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

Category: Politics

  • Soldier Saves Unconscious Driver Moments Before Car Explodes

    From Army Times SFC Erik Kingsley Awarded Soldier’s Medal

    An off-duty Special Forces Soldier’s quick thinking, and quick action, saved an unconscious driver’s life moments before the driver’s car exploded.

    He was driving his brother-in-law, and his family, to the airport in order to drop off his brother-in-law. It was dark, approximately 3:30 AM, when he saw something that was not normal… A couple of headlights shining out of the ditch.

    He quickly went into action, pulled over, had his wife call 911, and had his brother-in-law move the family’s vehicle further away from the other vehicle.

    The other driver was apparently drunk, and unconscious, and had rolled off the highway. With his foot still on the accelerator, his engine overheated and it resulted in a fire.

    From the Army Times:

    The car was covered in briar patches, he said, and the driver’s lead foot on the accelerator had caused the engine to overheat. As the shrubs caught fire, Kingsley pulled the driver out, then directed his brother-in-law to move their own car farther away, out of the reach of the fire.

    “I grabbed the guy, I put him on my shoulders, I started walking out, and the vehicle exploded,” he said.

    For his quick action, SFC Erik Kingsley earned the Soldier’s Medal. This is the highest noncombat award for valor and bravery that the Army awards its soldiers in situations like this.

    Thanks to Devtun for the link. You can read more here.

  • Feed Two Birds With One Scone, Don’t Kill Them With a Stone

    If PETA gets its way, many of the familiar phrases that we’ve used would fall victim to political correctness. Normally, when we use these sayings, we are using the characters in the sayings to symbolize something.

    For example, taking the bull by the horns. Granted, most of us will not run out to the pasture and grab any bull by the horns. That’s just asking for trouble. The “bull” happens to be whatever it is that we are trying to accomplish or overcome.

    One use for this saying is that we simply have to just “dive in” and tackle the issue. The idea is that a bull would fight back if we tried to grab it by the horns. We’d sometimes find ourselves dealing with a problem that does not offer an “easier route”.

    But, we still have to “prevail” regardless of how daunting and difficult the task. This describes many a problem and challenge. Both evolve, and both seem to “tend to try to overcome us”.

    A flower doesn’t do that. If you grabbed a flower by the thorn, said flower would not try to fight you back. The meaning of the saying would simply not match the meaning of the original saying.

    Ditto with “Kill two birds with one stone”. One of uses of this statement is to resolve two issues with one action. “Killing” implies a benefit to the one doing the “killing”.

    If you’re feeding two birds with a scone, this statement becomes more of using one action to compound more than one problem.

    From Fox News:

    Instead of “kill two birds with one stone,” say “feed two birds with one scone.” “Take the bull by the horns” should be replaced with “take the flower by the thorns” and instead of “bring home the bacon,” say “bring home the bagels”.

    They’re trying to include “anti-animal” statements in the same category as “anti-gay” statements.

    Our language may be evolving, but the universal meanings, of the sayings that PETA wants to change, remain the same and would lose these meanings under PETA’s version.

    Thanks to AnotherPat for this link. You can read more here.

  • There Are No Coincidences

    For a long time after the end of the war in Vietnam, the Communist Vietnamese government had a law in place that any US citizen who entered Vietnam would immediately be arrested.

    In 1999, things changed when the British government returned ownership of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the mainland Chinese government. There was speculation that the city would become another Communist wasteland. Instead, the Chinese government had been watching how things worked in Hong Kong and in the business world outside of China and took the track of business. Instead of interfering with a successful economic model, they embraced it and began a new way of doing things. Construction of new buildings in Beijing and the irruption of the capitalist business model made many, many people prosperous. And China wanted money coming in. China’s plentiful coal resources spurred the construction of new coal-fired power generating stations, and began to provide power to provinces that had not had a reliable source before. China is now contracting to build coal-fired power plants in other countries.

    With Vietnam being heavily influenced by the Chinese government, the capitalist business model was adopted and tourism grew. Americans can visit there, but do not speak out against the government unless you want to spend time in a re-education camp.

