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

Category: Media

  • Sounds Kinda Like An “Enemies List” to Me

    A few years ago, a lady named Christine O’Donnell ran for the Senate in Delaware. She ran an, um, interesting campaign.

    She lost.

    One can argue whether or not she was a good candidate. I personally thought she was a poor candidate, ran at best a mediocre campaign, and that a better candidate could have won. But regardless, she managed to parlay that experience – and the publicity it generated – into a new gig. She now writes a column for the Washington Times Communities.

    Ms. O’Donnell is quite conservative. She was a Tea Party favorite when she ran for the Senate.

    However, for the past few years she’s been having a bit of trouble with a certain Federal agency. Let’s see – she’s conservative and writes a column for a conservative publication. Gee, what Federal agency do you think might be giving her a hard time?

    If you guessed the IRS, give yourself a pat on the back. Yeah, the same IRS that has been proven grossly biased against conservatives – giving conservative organizations filing for nonprofit status the “slow-roll” treatment, while expediting the processing of those who are politically liberal and/or well-connected.

    The IRS has now reportedly frozen Ms. O’Donnell’s bank accounts. In error. For the second time in the last 5 years. And the IRS also reportedly removed $30,000 from her accounts when it froze them – which has yet to be returned.

    If you or I pulled a stunt like that, it would probably be called “theft by deception”, fraud, or something similar,  We’d almost certainly be on the “hot seat” being grilled by Federal LEOs.

    But here, it’s the IRS doing it to a public figure of the opposite political philosophy than the current      DC clown krewe in charge      Administration.  So it’s seemingly A-OK.

    You know, I can’t help but contrast this incident to stuff I remember from years ago. When employees of a certain past former POTUS pulled similar stunts, it was called “dirty tricks” and an “enemies list”; the press raised hell about it. But today, for the current Administration it seems to be just “business as usual” – and the press doesn’t seem to give a damn.

    “Most transparent administration in history”? Well, maybe. If you’re talking most transparently willing to abuse the power of the Federal bureaucracy to retaliate against its political enemies, that is.

    And meanwhile from the press we hear . . . nada.  They seem unable to pull their thumbs out of their keisters and write anything

  • Shawn Parcells; CNN’s forensics expert’s creds questioned

    Shawn Parcells; CNN’s forensics expert’s creds questioned

    Shawn Parcells

    Andy11M sends us a link to The Daily Caller which reports that CNN’s go-to forensics expert in the Michael Brown/Ferguson case isn’t who he says he is, and he doesn’t have the credentials that he says he has. Now, I don’t watch CNN, I haven’t since they ran that report of the military using chemical agents to kill defectors to the North Vietnamese in the late 90s. But apparently they used this Shawn Parcells pretty extensively;

    Parcells appeared on all of the major cable TV networks, but showed up most frequently on CNN. He was interviewed multiple times on Anderson Cooper 360, and by Jake Tapper and Ashleigh Banfield. He also made at least two appearances on HLN with Nancy Grace.

    But in its investigation, the very same network that cited Parcells so often found that he had embellished his academic background and that he conducted a 2012 autopsy in Missouri without a licensed pathologist present.

    He even made up the term that CNN used to lend credibility to his reportage – a Forensic Pathologist Assistant. Of course, in true pretender fashion, Purcells blames CNN for not checking his creds;

    Despite ample public evidence against Parcells, he told TheDC that when he was making the rounds on the TV circuit to discuss the Brown autopsy, networks never asked about his professional past.

    “I was expecting them to ask, but they never did,” Parcells said.

    Like I’ve been saying since we started busting the anti-war phonies here, it’s more important what the fakers are saying than what are the source’s credentials for saying that stuff. The media is more interested in making news than reporting it.

