Category: Politics

Just breezing through the WaPo, I stumbled over this story entitled “Success of Drug Plan Challenges Democrats“. Of course, I thought of several snarky comments that I could make over just the title alone.

Turns out, the story is about the Bush Medicare Drug Plan and how successful it’s been.  I read the story, then I nearly choked on these lines;

The cost of the program has been lower than expected, about $26 billion in 2006, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The cost was projected to rise to $45 billion next year, but Medicare has received new bids indicating that its average per-person subsidy could drop by 15 percent in 2007, to $79.90 a month.

Urban Institute President Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, called that a remarkable record for a new federal program.

Initially, he said, people were worried no private plans would participate. “Then too many plans came forward,” Reischauer said. “Then people said it’s going to cost a fortune. And the price came in lower than anybody thought. Then people like me said they’re low-balling the prices the first year and they’ll jack up the rates down the line. And, lo and behold, the prices fell again. And the reaction was, ‘We’ve got to have the government negotiate lower prices.’ At some point you have to ask: What are we looking for here?”

So, of course, instead of telling us this a month ago while Democrats were using it as part of their scare program on seniors, they tell us now that the Republican plan was working successfully – under budget to both the government and the participants (i.e.; seniors).

And of course, the WaPo blames Republicans for not selling the plan well enough. To whom? The choir? Seems that not telling the story is the fault of the News Media which is more content crowning Democrat Kings and Queens than telling the people the truth. 

I used to have a lot of respect for Hagel – he helped my band of brothers (the 82d Airborne Division Association) get August 16th named as National Airborne Day. When I sent him a fax thanking him for his help, an aide called to thank me for the “thank you”.

Doing a little research on him I discovered he had been an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam with the Ninth Infantry Division, and I noticed he doesn’t bring up his service and his Purple Hearts in every breath like some veterans-turned-politicians. So I always though he was a pretty decent guy.

Until this morning. Then I catch this nugget on the Commie News Network site;

“There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq,” Sen. Chuck Hagel wrote in Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post.

Huh? That’s a mighty damn broad statement for a former squad leader to make. Of course, the whole world will read the sentence as “there will be no victory for the US in Iraq” and Hagel should know that. But then he goes on to say more ignorant crap;

“The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed,” he wrote. “We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq.

That’s downright treason. To tell the world that we’ve drained our manpower assets with less than two hundred thousand troops actively engaged? That no number of troops would resolve the conflict? Why not hand over the keys to the country to the Islamofacits right now, Chuck? You claim we’ve already been beaten, you claim that we can’t resolve a little problem in that shithole corner of the world.

Had enough? Well, Hagel hasn’t. From his WaPo editorial;

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We’ve been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

Wasn’t Hagel in the last Congress? Didn’t he have oversight responsibilities that were apparently abdicated? Doesn’t he think that all of this bluster and double-dealing weasel words embolden the enemy? Is he waving a white flag?

Doesn’t he remember when he was a squad leader in Vietnam how it felt to have politicians telling everyone how he was losing the war while he was pretty certain he was winning?

Who is Chuck playing to? Certainly not his constituency. Is he making a play to jump ship so he can be in the majority again? Or is he jumping ship and going to announce his conversion to Islam? Or French.

 

Senator Jay Rockefeller, serial leaker for the Democrats, wants to investigate the NSA’s surveillance program and the CIA’s interrogation program according to the Washington Post. I wonder how long it’ll take for the details of these programs to reach the New York Times, and I wonder how many poor, unsuspecting aides will get trampled when they inadvertantly get stuck between Rockefeller and a microphone.

We might as well let John Hinckley out of the mental ward, give him a loaded gun and drop him off in front of the White House while we’re at it. Or give Sandy Berger some “relaxed fit” Dockers and the keys to the National Security Archives.

Sorry, I’m still having trouble believing that the American voters gave these people Congress for two years.

Marty Meehan and Barney Franks announced that they want to tinker with “Don’t ask, don’t tell” during the next two years in Congress. Can someone please tell me how in the hell this has any relevence in the world today, outside of the fact that Franks and Meehan can meet more gay advocates and make some more points with the fringe supporters of Democrats? How can this minutae compare with the worldwide struggle against tyranny?

How many people have been booted from the military since this half-measure was instituted in 1993? Well, I can’t tell you, because there are no public statistics. Why wouldn’t all of the gay advocates be announcing some HUGE number of poor souls denied the right of giving their lives for their country? Because the number isn’t huge. There aren’t that many gays who want to serve, the whole fight is based on the fact that gays want the barrier down – not because of some patriotic bloodlust to kill our nation’s enemies, or a need to tend to our wounded in battle, or even cooking scrumptious meals for our warriors.

They want Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell to go away simply because of the idea that there’s something they’re not allowed to do – not something they want to do, but that’s irrelevant, apparently. Yes, there are SOME gays in the military; there have probably always been a few gays in the military. But there’s no huge goldstrike of volunteers just waiting to be mined by recruiters that could turn the tide of battle against Islamofacism as we’re being led to believe.

And since our military is doing just fine and dandy without the revocation of this policy, why would Democrats bother to tinker with something that ain’t broke? Unless they view the military as some grand social experiment and another way of garnering more votes from the ‘downtrodden’? More grandstanding from the Democrats that will cost them in 2008.

I figured I’d leave Rangel alone for awhile but yesterday on FNS to Chris Wallace he said

I want to make it abundantly clear: if there’s anyone who believes that these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No young, bright individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment. If a young fella has an option of having a decent career or joining the army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq. 

