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

Category: Politics

  • Gun Control as a weapon

    I know I’m late to the Virginia Tech “massacre” debate, but not so late that I don’t get to see ass clowns use it for a reason to undermine our rights, apparently.

    In today’s DC Examiner, Harry Jaffe complains that not enough DC residents are protesting for “states rights” for DC. As an excuse that DC needs states rights (which as I’ve explained before is like giving car keys to a 10-year-old) jaffe presents the fact that courts have sided with Americans’ right to protect themselves in their homes with firearms. Jaffe begins by butressing his argument with the Virginia Tech shootings;

    I tend to be a practical protester, with an eye toward results. Here’s my take on three worthy reasons to take to the streets in Washington: voting rights, righting judicial wrongs, and gun control — in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.

    And ends with an idiot mish-mash of garbled reasoning;

    For years, we had a strong gun–control ban as a bulwark against the tide of handguns that come our way from Virginia. It gave teeth to our laws and power to our cops to grab guns.

    Now courts have overturned that law, and we could lose one of our best defenses against mayhem. But the best way to keep guns off our streets would be to encourage Virginia to make it harder to buy deadly weapons, such as the semiautomatic guns that killed 33 at Virginia Tech, and the ones that migrate to our streets.

    That’s pretty convoluted thinking, for one thing. The best way DC residents have to protect themselves from criminals is giving up their weapons? DC has the highest violent crime rate in the country and yet Jaffe trumpets the 31-year-old liberal draconian gun laws as the District’s best chance to beat crime.

    All the appeals court said was that DC residents could own guns and keep them in their homes for self-defense. Does Jaffe think that the DC cops have time to do a house-to-house search to “grab guns”? I doubt you could pry a sizable number of DC cops away from the Popeye Chicken joints long enough to check even one home. When DC had a gun buy-back program in 1999 and 2000 (25 years after the gun law was enacted) they took in 6253 guns – there were still that many guns in the District. Doesn’t sound like the laws are working – so why write more?

    Luckily, I have Charles Krauthammer on my side;

    Unfortunately, in today’s supercharged political atmosphere, there is the inevitable rush to get ideological mileage out of the carnage.

    It did not take long for the perennial debate about gun control to break out, preceded by the inevitable scolding and clucking abroad about America’s lax gun laws.

    Yeah, I caught bits and pieces of that clucking this week. Euro-weinies scolding us for our “gun culture” yet unable to protect themselves from gun and knife-wielding lunatics and asundry “youth” criminals destroying half of Europe everytime the weather gets warm.

    But that doesn’t stop perpetual handwringer EJ Dionne from complaining that Europe is laughing at us;

    Our country is a laughingstock on the rest of the planet because of our devotion to unlimited gun rights. On Thursday, an Australian newspaper carried this headline: “America, the gun club.”

    Dionne proves he doesn’t understand the debate;

    Any reasonable measures are blocked because most Republicans are opportunists on the gun issue and Democrats have become wimps. Republicans have exploited support from the NRA for years, and Democrats, eyeing rural congressional seats, are petrified of doing anything that offends the gun lobby.

    Republicans have this weird thing where we think the Constitution protects the rights of citizens, not it’s a list of suggestions for privileges that politicians can use to reward their constitituents. Democrats are the ones exploiting the fear of more gun violence instead of accepting the fact that guns protect us more than they kill us.

    But, honestly, I hope Democrats take Dionne’s “Democrats are wimps” line to heart. Nothing would wipe out Liberalism in one fell swoop like a national campaign against gun owners.

    Actually, I figure it’s this lunatic liberalism that thinks judges can predict human behavior – especially if they’re allowed to ignore other liberal “experts”. And, Lord knows we can’t violate the rights of lunatics to own guns, even though we think it’s fine and dandy to restrict mostly sane and rational people from owning guns. Which is exactly what Jaffe is supporting.

    I’ll bet cash money that neither Jaffe nor Dionne would have supported putting a note on Cho’s NAC file that hinted he might be a little nuts and shouldn’t be sold a gun. They’d just rather broadbrush paint the entie nation’s residents as potential lunatics instead of just restricting the dangerous guys.

    It’s comforting to know Mr. Krathammer thinks as I think;

    In a previous age, such a troubled soul might have found himself at the state mental hospital rather than a state university. But in a trade-off that a decent and tolerant society makes with open eyes, we allow freedom from straitjackets to those on the psychic edge, knowing that such tolerance runs a very rare but very terrible risk.

