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

Category: Media

  • WaPo back on the Walter Reed kick

    I guess the Washington Post has run out of things to bash the Administration with, so they’re back on their Walter Reed/Army bashing this week;

    At Walter Reed, Care for Soldiers Struggling With War’s Mental Trauma Is Undermined by Doctor Shortages and Unfocused Methods

    By Anne Hull and Dana Priest

    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Monday, June 18, 2007; Page A01 

    Yeah, I’m going to admit that the Army does alot of things badly – mostly administrative stuff and the way the Army treats soldiers is pretty bad, too. But, ya know, it’s all a part of being in the Army – it’s a big bureaucracy run by kids right out of high school. I hate it when civilians try to apply their standards to military life – just like I’m sure Hull and Priest would hate it if I came over to their respective houses with a white glove and applied my standards to their lives.

    I know their whole point is that the President went to war before he had enough psychiatrists on staff at Walter Reed – just like he rushed to war before they’d cleaned up some of the transient quarters on WRAMC, too. But buried way down in the middle of the article is this;

    One of the country’s best PTSD programs is located at Walter Reed, but because of a bureaucratic divide it is not accessible to most patients. The Deployment Health Clinical Center, run by the Department of Defense and separate from the Army’s services, offers a three-week program of customized treatment. Individual exposure therapy and fewer medications are favored. Deployment Health can see only about 65 patients a year but is the envy of many in the Army. “They need to clone that program,” said Col. Charles W. Hoge, chief of psychiatry and behavior services at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

    Instead, Deployment Health was forced to give up its newly renovated quarters in March and was placed in temporary space one-third the size to make room for a soldier and family assistance center. The move came after a series of articles in The Post detailed the neglect of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed. Therapy sessions are now being held in Building T-2, a rundown former computer center, until new space becomes available.

    In the Army we all know what Buildings with “T” in front of their number means – a corregated steel barn the Army throws up while it’s building another one. There is construction going on WRAMC – it’s been going on since before the war. I didn’t see that mentioned in the Walter Reed story.

    Neither did I find a reference to the Washington Post’s Walter Reed story I wrote on back in April;

    A review panel’s recommendation that the Pentagon accelerate the expansion of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda drew a wary reaction yesterday from local officials and neighbors concerned about traffic problems.

    The Pentagon’s Independent Review Group, which is examining flaws in outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, released a draft report Wednesday recommending that the Army hospital be closed as soon as possible and replaced by a facility to be built on the Bethesda campus.

    The Pentagon recommended speeding up the process of building the new Walter Reed facilities at Bethesda to overcome some of the problems at the cramped old facilities on Georgia Avenue in the District – but my dork-ass, elitist, pot-smoking, punk Congressman Chrissy VonHollen is blocking it because residents in the flashy, trendy Bethesda are worried about traffic (there’s a subway that runs right through the area, but why buy a Mercedes if you can’t park it in traffic on Wisconsin Avenue five days every week).

    VonHollen wasn’t alone, by the way. Jimmy Moran sobered up long enough to become somewhat coherent and gurgled out;

    But some members of Congress, including Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), insist that Walter Reed be kept open. “What you’re doing is changing horses in the middle of the stream at a time when soldiers need the best medical care,” Moran said yesterday.

    So which is it, Moran? Are they going to get the best medical care in the cramped Georgia Avenue Walter Reed or at the brand-spanking new facility in Bethesda – 12 miles away. Are you trying to say we can’t build the new hospital until the war ends? Do you even know what you’re saying?

    You’ll notice the Bethesda story is on page three and two months old. That’s how worried the Post is about our troops when alleviating some of their problems involves inconveniencing some Democrats in Bethesda with more traffic and its blocked by a Democrat punk-ass, dork Congressman Chrissy VonHollen.

    Maybe Hull and Priest will have a little more credibility on the subject when they tell me what they’ve done to help the Pentagon build the new Bethesda facilities.

