Someone sent me an article from Mother Jones entitled “Zip it, Soldier” which celebrates the bravery of the IVAW members who go against the grain of the military. Of course, they include two of our favorites, Army Sergeant and Adam Kokesh both of whom visit here from time to time.
But what made me dredge all of this ancient history up was Sharrock’s last paragraph in which she wrote;
[Kokesh] testified before Congress last May about his experience and has participated in numerous IVAW events—in uniform.
Like he was brave for continuing to wear his uniform even in front of Congress. Well, unfortunately for Ms. Sharrock, me and my camera were at the testimony, too;
What military uniform is that?
Other protests she might have been talking about;
Oh – a hat. That must be what she’s talking about. He wore his hat without fear. At least she didn’t call him Sergeant Kokesh.
IAVA’s West Coast Heroes Celebration
This spring, please join us in honoring the nation’s newest generation of heroes and celebrating the successes of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA). IAVA is holding the first annual West Coast Heroes Celebration on Thursday, April 30th, 2009. The cocktail reception will be held at the offices of Creative Artists Agency (2000 Avenue of the Stars) in Los Angeles, California from 7-9:00PM.
We are excited to have Cameron Diaz, Nick Styne, and Norman Lear co-host this special evening.
I mean, who among us could ever forget Ms. Diaz’s standing up for the veterans during the 2004 election when she said:
Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. We could lo–if you think that rape should be legal, then don’t vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote.
Well, that really had nothing to do with veterans actually, but I am sure she is spectacular on her caring.
High-powered motion picture talent agent Nick Styne is leaving International Creative Management after more than ten years. He’ll be joining the Creative Artists Agency and is reportedly taking major clients like Cameron Diaz, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair supermodel Heidi Klum with him.
Man, I can TOTALLY see why OEF/OIF vets want to hang with him. I know when I came off the airplane on my return my first thought was “Shit! Where am I gonna get a talent agent now?” Because, if there is one thing a wounded vet without a job needs, it is a talent scout. Don’t believe me? Just run up to Walter Reed and ask for a show of hands on how many have their own, and I bet not a one of them does.
And Norman Lear, man, that dude is Teh Awesome! Just a few weeks ago he was talking about how he supported the troops of this war, as he had ones in the past:
But like any great film, and Stop-Loss is a great film, it can help the viewer to experience that “feeling,” if only fleetingly. Stop-Loss did that for me. I feel as never before for the men and women fighting it and for their families.
During the Vietnam protest days there was an indelible photograph of a group of students lying on the track in front of a troop train. Where, I wonder, is my troop train?
Dude, I am *SO* down with that logic. I truly am. I like the Red Sox, but until Jimmy Falon played a deranged lunatic member of Sox Nation, I never truly understood. It really does take a movie to make you understand and grasp the importance of an event you took part in, doesn’t it?
(To his credit, at least Lear is a veteran of WWII)
I just personally want to thank IAVA for doing this for all of us out here struggling with having $250 of expendable income that we can’t get rid of, and giving us the opportunity to meet the types of counsellors we need the most: ones who can get us into the movies.
This headline caught my eye while I was checking my email;
Why do you think President Bush called them part of the axis of evil? What do you think they’ve been doing the last several years? Capturing British sailors, supplying the insurgency against US troops in Iraq? Are we supposed to believe it just started this weekend?
The guy who sat next to me in the turret of our Bradley through the Gulf War sent me this article from Fox News;
Iran can develop a nuclear weapon within a year and has ready access to enough fissile material to produce up to 50 nuclear weapons, according to a panel of current and former U.S. officials advising the Obama administration.
William Schneider, Jr., chairman of the Defense Science Board and a former under secretary of state in the Reagan administration, offered those estimates Wednesday during a news conference announcing the release of a new “Presidential Task Force” report on Iran by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
So are we going to continue to subordinate our foreign policy to the whims of those hags at Code Pink and IVAW? Or are we going to act like grown ups?
The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board writes this morning that the Bush recession has ended, that the market should be on it’s way to recovery. Housing prices have fallen 27%, the planet is awash in capital what with every government lowering their interest rates, stocks were priced for the recession last year, after the damage was assessed. So why hasn’t the economy begun recovering;
So what has happened in the last two months? The economy has received no great new outside shock. Exchange rates and other prices have been stable, and there are no security crises of note. The reality of a sharp recession has been known and built into stock prices since last year’s fourth quarter.
What is new is the unveiling of Mr. Obama’s agenda and his approach to governance. Every new President has a finite stock of capital — financial and political — to deploy, and amid recession Mr. Obama has more than most. But one negative revelation has been the way he has chosen to spend his scarce resources on income transfers rather than growth promotion. Most of his “stimulus” spending was devoted to social programs, rather than public works, and nearly all of the tax cuts were devoted to income maintenance rather than to improving incentives to work or invest.
His Treasury has been making a similar mistake with its financial bailout plans. The banking system needs to work through its losses, and one necessary use of public capital is to assist in burning down those bad assets as fast as possible. Yet most of Team Obama’s ministrations so far have gone toward triage and life support, rather than repair and recovery.
