Category Archives: obama

by | May 20, 2013 · 2:51 pm

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Obama Administration

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One cannot think back to the last thing that the Obama Administration nor any of its appointed officials have said about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, or the illegal subpoena of Associated Press phone records that has had even a shred of truth.

About Benghazi, Hillary Clinton lied.  She knew it was a terrorist attack when she talked about some internet video being the cause of a spontaneous demonstration that turned violent.  Hillary also knew it was her State Department, and not intelligence entities, that changed the talking points into a pack of lies.   Susan Rice lied by repeating those talking points when she knew they were untrue several days after the tragedy.    Barack Obama lied when he claimed he had called the Benghazi attack “terrorism”.  He very pointedly did no such thing, and apparently believes us lazy enough to not remember what he said, or stupid enough to make us think we didn’t understand his words.

The IRS scandal keeps growing, as well.  Despite assurances at the time that no such targeting of political opponents took place, it was widespread.  Not only that but even as the assurances were being given, high level White House and IRS officials knew that targeting was happening.  The tale that it was a few “low-level employees in Cincinnati” was a deliberate fabrication.   So when President Obama tells us he heard about it on the news like everyone else, he is either an imbecile, or he is lying.    Since he considers himself smart enough to lecture us on Naval strategy during a debate, I will have to choose the latter.

Now, new revelations that the illegal, secret, unconstitutional subpoena of Associated Press phone records is much broader than we were first told.   Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department has been nothing short of a criminal enterprise, with this episode yet another in a long list of violations of his oath, and of the law.  (Fast and Furious,  New Black Panthers)  His Deputy Attorney General is also complicit.  James Cole has been caught in a lie.   The extent of the subpoenas is far greater than we were told.  Another deliberate falsehood.   Resignation is not sufficient.  Eric Holder is a criminal and should be behind bars.

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There has been nothing that can be believed that has come out from this Administration in this first few months of a second term.  Worse, he has two people who are willing unconditionally to sell their honor and trumpet the deliberate falsehoods of this presidency.  One is a spineless political sycophant.  The other is Jay Carney.

The Obama apologists will cling to their ideas that this is either not important, or the result of some kind of media/right-wing persecution of their Dear Leader.   That the IRS scandal, the subpoenas, and Benghazi weren’t stonewalled and obfuscated until Obama was safely re-elected.  Those who assert such, and claim anyone criticizing Barack Obama (don’t be hatin’ on Brother Barack!) is either parroting Fox News or is somehow a racist are intellectually bankrupt, and seemingly incapable of serious discussion regarding the malevolence of this Administration and its statist command-economy secular socialism.

Just as a reminder, this is the Administration that wants to control dispensing of our medical care.  That believes that it is a government responsibility to care for our children.  That believes a secret star chamber of “informed government officials” determining the grounds for assassinating Americans without criminal charges, a trial by a jury of one’s peers, or conviction in court constitutes “due process” and is a legitimate power of government.   This is the Administration that wants us to surrender our firearms, our last redress against the tyranny of government, and tells us it is for our safety and protection.

And a President that tells a commencement class not to listen to voices that tell them that tyranny is around every corner.    Small wonder.

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Did I mention Fast and Furious, above?  Well, seems DoJ was going great guns, pun intended, to discredit the one who blew the whistle on Holder’s criminal activity:

The former U.S. Attorney for Arizona could be disbarred, after an investigation found he lied to the Justice Department about his role in trying to discredit the federal whistle-blower who exposed the botched gun-running scheme known as Fast and Furious.

An Office of Inspector General report showed that Dennis Burke — the former chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by President Obama in September 2009 — lied when asked if he leaked sensitive documents to the press meant to undermine the credibility of ATF whistle-blower John Dodson.

“The report brings into question, yet again, the treatment that whistle-blowers receive from this administration,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Monday. “Instead of examining the allegations that came forward, the Justice Department almost immediately began to attack the credibility and good name of a dedicated federal agent upset with what he was ordered to do.”

I don’t agree with Chuck Grassley.  There is no question whatever of the treatment that whistle-blowers receive from this Administration.  They get the Chicago treatment.

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Filed under army, Around the web, guns, history, islam, Lybia, navy, obama, Politics, Uncategorized, veterans

by | May 15, 2013 · 7:19 am

Julian Bond, “Post-Racial” Racist

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Despite the howling protestations of the Grievance Mongers, a very good litmus test of the overt racism that surrounds our alleged “post-racial” President is to evaluate how an act, comment, or a situation would play in the media, and in the public eye, if the ethnicity of the aggrieved and of the alleged transgressor was reversed.

Imagine, if you will, a group of white neo-Nazi skinheads armed with truncheons, caught on video lurking outside a polling station intimidating black voters.   Only to have a white Attorney General declare that neither prosecution, nor further investigation, would be pursued because the white AG talked of such investigations demeaning “his people”.

Or a memorandum circulated by Federal Law Enforcement targeting unemployed Black men who believed in bigger gummint and more welfare as potential terrorists.

Or a white teenager with a history of drug abuse and violence attacking and beating a man, only to have that man defend himself and fatally shoot his attacker.   And then the press intentionally try to deliberately deceive the public by selective editing of audio and video, and invent a new ethnic category to try to portray the man defending himself as racist.   And to have a white President side with the attacker and say “if I had a son, he’s look like….”, professing his preference for white skin over brown.

Then there’s today’s assertion by former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, a so-called “activist” and “civil rights leader” (and, not surprisingly, Professor at American U), who believes that the government targeting of President Obama’s political opposition is not only permissible, but prudent.   Calling the “tea party” overtly and self-admittedly racist (of course), and the “Taliban wing” of the Republican Party, Bond was also adamant that President Bush was being racist for investigating the NAACP after Bond’s Bush-bashing remarks in 2004.

Do not kid yourselves.  There are many others of Bond’s ilk, in this Administration, in education, in the News Media, and in Hollywood, who believe just as Bond does.  They may not be politically imprudent enough to say so unless they feel a media-aided swell of support for their assertions (moral courage, they have not…).  But they do.  Grievance politics of the hyphen-Americans.  Saul Alinsky and Frank Marshall Davis.

The Benghazi coverup.  The IRS scandal.  Sibelius and HHS extortion.  Illegal wiretapping of the Associated Press.   The wealth redistribution scheme known as Obamacare.  Killing Americans without due process.   Much of this has been in the works since the 2008 election.   It is despicable racists like Julian Bond and others of the Obama cabal whom not only condone but encourage Brother Barack to “stick it to the MAN”, which means all political opposition, sometimes known as “whitey”.   Self-loathing addle-headed white fellow travelers who “feel good” about voting for a black man (provided, *gasp*, he wasn’t conservative) nodding sincerely in approval.  After all, we must have it coming.

The litany of Obama apologists will claim that he knew nothing about Benghazi, or the IRS targeting political opponents, or of wiretapping media phones, or that his AG refused review of cases of black criminal conduct, or that his model “son” was a violent thug.   Well, they had a common saying about such government abuses and injustices under another messianic leader about 75 years ago.

“If the Fuhrer only knew!”

Now, as then, that messianic leader not only knew, but gave direction and approval.     Using the power of government to divide and marginalize, demonize and persecute.   With  the full support of detestable men like Julian Bond, who are the very paragon of the post-Racial bigotry which permeates this Administration.

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(*** I couldn’t glean the URL this came from, but it was funny as hell.)

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by | May 13, 2013 · 4:48 pm

Tap Me Maybe? Eric Holder’s New Hit

DOJ

I saw the news while eating dinner.   Salamander broke it first over on the front porch, but I was gonna finish my baked scrod, dammit.    His question as to whether the media has “had enough” of Obama and Holder and the infringements on the First and Fourth Amendment rights of the press, I am afraid I have to answer in the negative.  Most, despite the loud protestations of some, are far-left ideologues, who consider such intrusion “breaking a few eggs”.  Hell, Chris Matthews was glad for Hurricane Sandy, with its 100+ dead and quarter million homeless, because it helped his man Obama win re-election.