    Oh, and all ya’all bloggers ain’t no damn better – there’s 34 links already to today’s WaPo hit piece and only six links to the story about punkass, sissy Chrissy VanHollen blocking the new facilities. Before ya’all go off on how the Army treats people, have all of the facts.  

  • Where’s the media on Venezuela?

     

    (Photos from Venezuela Llora)

    I’ve been waiting for the media to start covering the student protests in Venezuela for a few weeks now – but not a word. So I have to go to the bloggers. I find it odd that none of the media are doing much of anything – including the Spanish-language networks (which seem more interested in Shakira than the freedom of speech of a few million Latins).

    From A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective, Kate writes that most Venezuelan’s support the student movement;

    A Datos poll of 600 Venezuelans across social classes found 56.2 percent supported the students, with only 23.8 percent opposed to them.

    Of the rest of those surveyed, 19.3 percent had no strong opinion and 0.7 percent said they did not know or did not want to reply.

    The poll, published in newspapers on Sunday, was conducted on June 8-10 and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

    Of course, Hugo claims that it’s a another Bush plot;

    Chavez has accused the students of being part of a U.S.-backed “soft revolution,” saying they are trying to model their protests on the 2004 “Orange revolution” in Ukraine.

    Daniel at Venezuela News and Views writes that Chavez went to Cuba to meet with his mentor and gets the idea that more socialism is the answer;

    In front of mounting trouble Chavez did what he does usually: escape to Cuba for a few days. Now that Castro is healthy enough to discuss politics some, Chavez went to look for new inspiration. The results came today through a lengthy cadena, an unusual event on a Saturday and yet another sure sign of worries inside the government. So, trying to seize back the agenda held by the students, Chavez went on a new rampage of promises and threats:

    And from DEBKAFiles (h/t Aaron’s Rod), Chavez just came back from Tehran after discussing the future of a joint defense pact with the mullahs and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega;

    DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources have learned add that the Islamic Republic’s rulers have been sounding out “revolutionary” Latin American governments about creating joint anti-US terrorist cells for attacks in North and South America. The subject came up in talks with Nicararagua’s Daniel Ortega when he arrived in Tehran Sunday and in discussions with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

    So, Hugo’s been a busy little fella, yet none of this makes it to the pages of the major media. Other than some fawning in the Associated Press about those two lovable rogues getting together in Havana;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared Wednesday that his convalescing ally Fidel Castro has “recovered his fastball” and was in fine form during a six-hour visit.

    State TV reported the pair shared an “emotional” meeting Tuesday, discussing Venezuela-Cuba relations, climate change and a socialist-leaning regional pact they created.

    Ain’t that just the sweetest? The two major enemies of liberty in this hemisphere sharing an “emotional” meeting. This blatant disregard for impending danger is how al Qaeda became so perilous.

  • War may take decades? Oh, my!

    The newspapers all seem shocked this morning that General Patreus told Chris Wallace on Fox news Sunday yesterday that the war against the insurgency in Iraq may take years to end. The good general was quoted in the Washington Examiner;

    “In fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday. “The question is, of course, at what level.”

    Who thought otherwise? The President told us in the very beginning of this global war against terror it would be a hard, long slog. The biggest reason it’s a long, hard slog is because we – the United States – always seem on the precipice of surrendering. It’s happened before – we let the Chinese and North Koreans keep half of that peninsula, we let the Soviets have half of Europe, we abandoned all of Southeast Asia to the communists, we surrendered Somalia to the muslims, we stopped outside of Baghdad after we annihilated the 4th largest Army in the world. 

    And now, we have the world-famous surrendering Democrats throwing in the towel everytime there’s a corner turned. Insurgencies aren’t military campaigns in the traditional sense – the insurgents never win on the battlefield. Insurgents win in the newspapers and TV news programs of their enemies – thousands of tiny victories against the homefront.

