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

Category: Politics

  • Republicans for Obama?

    Proving that the media doesn’t understand Republicans or conservatives, the Chicago Sun Times ran this bit of wishful thinking as hard news yesterday;

    There is an interesting phenomenon that has arisen over the last few months: a trend of moderate Republicans who want to vote for Barack Obama. It may seem counterintuitive, conservatives supporting a candidate who wants to tax the wealthy and embrace the conventions in the Kyoto Accord, but there is something in Obama’s message about ridding politics of partisanship that is appealing to these Republicans.

    Of course Miss Hunter, the Sun Times columnist supports this contention with tons of evidence – namely three Obama supporters. Let’s look at this crowd, shall we?

     “From a philosophical point of view I still see myself as a Republican,” says Kenneth Wehking, 38, a Denver man who works for a software company. That means being fiscally conservative and moderate on social issues, Wehking believes.

    At one time he supported John McCain for those very reasons, but now he is attracted to Obama and belongs to a group called Republicans For Obama. He likes Obama’s philosophy: the need to rid the country of the red/blue divide that has made it impossible to move forth legislation in immigration or health care.

    “Obama is one of the first candidates who truly seems to embody a spirit of working together and moving forward,” he says.

    Yeah, who cares that Obama is diametrically opposed to every Republican and conservative issue – he wants to move forward while we’re working together. Never mind that we’re moving forward in the wrong direction and working together to bankrupt the nation.

    Randy Cooper, a 60-year-old lawyer from Eaton, N.H. — not a member of Republicans for Obama — says he grew up as an Eisenhower Republican. He supported George Herbert Walker Bush and John McCain. But Cooper began to feel that George II and his acolytes, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were being disingenuous about the reasons for going into Iraq.

    At first Cooper supported the war “based on what the president told us.” But then he began to ask questions: “I absolutely feel we were lied to. There were other reasons [Bush] wanted to go into Iraq. It wasn’t just about weapons of mass destruction.”

    And Cooper became so disillusioned that in 2004 he voted for John Kerry.

    Yeah, this is the guy the media loves – he swallowed every bit of their red meat and voted for Kerry – cuz Kerry was just like Bush only not Bush. Did you know John Kerry had been to Vietnam – that fact is seared, seared in my memory.

    “I went to India last February,” recalls Chicagoan Dian Eller, who works in philanthropy. “And the first thing my driver asked was if I had voted for Bush.” Eller did vote for Bush the first time around, but not the second because she “was angry and disappointed about the war.” But the pointed questions from the Indian driver made Eller very uncomfortable. “I am so upset about the way people feel about our country.”

    Yeah, it upsets me that an Indian cab driver thinks poorly about my country, too, so much so that I’m willing to vote for a socialist just to appease those ignorant third-worlders who so badly want a say in how our country operates.

    Those three folks accurately portray the entire Republican party, though – in the Bizzaro land of media. By the way, I found this article while perusing the Leftist blogs and they seemed pretty excited that you’re going to vote for Obama.

  • So Bloomberg was a Republican?

    My local news station woke me this morning as it always does (if you’re interested, I listen to Grandy and Andy while I fight the urge to hit the snooze button – yes, that’s Fred “Gopher” Grandy) and I heard the lead story was that Michael Bloomberg had left the Republican Party. I shot straight up in bed! Who knew Bloomberg was a Republican?

    That French Press Agency led their story with the headline “Bloomberg deserts Republicans, stirs talk of 2008 run”. Deserts? When was he ever “with” us?

    “I have filed papers with the New York City Board of Elections to change my status as a voter and register as unaffiliated with any political party,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

    “Although my plans for the future haven’t changed, I believe this brings my affiliation into alignment with how I have led and will continue to lead our city,” said Bloomberg, who was elected as a Republican, and is an ex-Democrat.

    That’s a pretty murky statement – his non-affiliation now aligns him with no one so he can lead everyone? Lead them where? Into obscurity?