    It is inevitable, I suppose, that advocates of one social policy or another will try to use the Virginia Tech massacre to their advantage. But it is simply dismaying that a serious presidential candidate should use it as the ideological frame for his set-piece issues.

    Yeah, Democrats are good at standing on dead bodies for their political advantage. Look how tall they stand on our dead troops. I expected it when I first heard of the shooting.  But Clinton’s gun policies is what ultimately doomed the Gore presidency – too many hunters in Florida. Any Democrat who thinks that gun control is good way to get the White House is deluding themselves, but the Democrats’ field of candidates isn’t short of deluded people, is it?

    In fact, I think we need to ban Spring. Every Spring these youthful gunmen come out – it usually happens in mid-April – and start blasting away at their fellow classmembers. It must be the Spring weather. Maybe we should lock up all males after the first week of April.

    Or maybe as Diana West of the Washington Times says today, we should scrap liberalism;

    Since for a long time. Since we, as a society, decided to abolish “normal,” effectively eliminating the parameters of, well, normal behavior. Since we, as a society, decided to rid ourselves of taboos, effectively disarming basic self-defense mechanisms, including good judgment. It is unlikely Cho realized any of this as he maniacally exploited society’s weaknesses. But it is crucial we understand our inaction on Cho’s warning signs as a consequence of political correctness and begin to reverse it. Otherwise, we won’t have even a hope of warding off such evil next time.

    But, then how many Democrat Presidential candidates would there be if we reinstituted “normal” – or even “rational” for that matter.

  • Reid; The war is lost (Updated)

    I noticed on a couple of blogs and discussion boards last night that Harry Reid can’t wait for the new tactical plan and the new commander in Iraq to have their effect so he called it a defeat pre-emptively. The Washington Post buried the story on page 3 (it’s not on their front web page, either – I had to “search” “Reid+war+is+lost”);

    President Bush warned Thursday that pulling out of Iraq too soon would trigger a bloodbath akin to that of the Cambodian killing fields of the 1970s, while Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid declared that it is too late to stay because the war has already been lost.

    On a day that reverberated with echoes of the Vietnam War era, Bush and Reid (D-Nev.) engaged in a long-distance debate over the lessons of history and the fate of the latest overseas war as part of a struggle over $100 billion in funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reid cast Iraq as another Vietnam and Bush as another Lyndon B. Johnson, while the president described dire consequences if the past repeats itself.

    And over at the Washington Times, Joseph Curl and S.A. Miller report that Reid was having a senior moment and can’t distinguish between things that only happen in his mind and things that happen with real people;

    “This war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said at a Capitol Hill press conference with anti-war state legislators.
        Mr. Reid said that both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates agree with his position, though neither has ever declared defeat.
        “You have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows,” said Mr. Reid, who left the press conference without fielding follow-up questions.
        The White House said no one recalled Mr. Reid saying “the war is lost” at the meeting with the president.

    Surprisingly enough, when I called Reid’s office this morning just to be sure that the media didn’t quote him wrong or take him out context, my call got switched to a mail box which was full and then dumped. Hmmm-I wonder if Reid is taking any heat.

    The Washington Post story goes on to illustrate how dingy Harry really is;

    “I know that I was like the odd guy out yesterday at the White House,” Reid said. “But I, at least, told him what he needed to hear, not what he wants to hear. I did that, and my conscience is clear.”

    So even though no one in the White House, according to the Washington Times, remembers Harry saying the war is lost, Harry still thinks it happened. And the Washington Times tells us the troops aren’t even in theater while Reid is calling it a failure;

    Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, this week said a little over half of the 25,000-troop surge he requested has arrived in Baghdad.

    Crotchety Old Bastard emailed me last night (for those of you who don’t know, his son deployed to Iraq late last year on the speartip of the surge in the mighty 1/325th Airborne Infantry Regiment) and he’s asking for everyone to post comments that he can print out and dump on Reid’s desk when he visits here soon. Michele Malkin put COB’s letter to Reid on her front page.

    Curt at Flopping Aces has the best multi-media blog post I’ve seen on this latest crybaby Dingy Harry exercise in mental masturbation. Although, Crotchety Old Bastard is much angrier.

    UPDATE: OK, so I got through to Reid’s office this morning at about 8:30 and talked to his press office. The young man explained to me that Reid’s comments were taken out of context and that Senator Reid regrets that he’s been misquoted. Apparently, Reid said “As long as we continue to follow the president’s current strategy, the war is lost.”