Sniveling sycophants aside, I have a few questions of my own.  

So, how is this new, streamlined, secret Eric Holder-style due process working for ya?    Anybody still think that the drone strike memo had anything to do with terrorists anywhere?   Or that gun-grabbing efforts anything to do with “the children”?  Or that the IRS targeting political opposition was a matter of “a few low-ranking employees”?   Or that Holder didn’t know anything about Fast and Furious?  Or that the “immigration reform” sought by Obama is anything but allowing millions of illegals onto Democrat voter rolls?  Or that repeal of DADT and women in combat arms was anything other than pandering to special interests to garner votes, at the expense of the combat effectiveness of our Armed Forces?

[Oh wait, I almost forgot the Affordable Healthcare Act.**]

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Here is an interesting quote.  It is by none other than Eric Holder, uncredited author of Fast and Furious, obstructionist in his refusal to prosecute the Black Panther Party voter intimidation case (wrong color),  champion of the authority of the Federal Government to kill any American, anywhere, without such messy and time consuming things like charges, grand juries, trials, or convictions.  Holder here in 2004, discussing the PATRIOT Act (emphasis mine):

When you look at some of the things that have done under the spirit of the act, where you detain citizens without giving them access to a lawyer, where you listen in on attorney-client conversations without involving a judge, these are the kinds of things that have been done in the name of the Patriot Act by this (Bush) administration…

…the problem that I had with the enforcement of the act is that this (Bush) administration said essentially trust us. We’re not going to involve judges, we’re not going to report to Congress on what we’re doing, and I think our history has shown us that we are best when we operate as people governed by the law as opposed to putting our trust in people and that’s the problem I have.

Seems that’s not a problem any more.   At least Bush was going after America’s enemies, and not Obama’s political opponents.

 

**100% to 400% increase in coverage premiums

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by | · 10:55 am

Obama: IRS Targeting Political Opponents “Outrageous”

From NBC News:

Amid outcry over revelations that Internal Revenue Service specialists specifically targeted conservative groups for scrutiny before the 2012 elections, President Barack Obama said Monday that the tax agency employees’ reported conduct was “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions.”

I spose it is a matter of which traditions.   Socialist-communist regimes have a long history of such things.   Sounding Buck Turgidson-esque, the President goes on to say:

…he does not want to judge the findings of an Inspector General investigation “prematurely” but said that if the reports of political targeting are found to be correct, those responsible must be held “fully accountable.”

Like in Fast and Furious, and Benghazi, and with ACORN, and….?  You get the idea.   Marco Rubio has weighed in, and his commentary could be extended to a great deal of this Administration:

“[I]t is clear the IRS cannot operate with even a shred of the American people’s confidence under the current leadership,” Rubio wrote. “I strongly urge that you and President Obama demand the IRS Commissioner’s resignation, effectively immediately. No government agency that has behaved in such a manner can possibly instill any faith and respect from the American public.”

“Baghdad Bob” Carney gets into the act, too:

In a statement earlier Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the president is “concerned” about the reported conduct of “a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees.”

Yeah?  Like the ones at the top?  Anyway, here is the President, expressing his outrage:

Oh yeah, I am still waiting for my Federal Income Tax refund.

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by | May 10, 2013 · 10:48 am

IRS Targeting of Tea Party: “not motivated by political bias”? Oh Please!

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Lefties, Obama apologists, and Fellow Travelers all squawk loudly in protest when anyone points out instances where this Administration and its elected and appointed officials turn the weight of government persecution against political opponents like a tin-pot dictatorship, and portrays those opposed to them as national enemies.

The FBI calling white Veterans who believe in the Second Amendment, smaller government, and God, terrorist threats.

DoD embracing “full-spectrum” war game scenarios positing law-abiding Americans as armed insurrectionists.

Far-Left gun-grabber Congressmen labeling law-abiding gun-rights advocates as “extremist fringe groups”.  (Not coincidentally very similar to the language that replaced Islamic extremists, so as not to offend our sworn enemies.)

The Attorney General openly declaring his contempt for the 14th Amendment by refusing to investigate voter intimidation by “his people”, the New Black Panther Party.

And now, of course, the Internal Revenue Service being used as a hammer for political opposition by the Obama Administration.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

No, it was criminal.  I will not buy that those perpetrating this did not know IRS policy.  Not for a second.  Of course, the official explanation sounds awfully similar to that of the Benghazi hearings.  ”Gee, we made a mistake, we didn’t have any malice in mind.  Gosh, we sure are sorry and promise to fix it.”  In both instances, it is complete and disingenuous bullshit.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.

Uh huh.  People in those targeted groups, which extend well past the reach of “low level workers in Cincinnati”, were decried in the beholden and supplicant liberal media as paranoid, complete with vehement denials by IRS officials to Congress.

“Yes, I can give you assurances,” said Shulman. “As you know, we pride ourselves on being a nonpolitical, nonpartisian organization.” He pointed out that only he and the IRS chief counsel are Presidential appointees, and they are appointed for five-year terms in order to overlap administrations.

Doug Shulman is either a liar or an incompetent.  Taking into consideration this Administration’s propensity for deceit and the lack of integrity of its officials, I would need to see damned strong evidence that he is not the former.   Besides, if the IRS is interested in finding tax cheats, it really doesn’t have to look far.

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Remember, this is the government that Obama touts as the solution to all our problems.  This is OUR democracy, right?  Then why does Administration behave more like Castro’s Cuba or Khruschev’s Soviet Union than the United States of America?

Tyranny is just around the corner?  Well, in your Administration, President Obama, it is in full view.  You are not to be trusted. Your motives are wicked, and harmful to our Republic and our liberties.   Nor are any officials you have appointed to be trusted.  They lack integrity and decency, and any sense of responsibility to carry out the duties they are entrusted with in an honest and faithful manner.   Those who continue to scream “benefit of the doubt” and “no proof!” when the fix is in, as it is with virtually everything this Administration touches, are willfully blind nincompoops.  That they expect others to be, and level criticism when they aren’t, is nothing short of delusional.

“It is freedom itself that still hangs in the balance,
and freedom is never more than one generation from extinction.”

-RR

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Our esteemed host confirms that the Administration’s story in this mess is all a lie.  Shulman knew.  So did Lois Lerner.  They lied.  The Administration lied.  Like Benghazi and Fast and Furious and Obamacare and gun control and transparency and unemployment and Solyndra and ACORN and…  You get the idea.

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by | May 9, 2013 · 7:07 am

WAPO Media Bias on Display

The Washington Post covers itself in glory again.  WAPO could be asked to fill the role of White House Press Secretary if Jay Carney ever choked to death on the fabrications that come out of his mouth.   Here is WAPO’s “tweet” on yesterday’s Benghazi hearings:

Who’s tweeting about Benghazi?

Rich, middle-aged men and Chick-fil-A lovers

Town Hall.com sums it up better than I could.  There is more to their story than the “tweet”, and it is worth the read.

Message one: Only out-of-touch old white guys and nutty conservatives care about this story.  The Chick-fil-A reference was a dead giveaway, just in case the other descriptors were a little too subtle.  Message two: Republicans are only beating the drum on Benghazi (you know, that unresolved terrorist attack that killed a sitting ambassador and three other Americans) to damage Hillary Clinton ahead of 2016.  In other words, this is just another political food fight, America.  Feel free to move along.

The mainstream media is corrupt.

We haven’t an independent press, for the most part, any longer.   With the current occupant of the White House, most every outlet has become a willing mouthpiece for WH propaganda and disinformation, and eager attack dogs for those Obama targets as opposing his policies or criticizing his performance.

Juxtapose that with the Valerie Plame coverage from WAPO, which originally reported that Karl Rove called a reporter in a fit of temper, deliberately “outing” what was supposedly a covert CIA agent.  None of which actually occurred.  Yet, never  a word of retraction.

