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

Category: VoteVets

  • VoteVets doesn’t recognize irony

    I’ve been trying so hard to avoid VoteVets the last few weeks, but the irony of their recent “issues” have been driving me nuts. Last week, dicksmith was calling the VFW a partisan Republican organization. This from the MoveOn.org affiliate that thinks that spending a million bucks on an ad for the President’s Energy bill is a military issue. The same folks who say they support veteran candidates yet supported Obama over John McCain.

    Well, their recent manufactured outrage is against Sean Hannity and his Freedom Concerts. Jon Soltz, the guy who spent three months in Kuwait then spends the next seven years speaking out for Iraq veterans (well, except the ones who disagree with his political views) is suddenly outraged because Hannity’s concerts cost money to present to audiences and they recover those costs from ticket sales;

    Sorry, but the only people talking about this issue are Leftists, hence the Salon link;

    At the heart of the CREW complaints — and the questions raised about the Freedom Alliance by Schlussel — is how much of the total that Hannity and North promised to devote to scholarships for the children of wounded and deceased veterans was spent on that worthy purpose. The data compiled by CREW’s researchers from Freedom Alliance’s own IRS 990 forms show that in every year since 2003, when the concert tours began, the organization has spent more on postage and printing combined (and on salaries) than on “grants” — and far more on “expenses.”

    In 2007, for example, the charity collected nearly $12.5 million in revenue — of which $1 million was spent on “fundraising,” $200,000 on consulting, $1.4 million on postage, $1.1 million on printing, and $500,000 on “conferences.” Another $1.4 million went to salaries. But that year, the Freedom Alliance reported making grants of only $895,347, while retaining “net assets” of over $19 million.

    Like i said, earlier, Soltz and VoteVets spends the money it raises promoting partisan issues and attempting to sabotage Republican candidates while they hire phony vets like Richard Strandloff to campaign for Democrat candidates and use the money they raise to promote issues that have nothing to with veterans. The candidates they support are all Democrat and apparently fir the Eric Massa mold of the ideal candidate.

    And, oh, they’re more worried about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell than they are about whether our troops are getting the support they need from the VA and the Pentagon.

    And yet they have the unmitigated gall to call others “partisan” and criticize the way others spend their money.

  • Confidence in how the war is fought

    Every week or so, dicksmith at VoteVets is fond of reminding us how many terrorists are being killed in Afghanistan under the current administration. Mostly he’s talking about dead terrorists resulting from the use of Joe Biden’s robot ninja zombies.

    dicksmith fails to mention the ways this administration is making us less safe. Ways like releasing terrorists back into the wild from Guantanamo;

    It marks the 34th time that a U.S. judge frees a Guantanamo terrorist since the Supreme Court ruled that detainees could challenge their incarceration in federal court. Slahi arrived at the military compound in 2002 and claims he was tortured, threatened with death, sleep deprived and moved around the base blindfolded.

    Slahi’s terrorist activities are extensive and detailed in the 9/11 Commission report, which explains how he recruited four of the September 2001 conspirators from the renowned Hamburg Germany cell. They include Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah, the suicide pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93.

    Yeah, I know it’s a judge who released Slahi, but it’s the choice of the administration to try these animals in a court of law instead of just leaving them imprisoned. Is there any doubt that the world willbe less safe when Slahi is released? How much sense does it make to release him on technicalities of law?

    I’d love for dicksmith or Tony Camerino to explain how this makes us more safe and how closing Guantanamo makes even a little sense.

    Thanks to Mad Bear for the link.

  • Healthcare bill screws veterans

    You might remember if you’ve been around here that long, back in August, we reported that Stephen Buyer warned that the healthcare bill penalized veterans who rely on their earned medical benefits as their primary provider. In fact, I asked the question just the other day.

    Well, according to the VFW, I was asking the right questions all along, and no one wasanswering for a good reason;

    “The president and the Democratic leadership are betraying America’s veterans,” said Thomas J. Tradewell Sr., a combat-wounded Vietnam veteran from Sussex, Wis., who leads the 2.1 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. and its Auxiliaries.