You can watch the video on Hot Air, Powerline and on Captain’s Quarters if you have the stomach.

This just illustrates how far out of touch Fatass Rangel really is. Seein’s how everyone and their bother have posted facts that disputes Dumbass Rangel, I won’t bother to rehash. 

However, I will tell my readers that I have a six-figure income, I have a college degree, I work in a very successful and fulfilling career field, yet I volunteered this last Spring to return to active duty – as an enlisted soldier – despite the fact that my twenty years ended in 1974. My military career field was (is) Infantry. Thus far the Army has shown some common sense and not recalled me, but my point is this; there are people in the world for whom economics aren’t our sole concern.

Despite what Fat Ass Charley Rangel, the doofus from Harlem, says, there are people who just want to do what’s right…and what’s right in this case is serving our country where they need us most. Some of us recognize that there is a real threat from forces who want to kill Americans in the largest possible numbers. Some of us realize that a large number of Americans won’t bother to get off their asses and do something about it, so it’s up to us.

Those kind of Americans – those who’ll volunteer to defend the country – have been writing our history for a coupla hundred years. I’m just happy to know a couple of them. But Charley will never know any – all he’ll ever know is other short-sighted narrow-minded bigots like himself.

UPDATE: Now it appears that college students (who historically have no thoughts of their own) are channeling Charlie Rangel. While protesting against military recruiting in Chapel Hill, NC, one student claimed that “modern military recruiting is racist”. Funny, but according to the Department of Defense, 83% of recruits are white. So who, exactly are the military recruiters racist against? Whites?

Mind-numbed robots who regurgitate the empty platitudes they’re fed by other mind-numbed robots.

Pudgy little nobody Charlie Rangel is again raising the prosepect of a draft. Traditionally, for more than 170 years, the US has instituted the draft for national defense. But, not Charlie…nope. He wants to institute a draft for political reasons – and admits it.

Do we need more troops in the military? Nope the services are all meeting their recruiting/retention goals as late as June 2006. And since I volunteered to go back on active duty last May, I haven’t heard a word from the Army – they can’t be that hard-up if they won’t take an experienced trigger puller and qualified instructor/linguist back on active duty, can they? 

So why does Charlie want to start a draft? So the rich kids will revolt. Because Charlie and his elitist buddies don’t know anyone in the military and so they figure the rest of us don’t know anyone either and they want to broaden our experience, bring the war to our living rooms and dining room tables. Because Rangel wants to make a point – he wants to divide this nation. And if a few innocent people get killed in the interim, well, that just makes it so much better.

I guess he figures this volunteer military farms kids from some genetic engineering facility in the desert and no one knows people who are fighting for our security. According to DoD, our fighting force is made up of the best and brightest young people in this country.

Rangel is so fricken clueless that I guess he figures that if we start drafting rich kids and Congress becomes more thoughtful about sending rich kids in harm’s way the threat from Islam will automatically evaporate. And this is all to convince people that we didn’t need to go to iraq in the first place (although the Left, throughout the 90s, whined that poor Bill Clinton wouldn’t have to bomb Hussein if the current President’s father had finished the job in 1991).

I remember Charlie, on December 20, 1989, asking when the troops were coming back from Panama. Most of the troops weren’t even in the theater yet when he was demanding a firm date for their withdrawal! Yes, I know he’s some sort of war hero from Korea – but what kind of war hero tries to muddle the debate about war with useless pranks. If Charley was really concerned about the troops, he’d be rah-rahing them instead of calling them morons and dirt-eating, poverty-stricken victims. 

Was Rangel talking about a draft when we were committing troops to Bosnia and Kosovo under the past administration? In fact, how did Rangel feel about the draft when President Nixon ended it in 1972? How did he feel about it when Jimmy carter reinstituted the draft registration in 1979 in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? And if he felt so strongly about the draft, why didn’t he vote for it when Republicans brought his own bill up for a vote in Congress?

Besides, since there’s no real need for more troops, since it costs millions of dollars to train one single soldier to prepare him to survive combat, since the services are meeting their recruiting goals and there’s no imminent threat to our shores that requires a home-defense force, and since we need experienced troops in the field, not training some bonehead halfwit college dropout, Charlie’s recommendation should be called DOA.

I suspect this is just the first time we’ll hear of this. The Democrat Congress will try peawit measures like this constantly to get President to bend to their will over the next two years – just so long as Rock the Vote and the rest of the “Republicans are coming for your children” types remember who it was that introduced this nimroddery in 2008.

There’s a shocker, huh? Not like it’s ever happened before. But apparently Eric Keroack will become the deputy assistant secretary for population affairs for the Health and Human Services Department. The dispute comes from the fact that he was the medical director of A Woman’s Concern – a non profit Christian pregnancy counseling organization in Massachusetts. Of course all of the usual suspects have turned out for the WaPo article;

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called Keroack’s appointment “striking proof that the Bush administration remains dramatically out of step with the nation’s priorities.”

Out of step with the nation’s priorities? I thought the Left wanted to make abortions rare – that’s what Bill Clinton told us. According to this 2001 article I found, that’s what Dr Keroack wants, too. It seems that this nation’s abortion addicts are the ones out of touch with our priorities.

And they oppose Keroack’s appointment just because A Woman’s Concern maintains that abstinence actually reduces the chance a woman will get pregnant? Imagine that.

Of course, it’s nice to see that the President isn’t backing down completely on everything. He still appoints good people to essential jobs despite the Left’s whining.