    Ho Chi Minh started the French-Indochina war over the French presence in Indochina before World War II. He wanted money and the French colonials out of Indochina, period. His war with France began in 1946 just as Kim Il-Sung, the godlike grandfather of ND:tBF, started his own war in Korea in his attempt to unite the north and south of that peninsula. Grandpa Kim wanted power more than money.

    Both Uncle Ho and Grandpa Kim got help from the Chinese in their quest. There were Chinese weapons and troops in both Korea and Indochina. When the French capitulated, Ho demanded a ransom for the 10,000 French POWs, but returned only 3,900 to the French. Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel, and Laos and Cambodia became independent states.. MacArthur, in Korea, stubbornly refused to end his trek into the north, demanded a nuclear weapon drop on the north, and was refused and recalled to the US by Pres. Truman. Saigon became the capital of South Vietnam, and Hanoi the capital of North Vietnam, and the Korean peninsula was permanently divided.

    In the 1960s, the US sent advisers to South Vietnam. South Korea was still recovering from its own war, with a US base at the DMZ that marked the boundary between the north and south. Occasionally, people would slip through the cracks, into the South or across the Nork-Chinese border into China. Pres. Johnson decided that the US should get more heavily involved in Vietnam and sent in more troops to start a shooting war in 1965.

    In 1987, two years before the USSR was dissolved and the war in the Balkans got underway, Donald Trump began to make trips to the Soviet Union for the purpose of making real estate deals. In 2013, the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow while Trump was there, negotiating a real estate deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. That deal fell through and he returned to the USA. Robert Mueller was Director of the FBI from 2001 to 2013.

    In 1989, after 10 years of futile warfare in Afghanistan, Gorbachev declared the Soviet Union bankrupt, dismissed the Politburo and sent everybody home. Shortly afterwards, the Berlin Wall was pulled down and the Balkan Wars began.

    During this time, with Trump engaging in his business deals and going wherever he felt like going, the CIA paid the Chinese through a third party to make it appear that the Russians were interfering in the US elections. The third party go-between for this was a woman whose presence was so lowkey as to be almost nonexistent. She went by several names, including the Dragon Lady and Mah Jongg. She appears in a few photos, but very, very few. Her appearance is not completely Chinese, but seems to be something else. There has been speculation that she is part Chinese and part “other” such as Yakut or Vietnamese.

    She was known for her ability to pick up languages quickly with the correct accent, especially important when speaking various Chinese dialects such as Mandarin or Yue or Hakka. If your accent is incorrect, no one will understand what you say. This made her a valuable asset for mischief.

    She also seems to have been an expert code hacker. In 2016, hackers stole $100 million from the central bank of Bangladesh after obtaining payment-transfer codes and moving the money overseas in what information security experts say appears to be one of the largest bank heists in history. Anyone who can use these codes can also make transitions quickly and instantly once they are confirmed. But the bank reportedly managed to block a further transfer of $870 million initiated by the hacker group.

    The destination for this large sum of stolen  money was never identified. The speculation was that the Dragon Lady sent it to North Korea, but attempts to trace it failed. Any account that received that money in the beginning was gone, period, with funds immediately transferred to other accounts to hide them. However, Mah Jongg did leave a mark behind, almost as a tease: $1.00 was left in the Bangladesh account.

    Only part of the blackmail money that Obama sent to Iran was delivered there. Some of it was diverted to North Korea, and from there to China for the purpose of enhancing the deceit that Russia was involved in meddling in the affairs of other countries, especially the US elections. Remember that recent whine from the Ayatollahs that they were running out of money?

    The discovery of Maria Butina’s inept and silly efforts to meddle in things, after she came to the USA in 2016, was also a distraction meant to enhance the notion that Russia was interfering in US politics. She was what Stalin used to call a “useful idiot” – the perfect plant to distract attention from what was really going on.

    In addition, the Chinese persuaded Fatty Kim da T’ird and his Nork bombmakers to create a distraction with his 25 kiloton test in September 2016, near the time of US election debates. He’s had plenty of assistance from China in return for distracting outsiders like the US government from their activities. The second test, the half-megaton underground test in September 2017, was a secondary distraction meant to draw attention away from the Chinese and put it on the Russians even though Trump was long since sworn in.

