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

Category: Media

  • Phony homeless veterans

    BooRadley sends along this article from her hometown about a homeless guy who claims to be a veteran.Boo says he’s not even close;

    “I’m here because of trouble I had in the past,” said Brian Shawver, 36, of Lorain. “I burned my bridges with the family and split. I’ve been here since the end of June. I served in the first Iraq war.

    “One time, I was in line at McDonald’s and this lady in front of me was putting down homeless people, talking about the picture in the paper showing all the tents. At the end of the conversation, she told her daughter, ‘We need to get to church.’ I got upset. I said that’s my tent in the picture,” Shawver said.

    “We (homeless people) don’t fit any designation. People think we’re always drinking and doing drugs and that we’re dirty and nasty. I lost everything I had. And this is where you wind up when that happens,” Shawver said.

    “I’m hoping something happens with the shelter. If not, I’ll just have to get extra blankets,” he said.

    He says his age is 36 – the first Gulf War was 19 years ago, that means he was 17. Boo says he was in high school during the Gulf War. When he eventually joined the Navy, he was chaptered out. There’s video of his interview at the link.

    He “burned bridges” with his family? He’s freaking 36 years old…what’s he need his family to do for him? I guess it’s just easier to camp out behind the local church and hope someone brings him a blanket.

    Since his story about being a veteran is false, the one about the line in MacDonald’s is probably manufactured, too.

    I remember watching the news after the Gulf War and the program I was watching was about homeless veterans from the Gulf War. One guy they were interviewing was talking about his wounds and sacrifice. The reporter asked him when he went to the Gulf and he said he got there in May. Either he was there three months before Hussein invaded Kuwait or he got there when the rest of us were leaving. The reporter realized he was talking with a fake, I could tell by the look on his face and he tried to quickly end the interview…without mentioning the guy was full of shit.

    That’s why I doubt this whole thing about massive numbers of veterans living on the streets. Every freakin’ homeless guy I’ve talked to claimed to be a veteran. One guy in Syracuse, when I told him I was a veteran, too, asked why I wearing a suit as if all veterans are homeless.

    The media perpetuates this story by interviewing these liars without doing ten seconds worth of math.

  • Robinson: Republicans want us back in a recession

    Eugene Robinson, quite possibly the only columnist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for cutting and pasting Obama Campaign press releases and calling it an opinion column, writes in the Washington Post today that Republicans’ “Pledge to America” will send us back to the 2009 recession. I’m not willing to concede that this recession has ended, but let’s look at why Robinson calls the Pledge “Hooey”.

    …the GOP also promises to “stop out-of-control spending and reduce the size of government.” Most economists would contend that right now, given the level of economic distress throughout the nation, those goals are mutually exclusive.

    In other words, Robinson’s contention is that government jobs are the way out of the unemployment dilemma. I wonder why Robinson doesn’t have a government job then. So I guess we should expand the size of government instead of expanding the opportunities for business to create private sector jobs to feed this government beast.

    The GOP also would give small-business owners a new 20 percent tax deduction on their business income. The pledge also tosses in the perennial Republican promise to curb “excessive federal regulation.”

    But on the spending side, the party would take a number of actions that would immediately destroy jobs. Republicans propose a hiring freeze for federal employees — exempting the defense and security sectors. Since the private sector isn’t hiring, a public-sector job freeze would only ensure that unemployment remains higher than it otherwise would have been.

    He says “20% tax deduction” for small businesses is a bad thing. He writes that “since the private sector isn’t hiring” like that’s a static factor. If you give a small business a extra tax-free chunk of money, wouldn’t that encourage a businessman to hire some-damn-body? Wouldn’t that drive down unemployment if more people were getting hired? I’m just askin’.

    The pledge also proposes embargoing any funds from last year’s stimulus bill that have not already been spent — money that is meant to keep construction workers, teachers, firefighters and others on the job.

    If businesses have more money to spend on expanding the private economy, why would we need the government to do it? And why is it always teachers, firefighters and police who are at risk of losing their jobs? I’m sure we can find some redundant bureaucrats to cut loose…like everyone in the Commerce and the Education Departments. And about 90% of the slugs in your local School District administrative offices. Not to mention the bozos in your city’s Asian/Pacific Affairs Office.

