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

Category: Media

  • Pentagon: Ban on Press at Dover ends Monday

    Here comes that Hope and Change and the Obama Administration making friends with veterans, the troops and their families (Stars and Stripes);

    For the first time in nearly 20 years, members of the news media will be allowed starting Monday to cover the solemn arrivals of American flag-draped coffins holding the remains of U.S. troops at Dover Air Force Base, Del.

    Defense Secretary Robert Gates issued an instruction last week to reverse the two decadeslong ban on media coverage, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, noting that a written memo is expected later this week.

    I hope that Gates and his staff have planned for the elephant parade and the clown car antics of the media when they get to the Air Force Base. Remember that when you let them in, you’re a slave to their self-important behavior – having been shoved aside myself a few times by anxious media types more worried about getting the picture than any semblance of decorum.

    What is the Pentagon going to do the first time a young spouse of a fallen service member finds out about the death of their loved one from some media clod calling them to get permission to snap pictures of the body coming off the aircraft in Dover?

    Gates BOFOs and military families are burdened with the responsibility of a decision that the Pentagon gracefully accepted years ago. Now the buck stops over there.

  • More on the Medal of Honor Ceremony

    You may remember my post yesterday about Brandon Friedman piteous BOFO (that’s Bend Over For Obama for those unfamiliar with the lexicon here) performance when the president actually attended an event for honoring Medal of Honor winners.

    Well, Greyfox at Mudville Gazette noticed that the entire media BOFO’d for the story;

    Resulting in national (AP) coverage – with the story morphed into an Obama praise piece:

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama made an unannounced stop at Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday to pay respects to recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award.

    Obama laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. He was joined by several living recipients of the medal, which was first awarded during the Civil War.

    …without a word about why the Medal of Honor recipients had gathered there.

    This is clearly about making amends for missing the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball – the story that we broke here. That’s why Friedman made a point of posting it – probably on marching orders from the Oval Office.

    But go read Greyhawk’s entire post and you’ll see why I’m so convinced it’s a slobbery kiss to vets. Greyhawk did an excellent job of pulling all of the pieces together. And he does it without the use of Muppet characters.

  • Gutfield crosses the line (Updated)

    I’ll admit that I never watch Redline with this Greg Gutfield fellow, but one of our Canadian readers sent me this video yesterday from his show the other day;

    Now, I remember how upset we got when some Canadian MPs started calling our president names, how is this more acceptable? I’ve worked with Canadian troops, and they certainly don’t deserve this sort of public abuse. Dieppe, anyone?

    We have few enough real allies in the world, why do we need to belittle the troops of one of them? At least Jonathon Hoenig, the Capitalist Pig, didn’t get down with the other in the mud.

    As our Canadian friend points out, 116 Canadian troops have died in Afghanistan – how about showing them some respect.

    TSO sent me this link to update this; Gutfield apologizes.

  • Obscuring the facts

    Wondering what I’d write to you about this morning, I opened my inbox and found this little nugget awaiting my attention;

    name = amerifag
    email = amerifag@osamaisgreat.com
    comments = dude you need to devote a homage to Osama on your site… 9/11 was FRICKIN SWEET… i was laughing the whole morning… fuckin americans jumping to their deaths…what could be sweeter (and funnier)???

    good times, good times…. cant wait for round 2

    have a nice day
    REMOTE_HOST: 38.103.144.42

    I shrugged and deleted it, because I often get little things like that in the morning from the meth-crazed freaks who can’t get to sleep. Then, I found more that had been sent to the spam folder – I deleted them as well, since it’s a fairly common occurrence, too. Then I saw jeffersonlives‘ comment. I wondered why the sudden surge, until I looked at incoming links, and I knew right away where the mental midgets were coming from.

    Yesterday, I referenced Brandon Friedman’s post at VetsVoice in one of my posts about the President’s attempt to charge vets for their service-connected treatment and Freidman tracked the link back here and wrote another Obama tongue bath and linked here. The Obama-bots and border-line psychopaths at VetVoice dutifully flocked over here to spam this blog with their immature and vile comments.

    But here’s a post TSO did on VoteVets in July which includes a debate he had with Friedman and here’s one I did on Soltz and Vote Vets after the election when Soltz emailed Melanie Morgan and called her a “stinky hag” keeping the debate civil. So now we’ve established a baseline on what I think about VoteVets, let’s look at Friedman’s post.

