These kids understand

Evening colors is something that I have always loved since I first joined the Navy.  It is a simple ceremony that marks the end of the day, but more importantly, it is an expression of reverence for our flag and the nation it represents.  We retire the colors at the end of the day because it is not fitting or proper for the flag to be flown when not illuminated for all to see.  As the colors are slowly lowered, retreat is played and all personnel outdoors render honors.  Throughout the base nearly all movement ceases, cars stop and those on foot face the flag and render their salute.  Stillness settles over everything, broken only by the sound of a bugler playing retreat.  Evening colors on Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard bases is performed at sunset which means the ceremony is often lit by the warm pastel glow of the sun as it disappears below the horizon.  To my mind, there is no more beautiful ceremony in the military than evening colors.

There were many times when I was in the Navy where I would take a moment to reflect on the meaning of service to my country.  Often it was during evening colors.  Standing there, at attention, saluting our nation's flag, I would think about those who had gone before me in service of this great nation.  Those who quietly went about their duties and brave men who gave everything; all serving their country and the promise of freedom it represents.  They all understood that defense of our liberty required that they sacrifice and put the needs of the nation ahead of their own.  The flag that I was saluting was the physical manifestation of the greatness of our nation and the sacrifice required to make it so.  This was the flag that color bearers in the Civil War so often gave their lives to keep aloft.  This was the flag that thousands of Marines gave their lives to raise above Mount Suribachi. 

I am so glad that there are still Americans who understand this and that they passing the lessons on to their children.

The wasteland of low expectations

This is the type of adversity average young Americans faced on this day 69 years ago.  

Young men in their late teens and early twenties were asked to do extraordinary things on a regular basis.  We asked a lot from them and expected them to rise to the occasion.  They did.
 
There is a lesson to be learned here.  We have lowered expectations for our children.  They are coddled and pampered; not challenged to rise to the limits of their abilities.  We think we are protecting them, but, in fact, we are consigning them to lives of mediocrity.

Brrrrring, Brrrrrring. Hello, Iran?

Israel just sent a message to Iran.  They aren't buying the 'new moderate' regime game that Obama and Europe have fallen for.

Israel is sending a message.  We'll see if anybody is listening.  The Israelis have had their worst fears confirmed; Obama will do absolutely nothing to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.  I'm sure the Israelis suspected this ever since Obama took office.  It's not like the signs were hard to see.  Obama's apology tour of the Arab world, his treatment of Netanyahu like a house servant, the reckless and destructive support for Islamists in the Arab Spring.  It all led up to the phony red line, fake bravado and then the ultimate, embarrassing capitulation to the Soviets Russians.  All talk, no substance.  Israel now finds itself alone, forced to deal with Iran alone, while the rest of the world withdraws out of fear or indifference.  If Israel takes out Iran's nuclear capabilities it won't just be an act of self-preservation; it will make the world a safer place.  The rest of the world will likely condemn Israel.  I am sad to say that our government probably will as well.  But they will all know that they are living in a safer world for Israels actions.   

The martial law solution?

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) suggests martial law to end the government shutdown. 

Fortunately Mrs. Lee is dumb as a box of rocks and is a little confused.  I don't think she is talking about martial law in the conventional sense.  I don't think she really knows what the hell she's on about.  I think she just pulled something out of her ass and went with it. Just as well.  That would definitely be the tipping point.  Statists like Mrs. Lee would surely find out that if they every tried to declare martial law to advance their plans there are more private citizens with guns in the United States than there are police and military personnel.  The results would not be exactly what she expected.

BTW: I am mortified to say that Sheila Jackson Lee, the unarguably stupidest person to hold a seat in Congress, represents a district right here in my adopted home of Houston, TX.  Yes, there is a ghetto here in Houston for her to represent.  That may seem harsh, but, unfortunately it is true. It is sad that the people most in need of competent, enlightened representation almost always vote for exactly the opposite.  Low income, poverty, broken homes, crime and government dependence invariably involve bad leadership.  It is a vicious cycle that seemingly has no end.  How can Detroit correct itself?  I don't see how that can happen.  The culture of dependence, corruption and despair is so deep it is impossible to dig out of the hole.  That is what terrifies me about Obamacare.  That is the step off the cliff for America.  Health care is an enormous segment of the economy and it is something that touches everybody at some point.  Allowing the government to get a foothold, let alone take control of it, will destroy traditional America; a country founded on the principle of limited government.  We will wind up one giant national ghetto with nothing but Sheila Jackson Lees running the country.

Guess the Party Affilliation - update

It is a little game we conservatives play with maddening frequency.  The guess the party affiliation game isn't very challenging so it is ideal to be used as a drinking game.  

It's time to play GUESS THE PARTY. The news media is shameless in its support of Democrats. If you doubt me, try playing GUESS THE PARTY for a year. You will find that whatever the transgression, real, manufactured, alleged or just the subject of gossip, the mainstream news media will identify the party affiliation of a Republican nearly 100% of the time. Not only will they identify the perpetrators party affiliation, but it will become a central theme of the story and will be used to taint other Republicans. If it is a Democrat transgressor, you will be hard-pressed to determine their party affiliation from any of the reporting. The MSM will do whatever is necessary to hide the party affiliation, and if that can't be done, they will ignore the story in its entirety. Look at Bob Filner, the longtime DEMOCRAT and mayor of San Diego. For over a week the national mainstream media completely ignored the story, hoping it would go away. As it got worse and worse it finally got national coverage, but the party affiliation was often left out of the report. The MSM couldn't say REPUBLICAN enough when talking about Larry Craig. They made up the whole 'Republican war on women' meme around Todd Aikin. So where is the same treatment for Democrats? That's right; it's not there. The mainstream media is not about reporting facts. The mainstream media exists to support the liberal political objectives of the Democrat Party

Update

Ding, ding, ding......We have another winner.  DRINK!

