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

Category: Usual Suspects

  • Time Warp Journalism

    Yeah, you really don’t need to watch the President’s speeches anymore. you can get crib notes from the media hours before the speech happens, along with their impressions of the president’s abilities – hours before he does anything. notice the date in the corner of the article;

    But the media isn’t biased. Any of you Obama voters feeling like suckers yet?

  • Anti-war crowd get what they voted for; not pleased

    The Washington Times‘ Michael Drost writes this morning that the anti-war crowd voted and raised money for Barack Obama knowing he was committed to winning the war in Afghanistan, and they’re not happy that he intends on keeping that pledge;

    “I’m very upset; he promised change, and this is not change. It’s just going to create more deaths on both sides and create more terrorists,” said Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink. The group, known for protests and targeting Bush administration officials, posted a statement Thursday condemning Mr. Obama’s decision and urging him to replace the combat troops with “humanitarian troops.”

    “Afghanistan needs troops of doctors, farmers, teachers, not more troops,” the statement says.

    Medea Benjamin, also a co-founder of Code Pink, said the group “was always unhappy with [Mr. Obama’s] stance on Afghanistan” and has a campaign on its Web site to “Remind Obama”of his promises to promote peace, stop torture, and end the war in Iraq.

    “We hoped that putting more troops in Afghanistan was just campaign talk….”

    The liberal blog Daily Kos, headed by Obama supporter Markos Moulitsas, also includes posts that are hostile to the president’s troop surge.

    “What possible purpose can be served by escalating the conflict with another 30,000 troops?” asked one post Jan 30.

    The article goes on to quote Michael Moore (who thinks he’s some kind of learned historian) and others. Well, I suspected that Obama’s stance was just campaign rhetoric, too, but I’m heartened that he shown at least a little bit of common sense by recognizing that withdrawal from Afghanistan would have far-reaching consequences, just like Clinton’s premature withdrawal from Somalia has had on our security.

    It’s unfortunate that the squeaky wheels are still willing to sacrifice our way of life just so they can feel better, but we are fortunate that Obama recognizes that most voters will hold him accountable if he sacrifices national security for the patronage of the cranks and liars of the anti-war movement.

  • Obama to halve deficit by 2012

    Have you ever been to one of those department stores which claim they’re selling merchandise at half off, but when you get there you discover that they increased the prices the week before so they could charge you regular prices as “half off”. I think we just saw the same trick played on us on a national scale;

    How hard will it be to halve the deficit when it just exploded last week? Of course Obama blames Bush for the problem;

    “This administration inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, the largest in our nation’s history, and our investments to rescue our economy will add to that deficit in the short term,” Obama told the gathering at the White House. “We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end.”

    Then why did he just double that deficit?

    I heard this same kind of talk in 1993 just before we got slapped with the largest tax hike in history. When the Clinton Administration decided that the rich included Social Security recipients and anyone that had a job. We’re all about to discover that we’re Joe Biden’s kind of patriots – those who pay their taxes and shut up about it.

  • Geezers for Peace honor a geezer for peace

    Shoe Bush 027
    Someone sent me this article from Palm Springs’ Desert Sun that tells us that former colonel Ann Wright gets *surprise* an award from the Geezers For Peace;

    Wright will be recognized today in Palm Springs with a Silver Helmet Award by the local chapter of Veterans for Peace at its annual banquet.

    “We admire her integrity, courage and dedication to the cause of peace,” Veterans for Peace President Tom Swann said in written statement.

    For those of you who don’t who Ann Wright is, she resigned her post with the Bush State Department in protest of the war in Iraq. Her posting was in Mongolia, so I’m sure she was a real valuable asset to the State Department and they were sorry to see her go. That was sarcasm, by the way. I’m pretty sure State doesn’t send important employees to Mongolia.

    She claims that while she was in the military she was stationed in Afghanistan, Granada, Nicaragua and Somalia. I’m having a little trouble believing all of that, which is why I’ve had a FOIA request in for her records since last month. But, her reasons for resigning on March 19, 2003 were;

    In her resignation letter, Wright listed four reasons she could no longer work for the U.S. government under the Bush administration:

    * The decision to invade Iraq without the blessing of the U.N. Security Council
    * The “lack of effort” in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
    * The “lack of policy” in regard to North Korea
    * The curtailment of civil liberties within the United States.

    So the reason she resigned was because President Bush didn’t allow her and her cohorts to make policy for the United States. In other words, she won’t be missed. She just generally makes a pest of herself since her resignation, interrupting Condoleeza Rice’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relation Committee in 2006 and sleeping in a ditch with Cindy Sheehan in Crawford, TX in 2005.

