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

Category: Society

  • Veteran victims; the Left’s latest absurdity

    This week, the week of Veterans’ Day, we’ve been pummelled with the media’s latest attack on the United States. CBS claims that the suicide rate among veterans is above the rate of Americans in general, disregarding that veterans are young and male and so their rate matches that of their peers. (Refuted here by Say Anything and Aviation Week) Is it a tragedy? Yes it most certainly is, but it’s not Bush’s fault – it’s not the VA’s fault. It’s more the fault of our culture (looking at you, CBS).

    Associated Press claims that soldiers are deserting at higher rates than ever before (well, since Vietnam). The New York Times reports that a quarter of homeless peple were veterans at some point in 2006;

    Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. More than 300,000 of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years.

    Sure aid groups are bracing – they have a financial interest in inflated numbers – in fact if you scroll down to the bottom of the NYT story, you’ll see where they had corrected their 300k from a 500k number because they were in such a rush to get the story out on Veterans Day they didn’t have time to check the methodology of their polls.

    While “only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless”, New York Times sees a great way to turn public opinion against Republicans – yet again.

    Now I’m not calling the NEw York Times liars, but I’ll tell you - quite a few “veterans” I’ve met couldn’t tell the difference between an M16 and SOS. DC is lousy with phony vets – I’ve busted several out in my travels around the city. And none of them pretend to be cooks or clerks – they’re all SEALs and Rangers. In fact, I’m in the process of busting out a guy who made the mistake of pretending to be in the 1st Battalion Rangers at the same time I was there back in the days of woolen longjohns.

    I watched some national news program back in 1992, during the presidential campaign where a correspondent was interviewing a supposed Gulf War veteran who was homeless. The correspondent asked the man when he had been in the Gulf and the man replied that he’d been there since “May”. Now either the guy was there three months before Hussein invaded Kuwait, or he was there two months after the war had ended. But the interviewer continued with the piece and didn’t bat an eye.

    I’ll never forget that I ran into a “homeless vet” in Syracuse near my office there. He was bumming money from me by telling me he was a veteran. I told him that I’m a veteran, too. His immediate response was “Why are you wearing that suit”? As if I didn’t fit the mold of a veteran because I had a job and wore a suit.

    I’ve been in touch with many of my troops since I left the Army and as far as I can tell, they’re all doing great. But the left and the media want to portray us as mental cases boiling under our peaceful facade. Honestly, I am boiling underneath my (reasonably) peaceful facade – at the Left.

    Dean Barnett at The Weekly Standard, in his piece (dated 11-26) The Last Talking Point of the Left; the vet-as-victim, told of an email exchange he had with National Guard colonel;

    I recently exchanged emails with a colonel in the California National Guard–an attorney when not on active duty–about Bruce Spring-steen’s new song “Gypsy Biker.” The song portrays Iraq war veterans as gullible dupes who shed their blood while “the speculators made their money,” and the colonel wrote;

    It’s this portrayal of vets as burnt-out losers with nowhere to go but out on the open road that gets me. I was in court today, a vet, arguing a million-dollar case, in front of a judge who was also a vet. Vets aren’t burned out losers–we’re leaders. For every vet with problems–and they certainly exist, though I would guess in percentages far below that of the comparable civilian population–there are dozens of vets out there building businesses, raising families, and leading communities. Many give up weekends and vacations to stay in the Guard and Reserve. But I guess those guys aren’t cool enough or useful enough. 

    The stereotypical vet is the burned-out homeless guy with a torn old green field jacket. I say it should be the dad dropping his little girl off at preschool before he goes to the business he built from nothing while fielding phone calls from his Guard unit’s full-time staff and driving a car with a trunk full of military gear so that, when the next earthquake or riot hits, he can go out and protect his community–again.

    But the Left makes it’s points with the public by making the norm less normal – and veterans always get the shitty end of the stick. 

  • Cocaine, the New Blood Diamond *Bonus, UN Blames Celebs*

    Use of cocaine by celebrities is encouraging death and destruction worldwide. So says a UN official.
    “One song, one picture, one quote that makes cocaine look cool can undo millions of dollars worth of anti-drug education and prevention,” read the text of a speech by the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa.