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by | May 6, 2013 · 11:53 am

Benghazi: Obama Administration Caught in Coverup

The “whistleblowers” in the Benghazi attack have finally been heard from.  And the news is entirely unsurprising, though no less maddening for it.

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Susan Rice lied.

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Hillary Clinton lied.  

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CJCS General Martin Dempsey lied.

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Barack Obama lied. 

The Administration knew the truth, even as the Benghazi attack was occurring.  They deliberately misled the American people, and the Mainstream Media outlets were complicit in the cover-up that followed.  

Not that anyone who paid the slightest attention to the events as they occurred and immediately after the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans had any doubt as to the deliberate falsehoods being promulgated by this Administration through the news media, who willingly and unquestioningly trumpeted those falsehoods.  In addition to the media’s complicity in the Administration’s deliberate deceit, media personalities attacked those voices who were critical of the botched tragedy in Benghazi, and who were suspicious of the unconvincing tales being told by Administration officials.

The one I have the most contempt for is Marty Dempsey.  He has shown himself time and again of questionable loyalty and lacking in integrity.   He sold his honor cheap.  And there is no recovering it from the bazaar of the political marketplace.    He is unfit to lead, and no longer deserves to wear a uniform.   He is despicable.

The individual with the most to lose is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who may yet see this testimony (which the mainstream media can no longer ignore) damage her chances as the Democratic nominee in 2016.   Because it does matter, Hillary.  And you know it.

The biggest hypocrite, however, is the sitting President.  He spoke yesterday at Ohio State’s commencement, where he derided those voices who warn that government isn’t to be trusted.    Perhaps his Attorney General, Eric Holder, can label any US citizen calling Barack Obama a hypocrite as an “extremist”, maybe even a “violent extremist”, and target them for death by Hellfire.   The new, streamlined due process arrangement should make that easy enough.

So much for this democracy being “ours”.

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by | · 6:39 am

Obama at OSU: “They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner.”

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President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates at the Ohio State University contained the following remarks:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

One would hope, at least, that the History majors and Political Science majors were squirming in their seats because their respective educations gave them insights that would cause them to disagree fundamentally with Obama’s assertions.  However, after sixteen years in the leftist secular-progressive socialist indoctrination camps that are secondary and higher education in this country, I am not optimistic.  Though it might be instructive to include an essay question on a final exam in which students would be asked to identify where forcible wealth redistribution, government-enforced equality, and government-dictated behaviors did not end in tyranny, oppression, and death.

Just whose voices are they that warn “incessantly” of tyranny that Obama begs to be rejected?  If you are scoring at home, here are a few of the no-account alarmists unreasonably suspicious of government overreach:

  •  Thomas Jefferson
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Voltaire
  • Martin Luther King
  • Edmund Burke
  • Alexander Hamilton
  • Thomas Paine
  • Abraham Lincoln
  • Patrick Henry
  • Benjamin Franklin
  • Plato
  • Frederick Douglass
  • Samuel Adams
  • CS Lewis
  • Aristotle
  • James Madison
  • Ronald Reagan

Whose voices have extolled the virtues of government authority and the necessity to limit the freedoms of citizens, for their own safety and well-being?  Here’s a sample of Obama’s esteemed colleagues:

  • Mao Tse-Tung
  • Pol Pot
  • Malcolm X
  • Fidel Castro
  • Earl Browder
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Saul Alinsky
  • Hugo Chavez 
  • Vladimir Lenin
  • Eugene Debs
  • Leon Trotsky
  • Idi Amin
  • Karl Marx
  • Che Guevara

In his speech, Obama remarked, “Because we understand that this democracy is ours.”   That phrase, and the plural possessive, has an entirely different meaning for those who warn against the encroachment of government authority on individual liberties than it does for those who believe that government, America’s experiment included, is about collectivism, and “what can be done by us, together”.   That difference is precisely the difference between liberty and tyranny.

Class of 2013, ignore five centuries of despotism at your own peril.  Because tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.      -Camus

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by | May 1, 2013 · 5:15 pm

Atheists in Foxholes

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Seems it might become policy for the US Military.  Unless you are Muslim.  Which is fine, provided you can somehow refrain from blowing up your CO with a grenade, or shooting four dozen comrades while yelling “ALLAHU AKBAR!”   And even if you do, we can conjure terms like “pre-traumatic stress” and speculate about discrimination being the cause if not the justification for such acts.

But those Christians.  They’re monsters.

Those who believe this will end up as a “common-sense” regulation against those forcing their religion, unwelcome, upon comrades and juniors must have missed the DoD genuflecting (pun intended) to Islam, Global Warming, Diversity, Gun Control, Feminism, LGBT, and the various other “religions” that General and Flag Officers spend an inordinate amount of time proselytizing as a matter of command influence.

Could one imagine the Defense Department having ANY dealings with someone who declared sharing the Koran with fellow Muslims to be “spiritual rape” and those who do so are “enemies” of the Constitution?

The reason, perhaps, that this grates so is that it is another in a long line under this Administration, with these GOFOs, of political pandering to the far-Left, anti-Christian, anti-cleric secular progressives.    With no end in sight.

But don’t worry, Marty Dempsey and your band of bended-knee political servants.  Jesus loves you.

Some of the rest of us can’t stand the sight of you.

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by | April 28, 2013 · 6:39 am

VX in Syria; A Vexing Question

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The Telegraph reports, in an article on the fight for the Al-Safirah chemical facility:

The Syrian regime’s chemical warchest is indeed vast – the biggest in the Middle East, and the fourth largest in the world. Started in the 1970s ranks with help from Syria’s Cold War sponsor, Russia, today its programme includes facilities for making mustard gas, sarin and another nerve agent, VX, which stays lethal for much longer after dispersal.

Of course, this is not the first revelation that Assad’s chemical inventory contained VX.  Former Syrian Army Chemical Officer MajGen Adnan Sillou discussed the matter in a December 2012 interview:

He listed mustard gas along with the sarin, VX and tabun nerve agents as the main elements in Syria’s chemical arsenal, whose existence Syria doesn’t even acknowledge.

Despite the anguished cries of the Bush-haters, the question of VX in Syria is a vexing one for the “no chemical weapons in Iraq” crowd.   Only four countries have ever been known to produce VX; Great Britain, where it was discovered/invented, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Iraq.

So, how did VX end up in Basher Al-Assad’s arsenal?  One of two ways, it would seem, or some combination thereof.  It was either provided by what the Telegraph calls Syria’s “Cold War sponsor” (the Soviet Union, not Russia), or it came from Syria’s southeastern neighbor, Saddam’s Iraq.   Or both.

Methinks that the VX stockpiles have MAKSIM‘s fingerprints all over them.  The presence of a KGB General in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion cannot plausibly be explained by casting him as an “adviser”.    Primakov had intimate knowledge of Iraq’s chemical capabilties, and would have been in an ideal position to help remove Saddam’s remaining stockpile, along with evidence of Soviet/Russian culpability.

Another alternative is the possibility that the Soviet Union (or Russia post-1991) provided Syria with VX directly.    Were that the case, the likelihood that the Soviets/Russians did the same with Iraq (or provided technical assistance to manufacture) increases dramatically.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Putin’s Russia has remained in the protector role of Assad in Syria, far and above that which would logically attend a regime on such shaky ground internally.   And would explain Primakov’s presence in Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion.

In either case, those who refuse to acknowledge Syria’s possession of VX, the most lethal of nerve agents, and by far the most difficult to produce, have to do some soul searching.   It might serve them well to search all the way back to 2003.

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by | April 27, 2013 · 10:25 am

Obama’s Syria Intervention Talk: An Echo of Bush

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“I think that in many ways a line’s been crossed when we see tens of thousands of innocent people killed by a regime, but the use of chemical weapons and the danger that is poses to the international community, to neighbors of Syria, the potential of chemical weapons to get into the hands of terrorists, all of those things add increased urgency to what is already a significant security problem and humanitarian problem in the region,” Obama told reporters.