    That’s not new, is it? I’m not the first to write those words, am I? Yet everyday, the US media grants another tiny victory to the enemy. At least once every week, the Democrats give the enemy more ammunition to fight the war – Harry Reid tells us the war is lost and that our generals are incompetent, John Murtha calls our troops murderers, Dick Durbin calls the troops at Guantanamo SS concentration camp guards.

    This war has dragged on for four years – the enemy has no hope of winning militarily. But the enemy still has hope of winning the war – why is that? Because they’ve pinned their victory on the fact that Democrats hate the Republicans, and by extension, our troops, more than they hate child-murdering terrorists.

    Kagan and Kristol have more on the slow collapse of support for al Qaeda in Iraq in the Weekly Standard article “Slow Motion Tet“;

    Last week, a group of tribal leaders in Salah-ad-Din, the mostly Sunni province due north of Baghdad, agreed to work with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces against al Qaeda. Then al Qaeda destroyed the two remaining minarets of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a city in the province. Coincidence? Perhaps. But al Qaeda is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong’s book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat. The fact is that al Qaeda is steadily losing its grip in Iraq, and these attacks are alienating its erstwhile Iraqi supporters. But the terrorists are counting on sapping our will as the VC did, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.

    The difference between Tet and Samarra? We have a commander-in-chief who doesn’t stick his finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing today to formulate his strategy like Johnson did and the two Democrat presidents who followed. And there’s an alternative to the “Surrender now!” media.

    Gateway Pundit documents the first known mass outbreak of SRDS (Salman Rushdie Derangement Syndrome). I’m coming to the conclusion that these folks of the “religion of peace” aren’t as peaceful as they let on.

  • Harry, 19% is all you can get!

    I really hate to keep beating up Harry Reid, especially since so many others are doing it at the same time, but he just makes it so easy. Reading the Washington Times this afternoon I find this article by S. A. Miller who tells us Harry is changing his strategy;

    Mr. Reid began the week Monday by vowing to “push very, very hard” for troop withdrawal from Iraq in a Defense Department budget authorization bill in two weeks.
        The next day — as the Senate began work on the energy bill and tried to revive immigration legislation — the Nevada Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California sent a letter to the White House imploring the president to heed the Democrat-led Congress’ call for a pullout.
        That same day, Mr. Reid railed against the war and U.S. military leaders in a conference call with a group of liberal bloggers.
        And yesterday, he said the Pentagon’s quarterly report on Iraq shows that President Bush’s war strategy is not working.
        “Attacks on U.S. forces are up, not down,” said Mr. Reid, who with Mrs. Pelosi last month capitulated to Mr. Bush’s demand for a war-funding bill without a troop-withdrawal timetable.

    Attacks are up not down. You sure, Harry? Been to Iraq lately? Karl at Protein Wisdom says otherwise. And besides, the Washington Post tells us that the “surge” was just put in place this morning. So why would he say that attacks are up and not down all of a sudden evaluating a strategy that hasn’t even been fully deployed yet?

       Just 19 percent of voters nationwide had a favorable opinion of Mr. Reid in a Rasmussen Reports survey conducted last weekend — down from 26 percent a month ago and still lower than Mr. Bush’s 35 percent favorable rating. Congress’ job-approval rating also is tanking, down to a 23 percent in polls this week by NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

    So who does he think is going to approve of him? That other 5% of the hardcare Left that want immediate withdrawal from Iraq? It’s the surrender talk that got him down to that 19% in the first place. Who is advising him? Why is he trying to talk to Americans by going to Think Progress?

       Mr. Reid’s early return to the war debate signals to the party’s antiwar base that it still tops the agenda, a Democratic leadership aide said.
        “That’s what the base is demanding,” the aide said.

    That’s not leadership – that’s pandering.

  • So learn English already!