    Over the next decade, [making the Bush tax cuts permanent] would add an estimated $4 trillion to the deficit. The Republicans’ notion that cutting the federal budget will somehow make up the difference is laughable.

    Maybe laughable, but laudable…and necessary. Making the tax cuts permanent would expand the economy (like they did after 9-11) and increase tax revenues by putting taxpayers back to work (like they did after 9-11).

    Sucking that much money out of discretionary programs would require draconian cuts in programs, such as education grants, that both red states and blue states have come to depend on.

    Grants? Really? If America went back to work, they could pay for their own kids’ education. If grants went ONLY the deserving, I’d agree they’re necessary, but since colleges have inflated their price tags at four times the rate of inflation, there’s probably some room for them to cut their tuition and salaries to an affordable level – and if they can’t, we have too many colleges in this country anyway. Some of them can die.

    I don’t remember Robinson wringing his hands over the effect on the economy of a huge healthcare bill (which slashed Medicare) or the Cap and Trade bill which will dramatically raise the price of energy, or declaring a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf which put thousands of Americans out of work. I guess he didn’t get any memos from the WHite House on what he should write.

  • Morning or Mourning in America

    Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post columnist, writes about two ads, one directed to appear like the first. The first of course, was Ronald Reagan’s ad entitled “Morning in America”. If you haven’t seen it, here it is;

    The other ad is recently released by the Citizens for the Republic and entitled “Mourning in America”

    Now, as I remember it, Parker jumped the Conservative ship and boarded the Obama steamer before the election. So I don’t why she has tried to jump back, and in her limited commentary beyond the ads she writes;

    …it is probably fair to say that Obama’s ideas were too big for America’s appetite. It would have been nice had he made a few incremental repairs to the economy and left the transformative events for a less stressful time.

    Actually, it would have been nice if America had seen what was coming in 2008 and voted for anyone except the ambitious, overachiever who is willing to gamble with our future and our money to ensconce his ideas in history. And stupid fucks like Parker can accept responsibility for their flirtation with the Obama tasty goodness.

  • That vote to lift gay ban

    Harry Reid’s gambit to foist gays on the military failed miserably today. This is how Associated Press tells the tale;

    Yeah, Republicans did it all by themselves. Democrats have a majority in the Senate, but it was Republicans who sunk the bill. Well, unless you scroll waaayyy down the page to the 18th paragraph;

    Democrats also failed to keep all of their party members in line. Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both of Arkansas, voted with Republicans to scuttle the bill. The vote was 56-43, four short of the 60 required to advance under Senate rules.

    All that matters is the headline anyway, right? That’s as far as those dillweeds at Democratic Underground read, anyway. You can read about the politics of Reid’s motivations at Blackfive.

    I want to get something straight;

    Someone wrote earlier today in the comments that this blog supports the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That’s false, you must be thinking of another blog.

    This blog stands firmly on the fact that we’re in a war and everything else is bullshit. Discussing who can put what in who is for another time when there aren’t any enemies at the door. These votes on abortion, gays in the military and whatever else bullshit is larded up in the defense bill are distractions from business of killing jihadis.

    If the Democrats had been committed to the military as they are to every bullshit namby-pamby, deviant group that might vote for them, this war would have been over years ago.

    I might have been persuaded to think about gays in the military, but the antics of active duty and reservists of that persuasion have steered me away from anything that might have ever been considered support. LT Choi is no different than Bobby Whittenberg.

  • What the Hell is Middle Class, Anyway?

    Recently, the news has been full of stories about the shrinking middle class and explosion of  poverty in the US.  The Department of Commerce has announced new Poverty Guidelines, and you can read two separate perspectives on this decision, here   and here .  Commerce says they will still use the old guides for program eligibility and the new ones to evaluate program effectiveness and such.

     How much poverty is there really  in America.  Listen, I live so far below the “poverty line”, you’d need a back hoe to dig us all out.    What is making people so damn poor?  And while were at it… fat.