    “All these celebrity role models, turned into junkies, have in fact spent a lot of time in rehab lately, and their lives are a mess,” he said at a conference in Madrid.
    In Colombia, cocaine has also provided hundreds of millions of dollars to fund Marxist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, claiming thousands of lives a year, mainly poor peasants

    I will now blame Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan (Among others…)for this cocaine induced strife.
    Mail and Guardian Story

  • Another Day, Another Victory For Political Correctness and Loss for Security

    As I told you HERE the LAPD had planned to map where Muslims lived to provide them with an idea of where trouble could start. Well, they wussed out. The big bad LAPD buckled under the protest of CAIR, the ACLU and others.
    We hear the hackneyed line Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. That’s nice, if misguided. I submit that those who value inoffensive behavior over safety are doomed to suffer the will of those not concerned with niceties. Breitbart and AFP have the story. If people claiming to be Presbyterians were strapping on explosive laden vests and blowing themselves up in public places, they’d need to be watched. But, that isn’t the reality we find ourselves in. Yes, we are told that Islam is the “Religion of Peaceâ„¢” and indeed, the majority of Muslims are peaceful, law abiding people. The cold hard fact is, that the majority of terrorists in the world today claim to be Muslim. It is irresponsible NOT to look closely at Muslim communities and groups.

  • Another Day, Some More False Philanthropy

    Al Gore is now a partner in the venture capital firm venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He’s going to donate his salary to “Charity” Well, not really,he is donating it to the Alliance for Climate Protection where he is a member of the board of directors. What a noble gesture, Al, giving money to a charity where you sit as chairman of the board… Wow, I’m inspired. NY Times story

  • CBS NEWS Writers May Strike

    The news department has writers? Gee, wouldn’t that make that little chipmunk Couric nothing more than a fat actress? True journalists who actually report what happens rather than editorializing and spinning for the left shouldn’t have much to worry about here. Oh, wait, it is CBS News we’re talking about… nevermind.NY Post Article

  • Berkeley Hippy Falls Out of Tree Goes Boom

    A 24 year old hippy loser fell out of the tree he has been staying in to keep UC Berkeley from removing it. His hippy brethren had built a traverse line so they could get past the fence the university had built to keep hippies out of the trees. University spokesman Dan Mogulof says the fall is not the university’s fault.”The accident is very regrettable but to state the obvious, completely avoidable,” he said. “Things like this wouldn’t happen if people who are illegally occupying university property were obeying the law.”This Hippy Now Believes in Gravity While the hippy in question, Nate Hill, claims this wouldn’t have happened had the university not put up the fence. You know, the one they put up to keep hippies out of their trees. NBC11 Story

  • …but they still support the troops

    I caught a quick flash on the news last night about protesters at Denver’s Veterans’ Day events, but it took me until this morning to check the news, because after my own activities yesterday, I just didn’t have the energy to spend on those goofballs. But here’s the story from Denver’s Channel 7 news;

    Hundreds of people lined the streets in downtown Denver Saturday morning to watch the city’s annual Veterans Day Parade but it was not without some conflict.

    One Gulf War veteran, who only goes by the name “Cougar,” lost both of his legs in combat. As he was being pushed down the parade route, he broke into tears.

    “It’s nice … We never got this treatment. Not until now. We deserve it,” he said.

    Supporters waved flags to the beat of the drums, and cheered on the veterans as they marched by.

    At the very end of the parade, though, several anti-war veterans groups were met with mixed emotions.

    They carried signs protesting the Iraq War and President George W. Bush.

    “We support the troops. We’ve been the troops. We believe the best way we can support them is to get them out of there,” said Frank Bessinger, a Vietnam veteran who organized the demonstration.

    Um, Frank, this is about all veterans who’ve served in all wars. I visited the Tomb of the Confederate Unknown Soldiers – a mass grave of more than three hundred soldiers aside Robert E. Lee’s former mansion on Arlington – and paid my respects to people who’d died 90 years before I was born. You and your goofy group of misfits were making it political.

    Denver’s Channel 8 reports they were banned this year for their behavior last year;

    Organizers of the event say Veterans for Peace was not invited because the group staged what they considered an inappropriate protest at last year’s parade.

    Andrew Grieb of the United Veterans Council of Denver says the parade is not a platform for protesting, but rather for honoring veterans of all services.

    But Vietnam vet Frank Bessinger says the exclusion of the group violates freedom of expression.

    Um, Frank, it wasn’t a government function, so you have no freedom of expression to disrupt it – the Bill of Rights protects us from the government not from each other.

    I don’t like the “Veterans for Peace” moniker, either – it implies that I’m a “veteran for war” – and that’s certainly not the case. I’m for peace everywhere, but I’m enough of a realist to recognize that there are times thugs need to be dealt a forcible blow so they understand that peace is more advantageous to them than war. Even that knucklehead Clinton understood that up to a point.

    But the Veterans for Peace were busy yesterday, they also made a splash in Boston. The complete and unvarnished coverage from Boston local Bloodthirsty Liberal and the blotter report from the Boston PD News blog.

