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

Category: Media

  • Gathering of Eagles

    I gotta tell ya, I haven’t felt so much at home before in DC as I feel today. I’m going to leave the crowd counting to the experts – but not the Washington Post who wrote this crap this morning;

    Thousands of protesters, marking the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, began gathering this morning for a march to the Pentagon, but many of them were met by a peaceful rally of veterans groups and war supporters near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

    It was a classic example of grass-roots politics in Washington and of the strong emotions that the Vietnam War still exerts more than 30 years after fighting there ended.

    Get that? THOUSANDS of protesters were met by a “rally” of veterans. Sounds like the veterans were outnumbered, doesn’t it?

    The only “grassroots” were on the side of the veterans who had come at their own expense and with very little organization. I met four veterans who had driven up in a car from the Florida Gulf Coast and got into town the night before – that’s grassroots!

    Anyway I got there at about 8:30 this morning (after my regular Saturday morning breakfast of SOS at the Walter Reed messhall) and here’s the video I took of the THOUSANDS of protesters. As opposed to this video I took of the Gathering of Eagles a few minutes before. Quite a difference from what the Post reported, huh?

    Here’s what the protesters saw across the street that separated the two sides;

    There were this many veterans;

    And this many protesters;

    Pretty intimidating huh?

    As the morning went on the crowds on both sides grew and the Park Police began putting up barracades to keep the sides separated;

    Let me just pause here to tell ya’all that the Park Police were real pros. The Wall was well protected – they’d set up metal detectors and hand searched everyone who went to the Wall. This in effect kept the protesters away because they didn’t want to wait in a long line to get to the Wall. The Park Police stayed out of the way, but kept a close eye on the event. Real pros.

    Now, back to the event.

    Apparently age doesn’t always bring wisdom, in the case of these folks;

    And despite the fact that ANSWER and the coalition of weasels have tried to deny that the Truthers are a part of their movement, the Truthers were there;

    And I don’t even want to think about what makes some “Queers” more radical than others;

    The only TV interview I saw being taped was with a supposed “Iraq veteran” who opposed the war. He looked a little old and pudgy to be a recent veteran, though, so I have my doubts. We all remember the Stolen Valor vets of the Vietnam Era, and the media that was more interested in their anti-war comments than their acceditation.

    A few times, the veterans would chant “USA” so loud it could probably be heard at the White House. The protesters tried to shout them down (in those testosterone deficient high pitched squeals that make them the moonbats that they are), but when that failed, they just turned up the music on their speakers – a weak answer to the real passion they faced over the police barriers.

    I’ve been to veterans rallies before. The “Kerry Lied” rally in September 2004 outside the Capitol comes to mind. But this one was so different. There was so much more backslapping, hugging, handshakes, “Welcome home” wishing than I’d ever seen.

    In my opinion, this Gathering of Eagles rally has done more for the healing of the wounds these veterans have been burdened with for forty years than any wall or memorial could ever. It was if they’d finally been given the opportunity to face their oppressors. There were no sorrowful stares, no sympathetic words. It was all smiles and laughter.

    All of those years of anger that had been bottled up was directed against their common enemy – moral and intellectual laziness. The world had to listen to them, the citizens who had sacrificed and paid the price and came home to the disapproval of the citizens who had never spent an uncomfortable moment in their lives.

    One veteran told me, “We’re here because those guys who are fighting in Iraq deserve better than what we got when we came home. No one stood up for us, but by God, we’re standing up for them. And if we don’t, who will?”

    Welcome home, brothers.

    UPDATE: Welcome LGFers and Sweetness and Light folks

    Michele Malkin has photos up on her “blog burst” now. Curt at Flopping Aces has a round up of several blogs.

  • Another shot in the dark

    I’ve been following this story about the Justice Department lawyers for a couple of days, but I’m still confused about what the big deal is. I even emailed the Washington Post reporters on Tuesday, Dan Eggan and Paul Kane, and mentioned the Clinton purge. Dan Egan emailed me back and tried to explain that they had mentioned the Clinton purge in their article, but that they were more focused on the Karl Rove connection and the political undetones of the firings.

    Like there were no political motives in the Clinton purges. Sweetness and Light reprints the New York Times article about the Reno firings.