An AP story on the Fox News website (fair and balanced) about disgraced former Detroit mayor Kwame Kirlpatrick being sentenced to 28 years for corruption.  Ten paragraphs.  That's 10 paragraphs into the story before there is a passing mention that Kilpatrick is a Democrat.  CNN's report didn't mention his party affiliation at all.  The New York Times gave far more column inches to the story than did the AP version, yet Kilpatrick's party affiliation was never once mentioned.  Could it be that the media would rather not remind you that Detroit, a once-gleaming example of the power of unrestrained American capitalism, has been run into the ground by sixty years of Democrat leadership.  The Democrats bled the golden goose dry and now Detroit looks like a third world craphole or the setting for some post-zombie-apocalyptic video game.  Thanks, donkeys.  Drink.

My boss is a d!ck

D-Bag boss.  Everybody can relate to that

At one time or another everybody likely has had a boss who was a jerk.  Some bosses just aren't good people.  Face it; you know the type.  He could be the knob polisher who spends most of his working hours  kissing up to the company power brokers.  She might be the type who makes all sorts of promises and never delivers.  Maybe it was the guy who always took credit when things went well and threw you under the bus when they went south.  How about the one who copes with her feelings of inadequacy by always denigrating others?  It could be the lazy bastard who leaves early every day and dumps his work off on you.  The thing is, if you have worked for any length of time you have had to deal with this.  It makes going to work a chore and something to dread.  If it goes on long enough you will do anything for a change.

I once worked for a real loser at a trucking company.  The man was a compulsive gambler, a liar and a cheat.  He would promise customers service that we had little chance of providing, then gamble that he could somehow dispatch the drivers in such a way as to meet all the appointment times.  All of his plans were predicated on everything going right, no traffic, loads available, all the paperwork being correct and so on.  Every day as he set appointments and scheduled drivers he created in his head a fantasy world where nothing went wrong and everything turned out alright at the end of the day.  Sure as hell, every morning the plan would go to crap with the first deliveries of the day.  All the fancy plans that looked so good on the dispatch board in the office would fall apart when exposed to the harsh light of reality.  Then the chaos would start.  In spite of the growing delays with each move, he would refuse to call the customers and let them know that our drivers would be late.  He would just sit there staring at the dispatch board, hoping that somehow the driver would get there on time.  He was practically delusional.  He wasn't just lying to the customers, it soon become apparent that he was lying to himself.  This gathering chaos would build throughout the day and then at 3 o'clock he would grab his stuff and head home.  We would be left to deal with the irate customers who were paying lumpers to sit around waiting for our drivers to arrive.  All day long this guy had been promising everything to everybody and then, when the crapstorm broke loose he would walk out and let us take the heat.  This guy also cheated the drivers every chance he got.  He would promise them one rate and then pay them something less.  Every week he would short their pay and then take off early on Friday; leaving us to handle pissed off drivers.  At his best he was a petty little man, at worst he was a vindictive bastard who would cut off his nose to spite his face.  He never understood why our best drivers would get frustrated and quit.  He didn't understand why customers eventually become former customers.  He lived only in the moment and would not recognize that his actions had repercussions.  

I've been looking at what has been happening in Washington, DC the last ten days and I am absolutely appalled.  I'm not seeing a president who is up to the task.  I'm not seeing a president who rises to the stature of the office.  I'm not seeing any leadership.  What I am seeing is a petty little man who is not that much different than the general manager of the crappy little trucking company I worked for.  A small man with a failed plan who is not willing to take responsibility for his mistakes.  I am seeing a thin-skinned, vindictive man who will deliberately hurt others in order to get his way. What I am not seeing is an American President.  All I see is a guy who is like my old boss.......and my boss was a dick.

Libyan PM Zidan kidnapped

Get ready for another foreign policy performance that will make Jimmy Carter look Curchillian 

CNN is reporting that armed rebels have kidnapped Libyan Prime Minister, Ali Zidan.  There aren't many details yet, so it's hard to tell how this will play out.  Here is one scenario.  In the morning the rebels - oh hell, let's just call them what they are - Islamist militia will announce that they have taken the PM prisoner because he cooperated with the United States and allowed al Qaeda terrorist Abu Anas al Libi to be seized by US forces.  They might hold Zidan hostage and demand the return of al Libi or the may just behead him as an apostate.  Either way it will be great theater watching Obama flop and twitch when the inevitable questions are asked.  Did the United States illegally seize al Libi?  Did Obama order the mission and, if so, did he anticipate this sort of thing might happen?  Will he negotiate with the Libyan militia (the way he did with Iran, but not the Republicans)?  American media lapdogs won't be asking these questions, but foreign journalists will.  I imagine that Vladimir Putin might even come back to get some sloppy seconds on Little Barry.  I'm just wondering who goes under the bus first; FBI, CIA, Delta, SecDef?  SecDef is a nominal Republican so he's my bet.   Ol' Chuck is too stupid to see it coming.  He will probably take one for the team (D), but I bet he blames the Jews for something or other before the back wheels bounce over his dumb ass.

Update: 10OCT13

Turns out it was just politics as usual in the shattered remains of what once was Libya.  Obama's off the hook for now.

Pedro Martinez needs to be on TV - always

Screw the pre-game show; Pedro needs to be in the booth for every game in the post-season.

Pedro is the best thing to happen to televised beisbol since Chico Escuela.  TBS is just a wasteland of sleep-inducing play-by-play announcers and bland, listless 'color' men.  It's killing me watching these Dodger games without the familiar and comforting voice of Vin Scully.  If I can't listen to Vinny, I need something to keep me interested.  Pedro is just the ticket.  I just heard him say something about the Pirate's rookie pitcher throwing heat right at the mouth of the San Luis players.  Huh?  Oh Hell, who cares.  It was awesome.  TBS has got five guys on the pre-game show and I don't remember what any of them said other than Pedro.  He might not speak English very well, but he is the only one who is emotional and willing to give a real opinion.  Raw talent.  Just like when he was a 135lb reliever for the Doyers.  He was raw and inexperienced and looked like he'd get blown off the mound if the Santa Ana winds picked up, but he was a gamer who had some fire in him.  Pedro didn't become a great pitcher until he went to Montreal and they made him a starter.  By then he was up to maybe 150lbs and was the baddest badass in baseball.  He had nasty stuff and he wasn't afraid to come inside......way inside.  Pedro needs to move up to the starting role for TBS.  He's got to be the color commentator for the big games.  Give 'em the ball and let him throw some opinions in broken English right at your ear.  He'll grab that broadcast like Don Zimmer's head and wrestle it to the ground.  It will be awesome.

