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

Category: Society

  • Child education is a nasty business

    I swear, it’s rare when get this mad. I just got done reading this story from the Washington Post about a low-life, scum sucking, pig kisser who bilked DC taxpayers (read that; all US taxpayers) out of $647,000 in just three years;

    Belton, 61, admitted to U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina that she steered about $446,000 in seven no-bid contracts to friends and a cousin and stole $203,000 by paying school funds to a fictitious company she controlled. At the same time, she received $180,000 in illegal payments and kickbacks from friends she helped with school business. The crimes took place from March 2003 to May 2006, prosecutors said.

    Where does DC find these “public servants”? We all know the story about Marion Berry – the crack smoking whore-monger who has dodged jail for tax evasion for the last two years.

    Well, a couple of years ago, they had a fire chief whom they hired while he was being investigated in Augusta, Georgia for skimming funds – and surprise! – funds were missing when DC government finally decided to let him go.

    The manager of the teachers’ pension fund got caught stealing about a million bucks to buy herself a new car, fur coats, and such – and she gave some of the money to friends and her fricken chauffeur. See, that’s what happens when you give a public employee a fricken chauffeur.

    One of the charter school principals they hired turns out to be a sex offender.

    The list goes on. It seems that every week I get to read about how some public employee in the District is caught with his/her hand in the till. And they get a little handslap and sent to the corner to think about what they’ve done.

    What fate awaits Brenda Belton, thieving bitch? She gets a whooping 3 years in jail;

    During sentencing in November, Belton will face a likely term of 30 to 37 months in prison for theft and tax evasion charges. She has agreed to pay restitution of $383,000, most of which will go back to the school system.

    See, that’s why they keep being criminals. She doesn’t have to pay the District all of the money she cost them, or even all of the money she bilked – just the portion that she kept. I call bullshit! If I’d robbed a damn bank without a gun, I’d get at least 10 years – how is this different from robbing a bank?

    And what the Hell is this bullshit about “most of [the money] will go back to the school system”. Where else is that money going? Lemme guess – to pay lawyers and the court system. Every damn penny should go back to the schools. If the lawyers and judges want some damn money, get it from the bitch who robbed the taxpayers, ya fricken blood sucking leaches. 

    I swear, it’s like living in a third world country.

  • More “One America” ranting

    OK, Obama got my juices flowing on this one with that idiot “One Struggle” the other night in Miami. Now I run across this from the Wall Street Journal;

    All the major Democratic presidential candidates-and none of the Republicans-will be in Los Angeles tonight for what was billed as a nonpartisan forum on issues important to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. The televised event showcases the status that gays’ votes and money have earned them in the Democratic Party, but also the continued controversy of their cause.

    So what? I know I wrote about this event a few weeks ago and mentioned that Democrats debating about gay rights is just useless – each trying to out-gay the next candidate. There’s nothing to debate – the Demorats will bend over (figuratively) for anything the Gay community wants. So what’s to argue about?

    But in the article, gays complain that “Republicans have walked off the field” in the arena of gay rights. Well, maybe because Republicans don’t believe in gay rights…or women’s rights, or animal rights or any of those other special rights that seem to crop up from time-to-time. Republicans believe that we all have the same rights and that to endow a group with special rights is just unconstitutional. Period. Why discuss something that doesn’t exist except in the minds of certain politicians pandering for votes?

    As for Republicans, Patrick Sammon, president of the gay political group Log Cabin Republicans, says he remains optimistic that his party won’t always be opposed to gay rights. “Our party, to be a majority, has to get independent voters. And using antigay politics is a sure way to turn those voters against it.”

    This is all just mindless drivel – more adherence to the Leftist pseudo-victimization of totally manufactured groups. Go ahead and pour your disposable income into the Democrat Party – all it’ll you buy is promises. Empty promises.

