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

Category: Usual Suspects

  • Health care struggling

    So the President thought he could convince us to stop thinking about numbers last night. Didn’t work. JammieWearingFool recounts the conversation Senator Charles Grassley had with a Democrat colleague in which the colleague related the President telling the Blue Dog Democrats “You’re going to destroy my presidency.”

    Karl Rove, In the Wall Street Journal “ObamaCare in Trouble“;

    The polls are crumbling because of a flood of bad news about Mr. Obama’s health-care proposals. One batch of such news came from a July 17 study by the Lewin Group that was commissioned by the Heritage Foundation. It projects that if the House bill becomes law, 83.4 million people—nearly half of those with private coverage—will lose private insurance as employers drop their plans. Mr. Obama’s promise that you can keep your plan is being left on the cutting room floor with nary a peep from the president.

    Another batch of bad news came this week as Democratic governors from Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico and Washington joined GOP colleagues at the National Governors Association summer meeting to blast the administration for plans to shift millions of families into Medicaid. That could stick states with $440 billion in new costs over the next decade.

    Even the Associated Press can’t put a happy face sticker on the White House these days;

    The sense of bipartisanship the president infused into the effort in March has been dissipated; lawmakers may never have taken it seriously. And the clear, confident message of last year’s presidential campaign has turned into confusing policy options and messy politics, a standoff on Capitol Hill over how to expand and improve health coverage — and somehow pay for it.

    It’s all recasting Obama’s image. The cool, crisp candidate who captivated voters last fall has been replaced by a president who is constantly calling for action, with little to show for it and his credibility at stake.

    Democrats are putting on a brave face, noting that in Congress a legislative standstill can quickly shift into high-gear action.

    It’s called biting off more than you can chew. George Bush knew it. he didn’t try to shove massive tax cuts down Congress’ throats, he took it slowly over five years and got everything he wanted. But Obama thought he had some kind of leverage over everyone because everyone around him told him so – that echo chamber effect.

    All of those people who took the fall for his miscalculations during the elections are about to get some more company under the Obama bus.

  • Maddow blames “right wing” for Peters

    Rachel Maddow, whose show on MSNBC is viewed by fewer people than live in my house, took the time the other day to blame LTC Ralph Peters’s stupid rant on Fox News on Sunday over imprisoned Bowe Berdahl’s video on the entire right. IAVA’s Paul Reickhoff is interviewed and, to his credit, doesn’t engage in the partisan hackery of Maddow;

    Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

    Maddow takes the time to quote Michelle Malkin and disparages her for describing Peter’s rant as “tough words” – somehow that’s evidence of a broader conspiracy against our troops. Actually, I think Ms. Malkin was showing uncharacteristic restraint.

    I wonder where Maddow was when the famous left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga commented on American contractors who were killed in Iraq aqnd their bodies hung from a bridge with his famous “F*** ’em“.

    In fact, some of us saw evidence of Maddow having an effect on the nutroots yesterday when a Left wing blogger accused the milblogs of supporting Peters’ statement. The truth is that the milblogs have been mostly silent on it, there is no support for Peters among the milblogs or even the Right blogs.

    Maddow, true to her character, makes a mountain out of a mole hill. The left would be wise to do their research before they go off half-cocked.

  • The IVAW Board series; TJ Buonomo

    As TSO wrote last night, we’ve come into possession of the actual applications for the eight folks who endeavor to occupy those seats around the IVAW Board of Directors table. And a stellar group they are. Since there’s eight of them, we’ve decided to split them up between us and hit you with one every day for the next week or so.

    Army Sergeant claims that when the current board is gone everything will change. Although that would be nice, given the candidates, I don’t think so. To wit;

    This is Thomas J Buonomo;

    tj-buonomo

    That’s from a picture I took of him when I met him last March. In fact, I talked to him for about an hour during my long lunch. The first thing he remembered about me was the post I did earlier in the month entitled “Safe enough for ya now, TJ?” in which I chided him for avoiding duty in Iraq when there was a war, but venturing to Iraq now that the surge worked. He didn’t like the post much, I guess.

