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

Category: Society

  • All out of love

    [youtube ivkHVlVtlFQ nolink]

    Backed into a corner, down 11 straight States, Hillary’s claws have come out. The tears don’t even work anymore, so it’s time to revert to the wronged woman/school marm and to invoke the ghosts of Karl Rove and George W. Bush (Wall Street Journal link);

    Sen. Hillary Clinton ratcheted up her attacks on Sen. Barack Obama today, comparing his campaign tactics to those of George W. Bush and urging Ohioans to see past his momentum.

    “Enough with the speeches and the big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters at a press conference today.

    She clutched two negative fliers sent to Ohio voters by the Obama campaign that she says make false claims about her position on health care and trade agreements. “Shame on you Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign that is consistent with your messages in public. That’s what I expect from you,” Mrs. Clinton said.

    I guess she doesn’t like being held accountable for her voting record since Obama’s campaign just criticized her for her support of NAFTA and the fact that everyone would pay for her healthcare plan whether they can afford it or not.

    Obama claims it was just a disingenuous Clinton camp tactical response than simple outrage at Obama camp tactics (Washington Times link);

    Speaking to reporters here, Mr. Obama of Illinois doubted the authenticity of her outrage since the mailers in question have been circulating and weeks ago provoked response from her campaign aides.

    “I’m puzzled by the sudden change in tone unless these were just brought to her attention. It makes me think there’s something tactical about her getting so exercised this morning,” he said. “The notion that somehow we’re engaging in nefarious tactics … is pretty hard to swallow.”

    Mrs. Clinton, dressed in bright red and vowing she would continue her candidacy, said a voter handed her the mailers on the rope line after a rally and characterized them as “false” attacks that have her “deeply disappointed.”

    The Washington Post had a more substantive response from Obama;

    “Senator Clinton, as part of the Clinton administration, supported NAFTA. In her book, she called it one of the administration’s successes,” he said. “We’re pointing that out in a state that’s been devastated by trade and is deeply concerned about the position of the candidates on trade.”

    It was indisputable, Obama added, that Clinton’s plan required people to buy health insurance even if they did not think they could afford it. She may not want the plan described that way, he said, just as he did not like her characterizing his plan, which does not include a mandate, as leaving out 15 million people.

    “We have been subject to constant attack from the Clinton campaign except when we were down 20 points. They need to take a look at what they’ve been doing,” Obama said.

    So while the Democrats argue about who’ll be the most Liberal, Democrat voters are beginning to wonder about the substance of their promises (Washington Post link);

    It is also a story the two Democratic presidential candidates are promising to change. As Ohio’s pivotal March 4 primary approaches, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have each called for significant infrastructure investment, development of alternative energy and other “green-collar” jobs, while promising to toughen environmental and labor standards that accompany free trade deals.

    Those ideas are welcome here in heavily unionized and heavily Democratic northwest Ohio, but at the same time, no one seems to believe they go far enough to reverse the powerful tide of globalization that many blame for the constant manufacturing job losses.

    “They identify with the situation, but they don’t do anything about it,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, (D-Ohio), whose district includes Toledo. “They are descriptive, not prescriptive. We want more detail and we want it now.”

    Quite a bit different than applause for Obama blowing his nose or for Hillary’s release of a few tears for the cameras, the Democrat candidates are giving Republicans fodder for this summer’s campaign.

    Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades writes that Hillary’s campaign is falling apart. At Big Dog’s Weblog, Big Dog writes that Hillary can’t cherry pick her accomplishments from her record. From Blue Crab Boulevard;

    “…he sounds confident, she sounds shrill. That is not a recipe for a Clinton victory.”

  • Iraqis sweep up derelicts

    The Iraqi Interior Ministry made huge sweeps through Baghdad today according to the Associated Press;

    The Iraqi Interior Ministry has ordered police to round up beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets in Baghdad to prevent them from being used by insurgents as suicide bombers, a spokesman said Tuesday.

    The decision came after a series of suicide attacks, including two female bombers who struck pet markets in Baghdad on Feb. 1, killing nearly 100 people. Iraqi and U.S. officials have said the women were mentally disabled and apparently unwitting bombers.

    The people detained in the Baghdad sweep will be handed over to governmental institutions that can provide shelter and care for them, Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said. “This will be implemented nationwide starting from today,” he said.