    Well in their own article, on Page 2 this morning, Eggan and Kane admit that Rove was opposed to the firings;

    The three e-mails also show that presidential adviser Karl Rove asked the White House counsel’s office in early January 2005 whether it planned to proceed with a proposal to fire all 93 federal prosecutors. Officials said yesterday that Rove was opposed to that idea but wanted to know whether Justice planned to carry it out.

    Of course they (Kane and Eggan) don’t believe that.

    The first e-mail, dated Jan. 6, 2005, is from a White House counsel’s office assistant. It indicates that Rove had stopped by that office to ask lawyer David Leitch whether a decision had been made to keep the U.S. attorneys in their jobs. The e-mail does not suggest that Rove advocated one outcome over another.

    So if there’s no evidence he was opposed or not, then we must assume the worst (or best, depending on your perspective and who butters your bread).

    And ABC News buries the fact that these firings are really no big deal in the middle of their story making a big deal of the firings;

    Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said Gonazales “has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. attorneys while he was still White House counsel.” She said he was preparing for his attorney general confirmation hearing and was focused on that.

    “Of course, discussions of changes in presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal White House exchanges in the days and months after the election as the White House was considering different personnel changes administration-wide,” Scolinos said.

    Curt at Flopping Aces lays the whole thing out better than I.

    Jon Ward at the Washington Times tells us that Howard Dean and Chuckie Schumer are taking advantage over the confusion the public has with this;

    Democrats smell blood — and campaign cash — in the uproar over the Justice Department’s firing of eight federal prosecutors last year.
        “This could be George Bush’s Watergate,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean wrote in an e-mail soliciting campaign funds yesterday.
        Senate Democrats said their investigation into the firings is intended to preserve independence for federal prosecutors and keep them from being used as political foot soldiers for the executive branch.

    If this is President Bush’s “Watergate”, is that all they’ve got? They get exercised over a non-covert CIA agent being “outed” (while her husband has been outing her all over town), some dusty buildings on an Army base and now this? If only they’d get this exercised about their own shortcomings. Like FBI files lost for years that suddenly turn up with the fingerprints of an unelected, uncommissioned person, or the travel office employees getting fired to pay off political allies.

    Arlen Specter discovers he’s still a Republican and speaks out against Schumer’s conflict of interest in the Senate’s investigation;

    Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, was using information gained in congressional inquiries he directed to attack Republicans through the Senate Democrats’ fundraising arm, which Mr. Schumer chairs.
        “I believe there is a conflict of interest between Senator Schumer’s position as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the leader of this inquiry,” said Mr. Specter, the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican.
        Mr. Schumer rejected Mr. Specter’s criticism during a low-key but tense exchange in a Senate Judiciary Committee session.
        “I fail to see any conflict whatsoever,” said Mr. Schumer…

    Yeah, well, we’re used to Little Chuckie Schumer not seeing a conflict of interest on his side of the aisle.

    If ever there was “much ado about nothing”, this is it.

  • Senate ready for Iraq debate – again

    Apparently the GOP will allow the Senate to debate the Iraq War today. From the Washington Times’ S.A. Miller and Christina Bellantoni;

    Senate Republicans yesterday pledged not to block the beginning of debate on a Democratic resolution that calls for all U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 2008.
        “I think we’re going to proceed because we don’t mind having the debate,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, adding that Republicans still have misgivings about the bill.
        “It moves us down the roads towards further micromanaging the troops and having a date specific for an exit,” said the Kentucky Republican. “It’s not at all clear at this point how this week’s debate on Iraq is going to play out.”

    Yeah, I say give the Democrats enough rope to hang themselves. They want to take half-measures while avoiding committing themselves to what they know is complete failure. Let ’em go.

    But Dingy Harry Reid is going to sabotage the debate by putting an early withdrawal clause in his proposal. From the DC Examiner’s Anne Flaherty;

    “Agreeing to a debate is not enough,” said Reid, D-Nev. “Republicans must heed the voices of their constituents and the overwhelming majority of Americans and vote to change the president’s flawed Iraq policy.”

    Reid is pushing a resolution that would set a target date of March 31, 2008, for the withdrawal of combat troops. The measure says U.S. forces could stay beyond that date only to protect U.S. personnel, train and equip Iraqi forces and carry out counterterrorism operations.