    The only reason Bloomberg became a Republican was so he could cash in on Rudy Giuliani’s wave of support after 9-11. I doubt the Wall Street crowd could’ve carried him to victory without the Republican mantle of the previous popular mayor. So who gives a tiny rat’s ass that Mr. Smoking Ban left the Republican Party?

    Michael Scherer in the Washington Post described the exit as;

    New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abruptly left the Republican Party yesterday, declaring himself free of a “rigid adherence” to ideology and stoking speculation that he will use his multibillion-dollar fortune to mount an independent bid for the White House.

    Got news for ya, pal; Michael Bloomberg abruptly left the Republican Party before his right hand reached his side after taking the oath at his inauguration. And to what tenet of Republican ideology did Mr. Bloomberg rigidly adhere? Name one?

    But it was cute chasing links in Technorati that proclaimed that this marks the end of the Republican Party – followed by whoo-hoos and assorted other incoherent drivel. Oh, and high hopes for his campaign as President – apparently the nutroots think that if Bloomberg ran it’d drain off Republican voters – from who? (I’d link up some of the nutroots, but it only encourages them to send me dorky threatening email and drives up their traffic)

    I will admit, though, a three-way race between Kucinich, Ron Paul and Bloomberg would give me material to last well into my retirement. (I’ve been trying to think of a way to get Ron Paul’s name in one of my posts so I could bump up my traffic some).

  • How the inmates began running the asylum

    What a nutty week, huh? We have Palestinians from the Gaza Strip begging the Isralis to let them into Israel so they can get away from other Palestinians and human rights organizations demanding that Israelis treat injured and ill Palestinians. From the AP by way of the Wall Street Journal;

    Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army on Wednesday to allow into Israel any of the hundreds of Gazans holed up at a fetid crossing who might desperately need medical treatment.

    A teenager with leukemia was on his way through shortly after, the military said. Additionally, Israeli officials allowed all foreign nationals in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to cross over to Israel.

    In related news, Israel’s Supreme Court was hearing a petition Wednesday by a human-rights group, demanding that Israeli authorities offer immediate medical treatment to 26 critically ill Palestinians hospitalized in Gaza.

    Israeli aircraft, meanwhile, fired missiles at two rocket launchers in northern Gaza, in the first aerial attack since Islamic Hamas militants took over the coastal strip late last week. No injuries were reported. Earlier in the day, Israeli tanks entered southern Gaza, and four people, including at least two militants, were killed in an exchange of fire, Palestinian hospital officials said.

    And of course, Jimmy Carter, being the dumbass country hick playing diplomat, blames the Bush Administration;

    Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who was addressing a human rights conference in Ireland, also said the Bush administration’s refusal to accept Hamas’ 2006 election victory was “criminal.”

    “Criminal”. And, of course, Carter doesn’t stop there. He claims that the murderous Hamas organization, a group of thugs masquerading as politicians (although that’s very thin line to begin with, I suppose) were elected fairly and democratically – by other terrorists;

    Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with Abbas’ moderate Fatah movement.

    Except that Hamas has been terrorizing the Fatah government, and dragging it’s opponents into the street and gunning them down – I guess that’s a more effective way of winning the next election – would Jimmy call that fair? All of Hamas’ opposition in the graveyards?

    Here’s a story of Carter’s heroic Hamas from Conflict Botter;

    They surrendered. A Hamas gunman shot one of the 12 soldiers in the leg and told the rest to run away. As they fled, they opened fire, Iki said, shooting them all in the legs as they tried to run away. A Hamas gunman came up and executed each wounded soldier, continued Iki. Iki was lucky, the execution bullet hit him in the side of the neck and he didn’t die. He lay semi-conscious on the street for an hour and a half bleeding. The bus driver who had driven the Hamas militants to the fight checked his pulse at one point and found he was alive. He started to help him.

    “Leave him or we’ll shoot you,” a masked militant said.