    “Militant groups, like al Qaeda in Iraq, have started exploiting these people in a very bad manner to kill innocents as they do not raise suspicions,” Gen. Khalaf said. “These groups are either luring those who desperate for money to help them in their attacks or making use of their poor mental condition to use them as suicide bombers.”

    Hmmm, “beggars, vagabonds and mentally disabled people from the streets” sounds like hordes of Democrat suicide voters that the Democrats have been recruiting over the last forty years. I wonder how long it’ll be before some Democrat congressmember complains that the Iraqis are warehousing the poor and mentally ill. That they should let the poor saps make their own decisions about where they live.

    I think it’s an exceptionally good sign that Iraq is getting proactive in the war against cold-hearted thugs. It sounds like they’re more than ready to stand on their own two feet – and our troops can come home soon because there’s no need for them to be there.

  • Washington Post latest anti-Army tear

    First let me clarify that I certainly support our women in uniform – my close friendship with fellow author on this blog and 30-year Army combat veteran GI Jane demonstrates that. However, Washington Post’s latest attack on the military establishment is so petty it doesn’t belong on the front of today’s edition. In “Short Maternity Leaves, Long Deployments“, Ann Scott Tyson writes;

    Many female soldiers hoping to start families face the prospect of missing most of their child’s first year. The Army grants six weeks of maternity leave before a new mother must return to her job or training, and four months until she can be sent to a war zone. The Marine Corps and Navy allow from six months to a year before a new mother must deploy.

    The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe strains on the Army, including longer deployments in which soldiers serve 15 months in the war zone, followed by 12 months at home. Under that system, a woman who wishes to have a child and remain with her unit must conceive soon after returning home so she can give birth, recover and prepare for her next overseas tour.

    It seems to me that a responsible pair of parents wouldn’t want to bring their child into a situation which risks the absence of one or both parents for extended periods of time.

    The constraints on reproduction, child-rearing and family are a key factor leading many female soldiers to quit the Army, and have discouraged many civilian women from considering enlistment, according to Army officials. Surveys show that time away from families, because of long, frequent deployments, is the top reason for soldiers to leave the Army. The willingness of women to serve in the military has dropped faster than that of men in recent years, from a high of 10 percent among 16- to 21-year-olds in November 2003 to 4 percent last July, according to periodic youth surveys on “propensity to serve” conducted for the Army.

    Well, it looks like American women have found a solution to their dilemma – they get out or they don’t join. SO why is this a front page story? I’m so sure that aren’t millions of women waiting to join the military if only they’d extend the maternity leave to, say, five years like the Post seems to suggest is reasonable.

    …said Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, deputy Army surgeon general for force management.

    “We need to look at the fact that many women want to serve but they also want to be mothers,” Pollock said. “It’s a medical issue, it’s a mental health issue. Your ability to bond with your children is . . . very important.”

    Pollock said last summer that she had proposed that the Army double the time women are exempt from deployment from four to eight months, noting that she would prefer 12 months. “That addresses the need for breast-feeding that is important for health, and also allows for optimal bonding time,” she said.

    So far, Army policy remains unchanged, spokeswoman Cynthia Vaughan said this month. Senior Army officials declined requests to explain the reasoning behind the current policy.

    Other services grant longer exemptions, and all have generally shorter deployments: The Navy exemption is 12 months, and the Marine Corps’s is six months, and deployments average seven months for both. The Air Force has a four-month exemption, but its deployments average only four to six months.

    Well, since all of the services have different policies according to their force needs in theater, the Army arrived at their policy logically. But, if a woman wants to serve in the military she has an array of choices, doesn’t she? She certainly doesn’t need the Washington Post reporter with her a the recruiting station to help her.

  • Secure our borders! Yesterday!

    In this morning’s Washington Times, Sara Carter (quickly becoming one of my favorite reporters over there) writes that “US Foes target Latin America”

    Iran, Cuba and Venezuela are working together against the U.S. by undermining democracy in Latin America, allowing trafficking of illegal drugs and creating safe havens for extremist groups, intelligence officials said.

    Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Tuesday, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said that influence from the three countries — led respectively by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez — has spilled into Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, which “are pursuing agendas that undercut checks and balances” of democratic governments.