So the hundreds of thousands of innocent people being killed by a regime, the use of chemical weapons, the potential for chemical weapons to get in the hands of terrorists, ARE considerations for military intervention?    Could we say as a counter, perhaps, that Bashar al-Assad poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors…and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history?

Yes, indeed we could.  I am not advocating for or against intervention in Syria, though I would be curious to know whom we believe we would ally with, and whom against, and just what we could accomplish given the active opposition of Putin’s Russia (not least because of the possibility of Russian fingerprints on Syria’s chemical stockpile, and on a chemical stockpile of Iraqi origin).

It seems that President Obama’s “student union view” of the world and how it works has once again collided head-on with reality.    The “game-changer” bandied about so often of late has already happened.   The world, our allies, and our adversaries, will see what comes next.    Will we see the Obama who condemned his predecessor for Iraq?  Or the Obama whose tough talk regarding Syria is a virtual echo of that predecessor?  Has he the statesmanship and foreign policy acumen to act decisively and effectively?   Considering the string of diplomatic failures punctuated by the Benghazi catastrophe and the ineffectual confrontation with the DPRK, I am not terribly hopeful.

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by | April 26, 2013 · 4:58 pm

Holder Calls Citizenship for Illegal Aliens “Civil Right”

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Eric Holder’s latest copy of the Bill of Rights, w/CH 1, as we say in the Corps.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Add:

Creating a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country is essential. The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are undocumented… This is a matter of civil and human rights.   (Except for the ones killed with Fast and Furious weapons)

2 Comments

Filed under Around the web, obama, Politics, stupid, Uncategorized

by | · 9:31 am

Kindermord in Philadelphia and a Deafening Silence in the Media

Dr.-Kermit-Gosnell

The horrific details of the five weeks of the Dr. Kermit Gosnell murder trial have come to light in various places of late.  However, the mainstream media has consistently shuffled the trial to the electronic and video version of “below the fold”.   Some are beginning to take notice.  James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal last week wrote a disturbing piece about the “house of horrors” Gosnell orchestrated, and the complicity of other abortion clinics in referring patients to Gosnell despite the legal limitations

The grand jury’s account suggests that other abortionists treated him less as an outlaw than as a niche player in the abortion market. He earned a bad reputation in Philadelphia but received referrals from across the Eastern Seaboard. Many of the women dispatched to him were “well beyond” 24 weeks pregnant, the legal limit in Pennsylvania.

The grand jury did not name any of the clinics, hospitals or doctors who made referrals to Gosnell, except for a Delaware clinic where he also worked part-time. Its narrative suggests, however, that “legitimate” abortionists routinely availed themselves of Gosnell’s services to help their patients evade legal and ethical limits on late-term abortion.

The 2010 Federal raid on Gosnell’s butcher shop was a narcotics raid, and it was only then that the conditions in the clinic came to light.   The grand jury in this case makes it clear that many, many “legal” abortion clinics abetted Gosnell’s activities and his business there.

We are incessantly bombarded with the dubious, politically-slanted notion that the firearms of law-abiding gun-owners are somehow “on the street” and present a threat to the “safety of our children”.    Because “keeping our children safe” is a “national responsibility” and justification for disarming the populace, restricting freedoms, and expanding the power and reach of government at the expense of parental rights.  Those who assert that my firearms are a threat to “the children” are in large part a major component of the rabid pro-abortion lobby, who euphemistically call the stance “pro-choice”.

He or an untrained staffer would induce labor, deliver the baby alive, and then perform the procedure they called by the chilling euphemism “snipping”—slashing the infant to death with scissors to the neck and spine. “Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings,’ ” the grand jury found. But bodies had been disposed of and files destroyed, so the evidence was sufficient to prosecute in only seven cases. One of those victims, a neonatologist testified, was a boy of “32 weeks, if not more, in gestational age.” That is, his mother had been at least 7½ months pregnant.

Adam Lanza, a mentally-ill man of 19 murders his mother, and shoots twenty children and six adults in December of 2012.  The cries in the media and the Obama Administration for restricting the rights of the law-abiding and making ever-stricter gun laws was deafening, on every major network for weeks, and occasionally still there.   Even as the Left admitted that draconian restrictions won’t do a thing to prevent such an act of evil.  The “national discussion” was but a tirade from the gun-grabbers, with a complicit media dutifully broadcasting, and often advocating.

Hundreds of babies killed after live births?   Not a peep from the Administration, decidedly subdued coverage in the national media.  Why, Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke an unkind name made much bigger headlines than this.   Porquois?  Because Roe v. Wade is among the holiest of holies on the far-left.  And a beholden MSM would not dare dream of casting abortion in a negative light.  Even though, as Taranto so eloquently asserts;

The grand jury’s report should also be seen as an indictment of America’s post-Roe abortion industry. Its indifference—at best—to legal limits made possible the deaths of untold numbers of babies, lending credence to the argument that legal abortion is a slippery slope to infanticide.

There is far more truth in that statement than in all the anti-gun propaganda promulgated by those people who want guns banned and abortion legal.   Notice Obama spoke at Planned Parenthood, and claims the NRA “lied” about his gun control push.

The hypocrisy just kills you.  Eventually.

******************************

As if on cue, these words of partisan venom today from our Protector of Children:

“The fact is, after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st Century…

Strange.  I seem to remember the Massacre of the Innocents being quite a bit longer ago than that.  The babies who had been born alive and had been killed over the decades since Roe v. Wade inside Gosnell’s abortion charnel house could not be reached for comment.

*****************************

GUILTY on three counts of MURDER and one involuntary manslaughter.   Wonder when the press will cover it?

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Filed under Around the web, obama, Politics, Uncategorized

by | April 19, 2013 · 8:52 am

The “Wrong” Suspects in Boston

suspects

Well, Boston police did not produce the category of suspect that most of the mainstream media and former advisors to the Obama Administration almost immediately speculated, indeed, fervently HOPED it would be.   The suspects are not white ‘Tea Party’ anti-government types, who picked the city, Boston, and the day of the attack, Patriots’ Day, for the symbolic value of violent opposition to President Obama.

Instead, the suspects were two young brothers from Chechnya, an overwhelmingly Sunni Islamic region.  Though motive is certainly difficult to determine for sure immediately, the chances are now ZILCH that it was anti-Obama Tea Party villain or villains who decided to slaughter innocent Americans.   Despite myriad commentary that virtually campaigned for a conservative white male to be the target.

CNN’s Peter Bergen speculated that the terrorists were “right-wing extremists”.

Charles Pierce, of Esquire, gave us this bit of brilliance:

I would caution folks jumping to conclusions about foreign terrorism to remember that this is the official Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts, celebrating the Battles at Lexington and Concord, and that the actual date (April 19) was of some significance to, among other people, Tim McVeigh, because he fancied himself a waterer of the tree of liberty and the like.

There was, of course, David Sirota at Salon.com, who expresses his strong preference for white terrorists, while somehow missing the point about radical Islam actually close to BEING an existential threat.

Michael Moore was, of course, certain of the guilt of the Tea Party he despises so much.

And, also, this from taxpayer-funded NPR‘s Dina Temple-Raston:

“April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals,” she said.

“There’s the Columbine anniversary. There’s Hitler’s birthday. There’s the Oklahoma City bombing. The assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco,” she added.

There are a host of other instances of such wishful speculation, on the talking head panels, the liberal blogosphere, and on “twiddah” from the not-so-cerebral far Left.

The most telling, disturbingly so, was the commentary from former Obama adviser David Axelrod.  He posited rather confidently what would be President Obama’s thought process and first instinct.   While he couches it in softer language, his message is clear.  President Obama first looks to his political opponents as the possible terrorists, and opposition to him and his policies as the motive.  Axelrod is eminently correct in his assertion.

