Saturday, October 04, 2008
The VP Debate
For all the focus on Sarah Palin's graceful performance in Thursday's vice presidential showdown, a more significant spectacle was taking place behind the other rostrum.
That's where Joe Biden, speaking with the pompus self-importance befitting his 36 years in the Senate, told one baffling fib after another.
Some, of course, were just Biden being Biden. He smeared Dick Cheney as "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history."
To which we must take specific offense: After all, the founder of this newspaper, Alexander Hamilton, was killed in a duel by then-Vice President Aaron Burr.(Certainly Burr was a better shot than Cheney.)
But that's a matter of opinion.
Not so, some other Biden gems:
* It's "simply not true" that Barack Obama said he'd meet Iran's president without preconditions, Biden insisted.
Yet when Obama was asked if he would in a debate during the primaries, he said yes - a position Biden back then termed "naive."
* Biden said he's "always supported" clean-coal technology - after stating emphatically only last month, "We're not supporting clean coal."
* Biden asserted - repeatedly - that the US spends more money on three weeks' combat in Iraq than it's spent in Afghanistan since the war began.
That claim's only remotely intelligible if he limits Afghan expenditures merely to US rebuilding efforts - and even then, he's off by a factor of three, according to State Department numbers.
* Also on Afghanistan, Biden insisted - repeatedly - that "our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work" there.
That may not be an out-and-out lie, but it took supposed foreign-policy neophyte Sarah Palin to bring any context or nuance to the statement.
What Gen. David McKiernan had said was that tribal realities in Afghanistan are very different than in Iraq - requiring a different form of cooperation.
But he flatly said more troops, and more local engagement, are needed.
Sounds like a surge to us.
* Then there was what might have been the biggest head-scratcher of the night. Said Biden of the Bush administration's supposed Middle East follies:
"When . . . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, 'Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don't, Hezbollah will control it."
Huh?
Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?
As if America's NATO allies would have gone in the first place.
But hey, as long as it makes Biden sound presidential.
At some point, Americans have to wonder: Is this a fellow who should be a heartbeat away from the White House?
Sarah beat old Joe hands down, by being Sarah! Time the McCain campaign lets her loose! - Sailor
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Help Our Wounded Troops!
Now it is our turn to step up and protect those that have been protecting us from losing their homes. The Coalition to Salute America's Heroes needs our help to fill their Wounded Troops Foreclosure Fund, so they can help prevent these foreclosures. I know things are tough out there, what with the price of fuel and food, but these are our heroes. They have sacrificed more than many of us can imagine. I am asking you to give up a couple of movies, that case of beer, that dinner out or night out with the boys or girls. I cannot say this enough, these severely wounded troops and their families have made sacrifices we can never fathom. I am asking you to dig deep and help with all you can. Thank you! - Sailor
Wounded troops hit by foreclosure crisis need your help to avoid losing homes!
Dear Patriotic American,
The number of calls have skyrocketed.
"Ever since I got out of the hospital, I've been unable to work. My wife can't work because she has to take care of me and the kids."
"Now, I'm holding a foreclosure notice on my home and I don't know what I am going to do."
It started out as a trickle. Just a few of the hundreds of calls the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes receives every week.
Wounded troops, many paralyzed, brain-damaged, burned or blinded asking for someone to help them save their homes and keep their families from being tossed out into the street.
Now, that trickle has turned into a flood and it is threatening to drown many of these wounded warriors.
Please click here to help prevent them from losing their homes.
My name is General Chip Diehl (Ret.) and I'm writing to you on behalf of the Coalition to Salute America's Heroes. The Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded to help troops who have been severely wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan.
So far, the Coalition has rushed over $11 million in emergency aid to more than 6,000 of our severely wounded troops and their families.
Because of this surging need, we've just launched the Wounded Troops Foreclosure Fund, an effort to raise $1 million to help as many wounded troops and their families as possible who are facing foreclosure or eviction.
By clicking here you can make a generous, tax-deductible donation to the Coalition's Wounded Troops Foreclosure Fund.
I also want to ask you to take just a few seconds to sign a special THANK YOU and GET WELL card for a severely wounded young Marine, Soldier, Sailor or Airman.
When you make a donation, a special THANK YOU and GET WELL card with your name on it will be hand-delivered to a severely wounded hero who needs some cheering up. You can even type in a personal greeting if you like!