    “And what makes matters worse is the leadership and the president knows the bill is flawed, yet they are pushing for passage today like it’s a do-or-die situation. This nation deserves the best from their elected officials, and the rush to pass legislation of this magnitude is not it.”

    Apparently, Buyer saw it comingback in August and no one did anything about it – that means to me that it was intentional on the part of the people who wrote the bill. Otherwise, they would have fixed it. We saw last year how this government tried to finance their health care bill on the backs of service-connected disability veterans and they caved pretty quickly – now we know why.

    The folks who play at being veteran advocates, like those at VoteVets, have been telling us to sit down and shut up. I hope veterans remember in November.

    ADDED: Defense Secretary Gates claims that TRICARE meets the minimum requirements of the health care. I guess we can expect Shinseki’s blowjob support any minute, too.

  • Questionable DADT poll at VV

    I saw the blog post at VetsVoice yesterday in regards to the poll VoteVets commissioned about the question of the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy among younger troops and veterans. Just because it was a VV poll and the fact that showed exactly what VV wanted it to show made it suspect. Luckily, Bruse Kesler at Maggie’s Farm saw it, too, and decided to break it down for us;

    1. Its service composition is off. The poll has the following service who say they served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 50% Army, 12% Marines, 18% Navy, 22% Air Force. According to Stars and Stripes in March 2008, for example, when most who’d served had been in Iraq, 73% were in the Army, 18% in the Marines, 3% in the Navy, and 6% in the Air Force.

    2. The poll does not distinguish those in combat units (although many in non-combat units often were subject to hostile fire). One of the key considerations regarding Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell is how it may affect combat effectiveness.

    3. The methodology of the poll is clouded.

    Go read the whole thing.

  • VoteVets today and yesterday

    Here’s a video posted in February 2007, in which Jon Soltz (the Michael Scott of veteran affairs) tells the press that there’s a “100% chance that the escalation [the Surge] won’t work”.

    This weekend, VetsVoice‘s Eyes Only brags about the conditions in Iraq;

    And, perhaps the greatest thing to happen on Election Day in Iraq was that NO US Forces were hurt, or needed, or called out for anything. The Iraqis were able to do what they needed to do. And now, it is our turn to do what we need to do, which is prepare to close this out, return with honor, and continue on.

    And yet VoteVets thinks they’re a relevant voice in the public discourse over the war against terrorists. It seems to me that the surge was a 95% success and not the 100% failure that Soltz predicted…and that’s if I only use Eyes Only, Soltz’ own blogger, as my source.

    That’s probably why they’ve limited themselves to completely idiot issues like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Cap and Trade bill. Soltz’ three months in Kuwait didn’t equip him for military prognostication.

  • Jon Soltz: enslave the brown people

    Just like everything else that VoteVets supports that doesn’t have anything to do with the military, Jon Soltz, veteran of three months in Kuwait hearing the Iraq War in the distance, has decided that *surprise* another Democrat vote-buy supported by the MoveOn crowd is related to the military. Immigration.

    Let’s read to his plan to enslave the brown people from south of our border to do our bidding in the war against terror;

    We don’t know exactly how many potential troops we’re robbing our military of, as it fights dangerous enemies around the world, by continuing an immigration policy that leads far too many undocumented immigrants to stay in the shadows. What we do know, however, is that the current system keeps many of them from the benefits military service offers in terms of education, a living wage, health care, and pensions, which many would find generous enough to consider service. According to Senator Dick Durbin, tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants could become recruits.

    By opening up the path to citizenship, and adding tens of thousands of new service members, those currently in our Armed Forces can get some much-needed relief. A young man from Oklahoma who is away from his wife and kids because of his fifth tour in Afghanistan might get rotated out and given a much needed rest on the home-front, if we allow immigrants to come out the shadows and serve.

    OK, so maybe he didn’t say “enslave” the brown people, but just like the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell debate, we’re expected to believe that by passing all of this legislation, gays and illegals are just lined up around the corner of every recruiting station in the country waiting for the opportunity to join the military. I don’t see it.

    I make all these points, first and foremost, because I love our military, and care about the people serving right now.

    Then why don’t you carry your incompetent ass over to the Middle East and put in a few months for someone right now, Jon?