    I guess Harry doesn’t realize that Republicans have a constituency quite different from his, apparently. While some of the morons that keep sending Harry The Sock Puppet to the Senate may be telling him they want out of Iraq, but the folks who sent Republicans back to the Senate aren’t. If Harry’d back off from the Kool Aid for a moment, he might realize that the majority of Americans don’t want to lose in Iraq.

    After yesterday’s scathing editorial condemning the Congressional Democrat’s proposal that doesn’t take into account what will happen to the Iraqis, the Washington Post criticizes the Republicans for taking into account what will happen to the Iraqis;

    The lack of debate inside the Republican Party reflects not just loyalty to the president but also a belief that Bush’s policies still offer a chance for success in Iraq, GOP officials said. But that has done little to calm growing fears that Republicans will be punished politically unless there is a dramatic improvement in the course of the war and Americans’ perceptions about it.

    “I don’t think there is a lot of Republican anxiety that we’re doing the wrong thing and it’s hurting us,” said Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman from Minnesota. “There’s a lot of feeling that we’re doing the right thing and it’s killing us.”

    That’s right. It’s like I wrote yesterday, the right answer is always hard. The easy way out never works for long. But, I guess you can’t tell the baby-boomer Leftists stuff like that.

  • Republicans dissatisified with candidates (d’oh)

    UPI is running a short piece about how nearly 60% of Republicans aren’t happy with their candidates;

     A new poll suggests U.S. Republican voters consider their party divided and are unhappy with the current candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination.

    The poll of 1,362 adults — including 698 Republicans — found that just short of 6 in 10 Republicans polled are not satisfied with the current presidential contenders from their party, The New York Times reported Tuesday. By contrast, about 6 in 10 Democrats expressed satisfaction with their party’s contenders.

    Imagine that. 18 months before the election – whatever will we do? Guess we ought to throw in the towel now. In the meantime, 60% of Democrats are happy with their field of weirdos – reminiscent of the bar scene in Star Wars. Shocker, huh?

  • General Pace on “don’t ask, don’t tell”

    The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, responding to a question from a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, expressed support for the Administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy;

    “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

    “As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” Pace said.

    So because a soldier supports the policies of his commander-in-chief, and the commander-in-chief before him, the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network, which claims to represent 65,000 servicemembers who are in violation of that policy thinks he should apologize;

    “General Pace’s comments are outrageous, insensitive and disrespectful to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our armed forces,”

    Now, let me get this straight; they think he should apologize for merely having a view that doesn’t jive with their’s? Apologize for having an opinion that is the legal opinion and not the opinion that supports criminals in violation of that policy?

    Nevermind that there are more important things going on in the world that people (including the Chicago tribune, by the way) shouldn’t be getting exercised about who puts what where in the privacy of their homes, but demanding an apology for having an opinion is just ridiculous and childish. I think the Servicemembers’ Network should apologize for thinking they deserve an apology.

    And the AP, by way of the Washington Post quotes the Human Rights Campaign;

    Louis Vizcaino, spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said Pace’s comments were “insulting and offensive to the men and women … who are serving in the military honorably.”

    “Right now there are men and women that are in the battle lines, that are in the trenches, they’re serving their country,” Vizcaino said. “Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their capability to serve in the U.S. military.”

    That’s exactly right, Lou. So why can’t they just serve and obey the policy?

  • DC’s Mayor Fenty speaks out against citizen’s rights

    Everyone knows by now that, in a rare act of confidence in DC residents, the DC Circuit Court struck down the District’s draconian 1976 gun law that forbade citizen-owned handguns and only allowed owners to have rifles in their home (not shotguns, rifles) if the rifle was disassembled and separated from it’s ammunition.

    According to Washington Time’s Tarron Lively and Daniel Taylor, newly-elected Mayor Adrian Fenty (that’s him on the left in the picture above) was “outraged”;

    D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said he was “outraged” by the court’s decision, which overturns a law that “has been unquestioned for more than 30 years.”
        “Today’s decision flies in the face of laws that have helped decrease gun violence in the District of Columbia,” he said. “The ruling also turns aside longstanding precedents and marks the first time in the history of the United States that a federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds.”

    Scott McCabe of the DC Examiner quoted the new mayor;

    “I am strongly opposed to the court’s decision,” Fenty said. “District residents deserve every protection afforded to them under District law.”

