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

Category: Politics

  • Whatever Happened to the Stalwart Brits of Fame and Legend?

    Stiff upper lip and all that? Not so much anymore… The sun has set on the mighty British Empire and out of the ashes rises not a phoenix, but rather a whiny, politically correct weasel.
    This from the Guardian:

    Counter-terrorism officials are rethinking their approach to tackling the radicalisation of Muslim youth, abandoning what they admit has been offensive and inappropriate language. They say the term “war on terror” will no longer be heard from ministers. Instead, they will use less emotive language, emphasising the criminal nature of the plots and conspiracies. The government in future, they add, will talk of a “struggle” against extremist ideology, rather than a “battle”.
    A “struggle”? What? Do these people not remember the London Tube Bombings?
    Why not call it a Jihad, maybe that will win “Hearts and Minds”…

    Well, it is sadly obvious that the England of Churchill is dead. These Brits have flagged and failed. They no longer have the heart to “go on to the end” to “Fight them on the beaches”. Rather than the beacon of courage and of leadership that Churchill provided, today we are left with a UK that is sadly, apparently, just not up to the fight.The change in approach by counter-terrorism officials is part of plans by the government’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit to counter al-Qaida propaganda and win hearts and minds. In WWII, the British understood that, “When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” But, then I guess it isn’t merely a British problem… Far too many American politicians don’t understand, either.

    They think that this is a problem that can be bested in conference rooms, by negotiations with reasonable men. That, would we just give “a little”, there really could be “Peace in our time.” Folks, I’m here to tell you, Chamberlain was dead wrong. There will not be peace in our time if we negotiate rather than fight. We don’t have time for a second “Phony War”, we need leaders with the guts, the intestinal fortitude, hell, the balls to fight these terrorists abroad before anymore buildings fall in this country, before something worse happens.

    We cannot allow border security to be laughed off as anti-Mexican bias, as bad as illegal immigration is, terrorism is much worse. We don’t want suicide bombers in our clubs and malls. But, I am increasingly afraid it will take another terrorist attack on American soil for some to grasp the simple fact that the terrorists will remain at war with us until one of two things happen; we can either capitulate to their abhorrent demands, or we can treat them as the enemy they are and wipe them out.

    One of the greatest missteps in the Vietnam War, was the gross underestimation of the enemy’s capabilities, the idea that people without the vast technological prowess of the US, were no danger to us was disproved time and again, and yet, some still won’t see it.
    HatTip: Dhimmi Watch

  • For how much would I sell my blog to Congress?

    My good buddy, Kate at A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective asked me this afternoon “Jonn, for how much would you sell your blog to the illustrious Democraps we have running our Congress?”

    Here’s my answer; I’d give it to ’em. Free. On one condition; they’d have to spend the rest of our war against terror acting like they’re on our side and not the side of evil. They’d have to stop calling our troops names like “murders” “SS concentration camp guards”. They’d have to record all of their accusations and false outrage and save it for when the war is over.

    In fact, if Democrats did that, I’d give up blogging all together. The whole reason I blog is to prevent Democrats from surrendering to the Islamo-facists. If Democrats shut up for two years, the whole war would be over across the entire globe, and I’d have no reason to blog any longer.

    I’m pretty sure no offers are forthcoming, so stay tuned.

  • DC’s $20 million shame

    I wrote a few weeks ago about Harriet Walters and Dianne Gustus of the Washington DC ‘ Office of Tax and Revenue who scammed US taxpayers out of betweeen $20 and $30 million by issuing bogus property tax refunds. You might ask yourself how a relatively low-level employee might get away carrying loads of cash out of the public coffers. Easy – everyone in the Washington DC government are corrupt.

    “How dare you say such a thing, paint with such a broad brush over every single District government employee” you might be asking. Well, judge for yourself. I found this in a Washington Examiner article from earlier in the week;

    The 51-year-old Walters was known as “Mother Harriette” in her office — the woman to see for emergency loans, designer clothes and accessories, even floor-level Wizards tickets, three sources with direct knowledge of the widening federal and local investigations said.

    She also paid out large cash rewards, in increments of up to $20,000 at a time, to fellow workers who helped her edit and complete her paperwork, sources said. Her annual salary was $81,000.

