Alvin Greene Democrat candidate for the Senate, lost in South Carolina but he did much better than he deserved. His opponent Jim DeMint won 792,133 votes compared to Greene’s 358,276. I don’t know who Greene’s supervisor was in the Army, but he deserves an Meritorious Service Medal if this is the same way Greene acted in uniform;
350,000 Democrats voted for this fool. Go find an election map of SC – he actually won in several counties. WTF were they thinking?
Iraq Veterans for Congress sent us a list of their graduating class from last night’s election results;
Iraq Veterans
Tim Griffin, Arkansas’s 2nd District, U.S. Army Veteran
Dr. Joe Heck, Nevada’s 3rd District, U.S. Army Veteran
Adam Kinzinger, Illinois’ 11th District, U.S. Air Force Veteran
Steve Stivers, Ohio’s 15th District, U.S. Army Veteran
Allen West, Florida’s 22nd District, U.S. Army Veteran
Gulf War Veterans
Michael Grimm, New York’s 13th District, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
Steven Palazzo, Mississippi’s 4th District, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran
Veterans of Other Eras
Rick Crawford, Arkansas’ 1st District, U.S. Army Veteran
Steve Pearce, New Mexico’s 2nd District, U.S. Air Force
*Vietnam Veteran
Mike Pompeo, For Kansas’ 4th District, U.S. Army Veteran
You probably remember TSO’s well researched and documented article last week entitled “Criticisms of the New IAVA Scorecard (Actually, ALL Scorecards)“. Well Veterans Today decided that Michael Farrell would do an article on the IAVA scorecard, too, but apparently they wanted to the complete opposite – just cut and paste without a moment’s research.
The part that got me was this line;
It’s hard to be an upstart organization for Vets and be totally nonpartisan but IAVA tries.
Are you serious, numbnuts? March 6th last year, I wrote about how “nonpartisan” are IAVA and it’s Executive Director, Paul Reickhoff. Reickhoff is as non partisan as I am – the difference is that I’ll admit it. That’s probably why I got an email from Reickhoff a few weeks ago asking me to attend some piece of shit IAVA event. Funny how that came just before the scorecard was released, huh? Probably because Reickoff was still smarting from the first spanking TSO gave him over the 2008 scorecard.
The Veterans Today article is entitled “Maybe someday we’ll wake up as a group …” From what I can tell, the crew at Veterans Today is in a deep coma with no chance of waking up if they think Paul Reickoff, the founder of OpTruth, the Army lieutenant who gave the Democrat response to one of President Bush’s Saturday Radio Addresses, is trying to be nonpartisan.
Take this one that Farrel takes at face value;
A couple of other interesting trends: one Democrat in a tough race went from an A+ rating to an A (Barbara Boxer) while another went from an A to an A+ (Blanche Lincoln).
Yeah, poor anti-war Barbara Boxer, who berated a general for calling her “Ma’am” instead of “Senator” fell from an A+ to an regular old “A”. Poor thing. I guess that’ll teach her. Farrell takes the “fuckstick” title I bestowed on Reickhoff once.
Thanks to TSO for the link.
You probably remember the bit I wrote last week about decorated retired colonel Chris Gibson when he slapped down some snot-nosed rich boy in a debate. The Albany Times-Union says the good colonel is now up nine points on Scott Murphy;
Gibson’s appeal has also broadened beyond his Columbia County base as voters have learned who he is, the poll shows. He has erased Murphy’s lead in Warren and Essex counties, where Murphy has been popular, and is now winning the district’s populous core in Saratoga and Rensselaer counties 54-41 percent. In September, Gibson trailed there 58-36 percent.
Here’s one of the ads Gibson is running;
Thanks to Adirondack Patriot for the link.
TSO sent me this link from Moonbat Central at Veterans Today in their own discussion of the war we started with the VFW PAC entitled VFW Endorsements rile the grassroots written by Michael Leon.
Leon defends the VFW PAC by pointing out how other PACs support candidates from both sides of the aisle based on their voting records. He spends an inordinate number of column inches on Vote Vets. Every time a writer does that, you can bet he’ll screw up. After quoting Jon “Hanger Queen” Soltz, Leon writes;
The VoteVets.org PAC leadership picked 10 veterans to endorse for office this year, including one Republican.
Oh, really? Which Republican would that be?
