You've Got To Be Kidding

Alternate Title: Don't You Have Some Real Problems To Address?

At first I thought this headline was a joke.

Sadly, it is not.

Government Considers First Pokemon Go Regulations

Pokemon Go players have certainly had their fair share of run-ins with the law this week — mostly on the wrong side of it. Two men sustained serious injuries and are facing possible charges after falling down a cliff in California chasing Pokemon. Two teens were arrested in Toledo after jumping fence into the Toledo Zoo following the digital creatures. And in LA, police are chasing after Pokemon Go players who wander on to random neighbors’ lawns.

Okay, stupid people do stupid things. Nothing new about that. But apparently some of the idiots we have elected to office think they must do something to protect us from ourselves.

... the app itself is now the target of lawmakers, who want to regulate the game, claiming that the app poses a significant risk to public safety, and the fun must end.

One New York Assemblyman is considering drafting some sort of restriction on the game, claiming that Pokemon Go, which involves battling digital creatures, could have “tragic real-world consequences...”

Senator Al Franken is also looking into Pokemon Go. The former SNL star and Minnesota Democrat has written a letter to Niantic, the company responsible for programming the augmented reality portion of the app, asking them how much information they’re collecting from users, and what they plan to do with that information.

If his questions go unanswered, Franken could call for Congressional hearings on the subject...

That's what we get for electing a joke to the senate. (You know  the old saying: "That's the problem with political jokes. They keep getting elected.")

Democrats think congressional hearings are a bad thing when it comes to hillary, and Benghazi, or hillary and classified information, or hillary in general, but they're a good thing when it comes to imaginary creatures on your cell phone. Sigh...

The scary thing is that the move to legislate a game - a friggin' video game! - is occurring at multiple levels of government, and in multiple locations.

I am firmly in the "less government is better government" camp. This is just the latest reason why.

And So It Begins

Hillary got away with “extremely careless” behavior that would have resulted in criminal charges for anyone else. Her defense? She 'didn't intend to' violate regulations regarding the transmission and storage of classified material. (here and here)

Absurd? Without a doubt. Effective? Most certainly. After all, she got away with it.

Not only does this allow a dangerously unqualified person to quite possibly become the next President of the United States, it sets a dangerous precedent for other cases involving national security.

“I intend to use the Hillary defense,” said Sean M. Bigley, a lawyer whose firm handles dozens of cases a year involving national security clearances. “I really question how any agency can say someone is a security risk if the president of the United States did something similar.”

He added, “We’ve had people lose 20-year careers for doing less than what she did.”

Mark F. Riley, a former military intelligence officer who became a lawyer defending those accused of national security violations, said he, too, would invoke the Clinton recommendation.

“I’m going to use it every chance I get, particularly in oral arguments. I’m going to bring it up over and over and over,” Riley said, adding that he thinks Clinton and her team engaged in “an egregious, egregious security violation.”

“Any other person would have had their security clearance revoked,” he said.

Kel McClanahan, another national security lawyer, said the FBI had not pursued an important line of inquiry: whether Clinton violated the law merely by setting up private servers and diverting government records. Someone who “conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys” government records can face a fine and up to three years in prison. The Justice Department has sent defendants to prison for such a crime, McClanahan said.

Oh, great. Not only is there a strong possibility that classified information was stolen from hillary's unlawful and unsecured email server, but now the 'hillary loophole' will be used to help foil prosecution in other instances of compromised national security. And yet this creature continues to be a viable candidate for president... and somewhere around half of Americans support her.

When will we wake up from this national nightmare?

In related news, the 'Hillary Defense' is already being invoked in sleazy criminal cases.

A lawyer for one of the NYPD cops accused of doing favors for bribes — including mile-high sex with this hooker on a free trip to Las Vegas — said his client’s behavior was no worse than Hillary Clinton’s.

“It’s similar to what the FBI said about Hillary Clinton, and why she wasn’t charged,” said John Meringolo, a lawyer for James Grant, who pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court Wednesday.