    On paper my family is the poster family for poverty in America.  But based on the loose definition of Middle Class– home-ownership, college, kids in college, and vacation (we went on one last year, woo woo)– put us just inside this holy grail.   But while the government tries to “save” other lower income families… they are destroying their quality of life. 

    Here’s an example of real  POVERTY:

    Ok, I don’t want to see people living in America living  like that. Chances are, if they do, its because of something the parents lack, and I don’t mean money. 

    But social manipulation has detroyed the quality of life of those who live with less in the United States.  We’ve told them that life will get better if you put Jr. in Head Start and get a job, but then act shocked when the kids, and moms, get fat . Or we fill their wallets with food cards so they can buy frozen pizza and burritos and pop and use all their extra cash at McDonalds or to pay for cable.  We tell women they don’t need a man, that they can raise a kid on their “own” with Uncle Sam’s help.  We tell them we’ll pay their rent if they will all move in together like so much cattle. 

      We’ve made available to the poor all the things they would be striving to get, if it wasn’t already given to them.   And men?  Well, they’re still getting their share of mindless entertainment, regardless of if they have time for it, or not.

    Maybe, just maybe, we need to stop trying to give the “sorta-poor” in the US everything everyone else has, and  let them learn to LIVE again.  To feel the satisfaction of raising children, saving for a home, or just paying the rent steadily, and know they did it with their own two hands.

  • Insurgent dissidents

    I wonder what image the New York Times is trying to convey by calling Republican candidates “insurgents” and “dissidents”

    I’m pretty sure that of FoxNews used those terms to describe a certain President’s campaign two years ago, someone would have called it racist or at the very least an attempt to conjure an image of terrorism and the war.

    Thanks to Tankerbabe for the link.

  • Fake Congressman fools fake journalist

    VTWoody sends us a link to the SFGate in regards to a Washington Post journalist who got sucked in by a fake Congressman Tweeting anti-Obama one liners. It seems that @RepJackKimble Tweeted that the war is costing taxpayers under Obama while Bush fought the war without spending a dime.

    The Tweet came to the attention of Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart who shot back that it was a “stunning bit of ignorance” on the part of the “congressman”.

    The journalist then discovered that the congressman didn’t exist, and apologized…sorta;

    Yes, I got bamboozled by @repjackkimble but the point remains.

  • Newsweek: We overreacted to 9/11

    Tim HetheringtonFareed Zakaria wrote for Newsweek an article entitled “What America Has Lost“, but the url tells us that the original title was “Why America Overreacted to 9-11”

    In the article, HetheringtonFareed Zakaria wrote;

    Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself.

    Smaller attacks? Influencing the Spanish election with terror causing the Spaniards to withdraw from the war is smaller? That’s HUGE for a supposedly small terror group. And HetheringtonFareed Zakaria admits that it’s because the world took “serious countermeasures” that al Qaeda is unable to launch a similarly large attack like 9-11 – so how is that overreacting?

    In every recent conflict, the United States has been right about the evil intentions of its adversaries but massively exaggerated their strength. In the 1980s, we thought the Soviet Union was expanding its power and influence when it was on the verge of economic and political bankruptcy. In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap.

    Remember the media estimates of 10,000 US casualties that never materialized based on nothing in particular except their own desire to scare the crap out of Consumer America? Yeah, it’s much better to underestimate enemies. We’re dealing with a military genius here.

    So after the first page of this garbage, HetheringtonFareed Zakaria wrings his hands over the size of the government after 9-11 – in particular the Homeland Security Department. If i remember correctly, George Bush just tried to keep Homeland Security a seat at the cabinet table and it was the Democrat Senate which demanded an accountable Department instead.

    So HetheringtonFareed Zakaria calls for an end to the war to cure this growth of HSD. The war on terror would be over by now if these numbnut armchair generals and philosophers would shut the Hell up for one minute.

    Is there any doubt left in your mind why the Washington Post sold Newsweek magazine for a dollar?

    Thanks to ROS for the link.