    My original contention that Reid is ignoring the fact that the new strategy hasn’t even been fully implemented still stands. Reid’s office told me that the new strategy must include the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group – that the bulk of US troops need to be “redeployed” (his word not mine) out of Iraq.

    That’s just baffling. While Reid is calling the President a reincarnation of Lyndon Johnson, he’s also calling for implementing the Johnson policy of reaction forces to protect mobile training teams. So I guess we’re at the point where we just have to assume that Harry Reid is insane as well as being a lying political sack of camel dung.

  • Reading assignment and miscellaneous stuff

    Having a busy weekend. Something happened thirty years ago today and my wife is fairly angry that I don’t remember what it was. Hope I figure it out soon so I can get pancakes for breakfast. So while I get my brain housing group soaked in RBC, get smarter and stuff at these blogs;

    If you read nothing else this weekend read Andrew Walden’s “Learning from George McGovern and Earl Browder” on The American Thinker. Excellent.

    And, if you’ve got an hour or so, read this from Eject! Eject! Eject! and every time you need an uncommon dose of common sense.

    Blackfive discovers why the Iraqi Parliament was vulnerable to attack this past week. 

    If you still think that Liberalism hasn’t become a religious faith, read Samhita’s “analysis” – notice the emphasis on the first half of the word – (via Crotchety Old Bastard, Ace Of Spades and Protein Wisdom) of the Duke University cluster. Please be prepared to take a shower afterwards. 

    And, if Sharpton “brought down” Imus, Imus’ fall couldn’t have started very far from the bottom. And who believes anyone on this planet would waste even a nanosecond of their life to locate contact information so they could threaten Al Sharpton? I figure he’ll choke on his own bile soon enough.

    Don’t miss Sharpton’s stammering defense of his inability to apologize for his misdeeds in the Tawana Brawley case (oddly enough, it echoes the post from Samhita mentioned above) to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday when it gets rebroadcast this afternoon. While waiting, read about Sharpton’s attack on the entire German Army. I guess Imus gave him the courage to run to every open mic he sees. If there’s a reason Imus deserved to be fired, it was for kissing Sharpton’s ring more than anything else.

    Meanwhile, Curt at Flopping Aces , via Screw Loose Change, discovers the REAL reason Imus was fired.

    El Presidente at Slapstick Politics asks why we should trust climate experts on Global Warming when they can’t get the weekend weather right. 

  • Hussein/al Qaida links

    In this week’s Washington Times column “Inside the Ring”, Bill Gertz actually read the Pentagon’s IG report (unlike some other journalists) and relates parts of Eric Edelman’s rebuttal of the report in the report’s appendix;

    The rebuttal is contained in the appendix of the IG report that criticized the alternative, pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment done by a Pentagon policy group on ties between Iraq and al Qaeda as “inappropriate.”
        Mr. Edelman stated that the policy group’s work on the issue was not only appropriate and legal, but directed by both former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
        “Apart from the numerous factual inaccuracies, omissions and mischaracterizations identified throughout these comments, the [IG] report suffers from a basic analytical flaw in attempting to paint the work under review as ‘inappropriate’ even though no laws were broken, no DoD directives were violated and no applicable policies were disregarded,” Mr. Edelman wrote in his counter to the February IG report made public April 5. 

    Mr Gertz goes on to relate Edelman’s recharacterization of the links between al Qaida and Hussein. So why would the IG report misrepresent the findings of the study? According to Mr. Gertz;

    The IG report was released by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, who defense officials say for years has quietly recruited agents within the Pentagon inspector general’s office to produce reports and audits sympathetic to the liberal Michigan Democrat’s views.

    Nice. We need people spying on our own defense establishment from Congress.

  • Army told “Hurry up and wait”

    Now all of the Democrats who whined so loudly and so long about the condition of OUTPATIENT facilities at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are trying to block the expansion of facilities at Bethesda Naval Hospital to accomodate the Walter Reed move. According to Steve Vogel of the Washington Post;

    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 report says the Pentagon should speed up the 2005 decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission to consolidate medical care at the Bethesda facility. It recommends that money to break ground for the expansion be released as soon as possible and that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates “accelerate or waive” an environmental study being conducted by the Navy.

    But Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who represents Montgomery County in Congress, said yesterday, “We shouldn’t be cutting any corners.

    “Some people are saying let’s slam on the brakes; others are saying we should hit the accelerator,” Van Hollen said. “I think we should proceed in a deliberate way.”