Meringolo described his client’s alleged actions — swapping police favors for expensive gifts like the wild trip with prostitute Gabi Grecko — as mere violations of police conduct.

Gabi Grecko

Here's some more examples of the 'Hillary Defense' in action.

Priorities

This should not come as a surprise to observers of the obama administration. They feel no obligation to the public or the nation they took an oath to serve.

Assholes, one and all...

Kerry Leaves NATO Summit Early To See ‘Hamilton’

Secretary of State John Kerry is facing criticism after departing a major NATO summit early in order to watch a showing of the hit Broadway play Hamilton...

Kerry had been attending a major summit of NATO powers in Warsaw, Poland this weekend, but departed early from the powwow, dubbed by a U.S. official as “one of the most important political events of the year,” so he could attend a final showing of the musical...

Kerry’s early departure drew criticism from some foreign policy observers and prompted the State Department to admit that the secretary had left early for the showing, as well as a wedding ceremony.

Many celebrities attended the showing, prompting criticism from at least one former U.S. official.

“Priorities … John Kerry left the NATO summit early so he could hang out w/Jane Fonda, JLO, & Charlie Rose,” tweeted Michael Doran, a former senior director of the White House’s National Security Council.

Kerry also posed for pictures with fans during the play, according to photos posted on Twitter.

At least, unlike his predecessor, an American ambassador and three other state department employees haven't been killed on his watch.

Yet...

Here We Go Again

By now everyone should be aware of what happened in Dallas last Thursday.

Dallas Shooting Suspect, Micah Johnson, ‘Upset at White People’

A military veteran who said his goal was to kill white police officers opened fire Thursday night in downtown Dallas, leaving five officers dead and seven wounded...

Shortly thereafter, similar incidents followed.

Tennessee shooter targeted white victims, similar to Dallas ambush

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has released the name of the suspect behind Thursday morning's random shooting in Bristol, TN that claimed the life of an area newspaper carrier and injured three others, including a local police officer.

The TBI says 37-year-old Lakeem Keon Scott was armed with at least two weapons, an automatic-style rifle, a pistol and a large amount of ammunition...

Preliminary findings indicate Scott may have targeted people and officers after being troubled by recent events involving African-Americans and law enforcement officers in other parts of the country.

Missouri Cop 'Fighting For His Life' After Being Shot in Traffic Stop

A police officer is "fighting for his life" after he was shot during a traffic stop this morning in Ballwin, Missouri...

The incident, which was caught on police dashcam, happened around 11 a.m. local time on Friday when an officer pulled over a vehicle for speeding...

After speaking with the driver, the officer went to his car to do paperwork ... the driver exited his vehicle, approached the officer's car, fired three shots, returned to his vehicle and fled.

The suspect, Antonio Taylor, a 31-year-old black man who was paroled in 2015 after serving time on a federal weapons charge, was charged with assault of a police officer, armed criminal action and a felon in possession of a firearm...

Gunfire strikes San Antonio Police headquarters

Multiple gunshots were fired at the San Antonio Police headquarters building Saturday night... There were no reports of injuries.

Bullet marks were found on the exterior wall of the building, and shell casings were discovered in a nearby alley...

This incident comes as police departments nationwide are on edge following the shooting of 12 police officers in Dallas.

I'm a data guy. My first professional career involved numbers, algorithms, and analytics. My second career relied heavily on data collection and analysis. So when I view the events of the past few days (the Dallas shootings and related aftermath), I get frustrated when so many use emotions in place of analysis and logic.

Here's some numbers to chew on.

Last year (2015) 990 people were shot and killed by police in this country. Approximately 50% were white, 26% were black, and the remainder were hispanic or 'other.' 9% were unarmed. 74% were shot while some sort of attack was in progress.

This year (2016) 512 people have been shot and killed by police to date. That's pretty much on track with last year's numbers. Approximately 47% were white, 24% were black, and the remainder were hispanic or 'other.' 7% were unarmed. Data was not provided regarding whether or not an attack was in progress.

