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

Category: VoteVets

  • More VoteVets double talk

    Back when the Obamacare bill passed and the boys at Vetvoice were tooting their horns about how great this would be for the country, I asked them how this would affect my health care, selfish fuck that I am. The boys at VetVoice assured me that this would not affect me at all. That I should stop whining and do my own research.

    But, lo and behold, today, with Republicans threatening to end the Obamacare bill, they send out this warning to veterans;

    It’s for those veterans that this new law means so much. To repeal it would mean that unemployed veterans – the rate of which is 10 percent, and 21 percent among young Iraq and Afghanistan veterans – will lose the access to health care that this law will soon provide. To repeal it would mean a whole new generation of veterans will come home to struggle to make ends meet, while paying skyrocketing health insurance premiums to unchecked insurance companies.

    We need your voice heard, now more than ever. Don’t let the House Majority get away with framing this debate as anything other than what it is – a desire to return to the old status quo, which helped insurance companies, and hurt America’s veterans and working families.

    Now WAFS, here. If the bill wasn’t going to affect me in the first place, how will it affect me when it ends? One might get the idea that VoteVets is blowing smoke up our collective ass.

    TSO reminds us that OIF and OEF veterans get five years of free healthcare, so how does repealing a bill which isn’t supposed to take effect for 3 more years affect them?

  • VoteVets and Taliban agree on Afghanistan bases

    The other day, I quoted from VoteVets VetVoice diarist, Richard Allen “dicksmith” Smith on Lindsay Graham’s proposal that we have permanent bases in Afghanistan after combat forces leave;

    My question to Lindsay Graham is “how do permanent bases in Afghanistan make us safer”? I’m not even certain that our temporary presence there is making us any safer at this point, much less an unending commitment.

    Well, according to the Associated Press, the Taliban feel the same way;

    In an online message released Tuesday, the Afghan Taliban said Sen. Lindsey Graham’s comments proved that the U.S. is intent on occupying Afghanistan and depriving its citizens of their rights.

    “His remarks definitely lifts the curtain from the colonialist motives of America,” the Taliban said in a statement detailed by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant websites. America, the Taliban said, wants to establish dominance over the region.

    Yes, Mr Taliban, we’re depriving the Afghans of their rights. Like their right to be doused in acid for attending school, their right to be stoned when they’re raped, their right to sit in the back of the room and shut up. Oh, wait…that’s you, isn’t it? Yes, the US has colonialist motives…every great power needs a source of sand to achieve their status. Every global hegemon needs a giant shit hole with a population that is dumber than a box of their own sand.

    But, if VoteVets and the Taliban ever join forces (maybe they can recruit Lynn Woolsey, too) clearly we’ll never be able to overcome their massive brain power.

  • dicksmith; The Party of Perpetual War

    Poor Richard Allen Dicksmith at VetVoice has gotten hisself confused after his long vacation. The post at the top of the blog complains that Lindsay Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, has suggested we have permanent air bases in Afghanistan.

    My question to Lindsay Graham is “how do permanent bases in Afghanistan make us safer”? I’m not even certain that our temporary presence there is making us any safer at this point, much less an unending commitment.

    First of all, who died and made Lindsay Graham the mouthpiece for the whole party? I swear, he’s in every news story from the Senate these days. COB6 can’t be happy about that.

    Now to dicksmith; we already know what happens when we completely leave Afghanistan to it’s own devices. In fact I remember some Lefties blaming the 9-11 attacks on the fact that we abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviets left. So you guys need to coordinate your message a little better. Which is it?

    By the way, having permanent bases in a country isn’t “perpetual war” unless he still thinks we’re at war with Germany and Japan. Spain and Italy. Holland and England. Diego Garcia. I think our allies consider it a symbol of our commitment to their security. But then commitment isn’t a word fully understood by the Left side of the country.

    And then on the same day, dicksmith writes another blog post about the war being over in Iraq but troops are still getting killed. Didn’t he pee himself a little when Obama declared the Iraq War over? Now he’s suddenly discovered that folks are still getting killed? Again, which is it?

    I’m glad to see that the intellectually vacant ghost of Jon Soltz is still alive and well at VoteVets while he’s getting his ass beat by his NCOs in a motor pool shed somewhere in the Middle East.

  • American Legion joins in Stolen Valor battle

    SFGate reports this morning that the American Legion has filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the Richard Strandlof Stolen Valor case;

    The American Legion decided to intervene in Colorado because prosecutors have a stronger case there, said Mark Seavey, the group’s media manager.

    Seavey said the Colorado case also is “a little more germane to us” because Strandlof claimed to be an advocate for veterans.

    Yeah, and I’m just sitting here thinking where VoteVets and IVAW are in this case. After all, those two organizations had put Strandlof in front of their organizations to spread their respective messages. VoteVets used him in their political ads in Colorado. Stranloff made them look silly while they discussed whether they should admit that one of their stars was a complete fraud. You’d think they’d have a dog in this fight.

