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

Category: Media

  • Olberman “suspended”

    ROS and Old Trooper both sent links to us about NBC suspending Olbermann indefinitely here and here. I think NBC has been looking for a reason to fire him for a while and he broke their rules right on time.

    NBC claims Olbie contributed to three Democrat candidates during the elections this Fall. Someone who had a grudge (no, that can’t be true) probably blew the whistle on him because I’m sure someone didn’t spend the whole Fall looking through public records.

    I don’t like Olbermann at all…not even a little bit. The only time I’ve ever watched him is on YouTube in case someone is watching my viewing habits and mistakes me for a fan. I do appreciate him outing Tony Camerino/Matthew Alexander, though.

    But I think it’s shitty for NBC to have a clause in his contract that forbids campaign contributions to political candidates. Like I told Old Trooper, it’s like they make employees hang their dicks on the wall before they go into the whorehouse. It’s not like Olbermann contributes to Democrats every time he opens his stupid yap. It’s almost rises to the level of the Juan Williams firing…except that he signed the contract. NBC probably did it to get ahead of the news cycle.

    I’m glad he’s gone, I just don’t like the way he was “suspended”.

    Operator Dan’s take below the jump;
    (more…)

  • Left’s latest lie: Pelosi lost her job because she’s so effective

    Can there be any wonder that no one reads the newspaper anymore when you run across unadulterated crap like Eugene Robinson’s “Nancy Pelosi, undone by her own success” or Andrea Stone’s “Experts Rank Pelosi Among Greatest House Speakers“?

    Robinson speaks;

    Pelosi did what was right for the country, and what’s right isn’t always what’s popular.

    Yeah? So why did she try to pull funding for the Defense department and the war no less than five times? That was what was popular in 2007 and 2008.

    Can I mention that for half of the years that Pelosi was Speaker, the Congress passed no budget? Isn’t passing a budget the main job of Congress? So obviously, she got fired for being incompetent.

    Stone writes;

    Few Republicans would give Pelosi even a passing grade. She has been caricatured as a monster, has been excoriated by right-wing bloggers as the mother of all federal deficits and has become the bete noire of conservative talk radio. Most would, and have, called her the worst speaker in history.

    Well, so would the American people, apparently, because they fired her. that was accident of fate on Tuesday…it was America’s voice.

    Yeah, as long as newspapers continue to hire incompetent boobs as columnists, consumers will vote against them with their wallets.

    Thanks to ROS for half of those links.

  • WaPo: War against Taliban is unsuccessful

    The Washington Post’s Greg Miller writes this morning that “U.S. military campaign to topple resilient Taliban hasn’t succeeded” of course this is based on a single, unnamed “Defense Department official’s assessment.

    The Obama administration’s plan to conduct a strategic review of the war in December has touched off maneuvering between U.S. military leaders seeking support for extending the American troop buildup and skeptics looking for arguments to wind down the nation’s role.

    Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has touted the success of recent operations and indicated that the military thinks it will be able to show meaningful progress by the December review. He said last week that progress is occurring “more rapidly than was anticipated” but acknowledged that major obstacles remain.

    Well, if the Washington Post is right, they don’t bother to consider that the Obama Administration neglected to honor the assessment of General McCrystal when they gave him half of the troops he requested in 2009. McCrystal warned at the time that refusing to give him sufficient troops would result in exactly these results.

    Instead, the Washington Post blames solely the Pakistanis;

    A crackdown by Pakistan’s military on those sanctuaries probably would have a greater impact on the war than any option available to Petraeus, officials said. But given the Pakistani government’s long-standing connections to the Haqqani network and the Taliban, a move by Islamabad against those groups is considered unlikely, at least by the administration’s timetable.

    Ah, the precious timetable again. This administration considers the war a distraction from the president’s domestic policy and arriving at politically expedient decision in regards to the war is more attractive than the prospect of victory.

    I agree that Pakistan’s involvement in the war against the Taliban would be helpful, but given the fact that this administration more willing to throw the allies of democracy undr the bus to demonstrate his commitment to “smart diplomacy” why should the Pakistanis help us?