  • Ban ki-Moon; Hope at last for Haiti

    The UN’s Secretary General Ban ki-Moon wrote a piece this morning in the Washington Times celebrating that there’s “Hope at last for Haiti“. I hate to remind the new Secretary that there’s always been a lot of hope for Haiti, but not much progress. Ban writes;

    There may be worse slums in Haiti, but none so infamous for its violence and grinding poverty as Cite Soleil in the heart of the capital city, Port-au-Prince. Drinking water is scarce, public sanitation nonexistent. Most of its 300,000 residents have no electricity; fewer have jobs. The neighborhood’s mayor was blunt when I met him during my visit to Haiti last week. “Here,” he said, “we need everything.”

    And yet I also saw hope in Cite Soleil. At the mayor’s offices, a new local government is putting down roots in a community it long ago abandoned. Across the street, I toured a newly refurbished school. Youngsters greeted me, excited by the prospect of resuming their education. Nearby, young men played soccer.

    Good for them. I truly mean that, but whatever happened to the hope we had back in 1994?

    The day after former President Jimmy Carter helped negotiate the agreement to avert a U.S. invasion of Haiti, The Los Angeles Times described him as a person with “a preternatural patience and an unshakable faith in his fellow man.”

    But in the eyes of President Carter and The Carter Center, another factor was at work. The situation in Haiti exemplified how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like the Center can work with a government to prevent violent conflict and to promote peace and human rights.

    “President Carter was able to help the U.S. avert a war in Haiti because of the Center’s long history of involvement there,” said Marion Creekmore, director of programs at The Carter Center. “We try to be available to assist countries that are struggling to build democracy.”

    Thirteen years ago, the Carter-Clinton cabal negotiated away millions of US taxpayer dollars to pay off General Cedras and his cronies and they promised us that they would fix Haiti. Within months, Haiti fell off the media’s radar screen and our failures there never saw the light of day.

    No one published pictures of the hundreds of Haitians imprisoned on Guantanamo Naval Base in worse conditions than the current population enjoys. No one has bothered to mention the hundreds more that have landed on our shores in the ensuing years (the reason we were given for getting involved there in the first place).

    But not to worry, the UN has finally figured it out. I’m so relieved.

  • I thought we were all Americans

    See, I must be a fool. In 1963, I heard Martin Luther King, Junior say;

    I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

    Well, I thought the civil rights movement was about making Americans ONE PEOPLE, and I bought into it. I thought it was about everyone being equal totally disregarding the level of melanin pigment in their skin color. I married a woman who was of Black, Asian, European and Indian extraction – because I believed (and still believe) that skin color and heritage didn’t make the person who they are.

    Now, here we are 44 years after Reverend King’s speech about his dream, and we’re still consumed by this skin pigment thing – an accident of nature, something has nothing to do with anything.

    Today, the Washington Post runs a sceeching headline that people with less melanin in their pigmentation are outnumbered by people with more melanin in the DC Metro area;

    Fueled by an explosion of jobs attracting immigrants to the nation’s suburbs, the percentage of minorities has dramatically increased in six local counties — including Prince William, where the share of minorities grew from 35 percent in 2000 to 48 percent in 2006, according to census estimates to be released today.

    In addition, Manassas Park was one of eight jurisdictions nationwide that shifted to majority-minority status in 2006, bringing the total number of counties in which minorities outnumber whites to 303 — nearly one in 10 of the nation’s 3,141 counties.

    […]

    Locally, Charles County in Maryland and the Virginia counties of Prince William, Loudoun and Stafford, as well as the city of Manassas, remain majority-white, but the proportion of minorities increased at some of the fastest rates in the nation.

    In 2000, minorities accounted for 33 percent of Charles’s population. By 2006, they were 45 percent. Similarly, Stafford’s share of minorities grew from 20 percent to 29 percent, and Loudoun’s share increased from 20 percent to 32 percent.

    So what? Can anyone explain to me what this has to do with the price of tea in China? Why should it matter that there are more people of color in this area? Apparently they’re all working – that should be the good news. Shouldn’t it?

    Yesterday I wrote in the post below this one about Barack Obama declaring, to a group who calls itself “The Race” that Black Americans and Brown Americans are engaged in “One Struggle”. Against who? For what?