    IVAW had countless videos with Strandlof talking about his imaginary service and the horrors of dreaming about combat. IVAW had more personal contact with him and might have been more likely to notice that the finger he had shot off was still there and the pate in which he claimed he had a steel plate was scar-less. In fact, at the Winter Soldier hearings, Strandlof was in charge of their PTSD clinic, so someone had to have had contact with him and grounds to testify to the damage that he did while living out his dream as a gay Marine captain.

    But, then if IVAW came out against lying about their service, they’d be smearing at least half of their membership, but only beginning with the ones who put on a T-shirt that calls them “Iraq Veterans” Against the War.

  • dicksmith and Wikileaks

    Over at VetVoice, dicksmith uses the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as an excuse to call former Lieutenant Colonel Allen West a war criminal again when West expresses a concern that certain US media releases classified documents to the public endangering our national security;

    It never ceases to amaze me how much these people, these teabaggers, who claim such ardent support for the Constitution, actually can’t stand the protections offered by the document. Of course, Allen West is also an admitted torturer, so I shouldn’t be surprised at his lack of principle.

    But unfortunately, Allen West has some institutional support for his position. None other than the United States Air Force is blocking access to, not just Wikileaks, but sites that reported on the news of Wikileaks:

    dicksmith goes on to write about the Air Force blocking certain websites, including the US media which are publishing Wikileaks material despite the danger that the material poses to national security. Maybe if dicksmith had been awake for the last week or so, he’d know that every government agency has warned their employees that accessing, linking and posting that leaked material, which is still considered classified, continues to be a crime.

    Most agencies haven’t gone to the extreme that the Air Force has, but the Air Force is protecting their employees. Whether they “look silly” or not.

    What looks silly is an organization which is supposed to be focused on getting recent war veterans elected to public office bashing a recent war veteran who urges the government to arrest for espionage a foreign citizen and block access to sensitive material irresponsibly posted in the public domain by an irresponsible media.

    Is it any wonder that his parents named him “Richard”?

  • What’s good for the goose….

    Of course, dicksmith at VetVoice is writing about the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, ONCE AGAIN. They might as well rename the VoteVets blog to “One Track Mind”. But today, he’s quoting ISAF CSM Marvin Hill who intimates that soldiers who disagree with the repeal have to make up their own minds about whether they stay or go when the time comes.

    Of course, dicksmith takes that to mean that the Command Sergeant Major is telling them “Just like any policy in the military, if you don’t like it you can get always get out when your enlistment term expires. There is no room in military service for people who allow their bigotry to inhibit combat readiness.”

    I wonder if dicksmith would apply that to the criminals like Dan Choi who couldn’t comply with the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and became disruptive influences in the ranks. Or is dicksmith just telling people who have opinions that don’t track with his to STFU?

    dicksmith should come out of the intellectually shallow end of the pool.

  • Weinstein Compares Apples and Potatoes

    Over at VetVoice this morning, dicksmith reprints an article from Mother Jones written by their token veteran Adam Weinstein entitled “Army Kicks Out More Gays Than Fat Soldiers”. I guess it’s supposed to mean that the Army is more worried about gays in the military than unhealthy fat people. he could have just as easily titled the article “Army uses more bullets than TOW missiles” or “Navy sees more water than the Army”;

    But the Army’s recent discharge statistics (.xls), given to MoJo by a government source, suggest that the service has been far more concerned about its soldiers’ sexual orientation than their waistlines, muscular endurance, or cardiovascular ability. In fiscal 2007 and 2008, the Army brass threw out 592 enlisted members for violating DADT—more soldiers than it ejected for excessive body fat or fitness-test failures combined.

    I guess that neither Weinstein or dicksmith could fathom the fact that maybe there were more malcontents who declared themselves gay than there were body fatties. And unlike gayness, some body fatness is treatable. It’s not like a commander can put a gay guy on a diet of vaginas for a year until he’s not gay anymore. They don’t get another shot at the Gay Test to see they can pass on a second try.

    And there’s always Bethany Smith/Skyler James who was begging to get thrown out for violations of DADT and couldn’t.

    Yeah, I’ll do another interview with Weinstein…in his fucking wet dreams.

  • Center for American Progress: Use the troops to make policy

    Rurik sent me a link to Gateway Pundit which linked to The Blaze which in turn linked to the Center For American Progress, a Soros-funded group that offered options for the president to make and enforce policy even though he has no control over the law-making body in Congress.

    The U.S. Constitution and the laws of our nation grant the president significant authority to make and implement policy. These authorities can be used to ensure positive progress on many of the key issues facing the country through:

    * Executive orders
    * Rulemaking
    * Agency management
    * Convening and creating public-private partnerships
    * Commanding the armed forces
    * Diplomacy

    The ability of President Obama to accomplish important change through these powers should not be underestimated.

    I have no idea why they call these organizations “think tanks” since apparently there’s no thinking going on there. It’d probably more accurate to call this one a “wishful thinking tank”. It’s highly unlikely that military leaders would turn their charges on the American people over policy decisions like healthcare, and clean energy. Just because VoteVets battles in the political arena for these issues, that doesn’t mean the rest of the military will follow their example.