    First of all, let me say this; I speak almost exclusively Spanish in my home. There are times when I speak Spanish with my wife outside my home when I need to speak privately to her. In fact, when I first saw Schwartzenegger make this comment last night, I was watching it on Telemundo – I watch Spanish language news programs. Well, here’s the report from SFGate;

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told a gathering of Hispanic journalists that immigrants should avoid Spanish-language media if they want to learn English quickly.

    “You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set” and avoid Spanish-language television, books and newspapers, the Republican governor said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

    “You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster,” Schwarzenegger said.

    “I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say, and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” he said, noting that he rarely spoke German and was forced to learn English when he emigrated from Austria.

    When I first heard it, I thought, well, that makes complete sense. The language of commerce for the whole world is English – someone wanting to make money should learn to speak English, for Pete’s sake. Then I listened to the outraged SPANISH-LANGUAGE journalists complain about what Arnold said, and they pretty much echoed the SFGate article;

    “I’m sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that,” said Alex Nogales, president and chief executive of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

    “Naive and out of it”. Hey, Nogales, compa, you’re being naive and out of it.  

    From Hispanic Business.com, probably the most ignorant words in response to the governor’s statement that Latins should learn English;

    “They’re busy working,” remarked panelist Pilar Marrero, political editor of Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion. “They don’t have time to.”

    […]

    “Spanish media is there to do what the English media doesn’t do, which is to serve the immigrants,” Marrero said afterward.

    Spanish media is there to make money for the Spanish media, Pilar. If your audiences learned to speak English, they wouldn’t need you anymore and you’d have to become a real journalist instead of victimizing and stigmatizing your audience. And next time you’re talking to the governor, and you’re trying to present yourself as a journalist, don’t end a sentence with a preposition – it detracts from your credibility.

    I learned Spanish when I lived in Panama, I learned German when I lived in Germany. I already had jobs in boths places that didn’t have a language requirement for the local language, so I didn’t have to learn the respective languages – but I did out of respect for my neighbors and the people with whom I conducted daily business. There were English-language TV channels in both places, but I watched the local TV stations to immerse myself in the language.

    And who better to make that “naive and out of it” statement but Scwartzeneger – an immigrant who came here speaking no English? Is it politically incorrect because he happened to be an immigrant from a European country instead of a southern country? Pilar Marrero thinks so;

    Marrero said afterward. “As he said, it’s a political hot potato. I think he believes it, he thinks about his own experience. It’s different when you come from Austria than when you come from Latin America.”

    That’s pretty racist, Pilar. Are you saying that Europeans are genetically predisposed to learning multiple languages? Or are you saying that Latins are too stupid to learn another language besides Spanish? Or are you just yapping to hear yourself yap?

    Actually, the SPANISH LANGUAGE JOURNALISTS were upset that Schwartzeneger implied that they, SPANISH LANGUAGE JOURNALISTS, were contributing to the inability of their audience to function in an English-speaking society and conduct English-speaking business. And they are. They’re just angry that he said it outloud – to a group of SPANISH LANGUAGE JOURNALISTS.

    Like I said, who is being naive and out of it?

    By the way, I speak Spanish in my home to keep in practice for when I visit Latin America – out of respect for the people I’m visiting. I can do that because my English (the language of commerce) is just fine.

    Salud!

  • Surrender Fever hits new high among Democrat “leadership”

    I learned about this from Crotchety Old Bastard to whom I’ve immediately shipped some of my blood pressure meds. 

    In a joint letter to the President, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi noted that, even though the final troops aren’t even deployed in Iraq yet, the surge is ineffectual. From AP;

    Top US congressional Democrats bluntly told President George W. Bush Wednesday that his Iraq troop “surge” policy was a failure.

    Senate Majority leader Harry Reid and House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi challenged the president over Iraq by sending him a letter, ahead of a White House meeting later on Wednesday.

    “As many had forseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results,” the two leaders wrote.

    “The increase in US forces has had little impact in curbing the violence or fostering political reconciliation.