    Ya hafta wonder what is going through Carter’s head (if anything at all). Everyone (and I mean everyone) agrees that Jimmy Carter was a walking abortion as President, but everyone always qualifies that with “but he’s a good man”. How does this statement fit into the category of “a good man”? He’s actually encouraging Hamas to continue their murderous rampage through the streets of Gaza – and he calls that “more organized than Abbas’ moderate Fatah”. I very rarely use the expression, but this warrants it – WTF? 

    Here’s the conflict that Carter is having with his own statements; if the US has no business interfering in Palestinian politics, why should what we give the Palestinian government have any impact? I mean, all we did was not give them money and weapons. If I don’t like Walmart, am I still required to give them my money? 

    It’s like Carter’s other idiot cause – Cuba. If communism is so great, if Cuba is such a paradise why does it need trade with the capitalist US in order to survive? It’s trading with the whole rest of the world – why should trade with one nation out of 170 impact it so?

    To quote Investors Business Daily’s editorial (h/t Blue Crab Boulevard);

    The statement was so malevolent and illogical as to border on insane. Carter wasn’t honest enough to say he was rooting for terrorists who started a terrifying new war in the region and trashed what little democratic rule the Palestinians had. Instead, he tut-tutted the West for being insufficiently sensitive to the fact that Hamas thugs were democratically elected in 2006 in an “orderly and fair” vote.

    When one party has started a civil war, democracy isn’t exactly the issue anymore. Just being elected does not justify making warfare on your fellow citizens. 

    But everything Carter says conflicts with itself – I found this great article in the Jerusalem Post that calls Jimmy Carter “Father of the Iranian Revolution“;

    The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.

    Carter viewed Khomeini as more of a religious holy man in a grassroots revolution than a founding father of modern terrorism. Carter’s ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, said “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.” Carter’s Iranian ambassador, William Sullivan, said, “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.” Carter adviser James Bill proclaimed in a Newsweek interview on February 12, 1979 that Khomeini was not a mad mujahid, but a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”

    The shah was terrified of Carter. He told his personal confidant, “Who knows what sort of calamity he [Carter] may unleash on the world?”

    Who knew that Carter would still be unleashing his calamities on the world thirty years later? The JPost goes on;

    In his anti-war pacifism, Carter never got it that Khomeini, a cleric exiled to Najaf in Iraq from 1965-1978, was preparing Iran for revolution. Proclaiming “the West killed God and wants us to bury him,” Khomeini’s weapon of choice was not the sword but the media. Using tape cassettes smuggled by Iranian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Najaf, he fueled disdain for what he called gharbzadegi (“the plague of Western culture”).

    Carter pressured the shah to make what he termed human rights concessions by releasing political prisoners and relaxing press censorship. Khomeini could never have succeeded without Carter. The Islamic Revolution would have been stillborn.

    Gen. Robert Huyser, Carter’s military liaison to Iran, once told me in tears: “The president could have publicly condemned Khomeini and even kidnapped him and then bartered for an exchange with the [American Embassy] hostages, but the president was indignant. ‘One cannot do that to a holy man,’ he said.”

    What was holy about the murderous rampage that was carried out in Khomeini’s name throughout Iran? What was holy about the 444 days our citizens spent in captivity? And remember why the hostages were taken? Because Carter gave sanctuary to the shah and his family from being murdered by the Islamic Revolution.

    Remember why we propped up Saddam in the 80s? Because we were afraid of the murderous Islamic Revolution spreading – and so were the Gulf States which plowed money into Saddam’s war. Which is why Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 – he was deeply indebted to Kuwait and Gulf States and figured the Kuwaiti oil fields would give him some fiscal relief by eliminating one debtor and gave him cash to pay off the others.