    All those missile tests going on in Norkiland, and the posturing and threats by Fatty Kim da T’ird, were distractions right up until the ballots were counted and recounted with more Trump votes being found, and the electoral college had cast its votes. The activities from North Korea abruptly ceased when Trump, in November 2017, got the two Koreas to work together, made business deals with Xi JinPing in China, visited Vietnam, and has watched while every ridiculous effort possible has been dragged into existence to try to unseat him, including the Circus of Trolls called Supreme Court justice hearings.

    The effort is still going on. And China is now negotiating for contracts to build coal-fired power plants in countries outside their borders, while now openly demanding that the USA give them more cash.

    Coincidence? I don’t think so.

  • Federal Judge Strikes ObamaCare Down

    When the tax bill was signed into law, before the end of last year, one of the things that it contained was the repeal of the individual mandate. But, the mandate still remains in effect as of this year. Now comes the other prong of attack, a federal judge ruled that not only is the individual mandate unconstitutional, but so is the rest of the law.

    From thehill.com:

    U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, and that because the mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the law, the rest of the law is also invalid.

    The law is still in effect, and appeals are pending. Whichever side you’re on, prepare for a “battle”.

    the New York Times provides a more detailed account, but with some biases injected:

    The ruling was over a lawsuit filed this year by a group of Republican governors and state attorneys general. A group of intervening states led by Democrats promised to appeal the decision, which will most likely not have any immediate effect. But it will almost certainly make its way to the Supreme Court, threatening the survival of the landmark health law and, with it, health coverage for millions of Americans, protections for people with pre-existing conditions and much more.

    If you read the New York Times article, they mentioned which president appointed the judge that made this decision, and mention who would negatively be impacted by this decision:

    “Today’s ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with pre-existing conditions, on the 20 million Americans who rely on the A.C.A.’s consumer protections for health care, on America’s faithful progress toward affordable health care for all Americans.” – Xavier Becerra, California’s Attorney General

    You can read more at The Hill and an New York Times. The Hill has a PDF copy of the ruling.

  • Hillary Clinton’s Speaking Event tickets, from High-Priced to Discounted

    Shawn McCreesh for the New York Times

    I remember, during the Presidential Election Campaign of 1996, how the media loved to photo capture the crowds that attended President Clinton’s campaign stops. Contrast that with how they portrayed Bob Dole. The media frequently showed videos of him in small towns, with small crowds approaching him and his campaign bus.

    The media’s emphasizing large crowds extended to Hillary Clinton. She brought in the crowds, and her speech brought in the money. She made more money in a single speech than what many people earned in an entire year.

    In the Presidential Election Campaign of 2016, once again the media loved to camera capture the crowds attending Hillary’s campaign events. Then candidate Donald Trump had to make a request, in the middle of one of his speeches, for camera personnel to pan the crowds.

    Predictably, they zeroed in on him instead.

    After the Presidential Election of 2016, Hillary appeared to be in a struggle to remain relevant. Even with Bill Clinton at her side. But even members of her own party had been calling for her, or both of them, to step aside and let new leadership take the reins.

    It has gotten to the point to where they appear to have problems drawing crowd numbers that they used to be able to bring in. Those selling tickets on the Clinton’s behalf, and who host Hillary Clinton’s speeches, are now losing out on earnings. Now, was the mainstream media as honest about their audiences as they were about Bob Dole’s?

    Where they were willing to show Bob Dole and small crowds, attempts are made to diminish the appearance of small crowds at Bill and Hillary’s events. With not enough people purchasing tickets to see her speeches, those attempting to sell tickets to her speech events needed to rely more on other selling venues. They also considered discounts and cutting the prices to the tickets for the attendance.

    From Fox News:

    Among the deals: Tickets to an April 11 talk at the Beacon Theatre in New York — normally priced $287 — are going for $145 on Monday. Tickets to an April 12 Detroit talk, originally listed for $220.70, are going for $95. And tickets in Philadelphia for an April 12 talk have been reduced from $208.20 to $85.

    And from the Washington Times:

    And things kept getting worse. Ticket prices for their event in Texas plunged to just $6. Seems no one is interested in hearing them tell “stories and inspiring anecdotes that shaped their historic careers in public service, while also discussing issues of the day and looking toward the future,” which a press release promised.