    Right in the title of his post, Friedman lies. “Administration Listens to Vets; Backs Off VA Insurance Plan”. Now if it was a timeline, it’s accurate because the Administration did back off after they listened to veterans – but they didn’t back off BECAUSE they they listened to the VSOs. Before the 1PM meeting yesterday, the last time the President had listened to VSOs, the meeting ended with him, in effect, telling the VSOs “pound sand, I’m doing it anyway”. He wasn’t even at the meeting yesterday, according to The Hill;

    Jim King, the national executive director for American Veterans (AMVETS), said that the meeting with Rahm Emanuel lasted all of 15 minutes and that the health insurance issue was the only topic discussed. The representatives of the 11 veterans organizations told Emanuel they were not willing to back down, and the chief of staff told them that he thought the issue was “off the table,” but that he needed to talk to Obama.

    Something that had happened between the end of the Monday meeting and the Wednesday meeting changed his mind. Nothing he “heard” from VSOs changed his mind – except that he was facing another Bonus March.

    The Administration was dictating to the VSOs what policy was going to be in regards to this issue. I have a theory as to why the Obama Adminsitration thought they could get away with it, and it’s related to the Salute to Heroes Ball dust up in January, but I can’t say anything about that. Yet.

    The only organization which took immediate action was the American Legion. The Legion had the good sense to make an issue of it, instead of taking the VoteVets approach of bending over for Obama (from here forward referred to as “BOFO”) and spreading their cheeks. While VoteVets was telling everyone to not worry, the American Legion mobilized the troops. That’s what changed minds. It wasn’t the media, either – it took two days for for the media to notice, well, except for McClatchy and no one reads them anyway.

    So Friedman is just wrong that we should just assume Obama has our best interests in his heart – the VSOs need to be vigilant, not BOFO like VoteVets.

    By the way, I have this picture so I’m using it;
    Perry Soltz
    It’s VV’s Jon Soltz meeting on a runway somewhere with VFP/VVAW member and IVAW advisor Bill Perry.
    And here they are inside the airport with more VFP/VVAW/IVAW members;
    VV IVAW VVAW VFP group hug

    Don’t tell me you have veterans’ interests in mind when you cavort with the mindless drones of IVAW who care about nothing except where they can score some pot and babe-age. VoteVets is a partisan organization that falls under aegis of MoveOn.org. Even John Bruhns, the former soldier – turned anti-war activist, left VoteVets because they were too much in the pocket of the Democrat party.

    And, Friedman, this isn’t an anti-Obama blog. I started this blog before Obama started running for President, so it can’t be an anti-Obama blog. I’m against his policies but mostly I’m against buffoons and charlatans who are climbing over the bodies of their former comrades using their motor pool dispatch credentials to lead this country down the road to ruin.

    I guess you can say I’m anti-dipshit.

  • Where’s the media?

    I got angry yesterday listening to the news and getting the AIG bonus scandal every five minutes. I got angry enough to email several news agencies to no avail. So, this morning, as if we didn’t hear it enough yesterday, all of the news – Fox News Channel included – are still on the AIG thing. To the point that I don’t even care anymore.

    So where are they on the veterans issue that we all talked about yesterday? Except for the Washington Post, there’s nothing. The Post put their article on page four and see if you can find it on this screen shot of their web page this morning;

    Yeah, it’s there, but you’ll have to squint to see it. They actually did a pretty good job on the article, except it’s hidden. An issue that affects many millions of Americans adversely and it’s in tiny print.

    So, as is my wont, I went to the comments expecting to see some serious troop-bashing, but I was surprised by what I found. Most of the comments supported the troops. Well, except for this moron;

    Doofus.

    But where is the rest of the media on this? Why are they so fixated on the AIG bonus scandal? How many times do they figure they need to beat us over the head with it?

    The American Legion’s national commander, David Rehbein, whose press release we used to break the story on Monday night, has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal which scalds the Obama Administration for reneging on their campaign promise to “restore our sacred trust with our nation’s veterans“;

    As head of the nation’s largest veterans organization, I was startled by this radical shift of position the president has taken. Last October, candidate Obama listed several proposals he had for the VA and none of them included billing veterans’ insurance providers.

    In fact, when asked how he would improve the funding formula for the VA’s health-care system, then-Sen. Obama told the American Legion Magazine, “It starts with the president saying that if I’m budgeting for war, then I am also budgeting for VA. If I’ve got a half-a-trillion-dollar Pentagon budget, then I’d better make sure that I make some of those billions of dollars available to care for the soldiers once they come home. It should be a non-negotiable proposition that people are receiving the services that they need. This is the reason I joined the Veterans Affairs Committee — because I believe deeply in that principle.”