    TSO wrote about TJ in April of last year, while he was still at The Sniper, so I won’t rehash that whole thing about him going to the Air Force Academy and then getting booted from the Army for advocating then-VP Cheney’s impeachment. But it is germane to this application. In his qualifications, Buonomo writes;

    35D All Source Military Intelligence Officer, U.S. Army; 2LT; 14 Months Active Duty Army; 5 Years, 14 Months Total Time In Service

    How many officers include their service academy or ROTC time in computing their military service? Yeah, TJ, you have 14 months of service time. Most of that was in your Officer Basic Course (18 weeks, I think).

    When asked how he would improve the IVAW, his answer was;

    Nuance, in the way we express ourselves through public statements and through action in the street, is the key to credibility and relevance. We have to keep up with what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and tailor our messaging accordingly.

    But, in his “Candidate’s Statement” his views were a bit less “nuanced”;

    …my proposed mission objectives would include the prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, starting with former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

    In fact, I can’t think of anything more old-anced. He left out the “no war for oil” line. Oh, wait;

    …my proposed mission objectives would include pressuring the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to exercise rigorous oversight over U.S. oil companies in order to safeguard against a long term economic occupation of Iraq.

    Congress does such a good job with “oversight”, I’m sure they could drive Iraq’s oil industry into the ground in no time. Especially, with unicorn poop as a cleaner, more abundant fuel source right around the next corner.

    Gotta get in a plug for the ISO;

    …my third proposed objective would be to pressure the Obama administration’s State Department to unequivocally champion workers’ rights in Iraq in accordance with standards established by the International Labor Organization.

    So we’re not supposed to interfere with foreign nations’ internal issues – unless it’s in support of organizing them into a cool socialist organization. I get it now.

    And since Buonomo isn’t a combat veteran, he’s all for letting other non-veterans into the IRAQ VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR;

    I am in support of expanding IVAW’s membership to include Foreign Service and Intelligence Community veterans who have served since September 11, 2001 because I believe that it is essential for us to have an integrated understanding of the military, economic, and political facets of the occupation.

    So much for being legitimate Veteran Service Organization. They’ve had a hard enough time verifying their membership’s qualifications. Can you imagine how many “former CIA agents” who were “black ops” with “classified records” they’d have lined up to join?

    He does reveal one tasty tidbit – out of the 1700 members of IVAW, only 1300 of them have been verified. That means I have to root out 400 prospective phonies.

    What I remember most about my conversation with Buonomo is that he talks so slow and he really has no point. At the time I wrote; “I tried to have a discussion with him, but he talks so slow that’s it’s just irritating. He kept saying “Let me finish” but he never does.”

    So, do you folks at IVAW want yet another deep thinker who hasn’t served in the military outside of the United States representing your interests even though he doesn’t have a clue what you’ve experienced? One who counts his college time as military service? One who thinks that prosecuting what he defines as “war criminals” is more important that reaching out to veterans and helping them?

    Clearly, Buonomo is more interested in being involved in activist activities than helping the membership. At what point do you get past the “Against the War” part and start focusing on the “Iraq Veterans” part? And which part do you think is most important to TJ Buonomo?

  • Everyone comes to TAH; the Andre Shepherd version

    Yes, everyone comes to This Ain’t Hell sooner or later. Everyone we’ve written about has eventually had someone who knew them “back when” come forward and tell us their back story. Today we feature a tale about Andre Shepherd, the soldier who went AWOL in Europe and is applying for refugee status to avoid doing his jail time. In fact, we expected the Germans to arrive at decision last month about him.

    But here’s the real Andre Shepherd from someone who knew him. He came by here yesterday and left a comment. I contacted him last night and asked him if he could expand his thoughts and here they are;

    Wowwwww, I mean wowwww… ok I have to say a few words now…

    My name is Joe, I was born in Torrance California and moved to Kent Ohio in July of 1999. What you don’t know is Andre Shepherd was one of my first friends when I moved to Ohio met him in 2000 . He was my manager at McDonalds at Kent State University. The guy was pretty cool he was into video games, movies – he was a geek like myself.