  • Media lectures Republicans

    Media lectures Republicans

    10434313_10100441035897718_6319287116603961801_n

    I’m sorry, but I just love that picture and needed to write a post around it. The New York Times and the Washington Post feel the need to tell Republicans what they need to do to be successful in the next few years. That’s like me taking advice on how to expose phonies from Christopher David Duke, but the Times, as is their wont, lectures Republicans with some fractured history;

    Campaigning on pure negativity isn’t surprising for a party that has governed that way since Mr. Obama was first sworn in. By creating an environment where every initiative is opposed and nothing gets done, Republicans helped engineer the president’s image as weak and ineffectual.

    Yeah, no. The President and his staff engineered that image all by themselves by making him a weak and ineffectual leader – they didn’t need Republicans to help them in that regard. Benghazi, ISIS, Ebola, Fast & Furious all come to mind when the public needs examples of this White House’s failure to act in a timely manner. Not to mention that veterans have been complaining about Shinseki and the way the VA has been run for years, and it took the deaths of veterans to drive the point home finally.

    And, oh, by the way, New York Times editorial board, it’s Harry Reid who hasn’t passed a budget in the Senate for five years, and all of the legislation that he’s been sitting on over the last year or so, waiting for yesterday’s election. So sell that crazy somewhere else.

    From the Post;

    A full debate on the United States’ fight against the Islamic State is past due, with significant congressional review of and consent to the sustained air campaign over Iraq and Syria still lacking. The “sequester” — those utterly irrational, across-the-board budget cuts that should never have come into effect — is set to hit harder next year. Lawmakers have plenty of reasons to head off the budget sledgehammer, from preserving military readiness to maintaining investment in programs that sustain Americans’ quality of life.

    While I agree with the Post that sequester is irrational and dangerous, it came out of the White House and it was enacted by a cowardly Congress not making the tough choices so I don’t have much hope in that regard. Especially, while the Post itself is calling for personnel cuts at the Pentagon without personnel cuts to the rest of the Executive Branch employees.

    Can we please stop calling the redistribution of wealth of productive Americans to those who are less productive “investments in programs”? While I’m not in favor of pulling the rug out from under the truly needy, it’s hardly an “investment” when people won’t work for their way in the world. It’s only an investment in selfishness and a sense of entitlement. So let’s call it what it is.

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the links.

  • Washington Post: Want to help veterans? Stop pitying them.

    Chief Tango sends us a link to an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran entitled “Want to help veterans? Stop pitying them” which is basically the same thing that we’ve been saying for a while.

    The press, politicians and even many veterans’ advocacy groups tend to focus, with legitimate reason, on service members who have returned banged up or who are struggling in their new civilian lives. But this fails to convey the full measure of this generation of veterans. That wouldn’t be a problem if Americans knew their military and understood these stories in context, with the knowledge of veterans who are thriving. But fewer than 1 percent of Americans have participated in our latest wars. Add their direct family members, and it is still only about 5 percent of the population.

    With so few possessing a direct link to someone who has served, Americans often don’t understand that most of our veterans are not damaged and that many have successfully navigated the transition to life after the military. Even those suffering from trauma or physical injuries can have an enormously positive impact in their communities. Our veterans can make — and are making — valuable contributions in business, government, education, health and community service.

    Our all-volunteer force has provided us with the best-trained military in the world. The reliance on volunteers, however, has led many other Americans to pay scant attention to the sacrifice and skill of our warriors. We let them protect us, while we go on with life as usual.

    That lat part is probably the fault of George W. Bush who told us to go with our lives as usual so the terrorists don’t win. Some people don’t understand the limits of that statement. Some saw it as their duty to fight terrorism in the malls with their dollars and their inattention to the war. So now, their “pity” for veterans springs from that inattention. The only veterans that they read about in the news are the ones who misbehave and blame their military service for their crimes. Those are the veterans, or the non-veteran pretenders who thrive on the pity.

    I can rattle off the names of folks from Tim Poe to James Deon Korfhage who lied about their service to make excuses for their behavior. To get pity from judges and audiences.

    The concern about prospective bosses prying into post-traumatic stress or asking “Did you ever kill anyone?” prompted one active-duty soldier to tell us that he is more nervous about sitting for a job interview than he is about redeploying to Afghanistan.