    Maureen Dowd attended one of the speeches in an arena. Curtains separated the empty half of the arena from the half containing the audience. However, this half was not completely filled with customers. So, action was taken to isolate the empty seats. She paid $177.00 while pre-booking this event; however, had she waited to the day of the event she could potentially have purchased the same ticket for under $10.00.

    You can read more of her observations of this event in her New York Times article:

    I’m looking around Scotiabank Arena, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it’s a depressing sight. It’s two-for-the-price-of-one in half the arena. The hockey rink is half curtained off, but even with that, organizers are scrambling at the last minute to cordon off more sections behind thick black curtains, they say due to a lack of sales. I paid $177 weeks in advance. (I passed on the pricey meet-and-greet option.) On the day of the event, some unsold tickets are slashed to single digits.

    You guys are already familiar with many of the reasons to why Hillary Clinton has gone from a high-priced cash cow to someone that struggles to get the kind of audiences that she used to get.

    It goes beyond that. The Democratic Party has new stars. Also, the party has shifted further to the left as evidenced by the political leanings of the last president, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others.

    Not only is Hillary Clinton suffering from apparently becoming less relevant as a “sought-after” speaker, she is also suffering from the changes in demographics to include changes in attitude of the Millennials. And, of course, she is suffering from the culmination of decisions that she consistently made, and of actions that she consistently took, in the past.

    Thanks to AW1Ed for the first link that lead to the generation of this post.

  • Thursdays Are For Cooking… and Fridays Are For Coming Clean About the Cooking

    Thursdays Are For Cooking… and Fridays Are For Coming Clean About the Cooking

    PhillyMag recently did an article about South Philly self-proclaimed celebrity chef Michael DePasquale.  DePasquale has claimed to be a friend and business partner of the late Anthony Bourdain, as well as being a United States Marine.

    This article references another article by the South Philly Review.

    Oh, and DePasquale recently “nursed a Vietnam veteran back to health who was suffering from kidney and congestive heart failure using herbs recommended by Bourdain,” according to the South Philly Review story.

    Then…

    He said that he “cooked for several presidents” and that he was scheduled to cook for Vladimir Putin shortly after one of the videos was recorded.

    He said that he was conducting a private investigation into Bourdain’s untimely death (the South Philly Review article indicated that DePasquale was “using resources from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the presidential cabinet” for that inquiry).

    He spoke about being a United States Marine who did “three tours in Afghanistan, Iraq and Fallujah.”

    And later…

    And for the miracle cure that DePasquale provided to that Vietnam vet:

    “It’s a disabled vet who had lung and heart failure and kidney failure,” DePasquale said to me on Tuesday afternoon. “He was going to be put on dialysis on a Monday, but then Bourdain got me in touch with an herbalist. I gave him some herbs and I cooked him cabbage and potatoes and greens, and in four or five days, he was able to walk again. Soon, he was walking and talking like a champion.”

    Alas, DePasquale didn’t want to put me in touch with the cured patient, but he added that the man had “landed four space shuttles.”

    Space shuttles?   Hmmm… it’s all so clear to me now.  As to his military service…

    And speaking of vets, I wanted to learn more about DePasquale’s service to our country — especially since there were no publicly known U.S. military deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan between 1994 and 1997, the years that DePasquale told us he served as a Marine.

    “I don’t wanna talk about my military stuff,” DePasquale said when I asked him about his career in the armed forces. “But let me just say that Afghanistan and Iraq are some of the most dangerous places around. I was also in Kosovo and Albania. I’m glad I did what I could. I’m glad I was able to help people.”

    But, the U.S. Marine Corps weighed in, according to author Victor Fiorillo…

    But I’ll tell you who did get back to me: the United States Marine Corps. On Tuesday, I contacted the press office for the USMC, and they provided me with an official statement stating that they had no record of DePasquale ever serving in the Marines.

    I called DePasquale back on Tuesday evening to ask him about what the Marines had told me. I wasn’t sure what he’d say, what explanation or excuse he’d offer. But he didn’t offer any. He was shocked that I contacted the Marines.