    Yes, that’s my Congressman. He’s quick to hit at the Bush Administration, but slow to act in the interests of our nation and our troops.  A few weeks ago, the troops were a “priority”, now the priority is the poor dregs who’ll be stuck in traffic on Wisconsin Avenue because they’re too damn lazy to take the bus or the subway to work.

    But he’s not the only one. Jim “Fighting Drunk” Moran;

    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.

    According to what Democrats were saying a few weeks ago, that’s what they wanted to happen – they wanted to change horses in mid-stream.

    And from the ugliest woman to walk the floor of the Senate;

    Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) also expressed concern about closing Walter Reed, “given the current strain on patient care for our soldiers.”

    So let me get this right – Democrats want everything to change for the troops, except everything must remain the same. This is classic Democrat double talk. they’ve done the same thing on the war, on education, on welfare reform, on Social Security, on nearly every issue before them. They want everything done yesterday – but only as long as nothing changes.

    So why do the Democrats want to slow down on Walter Reed? Because the District stands to lose 6,000 jobs when the medical facility moves 10 miles away to Bethesda (keep in mind driving ten miles through the District and southern Maryland can take two hours depending on the time of day). Most of those jobs are menial kitchen and jantorial labor. There’s nothing in that area to attract businesses that could replace such an employer.

    The District wants the Army to just turn over the buildings to the city, so the city can turn the buildings, which are too dilapidated for outpatients, into low-rent apartments so the District can have some more slums to warehouse the il-educated denizens of DC. At this time the Army is resisting that plan – so Demorats are waiting for a friendlier administration that will let them become the Mid-Atlantic’s slum lords. 

    Read all of the Washington Post’s genuine frontpage concern for the troops here, before the Democrats started stonewalling the process and got this particular story moved to page 3 while the frontpage is reserved for really important stuff like Rove’s missing emails and FEMA’s wasted food.

  • Summits, summits everywhere…

    Washington Times reports two summits happening for the benefit of Iraq in the next few weeks. One in Egypt on May 3rd for the “Arab Street” and one in the White House for the Democrat leadership next week.

    From WashTimes David Sands, Iraqi hopes are pinned to the outcome of their Egypt meeting;

    “It would be a real slap in the face” if the May 3 gathering at the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el Sheik failed to produce concrete offers, Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. undersecretary-general overseeing the Iraq-reconstruction program, said in an interview Tuesday with The Washington Times.
        “It could undermine the vision of [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki and his government to take the steps needed to restore Iraq’s economy,” the veteran Nigerian diplomat added.
        Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh warned on a Washington visit yesterday that Iran is ready to expand its clout inside Iraq if Arab rivals like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait fail to support Iraq’s economic recovery.
        “If the Arab countries do not step up, Iran’s influence in Iraq will grow,” Mr. al-Dabbagh said. 

    Later on in the story, Sands tells us that the US and the “Paris Club” are forgiving substantial portions Iraq’s $120 billion debt, but the Arabs aren’t so forthcoming on forgiving the debts of their Arab neighbor.

    Isn’t that what started this mess in the first place? I remember Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 because he was deeply indebted to his Arab brothers after fighting off the Iranians and preventing the spread of fundamentalism throughout the Gulf region. Kuwait wouldn’t give him any concessions or breaks on repayment so he took their oilfields (a REAL war for oil). Well, I guess no one has ever accused the Arabs of learning from history.

    The other summit, according to Joseph Curl and S.A. Miller, is the meeting in the White House that President offered to the Democrats the other day and they spent all day yesterday feigning outrage that the President was sticking to his principles rather than caving in to their $20 billion graft-ridden defense supplemental bill.

      “We will listen to his position, but in return we will insist that he listen to concerns of the American people that his policies in Iraq have failed and we need to change course,” they said.
        Earlier in the day, Mr. Reid balked when the White House announced that the Nevada Democrat had agreed to attend the meeting and discuss the $100 billion war-funding bill that Mr. Bush has vowed to veto.
        Reid spokesman Jim Manley had said the Nevada Democrat would rebuff offers to talk until he gets “a signal from the White House that they are prepared to drop their demand that this meeting is a listening session only and this meeting will not include negotiations.”
        Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, also began the day declining Mr. Bush’s invitation — reiterating the stance the leaders took Tuesday after the White House characterized Congress’ role in the meeting as listeners not negotiators.
        There was no indication from the White House last night that the president had altered the terms of his invitation.

    I guess the Democrats workshopped their response and found out they’d be holding the brown end of the stick. That “concerns of the American” people crap is wearing a little thin. I’ll say it one more time for those of you not paying attention; if you spoke for the American people, we would have elected enough of you that you wouldn’t have to worry about the President’s veto.