One more note while I'm on the subject.  I think Keith Olberman is a loathsome, execrable person.  In spite of that, I have to say I still kind of like him doing sports.  Watching him on the playoff pre/post-game shows for the last week made me nostalgic for the glory days of ESPN Sports Center when he and Dan Patrick revolutionized sports reporting.  If he had only stuck to doing what he was best at I'd probably still like the guy.  Instead, he had to go on MSNBC and show everybody what a douche he is.

The White House.gov drinking game

I'm not a drinker, but playing the White House.gov drinking game would surely be a hoot.

Here is the general concept.  Go to www.whitehouse.gov and explore the website for a few minutes.  For every blatant lie you find you take a shot.  If I had tequila I would be drunk before I got off the home page.  Fortunately I'm drinking lemon-limeade so I just have to watch for an unhealthy blood sugar spike.

I don't know where to start.  The lies, the blatant partisanship, rank hypocrisy, the mean-spirited tone......  It is all very off-putting.  I just went there to find the text of today's presser (I'm sorry, but I just can't listen to that petulant little Marxist.  I can't afford a new TV and if I had to sit through one of his speeches I know I'd be throwing things).  I got sidetracked by looking at the text of recent presidential imperial speeches.  Oi vey! There is one common theme that I always go back to; this man deliberately and confidently lies because he knows he can get away with it.  Think about how dangerous it is to have any politician who feels comfortable lying because he is absolutely sure that he won't be questioned by the news media.  Now think about an entire political party that can say just about anything, no matter how dissociated from reality, and be sure of never having to defend their position.  This is the political world manifestation of the old saying; "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."  Now think about what happens when an arrogant narcissist, indoctrinated from birth on Marxist ideology wields this absolute power.  OK, you don't have to think too hard about it.  This dangerous scenario has been played out in real life for 5 years.

This goes beyond just winning and losing elections.  The mainstream media only gives the liberal view on just about every issue.  A representative republic like ours relies on the citizens being able to make INFORMED choices so that their representatives can do what is right for the country.  The MSM's support for the Left has knocked that vital support out from under our nation.  The people are no longer able to make informed decisions because they have been deprived of objective facts.

So what is the solution.  Well you try to run candidates that have the backbone and intelligence to stand up to the liberal media.  That only goes so far, because you will always be on the defensive as long as the media remains unchanged.  What we need to do is destroy the liberal media.  The traditional media is already on the ropes.  Their credibility is being questioned, they are rapidly losing readership to new media and the business model that has supported them for decades is failing in the digital age.  The mainstream media is vulnerable.  It is just a matter of cutting into their market enough to push them over the edge.

We need to break the back of the news media's credibility with those who are just casual observers of current events; the low-information voter.  The low information voters lack information because they are lazy or disinterested.  They are not interested in politics or anything outside of their narrow scope of awareness.  You will never reach these people through intellectual arguments.  You have to make it personal for them.  You have to trigger their emotions.  We need to make the low information voter feel angry, insulted and betrayed by the liberal media.  You need to personalize the media's faults for them.  Link specific media lies to issues that hit home with the low information voter.  Listen to what they complain about and provide them with specific examples of how the media allowed or encouraged it to happen.  Every example of media bias or malfeasance must have an emotional hook if you expect to get through to them.  That is how the Democrats have been doing it for years their entire history.

I have never been a big fan of boycotts, but the precarious financial condition of many traditional media outlets make them particularly vulnerable to loss of advertising revenue.  I wouldn't go with general boycotts of the media; rather focused attacks on specific advertisers of a single media company.  The New York Times or Washington Post would be a good targets for such an attack.  They may be big, but they are also vulnerable.  They are surviving more on reputation than sound business plans at this point.  The NYT took an enormous loss with the Boston Globe deal and is still on the hook for the Globe's pension liabilities.  Getting just a few major advertisers to dump the NYT might put them in a hard spot.

WTF NPS

Yet another example of just how deeply our government is politicized and infected with liberal ideology. 

via Gateway Pundit: Our Tax Dollars at Work

Agencies like the IRS, EPA, NPS and NASA should be completely non-partisan and ideologically neutral.  These agencies should be fulfilling their duties as required by US Federal Code, not used as vehicles to attack political enemies of the president or spread Muslim propaganda.  There is no earthly reason why the National Park Service should be producing propaganda videos extolling the Muslim religion.  Given the Left's Taliban-like zeal for stamping out any government association with the organizations, symbols or teaching of Christianity, no matter how small or insignificant, it is ironic that they would accept such blatant cheer leading for Islam.  And where is the outrage from the feminists over this?  They can't possibly think that the propaganda in these videos possibly represents the actual state of human rights or living conditions experienced by hundreds of millions of Muslim women.  Both the NPS and NASA have significant budgetary constraints, yet both are being used for Muslim outreach, something that is completely outside their defined missions.  That would seem to be a waste of scarce resources.

Just another OPSEC/INFOSEC violation

Terrorist protection from SEAL raids; children as human shields

Information on Somali SEAL raid leaked

If I were an Islamist terrorist warlord/sheikh, what would I gather from this news report?  Well, I would definitely make sure that every place I lay my head for the evening has a load of kids running around.  This unnamed official basically just announced that we are not willing to accept collateral damage even when trying to capture some bastard who is more than willing to order the deliberate slaughter of innocents.

Oddly, when blowing up Islamist a-holes will Hellfires we don't seem to worry about the kids that get splattered.

Maybe the SEALs should have just pulled back and let a Hellfire or JDAM take care of the problem.