    That feeds the whole “pity” thing for people who have no experience or understanding of military service. They’re actually victims of the popular culture and the media who want to tell about the “crazy vets” who do bad things because George W. Bush sent them to war instead of the mall.

    Paying attention to the many who have returned with serious physical and mental wounds is one way to build that support. But pity isn’t a sustainable strategy. A better recognition of the overall veteran experience — the bad, the good and everything in between — is essential to forging a lasting compact between those who have served and the rest of us.

    The “pity” thing feeds the phonies who only compound their bad behavior with more bad behavior while the mall walkers pity them. After the Vietnam War, the popular culture (obviously, not all folks) reviled veterans for what they’d done in the war and the pendulum has swung back to the other extreme and everyone wants to be a veteran, even those with minimal or non-existent service. The “pity” is the attraction.

    Rajiv Chandrasekaran has contributed mightily to the “pity” for veterans in the pages of the Post. For example, his columns After the Wars: The other wounds and After the wars: A legacy of pain and pride, so I guess this one as well as his book due out this month is his penance.

    It’s easier for Washington Post’s readers and writers to think of veterans as victims of George W. Bush than to acknowledge their own contributions to the popular culture’s perception of veterans.

  • On the Absurdity of Being Earnest

    White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, speaking about the situation in Dallas:  there “are screening procedures in place at our border.”

    Sure there are, Mr. Earnest – sure there are.  And the CDC folks in Dallas are working desperately to track down and monitor about 100 close contacts of a man who recently came to the US from Liberia as part of some readiness exercise, right?

    Sheesh.   Compared to these guys, Baghdad Bob was as trustworthy as Lincoln.

  • The anti-war whispers

    The anti-war whispers

    Medea Benjamin

    I know something about the anti-war protests of the last Iraq War, often times finding myself in the center armed with nothing but my camera. And, yeah, now that Obama has begun it’s second term safely, some of the anti-war creatures from the last decade’s protests are raising their slimy heads, a little. John Kerry spoke to them recently;

    If I were John Kerry, I wouldn’t mention his own history as an anti-war socket puppet. That’s what defeated him in the 2004 presidential election. I do, however, find it delicious irony that he has to school Code Pink on ISIS to get his point across and that they interrupt him during his windbag lecture pointing out their hypocrisy on the entire issue because they support ISIS.

    Howard Kurtz discusses the cautious whispers in the media against this, the latest deployment of troops to Iraq.

    These days, of course, the press seems to be prodding a reluctant president into war. The coverage of ISIS and the endless re-running of images from the beheading videos caused a surge in public support for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. But not everyone in the fourth estate is saluting.

    Chris Matthews may be the most visible of the naysayers. He used his MSNBC show to deride “this wild, angry push for war, another one in the land of Islam.”

    There was more: “Here we go again, going in with all the field marshals of the op-ed pages urging us on. All the tongues, wagging, demanding, that the United States get itself right back in the middle of the latest outrage from Mesopotamia…

    “And yes, the bombs will work. People will die. There will be pictures in the world press of mothers holding babies and the wounded in their hospital beds, and there will be an outcry against us.”

    Yes, I don’t like this latest deployment, but not because I’m wringing my hands over the brutality of it all, but because, no matter how many US troops will find themselves in Iraq for this third war, they won’t be allowed to fight the war that needs to be fought – for the third time.

    But, here come the kneejerk anti-war crowd who only oppose war because it’s war and they’re on the heels of the knee-jerk Democrats who think that war can be managed and made palatable to the American public, despite the fact that they’re preparing us for five years or mare of war in Iraq, once again.

  • Geraldo, You Had Me from ‘Declaration’

    Geraldo, You Had Me from ‘Declaration’

    Geraldo_Rivera

    Quick, someone at [This Ain’t Hell] tell the Devil to check his ponds for skim ice. I know it’s gotta be starting to freeze over down there, because I just found myself nodding my head and agreeing with Geraldo Rivera in his appearance on the O’Reilly show.