This, despite the fact that those who believe in the Constitution and oppose his explosive government growth, intrusion into our privacy, curtailing of our freedoms, and raiding of our wallets have never violated the law, threatened to violate the law, or considered indiscriminate murder of innocent people to be the way to get their points across.  Unlike Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, who still do.

The Obama Administration has to be bitterly disappointed.  The terrorists weren’t “home grown” white men who fit Janet Napolitano’s description of Veterans who believe in smaller government, the Second Amendment, and God.     They did not give him a reason to further restrict the rights of the law-abiding, or to disparage those who disagree with him as unreasonable and dangerous criminals.

In fact, these terrorists, who they are and what they did, both at the Marathon on Monday and last evening, put paid to the falsehood that infringing on the Constitutional liberties of the law-abiding with draconian gun laws will prevent someone intent on evil from perpetrating that evil.   Fresh off the stinging rebuke of his anti-gun platform by a Democratic Senate, President Obama cannot even leverage his beholden press to further demonize non-liberal white males as terrorists and murderers who pose a threat to our freedoms.

However, there should be considerable alarm at the willingness, or rather enthusiasm, with which the majority of our media and government officials ruminate, without proof or precedent, on the collective culpability of an entire segment of American citizens.   They simply rub their hands and wait for a chance to bring the full weight of government authority and public opinion (to the extent that they influence the latter) to bear against those they disagree with.

Well, maybe next time.

In the meantime, I will cling to my guns and my religion and the Constitution.   But I have no illusions about the desire of my own government to target me, because of my race and my beliefs, and label me an enemy.    After this fiasco in Boston, none of us should.   All they need are the “right suspects”.

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Filed under history, islam, obama, ossettia, Politics, recruiting, Uncategorized, war

by | April 17, 2013 · 8:07 pm

“Shameful” is the Right Word

barack_obama_gun_control_ap_328

Barack Obama seethed as the Democratically-controlled Senate rejected an amendment that would require Federal background checks for gun sales between private citizens.   (He did so, of course, instead of attending the funeral services of a staunch American ally and LEADER.)  His ploy to use families of the Sandy Hook tragedy as emotionally-charged props to push his long-standing anti-gun agenda did not sway even his own party, which had four defectors, guaranteeing defeat of the measure.  True to form, Obama blames the NRA.  He claims the NRA’s suspicion of his motives and interpretations of the language of the bill constitutes “deliberate falsehoods”.   Obama admonished the Senate in a semi-tantrum when the defeat of the legislation was announced.

“All in all this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, after walking to the podium with his arm around Giffords and hugged the relatives of victims of the December shooting.

Obama’s complaint that the NRA spread deliberate falsehoods is ironic in the extreme.  With his staff of political assassins that scour high and low to find information to discredit political opponents, not one statement from the NRA has been produced that shows any kind of falsehood regarding the Obama/Feinstein/Schumer/Bloomberg gun-grabbing agenda.  If there were, it would be in the headline of every of the beholden mainstream media outlets which kowtow to the Obama Administration so meekly.  But there are none.

Regarding such assertions about the NRA, Gertrude might tell Barack Obama that he “doth protest too much”.  From Fast and Furious to Obamacare to Benghazi, and now with the tall tales of the effects of Sequestration, the Obama Administration is chock-full of deceitful fibbers, beginning with the President.  Obama’s insistence that Sequestration was an idea born in Congress and not the White House is such a canard.

Barack Obama deriding the Senate as “shameful” for not falling into line and passing his anti-gun agenda smacks once again of his notion that the Executive is more important than the Legislative.  His declaration of reflecting the “will of the people” he thinks should be enough to rubber-stamp any and all proposals to infringe upon our Constitutional freedoms.  Hardly a surprise from a man whose appointment to Attorney General believes a secret deliberation of high government officials constitutes “due process” and should be grounds for directing the killing of American citizens.

The American people, elected officials included, have had a strong object lesson this week, that those who wish to perpetrate evil will do so with a variety of means, and the further curtailing of the rights of legal gun owners will do nothing to prevent that fact but plenty to expand the authority of government.   The Senate was not buying the thinly-veiled gun-grabber initiative whose start would have been today’s proposed amendment.   So Obama continues in his Alinsky-mode portrayal of political opponents as national enemies.  With the help, of course, of the “free” press he keeps in his pocket.

But perhaps there’s good news.  Police have identified two suspects, both white, who have a history of extremist speech and planting bombs to kill innocent people to advance their anti-government political agenda.

090820-ayers-dohrn-chicagoist-2004

Oh, wait…..

All in all this was a pretty shameful four years in Washington.

5 Comments

Filed under Lybia, obama, Politics, veterans, war

by | April 15, 2013 · 11:40 am

Political Officers of the People’s Defense Commissariat

commissar_nkvd_unif_0

Over on the Front Porch, the ever-thoughtful Commander Salamander has some very good thoughts on an initiative by which commanders and General/Flag Officers would be subject to evaluation above and beyond what should be the considered judgment of their reporting seniors and reviewing officers.   Salamander calls it “Outsourcing Leadership”, and so it is.  He makes good arguments as to why such a thing should be anathema to anyone who considers him/herself worthy of high command.

While I agree with everything Sal says, I do believe very strongly that the implications are far more destructive than he points out.   What this new “review” is setting the conditions for is nothing less than an evaluation of Officers in the US Armed Forces for their political and social reliability.   We have had a long tradition of political non-alignment among especially our senior commanders, but also among Officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, which has largely protected us from the scourge of a military that is a social force that has its say in national politics.  No Kurt Schleicher or Francisco Franco here.  Our military leaders who have held office have been retired from the Armed Forces before doing so.   Any test of political and social reliability was in the obverse, in that propriety was maintained by refraining from expressing personal opinions or political views in uniform, especially as a part of official duties of office.

The landscape changed dramatically in 2009, when CJCS Admiral Mike Mullen indulged in telling Congress and the American people, unsolicited, his personally-held views on repeal of DADT and open service for homosexuals in America’s military.  At the time I warned of the damage of that unprofessional, arrogant, and selfish act.   Soon, Mullen informed our service men and women that, unless they held the same personal beliefs he did, they were not fit to serve, and should “vote with their feet”.   We were on our way down the well-greased slope.

This Administration, many of whose principles have openly and loudly expressed their disdain for our military (Hillary Clinton conspicuously among them), has spared no effort to co-opt military leadership into conforming to a political stance.  Even when Stanley McChrystal was justifiably relieved, he blithely informed the American public that he had indeed personally voted for Obama, and such a revelation garnered scant attention.  One has to imagine that, had he mentioned he had voted for John McCain, the howls of the Administration and its complicit “free press” would have been deafening.  Rightly.  But because McChrystal voted “correctly”, not a peep of of objection was heard.

The push to allow Commanding Generals to order confiscation of lawfully-owned firearms from service members in private residences has far less to do with any kind of prevention, and much more to do with General Officers falling in behind a gun control agenda that anyone in DoD is willing to admit.  Violation of due process and Constitutional liberties of those who defend our freedom is scant cost for active advocating of a Leftist crusade.

In the midst of escalation of rhetoric and sabre-rattling of a nuclear North Korea and a China bullying our allies over two sets of disputed islands, the Commander of the Seventh Fleet informs us that he believes the biggest security threat in his assigned Area of Operations is….  global warming.   Someone in Locklear’s position who says something so patently absurd and politically pandering should be relieved forthwith as someone who lacks the judgment and/or integrity to lead.  If he doesn’t believe his own words, he is disingenuous and untrustworthy.  If he does, he is an imbecile.  In either event, he does not belong where he is.  But, of course, he remains.  He toes the line of political agenda.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a political appointee, volunteers the US Navy to be a beta-tester of biofuels, at enormous expense, not least of which is the up-front cost of the fuel itself, but as yet undetermined is the cost of the damage that the corrosion and water will do to extremely expensive systems in ships and aircraft in the medium-long term.  While Mabus doesn’t wear a uniform, I would speculate that nobody who does raised a single objection to SECNAV in any way, or told him how inappropriate such measures were, that it amounted to incestuous political pandering at the expense of readiness and warfighting.  Not one.

When outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta fired his parting political broadside and removed the exclusion of putting women in combat arms units (the issue is NOT women in combat, and anyone honestly evaluating the situation knows that), there were loud promises from every corner that standards would not be lowered.  Until CJCS General Dempsey quickly said that the would be, to accommodate making women successfully pass the training requirements.

To anyone who watches what is said and not said, all these occurrences are signposts that point in the direction of travel.  This “review process” is another waypoint on that journey of the destruction of the fiber of our Armed Forces and its leadership.  That same CJCS, General Marty Dempsey, is now mandating that the review program will include inspections.

The inspections will not be punitive, but will provide a “periodic opportunity for general officers and flag officers to understand whether, from an institutional perspective, we think they are inside or outside the white lines,” he said. In addition, new programs will be instituted to ensure that a commander’s staff, and a spouse, are fully aware of military regulations.

This is the Marty Dempsey who violated his oath to our Constitution on two occasions, actively criticizing the legal free expression of private citizens in direct violation of that Constitution he is sworn to support and defend against all enemies.  In the Benghazi incident, Dempsey’s admonitions amounted to a deliberate falsehood, a lie, to perpetuate the lies told us by our State Department (and Hillary Clinton) that the attack on the embassy was a spontaneous one stemming from a demonstration regarding an online anti-Muslim video, when both he and SecState knew good and well their words were false.   He readily and easily forfeited his integrity for his bosses.  Are we now expected to believe that those “white lines” reflect the traditional role of the non-political military officer?   The traditional tenets of leadership, technical and tactical proficiency, integrity, judgment, courage, decisiveness, and the others, will be pre-empted and eventually superceded by assurance of political reliability and the “correct” beliefs regarding social and political issues, and a willingness to set aside one’s honor at the behest of military and political seniors.

Why ever would we expect any different?  Men (and women) in uniform who behave as political sycophants should not be trusted to lead.   Certainly, Martin Dempsey has proven on several occasions not to be worthy of my trust, nor yours.  Except to use these new standards of performance as a tool to remake the senior officers of our military in his image, that of a pliant servant of political masters, whose oath to the Constitution is a mere gesture.   Those who conform to that mold will not be worthy of our trust, either.    When the choice is between obedience to our Constitution or obedience to political bosses, why, it won’t be a choice at all.

Alles klar, Herr Kommisar?

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Filed under Air Force, army, infantry, marines, navy, obama, Politics, Uncategorized, veterans, war

by | April 12, 2013 · 7:49 am

American Komsomol

cc 1

That which cannot be proved must be taught and enforced through indoctrination.   Like Aryan racial superiority, and the benign and wondrous benefits of Bolshevism.   And Global Warming.

“Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming),” according to the elementary school standards

 The best line of the whole article?

we will need to revise our coverage of climate change and many other science core ideas, to reflect the depth of coverage in the new standards and the shift to focus on scientific practices,”

Positively Orwell.  The invention of a problem that doesn’t exist in order to gain massive power and money to solve said “problem”  is “scientific practice”.
hj-prelude-hike
I am probably overreacting.  Right?  I mean, it isn’t like we have teachers espousing political doctrine in place of knowledge, or adolescents marching about in uniform proclaiming allegiance and demanding obedience to a leader, or anything.   Right?
Of course not.

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Filed under Around the web, history, obama, Politics, Uncategorized

by | April 10, 2013 · 5:27 pm

Gun-Grabber Mayors Against Obeying the Law

3-24-Michael-Bloomberg

The Bookworm Room asks a great question at the end of a great post.   Citing the collection of law-breakers who are whole hog coming after the guns and freedoms of the law-abiding in this country, BW posits:

I haven’t studied them, but what do you bet that they’re all Democrats?

Gun-grabbing-mayors-with-records

Well, no.  They aren’t all Democrats.  Let’s review:

  • Sheila Dixon – Democrat  
  • Gary Becker – Democrat 
  • Larry Langford – Democrat 
  • Eddie Perez – Democrat 
  • David Delle Donna – Democrat 
  • Frank Melton – Democrat 
  • Buddy Cianci – Independent 
  • Samuel Rivera – Democrat 
  • Jeremiah Healy – Democrat
  • Will Wynn – Democrat
  • Kwame Kilpatrick – Democrat
  • Richard Corkery – Democrat
  • Adam Bradley – Democrat
  • Gordon Jenkins – Democrat
  • Roosevelt Dorn – Democrat
  • Pat Ahumada Jr. – Democrat
  • April Almond – Democrat
  • Tony Mack – Democrat

See? Not all Democrats. That should make us feel better about Bloomberg and his subjugation of our Constitutional liberties. Right?  Only 14 felons among them (out of 18).   Oh, and one merely facing felony charges.  Three assault convictions, one  for domestic abuse, and two convicted pedophiles.

Next time someone tells you that people like Bloomberg and his gun-grabber cabal are anything but corrupt low-life convicts eager to abuse power, show him/her this helpful pocket guide.

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Filed under guns, history, obama, Politics

by | April 8, 2013 · 6:50 am

Farewell to the Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher dead at 87

Margaret Thatcher

Britain’s only female Prime Minister, a friend and confidant of President Ronald Reagan and a staunch US ally, has died following a stroke.  She was 87.

Mrs. Thatcher held the office of Prime Minister from 1979 through 1990, and was a Conservative of immense stature at a time when Socialism was on the rise all over Europe and the British Isles.   And she halted, temporarily alas, the decline of Great Britain following the Second World War.   She had the courage to order the retaking of the Falklands, and understood the world of power politics in the depths of the Cold War.  She was also a LADY, albeit an Iron one.

Her warnings against the EURO and the European Central Bank were cogent and prescient.  But for Britain having followed her advice.

When the far-left feminists cite great women to hold political office in the modern age, they will invariably rattle off the names of the lessers, the second-rate and third-rate leaders  (virtually all liberals), including our own, as their heroines.  Almost NEVER is the name Margaret Thatcher mentioned, and when it is, there is either an inevitable qualifier that she was a conservative and therefor NOT a true “woman”, or a downright derogatory reference because she despised socialism and had utter contempt for the Socialists.  Ponder.

French President Francois Mitterand once commented that Mrs. Thatcher had the “eyes of Caligula, and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe”.   Be that as it may, she was a leader and a statesman, someone who stood unabashedly for what she believed in, and defended those beliefs with power and eloquence and unimpeachable reason.   Our current crop of GOP leaders could take a lesson from Maggie.

Rest in Peace, Mrs. Thatcher.  You will be missed.  I sorely wish America had someone like you at the helm.

***********************

A commenter over on the porch provided a most fitting epitaph for the incomparable Mrs. Thatcher, which was spoken of Winston Churchill by Harold MacMillian upon Churchill’s final visit to the House of Commons:

“The man you have just seen leave these chambers is unique in all of British history. The oldest among us cannot remember another of his like, and the youngest among you, however long you may live, will never see his like again.”

So it is true of Margaret Thatcher.

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Filed under Around the web, girls, history, obama, Politics, SIR!, Uncategorized, war

by | April 6, 2013 · 3:08 pm

China’s North Korea Rhetoric: Once Again, We Are Eating it With a Spoon

NKPRC

The People’s Republic of China is once again disseminating its ever-predictable rhetoric to make it seem as if this time, for sure, they are “losing patience with North Korea”.    Just as predictably, current and former State Department officials in this Administration are gobbling it up hopefully and eagerly.     From the Telegraph:

There are clear signs that China is losing patience with North Korea, America’s former top diplomat in Asia has said.

“There is a subtle shift in Chinese foreign policy. Over the short to medium term, that has the potential to affect the calculus in north east Asia,” Mr Campbell said at a forum at John Hopkins university.