    She goes on to write;

    “We’ve known for some time that Islamic extremists groups were gaining momentum and exploiting the region,” said one U.S. federal law-enforcement official, on the condition of anonymity, who worked drug operations in Central America. “Iran is no exception — now with Cuba and Venezuela, the door is open.”

    Web sites advocating Hezbollah and other Islamic extremist groups in Central America are used to recruit members and espouse extremist ideology.

    On one Web page — now removed from the Internet — “Hezbollah Latin America” displayed photographs of members, with their faces covered and weapons raised. The Web site contained links to Hezbollah group members in Venezuela, El Salvador, Argentina and as north as Chiapas, Mexico.

    Regular readers of this blog will remember the link to Jungle Mom that I’ve posted several times over the past several months referring to Hezbollah influence among the indigenous people of Venezuela’s interior after Chavez forced Christian missionaries out of the country.

    Unless we build the wall and start enforcing border securing, these Latins influenced by terrorist organizations will have the ability to blend into our own population and strike without a bit of hinderance.

    If that’s not terrifying enough for you, try this;

    In 2005, Venezuela became a major transient route for South American — predominantly Colombian — cocaine destined for the U.S. market and it continues to grow, U.S. intelligence officials said.

    Mr. Chavez’s lack of counterdrug cooperation “undermines efforts by other countries, particularly Colombia, by giving traffickers access to alternative routes and transit points Chavez is likely to remain unengaged on the counternarcotics front unless the drug trade is perceived to damage his international image or threaten his political longevity,” Mr. McConnell said.”Military cooperation between Tehran and Caracas is growing,” Mr. McConnell testified. “There are growing signs of anxiety among Venezuela’s neighbors about this military buildup.”

    Coca-chewing Chavez and crackhead Ahmadinjad supplying our own drug addicts with druga and using the money against us (where are all of those Libertarians who say that drug use is a personal preference and don’t harm society).

    But any war against drugs must be prefaced with secure borders. It’ll be up to the next president since this one has been a bit out-to-lunch on that one. And it’ll take a sturdily-spined Congress to force the next Administration to do what needs to be done.

    As it stands now, the only people willing to stand up to Chavez and his cronies seems to be Exxon-Mobil.

  • Can’t we all just get along?

    The famous Rodney King hackneyed plea that disingenuously asked the looters, rioters and killers in South Central Los Angeles to stop looting, rioting and killing jumped immediately into my mind this morning as I read dueling Conservatives Rush Limbaugh’s interview in the Washington Post and Bob Dole’s letter to Rush at Fox News this morning over John McCain. But then my mind has been affected by the Obama ad I’ve been victimized by all weekend.

    First Rush;

    “If I believe the country will suffer with either Hillary, Obama or McCain, I would just as soon the Democrats take the hit . . . rather than a Republican causing the debacle,” he said. “And I would prefer not to have conservative Republicans in the Congress paralyzed by having to support, out of party loyalty, a Republican president who is not conservative.”

    Now Bob;

    I worked closely with Senator McCain when he came to the Senate in 1987 until I departed. I cannot recall a single instance when he did not support the Party on critical votes.

    (At my age, I cannot be entirely certain but here are a few key conservative examples:)

    1. Consistent pro-life record

    2. Strong advocate for strict constructionist judges (We were misled on the Souter nomination)

    3. Supported voluntary school prayer

    4. Supported Constitutional Amendment for a Balanced Budget (needed two-thirds and lost by one vote – 66-34)

    5. Strong advocate for reducing spending and opposing pork barrel “ear marks” which has, I might add, angered some of his colleagues

    6. Consistent on defending Second Amendment rights

    7. Opposed “Hillary Care” which would have been devastating

    8. Probably the Senate’s strongest advocate for strong national defense

    9. Of course he has cast many votes since I left. I totally disagreed with the McCain-Feingold legislation. On immigration, Senator McCain was not in the Senate when Congress passed President Reagan’s immigration legislation which passed overwhelmingly. It granted amnesty to 2.7 million illegals. It was not much different than the 2007 McCain, Kennedy, Bush effort.

    I disagree with his votes against the Bush tax cuts but I believe his pledge to make them permanent….