    The District has banned handgun ownership since 1976. In 2004, a lower-court judge told six D.C. residents that they did not have a constitutional right to own handguns.

    I’d remind Mayor Fenty that the longevity of a law doesn’t neccessarily protect it from challenge. Otherwise slavery and Jim Crow Laws would be common practice since they were unchallenged for decades. As for helping keep DC gun violence down, according to the Metro DC police’s own count, they’ve confiscated 9046 guns since 2002. I’m guessing that they’re only scratching the surface of illegal guns in the hands of criminals in the District. There have been 30 murders in DC already this year – that’s over 3 per week.

    According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,  209 kids (between the ages of 0-19) were murdered by gun violence 1999-2004 in our nation’s capitol. Doesn’t sound like this law has been doing much good. Nor does it sound like the District can protect it’s half-million citizens with the eight thousand law enforcement officials on patrol from various local and Federal agencies in this city.

    Crime has been on the rise over the past two years in DC and it’s largely because the law-abiding population isn’t armed and the criminals are armed. Car-jackings and home invasions are becoming more prevailant – two crimes that would virtually end if criminals weren’t quite so sure that their intended victims are unarmed.

    We moved from Northeast DC last year because crime was becoming a daily event in our neighborhood – gun crime. Two people were shot on different occasions in our upscale apartment complex. Two carjackings at gunpoint and a home invasion at knifepoint finally drove us to the suburbs. Having my Ruger Mini-14 in the closet was some comfort, But not being able to brandish it in an emergency was becoming a concern. I can only imagine the nightmare of a trial I would be forced to endure if I’d actually shot an intruder.

    And just because another court has never struck down a gun law on Second Amedment grounds, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be struck down. That’s what the Bill of Rights is supposed to do, Junior. It’s supposed to protect the minority from the ill-considered over-reactive policies of the majority.

    The Washington Post does it’s level best to paint the plaintiffs in this case as right-wing gun nuts;

    Gura declined to say how he assembled the plaintiffs, who came to the case with different backgrounds and motivations.

    Some of the plaintiffs grew up with guns in and around their homes and belong to the National Rifle Association. A few are involved with libertarian organizations, including the Cato Institute, which provided legal assistance in the lawsuit.

    To us on the Right it sounds innocuous enough, but to the Leftists in DC (who voted 90% for Kerry in the 2004 election) invoking the boogey-creatures the NRA and Cato Institute (which a DC resident recently explained to me was a front organization for the KKK) is fear-mongering. This case (to which I’ve contributed money since 2003) didn’t garner much attention outside the Cato Institute’s membership and the Washington Times until this court decision. I suppose it’ll take front-and-center in the gun-grabbing Washington Post’s columns from now on, though.

    Yesterday, their editorial board called it a “Dangerous Ruling“;

    IN OVERTURNING the District of Columbia’s long-standing ban on handguns yesterday, a federal appeals court turned its back on nearly 70 years of Supreme Court precedent to give a new and dangerous meaning to the Second Amendment. If allowed to stand, this radical ruling will inevitably mean more people killed and wounded as keeping guns out of the city becomes harder. Moreover, if the legal principles used in the decision are applied nationally, every gun control law on the books would be imperiled.

    The 2 to 1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down sections of a 1976 law that bans city residents from having handguns in their homes. The court also overturned the law’s requirement that shotguns and rifles be stored disassembled or with trigger locks. The court grounded its unprecedented ruling in the finding that the Second Amendment right to bear arms extends beyond militias to individuals. The activities the Second Amendment protects, the judges wrote, “are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or continued intermittent enrollment in the militia.”

    Never before has a law been struck down on that basis. The Supreme Court, in its landmark 1939 decision United States v. Miller, stated that the Second Amendment was adopted “with obvious purpose” of protecting the ability of states to organize militias and “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.” Nearly every other federal court of appeals has concurred in that finding. The dissenting judge in yesterday’s opinion, Karen LeCraft Henderson, a Republican appointee like the other two judges on the panel, rightly lambasted the majority for its willful disregard of Supreme Court precedent.

    Yep, never before has the court ruled that a basic God-given right of an individual is to protect his property and his family. Way to misinterpret the Constitution, goofballs. I wonder if any of the members of WaPo’s editorial board or Mayor Fenty own guns, or if any of the people who protect them have guns. Don’t the rest of us deserve the same level of security?