    According the source, a few months before her Nov. 7 arrest, Walters was called into a meeting with Terez Badger, a chief in the tax office, and Susan Lee, a deputy chief and Walter’s direct supervisor. They told her to stop giving out the presents and taking her co-workers on shopping sprees.

    Everyone in her office knew she was stealing – how else could she afford to hand out what amounted to 1/4 of her annual salary for doing her work around the office? And everyone knew her reputation for handing out goodies – everyone was in on it. But as long as they got their cut, they didn’t care. No one blew the whistle on her, no one asked any hard questions - her supervisors just told her to stop buying gifts for everyone. Not wondering for a minute where she got her money.

    See, Mother Walters was cutting property tax refund checks that never made it to the people for whom they were intended (whether they deserved refunds or not isn’t clear yet).

    Wonder what the District’s Chief Financial Officer’s office has to say about it? Washington Times’ Jim McElhatton;

    “It’s the belief of the CFO’s office that we should have done a closer investigation of the data,” Natalie Wilson, spokeswoman for the CFO’s office, said this week. “If we had gotten down in the weeds and closely examined the data, maybe we could have identified it.”

    “If we’d gotten down in the weeds…” Um, where I come from, 20 million bucks isn’t in the weeds. When property tax refunds skyrocket 110%, in just one year, how thick is that weedlot?

    From fiscal 2003 to 2004, for example, a review of the CFO’s monthly cash reports show real property-tax collections rose 11.8 percent. But refunds soared nearly 10 times that rate — by 110.8 percent.

    “That should have been a big red flag,” said financial specialist Larry Crumbley, a Louisiana State University professor and author of a book on forensic accounting.

    Ya think? Well, not in DC where corruption is just part of day-to-day life. “Well, at least DC officials caught up with Mother Walters”, you’re saying to yourself, “At least someone was on the job”. Think?

    D.C. officials only learned about the purported theft after federal authorities, acting on a tip from a local bank, began an investigation.

    $20 million in taxpayer money missing and it takes a tip from the bank to figure out the money is missing. No one’s accountable and criminals all have legitimate excuses for what they’ve done. I’m pretty sure Mother Walters will skate, relatively speaking, the criminal investigation will probably drain off another $20 million from the taxpayers coffers and she’ll get a slap on the wrist. Ask Marion Berry about his tax evasion trial and conviction.

  • Common good; common misery

    The Wall Street Journal’s Steven McKinnon has discovered the Democrats’ rallying cry for this election season;

    The latest tussle in the world of political rhetoric is pitting Aristotle and Augustine against political pollsters and a raft of Democratic presidential candidates.

    At stake is the notion of “common good,” which many Democrats are embracing as a new framework for expressing their vision of broader opportunity and equality.

    We heard it three years ago when Hillary Clinton warned some her more ignorant rich supporters in San Francisco that she planned on taking their stuff “for the common good”. It worked so good then that, I guess they plan on using it as a theme. And true to his character, Eugene Robinson, DNC’s partisan hack columnist at the Washington Post parrots the party line today;

    The picture that emerges from all the quintiles, correlations and percentages is of a nation in which, overall, “the current generation of adults is better off than the previous one,” as one of the studies notes. The median income of the families studied was $55,600 in the late 1960s; their children’s median family income was $71,900. However, this rising tide has not lifted all boats equally. The rich have seen far greater income gains than have the poor.

    Even more troubling is that our notion of America as the land of opportunity gets little support from the data. Americans move fairly easily up and down the middle rungs of the ladder, but there is “stickiness at the ends” — four out of 10 children who are born poor will remain poor, and four out of 10 children who are born rich will stay rich.

    So, who exactly are these rich people who are holding the poor down, counter to the “common good”? Well, according to the Washington Times’ Donald Lambro, they’re Democrats;

    Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional districts.

    In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

    He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.

    “If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions,” Mr. Franc said.

    A key measure of each district’s wealth was the number of single-filer taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year and married couples filing jointly who earn more than $200,000 annually, he said.

    Now, far be it from me, an avowed Conservative for more than thirty years, to disparage people for having as much or more money than I have, but one has to wonder why people who’ve sacrificed and worked hard their whole lives would turn on their neighbors and require even more sacrifice and hard work for less reward for a tired old marxist term like “for the common good”.