    Well, it has certainly become clear why McCain became the media darling, oh, so many years ago. He’s accomplished what the media has been trying to do since Richard Nixon – fracture the party to the point of crippling us. Is it McCain’s fault? No, not really. He has his stance on issues just like every other Joe in America. The problem is with the electorate.

    I don’t like Spanish President Zapatero very much, but in the famous exchange that resulted in the “Porque no te callas” line, Zapatero defended his predecessor, Aznar, to Chavez’ juvenile name-calling by reminding Chavez that he, Chavez, was not only showing disrespect for Aznar, but also the Spanish people who’d put him in office. After all is said and done, it’s the voters who are responsible for the people they elect. But in the current climate of personality and identity politics, sometimes we forget that.

    I’m no dyed-in-the-wool McCain supporter, but I’m a huge supporter of the American voter. I figured out that voters are largely easy to sucker, but mainly because they want to believe candidates, they want to trust the media. Americans are naive like that, I suppose, but endearing nonetheless.
    I don’t listen to Rush anymore because the requirements of my current employment don’t permit listening to him, but I’m thankful to him for all of those years I did listen to him – he was the one that influenced me to step outside my comfort zone and seek a new life where I’d never lived before. But, it’s my opinion that Rush and the legions of other “conservatives” that are willing to throw the country to the likes of Pelosi, Reid, Clinton and Obama are being irresponsible.

    Suppose Obama or Clinton get their wish and get universal health care…does Limbaugh or anyone else think a Republican who follows them will reverse that? They haven’t gotten rid of that bloated, corrupt and inept Education Department that Jimmy Carter built. They haven’t done away with any of the bloated corrupt and inept programs of the Johnson Administration’s New Deal. We’d be living with that universal health care albatross for the rest of our lives (and deaths).

    Does Rush or any of the others think that Clinton or Obama will accidentally name Conservatives to the Supreme Court? Or that terrorists will magically stop targeting Americans?

    Look, I’m not happy about the potential of a McCain presidency, but I’m not going to threaten to take my ball and go home just because the Republican voters selected the candidate I don’t like. I guess I learned a lesson from 1992 that everyone else has forgotten.

    Fortunately for me, I don’t labor under the misapprehension that my opinion will change anyone’s mind and cause an immediate halt to the intramural mudslinging. But, in good conscience I needed to say it regardless.

  • March Against FARC (Update)

    Background from the Financial Times;

    During his eight months as a hostage of Colombia’s Farc rebels in 2002, businessman Gustavo Muñoz knew that he would be executed the moment the Colombian military intervened.

    “They used to practise my execution every fortnight,” he said. “I knew exactly who would do it if the military attacked.”

    Mr Muñoz says Colombians are now more concerned about the 4,000 people held illegally by the Farc, other left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and common criminals.

    Thousands of Colombians are on Monday expected to march in repudiation of the Farc and its practice of kidnapping, in a demonstration organised through Facebook, the social networking site. The organisers claim the protest will be one of Colombia’s biggest, demonstrating a growing indignation with the kidnappings.

    “Some on the left used to argue that it was justifiable . . . that they needed to do it to finance the struggle for social transformation,” says Olga Lucia Gómez, whose País Libre charity helps victims. “You don’t hear those arguments anymore.”

    So I decided to add my voice to the millions worldwide from here in DC.

    I was really surprised that an ad hoc organization put together such a large demonstration in such a short period of time. It was just three weeks ago that Kate emailed me about contacts for getting permits for the demonstration. Most of the organization was done on Facebook and crossed generational lines as you can see from the photos. It really was a study in modern organization. My compliments to Laura Busche for herding all of these cats for the media and the participants.
    There were a few thousand people, mostly Colombians from what I could tell, gathered in the chilly drizzle of Freedom Plaza, just a few blocks from the White House;

    The theme of the demonstration was to show opposition to the Armed Revolutionary Front of Colombia, a Marxist terrorist organization that has been murdering innocent Colombians for forty years.

    Many of the people at this rally are refugees of the conflict in their country between a democratic government they elected and the Marxist narco-terrorists of FARC. This is a YouTube of Laura Busche, the main organizer of the event explaining the demonstration in English and Spanish.

