Saturday, May 28, 2011

Mark the Date!

Because this is the day I have officially seen everything.

via daily caller Well, they are white kids, except for the one who’s not white. And they’re wearing white. That’s (whiteness x 2) – 1. I call that a formula for racism. Remember: An accusation of racism is its own proof. The more you protest it, the more real it becomes to those who are more enlightened than you. Enjoy the next 18 months…

Oh wait, this was in Santa Cruz, now it makes sense.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Gene Simmons on Obama, Israel and some other stuff

The good news: at least one Obama voter has come to his #%&@ing senses.


Friday, May 20, 2011

SS questions 13-year-old over Facebook post

Not sure what part of this story is more concerning, and by concerning, naturally, I mean frightening.

Your choices are a) that the SS (no pun intended) is monitoring the facebook pages of 13 year olds -- and quite likely everyone else b) that they have nothing better to do with their time but to actually track down and "interview" a 13 year old over what is clearly an innocuous comment c) that they honestly think a mother of a minor would "not take such a call seriously" and decide to go ahead without her.

In the words of a 13 year old who is now wise beyond his years: "be careful what you post" .... hmm, I have the feeling that is exactly how they'd like it.

Friday, May 13, 2011

American Flag ... yup, still offensive

Another example of minority rule. Because nobody wants to offend "Jaden".

"Jaden" refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, which according to his teacher, means he finds the American flag offensive. Well, my guess is that he finds freedom offensive too -- maybe we should just ban freedom.

And am I the only one that doesn't understand how you could be offended by a flag that's not even anatomically correct?

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Idiots of the World Unite

Soviet Flags fly at Union May Day celebration in Kentucky. (great)


Via Big Government Useful idiots. That’s what Vladmir Lenin called western sympathizers of the Soviet cause. He must have been smiling from his cave in Hell Sunday when he saw the Soviet flag – and Communist Party signs – being carried in honor of May Day.

“Union members, pro-labor groups, and even anarchists” participated, according to Fox41.

A couple of anarchists, dressed as clowns (how fitting), were arrested after they scribbled anti-capitalist slogans on downtown buildings in chalk. Meanwhile, in Berlin, Germany, protesters “threw stones at banks and shops, and in isolated incidents police officers were targeted with bottles and fireworks,” according to published reports.

Chalk, schmalk. Is that the best these crazies can do? Put some heart into it! Make a difference for the cause. Or are they merely the type of useful idiots that bemused Lenin?

Call me a cynic, but I have a hard time seeing how the average American will sympathize with those who carry the flag of an empire that was bent on destroying the western way of life. But I suppose that’s a minor detail.

Elsewhere in the United States, AFL-CIO heavy Richard Trumka, began his remarks: “Brothers and Sisters, May Day is our day!”

He, along with other six-figure leaders of the “middle class” rallied their members against government spending reforms.

While it’s easy to laugh at these nutcases blocking the entrance of the Chow Wagon and marching under red banners, look how far they’ve come. Just a couple decades ago, they would have been accused of being traitors. Now they’re interviewed on the 6 o’clock news and have positions of real power.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory


10 ways Obama botched the aftermath of the masterful Bin Laden operation

Via The Telegraph The past few days have seemed like an extended amateur hour in the White House as unforced error after unforced error has been made in the handling of the US Government’s message about the killing of bin Laden.

We should not forget the bottom line in this: bin Laden was justifiably and legally killed by brave and skilled US Navy SEALs. The operation was audacious and meticulous in its planning and execution. President Barack Obama made the call to carry out the raid and his decision was vindicated in spades.

Having said that, the messiness since then has taken much of the sheen off this success, temporarily at least. Here’s a summary of what went wrong once the most difficult bit had been achieved:

1. It took nearly three days to decide not to release the photographs. I think there was a case for not releasing the pictures, though on balance I think disclosure would have been best. But whichever way Obama went on this, the decision should have been made quickly, on Monday. By letting the world and his dog debate the issue for so long and then say no made the administration look indecisive and appear that it had something to hide. It will fuel the conspiracy theories. And the pictures will surely be leaked anyway.

2. To say that bin Laden was armed and hiding behind a wife being used as a human shield was an unforgiveable embellishment. The way it was expressed by John Brennan was to mock bin Laden as being unmanly and cowardly. It turned out to be incorrect and gave fuel, again, to conspiracy theories as well as accusations of cover-ups and illegality. Of all the mistakes of the week, this was by far the biggest.

3. It was a kill mission and no one should have been afraid to admit that. Bin Laden was a dead man as soon as the SEAL Team landed. There’s nothing wrong with that but the Obama administration should have been honest about it rather than spinning tales about bin Laden having a gun, reaching for a gun (the latest) and resisting (without saying how he resisted).

4. Too much information was released, too quickly and a lot of it was wrong. When it made the administration look good, the information flowed freely. When the tide turned, Jay Carney, Obama’s spokesman, clammed up completely. I’m a journalist; I like it when people talk about things. But from the administration’s perspective, it would have been much better to have given a very sparse, accurate description of what happened without going into too much detail, especially about the intelligence that led to the compound (an account which is necessarily suspect).