It's hard to say without knowing more about the target and what the US intended to do with him.  If the Tripoli raid is any indicator it may have been an attempt to capture for prosecution.  I can't believe we are still doing that.  When do stop treating terrorism as a crime and begin to accept that they are committing acts of war against us?  The whole purpose of treating terrorists as common criminals instead of as unlawful combatants was to deny the motivations of the terrorists any sort of recognition or validation.  That quaint little concept has been overtaken by reality for decades.  Islamists view terrorism as a valid form of warfare and much of the Muslim world accepts it as such as well.  All we are doing by treating them as criminals is handicapping our ability to deal with the terrorists.  They are engaged in unconventional warfare against us.  Dealing with them as if they were disgruntled postal workers in absolutely pointless.  We cannot effectively hunt down and kill terrorists if we are trying to abide by US standards for probable cause to arrest.  Besides, if we violate the sovereignty of a foreign nation, break any number of their laws as we illegally snatch terrorists, how can we try them in a US criminal court?  It is beyond insane.  If we identify an unlawful combatant who is committing acts of war against US citizens or interests we should deal with them as such.  It is time for a paradigm shift.  International terrorists are very similar to the pirates of centuries ago.  They operated outside of the normal laws and conventions of civilized nations and were dealt with as what they were; unlawful combatants.  They could be tried by courts martial and summarily executed.  This is the model we need to use for terrorists.

The cost of Obamacare

More than we can afford

Obamacare will add $621B to health care costs

This should not surprise anybody. When the socialists of the Democrat Party foisted Medicare/Medicaid on the country they wildly underestimated the costs. Medicare/Medicaid costs were several hundred percent higher than projected less than twenty years after it was passed into law. Not only were the costs to the government greater, but health care costs for everybody rose as the effects of government interference rippled throughout the market. People with common sense and an understanding of history knew that Obamacare was going to increase health care costs and burden the federal budget, just as Medicare had. Unfortunately, those who spoke out against Obamacare were shouted down by Democrats and the media (same thing). Our facts and history meant nothing, because the argument wasn't about facts. The liberals knew they could never get Obamacare passed by using facts and logic, so it became an emotional argument. If you were against health care reform it was because you hated the poor. If you Opposed Obamacare it was because you were a racist. So, after billions in pork had bought the last Democrat votes, Obamacare was pushed through Congress in the dark of night using procedural tricks. And here were are. Obamacare will come into full effect in less than two weeks and the signs are already abundant that it will be a disaster. Costs have already increased dramatically beyond projections. Companies across the nation have dropped or reduced health care benefits, fired workers and reduced hours in order to minimize the law's impact on their costs. Insurance companies are raising rates to compensate for the unfunded mandates imposed by Obamacare. The state exchanges are an absolute clusterf*ck that will not be able to provide required services and the president has taken unilateral, unconstitutional actions to exempt certain campaign supporters and delay implementation for political gain.

We have one last chance to defund Obamacare before it is fully implemented. It is the right thing to do. It is the smart thing to do. It is what we must do. 

Dems starting to lose the Government shutdown blame game

After all the deliberate, petulant actions by the Obama Administration, the American people are seeing this for what it really is

Breitbart - Obama Administration decided to block access to memorials

PJ Media - White House ordered privately owned and funded parks to close

This is not new for the Obama Administration. They have deliberately used closures of public facilities, cancellation of popular programs and threats of cutting off payments to the military, veterans, the disabled and Social Security recipients in order to create the maximum amount of pain, suffering and discontent and then accuse the Republicans of being the cause. This has been a Democrat tactic since Clinton used it in '96. They know that their allies in the mainstream media will dutifully fall in line and run endless stories of suffering and lay the blame at the feet of the Republicans. The Obama Administration is shutting down sites that require no staff or are run, at no cost to the government by volunteers. This is the same crap they pulled with the sequester. Then they cancelled White House tours even though they are run by volunteers. This is the petulant response of a little man. This president wants to punish the American people to get his way. Think about that for a minute. Have we ever had a president so vindictive and petty? I don't think so. This government shutdown could have been avoided altogether. All Obama and the Democrats had to do was defund ObamaCare. While the news media was running government shutdown sob stories wall to wall yesterday, they were trying their damnedest to ignore the monumental clusterf*ck that was the rollout of ObamaCare. First day of the individual mandate and the system didn't work. That's just the individual mandate, mind you. The employer mandate was delayed by Obama, in violation of the PPACA law and the Constitution. Just as Obama illegally provided waivers for the unions that have supported him. Just as he illegally exempted Congress and their staffers from the law. If they have had three years to prepare for this day and the infrastructure doesn't work and various groups have been illegally exempted so as to minimize political fallout, then why the hell should Obama care if ObamaCare is defunded or delayed? Obama is punishing American citizens in order to save a crappy piece of legislation that is so bad he has to violate that law to protect the Democrats electoral fortunes in 2014. America deserves better than this petulant little man.


WWII vets break through barrycades at the WWII Memorial

The veterans of World War II just gave Washington a lesson on getting things done and standing up for what is right. These men endured a crippling economic disaster and then the horror and brutality of war. They know what is important and what isn't. They learned that freedom and prosperity requires tremendous sacrifice. It is time that everybody in Washington, elected, appointed, civil service and the those whose businesses rely of the largess of the federal government, relearn this lesson.

Ideology and the free market

Every time the government interjects itself into the marketplace somebody is going to lose some money

American Spectator - Assault and GM's $30,000 battery

No matter the reason, good intentions or bad, the intrusion of the government distorts the market and costs some or all parties money and often a level of freedom. It is for this reason that every law, regulation and policy must be carefully scrutinized to determine the economic impact that is sure to occur. The cost must be objectively and dispassionately weighed against the benefit. In other words; adult, mature decision-making. The Democrats have shown themselves to be incapable of making any sort of objective analysis of the impact of their decisions. They are driven by emotion and a blind, ersatz religious faith that whatever they do is the morally superior action and therefore, any questioning of motive or result is not worthy of discussion. For all intents and purposes we are being governed by teenagers. They lack the experience, wisdom and maturity to make sound judgments; instead, the act only in emotional self-interest.