    The current administration’s penchant for a policy of waiting for foreign policy issues to work themselves out has only encouraged our enemies from North Korea to Iran. Our adherence to a timeline rather than total warfare in Afghanistan has done the same for the Taliban.

    Maybe if the media would stop praying at the altar of Obama and stop treating this war like a political issue, maybe things would turn in our direction for a change.

    Thanks to Jerry920 for sending this link.

  • Anti-gun WaPo targets legal gun dealer

    While making preparations to spend the day at the range with own handguns, I ran into a Washington Post article in which they try to shame a legal gun dealer in Prince George County, Maryland out of business. The title of the article is “Realco guns tied to 2500 crimes in DC and Maryland” written by David Fallis.

    Fallis argues that because Realco, the gun dealer, has been linked to so many gun crimes in the Metro DC Area, it must be doing something wrong. The issue here is “straw purchases” – one buyer who can pass the background check buys a gun and then sells it to someone who can’t pass a background check;

    Glenn Ivey said that after he became Prince George’s state’s attorney in 2002, he asked law enforcement colleagues if he could do anything about the flow of guns from Realco, which he said he knew of from his time in the 1990s as a prosecutor in the District.

    “I had an eye toward trying to take action,” Ivey said. “The feedback we got was: They are doing it the way they are supposed to. They are following the letter of the law.”

    Asked about Realco, ATF spokeswoman Clare Weber said stores with greater numbers of traces are inspected more frequently.

    “The number of traces that come back to a [gun dealer] is not a revocable offense if the dealer is found in compliance with record-keeping requirements,” she said.

    Prince George County is a high-crime area which borders on DC’s notorious Southeast neighborhood. Criminals routine cross back and forth across the DC-MD boundary. Crime, of course, follows them. In fact, Martin O’Malley, the incumbent governor of Maryland, brags that he’s reduced crime in Maryland, when all he’s done is chase it back to DC. Four years ago, DC’s Police Chief Ramsey bragged that he had reduced crime in DC when all he had accomplished was chasing criminals to Prince George County.

    Obviously, the county needs a gun store for law abiding citizens to purchase protection from the scores of criminals, so closing it is not a rational option…well, except to the Washington Post which really doesn’t care about PG County’s residents.

    If there’s a high crime rate, and an elevated number of criminals, it makes sense that there would be some illegal purchases. So prosecute the folks who resell their guns to criminals – not the gun store owners who are following the law.

    Of course, the Washington Post advocates closing the store for no other reason than it’s in a bad neighborhood. It’s not the gun store’s fault that the gun is resold.

    [August, 2007], prosecutor Ivey joined Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition and others outside Realco in a “protest against illegal guns.” Inside the shop, Maryland State Police pored over Realco’s paperwork. Investigators found little of concern.

    Yeah, marching with the Rainbow/PUSH coalition really elevates the prosecutor’s character in my estimation. His motivations are more about politics than about concern for the law abiding citizens. He should be protesting outside the homes of straw buyers if he wants to make a valid statement.

    Drag the right wingnuts into it;

    In a May 2006 straw purchase, a man bought a handgun at Realco for a felon friend who wanted to shoot abortion doctors. The plot was foiled after the felon’s family called authorities weeks later.

    Criminals are criminals. Throw them both in jail, just quit dragging the rest of into it.

    Once out, [Erik Dixon] met Cathy R. Anderson, 31, and soon asked that she buy a gun for him. In January 2007, the pair visited Realco, where she made a down payment on a Glock .45, signing a form saying she was buying the gun for herself. Dixon was in the store with her, she later told police.

    She told investigators she didn’t know of his criminal past. She said she never touched the gun after she picked it up on a return trip to Realco.

    “I took it back to Erik’s truck and gave it to him,” she told police.

    And yet she’s still walking around’

    “That was then; this is now,” she said. “. . . I’m sorry for what happened.”

    OK, well, ‘sorry’ makes it all better.