5. Obama tried to claim too much credit. Don’t get me wrong, he was entitled to a lot of credit. but sometimes less is more and it’s better to let facts speak for themselves. We didn’t need official after official to say how “gutsy” Obama was. Far better to have heaped praise on the CIA and SEALs (which, to be fair, was done most of the time) and talked less about Obama’s decision-making. And a nod to President George W. Bush would have been classy – and good politics for Obama.

6. Proof of death was needed. The whole point of the SEAL operation, rather than a B2 bombing that levelled the compound, was to achieve certainty. The administration has DNA evidence, facial recognition evidence and photographic evidence. Some combination of that evidence should have been collated and released swiftly. It’s not enough to say, effectively, “Trust me, I’m Obama” – especially given all the misinformation that was put out.

7. The mission should have been a ‘capture’ one. Notwithstanding 3. above and the legitimacy of killing bin Laden, I think a capture of bin Laden was probably possible and, in the long term, would have been better – not least because of the intelligence that could have been gleaned from interrogating him and the couriers. My hunch is that Obama didn’t want him alive because there would have been uncomfortable issues to address like whether he should be tried, where he should be held (it would have been Guantanamo – obviously) and the techniques for questioning him.

8. Obama’s rhetoric lurched from jingoistic to moralistic. During the initial announcement, Obama said that by killing bin Laden “we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to”. If Bush had said that, he would have been mocked and laughed at, with some justification. But by today Obama was all preachy and holier than thou saying: “It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool. That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.”

9. Triggering a torture debate was an avoidable own goal. Following on from 3. by discussing the intelligence, the administration walked into the issue of whether enhanced interrogation techniques yielded important information. That was certainly something they could have done without. Politically, it gave something for Republicans to use against Obama.

10. The muddle over Pakistan. Everyone I talk to with knowledge of these things tells me that Pakistan had to have given the green light for the raid in some form. But the Pakistanis, for good reasons, would not want this made public. Rather than say it would not comment on whether Pakistan had harboured bin Laden or was playing a double game, the White House poured petrol on the flames by encouraging criticism of Pakistan. That might have been deserved, but in terms of managing the region it was impolitic. The Pakistanis are clearly riled and the contradictions between the US and Pakistani accounts, again, fuel the conspiracy theories.

All this has meant that this week’s media story has become one about Obama and the White House more than one about the SEALs, the CIA and what killing bin Laden means. That’s exactly the wrong way round.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Military Triumphs - Despite Obama


via Big Peace When President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden to the nation Sunday night,
he referenced himself more than 25 times during the speech. At the same time, he referenced the U.S. military only 3 or 4 times.

It was almost as if he really believed credit was due him for cornering and killing Bin Laden, but the obvious truth is that the military personnel he scorned in that speech, the very ones that he has scorned throughout his days on the national stage, deserve the credit. And they deserve it not only for killing Bin Laden, but for doing so despite the many obstacles Obama has thrown up along the way.

The cold hard truth is that Obama has done all he can, to date, to hinder our success in the War on Terror "Overseas Contingency Operation”

Perhaps a few simple examples will suffice to make my point:

In 2007, when the troop surge that turned everything around in Iraq was being promoted by President Bush, then-Senator Obama opposed it, and arrogantly asserted: “We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, [but] I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference.”

Despite Obama, the surge was implemented and the surge worked.

Around the same time, Obama opposed funding the troops because he wanted President Bush to set a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq but Bush refused. (In other words, Obama was willing to withhold funds to the point of hurting our troops unless he got his way.)

On the presidential campaign trail, Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay, end military tribunals, and ban the enhanced interrogations techniques that some of our troops had used on terrorists, and which Obama believed violated human rights.

For the record, I always found it strange that members of our military, a.k.a., the good guys, were supposedly violating human rights by “placing hoods or sacks over [terrorists’] heads, [placing] duct tape over their eyes, [or subjecting] them to total sensory deprivation,” while the terrorists, a.k.a., the bad guys, were to be handled with kid gloves although they had a penchant for decapitating and otherwise mutilating the bodies of captured U.S. personnel.

Nonetheless, just months after Obama was sworn into office in 2009, he further tied the hands of our military (and intelligence communities) by requiring that “Miranda rights [be read] to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan.”

These Obama-era policies are so harmful to our military that it seems fair to ask whom Obama is really at war with? Especially when we add the attacks he leveled at our military tribunal system by trying to move the most high profile terror trial on record – that of “professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators” – from military hands to civilian courts in New York City where everyone would be guaranteed the chance to lawyer up and plea bargain (and to use the subsequent media coverage as an opportunity to propagate “anti-U.S. and anti-Semitic rants that would have served as a rallying cry to Islamists everywhere”).

Of course there are others things Obama has done to hinder our military or damage its morale, but the constraints of this post don’t allow them all to be to be covered here.

Suffice it to say Obama’s speech about the death of Bin Laden should have contained 3 or 4 references to himself, at most, and 25-plus references to our brave military personnel, at a minimum.

For not only did they kill Bin Laden, they overcame Obama to do it.