    Now Carter has deepened the conflict by allowing Chavez, who rules by decree these days, to seize power in Venezuela with his petrodollars and form an alliance with Iran. And he still doesn’t get it;

    Carter said the consensus of the U.S., Israel and the EU to start funneling aid to Abbas’ new government in the West Bank but continue blocking Hamas in the Gaza Strip represented an “effort to divide Palestinians into two peoples.”

    I guess murdering the opposition in the street doesn’t have the effect of dividing the Palestinians into “two peoples” does it? Although, this Hamas government is a demonstration of how voters get the government they deserve. Palestinians voted for Hamas because Hamas hates Jews and thinks they have a mandate from God to kill Jews – so anything they do in the space of time before they get to kill all of the Jews should be OK with God, too. And with Jimmy Carter as well, apparently.

    In other related news, Aunt Agatha at Bloodthirsty Liberal mirrors my thoughts on Ahmed Yousef’s piece in the NYTimes explaining to us poor, ignorant Zionists and those guilt-ridden Leftists looking for an excuse to continue supporting the bloody Palestinians “What Hamas Wants“.

    Boker Tov, Boulder reports that the peaceful Palestinians fired off two more Kassam missiles into Israel.

    Israel Matzav tells us that the New Hamas “government” (for the want of a better word) warns that the new Sharia Law in Gaza is going to apply to the dhimmis still in Gaza. That should be a warning to dhimmi-wannabes here in the US, but, I guess it probably won’t.

    I figured that I’ve been spending too much time on that buck-toothed, shriveled up, has-been-that-never-was moron, Jimmy Carter, so instead of repeating myself over-and-over, I created a Jimmy Carter category and ya’all can just go click that link on your right and it’ll take you to all of my brilliant thoughts about that dull, little POS Jimmy Carter and I swear I’ll never type his name again. Cuz Don Surber and I share a common shame – we both voted for Carter once.

  • Haditha story wrapping up

    I’ve wanted to write about all of the good news coming out of the Haditha investigation, but there’s no way I could do as good a job at it as Robin, my bestest new buddy, at Chickenhawk Express (who recently added me to her Blogroll – thanks, Robin).

    Robin, who also writes at Newsbusters, has been churning out really good updates on the Haditha Article 32 investigation (equivalent to a grand jury) of Lance Corporal Justin Sharrat over the last week or so here, here and here.

    For my part, I’ve been diligently calling John Murtha’s office every morning to ask when Murtha is going to apologize for calling LCpl Sharrat and his fellow Marines cold-blooded murderers. Every morning, I get the same answer – Representative Murtha hasn’t heard anything about the investigation.

    I think that’s funny because he was so sure about the information he had before the investigation began;

    Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”

    So, why doesn’t he have information that been publicly available? A year ago, he told ABC News;

    Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., told “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in an exclusive appearance that reports a group of U.S. Marines may have killed 24 Iraqi civilians following an IED explosion in Haditha, Iraq, was “worse than Abu Ghraib,” calling their actions war crimes committed “in cold blood.”

    Murtha, a Marine veteran who six months ago called for the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, added, “There has to have been a cover-up. There’s no question about it.”

    Wouldn’t a rational person, who staked their reputation on such an damning statement, want to keep up with the story? I guess we’re not talking about a rational person here, though, are we? We’re talking about a hateful little pussbag, fatass who gives not a moment’s thought to this nation’s security or the lives of the people who defend it. I think it’s time Murtha signed his Form 180, too. I have trouble believing that this coward spent even a minute in the Marine Corps.

    And where are the headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the LA Times admitting they were wrong in their initial accusations?

  • WaPo back on the Walter Reed kick

    I guess the Washington Post has run out of things to bash the Administration with, so they’re back on their Walter Reed/Army bashing this week;

    At Walter Reed, Care for Soldiers Struggling With War’s Mental Trauma Is Undermined by Doctor Shortages and Unfocused Methods

    By Anne Hull and Dana Priest

    Washington Post Staff Writers
    Monday, June 18, 2007; Page A01 

    Yeah, I’m going to admit that the Army does alot of things badly – mostly administrative stuff and the way the Army treats soldiers is pretty bad, too. But, ya know, it’s all a part of being in the Army – it’s a big bureaucracy run by kids right out of high school. I hate it when civilians try to apply their standards to military life – just like I’m sure Hull and Priest would hate it if I came over to their respective houses with a white glove and applied my standards to their lives.