McCain hires a liar

Why am I not surprised

McCain hires discredited Syria activist, Elizabeth O'Bagy (not a PhD)

Not that I've believed anything coming out of John McCain's mouth for over a quarter century, but this should show everybody that anything rolling out of that old crank's pie-hole is not to be believed. It is hard to say if this is driven by his arrogance, senility or his penis. It is likely all three played a part. This idiot staked his reputation on the position that the Syrian rebels were the good guys in need of the support of the United States. He evidently ignored recent history and the results of the Arab Spring throughout the rest of the Mediterranean Rim. I guess he hasn't bothered to follow the news coming out of Libya. No, somehow he has insulated himself from all facts and decided that the Syrian rebels are not in any way affiliated with al Qaeda and are worthy of American military aid and combat arms support. How did he come to this position, in spite of all facts and common sense? Well......he read an op-ed piece by Elizabeth O'Bagy......and then she gave him a personal briefing. SHAZZAM! -suddenly the randy ol' kook thinks that the FSA are freedom-fighting patriots, just like our forefathers at Lexington and Concord. So the randy ol' coot goes out and beclowns himself, calling for the U.S. to enter the Syrian Civil War on the side of the rebels. Just one little problem; Miss O'Bagy, who also advised Secretary of State, John Kerry, was a liar. She lied about her education and she lied about her ties with pro-FSA groups. Did she lie to Kerry and McCain? Who knows. Maybe she means well and just set aside her objectivity. Maybe she is actively trying to sway U.S. policy on Syria. Maybe she is a lying sack of crap who used her looks to bamboozle a couple of horny old guys. One thing for sure; she has lied about substantive issues and misrepresented her interests. That makes her untrustworthy. She was fired by her employer because she was untrustworthy. Here's where McCain's arrogance comes in. He still believes what O'Bagy told him about the FSA. He still thinks that we should enter the Syrian Civil War on their side. His arrogance won't let him even acknowledge that he might have made a mistake. To prove that he was right, not only is he refusing to accept that he may have been misled, he is going to double down and hire the discredited Miss O'Bagy. This is just sad. He is a bitter, cranky old man, whose personal honor and integrity was evidently expended in the Hanoi Hilton. Now he's just an arrogant, narcissistic politician who is easily driven by his base instincts and is unwilling to admit that he was wrong.

The purpose of the government shutdown

Create the maximum amount of pain felt by the maximum number of people and reported by the maximum number of liberal journalists.  Simple as that.  The blame game.

RS McCain - Extremely extreme extremists

Here is a good explanation of what is really happening with the federal budget and who caused it. R.S. McCain rightfully lays the blame with the Democrats, but I would also direct a little of that blame towards the Republican leadership. The TEA Party Republicans have been fighting this mess since 2009; however, the Republican leadership has done absolutely nothing of substance to stop Obama and his merry band of socialists. Boehner, Mitchell, McCain, Graham, Cantor, Michael Steele and Reince Priebus and the rest of the establishment Republicans have done nothing but capitulate to every Obama initiative since the PPACA passed. Their unwillingness to oppose the damage that the Democrats were inflicting on the country makes them just as guilty in my mind.

This country has developed a political class that is more concerned with maintaining the structures of federal power than they are with serving the needs of the people. The political class exists to grow and protect the institutions of government. It does whatever is necessary to protect its power, even if it is diametrically opposed to the will of the citizens. It is a cancer that is metastasizing throughout our nation. The existence of a professional government class is antithetical to the principles on which this nation was founded. If we do not break their grip on our government, America, as we know it, will not survive.

Brain washing Americans against guns

This is not just stubborn bureaucratic rigidity. It is not just the typical liberal stupidity. This is a deliberate, planned effort, targeting children, to break the longstanding American tradition of firearm ownership.

School expels kid for playing with an Airsoft gun on private property

This is the brainwashing that AG Holder said the government should undertake to destroy what he considered our gun culture. When schools are expelling students for biting a pop tart into something vaguely resembling a gun or playing with air soft guns at home it is a clearly beyond any sort of reasonable school safety measure; it is social engineering.

The right to self defense is a basic, unassailable human right. American citizens have the constitutional right to own firearms. Our right to bear arms has been repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court. These 'educators' and public school bureaucrats don't accept those basic facts and are doing everything they can to deprive us of our civil rights. The sad thing is that, rather than trying to engage adults in the arena of logical debate, they are attempting to brainwash impressionable children. Sad.

The best thing anybody could do would be to home-school their kids or put them in a church school.


1995 video of Eric Holder calling for brainwashing people against guns

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”

He also said that the school board should have some form of anti-violence or anti-gun message every day.  “Every day, every school, at every level,” he stated.

“We have to be repetitive about this,” he said.  “We need to do this every day of the week, and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

They really don't know what they are doing

It's a good thing we have a competent administration that fully understands the complex military, political, religious and economic issues at play in the Muslim world. Wait!....ahhh...What just happened in Libya?

Theft of weapons from training camp in Libya

These are the same folks who are providing weapons to the rebels in Syria and wanted us to join the fighting on their side. It's OK, only about half of them are allied with al Qaeda. Shouldn't be a problem.

I'm not positive, but I'm going to take a guess on how this played out.  Not wanting to offend the Libyans, the Obama Administration agreed to host nation security for our training camps.  Every night our troops head off-site back to their housing; leaving poorly paid guards of suspect allegiance watching our stuff.  Just like with the Benghazi consulate, the guards probably recon'd the compound before tipping off the Islamist militants who stole the equipment.

Just another case of idealistic amateurs getting schooled by reality. "Gee, it sounded like a good plan when we were discussing it in the staff lounge at Harvard."  It would be so damned infuriating if they didn't keep making the same mistakes over and over.

F'n idiots.