    In 2000 Dres roomate was moving out of his place and I was living with my then girlfriend in a nice 1 bedroom apartment. He came to me and asked if we could move into his place. He didn’t want to leave his lease, So i talked my gf into doing it I trusted Dre as he was a good friend so my girlfriend did as well. We move in with him everything is going fine for about 6 months. One day Dre comes home and tells us he got fired from McDonalds. I;d get home from working a 8 hour day and he’s playing my Dreamcast.

    At first, whatever, he just lost his job but it kept going on and on I’d get home he’s always in the same spot im like man you need to go out and look for a job. He tells me I did look I just got back just running me lines of bullshit. He never wanted to go back to fast food but I told him I could see if I could get him into Burger King he had plenty of experience. Didn’t take very long and Burger king hired him on the spot as a shift manager, he trained for a few months and was a assistant manager making salary.

    Everything was fine till around October. He decided to quit the job he was done with fast food and all the drama. He left one day and never came back. Andre flat out left me and my girlfriend to pick up the slack 6 months he was gone. Daily I would get home and there would be 50 messages on the answering machine of people trying to reach Dre. The phone would ring off the hook and we would tell the bill collectors no we have not seen him, sometimes the bill collectors would tell us we were lying and that he was home and we were trying to hide them.

    We would get knocks at the door of people trying to find him so they could start repossessing things of his. My girlfriend maxed out 2 credit cards and we were 3500+ in the hole having to pay his half of the rent, we tried to get out of the lease but they said tough shit pay us. I was sitting there playing my Dreamcast and in walks Dre after 6 months no calls no one knows where the hell he was.

    I was livid I let out all I had on my mind. He apologized but that was not good enough. My then girlfriend told me how she lost respect for me and lost all trust cause it was my fault I told her we would be ok moving with Dre he had a job, well, wow, did that all hit me in the face.

    So after I cooled down he told me how he got this job selling these awesome Kirby vacuum cleaners. He tried to sell one of these Kirby vacuums they’re like 2 grand and I couldn’t believe it. He made this sales pitch, granted he did a good job showed us how this vacuumed could do all these things – it was impressive. We told him “hell no” we’re not gonna buy this and he got pissed at us for not doing so, how can we afford a vacuum cleaner at this point when were so far in the hole?

    The point I’m making here is the guy ran away from everything just as I’m finding out now he ran from the Army and is banned from the USA. WOW, really? I know more about the dude being his friend for 5 years. The dude was a Republican would never join the military unless he had to for financial obligations. Let me tell you when I sit and read all this stuff he makes him self out like some hero. Truth be told he’s doing what he always had run from everything, run from his job, run from his friends. He lived in his car the 6 months he was gone. His bills were piling up so high you couldn’t see half of his door to his room, the door is almost 7 feet tall.

    He owes me almost $3500 in bills we had to pay for his lease obligation , we were paying his half of his rent with credit cards till they maxed out. He owes another friend $2k for buying his Dodge Intrepid at the time he had a job at Burger King and thought he was gonna get paid back. Dre, as far as a person goes, is the nicest person and caring person you would ever meet. His obligations however are a mess and anytime something would come up the first thing he would do is run from them like he did to us. His bills got so bad, his life got so bad having to live in his car he didn’t have a choice.

    Joining the Army would pay his bills. Now I’m not saying he’s not fighting for a good cause, i believe he is doing something he strongly believes in, he thinks the Iraq war is pointless and, yes, I agree it is pointless and its a war that will never end. But when you sign up for the army or anything you are committed to do whatever is asked from his country.

    He swore an oath, and he ran. Not only did he run but he ran during a war which is the death penalty in the USA he is a traitor to our people. The problem is he always thinks about him self but there is gonna be more long term impact on what he’s doing with this thing in Germany. If they grant him amnesty you are gonna see thousands of people trying to do the same thing he’s doing and that is not right.

  • Feds one step closer to Murtha

    Washington Times‘ Ben Conery reports this morning that federal prosecutors have secured a conviction of another criminal with ties to John Murtha;

    A federal investigation into defense contractors, including some with links to Rep. John P. Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, appears to be gathering steam – and valuable help.

    Mark O’Hair, a Defense Department program manager, pleaded guilty Monday to making a false statement on a federal disclosure form. He acknowledged lying about business ties he had to companies that received money from a military contract he oversaw.