Another piece of data was cited by Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke (who, BTW, is black).

"Forty percent of law enforcement officers in the country that are killed in the line of duty are killed by black men," Clarke said, pointing out that blacks only represent about fifteen percent of the population.

The data indicate that there is no epidemic of police shooting blacks. The numbers have remained steady.

What has changed is the use of social media to share and encourage emotional and illogical responses to these incidents. We also have grandstanding politicians and their enablers in the press who are busy spinning these tragedies to advance their narrative. For example, in a Facebook post last week obama had this to say.

"What's clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve."

I guess barry can't be troubled to examine the facts.

He's not alone. Here's what some SJW had to say in the New York Times.

... this brand of tragedy has become routine… Law enforcement, militarized and indifferent to black lives, is the problem.

Of course, hillary had to chime in as well.

Speaking to a largely African-American audience at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, (hillary said)... it was important to acknowledge the "implicit bias" in society and some police departments.

(Side note: hillary desperately needs the black vote to help her get elected, so it's not surprising that she's pandering to them. But some conspiracy theorists think there might be another, more sinister explanation.)

I don't doubt that some of the shootings may not have been justified. But there are a myriad of factors in play here - training, mental and emotional composure of the officers involved, experience, actions of the suspects, and yes, possibly even some racial bias. But to tag all shootings as racially motivated, and to paint all cops as indifferent or even hostile to blacks, is not only false and misleading, it is grossly irresponsible. It leads to incidents like the Dallas shootings, and other similar events.

There have also been reports of individual black people and police officers coming together and helping bridge the gap between both sides. Here's one example.

Click to embiggen.

Color me foolishly naive and optimistic, but I hope that the events of the past few days will open eyes on both sides. Regardless of my fetish for data, I realize that perception is important. And right now, rightly or wrongly, blacks perceive that cops represent a threat to them, and are responding accordingly. We have to hope that the police have a better grip on their emotions and don't push back, leading to a vicious cycle of tragedy upon tragedy. We also have to hope that calmer heads will prevail on the other side, and that, over time, a calm and reasonable dialogue will emerge.

Like I said, color me foolishly naive and optimistic...

Surprise Surprise Surprise

Remember Gomer Pyle?

I was reminded of his "Surprise Surprise Surprise" shtick when I heard the news that hillary beat the rap in her email case.

Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System

Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way...

Notice there is no mention of intent when discussing the federal statute. Mishandling classified information is a violation - period.

Yet later on Comey states:

Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information... (emphasis added)

"intended to violate" - so hillary gets a pass based on her intentions. I guess the next time I break a law I can just say I didn't intend to. If it's good enough for hillary, it should be good enough for you and me. Right?

Yeah, sure...

There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation (e-mail chains concerning matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received). (emphasis added)

Wait a minute! Did Comey just say that hillary is not a reasonable person? That's just about the only thing in this load of BS that passes the smell test.

In addition to this highly sensitive information, we also found information that was properly classified as Secret by the U.S. Intelligence Community at the time it was discussed on e-mail...

None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.

Classified information stored and transmitted on personal private e-mail servers less secure than Gmail - sure sounds like a violation of the 'mishandling' federal statute to me. But then again, I'm not the FBI Director.

It's enough to make me wish that J. Edgar Hoover was back in charge - feathered boa and all...

More:

FBI Rewrites Federal Law to Let Hillary Off the Hook

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.

Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require... (emphasis added)

It seems to me that this is what the FBI has done today. It has told the public that because Mrs. Clinton did not have intent to harm the United States we should not prosecute her on a felony that does not require proof of intent to harm the United States. Meanwhile, although there may have been profound harm to national security caused by her grossly negligent mishandling of classified information, we’ve decided she shouldn’t be prosecuted for grossly negligent mishandling of classified information.

Two more things:

First, if hillary and her clown posse can't handle simple things like email and fax systems, how on earth can she serve as leader of the free world?

click to embiggen

Second, if, as she claims, she never sent classified info over her private server, and never used the official State Dept. system, how in God's name did she do her job as Secretary of State?