    I’ll bet you money if Rush Limbaugh was addressing a group of melanin-deficient people who called themselves “The Race” and declared that we were all engaged in One Struggle, that would make the evening news and probably start a war between melanin-deficient people and melanin-loaded people. Over what?

    Guess what? We’re all engaged in One Struggle – the terrorists who are trying to kill us are colorblind. They want to kill us all because they lump us all into One Culture, even though we ourselves don’t. And we do have a shared culture – a culture of peace, ingenuity and prosperity.

    If the people trying to eradicate us, along with that culture of peace, ingenuity and prosperity, recognize that, why can’t we?  

  • Rakkasan: SGT Aguina is mentally ill

    Robin at Chickenhawk Express sent me this link to the comments section of the Daily Kos  from the Angry Rakkasan, otherwise known as Brandon Friedman, one of Jon Solz‘ strokin’ buddies in the VoteVets front organization for attention-starved former Army captains who couldn’t make the Majors’ list.

    Freidman accuses the young buck sergeant, David Aguina, who confronted “Lil Mac” Clarke and his half-witted poodle Jon Solz with the facts of the surge at the YearlyKos Convention, of suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome because he doesn’t stand with Rakkasan, Clarke and Solz on the facts of the “surge”;

     We need to get to the bottom of this.  This is a soldier who needs some help–whether it’s more training in military bearing and discipline or treatment for complex PTSD, we just don’t know yet.  Either way, he’s being exploited by the right-wing blogs.

    Yeah, like the Left wing blogs aren’t using Friedman, Clarke and Solz  – at least their mental problems are more easily recognizable – penis envy. Now I haven’t seen a picture of Brandon, but I think Solz and Clarke must’ve got waivers for their height and weight in order to join the military – they’re the shortest little peckerheads I’ve ever seen to have worn a uniform. Since I can’t find a picture of Freidman, I gotta guess he’s the tall one – he has to be.

    As far as Aguina’s bearing and discipline, I think you’d better start with that gelding Solz. Aguina acted entirely professional, his bearing and discipline were just fine. It’s that pussy Solz that needs to be taught how to be a leader and not some power-starved lap dog for a retired diminutive general. If I had been in SGT Aguina’s shoes that day, the maintainence crews would still be picking pieces of Solz out of the ventilation system.

    Robin also tells us that Friedman gave the opposing response to a presidential radio address back in July. I guess he doesn’t think the Left is using him like a two-bit whore for that, huh? Those fat cows over at Code Pink must be falling all over their worn out udders to get seen with him. 

    And Friedman apparently plans on stalking young Sergeant Aguina;

     I would like to get contact information for Sergeant Aguina, if anyone has it.  I’m also working through VoteVets.org to get it.  I want to speak with him, Iraq veteran-to-Iraq veteran without any consideration of rank.  I’m willing to listen to him, as well as to give him some advice.

    Yeah, Brandon, I’d like to get your contact information, too. You ain’t worth listening to, but I’ve got some advice for you. Probably the same advice your first platoon sergeant had for you.

  • Beauchamps; it ain’t over yet

    I pretty much put the Beauchamps story behind me, it was worth a lot of traffic, I met some new people and I made my point – an indisputable point. My last word on Scott Thomas Beauchamps was “Told ya”.

    Well now I read from Little Green Footballs that The New Republic can’t believe its lyin’ eyes;

    We’ve talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account as detailed in our statement. When we called Army spokesman Major Steven F. Lamb and asked about an anonymously sourced allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, he told us, “I have no knowledge of that.” He added, “If someone is speaking anonymously [to The Weekly Standard], they are on their own.”

    And the left still clings to the fairie tales of Beauchamps; from the Washington Post;

    Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, called the Army’s refusal to release its report “suspect,” adding: “There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there’s one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests.”

    See, the Army is “suspect” more than the New Republic is suspect for their shoddy journalistic procedures – especially if you check with “journalism” teachers. Um, I wonder why that is?