    So I ask President Obama now, for all America’s veterans, where is that principled stance today? By abandoning its responsibilities to the heroic men and women who answered our nation’s call, the federal government is breaking a sacred promise. Moreover, it is unnecessary.

    Read the entire piece (I think it doesn’t require subscription – if it does, let me know and I’ll screen shot the thing).

    Huffington Post finally notices the story but who do they go to for answers? VoteVets’ Jon Soltz – who, by the way wasn’t even in the meeting between the VSOs and the President. So he’s HuffPo’s source;

    “We don’t know if this is going to be the proposal, or if it is a serious consideration or not,” he told the Huffington Post. “So, it’s premature to go to the White House with pitchforks at this point.”

    Yeah, the President already made it clear that it was going to be in his budget because the reimbursements from insurance companies are a linchpin in the funding. Didn’t he tell the VSO reps to “find the money” for him after they told him it was a non-starter? The Washington Times quotes someone who was actually in the room;

    “It became apparent during our discussion today that the president intends to move forward with this unreasonable plan,” Mr. Rehbein said Monday. “He says he is looking to generate $540 million by this method, but refused to hear arguments about the moral and government-avowed obligations that would be compromised by it.”

    Friday, I found this from VetVoice (Soltz’ organization) that said veterans shouldn’t worry about the Obama administration – it’s all just rumors. The day before Obama tells the VSOs he’s going to charge vets for their service-connected treatment. So VoteVets is STILL providing partisan cover for the Administration.

    Even Chris Muir weighs in on the President’s proposal.

    Whether this passes or not (and I’m pretty sure it won’t), it still demonstrates to veterans what the Obama Administration thinks of us.

  • Another Socialist: Obama’s not socialist

    Last week, the Washington Post ran a column by their resident socialist Harold Meyerson easing our fears of President Barack Obama’s political persuation by declaring that “he’s not one of us”. Today, they find another socialist to confirm Meyerson’s assessment. Billy Wharton allays our fears with typical misinformation;

    A national health insurance system as embodied in the single-payer health plan reintroduced in legislation this year by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), makes perfect sense to us. That bill would provide comprehensive coverage, offer a full range of choice of doctors and services and eliminate the primary cause of personal bankruptcy — health-care bills. Obama’s plan would do the opposite.

    Never mind that any intrusion by the government into private health care is socialist. Any intrusion by government into any private enterprise is socialist. But here’s the most ludicrous of the evidence he presents us;

    Issues of war and peace further weaken the commander in chief’s socialist credentials. Obama announced that all U.S. combat brigades will be removed from Iraq by August 2010, but he still intends to leave as many as 50,000 troops in Iraq and wishes to expand the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made recently by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.

    So a “true socialist” would send scholars and engineers to battle a threat? Like those engineers and scholars Chavez sent to the frontier with Colombia last year? Those engineers and scholars that Cuba sent to Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras a few decades ago? The engineers and scholars that Vietnam sent into Laos and Cambodia in the late 70s? Please.

    I find it somewhat dismaying that the Post is now publishing columns weekly that tell us we’re paranoid bubbleheads if we think Obama is a socialist. More dismaying is the number of WaPo commenters who agree and thank Wharton for trying to educate the paranoid bubbleheads.

  • Dems: Earmarks are good now, trust us

    With their willing accomplices in the press running interference for them, the Democrats are trying their hand at changing the public’s perception of earmarks. Last year, campaigning Senator Obama said earmarks are bad (CNN link);

    “We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress’ seniority, rather than the merit of the project,” Obama’s statement said.

    “The entire earmark process needs to be re-examined and reformed. For that reason, I will be supporting Sen. DeMint’s amendment and will not be requesting earmarks this year for Illinois,” the statement added.

    But the Democrats in the Senate this year, are doing their best to convince voters that earmarks are good. Senator Dick Durbin (The Washington Times link);

    “That there is something inherently evil, wicked or criminal or wrong with [earmarks], it’s just not the case,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, noting that he earmarked millions of dollars in the pending omnibus spending bill for what he said were worthy projects in his home state.

    Mr. Durbin said lawmakers’ pet projects are listed in the bill and exposed to public scrutiny, and that members of Congress know how to best spend taxpayer dollars in their districts and states.

    “Otherwise, what happens? We give the money to the agency downtown and they decide where to spend it,” Mr. Durbin said on the Senate floor. “It isn’t as if the money won’t be spent. Oh, it will be spent. But it may not be spent as effectively or for projects that are as valuable.”