    I know their whole point is that the President went to war before he had enough psychiatrists on staff at Walter Reed – just like he rushed to war before they’d cleaned up some of the transient quarters on WRAMC, too. But buried way down in the middle of the article is this;

    One of the country’s best PTSD programs is located at Walter Reed, but because of a bureaucratic divide it is not accessible to most patients. The Deployment Health Clinical Center, run by the Department of Defense and separate from the Army’s services, offers a three-week program of customized treatment. Individual exposure therapy and fewer medications are favored. Deployment Health can see only about 65 patients a year but is the envy of many in the Army. “They need to clone that program,” said Col. Charles W. Hoge, chief of psychiatry and behavior services at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

    Instead, Deployment Health was forced to give up its newly renovated quarters in March and was placed in temporary space one-third the size to make room for a soldier and family assistance center. The move came after a series of articles in The Post detailed the neglect of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed. Therapy sessions are now being held in Building T-2, a rundown former computer center, until new space becomes available.

    In the Army we all know what Buildings with “T” in front of their number means – a corregated steel barn the Army throws up while it’s building another one. There is construction going on WRAMC – it’s been going on since before the war. I didn’t see that mentioned in the Walter Reed story.

    Neither did I find a reference to the Washington Post’s Walter Reed story I wrote on back in April;

    A review panel’s recommendation that the Pentagon accelerate the expansion of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda drew a wary reaction yesterday from local officials and neighbors concerned about traffic problems.

    The Pentagon’s Independent Review Group, which is examining flaws in outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, released a draft report Wednesday recommending that the Army hospital be closed as soon as possible and replaced by a facility to be built on the Bethesda campus.

    The Pentagon recommended speeding up the process of building the new Walter Reed facilities at Bethesda to overcome some of the problems at the cramped old facilities on Georgia Avenue in the District – but my dork-ass, elitist, pot-smoking, punk Congressman Chrissy VonHollen is blocking it because residents in the flashy, trendy Bethesda are worried about traffic (there’s a subway that runs right through the area, but why buy a Mercedes if you can’t park it in traffic on Wisconsin Avenue five days every week).

    VonHollen wasn’t alone, by the way. Jimmy Moran sobered up long enough to become somewhat coherent and gurgled out;

    But some members of Congress, including Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), insist that Walter Reed be kept open. “What you’re doing is changing horses in the middle of the stream at a time when soldiers need the best medical care,” Moran said yesterday.

    So which is it, Moran? Are they going to get the best medical care in the cramped Georgia Avenue Walter Reed or at the brand-spanking new facility in Bethesda – 12 miles away. Are you trying to say we can’t build the new hospital until the war ends? Do you even know what you’re saying?

    You’ll notice the Bethesda story is on page three and two months old. That’s how worried the Post is about our troops when alleviating some of their problems involves inconveniencing some Democrats in Bethesda with more traffic and its blocked by a Democrat punk-ass, dork Congressman Chrissy VonHollen.

    Maybe Hull and Priest will have a little more credibility on the subject when they tell me what they’ve done to help the Pentagon build the new Bethesda facilities.

    Oh, and all ya’all bloggers ain’t no damn better – there’s 34 links already to today’s WaPo hit piece and only six links to the story about punkass, sissy Chrissy VanHollen blocking the new facilities. Before ya’all go off on how the Army treats people, have all of the facts.  

  • Where’s the media on Venezuela?