    Geraldo pointed out to Bill that the optimal course to take in dealing with ISIS is to formally declare war on the Islamic State, uniting the Congress and the nation in a determined campaign to ensure the total and complete destruction of said Islamic State. He made the excellent point that ISIS has declared itself a state and has real military and political control over large geographical areas, which means it has therefore self-identified as a nation and is consequently subject to a declaration of war.

    Why? Because the world’s newest nation has defiantly thrown down a gauntlet of challenge to the United States by publicly executing two American citizens in the most bloodily brutal way imaginable. Further, they have publicly announced their determination to attack the United States on its home soil. Even the Germans and the Japanese never publicly executed American citizens as an act of provocation, nor did they announce to the world prior to our declarations of war against them any avowed intentions to destroy us.

    I confess that Geraldo caught me completely off-guard with his proposal. I previously hadn’t drilled down far enough to consider a declaration of war as being the course to pursue in bringing down this new manifestation of fascism cloaked in Islamic clerical garb. But it does make sense that we turn the tables on ISIS by giving them the formal recognition they want and then use that affirmation of their political existence to pound them into smoking rubble. A formal declaration takes away some of the restraints that have limited our offensive attempts up to now. In a declaration, our Congress can make it crystal-clear that the intent of our nation is to obliterate theirs, thus making it one of the most short-lived nation-states in history. With such a declaration, America’s gloves come off, because in said declaration we have informed the world of our intention to unconditionally and totally destroy this Islamic State. Surrender or a formal ceasefire is not an option – only obliteration.

    And then, as if I hadn’t been surprised enough by the common sense flowing from beneath that ridiculous moustache, Geraldo floored me again with a second recommendation that made at least as much sense as the first: bring Gen. Stanley McChrystal back to active duty and put him in charge of building a Kurdish Army, now loosely defined as the Peshmerga, to help defeat ISIS and then serve as a counter-force to the rise of another such fanatical foe. The general may be a bit too liberal in some of his views for die-hard conservatives, but he’s a tough SOB who knows the terrain and the Middle East mindset.

    Damn all, Geraldo, you ruined my Friday night. I’m still sitting here shaking my head at the possibility that we could be in agreement.

    Crossposted at American Thinker.

  • Washington Post learns to love the Iraq War

    Washington Post learns to love the Iraq War

    last convoy out of Iraq

    They’re only eleven years too late, but the Washington Post editorial board has decided that we need boots on the ground in Iraq. Isn’t that nice of them? I mean, I wonder what has changed that they decided they can finally get behind the president?

    Earlier this year, Mr. Obama was dismissing al-Qaeda offshoots as the junior varsity of terrorism and promising Americans that the tide of war was receding. Now his secretary of state, John F. Kerry, calls the Islamic State an “evil” that must “be destroyed.” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says it is “as sophisticated and well-funded as any group that we have seen .?.?. beyond anything that we’ve seen.” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says it “will eventually have to be defeated.”

    What would it take to defeat the Islamic State, which continues to rack up military victories in Iraq and Syria, including the capture of another air base Sunday? When Mr. Obama was urged to support the moderate opposition in Syria three years ago, one reason given was that a failure to do so would leave an opening for more radical factions that would eventually spill out of Syria and threaten the region. The longer the president waited, the more the need for action would become obvious — but the more unappetizing his options would be.

    Yeah, they want boots on the ground suddenly. I could have sworn that we had boots on the ground in Iraq twice before. I remember Easter morning 1991 when I woke up in sight of the Euphrates River not far from Baghdad – I had my boots on the ground, too. Many of you have been there since, too, with your boots firmly on ground. Neither time did we get the support of the Washington Post. Like I said, I wonder what could have changed. But I noticed that they still can’t form the words “war against terror”.

    I’m guessing that the news out of Iraq and Syria are making them feel uncomfortable and you know what that means to Leftists; time “do something, anything”. If it gets American servicemen killed, well, that makes it even better, because it won’t affect anyone they know. Maybe those cuts to the military aren’t looking quite so attractive now.

    On a hilarious note, the commenters on the article are calling the Post editorial board Neo-cons.

    Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.