    Aside from the hundreds of Colombians being held hostage for ransom (that’s how FARC finances it’s anti-government operations in addition to drug dealings) there are also three Americans being held hostage for propaganda purposes. The Colombians at the rally demonstrated for their release, too.


    Many of the signs the Colombians carried were specific about who are the enemies of democracy in Colombia. For example, this one about Human Rights Watch, which ignores the atrocities of FARC while pressuring the Congress and Bush Administration on supposed Human Rights violations of the Uribe government.

    This one speaks for itself;

    “[Simon] Bolivar dreamed of a great Colombia, not a terrorist Venezuela”

    This turns out to be the author of Padre Hoyos Blog.

    Here’s a YouTube video of the crowd singing the Colombian national anthem. They began their demonstration by singing the US national anthem, though. Another YouTube video of the crowd.

    Try as I might, I couldn’t find any Communists or Socialists on the periphery of the protest like they are at so many others. There were no Code Pink showboats trying to steal the show. There were no Bushitler signs, no signs that called for us to end our war against some nebulous brown people or to release prisoners from invisible camps. It was a genuine outpouring of contempt for FARC and a call for the hostilities to end against the Columbian people.

    Kate at A Colombo-Americana’s Perspective has a worldwide round up of the international demonstrations today. We bumped into each other taking pictures in Freedom Plaza today so I’m sure she’ll have less Anglo-centric view of the event when she gets her pictures posted.

    Gateway Pundit has amazing pictures of the huge crowds in Colombia. Daniel at Venezuela News and Views has pictures of the march in Caracas.

    UPDATE: I was anonimously sent this YouTube link to very well done video record of the event in DC. Pictures and videos of the event in Toronto at Correo Canadiense.

  • The Sun Has Set on The British Empire

    Daily Mail Graphic
    This is too sad for words.

  • ACLU plans to defend trolls/pervs

    Trolls cruisin' Miami
    This morning, a Miami Herald article describes a woeful situation wherein a group of sex offenders are being forced out of their homes under one of the Miami causeways;

    Convicted sex offenders who have called the area under the Julia Tuttle Causeway bridge home got a rude awakening early Saturday morning.

    They were visited by state Department of Correction parole officers at 5 a.m. The message, delivered in writing, was clear: The residents have until 9 a.m. Monday to vacate the bridge, which spans Biscayne Bay, linking Miami to Miami Beach.

    Poor little fellas just can’t find a home because of the choices they made;

    The ordinance does not allow convicted sex offenders to live within 2,500 feet of a school. The state requirement is only 1,000 feet.

    The state Department of Corrections, charged with supervising offenders after their release, said no offenders were ever assigned to sleep under the Julia Tuttle bridge. The department simply OK’d the location because offenders said it was just about impossible to find a place to live within the ordinance’s restrictions.

    Well, DOC shouldn’t have allowed it in the first place, so the time has come to correct the bad decisions they’d made in the past.

    ‘We had a nice place going here. We had it set up. It’s not a perfect situation. We have no running water, but we had it set up like home, like a community,” he said. State officials said offenders had received the first eviction notice on Tuesday and that four of the 19 residents already had found other places to stay by Friday night.

    Holy mackerel. You mean some of the hobos found some other place to live that wasn’t under a bridge? Well, that sounds like it was a good decision to make them move, then, huh? Anytime homeless people aren’t homeless anymore, it seems like a good thing. But that’s not the case, I suppose.

    Ray Taseff of the American Civil Liberties Union in Miami said the move to evict the residents will ”ultimately boomerang on the city” of Miami, causing offenders to go underground.

    ”This is the government that created homelessness, and now the government is effectively trying to banish them from the community,” he said.

    ”If these people are homeless and engaging in life-functioning behavior, it seems to me that violating their parole is a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights,” said Taseff, who said the ACLU will help the residents.

    Yep, the ACLU wants to step in and defend the rights of hobos and pervs to live under a bridge – against the rights of law abiding citizens to keep their children safe. To prevent government from performing the essential function of keeping law and order in the community in it’s charge.

    And yeah, it does banish them from the community – but the next community with more lenient laws is just a few miles away. If someone lives under bridge, I can’t imagine they’d need an 18-wheeler to move their possessions a few miles away.

    It’s beyond me how ACLU continues to function when they spend so much of their time protecting the rights of people who deny basic liberties to their victims.