    It has not enhanced Americas national security. The unsettling reality is that instances of violence against Iraqis remain high and attacks on US forces have increased.

    In fact, the last two months of the war were the deadliest to date for US troops.

    The letter appeared to preview a fresh showdown over Iraq between anti-war Democrats and the president, just a few weeks after Bush forced his foes to strip troop withdrawal timelines from a 100 billion dollar emergency war budget.

    It also came a few days after the US military mourned its 3,500th soldier killed in action in Iraq.

    “As predicted” they said. Isn’t that just childish and moronic. Before it’s begun, they’ve declared it a failure. Because the impatient crybaby hippies of the anti-war movement are disappointed. Apparently Harry’s “set the bar too high” explanation didn’t go over well with Code Pink.

    Meanwhile, AP also reports that the Senate will begin destroying more military officers’ careers for the Democrats’ own political benefit;

    On Friday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the stunning announcement that he would not recommend Pace to serve a second two-year term as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps four-star general had not been a target previously of Democrats’ ire on the war, but Gates said lawmakers made it clear the confirmation process would be ugly.

    “It would be a backward looking and very contentious process,” Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

    […]

    “General Casey knows Iraq and the challenges the Army faces there,” Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in February. “The principal failures that led to the chaos in Iraq were due to the civilian leaders.”

    But when it came to Pace, Levin signaled a new era in which uniformed officers close to the president would be held accountable.

    In an interview with reporters this week, Levin said Pace’s nomination would have been more contentious than other uniformed officers because he was the closest military adviser to the president on a failing war.

    Well, you know this is coming from the Code Pink/ANSWER bunch. Their most recent protests have deflated the egos of their members because, not only have they been poorly attended, but there have begun anti-anti-war protests which are increasing in numbers and strength. The anti-war movement is afraid that their decreasing popularity might make it into the media unless the politicians can win them some victories.

    And once Congress starts beating up the generals, it’ll be a signal to the Hippies-on-the-street to start mistreating the Joes and their families. I remember the playbook from the 60s, see.

    How do I know Code Pink and ANSWER are driving Reid and Pelosi? Well, there’s this in the Politico;

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “incompetent” during an interview Tuesday with a group of liberal bloggers, a comment that was never reported.

    Reid made similar disparaging remarks about Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said several sources familiar with the interview.

    This is but the latest example of how Reid, under pressure from liberal activists to do more to stop the war, is going on the attack against President Bush and his military leaders in anticipation of a September showdown to end U.S. involvement in Iraq, according to Democratic senators and aides.

    Yep, cuz there was the blog interview with Think Progress (for some reason I can’t get to Think Progress’ website this morning, but if you can, check out the comments on the Reid interview) the other day and now this one. And we all know there are no moderates with blogs – on either side of the political spectrum. And what fuels the Left? Well, how about dumbass reports like this one from the Washington Post this morning;

    Three months into the new U.S. military strategy that has sent tens of thousands of additional troops into Iraq, overall levels of violence in the country have not decreased, as attacks have shifted away from Baghdad and Anbar, where American forces are concentrated, only to rise in most other provinces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday.

    The report — the first comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in Iraq — coincided with renewed fears of sectarian violence after the bombing yesterday of the same Shiite shrine north of Baghdad that was attacked in February 2006, unleashing a spiral of retaliatory bloodshed. Iraq’s government imposed an immediate curfew in Baghdad yesterday to prevent an outbreak of revenge killings.

    Yesterday’s attack adds to tensions faced by U.S. troops, who are paying a mounting price in casualties as they push into Iraqi neighborhoods, seeking to quell violence that the report said remains fundamentally driven by sectarianism.

    Iraq’s government, for its part, has proven “uneven” in delivering on its commitments under the strategy, the report said, stating that public pledges by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have in many cases produced no concrete results.