    Even the New York Times gets a quote exhonerating the troops;

    “We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, his platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”

    And yet, the NYT still doubts the Army’s statement. Why? Well, for the same reasons they think President Bush did cocaine and went AWOL – there’s no evidence supporting it, so it must be true.

    Any halfwit who spent even a day in the Army knows that those stories Beauchamps wrote are false. Especially since some of the stories were written before Beauchamps even got to Iraq (even New Republic admits that the melted-face contractor story supposedly happened in Kuwait while Beauchamps’ unit was staging for deployment to Iraq- if it happened at all). The Onion called it Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome back in November.

    Regardless, the damage is done – both to our troops reputation and to the New Republic. The Beauchamp Tales will be spun at every anti-war rally from now until the troops come home and repeated millions of times on the internet as reasons we shouldn’t support the troops – just like the “Bush was AWOL” and “Bush the coke-head” tales get repeated ad nauseum.

    Personally, I’d really like to take the high road, like Baldilocks – one of the classiest ladies on the internet – but I’m afraid if I ever bump into Beauchamps…well, he’d better practice begging for mercy now. And falling down and ducking.

  • You can lead a DC child to free breakfast…

    Apparently, the District of Columbia can’t force the poorer children of the city to eat their breakfast, according to the Washington Examiner;

    The District of Columbia’s public schools reach fewer than half of low-income students who qualify for free breakfast, despite a “universal” program aimed at feeding all eligible children, according to a report released Tuesday.

    […]

    Alternative methods include serving breakfast in classrooms rather than in a cafeteria or “grab and go” plans in which students can take food items from carts or the cafeteria with them to the classroom. Studies have found that children who eat breakfast fare better on standardized tests.

    Well, you can also hook ’em up to a feeding tube or start giving them breakfast enemas, or intravenous feedings. or you can just cancel the damn program and make their parents feed them before they leave the damn house and stop spending my damn tax money on useless crap. For pete’s sake…

  • Paranoid…or just cautious

    I read with interest the Wall Street Journal online opinion piece by Ion Mihai Pacepa this morning. I was going to comment on it here, but as I looked around, I noticed it was being covered broadly. I’ve always been a Cold War buff, having spent time on the bayonet point of Western Democracy in the old West Germany and spent some time studying and writing about the US foreign policy of those days.

    This evening I stumbled onto Gateway Pundit (one of my favorites, by the way) and read his take on it. Of course, it focused on John Kerry’s shameful performance in Congress back when I was 16 years old. GP noted the stunning similarities between Pacepa’s piece and Kerry’s testimony.

    But at the bottom of GP’s post there was a link to somewhere I’d never been – Maggie’s Farm. Maggie wondered aloud in her post “Paranoid” that in light of GP’s highlighted text, perhaps we should be concerned about Bill Clinton and his trip through the Iron Curtain countries of the era. Well, I’ve always thought that was suspicious.

    But then I remembered the foreward of a book I read a few years back. The book was The Haunted Wood, by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. I met Weinstein lately, but I wasn’t able to bring up the question that had plagued me since I read the book the first time in 1999.

    Weinstein wrote the book directly from research he conducted personally in the Soviet KGB archives in the years immediately following the collapse of our old enemy. He had intended to clear Alger Hiss’ name by proving he wasn’t on the Soviet payroll – unfortunately for the life-long Democrat, he couldn’t infact he found records that proved that the Soviet Union was paying not only Hiss but also other employees of the Federal government, congressmen and actors.

    Being a rare type of researcher, Weinstein wrote the book the way the research led him. Of course, there was quite a bit of furor in academia.

    His research was dismissed – not because of the lack of proof, but because when Weinstein reached the part of the archives that stored the records of the 1960s and forward, Weinstein was abruptly banned from the archives and the archives was closed to western researchers. With no explanation from Russian officials. With the archives closed, no one could verify Weinstein’s research, so it was largely dismissed by the Left.

    But, I’ve always wondered what other secrets remain in the KGB archives and what caused them to suddenly curtail Weinstein’s research. And who’s skeletons are buried there. Of course, there’s plenty of room for speculation and I’ll just keep my speculation to myself.