  • Juan Williams fired at NPR because Muslims on planes make him nervous

    I picked this up at Ace of Spades this morning written by DrewM. Apparently, Juan Williams admitted to Bill O’Reilly that Muslims on planes make him nervous and NPR fired him for saying that out loud because it doesn’t fit their “editorial standards and practices”.

    You can search this blog for things I’ve said about Juan Williams. He I met one day and had a short conversation in the middle of Union Station in DC. He and my wife were both born in Panama, although on different sides of the isthmus, and we talked about that, but he was a real nice guy. One of his books, “Eye on the Prize” was a text in my History of Civil Rights class was the one bright spot of the semester, since the rest of class was about bashing white males (I was the only one in the class) and listening to a bunch of over-stimulated, post-menopausal hippies discuss which of them wanted to boink Bobby Seal most.

    But anyway, I don’t think anyone can call into question Juan Williams’ standards and practices. Both sides have their problems with him which pretty much tells me that he’s pretty fair. I think NPR needs to take a look at themselves – I’m sure we can all find reasons to question their “standards and practices”.

  • Grimsinger may skate on fraud

    In reference to that douche nozzle Kevin Grimsinger who claimed that he lost his legs in Afghanistan, the little turd might skate on any charges related to his fraud;

    Grimsinger also testified before lawmakers about medical marijuana in March, but it’s unclear whether he said then that he lost his legs to a land mine.

    Grimsinger serves on Denver’s Commission for People With Disabilities. City officials said they had no evidence that he claimed to be a wounded combat veteran to get a seat on the commission.

    The Mayor’s office knows what he said, because you know there’s miles of paperwork related to the Commission and Grimsinger somewhere, but the soft-headed ritards won’t uphold the law and throw the legless, lying turd in jail. I just love how we have all of these laws that no one is willing to enforce.

    And the video I’d linked to in which Grimsinger described his phony tour in Afghanistan in his testimony before the Colorado legislature has been taken down. He clearly stated that he’d been wounded in combat and that he suffered mightily from PTSD related to that incident. That video had been posted by the medical marijuana advocates.

    And while we’re on the subject, I asked Susan Greene, the author of the original story in the Denver Post, if she’d share the documentation they had on Grimsinger with us, ya know since we helped the Post track down all of the stuff they used on Strandlof and got away with just calling us “a Washington, DC group”. Well, suddenly, they’ve never heard of us and the princesses have a “policy” about sending copies of their documentation.

    Colacioppo, Lee Ann wrote:

    I edited the Strandlof piece and while I don’t recall us working with you, I appreciate your help as a source on that story. But we are not in the habit of repaying sources on stories. More importantly, we do not share our documents. We do not want to be in the position of assisting any advocate for a cause. I hope you can understand our need to maintain this distance from your efforts.

    The reason she doesn’t remember is because they called us “a Washington,DC group” instead of using our names. I remember I had to calm TSO down when he read that. Well, we’re in the habit repaying our leeching, halfwit, bottom feeding, back stabbing Old Media acquaintances in kind. The Denver Post is dead to me – they can’t count on the three readers who go over there every year from here any longer. Their online readership is thus cut in half. I hope they understand our need to maintain our distance from their punkasses. Pretentious prigs.

  • Woodward comes through for Obama

    Now that we’ve had the customary launch of another Bob Woodward book. this one “Obama’s War” we get to sit through months of Bob Woodward rewriting the book in the media to cover all of his liberal friends. In his first explanation, published this morning, Woodward tries to give cover to the Obama Administration, right before the midterm elections, by blaming the military for his long delay and ultimately lightweight decision to send less than half the troops to Afghanistan that the commanders asked.

    When his national security team gathered in the White House Situation Room on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2009, for its eighth strategy review session, the president erupted.

    “So what’s my option? You have given me one option,” Obama said, directly challenging the military leadership at the table, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, then head of U.S. Central Command.

    “We were going to meet here today to talk about three options,” Obama said sternly. “You agreed to go back and work those up.”

    Mullen protested. “I think what we’ve tried to do here is present a range of options.”