Bottom line - whatever shred of respect or allegiance I might have once had towards our federal government is now a thing of the past. It has gone from a minor annoyance to an out-of-control threat to freedom and the rule of law.

A pox on all three of its branches.

And a huge pox on hillary rodham clinton and her enablers.

Well, We Wanted The Government To Be Run Like A Business

One of the undoubted reasons behind the improbable rise of both Donald Trump and Bernie Saunders is that many of us have become totally fed up with how the political establishment goes to great lengths to feather its own nest, while at the same time giving the rest of us a royal screwing.

Here's the latest example.

Congress Declares Itself a Small Business in order to Qualify for Obamacare Subsidies

No, that's not a joke. Read on for the disgusting details.

Remember way back when, when obamacare was being debated, that there was a large outcry when it became apparent that Congress had exempted itself and its employees? In response, Congress removed itself from its existing health insurance coverage - the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program - and required members of Congress and staff to enroll in the new health insurance exchange system.

But then they discovered the flaws in obamacare (remember "We have to pass the bill so we can find out what's in it"?). The chief one that affected Congress was the cost.

Obamacare’s insurance subsidies for ordinary Americans are generous, but capped by income. No one with an annual income over $47,080 gets a subsidy. That’s well below typical Capitol Hill salaries. Members of Congress make $174,000 annually, and many on their staff have impressive, upper-middle-class paychecks.

That's bad enough. What followed is even worse.

Below is a history of how our elected representatives assholes have tried to circumvent the same rules they shoved down our throats. It will no doubt sicken and disgust you, but shouldn't surprise anyone who has been paying attention.

Act One—Congress Has a Panic Attack

Realizing what they had done, congressional leaders sought desperately to get fatter taxpayer subsidies in the Obamacare exchange system. In a nutshell, they wanted special funding unavailable to other Americans. The standard excuse was that, without a special “sweetener,” a Capitol Hill “brain drain” would ensue; the best and brightest would flee to the private sector to get more affordable employment-based coverage.

From 2010 to 2013, House and Senate leaders schemed to get extra taxpayer subsidies—past “the Tea Party rabble”—without a lot of noise, and secure a nice, quiet “administrative” remedy from the Obama administration.

Their hopes centered on a compliant Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the agency that administers the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, providing the unauthorized relief. No recorded votes. No ugly floor fights.

Act Two—Congress Gets Taxpayers’ Money Without Appropriating It

(In 2013, outsiders pointed out) that neither the Affordable Care Act nor Chapter 89 of Title V (the law governing the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program) authorized the transfer of monies in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program trust fund for use in health plans outside of the program.

(Furthermore, obamacare exchanges) are only open to individuals and small employers. No large employers can participate in the exchange... There is no provision, therefore for large employers, including the largest—the United States government—to pay for exchange coverage... “OPM initially ruled that lawmakers and staffers couldn’t receive the subsidies once they went into the exchanges.”

But, at a July 31 closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats, President Barack Obama had promised he would “fix” the mess they made of their health coverage. 

So, on Aug. 7, 2013, just as Congress was getting out of town for the August recess, the Office of Personnel Management ruled that members of Congress and staff enrolled in the exchange program would get Federal Employees Health Benefits Program subsidies, even though they were no longer in the program.

Act Three—Congress Magically Becomes a Small Business

In a second iteration of its rule-making, the Office of Personnel Management declared that Congress and staff were eligible to enroll in the Washington, D.C., “SHOP” Exchange, a health insurance exchange reserved for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. The exchange offers special insurance subsidies to participating small businesses.

The problem was, of course, that Congress is not a “small business,” at least under any clinically sane definition of the term, and no section of the Affordable Care Act provided for any congressional exemption from the ban on large employer participation in the SHOP exchanges. It’s hard to imagine a more arbitrary ruling.