    Well, it’s not that hard to figure out really. Democrats have always been exclusive – remember they’re the party of slavery, they’re the party of segregation. They’ve always had veneer of concern for the downtrodden while protecting their own particular status. They’re mighty good actors, too. Franklin Roosevelt, John Kerry, Al Gore, Jay Rockefeller, Ted Kennedy all millionaires in their own right, disparaged other millionaires and threatened to confiscate their earnings “for the common good” with some measure of success. But if you compare their actions with their deeds, the hypocrisy shines through.

    Take Hillary for example. We all know the stories in the 1992 campaign about her trying to write off her husband’s underwear on their tax returns to save a few pennies from the tax collector. Does that sound like someone who is willing to pay higher taxes “for the common good”? Remember Al Gore’s 1999 tax returns when his charitable giving amounted to the cost of a low fat mocca-java and a muffin at Starbucks.

    Remember John Kerry and Ted Kennedy fighting against the wind farm being erected off the coast of their mansions because it’d spoil their ocean vistas. Arguably, the wind farm would’ve benefitted the people of Massachusetts with low cost renewable energy, but it was sacrificed for the asthetics of a very few rich. Where was “the common good” factored in to that decision?

    Democrats measure the common good by common misery, though. It’s not enough that the poor have housing, healthcare, food and clothing – the working Americans have to actually do without their luxuries in order for Democrats to feel they’re doing something worthwhile. Bill Clinton raised taxes on married couples, called the “marriage-penalty tax” by Republicans. His reasoning was that they weren’t paying their fair share because most married couples, at the time, had only one working spouse while the other stayed home to care for kids, but they were getting a tax break equal to two workers. Make sense? Me neither.

    Bill Clinton raised taxes on retirees receiving Social Security by raising the taxable amount of the benefit to 85%. It had been 50% prior to the 1993 tax hike, because the money that you pay into Social Security is taxed when you earned it. But because of his facade of caring for the poor and downtrodden, AARP and retirees ignored the huge tax grab. Just like his facade of caring about the race issue – but not actually accomplishing anything yet he’s still being praised by “Black leaders” today. For having done nothing.

    Democrats feel better about themselves when they support tax hikes because they feel like they’re “giving” to the poor, but historically, their volunteer contributions to the poor are low. They say things like “Jesus would be a Democrat”, when actually, Jesus was talking to the people, not governments, and encouraging people to be charitable and caring. Government, by it’s very nature is neither charitable nor caring. I’m pretty sure that even Jesus would be somewhat angry at the comparison.

    So, I know when a Democrat tells me that he wants my money “for the common good”, he really means he wants me to be more miserable so he can feel better about himself.

  • Playing at international politics

    USAToday plays at international politics with an opinion piece entitled “US-Iran collision course calls for diplomatic brakes”

    Two distinct sides have emerged in a de facto Cold War in the Middle East. On one side are the United States and an assortment of players, from firm friend Israel to ally-of-convenience Saudi Arabia. On the other are Iran and its growing band of supporters, including Syria, terrorist groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and Shiite sympathizers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is fully capable of using its clients to initiate hostilities that, among other things, could send oil prices soaring to a level that makes $100-a-barrel look like a bargain.

    There’s also the risk that the attacks would fail because Iran has strong air defenses and is thought to have buried and dispersed its nuclear facilities. Captured U.S. pilots would recall the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80.

    Further, attacks would rally Iranians behind the ayatollahs just as opposition to hard-liners might be gaining strength.

    All of this makes a strong case for diplomatic options, even if they appear for the moment to be fruitless.

    So, because all of these insane, irrational entities are lined up against the civilized world, we should not confront them? That’s precisely why they are irrational – they know they can get with anything. And “for the moment to be fruitless”? That’s what the Islamic Republic wants – more time to become a nuclear power (or more like a nuclear loose cannon). There may be good reasons for not confronting the Islamic Republic at this time, but that’s the most idiotic reason I’ve ever read.

  • Democrat wistful dreams vs. reality

    In an interview yesterday, General David Petraeus sketched the reality on the ground for the news media, as reported in the Wall Street Journal;

    Gen. David Petraeus, in an interview yesterday, cautioned that it was too soon to conclude that al Qaeda in Iraq, which has focused its attacks on Shiite Muslim targets, has been defeated. But he said the group had been weakened by a U.S. and Iraqi campaign to kill or detain its leaders and cut off its supplies of weapons and ammunition.