Instead of “investing” our tax money in the private sector where jobs are created, where tax revenue is generated, where our wealth lives, the Democrats, with the president in their van, are making threatening gestures at the pharmaceutical industry, and the healthcare business, in general. They’re spending the money on grasshopper research and bee insurance while plotting to grab up the private student loan business.
Earlier, I wrote that the president’s press secretary dismissed investors as “a small audience” – even though over half of Americans are invested in stocks and mutual funds. Gibbs said that Obama is working for a “larger audience” – how much larger of an audience do investors need to be to merit the administration’s attention?
James Taranto in Best of the Web Today recounts a nearly Stalinesque atmosphere in the White House with feted artists and lavish parties on the taxpayer’s dime and chiildish dismissals of our concerns;
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 50% since its October 2007 peak, and some 30% just since Election Day*. The president’s response? As we noted yesterday, he dismisses this relentless decline as “fits and starts.”
WSJ’s editorial concludes;
Listening to Mr. Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, on the weekend, we couldn’t help but wonder if they appreciate any of this. They seem preoccupied with going to the barricades against Republicans who wield little power, or picking a fight with Rush Limbaugh, as if this is the kind of economic leadership Americans want.
Perhaps they’re reading the polls and figure they have two or three years before voters stop blaming Republicans and Mr. Bush for the economy. Even if that’s right in the long run, in the meantime their assault on business and investors is delaying a recovery and ensuring that the expansion will be weaker than it should be when it finally does arrive.
Harold Meyerson, one of the columnists at the Washington Post writes today that Obama isn’t a socialist, and he should know, he claims, because Meyerson is a socialist. He begins his little instructive column by taking offense that anyone would even consider Obama a socialist;
Well! Even as we all turn red, I’ve still encountered just two avowed democratic socialists in my daily rounds through the nation’s capital: Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders . . . and the guy I see in the mirror when I shave. Bernie is quite capable of speaking for himself, so what follows is a report on the state of actual existing socialism from the other half of the D.C. Senators and Columnists Soviet.
Yeah, “avowed” because there are very few people who wouldn’t admit it unless they have the protection that the Washington Post provides for their assembled crackpots and assorted lunatics.
Meyerson rambles on about “social justice”, national healthcare and all of the other blather about things he’ll never have to pay for as long as Conservatives stand firm against the socialist wave sweeping the country. After reading his lie about Chavez, I could hardly bring myself to read the rest.
I’m feeling a bit nervous here. We were accused of stifling dissent during the last eight years. What’s-his-face-Mr.-Sarandon complained that there was a chill wind blowing that kept him silent – from the podium at the National Press Club. Those poor Dixie Chicks only made several million dollars on their tour because of the evil Republicans. But all the while, the White House was actually silent about the controversies that surrounded all of the cranks who claimed they were being persecuted by the Bush/Cheney cabal.
But now we get a new administration, and they specifically target private citizens, attacking them in their public forum, from the White House bully pulpit. First, they went after Rick Santelli of CNBC a week or so ago. Last weekend, they decided to go after Rush Limbaugh. This morning Dave Poof (or whatever the hell his name is) Obama’s campaign manager, has an uncontested piece in the Washington Post singling out Limbaugh and stapling all kinds of false interpretations of Limbaugh’s speeches to Republicans and Conservatives.
Today we read that the White House has decided to take on CNBC’s Jim Cramer, a lifelong Democrat for saying this (the best part begins at about 3 minutes into the video);
So here comes Gibbs again (at about 2:50 into the video);
Gibbs calls investors “a small audience” – 50% of Americans are invested in stocks or mutual funds. I’d hardly call that a small audience.
This is unprecedented in our history – the president, through his staff, attacking private citizens for expressing their opinions. I feel a chill wind so where’s Mr. Sarandon now? Where’s my news conference at the National Press Club?
According to the Washington Times this morning, our new president is having trouble keeping his free-spending Congressional cohorts in line so he can keep the promisies he made to voters last year;
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer became the second leading congressional Democrat in a week to push back against Mr. Obama’s drive to curb member-directed earmarks on spending bills.
Saying he was open to the president’s “suggestions” about how to reform the spending process, the Maryland Democrat told reporters, “I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do. I hope you all got that down.”
His remark echoed a warning from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, that the earmarks process is a congressional prerogative.
Emphasis is mine – in other words, Congress is going to do what it wants – despite the president. I guess they still think it’s Bush up there in the White House.
Yeah, here’s what Obama said in the campaign;
In case you missed it, this line was in there;
Obama and Biden will slash earmarks to no greater than year 1994 levels and ensure all spending decisions are open to the public.
Apparently Reid, Pelosi and Hoyer missed that part of the campaign. Are any of them looking around at the economy outside of the Beltway? Next year’s elections are going to be so much fun to watch.
Meet Joshua Casteel, just another disingenuous IVAW member. Here’s his profile at IVAW;
He’s also been to the Vatican to convince the Pope to urge soldiers to become conscientious objectors;
In his profile at IVAW, he tries to make you think he’s an officer with this line;
Joshua Casteel first enlisted in the US Army Reserves at the age of 17, received an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point at 18, but at 25 was honorably discharged from Active Duty as a conscientious objector.