    Now, there may be a point in pointing out Maliki’s failures, but the Post absolutely negates the war the US military has been waging against al Qaeda which has seen a steep rise in damage to al Qaeda in Iraq’s leadership – as pointed out nearly everyday by Blackfive and the other Milblogs. But I guess the Washington Post and the other hippies can’t be bothered to check out the truth.

    And of course the WaPo instantly translates “new fears of sectarian violence” into American casualties that haven’t happened yet. I guess they never figured I’d check another source and notice that the Wall Street Journal reports that the military suspects that al Qaeda were behind the attacks – which doesn’t support the Washington Post’s “fears of sectarian violence” claims;

    After yesterday’s destruction , several Iraqi police were detained, indicating the possibility of an inside job. The pattern of the attacks — both yesterday’s and last year’s — suggests that insurgents could have slipped past the security cordon to place their explosives. Top U.S. military and civilian officials in Iraq place the blame on al Qaeda, saying it was trying “to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife.”

    Attacks by al Qaeda militants — including car bombs in crowded areas, destruction of bridges and a recent suicide bombing inside the Iraqi parliament — have become among the biggest challenges to the U.S.-led security plan.

    But it’s funny how the Washington Post suddenly decides the “surge” isn’t working on the same day Reid and Pelosi head to the White House, ain’t it?

    But, it’s nice know that the counter-protests are working. The Left is getting desperate and they need the war to end soon so they look like they have sway to their benefactors. That’s why Republicans in Congress need to hold their ground for a couple more rounds – the Left is in it’s death throes.

    Bloodthirsty Liberal wonders aloud how the Democrats felt about the increase in violence after the Normandy invasion. And Soldier’s Dad has some interesting charts related to the violence and Iraqi Security Force readiness. Bill Roggio has compiled more on the “minarets” attack.

    UPDATED: Hot Air discusses whether or not and whom Reid called “incompetent”.

  • Stunning strategy change; DC cops arrest criminals (Updated)

    The Washington Post announced today that over this last weekend, DC Metro police changed their tactics and began arresting criminals;

    The District’s stepped-up campaign to fight crime brought 492 arrests in its first two days, including 51 for felonies, a 70 percent increase over the previous weekend that has left city leaders hopeful about the new strategy.

    […]

    Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced last week that all of the force’s 3,300 sworn officers would work longer hours this weekend to give the summer crime-fighting program a jump-start. The plan, which cost $1.3 million in overtime pay, was intended to help prevent an increase in homicides, robberies, car thefts and gang activity that typically comes in the summer.

    It’s not all good news, though. They aren’t changing their strategy so much that they’ll stop relying on useless surveillance cameras;

    Police are also expanding their network of neighborhood surveillance cameras, adding five last week and 24 by the end of June, for a total of 72 across the city.

    Surveillance cameras haven’t done a thing except push criminals into areas that aren’t surveilled – or into Prince Georges County, Maryland.

    Cops got so excited that they could actually investigate crimes and catch criminals, they started running into each other;

     A police chase after a murder suspect ended in a violent crash Sunday. Two DC Police cruisers slammed into each, other injuring the officers inside, all while horrified residents looked on at the intersection of 13th and K Streets in southeast.

    And of course the City Council is on board…well…sort of;

    “I’m assuming all are valid arrests,” said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. “Some neighborhoods are enormously frustrated with ongoing criminal activity. If police are cracking down, I’m sure residents are pleased to be feeling a bit safer.”

    Council member Kwame R. Brown (D-At Large) agreed that the more aggressive tactics could be a good start to tamping down crime. “If these arrests are warranted, I’m happy it happened and they’re getting people off the streets,” he said.

    But councilmember Brown had a proviso;

    “The questions become, ‘How do you take those arrests and deal with them on the front end and back end?’ ” Brown said. “People arrested — fine. But at the same time, we need to focus why they are out there getting arrested in the first place.”