Ideology trumps competence in the Obama Administration

Who cares if they are competent at their job, as long as they will dutifully insert liberal policies into their organizations.

via CDR Salamander - Qualifications of the new Undersecretary of the Navy

It would be nice if the Undersecretary of the Navy was actually qualified. How in the hell does running a small liberal arts college make you in any way competent to lead the Navy and Marine Corps? She may not know a damned thing about the Navy/Marine Corps but I'm sure she can be counted on to zealously inflict liberal social engineering at the behest of the president. If he needs votes from women or gays she'll be right on it. Maintaining the readiness and force posture of the Navy and Marines.....eh, who cares.

The bodies aren't even in the ground before the politicking starts

Never one to let a good tragedy go to waste, Obama decided to politicize the Navy Yard shooting before the bodies were even in the ground.  What sort of man politicizes a memorial service?

Obama grandstands for gun control at Navy Yard memorial service.

Obama politicizes a memorial service, calling for more gun control laws. He cites the United Kingdom and Australia as models for the US to follow. In both of those countries liberal politicians capitalized on mass murders committed by the mentally ill to disarm the law-abiding. Obama seeks to replicate that same illogical action here. What he fails to mention is that crime has dramatically risen in both countries since the citizens have been disarmed. And here's a shocker; crimes committed with guns have increased since the law-abiding citizens have been disarmed. We won't repeat the mistakes of Australia and the UK. We have a constitutional right to bear arms. Our president, who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, doesn't seem to be aware of that fact. The founding fathers were clear in their desire for the people to have the arms to defend themselves against against all enemies, foreign or domestic, who might threaten their constitutional rights.

Unintended consequences of liberal policies

As long as liberals can feed their ego by 'doing something' that they think is compassionate, the results don't matter.

Thomas Sowell - Unintended Consequences

This piece by Thomas Sowell brilliantly highlights the destructive futility of liberals trying to shoehorn their Utopian fantasy world into the real world. Marxist socialists have killed tens of millions of people over the last century by forcible trying to alter human nature to comport with their socialist Utopian fantasy. They are angered when people want to do what is natural and in keeping with cultural norms. This anger leads the Marxist to impose the socialist Utopia onto society no matter what the cost. Marxists, believing in their own ideology with an unwavering religious-like zealotry, will never step back and realize that maybe the problem is not the people who won't accept socialism, but the socialism itself. And so the world has been cursed by the plague of Marxism for a century and a half, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Obama won't negotiate with Boehner.....

.....but he will talk to the president of Iran; the world's leading sponsor of terrorism.   Ironic, since Obama's lackeys have described Republicans as terrorists who can't be negotiated with. 

American Spectator: About that GOP are suicide bombers narrative

 President Obama refuses to negotiate with the Republicans, yet he is willing to negotiate with the Iranians, who are the world's largest supporters of terrorism and have threatened the United States and Israel with nuclear annihilation. Then, just days after the horrific terrorist attack in Kenya, top Democrats go out and equate conservatives to terrorists. Gee; remember all that bullsh!t the Democrats were spewing after the Tucson shootings? "We need to ratchet back on the partisan rhetoric." "We need to restore civility to politics." Basically they were blaming conservatives for instigating the shooting committed by a PSYCHOTIC LIBERAL who was obsessed with Gabby Giffords. Just as they tried to blame the Aurora, CO shooting on a TEA Party member. The very people who have been using the most vicious, defamatory attacks on conservatives for decades then blame conservatives for hyper-partisanship and violent rhetoric in politics. This behavior is only possible when your allies in the mainstream news media will cover for your blatantly hypocritical statements. This is exactly the same type of behavior that came out of the Soviet Union and its satellite states during the Cold War. Brezhnev or Khruschev would go out and make some crazy ass statement, accusing the United States of some horrible act of the type routinely committed in the USSR, and then Tass, Pravda, the New York Times and the Washington Post (all the state-controlled media outlets) would dutifully plaster it all over the front page as if it were the absolute truth.

I don't think the IRS can be trusted

Not politically.  Not financially.

IRS Obamacare slush fund is missing $67M

The IRS targets Obama's political opponents, demanding that they provide all sorts of information from member lists to the the text of the prayers that they say, but they can't even keep track of $67M in taxpayer dollars. Not only is the IRS unqualified to perform it's own job, it cannot be trusted to take on a major role in the nation's health care industry. DEFUND OBAMACARE NOW, REPEAL OBAMACARE IN 2017.

The pain of Obamacare begins......

.......too bad you'll need to wait three weeks before the Death Panel can decide whether to approve your treatment.

via Michelle Malkin: Obama lied, and my health plan died

Hope you enjoyed your relatively low-cost, good service health-care under our formerly "broken" system. Now, thanks to the wonderful health care for everybody (that will still leave millions uninsured) Obamacare plan you will likely have your rates increase, your health insurance coverage reduced or lost altogether and, just to put a cherry on top, be forced to work two jobs because your employer had to cut everybody to less than 30 hours so he won't be punished by the law.

BTW: This clusterf*ck of an abomination that is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not a trainwreck by accident. The destruction of the private health insurance industry and the attendant pain and suffering is by design. Obama knew that he couldn't get a single payer system passed, even in a Democrat controlled Congress. The costs would be astronomical and the economic damage in the middle of a recession would have made it a non-starter. But a single payer system is what Obama has always wanted and it is what he was promising his socialist labor union allies. So how do you get to single payer over the bi-partisan political objections in Congress? Well you come up with some happy horsesh!t plan that promises to give everybody health insurance, but is completely unworkable. The fact that the employer fines are less than what those businesses pay for providing health insurance should have tipped everybody off. The PPACA incentivized businesses to either drop health insurance coverage or reduce the number of full-time workers. The PPACA also heaped all sorts of requirements onto health insurance companies so as to ensure that either their rates would have to increase significantly or they would have to drop plan holders. Let's face it; when the government tells a private insurance company that it must provide coverage for those who are already sick it is no longer insurance. That is what you would call welfare.......but it's not welfare because the government isn't even paying for it. I guess you would most accurately describe it as an unconstitutional burden inflicted by the government. The intent here is to make the entire health care experience as negative, painful and expensive as possible to the health care providers, insurance companies, businesses and you, the patient. By design, it is meant to f*ck up the whole system. Obama and his ilk are counting on this. As businesses start to drop health care benefits and insurance costs go through the roof there will be tremendous outrage. They are counting on the low-information-voters to direct that outrage at the insurers and employers. Then, the good little socialists in the Democrat Party will come riding in on their unicorns to save the people from the evil companies that just want to make a profit. And the stupid will cheer and joyously elect Democrats for the rest of eternity.....or until about 2025 when the United States collapses under the financial burden of providing 'free stuff' to idiots who don't know haw the economy works. Enjoy your 'free health care' while you have it.......it won't last long.

