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

Category: Media

  • Pentagon clears Stan McCrystal

    Surprise, the Pentagon says they couldn’t verify the accuracy of the reporting in the Rolling Stone article which profiled General Stan McCrystal according to the Stars & Stripes – yeah the same article for which Dickbreath Michael Hastings won a Polk Prize;

    Pentagon investigators said they were unable to confirm the events as reported in the June 2010 article in Rolling Stone, and the inquiry’s final review challenged the accuracy of the profile of General McChrystal, who was the top commander in Afghanistan.

    The profile quoted people identified as senior aides to the general making disparaging statements about members of President Obama’s national security team.

    Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Hastings can’t verify his interviews. Yeah, me neither. Now he knows why his “men who stare at Senators” (hat tip to B5 for that phrase) story went absolutely no where.

    Nice move on the part of everyone who didn’t bother to lift a finger to defend him. Did I mention that US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry has been a dick for the whole four decades I’ve known him? So much for “civilian leadership”.

  • LA Times discovers Clinton’s “balanced budget” secret

    For more than ten years we’ve heard about how fiscally conservative Bill Clinton balanced the budget and how fiscally irresponsible Republicans screwed that all up with their wasteful spending on tax cuts and two unnecessary wars. I’ve been saying for years that the only reason Bill Clinton had year-over-year surpluses the last few years of his presidency is because he slashed the military and the Pentagon spending and because of Roth IRA conversions. The LA Times finally came around to the Roth IRAs idea earlier this week.

    In 1997, Clinton and Congress created the Roth IRA – after tax money growing tax free. They also allowed for pre-tax money in IRAs and 401ks to be converted into Roth IRAs, after you paid the taxes due on your pre-tax money. Billions of dollars that wouldn’t have been taxed for more than a decade was suddenly taxed. So billions in unexpected revenue flowed into the Clinton Treasury.

    And now, liberals see how this is working to their disadvantage – with $billions of untaxed growth sitting in private Roth IRAs, they don’t have any new schemes to get their grubby little paws on it. So the LA Times recommends that the government scrap the Roth and break yet another promise to tax payers and retirees.

    Gleckman is the editor of TaxVox, a blog published by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington. Here’s Gleckman on Roths for the rich: “In the long run, turning billions of dollars from tax-deferred to tax-free savings will be a huge loser for Treasury. My colleagues at Tax Policy Center figure that, through mid-century, allowing unlimited Roth conversions will reduce federal revenues by $100 billion.”

    Whatever the answer for individuals, there’s little doubt that Roths are wrong for America. They’re Frankensteins, fated to wreak havoc. It’s time to retire Roth IRAs.

    The Times reaches the conclusion that anything that’s good for the taxpayers is bad for the government – which is usually true. That’s why the Bill of Rights protects us from the government. The untaxed growth in my Roth IRA helped pay for my house (under certain conditions, you can withdraw limited amounts of the growth and principal from a Roth before age 60 – I called the IRS first, so should you) so the government didn’t get a share of my money, but it went into the economy just the same. Where do you think it did the most good?

  • Matthews worries that Ryan will kill his audience

    Newsbuster’s Noel Sheppard writes that Chris Matthews was worried last night that Paul Ryan’s budget cuts to medicare will kill off half of his audience;

    MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Monday spent much of show scaring viewers about Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) recently released budget proposal.

    So apoplectic was the “Hardball” host that he told liberal guests Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe that Ryan’s Medicare reform pland “is going to kill half the people who watch this show”

    It occurred at the end of this clip;

    So, half of Matthews’ audience is, what, two people? And I think I’m being generous here.

    And where was Matthews when the Obama Administration cut Medicare to pay for his healthcare bill?

  • Before it was just that we weren’t checking our tires

    Remember the good old days when we only had to check our tire pressure in order to live up to the president’s expectations? Well, now apparently, we’re supposed to buy a new car – one like my daughter and her hippie husband keep buying (they’re on their third Pious – is that how it’s spelled?) I thought that was the solution to our problems last year. I have to buy a new one this year, too?

    From Patterico, because it’s since been dropped from AP articles without an explanation;

    Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 a gallon nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzling vehicle.