“You have seen it at the United Nations (Security Council). We have seen it in our private discussions and you see it in statements in Beijing,” he added.

No, you haven’t.  You have HEARD it.  What we have SEEN is a People’s Republic of China that backs the DPRK unequivocally.  If they did not, the DPRK and Kim Jong Un, like his father and grandfather before him, would stand down from their provocations post-haste.  But, we continue to hear how “this time China is warning North Korea”.    We heard it with the starting of the nuclear program.  And again with the nuclear tests.  Each one of them.  We heard such with the testing of theater ballistic missiles.  And with the sinking of a ROK Navy frigate.  And the unprovoked artillery attack against ROK soldiers and civilians.

But there was no real warning.  And often, quite the opposite.  The warning has been issued instead to the South and to the United States about “restraint” and the need for “stability”.    Yet, the naively hopeful straw-grasping continues.

Earlier, Mr Campbell told the Wall Street Journal that China “cannot be happy” and that he expected a tougher line to emerge from Beijing.

Au contraire.  The PRC is ecstatic watching US attempts to garner both deterrent force and potential combat power from a shrinking pool of assets as the self-inflicted slashing of America’s military narrows options and limits US presence in the region.   But State is not the only entity hopelessly out of touch with China, her relationship with the DPRK, and her intentions to displace the US and dominate the region.

However, Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea expert at the International Crisis Group, said Beijing was “fed up” at the distractions being created by Pyongyang while it tries to focus its energies on other problems. “They need to address issues in the South China Sea, they have a corruption campaign going on at home, North Korea is giving them a headache,” said Mr Pinkston.

It would seem Mr. Pinkston doesn’t quite understand whose headache the situation has become.  But China does.  As does Iran. And every other of America’s adversaries.  And our allies, too.

The notion that China disapproves of the actions of the DPRK to the point of “changing the calculus” in the region, or simply tolerates the North because it is “the devil you know” is absurdly naive.  Reflective, unfortunately, of an arrogant, clumsy, and amateurish US State Department, whose lack of acumen and and diplomatic skill is paraded yet again across the world stage.  The PRC is keenly aware of the value of an unpredictable and well-armed North Korea as a constant thorn in the side of the US, especially as the PLAN grows and the USN shrinks.

If we want to know what China’s role is, do not watch what they say, especially not what is intended for our consumption.  Watch what they do.  And don’t do.

Acta non verba.

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Filed under Around the web, Artillery, guns, history, marines, navy, obama, Politics, Splodey, Uncategorized, war

by | April 5, 2013 · 3:24 pm

Indigo Montoya on Janet Napolitano

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano uses the word SECURE as she discusses our Southwestern border situation:

“I can tell you having worked that border for 20 years, it is more secure now than it has ever been. Illegal apprehensions are at 40-year lows,”

Fox news points out a significant discrepancy:

But figures released Thursday by Customs and Border Protection to Fox News tell a different story.

Arrests are actually up 13 percent compared with the same time last year. The number was 170,223 in 2012, and is 192,298 this year.

And there’s more:

The numbers back up anecdotal claims that Texas is seeing a marked surge in traffic. The increase comes as Congress prepares to debate immigration legislation, which in its draft form is expected to include a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already here. Some have expressed concern this provision could entice illegal immigrants to cross over.

The stats show that in Texas, arrests in the last six months are up 53 percent in the Rio Grande Valley; up 22 percent in Laredo; and up 24 percent in El Paso.

But hey.  In this Orwellian up-is-down existence brought you by the beholden mainstream media and the thought police of the far left, where economic stagnation and millions dropping out of the ranks of the employed signals “continued recovery”, global warming results in more ice and cooler temperatures, and massive increases in health insurance represent the “Affordable Health Care Act”,  I spose anything is possible.

Still, methinks Indigo has a point.

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Filed under Around the web, obama, Politics

by | April 2, 2013 · 1:39 pm

Mexican Cartels and “Gun Violence”

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The Associated Press is reporting the disturbing but wholly unsurprising news of Mexican drug cartels infiltrating US cities across the country.  The pestilence that is Mexican cartel violence is coming to a city near you.  Unless it is already there.    If it is, you likely hear about it only as “gun violence”, that meaningless term put forth by those who want to ban private firearm ownership, who use the term to convince the unthinking masses that the tool of the criminal, rather than the criminal, is to blame.

Still, police worry that increased cartel activity could fuel heightened violence.

In Chicago, the police commander who oversees narcotics investigations, James O’Grady, said street-gang disputes over turf account for most of the city’s uptick in murders last year, when slayings topped 500 for the first time since 2008. Although the cartels aren’t dictating the territorial wars, they are the source of drugs.

Riley’s assessment is stark: He argues that the cartels should be seen as an underlying cause of Chicago’s disturbingly high murder rate.

“They are the puppeteers,” he said. “Maybe the shooter didn’t know and maybe the victim didn’t know that. But if you follow it down the line, the cartels are ultimately responsible.”

Let’s review:

The murder capital of America, Chicago, has the strictest gun control laws in the nation.  Five hundred-plus murders in 2012.  The solution?  More gun laws to restrict the law-abiding.

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Attorney General Eric Holder was responsible for the illegal transfer of thousands of guns to Mexico, where they wound up in the hands of those same Mexican drug cartels that are infiltrating American cities and towns.  Those guns were used to kill several hundred Mexican nationals on their side of the border, and several American citizens (including a CBP agent) on our side of the border.

Holder and President Obama are pushing for radical new gun laws to restrict law-abiding Americans and infringe on their Constitutional liberties, ostensibly to keep us “safe”.  Despite the fact that even the Vice President admits the most radical of the proposed restrictions will do nothing to prevent the tragedy of someone who wishes to do evil.

The desire of the Democrats for open borders combined with the lax resourcing and enforcement of Federal immigration laws have allowed the infiltration of these Mexican cartels, yet any0ne proposing immigration controls of any kind is labeled a racist who is denying poor farmers the right to do the jobs Americans don’t want to do.   In fact the Federal Government filed suit against a sovereign state (Arizona) for the enforcement of existing laws.

Typically, cartel operatives are not U.S. citizens and make no attempt to acquire visas, choosing instead to sneak across the border. They are so accustomed to slipping back and forth between the two countries that they regularly return home for family weddings and holidays, Riley said.

This is the President that invoked the “safety of our children” as the requirement to justify laws to further restrict legal gun ownership.   Whose Administration talks incessantly about “domestic terrorism” and the threat from Veterans and gun owners, and people of faith.  An Administration whose senior law enforcement official believes the Government has the right to assassinate American citizens without any semblance of due process.

When the wave of violence because of the presence of these cartels begins, if it hasn’t already, you will hear Obama and Holder and Bloomberg and the usual suspects blather endlessly about the need to stem “gun violence”, and the need to restrict legal firearms ownership.   Not a word will be uttered regarding the gangs and cartels who are responsible for the vast majority of the shootings in our nation’s larger cities, virtually all perpetrated with illegal weapons that not a thousand gun laws will effect.

They know this as well as we.   Which makes their cry for ever-tighter gun control to ensure the safety of our children more than just inherently dishonest.   It is an active campaign to deceive.  The tragedy is that there are so many of these sheeple whose entire consideration of such issues is to emote about feel-good gestures that provide no solution and erode freedoms of Americans everywhere.   The bigger tragedy will be, that when the Mexican cartel killings start here, those same sheeple will be convinced unquestioningly that legal gun owners and the NRA are responsible.   Because their government and its state-beholden media never ceases to tell them so.  And the usual suspects will try once again to take away legally owned firearms to “keep them off the streets” and “keep the children safe”.

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Filed under guns, history, obama, Politics

by | March 22, 2013 · 5:55 pm

DHS Ammunition Purchase: SKK Asks Why?