     

    (Photos from Venezuela Llora)

    I’ve been waiting for the media to start covering the student protests in Venezuela for a few weeks now – but not a word. So I have to go to the bloggers. I find it odd that none of the media are doing much of anything – including the Spanish-language networks (which seem more interested in Shakira than the freedom of speech of a few million Latins).

    From A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective, Kate writes that most Venezuelan’s support the student movement;

    A Datos poll of 600 Venezuelans across social classes found 56.2 percent supported the students, with only 23.8 percent opposed to them.

    Of the rest of those surveyed, 19.3 percent had no strong opinion and 0.7 percent said they did not know or did not want to reply.

    The poll, published in newspapers on Sunday, was conducted on June 8-10 and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

    Of course, Hugo claims that it’s a another Bush plot;

    Chavez has accused the students of being part of a U.S.-backed “soft revolution,” saying they are trying to model their protests on the 2004 “Orange revolution” in Ukraine.

    Daniel at Venezuela News and Views writes that Chavez went to Cuba to meet with his mentor and gets the idea that more socialism is the answer;

    In front of mounting trouble Chavez did what he does usually: escape to Cuba for a few days. Now that Castro is healthy enough to discuss politics some, Chavez went to look for new inspiration. The results came today through a lengthy cadena, an unusual event on a Saturday and yet another sure sign of worries inside the government. So, trying to seize back the agenda held by the students, Chavez went on a new rampage of promises and threats:

    And from DEBKAFiles (h/t Aaron’s Rod), Chavez just came back from Tehran after discussing the future of a joint defense pact with the mullahs and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega;

    DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources have learned add that the Islamic Republic’s rulers have been sounding out “revolutionary” Latin American governments about creating joint anti-US terrorist cells for attacks in North and South America. The subject came up in talks with Nicararagua’s Daniel Ortega when he arrived in Tehran Sunday and in discussions with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

    So, Hugo’s been a busy little fella, yet none of this makes it to the pages of the major media. Other than some fawning in the Associated Press about those two lovable rogues getting together in Havana;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared Wednesday that his convalescing ally Fidel Castro has “recovered his fastball” and was in fine form during a six-hour visit.

    State TV reported the pair shared an “emotional” meeting Tuesday, discussing Venezuela-Cuba relations, climate change and a socialist-leaning regional pact they created.

    Ain’t that just the sweetest? The two major enemies of liberty in this hemisphere sharing an “emotional” meeting. This blatant disregard for impending danger is how al Qaeda became so perilous.

  • War may take decades? Oh, my!

    The newspapers all seem shocked this morning that General Patreus told Chris Wallace on Fox news Sunday yesterday that the war against the insurgency in Iraq may take years to end. The good general was quoted in the Washington Examiner;

    “In fact, typically, I think historically, counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday. “The question is, of course, at what level.”

    Who thought otherwise? The President told us in the very beginning of this global war against terror it would be a hard, long slog. The biggest reason it’s a long, hard slog is because we – the United States – always seem on the precipice of surrendering. It’s happened before – we let the Chinese and North Koreans keep half of that peninsula, we let the Soviets have half of Europe, we abandoned all of Southeast Asia to the communists, we surrendered Somalia to the muslims, we stopped outside of Baghdad after we annihilated the 4th largest Army in the world. 

    And now, we have the world-famous surrendering Democrats throwing in the towel everytime there’s a corner turned. Insurgencies aren’t military campaigns in the traditional sense – the insurgents never win on the battlefield. Insurgents win in the newspapers and TV news programs of their enemies – thousands of tiny victories against the homefront.

    That’s not new, is it? I’m not the first to write those words, am I? Yet everyday, the US media grants another tiny victory to the enemy. At least once every week, the Democrats give the enemy more ammunition to fight the war – Harry Reid tells us the war is lost and that our generals are incompetent, John Murtha calls our troops murderers, Dick Durbin calls the troops at Guantanamo SS concentration camp guards.