  • Getting stuff off my chest today

    Nothing going on today – except that Congress is having global warming hearings while the global warming is clogging our streets here in DC. Maybe they should schedule hearings in July when they might be more convincing.

    I guess everyone is mad that Ann Coulter insinuated that John Edwards might be a “faggot” (her word, not mine). I’ve been reading about it everywhere. Everyone seems mighty upset about it. But I haven’t seen anyone say that he’s not. Wonder why.

    And some goofus was smuggling a big magnet in his rectum on a cross-country flight. A magnet and some wires. And his bags went on the flight without him. I don’t care if he was doing something illegal or not, he’s up to something that no one else I know would be up to – he bears watching. He’s coming your way, Philly.

    Thank goodness the Libby trial is over. It gives the Washington Post something to put on the front page besides trashing Walter Reed. Paul Kane couldn’t help but mention it in his blog, though. Today he’s cheering on the “victorious” Democrats and their 81 (so far) oversight hearings on the Iraq War. I guess that the Democrats have been doing so much backpedaling on thier campaign promises, they need a cheerleader sometimes.

    “America voted for change in November. This is just the beginning,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a member of the Democratic leadership, declared in a Tuesday morning House floor speech. “What a difference a year makes.”

    How’s that Rahm? What difference is there in Congress? Just different incoherent yammering is all.

    Meanwhile, the President is delivering the good news from Iraq to the people since the Mainstream Media won’t.

    Spoke too soon; the Washington Post couldn’t help themselves. They had to put a Walter Reed story on the front page at 1:32 pm. Sure, it’s the same Dole/Shalala story recyled from yesterday…I guess they felt naked without it. What a bunch of…oh, look at the time – I’m late for rehab.

  • Washington Post just won’t let it go

    Yeah, OK, we get it already, WaPo. After being bombarded for a week now with stories ABOUT ONE FRIGGIN’ BUILDING at Walter Reed, Washington Post is adjusting fire and assaulting the entire veterans care systemin an article entited “It Is Just Not Walter Reed“;

    “It is just not Walter Reed,” Oliva slowly tapped out on his keyboard at 4:23 in the afternoon on Friday. “The VA hospitals are not good either except for the staff who work so hard. It brings tears to my eyes when I see my brothers and sisters having to deal with these conditions. I am 70 years old, some say older than dirt but when I am with my brothers and sisters we become one and are made whole again.”

    Firstly, I’d like to say that it’s certainly not difficult to find a soldier who’ll bitch to the press about anything. In fact, we used to say that if the troops quit bitching, it’s time to worry.

    Secondly, where was the damn Washington Post 13 years ago? Do they honestly believe that conditions in Veterans care facilities just got bad on January 20th, 2001? Where were they when I complained about 80-year-old patients were left for hours on gurneys in the hallway of the VA hospital in Syracuse, NY shivering from the cold and covered in a thin sheet back in 1994? 

    Where was the Washington Post when I was in the VA hospital in Washington DC back in 2000 and wasn’t fed for more three days – despite my constant harangue? I’ve been in VA facilities since then and conditions have improved immeasurably – despite the fact that President Bush’s Administration has increased the number of eligible veterans 6-fold!

    There are still problems (mostly because of the drama-queen administrators – like the idiot “patient advocate” at the DC hospital who I swear sounds and looks like a man, but overacts as well as any New Orleans whore on her way to jail) but it’s a damn-sight better than it has been before President Bush. The only way the DC hospital will get better is to fire those morons so deeply entrenched in their jobs that they’ll never fear being fired. But that’s true of any beaurocratic organization – especially on inside the Beltway.

    WaPo also has a companion story about homeless veterans. But where the Hell were they just two months ago when the DC VA Medical Center flung their doors open to more than three hundred local homeless veterans for their annual Winterhaven event? Go ahead and “google” Winterhaven on Washington Post’s website – no results found. “Google” the word veterans and you get five pages of Walter Reed stories.

    So where have you been, WaPo? If you had given a tiny rat’s ass before, you’d have something to compare current conditions with. But since you haven’t bothered before, your credibility (those few tattered shreds remaining) is shot to Hell.