    “At some point there has to be a sign to the people that security is enabling the beginnings of a better life, which obviously garners their support for the security effort. I do think there has been a pretty substantial recognition among Sunni Arabs, in particular, that al Qaeda Iraq is not for them.”
    Another factor, he said, has been unexpected, “robust” measures by Syria to reduce the number of foreign militants crossing into Iraq to carry out suicide attacks. Gen. Petraeus estimated that the number of foreign fighters coming into Iraq through Syria has fallen by at least one-third.

    “Al Qaeda has been dealt substantial blows,” Gen. Petraeus said. “It certainly still remains dangerous…but it is a threat that has been diminished.”

    Despite these real and significant gains the Democrats are mired in their political morass (Wall Street Journal);

    Last week, the House agreed to provide $50 billion for the war, but also insisted Mr. Bush embrace the goal of ending combat operations in Iraq by the end of next year. On a 231-192 vote, Republicans failed to strip out these conditions, but Senate Republicans blocked the bill Friday.

    Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D., Wis.) sought to shift the blame to Senate Republicans. But hours after the Senate votes last week, influential House Democrats with large military bases in their states were already meeting privately with Tina Jonas, the Pentagon’s comptroller, to assess the problems ahead.

    “We’re going to have to do something in December to reconcile this, or else we have a real crisis,” a House Democrat said.

    The goal is to open a window to press for a change in policy, even if it means risking being criticized for capitulating later. To buy time, Mr. Murtha joined Mr. Obey at a Capitol news conference in which they appealed again for the administration to reach some compromise with Democrats. The weeks before Christmas will be decisive, and the important numbers to watch are the operations accounts for the Army and Marines, which bear the brunt of the fighting in Iraq as well as Afghanistan.

    So, to summarize, the Democrats, who promised bipartisanship before the November election last year, are holding up funding of combat operations in a war zone because they refuse to compromise. But what worries Democrats worse? (Washington Post);

    The Defense Department warned yesterday that as many as 200,000 contractors and civilian employees will begin receiving layoff warnings by Christmas unless Congress acts on President Bush’s $196 billion war request, but senior Democrats said no war funds will be approved until Bush accepts a shift in his Iraq policy.

    Not the troops who face the emboldened enemies of our country, but the civilian employees in their home districts. From the aforementioned WSJ story;

    But hours after the Senate votes last week, influential House Democrats with large military bases in their states were already meeting privately with Tina Jonas, the Pentagon’s comptroller, to assess the problems ahead.

    And, oh, yeah, Murtha wants a Job Corps program for terrorists;

    Mr. Murtha’s trip to Iraq includes meetings with U.S. commanders about a strategy to win over and provide future employment opportunities for Iraqi detainees held by the U.S.

    And even though he admits violence is down, Murtha won’t admit it’ll last very long – yet he wants our troops pulled out;

    He said there is “no question” the level of violence has fallen in Iraq but argues that the administration should do more to take advantage of “this lull” to improve the lot of Iraqi civilians and accelerate the departure of U.S. combat troops.

    Murtha doesn’t even understand the concept of military operations and their relationship to the political realities (S.A.Miller, Washington Times);

    “To change the political law, it doesn’t seem to me you need the military stability,” Mr. Murtha told reporters on Capitol Hill.

    So, I guess Murtha would’ve expected a new allied-installed German or Japanese government in 1944. Doofus. 

    There’s your “combat veteran”, Democrats. This is the guy you’re holding up as the voice of reason in Congress. Robin from Chickenhawk Express is still sifting through mounds of research on Murtha and the money that connects him to the Haditha incident. You can read her latest posts here and here.

  • An Exception to Every Rule.

    Once a Marine, always a Marine, or so the saying goes. Congressman Murtha is the exception to that rule. Marines have an awesome Esprit de Corps, they think there is nothing that they can’t do, just because they are Marines and you aren’t. They say “Gung Ho” and mean it, they are hard chargers.

    Jack Murtha, on the other hand is not, he isn’t a hard charger at all. Here he is AGAIN saying the US cannot win in Iraq militarily. “Look at all the people that have been displaced, all the [lost] oil production, unemployment, all those type of things,” said Rep. John P. Murtha, chairman of Appropriations defense subcommittee. “We can’t win militarily.” It is that old self-fulfilling prophecy thing again, no, you can’t win if you don’t try to, and it is clearly harder to win when the congressional “leaders” keep spouting off in the press that it is impossible for you to win.