    This war has dragged on for four years – the enemy has no hope of winning militarily. But the enemy still has hope of winning the war – why is that? Because they’ve pinned their victory on the fact that Democrats hate the Republicans, and by extension, our troops, more than they hate child-murdering terrorists.

    Kagan and Kristol have more on the slow collapse of support for al Qaeda in Iraq in the Weekly Standard article “Slow Motion Tet“;

    Last week, a group of tribal leaders in Salah-ad-Din, the mostly Sunni province due north of Baghdad, agreed to work with the Iraqi government and U.S. forces against al Qaeda. Then al Qaeda destroyed the two remaining minarets of the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra, a city in the province. Coincidence? Perhaps. But al Qaeda is clearly taking a page from the Viet Cong’s book. The terrorists have been mounting a slow-motion Tet offensive of spectacular attacks on markets, bridges, and mosques, knowing that the media report each such attack as an American defeat. The fact is that al Qaeda is steadily losing its grip in Iraq, and these attacks are alienating its erstwhile Iraqi supporters. But the terrorists are counting on sapping our will as the VC did, and persuading America to choose to lose a war it could win.

    The difference between Tet and Samarra? We have a commander-in-chief who doesn’t stick his finger in the air to see which way the political winds are blowing today to formulate his strategy like Johnson did and the two Democrat presidents who followed. And there’s an alternative to the “Surrender now!” media.

    Gateway Pundit documents the first known mass outbreak of SRDS (Salman Rushdie Derangement Syndrome). I’m coming to the conclusion that these folks of the “religion of peace” aren’t as peaceful as they let on.

  • Democrats; the party of car salesmen

    Yesterday’s Democrat radio address told us that Republicans don’t care about our gas mileage, according to the Washington Examiner;

    In their weekly radio address, Democrats on Saturday called for a new direction in energy policy, away from gas-guzzling automobiles and reliance on foreign oil.

    “America deserves more fuel efficient cars,” Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington said. But she added “the only way consumers are going to get more out of a tank of gas is if the president and his party help deliver votes in a narrowly divided Congress.”

    It’s widely expected the Senate will approve some sort of increase in auto fuel economy as part of an energy bill it hopes to finish in the coming weeks.

    The Senate bill would require automakers to increase the fuel economy of new cars, SUVs and pickups beginning in 2020 to a fleet average of 35 miles per gallon. It currently is 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for SUVs and small trucks.

    Cantwell claimed that we need to head in a new direction. This is the same direction that Democrats have been harping about since the last time Rosie O’Donnell shaved her legs. A new direction for our indepedence from foreign oil would be drilling our own available reserves and increasing refinery capacity – like Jimmy Carter promised that Democrats would do in his “Malaise Speech“;

    …when this nation critically needs a refinery or a pipeline, we will build it.

    That was in 1979 – we haven’t built a new refinery since 1977 mainly because Democrats have stood in the way of new refineries and new drilling operations. So, in the meantime, Cuba, with China’s help, is exploring the Gulf of Mexico’s waters between Cuba and the US. Have the Democrats done anything about that? Nope – they think that somehow blocking drilling while demanding better CAFE standards from automakers (who are already struggling in the marketing) makes more sense and can be called a “solution” to our energy woes. DO they think that back-ass-wards Cuba and China will care much about the environment off of our own coast?

    Cantwell said;

    “America’s strength lies in our ability to invent new and better ways of doing things,” she said. “The challenge we face now is transforming America’s energy policy – one that is well over 50 years old and too reliant of fossil fuels – to one that will make America a global leader again in energy technology and get us off our over-dependence on foreign oil.”

    So Democrats think they can mandate science. Just by making government standards, business will automatically develop solutions in response.  Are we being governed by kindergarten students?

    They also think that Americans won’t mind being told that we have to drive under-powered crap-boxes like the Japanese inflict on our national sensibilities these days. Real Americans love their cars and I don’t think the Democrats are going to get much mileage out of telling Americans what cars they should drive.Â