Jose Biden leads the reconquista

I'm no expert on illegally entering countries, but if senior government officials promise amnesty to those who successfully sneak into their country, I think it would encourage more people to attempt to enter the country.

Michelle Malkin - VP Biden promises amnesty to all illegal immigrants

Vice Presidente Jose 'Reconquista' Biden goes to Mexico to encourage illegal immigration and basically promises to remake America into Mexico Norte. Gracias, Jose.

Just think what this says about Joe Biden's opinion of this country and its citizens. He goes to a foreign nation and tells them; we want you to illegally enter our country in order to change our demographics and politics. I think you can call that un-American. These liberals disgust me. The don't believe in their country. They don't believe that America is special among nations. They don't believe in American exceptionalism. They look at America as being just like any other country. They don't care for their country or appreciate the tremendous effort on the part of our forefathers to make it the great nation it is. They take our freedom and standard of living for granted; not realizing that it takes constant sacrifice and effort to maintain. Basically, they are like Section 8 renters. Homeowners have something invested in their homes, so they take pride in them, jealously guard their value and work to keep them in good repair. A Section 8 renter has no pride of ownership. They haven't had to work for the dwelling in which they live and that translates to a lack of respect for it. They will let it fall into disrepair with no worries about the consequences. If they get kicked out the government will just set them up in some other place. Too many Section 8 renters and the neighborhood becomes a ghetto. The liberals have just about succeeded in turning America into the ghetto where nobody wants to live.

Governments conspiring with scientists to lie about global warming

You expect governments to lie.  That scientist would abandon their integrity to advance their pet theories is a little harder to handle.  The government conspiring with scientists to lie to the public is totally beyond the pale.

Governments pushed scientists to hide evidence that global warming ceased 18 years ago

You have to ask yourself: "Why would governments be pressuring scientists to hide or minimize data that would call into question the theory of anthropogenic global warming?" I mean, seriously, carbon-limiting programs will costs industry,governments and entire countries trillions of dollars in direct costs and lost productivity. If they were truly interested in doing what was in the best interest of their people they would want more information before taking such incredibly costly and destructive actions........right? You would think, if you were logical. This is where we see that ideology has trumped science. Environmental sciences have been corrupted by radical environmentalism. These environmentalists are anti-industry. They have a childlike belief that by limiting or abandoning industry they can restore Earth to some sort of fantasy Utopian state. Just as with their kindred spirits, the Marxists, they continually push for an unobtainable fantasy goal and don't care how much destruction lies in their wake. And the leftists in government will gladly go along with the radical environmentalists. The leftists are openly hostile to industry and share many of the same motivations as the radical environmentalists. The radical environmentalists will advance their agenda using whatever means necessary. If that means supporting their crackpot theories with phony data and unworkable models, then that is just what they will do. If it means violating the most basic tenets of the scientific method to protect their pet theories from being put to the test they'll do it. If it means illegally blocking FOIA requests to provide their source data, well they did that. Attacking critical scientists who wish to perform an honest peer review on their hypotheses, done. Destroying data rather than complying with a FOIA request? Yeah they did that too.

Science is supposed to be unimpeachable. The scientific method is a self-correcting system that allows our understanding of things to change as new evidence is discovered. There is no such thing as settled science. There is prevailing science, but not settled science. If there were such a thing as settled science we would still think that the universe revolved around the Earth. That was the prevailing theory for all of human history from the moment people first started watching the movement of stars in the night sky until, armed with more information and a questioning mind, Copernicus postulated a heliocentric arrangement. The Copernican system was prevailing science until Kepler came along. Again, not settled science, but prevailing. Isaac Newton came along and changed our understanding of the solar system yet again. The scientific method requires all hypotheses to be tested by experiment and measurement of data. It is only when results that support the hypothesis can be reproduced repeatedly will a scientist publish his results. And then the theory will be peer reviewed. Other scientist will replicate the original experiments and perform other experiments and gather data to test the original theory. Only when this process has been completed do we arrive at what is the prevailing science. If new data or new methods of measurement and detection come along that call into question the prevailing science, the process will begin anew. This is how science is supposed to work. If it is done in this manner it should be unimpeachable. It is all that is known at this moment in time. It does not lock us in to never questioning what we think we know. The scientific method allows us to always question. That is why what has been done in the name of the 'science of global warming' is so distressing. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, James Hansen and the rest of the climate alarmists have made a mockery of the scientific method. They are acting more like the Catholic Church than Galileo. They are the flat-Earthers who would rather condemn their critics to death than admit that their world-view might be wrong. Not only is their global warming hysteria costing trillions and endangering our progress as a species, it will have a profound affect on how science is viewed. When the majority of people finally realize that climate scientists have been lying to them it will call into question the veracity of all scientists. This is what happens when we allow science to become politicized.


via AoSHQ - IPCC report "hilariously flawed"

MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen told Climate Depot on September 27, 2013:

I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase.

Their excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans. However, it is this heat transport that plays a major role in natural internal variability of climate, and the IPCC assertions that observed warming can be attributed to man depend crucially on their assertion that these models accurately simulate natural internal variability. Thus, they now, somewhat obscurely, admit that their crucial assumption was totally unjustified.

via Gateway Pundit: Popular Science disables comments because they don't like dissent.