    In her interview in the Desert Sun she tells us;

    It’s the responsibility of us, as U.S. citizens, to question our government. We have the responsibility to look closely at our government.

    So I wonder when she’s going to start speaking out against this Democrat government. I won’t hold my breath.

    She also says;

    I never really got any “You’re a traitor” or “You’re unpatriotic” because I worked for the government for so many years. To call me unpatriotic didn’t make any sense. Very few people approached me in that manner.

    Alger Hiss worked at the State Department for fourteen years. No one with a bit of common sense could deny he was a traitor – it’s not your length of service, Wright, it’s what you do while performing that service.

    And now the Geezers for Peace give her the Silver Helmet Award. I’d really hoped it was me that got the award for exposing so many phonies in VFP’s ranks, but it was not to be this year – maybe next year after I expose Ann Wright.

    I wonder if this is the “Silver Helmet Award”;

  • AP targets AER

    Associated Press saw nothing wrong with Congress passing a $ trillion “stimulus” bill that Congress  hadn’t read and that wouldn’t stimulate the economy. But that’s because they’re busy investigating why the Army Emergency Relief hoarded cash contributions instead of loaning it out.

    For some reason, AP mixes up the term “veteran” to confuse the reader about the AER mission;

    Today, AER’s mission is to ease cash emergencies of active-duty soldiers and retirees, and to provide college scholarships for their families. Its emergency aid covers mortgage payments and food, car repairs, medical bills, travel to family funerals, and the like.

    According to 2007 U.S. Census Bureau figures, 1.3 million veterans — or 6 percent — lived in poverty, with 537,000 unemployed.

    “I have so many people who are losing their homes, they’re behind on their mortgage payments, they’re losing their jobs because of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) or the medication they’re taking — and the Army Emergency Relief can’t help them,” says Outreach Director Sema Olson at U.S. Welcome Home Foundation, which finds aid for combat veterans.

    The AER can’t help them because “veterans” are not necessarily “active duty or retired” soldiers. Their own charter requires soldiers to clear their debt with AER before they leave the service. Just like everything else civilians write in the media about the military, AP finds something wrong with soldiers donating to AER and the fact that military officers are on the board of the AER.

    The truth is that AER loaned soldiers money when no one else would and if they hoarded money, it was because they’d rather have too much than too little – AP’s lack of scrutiny on Congress’ stimulus bill demonstrates where their priorities are. Every time I took one of my soldiers in need to AER, they got the help they needed and they didn’t pay interest on the loan and usually got the money the same day – and they can pay it back with allotments from their pay checks. What could be better?

    I don’t know what AP is trying to prove here, all they proved is that AER is a responsible organization that helps the troops and plans for the future. I’m sure some people might have some bad experiences with AER, but I’ve never seen them do anything but help the troops.

  • Military recruiting adolescents?

    I’ll tell you, this is the stupidest video ever created. Mostly, it’s about military recruiting through the use of the Junior ROTC program.

    The intro on the YouTube video reads;

    14-year-olds are recruited into the Army through the JROTC with the hopes of college money and a career. But when our soldiers come back from war, they face a back-logged Veterans Affairs Department, and can’t get the health care and other help they need. This documentary take a look at the U.S. war machine through the eyes of Veterans and JROTC cadets. It also looks at how veterans of past wars are forced to compete for services with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

    So the military is recruiting 14-year-olds now? Just like Nazi Germany in the final months, I suppose. I’m pretty sure the military is only recruiting 18-year-olds. But let’s look at all of the pretzel logic you have to believe before you can believe that recruiters are evil.

    One expert they interview is a homeless “veteran” who advises youngsters that his service didn’t advance his own goals in life – on Veterans Day he “earned” only about $15 from panhandling. “They don’t care if you’re a veteran”, he tells the interviewer.

    Since most of us veterans are homeless panhandlers, we can probably give youngsters the same advice. He does make the point that cops do give him a break when they’re clearing the streets of hobos, though – so you see, there’s a veteran benefit right there.

    Another group of “experts” are the IVAW members who testified at Winter Soldier II that socialized healthcare provided by the military and the VA sucks – their solution is to throw more money at it, of course. Yet the entire Left thinks the answer to our national “healthcare crisis” is to force the system on the entire country. I’ll never be able to figure that one out.

    Another interviewee, a high school-aged student described how recruiters “pressured” him by offering him job opportunities. Since he didn’t join, I guess they couldn’t have pressured him too much.