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1,625,000,000 rounds.  Jacketed hollow-points in 9mm and .40cal.   5.56mm ammunition.  This on the heels of the purchase of nearly 8,000 AR-15 platforms.  And 2,700 MRAPs for use in American cities against American citizens.  (For those thousands of high risk warrants where the person has barricaded himself into a house armed with heavy machine guns and anti-armor weapons.)  Even with sequestration, seems the budget is plenty fat enough in some places.

The lovely Susan Katz Keating asks why.   It seems a fair question.  More than a dozen Congressmen agree, and have asked pointedly about the subject.   The effect (combined with the gun-grabbing Left proposing legislation that would deny Americans their rights under the Second Amendment) has been to make ammunition in popular calibers almost impossible to find.  Recreational shooters, those of us who want to maintain proficiency at tactical weapons handling, local law enforcement, hunters, are all paying very elevated prices or are out of luck entirely.

However, like so many other issues that skirt the edge of legality with this Administration, DHS Secretary Napolitano refuses to give straight answers.  Witness Rand Paul asking a straightforward question until he couldn’t be ignored.  Once again, we get stonewalling and equivocating from those in charge.  As if we haven’t the right to know.  This should make anyone who cherishes our Constitutional liberties awfully wary.   The pattern is oh-so familiar with Obama and Holder and those who believe they have the right to rule instead of the responsibility to govern.    Not that the beholden and supplicant press corps will utter a peep of protest, as they are simply instruments of the rulers.

Susan, my dear, here is the answer to the question you ask:   DHS has purchased that ammunition so that we won’t have it.  And they will.  And they will have bought it with our money.    So that when push comes to shove, they have the upper hand.   After all, those of us who cherish the unalienable rights given us by our Creator, and who are suspicious of the drastic increase in the overreach of Federal authority, are terrorists.

With ongoing assaults from our own government upon the First, Second, Fourth, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments, soon the Bill of Rights will fit on a 3X5 card.

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There is commentary below that somehow Alex Jones created the idea of “thousands of drones”.

Well, no.

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Filed under Around the web, guns, obama, Politics, Uncategorized, veterans, war

by | · 12:27 pm

Our Political Navy: A Global Force for Far-Left Proclamations

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Nothing says “ready for combat in the service of our nation” like an Earth Day message in which our Sea Services “leadership” admonishes us to believe in the pseudo-science of Al Gore and the radical Left environmentalists.  Behold ALNAV 018/13:

3. DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY LEADERSHIP IS KEENLY AWARE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES AHEAD. CLIMATE CHANGE IS LEADING TO RISING SEA LEVELS AND LESS PREDICTABLE WEATHER PATTERNS IN THE AREAS WHERE WE TRAIN AND OPERATE. THE RAPID MELTING OF THE ARCTIC ICE CAP IS DRIVING NEW NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGIES AND PRESSING GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS. WE WILL CONTINUE ANALYZING THESE TRENDS AND WORKING TO ENSURE OUR FORCES ARE CAPABLE OF MEETING MISSION REQUIREMENTS. ONLY THROUGH A COLLECTIVE EFFORT CAN MILITARY AND OUR NATION PREPARE FOR THE CHANGES THAT MAY COME. WE MUST RECOGNIZE THAT OUR LOCAL ACTIONS CAN IMPACT THE SEVERITY OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES AND WILL DETERMINE OUR FUTURE READINESS.

But wait, there’s more.

4. FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY IS ON EVERYONE’S MIND THIS YEAR. LUCKILY, THE EASIEST AND MOST
EFFECTIVE EARTH DAY PROGRAMS CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED AT LITTLE OR NO EXPENSE. PICKING UP TRASH AT A LOCAL PARK, CLEARING DEBRIS FROM A BEACH, OR VOLUNTEERING WITH A LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECT CAN ALL BE DONE ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET. BRING YOUR COWORKERS, FRIENDS, SHIPMATES, AND FELLOW MARINES AND INCREASE YOUR IMPACT EXPONENTIALLY AT NO EXTRA COST.

“Fiscal responsibility”?  Oh please.  Does that include not sending messages out that are blatant political indoctrination about “climate change” and how it has more of an impact on readiness than neglecting maintenance of our Navy’s warships, or cutting back on the training and education of our Sailors to perform their missions?  So that we might instead have ad nauseum lectures and training about sexual assault, human trafficking, breathalyzers, cultural sensitivity, and all politically-sensitive things non-warfighting, and idiotic messages that waste everyone’s time like the above example?   What really riles. however,  is the last line of the message text.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE THIS YEAR.

We have a Navy and Marine Corps with tens of thousands of combat veterans from OIF and OEF.  Many have been decorated for heroism in action against the enemy.  Thousands have lost comrades and shipmates (not frigging CO-WORKERS, jackwagon!).  Yet, we have a man who never served a single day in uniform directing us to make a difference.  As if he would know what that really means.  Despicable.  Absolutely unconscionable.

I have a much more fiscally responsible suggestion.   How about the Department of the Navy eliminate the position of “Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Environment)”.  How about SECNAV Ray Mabus show Donald Schregardus and his $200,000+ salary to the door, along with everyone assigned to his likely considerable staff, and use the money instead to maintain and train a Navy for war?  Just a thought.  And if Ray Mabus isn’t capable of that, he needs to follow Schregardus off the taxpayer dole, post-haste.  Perhaps we then can get someone who can provide a modicum of leadership worthy of our Navy and our nation.   That’d be a switch.


							

	
			

				
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									by  | 						March 21, 2013 · 7:46 pm											


							
Obama to Israelis: “Put Yourselves in Their Shoes”
			
				

				
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President Obama’s remarks urging Israeli empathy with Palestinians is yet another indication that his (and his Administration’s) understanding of the world around him is woefully lacking, and remains, after four years,  not the slightest bit grounded in reality.   A nation whose founders were survivors of mass extermination attempts, a nation that sees mortal ideological and religious enemies in every direction, enemies that have openly vowed that nation’s destruction, is being lectured by America’s President as to where their sympathies should lie.


The President’s remarks reflect an astonishing arrogance.  Worse, they reveal a startling ignorance (and lack of propriety) that reflects the amateurish and muddled character of US foreign policy under this Administration.  President Obama is making no friends among our Israeli allies, which is reflected by his barely civil relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu and his low regarding among the Israeli public.


When prodded in the early 1970s about Israel’s hyper-vigilant posture, Golda Meir remarked, “If the Arabs lay down their weapons, there would be no more war.  If the Israelis lay down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.”


In the forty years since she made those comments, little has changed for the good for Israel.  Israel’s neighbors are as fanatical as ever about her destruction, with one of those neighbors possibly less than a year away from being a nuclear power.  Her closest ally has a President whose lack of understanding of the Middle East and barely concealed hostility toward Israel is cause for real alarm.   Despite the platitudes of solidarity this week, the US-Israel relationship remains decidedly cool.  Remarks like today’s certainly won’t help.  Israel’s enemies are taking notice, to be sure.


If President Obama really wants to talk about people putting themselves in someone else’s shoes, here is what he can do.  His wife Michelle and his two daughters can take up residence in Beersheba for one year.  No special protection, no armored cars.  The girls can wait on the street corner with the other children for the school bus, and Michelle can shop at the mall and the grocery other places, like the other parents.  Perhaps then, as three thousand rockets and mortar rounds are fired into Israel from Gaza (with the blessing and encouragement of the leadership of the very people Obama believes deserve nationhood),  President Obama can better put himself in the shoes of Israelis who live day to day with the spectre of violent death of loved ones at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.   Doubtless, news reports of dead and wounded from bombings and rocket/mortar attacks emanating from Gaza may tend to get his attention just that much more.


Perhaps then, also, President Obama will be less prone to lecture Israelis about empathy for Palestinians, and a little more willing to understand that of which he speaks.


Perhaps.

							

	
			

				
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Filed under history, Iran, iraq, islam, israel, obama, Politics, Uncategorized