    The plea agreement, reached in federal court in Florida, does not specify a penalty for O’Hair. But the plea deal does require O’Hair to cooperate with federal agents.

    Since the boneheads in Murtha’s district won’t fire his monkey-ass, maybe the Feds can do it for us.

  • Obama; healthcare isn’t about me

    Yesterday, Obama told a crowd of supporters that Republicans are picking on the poor baby. he got all whiny when he told the story of Jim DeMint, as recounted by the AFP;

    Last week, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint predicted the Obama plan would not pass Congress, and said such a failure could be Obama’s “Waterloo,” referring to the battle that effectively ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s military career.

    “It will break him,” DeMint said,

    In response, Obama sniveled;

    “This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy,” Obama said on a visit to a Washington hospital.

    Well, that’s the first time it hasn’t been about Obama, then. We’ve heard how if we don’t support Obama’s candidacy or his policies we’re racists. How that not personal?

    And DeMint is trying to defeat Obama politically because Obama’s policies are damaging to our future. Isn’t that what a political party is supposed to do – protect the country politically? A national health care plan is not feasible – it has nothing to do with Obama.

    It’s funny that the Obama crowd wants to do away with our missile defense system because it doesn’t work perfectly yet, but he wants to implement a plan for health care that every expert in the country says won’t work.

  • Mejia on Carl Webb

    Some of you may remember the investigation we did on Carl Webb a month-and-a-half ago. Webb made several comments on the internet that urged members of the military to sabotage equipment and otherwise disrupt military operations while stationed in Iraq. We had Webb’s military records and proved that he wasn’t eligible for membership in IVAW. That post has yet to be disputed with any evidence to the contrary.

    Webb has become a point of contention among members of the IVAW for quite sometime because some members of the IVAW don’t like being associated with other members who advocate killing US troops. The latest to resign because of Webb, is Jeff Peskoff, a member of this forum.

    Since the Board of Directors of the IVAW has been hesitant about doing anything about a rogue member advocating treason and sabotage from the safety of his keyboard in Austin, TX, Peskoff finally got a statement last night on Facebook from Camilo Mejia, IVAW’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. That statement follows;
    (more…)

  • Obama sends wrong message to Chavez

    In the past, the messages that the US has sent to foreign governments has caused many of our foreign policy problems. Who can forget Saddam Hussein thinking he had Ambassador April Catherine Glaspie’s tacit approval for an invasion of Kuwait? The reason the Soviets thought they could invade Afghanistan was because they knew Jimmy Carter would do nothing (boy, he fooled them – he boycotted the Moscow Olympics. That taught ’em.)

    Now, by coming down on the wrong side of the Honduras problem, Obama could be giving Chavez clearance to forcibly re-install ousted president Manuel Zelaya. Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes today in the Wall Street Journal;

    At issue is Mr. Chávez’s determination to restore deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to power through multilateral pressure. His phone call to a State Department official showed that his campaign was not going well and that he thought he could get U.S. help.

    This is not good news for the region. The Venezuelan may feel that his aims have enough support from the U.S. and the Organization of American States (OAS) that he would be justified in forcing Mr. Zelaya on Honduras by supporting a violent overthrow of the current government. That he has reason to harbor such a view is yet another sign that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history.

    In the three weeks since the Honduran Congress moved to defend the country’s constitution by relieving Mr. Zelaya of his presidential duties, it has become clear that his arrest was both lawful and a necessary precaution against violence.

    The Obama Administration has ignored the fact that Zelaya’s removal was required by the Honduran Constitution. In fact, under the Honduran Constitution, Zelaya’s loss of his Honduran citizenship was required. Continuing to call this a coup, only lends a violent return of Zelaya legitimacy.

    The Obama Administration has refused to acknowledge the discovery of computer files in Honduras that held the pre-ordained outcome of Zelaya’s illegal referendum (reported to us by Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog on Saturday) intentionally ignoring the fact that the whole world has been set up by the amateurs of the Bolivarian Revolution.

    Fausta writes this morning that Zelaya has shifted his ultimatum date to July 24th – enough time for Chavez to position Venezuelan troops in Nicaragua to force the return of Zelaya.