    Um, probably because they’re criminals, Council Member. I know you see it as an opening for convincing the already over-taxed, working residents of DC that you need to increase their taxes so you can “solve” poverty in the District, or you can blame over-crowded classrooms or some other equally vacuous platitude about how tax money can prevent crime. The Council and Mayor’s office have consistently prevented police from doing their jobs, and call for half-measures that mask their incompetence and disregard for the safety of law-abiding citizens.

    Like those idiot “Police Emergencies” that old Ramsey called last year that were nothing more than police doing their jobs for a few weeks and getting overtime pay for doing it. I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only one who could see through that ploy.

    There’s no revenue in catching criminals. They’d rather have cops writing tickets and putting boots on car wheels. That brings in cash. They think government is their own little business which doesn’t have it’s excesses and abuses regulated. The City Council is just too secure in their jobs – they know the voters will vote them back into office not because of what they’ve done, but because of what they are. Voters don’t hold the City Council responsible for their incompetence, because City Council blames everything on Congress and the President – and because the citizens are willfully blind and ignorant, they throw their votes away on lazy and incompetent government.

    As soon as arrests become politically unpopular, the City Council will jump back off board, I’m sure. 500 arrests means 1 in 1000 residents of DC were arrested this weekend (if they were indeed all DC residents). I expect to see angry parents and spouses on TV soon complaining that their criminal relatives were framed by over-zealous cops and the cops will go back to solving crimes at the drive-through window of the Popeye’s chicken joints.

    Not related to the sweep, but a trial that begins tomorrow for – guess who;

    DC Council member Marion Barry is expected to be in court Tuesday to face several traffic charges stemming from traffic stops that occurred last year in the District.

    In September, Barry was stopped by Secret Service officers near the White House after he allegedly ran a red light. Police also said he smelled of alcohol.

    Barry was charged with driving under the influence after refusing to take a urine test. A breath test came in below the legal limit.

    In December, Barry was stopped by US Park Police in Southeast for driving too slowly. He was charged with misuse of temporary tags and operating an unregistered vehicle.

    Barry insists the charges are unfounded.

     

    See, there’s the damn problem. This criminal is a council member, too. He’s delinquent on his taxes for seven years (and the federal prosecutors can’t force him to pay, because the judge won’t force him) and he’s a menace to society and the entire city.

    And do you know how hard it was to find links to these stories about Barry? I guess the local media is burying the criminal behavior of it’s most [in]famous resident.

    I don’t want anyone to get me wrong. I don’t blame the DC Metro Police for their inability to stop criminals and arrest criminals and jail criminals. I completely blame the local government. I know and I’ve met great dedicated cops on the Metro DC police force (there are some useless turds, too – they know who they are) – but the politicians won’t let them do their jobs the way they should because the criminals run the media like sock puppets and the media run the politicians like sock puppets. So, politicians; guess who’s hand is really up your…um…sock.

    UPDATE: The Washington Times reports this morning that;

    The Metropolitan Police Department made more than 650 arrests last weekend as part of a kickoff to the District’s summer anti-crime initiative, Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday.
        “I think overall we hit our goal of what the initiative was,” Chief Lanier said during a press conference announcing the arrest totals. Now, we “take those examples and then determine how we turn that around, listen to what people have said to us.”
        The 650 arrests were made from 6 a.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Sunday. That was more than twice the average number made during the previous five weekends, police said, and the arrests also resulted in a drop of about 10 percent in serious crime compared with the previous weekends.
        The adult arrests included 109 on narcotics charges, 11 for aggravated assaults, 14 for unauthorized use of a vehicle, nine on robbery charges and four from three homicide cases.
        Police also arrested 33 juveniles on charges ranging from weapons offenses to narcotics.

    I wonder where the Post got it’s numbers; 24% more arrests from the Times is pretty significant. Now the Post is conceding the 650 number;

    D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said yesterday that crime across the District dipped 10 percent last weekend as a result of her “all hands on deck” initiative, in which 3,300 members of the force worked a pair of overtime shifts.