    See? You legislators know best how to spend your tax money (or, more accurately, the money from some other taxpayer across the country from you). Even government bureaucrats don’t know how to spend your money like a Senator knows how to spend your money. That’s why he’s your Senator.

    But Durbin isn’t the only Senator who thinks earmarks are necessary – Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid think so, too;

    The refrain has been the same from other top Democrats, whether from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada or House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland. Besides touting the merits of earmarks, these Democrats balked at Mr. Obama’s announcement last week of a plan to reel in pork-barrel spending.

    Both Mr. Reid and Mr. Hoyer made clear that they thought it was out of Mr. Obama’s constitutional jurisdiction.

    What does Nancy Pelosi think of earmarks?

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, last week defended earmarks as an “appropriate function” of Congress, even as she pledged to work with the White House to cut the number and increase transparency – but only after passage of the omnibus bill.

    “The idea is lower number, more transparency, total accountability,” Mrs. Pelosi said.

    We’ll lower the number of earmarks – well, after this year. In other words, they’re hoping (and planning on) the media forgets that they said that next year. The Obama Administration is taking the same position – wait’ll next year (CNN link);

    [Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget] argued that the White House had little choice but to support the $410 billion omnibus spending bill, which it inherited from the previous administration. The bill would keep the government running through 2009.

    “This is like your relief pitcher coming into the ninth inning and wanting to redo the whole game,” Orszag said. “Next year we’re going to be the starting pitcher, and the game’s going to be completely different.”

    Obama argues that he was saddled with this spending bill because the Bush Administration didn’t get a spending bill through Congress last year – that’s because Democrats wouldn’t take it up and put it off until this year. Sounds like he needs to sit down and talk with the children in his party. Unless, of course, he enjoys breaking a new campaign promise every week.

  • Sleight of mouth

    We’ve all heard the yammering recently as the Democrat White House tries to change the subject from it’s own failures to their criticism of what the President calls “cable chatter”. Press secretary Gibbs has been quick to attack CNBC’s Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer for their criticism of the President’s agenda. Gibbs even admits that it’s counterproductive, according to the Washington Times;

    “It may be counterproductive. I’ll give you that,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about his repeated verbal jousting with Mr. Limbaugh and other media personalities who have criticized President Obama.

    But that hasn’t stopped him. Life long Democrat and Obama supporter Jim Cramer has responded to the most recent attacks against his commentary;

    So I will fight the fight against that agenda. I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there. And when they get there, if times are good, we can have them give back or pay higher taxes. Until they get there, I don’t want them shackled or scared or paralyzed. That’s what I see now.

    If that makes me an enemy of the White House, then call me a general of an army that Obama may not even know exists — tens of millions of people who live in fear of having no money saved when they need it and who get poorer by the day.

    Ohio Republican congressman John Boehner writes in today’s Washington Post that this has been part of the Obama strategy all along, to distract the public from the malfeasance that’s happening right before our eyes;

    Make no mistake: This strategy did not develop out of thin air. Democratic pollsters began laying the groundwork for this effort last fall. What’s particularly regrettable is that all this is unfolding at a time our nation can least afford it.

    President Obama has said that we must change the way Washington operates in order to address the unprecedented challenges of today. I hope that those inside and close to the administration begin heeding his advice, because the change-the-subject campaign they are employing is the oldest trick in Washington’s book. This isn’t about the leadership of political party officials or the influence of radio hosts. It’s about the need for both parties to work together toward real solutions to end this recession and put Americans back to work.

    Democrats know they’re creating a REAL SEVERE crisis out of a run-of-the-mill crisis by compounding the damage to the economy. Cramer, of whom I’ve been critical in the past, writes that he longs for higher taxes on the rich and greatly expanded environmental projects, but that now isn’t the time. The Democrats won’t wait for the time, though – they learned that in 1993 their grasp of power is tenuous when the people handed Congress to the Republicans for the first time in 50 after Democrats barely failed to enact their healthcare plan. They knew that if they waited to enact their far-reaching socialist plans, they might miss another opportunity to enslave the vote to their will.

    Now Democrats are trying to distract the public from what they know in advance will drive us deeper into a recession, maybe even a depression with their mismanagement of the economy – while in public they attack private citizens who disagree with them and carry out a show-trial against Karl Rove who they suspect of being guilty of doing the same thing they’re doing at the DOJ right now.

    So where are our watchdogs in the media?