    Of course in Maine, they arrested veterans for busting up smelly, ignorant hippies’ anti-war propaganda (Ed. Sorry, I just noticed the date was two years ago);

    “I’m saddened that it has come to this, but I have a responsibility to maintain public safety,” said Police Chief John Morris, a Vietnam veteran. “Veterans don’t behave like that. These people don’t have a right to destroy other people’s property. Legitimate veterans’ organizations don’t commit civil disobedience. Veterans died to allow freedom to exist — whether we like the message or not. ”

    On Oct. 30, the peace group, Waterville Area Bridges for Peace and Justice, placed the white flags at the park, accompanied by signs protesting the Iraq war.

    On Wednesday, with Veterans Day looming, some veterans called the display a “desecration” and a “disgrace,” threatened to forcibly remove the flags, and challenged the police permit that authorized the display.

    On Thursday evening, about eight people — Bridges for Peace members and their sympathizers, among them some veterans — gathered at one side of the park, not far from where about 10 protesters were preparing to yank the flags.

    Veterans’ Day is as much for the living as it is for the dead – we take down Christmas displays, we dismantle all kinds of things that supposedly “offend” certain protected species of Americans – why can’t we do that for the patriots in this country instead of tossing them in jail? I’m sure the left has no problem with what happened in Kansas, though (link to TIME);

    Almost as soon as Ann and Don Bender marked the 4th of July by planting a field of more than 3,500 flags — one for each of the American troops killed in Iraq— the elements began to take a toll. The baking sun and sudden storms of a Great Plains summer left the little flagsticks warped and broken and the fabric bleached and torn.

    But that was nothing compared to the damage done in the dark hours of Sunday morning by vandals who kicked down thousands of the flags and left behind a cardboard sign with a single word splattered in red spray paint: “MURDERERS.”

    “You’ll have to excuse me, sir, for crying,” said a big bear of a man named Andy Enders as he stood by the remains of what had been “the most beautiful memorial ever created by private citizens, in my opinion.”

    Leftist bloggers think Veterans Day means remembering the mewling masses of protesters. Cindy Sheehan thinks Veterans’ Day is an opportunity to explain Jesus’ politics. But then what should we expect from a bunch of emotion-driven, irrational, sexually-frustrated self-serving children who’ve never known a moment’s discomfort, or understand the real meaning of sacrifice. Maybe they should take the time to read this short but elegant blog entry from Debbie Mumford on the subject.

    Veterans’ Day is ABOUT the troops – it’s not about the government. If you can’t take one day off from your irrational emotional outbursts and support the troops on Veterans’ Day, you can’t claim to support them rest of the year, either.

  • Prosecutor and Judge Apologize for Sending Illegal Alien to Jail

    Luis Lopez is an illegal alien. While driving drunk, 14 months ago, he got into a car accident that resulted in the death of his brother-in-law. While he has been supporting his sister’s family, which, if he hadn’t killed her husband, wouldn’t need the support, that doesn’t change the fact that he is guilty, and plead guilty, to vehicular manslaughter. Nor does it change the fact that by his mere presence in this country he is committing a crime, a crime, by the way, that he was not prosecuted for, nor, apparently, will he be punished for.
    Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Alexander described the sentencing as a “lose-lose situation” and told the judge she feared “re-victimizing” Mr. Pelaez’s wife and two children.Like the judge though, she said Lopez needed to be punished for getting behind the wheel with a blood-alcohol content of .13 – .05 more than the legal limit in Maryland.

    “He should not have been on the roadway,” she said.

    Ms. Alexander noted Lopez had a clean record before the crash and that the victim’s family did not attend the hearing. She recommended only that Lopez spend some time in jail.
    “Shouldn’t have been on the roadway”. Sweetheart, had he not been in the country illegaly, his brother-in-law (VICTIM) wouldn’t be dead!Yeah, punishing the guy responsible for the death of their husband and father is “Re-victimizing” them.
    Through an interpreter, Lopez himself asked the judge for lenience.“I have never done anything bad in my life,” he said, explaining he regrets everything that happened that night. “I have to do many things to help my big family.” Except for that whole Illegal Immigration thing, and the killing his brother-in-law while driving drunk thing, except for those he’s as pure as the driven snow. What really infuriates me, is that ICE, the re-branded Border Patrol won’t deport a single person from either of these two families. It isn’t that we don’t have the capacity to round up illegals, the powers that be are too gutless to deport them when they are handed to them on a silver platter.
    Hometown Annapolis Story.

    Except for that whole Illegal Immigration thing, and the killing his brother-in-law while driving drunk thing, except for those he’s as pure as the driven snow. What really infuriates me, is that ICE, the re-branded Border Patrol won’t deport a single person from either of these two families. It isn’t that we don’t have the capacity to round up illegals, the powers that be are too gutless to deport them when they are handed to them on a silver platter.