    I guess they rushed yesterday’s story to print. But the fact remains that if DC deployed it’s police force more effectively, they could fight crime better. Giuliani put cops on beats pounding the pavement and it worked fine then.

  • The anti-Israel rally in DC

    We went to the rally against Israel this afternoon. We got there at about 2:30 and went by the pro-Israel group first (I had to get my bearings and I knew where the good guys were going to be). All-in-all they were a small, rational group;

    Before we left home, I checked the opposition’s websites and they predicted hundreds of thousands of partcipants. I’m sure they were fairly disappointed because there seemed to be only a few hundred. This was the view of their rally from the Pro-Israel rally;

    Most of the anti-Israeli group were crowded around the entrance. There were “marshalls” there that censored the signs that people brought themselves. I guess they were looking for overtly racist signs. The organizing moonbats brought scores of signs to hand out to participants. Too many it seems. These are the crews bringing the extras in after the rally started;

    This is about the size of the crowd at the mainstage just before it started;

    Not really hundreds of thousands was it? But as always at these events, it’s more important to see who’s on the periphery of the main rally;

    Ask us about socialism – that has to be my favorite line. As if any of the attendees were confused about the tenets of socialism.

    Here’s another little bit of hypocrisy. If the Bible isn’t a deed, then why is the Koran a deed?

    It’s a great day when you can wrap your kids in an Arafat scarf and make them a poster supporting the “next generation” of suicide-bombing haters.

    And you can muddy the debate with an accidental friendly fire incident

    And the fat cow coalition supports impeaching AIPAC, an organization that can’t be impeached. But it sure sounds stern, doesn’t it.

    And I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m fairly sure that there aren’t any Palestinians waving any flags for him or his clerical collar;

    Here’s my favorite guy. Guess what he is. That’s right, he’s a “twoofer”. His type are easily recognizable by the portable beer coaster he sports under his shirt and the aire of an intellectually superior being.

    And the dollar bill he’s holding? Well, my wife snatched it from him (before I could grab his  stubby little paw that he thrust in my face) and here it is;

    And the back;

    Isn’t that cute? That’s a real website, too, if you have the stomach for it. But I’m not driving traffic there.

    Well, we went back had a couple of gallons of ice tea at the Dubliner where we could keep an eye on foot traffic to the rally and as near as I can tell, not more than a few hundred more showed up, in dribbles and drabs (anti-democracy people are easily recognizable among the tourist foot traffic in DC when you’ve lived here as long as I have). So I’m not sure how the media is going to call this one, but I’d put attendance at about a thousand – tops.

    The pro-Israel rally was only about a hundred or so, but the Left had big expectations for their rally, guessing by the internet support. The Left generally pooh-poohed the low attendence at the March on the Pentagon back in March because of cold weather, but today was a gorgeous spring day. It was probably near 80 degrees and overcast – so what’s the excuse this time?

    My guess; the Left is just tired of pointless rallies. There were no puppets on stilts, no wildly dressed malcontents. Even the Socialist recruiting tables were less-attended than usual. I think the Left is losing it’s fire. Too bad really – I wanted some more pictures of puppets – I miss those little buggers.

    Ah, heck here’s one from last years Code Pink Mother’s Day rally for old time’s sake. (I know the date stamp is wrong – I’m no technical wiz)

    Solomonia and djca.org agree that today’s rally was pretty pathetic. More commentary from Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs.

    UPDATE: More pictures and a much better commentary at The Age of Hooper.

    Oh, ya know what? I forgot to mention that the were a couple of thousand people at the Capitol (Gay) Pride festivities (basically a street festival) just a few blocks away that generally just ignored the fact that their allies on the Left were having a rally that day. So I guess the lesson is that you can’t count on the Gay community for your goofy Leftist rallies. I’m sure the anti-Israel forces were counting on the Gays incidental appearances to swell their numbers. But it didn’t work out for ’em.