    “If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

    Like it’s our fault gas is nearing $4/gallon because we don’t buy Japanese shitboxes. Then he went on to tell how he’s just like us, cuz he can remember pumping his own gas;

    “Only a few years ago I was still paying off my student loans,” said Obama, who turns 50 in August.

    And with the price of gasoline at US pumps the highest in three years, Obama was quick to stress he understood the plight of average Americans, insisting he was not out of touch just because he is being whisked around in a motorcade or flying on Air Force One.

    “It’s true, I don’t pump gas now, but I remember what it was like pumping gas. I remember!” he said to laughter and applause.

    To laughter and applause. I wonder if he remembers pumping $4/gallon gas. That’s a little less funny than $1/gallon gas. Believe me. I’d like to see a picture of this Al Sharpton crowd who thought a president who used to pump his own gas is so damn funny.

    But you should go to the Patterico post about AP covering up the first quote in this post. Apparently AP is doing some creative editing to make the president seem a little more palatable.

    For the record, I picked this up at Ace of Spades.

  • KSM to be tried in Guantanamo – and it’s the (R)s fault

    The Associated Press, in their rush to report that the Obama Administration is about to report that they’re going to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9-11 mastermind, in Guantanamo instead of Manhattan (like they said they were going to do back two years ago) decides that it’s the fault of Republicans that Obama’s campaign promise has collapsed;

    President Barack Obama had tried, and failed, to overcome objections by Republicans and some of his fellow Democrats in Congress to transferring some detainees to U.S. prisons and trying Mohammed and others in federal courts.

    On March 7, Obama reluctantly lifted a two-year freeze on new military trials at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

    Of course, the Democrats controlled Congress, and the President’s agenda, for the two years since his Executive Order on the day after the Inauguration, so it really wasn’t the Republicans who caused this failure at all. He was fighting his own party and public opinion because of the half-witted plan.

    The MoveOn/VoteVet crowd thought the issue was a slam dunk because their self-imposed echo-chamber discussion, but Americans understand the issue better than the BDS Left.

    Thanks to ROS for the link.

  • Nevada drafts Stolen Valor Bill

    Since the federal Government seems to be dropping the ball on protecting veterans from being the victims of stolen valor, several states have picked up that ball. Nevada is the latest to draft legislation;

    “These citizens feel their service to country has been cheapened, demeaned, or otherwise disgraced by those who impersonate them,” [Assemblyman Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas]said.

    Anton said there is no difference between a white lie and fraud. But if the courts insist on basing stolen valor on the legal definition of fraud, then so be it.

    “Fraud is making out something that is totally untrue,” Anton said Tuesday. “A white lie could be like when your wife asks, ‘How do you like my dress?’ And, you say, ‘That’s great.’ While that might be a white lie, it might save your marriage.”

    Of course, the legislature has to battle with the pseudo-intellectual press which has become more tolerant of it’s own lies over the past ten years. In an editorial, the Las Vegas Review-Journal tries to sound like it’s editorial board has a brain cell, but only ends up sounding smarmy and tolerant of snake-oil salesmen;

    Fraud already is a crime. Carving out a special niche fraud for “stolen valor” is redundant, superfluous and a huge waste of lawmakers’ time. As for criminalizing the act of misleading someone, we would proffer a codicil: Make it a crime for politicians to mislead voters. That would fill the jails.

    How about we make misleading readers in the press a crime – there wouldn’t be a media staff left on the planet. How about we make awarding Pulitzer Prizes to illiterate buffoons a crime? There’d be no Pulitzer board.

    How about we take all of the editorial board members in the country who haven’t been in the military, don’t understand the life of the soldiers who protect their freedom to be smarmy pea-wits and drop them in the mountains of Pakistan during the up-coming Spring Offensive so they can stop calling the claims of unearned medals “white lies”.

  • Male-on-male rape in the military

    Newsweek has published an article entitled The Military’s Secret Shame about epidemic-levels of male-on-male rape in the military. Now, I know the military hasn’t changed that much in the nearly two decades since I retired that it’s as common as Newsweek makes it sound;

    In the staunchly traditional military culture, it’s an ugly secret, kept hidden by layers of personal shame and official denial. Last year nearly 50,000 male veterans screened positive for “military sexual trauma” at the Department of Veterans Affairs, up from just over 30,000 in 2003.