Click here to send your greeting to a disabled hero.
Your greeting card and donation may be helping someone just like Frank G.:
"On November 28, 2004, while on patrol in Iraq, I was wounded by an IED. I lost some of the use of my left lower leg and have partial paralysis. Soon after retiring, my wife and I discovered we couldn't make ends meet on the pension I was receiving.
"I sold personal belongings on E-bay and tried to find work. For the first time in my life,I had bill collectors calling me. I felt incredible shame and anger that I wasn't able to provide for my family, and I was afraid of losing everything I had worked for.
The day I called CSAH was the best move I have made for my family. The Coalition has given us the chance to keep our home. And because of all the people out there who donate to this incredible organization, we have time to find the solution."
So far, the Coalition has been able to help every single wounded troop who has placed an emergency call to the Coalition.
But this latest surge has completely busted our budget.
We've had to cap our emergency aid grants for foreclosures at $25,000 a week.
That's all we can afford to send.
But for the past couple of months, we have been averaging $36,000 a week in emergency aid payouts!
So, you can see, we are facing a shortfall of $11,000 a week . . .
. . . just as the need has risen to historic levels.
Two recent headlines on the front page of USA Today caught my attention, and they may have caught yours as well.
The first headline was, "Soldiers risk ruin while awaiting benefits checks." The article described how government red tape was holding up benefits checks for so long that many soldiers were winding up in homeless shelters.
The second article was headlined, "More U.S. troops battle foreclosure." It pointed out how America's foreclosure crisis is having a devastating impact on our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A little extra help may be all many of these wounded heroes need to turn their financial situation around, so please click here to make a generous donation right now.
These wounded heroes have protected our freedom, our families and our homes. Now it's our turn to protect theirs.
Please click here to make a generous, tax-deductible donation to the Coalition's Wounded Troops Foreclosure Fund.
Thank you,
Brigadier Gen. Arthur F. "Chip" Diehl
U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
P.S. The skyrocketing number of disabled servicemen and women facing foreclosure has wiped out our ability to help every single paralyzed, burned, blinded or brain-damaged soldier who needs help saving their home.
Many of these troops are unable to work, and nearly half their spouses have been forced to leave the work force and become full time caretakers for their injured spouse and kids.
Can you imagine how you'd pay your rent or mortgage under those circumstances?
That's why the Coalition has created a Wounded Troops Foreclosure Fund to help these families, and I hope I can count on your support!
Please click here to make an emergency donation.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Iraq’s Interior Minister Thanks U.S. Troops for Liberating Iraq
Minister al-Bolani also thanked the families of our troops for their sacrifices. In the meantime Obama could not find the time to enter into a town hall style debate with John McCain, that was to be sponsored by military family and veterans groups. Sort of tells you who appreciates our troops more. - Sailor
“We have come … to express our gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices made by these great warriors, soldiers, in freeing the Iraqi people and in helping us in Iraq recover from tyranny and dictatorship,” Jawad Karim al-Bolani, Iraq’s minister of the interior, said through a translator to a handful of journalists in the lobby of the medical center.
“We also want to express our gratitude to the families of all these great men and women and express how important their sacrifices are for our nation,” he added.
Bolani’s visit with troops comes on the heels of Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) recent trip to the Middle East, where the Democratic presidential candidate caused a stir when he canceled a planned visit to wounded American soldiers.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Barrack Obama: Socialist
Why is it that these two have decided the election? It is rather simple, they want a socialist in the White House. I do have a little bit of cold water to throw on their party. We here, in America, really do not give a rat's rear end what the European socialists think or want for that matter. Reality is that the only time these socialists want us around is when they are in trouble., or they need their low growth economies pumped up by the military bases we have there.
Investors Business Daily makes a great case on Obama being a socialist. Remember, the rich that Obama wants to tax so badly, already pay more then 50% of the taxes in this country. To pay for his socialist programs, Obama will need far more tax revenue then that. Guess where that money will come from? You, the middle class! - Sailor
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He's disguising the wealth transfers as "investments" — "to make America more competitive," he says, or "that give us a fighting chance," whatever that means.
Among his proposed "investments":
• "Universal," "guaranteed" health care.
• "Free" college tuition.
• "Universal national service" (a la Havana).