If you are not allowed to question it is faith, not science.  Just change the name of the mag to Popular (meaning government-approved) Faith

Conspiracy of silence

The mainstream media is very reluctant to acknowledge that the terrorists in the Nairobi mall attack specifically were targeting non-Muslims.

MRC - 90% of newspapers headlines censor Islam's role in latest terror attacks

CAIR and MPAC are public relations/lawfare organizations that represent the Wahaabi Gulf States. They are the ones suing for non-existent anti-Islamic discrimination. They are the ones who constantly run to the news after every Islamist terror attack and claim that most Muslims are moderate and that they will be victims of retaliation. They are the reason why the liberal news media is terrified of identifying Muslim terrorists as Muslim terrorists. When a Muslim soldier jumps up on a table, screaming Allahu Akbar and murders other soldiers, that is the act of a Muslim jihadi. Why can't we be honest about that? Well, because groups like CAIR and MPAC have called everybody Islamophobes so many times, they are scared to speak the truth. That's why General Dempsey goes to Ft. Hood and says that the most important thing in the wake of the heinous act of Islamist terr..er, hmm, ah....workplace violence, is that we continue to celebrate and tolerate diversity in today's Army.

I'm not a the ranking general in the Army, but even I know that if you aren't willing to even recognize that your enemy is your enemy you will never defeat that enemy.

The Islamist's war on all other religions continues

Based on current demographics and mindset, those nations with traditional Judeo-Christian cultures are not going to survive if they do not take this threat seriously.


Islamist terrorists attack Nairobi mall - target non-Muslims

Just in case you haven't been paying attention; Islam (the Religion of Peace) is at war with ALL NON-MUSLIMS. Twenty-two dead in Kenya today, 87 dead in Nigeria just the other day, 3000 dead in in America in 2001........it goes on and on.Everybody says that Islam is a religion of peace and that it is only a small group of extremists who are doing this. That might be correct. Only a small percentage of the 1.1 billion Muslims have actually taken up arms in jihad, but the rest of the Muslim world is deathly silent in response to these atrocities. Why? The jihadis are killing in the name of Islam. If the others take a stand against the jihadis they will be accused of being against Islam. They will be called apostates. Sharia law calls for the killing of apostates. What in civilized cultures would merely be taking a stand against barbarism is enough to get a Muslim killed. Many of the victims of the extremists are other Muslims. So it really doesn't matter that only a small percentage of Muslims are radical Wahhabi/Salafi. All it takes is enough of them to frighten the majority into compliance. There weren't that many Taliban, but through their ruthlessness they controlled all of Afghanistan. Boko Haram is not a large movement but it has effective control over all the Muslims in the northern part of Nigeria. The same applies for many other areas. I'm sure that a large percentage of Muslims, especially those who have more exposure to Western culture, would be perfectly happy living in peace with others; but that won't happen in the presence of Salafists. Nobody is going to stand up to the people who will cut off their head or blow up a car bomb at their children's school.

Islam is not retreating anywhere; it is spreading. It is spreading by demographics and force. Muslims are breeding at a much higher rate than other religions. The spread of Islam through birth rates is actually being preached in mosques. This is a soft invasion or Dar al Harb (the House of War-ie non-Muslim lands). France will be a majority Muslim nation in twenty years. By the end of the century, most of Europe will follow France into Dar al Islam. Dearborn, Michigan is, for all intents and purposes, Dar al Islam. Everywhere Islam exists, but is not a majority, force is used to advance its spread. Bangladesh has been the sad victim of this spread of Islam through violence. There is little proselytizing in Islam; conversion is usually by force. Non-Muslims are terrorized and killed, their land taken, government services denied to them, they are forced to pay the jizya tax and ultimately they are prevented from practicing their own religion. Look at the current plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, Maronites in Syria, Chaldeans in Iraq and Jews throughout the Arab world. The Copts are ten percent of Egypt's population, but under the Muslim Brotherhood they had no rights. Their churches were burned and Islamic law would not allow them to be rebuilt. They were killed for not paying the jizya tax. They were killed openly on the streets and yet there was no prosecution of the Muslim perpetrators. This is the life of a non-Muslim living in Dar al islam. There is no formal concept of freedom of religion in Islamic lands. Even in the Islamic countries that we call moderate this happens routinely. Indonesia is routinely described as a moderate Islamic state, but Christians do not have equal rights, their churches and property are frequently attacked and seized and they are persecuted and murdered. Christians and Muslims in Indonesia have been using the word Allah for God for six hundred years. The moderate Indonesian government just ruled that Christians can no longer use the word. Christians have no rights in that 'moderate' Islamic country. This is by design. Islam forces religious minorities to submit. Not surprising since the word islam means submission.

The greatest crime being committed in the Western world is the purposeful ignorance of the threat of Islam. Leftists throughout Western culture go beyond just ignoring the great danger inherent in the spread of Islam, they actively work with the Islamists to hide and disguise the true nature of the threat. You don't see a whole lot of coverage of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims. The Muslim apologists in the media and government quickly ignored the Islamist intent of the 9/11 attacks. They linked it to our support of Israel, to our supposed transgressions against Muslims, or just about anything but the real cause. Muslims in the UK routinely attack and rape non-Muslim women, yet the government and media never use the word Muslim to describe the attackers; only calling them Southwest Asians. Norway now has the highest rates of sexual assault in Western Europe, but the government and media absolutely refuse to acknowledge that 90% of the rapes are committed by Muslims on non-Muslim women. Time magazine recently ran a cover story about what it called terrorist Buddhist monks in Myanmar attacking Muslims. What the story completely ignored was the decades-long Islamist terror campaign to drive the Buddhists out of their homelands. US media outlets won't show the pictures of Americans who were forced to jump to their deaths from the Twin Towers on 9/11. They won't show the pictures of joyful Muslims throughout the Arab world celebrating those attacks. These liberals, with their self-loathing, hate-America mind-sets are hiding the very real danger of Islamists from the American public. Why would they do that?

Horrific acts of torture committed by Islamist terrorists in Nairobi mall attack

Religion of peace my ass