    I don’t have anything against immigrants serving – I remember the story in the early months of the Iraq War when a platoon of Salvadorans were ambushed by al Qaeda. Armed only with machetes, the Salvadorans charged into the withering gunfire and hacked their attackers to tiny pieces. That’s the kind of people I want on my side.

    But Soltz misses the point, in his usual manner. These illegals broke the law to get into this country – do we really want felons forgiven and serving alongside people who obey the law? And doesn’t their willingness to break our laws, and the laws of their own countries, by the way, kind of cast a pall over ALL immigrants, even the ones who obeyed the laws and came here legally?

    Of course, Soltz muddles the whole argument by quoting patriotic legal immigrants to justify forgiveness for the illegals.

    In fact, one immigrant in the military once said, “I’m a Cuban refugee who came to this country when I was 10 years old and flunked the sixth grade because I couldn’t speak English.” That immigrant was Army Brigadier General Bernardo Negrete, who was a special operations officer with four tours of duty….

    Yeah, Soltz, you dumbass, we’re not discussing racism here, we discussing law breakers, and your quote completely misses the target. My wife is a legal Spanish-accented immigrant, and she hates the way she’s treated like a criminal because of the actions of others – how she has to prove her innocence every time she applies for a job or credit.

    If you really care about the troops in uniform currently serving, you’d be against immigration reform as currently supported by Democrats in Congress.

  • Massa gropes us all

    Before you read this, go read David Bellavia’s five issues with Massa. It’s a masterpiece and one of the reasons I’m considering canonizing Bellavia.

    TSO sends us a link from the Washington Post about Eric Massa, the victim of “Old Guy” hate crimes perpetrated by his staffer. The last three paragraphs of the Washington Post article;

    After more than two decades in the Navy, during which he reached the rank of commander, Massa moved to Upstate New York to work for the manufacturing company Corning. In his official biography, he says he was laid off from his job because, “due to unfair free trade agreements, the company could not afford to keep those jobs in America.”

    Massa then became a professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. He says in his biography that he was an early critic of the Bush administration’s strategy for invading Iraq and that he was “forced out” of his Armed Services job for “standing up against the failed pre-war planning.” Congressional salary data on file at the Web site Legistorm shows that Massa was employed by the committee for eight months in 2003.

    Previously a Republican, Massa switched parties after leaving the House payroll and went on to work for the 2004 presidential campaign of retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, for whom Massa had worked when Clark was supreme allied commander of NATO.

    Yeah, Corning is probably the fairest employer in New York State – they’ve resisted moving the company and outsourcing during the last thirty years of brutal oppression of the last three New York Administrations. They’ve bore every burden and paid any price to keep the New York business in New York State. Well, for everyone except Massa, apparently. And, oh, those free trade agreements – all Clinton Administration, boy-o.

    Then he was forced out of the House Armed Service Committee after eight months of being an abrasive turd. I wonder what “pre-war planning” went on in the House Armed Services Committee. Seems to me that was done at the Pentagon – or maybe in the deep recesses of the psyche contained in Massa’s fat head.

    But he found a home with Wesley Clark – probably reliving the staff tickle fights they used to have during the Kosovo operation. Clark paid him back with Vote Vets endorsements in 2006 and 2008.

    And now Massa resigns and it’s someone else’s fault just like every other job he hasn’t been able to hold. Like I said the other day, I hope his poor wife slaps the dog shit out of him morning before breakfast – and I hope he carries his useless ass back to South Carolina where he belongs.

  • The depth of the intellect at VoteVets

    dicksmith at VetsVoice is pushing the myth that we never would have caught Colleen Larose, known as Jihad Jane in the media, if we were so involved in profiling Muslims just because Larose happens to be a Caucasian. This is so specious, it is to laugh.

    How many Caucasians have been arrested who were involved in terrorism against Americans as compared to Muslims? Seriously. How many? You can count on two fingers. Apparently, we should be ignoring a few billion people and focus on those less-than-one-percenters, just because they’re an acceptable skin pigmentation to profile.

    Of course, that’s the kind of mud-puddle-depth of intellect we’ve come to expect from an organization led by a motor pool officer with three months in Kuwait.