• "Universal 401(k)s" (in which the government would match contributions made by "low- and moderate-income families").
• "Free" job training (even for criminals).
• "Wage insurance" (to supplement dislocated union workers' old income levels).
• "Free" child care and "universal" preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for "working poor."
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a "living wage," with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and "fair trade" and "fair labor practices," with breaks for "patriot employers" who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for "nonpatriot" companies that don't.
That's just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn't stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal. Some, including colleague and presidential challenger John McCain, think he's the most liberal member in Congress
.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Obama Disses Our Troops Again
Seems some of our troops are not buying into Obama's so called concern. They have been e-mailing comments on the staged activities in Afghanistan and Iraq (hat tip rbees at ChronWatch). Here is a typical comment;
“Dude showed up in a suit”, one email reads describing clothes Obama wore. Generally visits - as with McCain are in some type of Kaki or other uniform. Obama and all his entourage looked like they were going to a dinner party, or perhaps just trying to project that “authority” thing he’s always talking about.
This sort of leads into a commentary by Ralph Peters, in the NY Post today. Mr. Peters points out the hypocrisy of the left and their mantra of support the troops, bring them home.
So here are three straightforward questions for all the march-in-step lefties who howled, "Support our troops, bring them home!" before their new messiah decided that war's not so bad, after all:
* Given that your candidate acknowledges the need for more combat troops in Afghanistan, will you enlist and do your part? Or do you expect other young Americans to continue to bleed in your place?
* If your man is elected president and orders ground troops into Pakistan - which could lead to a much wider conflict - will you enlist and do your part? We'll need a lot more troops to occupy those badlands.
* If the next president yanks our troops out of Iraq, all the progress disintegrates, Iran moves in and we have to re-invade to clean up the mess, will you enlist and do your part?
I know, I know: Educated people like you are too smart and too important to serve in uniform. The military's for dummies, for losers. Serious players stay home and blog and bitch over double espressos.
Inhabitants of the left-wing blogosphere, have you no shame? Was your pacifism nothing more than a hipster pose? Bush is on the way out - are your principles leaving with him? Have you stopped to wonder if BHO might not be your LBJ?
As far as I am concerned, Barrack Obama and his leftist supporters could give a rat's ass about our troops. All these claims of supporting our troops is just so much political posturing. - Sailor
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Fat Jack Murtha on His Way Out?
The 18-term congressman's challenger, staunch conservative Republican newcomer William Russell, raised nearly $670,000 in the second quarter. Earmark king Murtha scraped together a measly $119,000.
Russell's underdog campaign bested Murtha without the perks of incumbency, national name recognition, big PAC donations or mainstream media support.
Even more amazing: The challenger, a Desert Storm veteran and Army reservist who survived the 9/11 Pentagon attack, wasn't even publicly campaigning during the quarter. Russell, 45, is on active duty with the Army until after Aug. 1 and is barred from actively campaigning until then.
If all that didn't make this enough of an inspiring story: In February, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that Russell had failed to collect enough signatures to make the primary ballot. But he refused to give up on his goal of defeating Murtha. The GOP neophyte persevered on a shoestring budget and won more than 4,000 write-in votes in the spring to earn a spot on the general-election ballot. Russell's campaign manager, veteran GOP activist Peg Luksik, says most second-quarter donations were less than $50.
Russell's clear on where he stands. "I am a conservative," he says in his defining campaign statement. "I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty."
Monday, July 21, 2008
The New York Times Censors John McCain
Is it any wonder that the Times has taken a beating in circulation? This can be described as nothing less than partisan censorship. The American people a wising up to tactics such as this. In a recent Rasmussen poll, 49% of voters believe reporters will try and help Obama with their reporting, 14% believe they will help McCain, but a mere 24% believe they will be unbiased. These numbers are quite frightening, considering the influence media outlets such as the Times have.
McCain and his campaign are refusing to make any changes to the Op-Ed piece. The rival NY Post has approached the McCain campaign about publishing the piece. I will beat the Post to it and post McCain's piece here.
It is my opinion that the Times has now forfeited it's claim to be America's paper of record, forfeited any pretense on impartiality, forfeited any journalistic integrity it may have had left and is now merely the propaganda arm of the DNC and the Obama campaign. It is obvious to me that Shipley is taking marching orders from the DNC. - Sailor
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