    How is it, that in 2000 Al Gore and Company accused George W Bush of “Talking down the economy” and that was supposed to be some kind of horrific thing to do, but when Murtha and his congressional Dopes (er Doves) tell us the US military cannot win, that is not supposed to have any impact on the morale of the troops or the people of the US.

    The one thing Americans have always excelled at is exceeding the expectations of others. I am sure the court of King George III thought “They can’t beat us…” But, they did, and soundly. There were those who said man would never fly, but, the Wright brothers did that. Americans can do anything we set our minds to do, and no number of pantywaist ex-Marine congressmen will change that, no matter how much they try. But, he supports the troops! (Like a rubber crutch…)

  • WaPo and Maryland Dems celebrate screwing taxpayers (Updated)

    PH2007111902027.jpg

    Photo from Washington Post

    Yeah, I know what you’re thinking as you look at the photo above of Marty O’Malley celebrating his victory over Maryland taxpayers yesterday. I’ll bet you all can caption it real well, especially after you read this adoring piece from the Washington Post entitled “O’Malley Increases Influence With Wins on Taxes and Slots“;

    Gov. Martin O’Malley emerged from a grueling special session of the Maryland General Assembly with big wins on tax and slot machine legislation, praise from lawmakers for his willingness to tackle the state’s most vexing issues — and greatly increased clout in Annapolis.

    Less clear, as O’Malley (D) and bleary-eyed legislators celebrated at a bill-signing ceremony yesterday, were the wider political ramifications of pushing through $1.4 billion a year in tax increases during a frantic three-week session called to solve the state’s chronic budget problems.

    “How it plays politically is still up in the air,” said Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery). “Will people recognize it as hard choices that had to be made or as government run amok? But by any measure, the governor did an incredible job pulling it together. He was buttonholing people. He was schmoozing people. I don’t know if he was threatening people. At points, it was ugly, but it was certainly an impressive effort overall.”

    A grueling session. How grueling is it to tell people bound by law to pay more of their own income? And guess what? The tax increase is to fund NEW spending – not a budget shortfall. the only shortfall is in the Democrats’ agenda to tie votes of non-working Marylanders to their little red wagon.

    O’Malley was bound and determined to get a tax hike – he threatened to cut off essential services to communities (fire, police, rescue…) if the legislature wouldn’t fund his unneccessary spending increases. O’Malley has just become Maryland’s Mario Cuomo – the governor that drove Upstate New York into the dumper from which it hasn’t emerged.

    UPDATE: I was finally able to get into the Washington Times this morning and Tony Lobianco has even more insane Democrat quotes about the process that took place behind the backs of Maryland taxpayers;

    “This is the boldest move, the boldest action of any governor I have served with,” said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., Southern Maryland Democrat.

    Bold? It’s bold to threaten to shut down essential services to raise taxes? Bold would be cutting waste and cutting programs, not jacking up taxes to further ensconce Democrats in power in Maryland.

    “I’d like to thank all of you who were here for three weeks, which felt like three months, sometimes even three years,” said Mr. O’Malley, who called the session for lawmakers to consider his package of tax increases and his slots proposal to resolve a budget shortfall of between $1.5 billion and 1.7 billion, and for additional state spending.

    I’m waiting for them to all recommend each other for a damn Medal of Honor for sneaking up behind taxpayers in the middle of the night and stabbing us in the back like the greedy criminals they’ve become.

    So what was in the tax bill?

    Mr. O’Malley increased the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent, the corporate income tax from 7 percent to 8.25 percent and the tobacco tax by $1. He also reworked Maryland’s personal income-tax structure to increase exemptions for low- and middle-income earners and increase taxes for upper-income earners.

    A pack of cigarettes in Maryland is already nearly $5/pack. Jack it up to $6, you fools – most Marylanders only need to drive a few miles in almost any direction and buy them cheaper. Raising the price $10/carton more makes it much more attractive to buy them out of State. How much revenue ya got then, chump? The same with sales tax.

    Well, ya’all voted for them. I’ve already started looking for a place in Virginia – maybe West Virginia.

    Crossposted at Red Maryland