    Obama begged to differ. Two weren’t even close to feasible, they all had acknowledged; the other two were variations on the 40,000.

    Silence descended on the room. Finally, Mullen said, “Well, yes, sir.”

    Mullen later explained, “I didn’t see any other path.”

    See, you can’t really blame the commanders on the ground and the leaders on the President’s staff – they thought Obama wanted to win in Afghanistan. As we can see, his priority was to leave Afghanistan regardless of the outcome. Our commanders are accustomed to some sort of victory…and Obama clearly doesn’t consider that an important option. He’s perfectly happy watching troops die while him and Bite-Me plan a hasty withdrawal.

    I’m pretty sure the president and the Taliban have come to an agreement that the Taliban will surrender their arms as soon as the US leaves.

    More likely, the final pictures of the US involvement in Afghanistan will be similar to the last photos of the US involvement in South Vietnam.

  • More Stolen Valor free speech

    Doug Sterner sent us a series of links related to 42-year-old Kevin Grimsinger in Denver, CO who is a double amputee and advocate for medical marijuana. His credibilty is based on his story that he was injured in Afghanistan resulting from a land mine explosion while serving as a Special Forces medic. In the Denver Post’s words back in July, Grimsinger has “become the Colorado poster child for PTSD and medical marijuana”.

    The 42-year-old former special-forces medic had served in Kosovo and Desert Storm before stepping on a land mine in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2001. He lost parts of both legs, broke his back in 13 places, shattered a shoulder and ribs and suffered injuries to several internal organs.

    But by far, his toughest wounds are to his brain — textbook post-traumatic stress disorder.

    That means flashbacks. It means struggling to sleep and thinking about suicide more often than he cares to admit. His nightmares are constant, he says. “They’re bloody, they’re noisy and they’re gory.”

    After two years in hospitals, Grimsinger was released addicted “to every pain medication known to man,” he tells me. It wasn’t until turning to therapeutic cannabis, along with other prescriptions, that he says he has been able to function.

    While playing this part, he helped launch “The Budding Group” a veterans outreach program for medical marijuana. He was appointed to the Denver Mayor’s special commission, the Commission for People with Disabilities, he testified at a hearing of the state legislators and he was the quartermaster at his local VFW post, Post 1.

    Here’s a video Grimsinger telling his tale and advocating weed;

    Anyway, the Denver Post, who seems to make a habit of having the wool pulled over their eyes, has finally checked on Grimsinger;

    As it turns out, the double-amputee didn’t serve in Afghanistan and wasn’t injured by a land mine, as he claimed. Records show his military service ended a decade before he said he was hurt fighting in Kandahar in 2001.

    He was, in fact, paralyzed as a civilian in a crash on a mountain road in Southern California where, as he now tells it, he was trying to kill himself.

    “OK, so I claimed one tour that I wasn’t there for. I wasn’t in Kandahar. I didn’t trigger a land mine,” he admitted Friday. “I’m not laying no guilt trip or anything. But it’s just another nail in my coffin. I probably won’t make it through this if you write this.”

    Poor baby makes a fool of the whole State of Colorado, but he might kill himself if you tell the truth about him.

    What’s worse was hearing him twist his story when asked about military records that show he’s not a combat veteran and recipient of two purple hearts.

    “I’m exactly who I said I am. Any man in green will stand right next to me and vouch for it,” he said at first.

    “I’m highly offended that all this nonsense is in my face right now.”

    Not as offended as the rest of us, Kev. I think any “man in green” that would stand next to you has an alternate reason for being there. Don’t turn your back on him, ya weasel.

    The Denver Post writes;

    …he hoodwinked medical-marijuana advocates who were all too eager to wheel him forward as a valorous poster guy…

    Shades of Richard Strandlof, huh? Vote Vets and IVAW were more than willing to put Strandlof forward when he said the things they liked. I guess the hemp heads were happy to do the same with Grimsinger.

    Grimsinger at first denied being related to his mother, father, brother, aunt and uncles. Then he said they’re all dead. Later he clarified that they’re dead to him.

    I’m sure the feeling is mutual.