    The South Philly Review article has since been deleted.  I wonder why?  However, it was preserved here…

    https://cdn10.phillymag.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2018/12/michael-depasquale-bourdain-south-philly-review.pdf

    Oh, well – pizza anyone?

  • The Untold Story of Robert Mueller’s Time in the Vietnam War | WIRED

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s job is to make sense of how Russia hacked the 2016 election. But to make sense of Mueller, you have to revisit Vietnam’s bloodiest battles.

    I make it a point to attempt an understanding of those I disagree with.  It has become all too easy these days to use rhetoric in a dehumanizing manner.  I do not have to agree with someone to respect them.

    William Sparks, a private first class in Hotel Company, recalls that Mueller got off the helicopter in the middle of a rainstorm, wearing a raincoat—a telltale sign that he was new to the war. “You figured out pretty fast it didn’t help to wear a raincoat in Vietnam,” Sparks says. “The humidity just condensed under the raincoat—you were just as wet as you were without it.”

    As Mueller walked up from the landing zone, Kellogg—who had no idea Mueller would be inheriting his platoon—recognized his OCS classmate’s gait. “When he came marching up the hill, I laughed,” Kellogg says. “We started joking.” On Mueller’s first night in the field, his brand-new tent was destroyed by the wind. “That thing vanished into thin air,” Sparks says. He didn’t even get to spend one night.”

    Over the coming days, Kellogg passed along some of his wisdom from the field and explained the procedures for calling in artillery and air strikes. “Don’t be John Wayne,” he said. “It’s not a movie. Marines tell you something’s up, listen to them.”

    “The lieutenants who didn’t trust their Marines went to early deaths,” Kellogg says.

    And with that, Kellogg told their commander that Mueller was ready, and he hopped aboard the next helicopter out.

    Robert Mueller receives an award from his regimental commander Col. Martin “Stormy” Sexton in Dong Ha, South Vietnam in 1969.DAN WINTERS; ARCHIVAL PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF ROBERT MUELLER
    I am well aware of most peoples opinion of Mueller these days.  For those of you who would like to know more about the man follow the link below.  The author has an obvious bias but his article is well worth a read.

    Source: The Untold Story of Robert Mueller’s Time in the Vietnam War | WIRED

  • Trump sprang three traps on Pelosi and Schumer yesterday

    American thinker Logo

    Anyone watching the news yesterday must have seen the video of Trump, San Fran Nan, and Chuckie in the Oval Office having a little chat. This was a set-up by Trump, as SFN and Chuckie clearly did not expect the press to be present during the meeting, and said as much several times. Judging by body language, Chuckie clearly wished himself elsewhere as Trump cornered them on boarder security and building the wall.

    Our friend Poetrooper drew our attention to the work of one of his fellow American Thinker writers about the occasion, and suggested TAH readers would be interested. I certainly was, so now we both think you will be, too.

    Trump sprang three traps on Pelosi and Schumer yesterday
    By Thomas Lifson

    President Trump clearly shocked House speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer yesterday with his televising of the Oval Office sit-down over his demand for $5 billion in funding for border security, including funding of critical mileage for his border wall. Knowing well that Pelosi had already vowed publicly that “transparency and openness” would characterize the Democrat-run House starting next month, her plaintive request to speak in private scored points for Trump and revealed her hypocrisy before any substance at all was considered.
    The remarkable body language during the meeting tells the story of Trump’s dominance.

    That was merely the first of three traps Trump had prepared for the Democrats’ congressional leadership.

    Trump’s second trap is his bold declaration of ownership of any “government shutdown.” Democrats have convinced themselves that what is called a “shutdown,” but really means furloughing non-essential federal workers, is a tragedy, a scar on the nation’s psyche. The fact that federal workers are now a major and solid constituency for Democrats skews their perception of the public’s concern. Aside from canceling sleigh rides in national parks and other such photo drama, the fact is that life goes on well for nearly all Americans during the furlough. They learn that there are a lot of non-essential government workers.

    After multiple shutdowns, including the last one that bore the label “Schumer Shutdown” and was quickly conceded by the Democrats, the public is no longer afraid of non-essential services (roughly 25% of the government) being temporarily suspended.

    The entire article can and should be read at American Thinker