    I hope whichever way these meetings break, it’s in the best interest of the iraqi people – who really do need a break from all of this posturing and politicking.

  • Biden vs. McCain

    Joseph Biden takes issue with John McCain’s “The War You’re Not Reading About” piece in the Washington Post last Sunday and writes a rebuttal in the Washington Post;

    McCain wrote that the president’s strategy is beginning to show results but that most Americans don’t know it because the media cover the bad news, not the good news. Of course, reporting any news in Iraq is an extraordinary act of bravery, given the dangers journalists must navigate every day. But the fact is, virtually every “welcome development” McCain cited has been reported, including the purported anti-al-Qaeda alliance with Sunni sheikhs in Anbar, the establishment of joint U.S.-Iraqi security stations in Baghdad and the decision by Moqtada al-Sadr to go to ground — for now.

    The problem is that for every welcome development, there is an equally or even more unwelcome development that gives lie to the claim that we are making progress. For example:

    So Biden begins by sucking up to the brave journalists who are apparently in greater danger than our troops. Those brave journalists who call reporting explosions from their hotels in the Green Zone journalism. But, see, that’s how Biden makes his point that Iraq is dangerous. Of course it’s dangerous, numbnuts – that’s why its a war.

    Old Hair Plugs calls the President’s strategy a “failing strategy”. How’s that possible? It hasn’t even reached fruition, yet. If you want to call the old strategy a failure, go ahead, have at it. But how can you call the current strategy a failure when it hasn’t even happened yet?

    The administration hopes that the surge will buy time for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government to broker the sustainable political settlement our military views as essential to lasting stability in Iraq.

    But there is no trust within the government, no trust of the government by the people it purports to serve and no capacity on the part of the government to deliver security or services. There is little prospect that the government will build that trust and capacity anytime soon.

    In short, the most basic premise of the president’s approach — that Iraqis will rally behind a strong central government that looks out for their interests equitably — is fundamentally and fatally flawed.

    So we should just quit, Joey? Just stop? Oh, no. He has a plan;

    I cannot guarantee that my plan for Iraq (detailed at http://www.planforiraq.com) will work. But I can guarantee that the course we’re on — the course that a man I admire, John McCain, urges us to continue — is a road to nowhere.

    The same old Joe Biden partitioning of Iraq. Is there a reason that Iraqis haven’t arrived at that solution by themselves? Afterall, it’s their government, their constitution. Now if we imposed that plan on the Iraqis, that would be a puppet government, it would be an occupation.

    And we don’t need more of your doom and gloom stories from Iraq, Joe, we get them everyday from the Washington Post. In fact, we can hardly call your opinion news at all – it’s more of a “dog bites man” story. It’s not news that you and your buddies have a problem with this particular while a Republican administration is fighting it. And it’s not news that you think a strategy that hasn’t happened yet is failing.

  • Sadr-ites back withdrawal timetable

    According to Washington Post’s Qassim Abdul-Zahra Sadr’s allies in the Iraqi legislature are threatening to leave the government if the Iraq government doesn’t support a withdrawal timetable for US troops;

    Iraqi Cabinet ministers allied to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened Wednesday to quit the government to protest the prime minister’s lack of support for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, according to a statement.

    Such a pullout by the very bloc that put Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in office could collapse his already perilously weak government. The threat comes two months into a U.S. effort to pacify Baghdad in order to give al-Maliki’s government room to function.

    Al-Sadr’s political committee issued the statement a day after al-Maliki rejected an immediate U.S. troop withdrawal.

    “We see no need for a withdrawal timetable. We are working as fast as we can,” al-Maliki told reporters during his four-day trip to Japan, where he signed loan agreements for redevelopment projects in Iraq.

    “To demand the departure of the troops is a democratic right and a right we respect. What governs the departure at the end of the day is how confident we are in the handover process,” he said, adding that “achievements on the ground” would dictate how long American troops remain.

    I guess that’s a bit treasonous because the Sadr-ists are just anxious to get the Americans out of their way so they can seize the government by force, since the electoral thing isn’t happening for them.

    It also indicates that Sadr is sweating the American destruction of his forces in Iraq. They’re in a hurry to get us out before there is no militia with which to take over the government. They at least want a timetable they can use to raise the morale of the militias instead of sending them into the US meatgrinder.

    Maybe Pelosi and Murtha can go over there to buck up the Sadr troops. Well, what’s left of them.