    A teacher makes the claim that recruiters offer illegal green cards to “undocumented” students. Now, why would they do that? I mean, honestly. Why would a careerist jeopardize his future by offering a youngster, a youngster who has already broken faith by illegally occupying a space in a classroom funded by taxpayers, an illegal document just to make numbers for a month?

    Other experts they interview are young teenagers who seem eager to advance their lives through the benefits the military offer inner city kids. The youngsters also seem anxious to defend their country, and they have unrealistic expectations of the glory of going to war. How uncharacteristic of teenagers to not understand the gravity of war.

    They also show a clip of Phil Donahue, the king of sleazy television, advocating for the stream of flag draped coffins across out TV screens nightly. The same guy who an hour interviewing a former guy who went through a sex change operation only to discover he was a lesbian. Yeah, he knows what makes good TV.

    Seein’s how, by the video’s producers’ own admission, only 30-50% of JROTC students go on to join the military, I guess the military isn’t doing a good job of brainwashing and arm-twisting.

  • Obama tells employers to fork over our whopping tax cut

    Obama told employers to start giving us our tax cut in April in his weekly radio address today. So that weekly extra thirteen bucks will begin flowing into the economy sooner. Now that money will be burning a hole in our collective pocket, we’ll be able to pay our mortgages, buy gas for our cars…heck, now we can even afford a new car. All thanks to Obama (praise be to him).

    Oh, by the way, that’s thirteen bucks if you’re married and filing jointly – six bucks if you’re not married. And I don’t care what the media says, the way I read the whole “tax credit” thing, it works out to a buck-and-a-half if you’re in the 10% tax bracket (under $60k/yr combined income).

    I’d rather see the contribution limits raised for qualified IRAs and 401ks – that’s the main reason my taxes are lower by more than half since 2001 (and I make twice as much money as I did then). Not only that, it’d help me recover some of my losses from last year in my retirement accounts – it also puts my earnings out of reach of the government for a few more years.

    Yesterday, Obama tried to bully the governors by threatening them if they squandered their stimulus money, and today it’s employers. Who is going to be next?

    How about threatening those people who aren’t paying their mortgages and credit card bills?

  • MSNBC’s Santelli draws ire of Democrats

    In case you missed it the other day, MSNBC’s Chicago trading floor reporter, Rick Santelli let loose on the air Thursday over the “stimulus” bill. I could recite some his points, but it’s much better if you watch him give them;

    Well, it must have had some effect because yesterday, press secretary Gibbs mentioned Santelli by name six times (from the Washington Times);

    A day after President Obama’s housing foreclosure plan was battered by a cable network reporter, the White House on Friday launched a bullish retaliatory attack, saying CNBC reporter Rick Santelli’s “rant” was uninformed and dangerous.

    “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, mentioning the reporter six times by name and holding up a copy of the fact sheet the White House released to back up its foreclosure plan.

    “I would encourage him to read the president’s plan and understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows. I would be more than happy to have him come here and read it. I would be more than happy to buy him a cup of coffee – decaf.”

    Maybe they should buy us all some de-caf coffee (maybe it’s already in the stimulus bill to buy us some de-caf), because everyone I’ve talked to gets just as exercised about the whole thing – including people who voted for Obama.

    Mr. Gibbs refused to accept the stock market as a valuable measure of White House policies.

    “I think it is very safe to assume that what is being priced into the day-to-day fluctuations of the market is not just what happens or is announced at the White House or on the road by the White House,” he said.

    Of course, he’d say that, look at what the market has done since the election;

    Investors don’t bet on the economy in the stock market based on day-to-day events, they bet on what they think the future looks like – and the future under Obama looks grim. Obama says so himself almost every day.

    Firing back at Mr. Gibbs on Friday, Mr. Santelli – more staid than during his Thursday performance – said all he was asking for was more specifics and that he appreciated the offer to read the plan. But he chided Mr. Gibbs over the massive $787 billion spending bill, spanning hundreds of pages, which Congress passed and Mr. Obama signed within a matter of days – and before most lawmakers had a chance to read it.

    Mr. Santelli also said he was happy to be invited to the White House, though he had a slight change for Mr. Gibbs’ plans for coffee: “I’m not really big on decaf, though. I think I prefer tea.”

    Here’s Santelli on Hardball with some doofus who tries to make Santelli’s rant political instead of based on economics;

    Instead of addressing the points of Santelli’s rant, Matthews minimizes the accuracy by claiming Santelli is partisan and “iconized” like Limbaugh and Hannity. Pathetic partisan hack that Matthews is.