe Six-pack gives a tiny rat’s ass that a hundred pampered people and their pampered staffs stayed awake one night? Nope the only people who care are the breathless hundreds who blogged all night about this non-event.

  • CAIR: US causes terrorism (UPDATED)

    Audrey Hudson and Sara Carter of the Washington Times report that CAIR spokeman Parvez Ahmed told an audience at the National Press Club that its Bush’s fault that Americans are mistrustful of Islam;

     A Muslim civil rights group yesterday blamed the Bush administration for promoting “Islamophobia” and said the “war on terror” won’t stop terrorists.

    “The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself,” said Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the national board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

    “Terrorism is a tactic. You cannot eradicate it by declaring a war against it. The war on terror is causing us infinitely more harm than the terrorists could have ever imagined.”

    Yeah, that’s the ticket. Let’s ignore the dozen or so attacks on Americans and our interests throughout the world over the past decade-and-a-half. It wasn’t until we declared war on terrorists that people became aware of the plots against us – aware of the war Osama bin Laden declared against us a decade ago. Maybe there’s a perception that we’re fighting Islam because organizations like CAIR refuse to condemn terrorist attacks against the US. Think?

    “It is important to bear in mind that terrorists cannot destroy America,” he said[….]  The U.S., he said, is too powerful and too resourceful for terrorists to defeat.

    So we should just sit back and let the terrorists have at us…like we did from 1993 to 2001. Yeah, no problem with that, I guess. Well, except for the people who get killed in the interim.

    I guess the fact that CAIR thinks we should stop fighting the war against terrorists is enough reason to continue fighting the war against terrorists.

    UPDATE: I’m listening to the Chris Core Show on WMAL (about 10 AM), and apparently Audrey Hudson, one of the writers on this Washington Times story was escorted from the press conference – she claims she was warned in advance that she wasn’t welcome. Probably because of the bang-up job she’s been doing on the Flying Imams story.

    Isn’t it odd that a journalist is barred from a news event at the National Press Club – probably a news event held in the prestigious First Amendment Room on the top floor, too. 

    Hudson anounced that CAIR doesn’t tell her what her “news beat” is and she’ll continue to cover CAIR whenever the Times assigns her. Sara Carter, Hudson’s co-author of this story, just made her bones on this, her first story. Let’s see how long before CAIR bars her from their propaganda sessions.

    Of course, CAIR disagrees with Hudson’s story (she says she missed only a few minutes of the end of the conference) but they refused to come on Core’s show and explain what was inaccurate about the Times story. Wonder why? 

  • Living in the 60s; divided we fall

    OK, there was something familiar in the political climate that I couldn’t quite put my finger on – until I read this story from the Politico’s Mike Allen;

    Sen. John Edwards plans to warn later this week that the nation’s schools have become segregated by race and income, and he will propose measures to diversify both inner-city and middle-class schools.

    It feels like the 60s again, doesn’t it? Yesterday Edwards, the prettiest Democrat candidate, was talking about a “poverty tour” and today it’s busing and desegregating schools. The other candidates (and Edwards included) are all “against the war” (whatever that means today), they’re all for raising taxes “on the rich” (whoever that is these days). All of the broke-dick, big-government Liberal issues that brought on the malaise of the 70s are rearing their heads – as if history never happened.

    It doesn’t help that the media are all in on it and the old hippies who are now “journalists” play the game. Like this syncophantic piece from the Washington Post;

    “A lot of Americans think of people who are struggling as people who don’t want to work, and that’s nonsense. We need to make sure the country understands that,” the Democratic former senator from North Carolina said.

    On the second day of an eight-state tour of impoverished communities in the South and Midwest, Edwards tried to connect his presidential campaign with the legacy of King and Robert F. Kennedy and the issue they tried to publicize in the 1960s: poverty. The four-day tour will end in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Kennedy concluded a tour of Appalachia in 1968.

    So, the guy with $400 haircuts and $1/2 million dollar part-time jobs carries the mantle of King and RFK now. I can just see King and Kennedy standing at the gates of Heaven with baseball bats waiting for Edwards’ arrival – and this Perry Bacon, Junior from the Washington Post.

    “We still have two public school systems in this country,” Edwards said. “They’re not segregated just based on race. They’re segregated, to a large extent, based on economics, which has racial implications.”

    The result is, Edwards continued, “if you live in a wealthy suburban area, the odds are very high that your child will get a very good public school education. If you live in the inner city or if you live in a poor rural area, the odds of that go down dramatically. And I think there are very specific things we can do to not only improve the quality of the education in those areas but also to improve the quality of our schools at large.”

    Funny how Federal programs and robbing the American taxpayers of their earnings is always the solution – until the big-government program fails and then the answer is always more money. That’s how we ended up with a 70% tax bracket in the 70s.

    Edwards, and the Democrats as a whole, act as if there is no possiblity for economic mobility in this country. They act as if we’re born to a station in life and that’s where we remain – as if this is 18th century France. The opportunities exist – everywhere in this country. granted there are people who don’t take advantage of those opportunities, but how is it my responsibility to pay for others’ bad choices?

    If I were one of those inner-city or rural teachers, I’d be pissed at Edwards. How dare he say that those teachers aren’t interested in teaching kids until they get more Federal money? So where’s the outrage? Edwards called all of you inner-city and rural school teachers greedy, heartless capitalists. Yeah, I can just hear the howls of rage – hypocrites.

    And this “Two Americas” crap is played out. Edwards is just playing two sides against each other. Ronald Reagan brought America together, and now Edwards is trying to tear us apart like Johnson, Nixon and Carter did. We beat the Nazis and the Soviet Union when we all pulled together. How are we going to defeat Islamofacism with the Democrats pulling us apart?