In the VoteVets PAC’s “About Us” page it says;
VoteVets.org PAC has three primary goals:
Elect Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans to public office – regardless of party.
I asked them the other day which Republican they EVER supported. The answer came back; Chuck Hagel. Well, Chuck Hagel isn’t in the running this year, and as far as I know, although he was a veteran, he’s not a veteran of either Iraq or Afghanistan – unless you count the sharpshooting he did at President Bush.
So I’m wondering which Republican they’re supporting this year. A dogcatcher in Bumfuk, Montana?
See, if you go to Iraq Veterans for Congress’ website, they tell you in their “About Us” page right up front, that they only support Republican veterans.
Vets For New York does the same thing.
But VoteVets even supports non-veterans, even though their About page says that they only support veterans. Just yesterday, they announced they’re throwing another 200 grand into their ad buy for Harry Reid in NV. That’s a total of $600k for a guy who has never served a day in uniform…in fact he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War by taking a number of college deferments, the same thing Dick Cheney was criticized for eight years over.
But $600,000 for a non-veteran? From an organization that calls itself “VoteVets”? There should be a law.
From the CATO Institute:
If you listen to Democratic campaign ads in Colorado, Nevada, or Delaware, among other places, you will discover yet another perfidious plot by evil Republicans — they want to “privatize the VA.”
Which makes one respond, “This is a horrible thing because … why?”
I know that even the mention of privatizing certain functions of the VA causes heads to explode at VoteVets and IAVA, which means the idea must have some merit. Personally, I am open to the idea. Jonn, myself, and others frequently post horror stories about the VA healthcare system in addition to using VA benefits ourselves. Despite a 11 percent increase in demand as a result of the GWOT and 95 percent budget increase, wait times are actually getting longer, quality of care isn’t improving, and almost every veteran I know who is attending college has to battle with the GI Bill office over something every semester. At least trying a pilot program where certain health benefits are paid for using debit cards like the ones they use for Health Savings Account is worth a shot.
For those of you who use VA benefits, what are your thoughts about this?
According to the Washington Examiner, the usually drunken brawler who Virginia’s 8th District continues to return to his Congressional seat, Jim Moran, locked in a close battle for that seat, disparaged the military service of his opponent.
Speaking to members of the Arlington County Democratic Committee on October 6th;
“What [Republicans] do is find candidates, usually stealth candidates, that haven’t been in office, haven’t served or performed in any kind of public service. My opponent is typical, frankly.”
However, Moran’s opponent happens to be Col. Patrick Murray (US Army-Ret.), who served 24 years in uniform, was deployed to four different combat zones, including Baghdad, as part of the 2007 troop surge under Gen. David Petraeus, and was even shot at by foreign combatants. If that isn’t public service, I don’t know what is.
What’s really disgusting about that? Moran claims to have endorsements from the Disabled American Veterans and Military Officers Association of America – neither organizations endorse political candidates. Of course, the district is shot-through with military voters since the district includes several military bases and the Pentagon.
So, apparently Moran will try to attract military voters with phony endorsements of their organizations, but he doesn’t think their service rises to the level of his own – Moran’s military-age life was spent on college deferments during the Vietnam War.
To answer your inevitable question; Yes, Moran was endorsed against Murray by the VFW PAC. You can endorse Murray at his website.
I picked this up at Ace of Spades yesterday, but I’ve been holding on to it for days like this. It seems that Retired Colonel Chris Gibson is facing off with Scott Murphy – another of those Hah-vahd grads who carpetbagged themselves into New York State. Chris Gibson, on the other hand is a born and bred New Yorker who graduated from Sienna College (near Albany) with an ROTC Commission. Gibson rose through the ranks through four tours of Iraq, a trip to Kosovo and most recently commanded the 2d Brigade Combat Team of the 82d Airborne Division to Haiti. According to his bio, he has a Purple Heart, 4 Bronze Star Medals, 3 Legions of Merit, Ranger Tab and a CIB.
Anyway, Gibson’s opponent, what’s-his-name-snooty-carpetbagger-lawyer-guy, accused Gibson of wanting to send jobs overseas. Go to 1:30 in this video to see his response;
In case you missed it; “the only thing that I’ve shipped overseas in the last few years has been myself and my paratroopers to fight for this country.”
According to the Albany Times-Union;
A public poll last month showed Murphy leading Gibson, but a Republican-sponsored poll released Tuesday claims Gibson is leading by three points.