    I don’t doubt that it happens occasionally – we get soldiers from the general society, not from a farm somewhere where they train from birth.

    It wasn’t until 1992 that the Defense Department even acknowledged such incidents as an offense, and initially only female victims were recognized. But last year more than 110 men made confidential reports of sexual assault by other men, nearly three times as many as in 2007. The real number of victims is surely much higher. Even among civilians, sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime. In the military the silence is nearly complete. By the Pentagon’s own estimate, figures for assaults on women likely represent less than 20 percent of actual incidents. Another study released in March found that just one in 15 men in the Air Force would report being sexually assaulted, compared with one in five women.

    What? Rape wasn’t illegal until 1992? Bullshit. Who do they think they’re talking to? And what are they calling “sexual assault”? Getting kneed in the ‘nads? Or the rapes that they breathlessly recount in the article, the three i read were totally implausible – there would have been ample evidence of the assault which should have triggered an investigation. A drill sergeant who raped a trainee? Really? Drill sergeants get investigated for every word they say – no one would have investigated a rape charge? One guy who was raped with a soda bottle – no physical evidence there, huh?

    Of course, Newsweek says that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should improve reports of these crimes.

    In my two decades of military service, mostly in the Infantry, the biggest exclusive man club in the Army, I never heard of one incident of same sex rape. Like I said, it probably happens, but it’s impossible that it’s as rampant as Newsweek claims. Of course, hiding behind the lack of victim reports make the story less believable.

  • Sticks and Stones

    Considering what is happening in Afghanistan I thought this is cartoon would put things into perspective. Also given that there are some interesting things coming out from the Rethink Afghanistan community.

    Ok were to start.

    Well, okay, but…these were UN workers at a time when 100K+ troops were in the country. Doesn’t seem like the presence helped them much.

    Or this one.

    That Florida pastor should be banished to Afghanstan for starting such a malificent ruckus, that people are killed as a result. If you read Islam’s history? You will realized it greatest spread came in the first 100years, by military conquest. Why poke a stick at a sleeping tigre?

    But it is really just propaganda and never happened.

    Those dudes SO look like they are posing in that picture. Look at that dude to the far left and the one behind him. Angry mob my ass. lol Looks like a well done fashion shoot for urban couture to me. Me thinks this is just some more propaga…nda to depict just how “wild and crazy” those Afghanis supposedly are, thus vindicating the presence of the “moral, virtuous, and humane” foreign occupation forces to preserve all that is just and good. Let’s forget about the indiscriminate killings that have been going down on their side. I’m just saying.

    Not to forget the standard it is all our fault statements.

    Carly the 1.5 million drone planes that US citizens have to pay with their tax dollars are bombing a villages and killing civilians. Death toll has risen to 31% this year. over 2 thousand just last year have died. Why isnt this hitting american media? How many babies are being born with deformities from chemical bombs being dropped. Maybe there protesting for other reasons as well. LOOK AT THE US and what there already doing. US government are the HITLER of today

    But the rioters are not to blame.

    Yep you heard that right, we are using chemical weapons in Afghanistan.

    Did you forget the US killed millions of Iraqis in a war based on false evidence. Did you forget they submited torture. Did you forget that they started a civil war within the country thats killing over 32 thousand people. Stop blaming The opressed look at the dictators, how do you explain what they did?

    Oh and if anyone can translate this one please let me know.

    u have to understand even if u think all rlgs are fairy tales that Muslims honor the Quran more than any other Ppl value their holy scriptures, so I u dis it u dis the Ppl n that’s y they wana take some action n not just do lip s…ervice … A good analogy for the westerners is if someone cussed out the mist beloved thing to u n wanted to burn it ( cud be ur mom ., ur daughter ., etc)how wud u respond????
    n than after ur actions if everyone else who witnessed it called u barbaric ., I think that person is absolutely desensitized, which is majority the case with Ppl in the west who don’t give a shit abt anything….
    Terry jones is an ass.
    b4 judging afg Ppl n society, judge ur own.