Act Four—Congressional Bureaucrats File False Paperwork

In filing to get the special insurance subsidies for enrolling lawmakers and their staff members in the D.C. “SHOP” Exchange, congressional officials claimed that the Senate and House each had only 45 employees. That false information allowed both chambers to meet the magic number requirement.

In Feb. 2015, Sen. David Vitter, R-La., a member of the Senate’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, attempted to subpoena these un-redacted documents, only to be stymied by all nine committee Democrats and five Republicans.

But thanks to those pesky outsiders - notice the recurring theme here - the truth was uncovered.

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that unnamed officials who administer benefits for Congress made clearly false statements when they applied to have the House and Senate participate in D.C.’s ‘SHOP’ Exchange for 2014. Notably, they claimed the 435-member House had only 45 members and 45 staffers, while the 100-member Senate had only 45 employees total. Rather than a good faith clerical error, this was an intentional falsehood, which makes it a crime under both federal and D.C. law.

Of course, nothing much will come of this. How many government insiders were prosecuted for the Fast and Furious gunrunning debacle, or the IRS selective prosecution of conservative organizations, or the four dead Americans in Benghazi, or the use of private unsecured email servers for transmission of classified information, or ... well, you get the idea.

It's reached the point where Congress can, with a straight face, declare itself a small business, and no one bats an eye.

I weep for my once-great country.

Rising Stock

I have some serious reservations about each and every one of the four remaining candidates for president (five, if you count John Kasich, which I don't). But when I saw this story Ted Cruz's price per share immediately skyrocketed in my personal presidential stock market.

Boehner: Ted Cruz a 'miserable son of a bitch'

Former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) panned Ted Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh” during comments at an event Wednesday night at Stanford University.

“I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone,” Boehner said, according to The Stanford Daily.

“But I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”

Oscar Wilde once said "You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." If that's true, then the fact that John Boehner (and by extension, the corps of D.C. insiders) considers Ted Cruz an enemy speaks volumes about both.

Remember way back when... when there were 15 or 16 republican presidential candidates? Cruz was a Washington outsider then. Hell, even after getting elected to the senate he remained an outsider from Day One.

Cruz ... met with House members of the conservative Freedom Caucus — an unusual move for a freshman senator — in 2013 and pushed them to fight to defund ObamaCare. The effort eventually led to a government shutdown...

Boehner reportedly called Cruz a “jackass” over the issue.

Boehner and his cronies are the jackasses. Even today, he and the rest of the GOP establishment don't get it. They fail to understand that their failure to stand up and do the job they were elected to do - dismantle obamacare, secure our borders, seek out and destroy terrorists, balance the budget, restore America's international power and prestige, and generally preserve American values and traditions - has resulted in The Rise of Trump.

What I don't get is how over the past few months Cruz has come to be portrayed as a member of the establishment, while others get a pass.

(Boehner) recounted how he used to play golf with Donald Trump, the current GOP presidential front-runner, and said they were “texting buddies.”

Boehner told the crowd he’d support Trump in the general election, but not Cruz.

So who's the real outsider here? And who's the miserable son of a bitch?

It ain't Ted...

They're All The Same

By now I'm sure you're aware of the outrageous action taken by that lunatic masquerading as the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe. He has restored the right to vote to over 200,000 convicted felons in that state.

Needless to say, he's a democrat.

His rationale?

Gov. McAuliffe wants murderers to feel good about themselves again

In his order, McAuliffe explained the decision in standard liberalese: the ban on felon voting “disproportionately affects racial minorities and the economically disadvantaged;” ex-cons “deserve to re-enter society on fair and just terms...”

The felons whom McAuliffe has allowed to vote include murderers, rapists (including those who have committed child rape), armed robbers, and kidnappers...

Adding more layers of absurdity, and laying it on thick, McAuliffe said that ex-cons are “embarrassed to tell their children” they lost the right to vote because of their crimes. Thanks to McAuliffe, they can avoid embarrassment by telling them they committed rape or murder but are free to vote.

McAuliffe also compared his political maneuver, a crass attempt to enlarge the number of Democratic voters, to the work of Abraham Lincoln. “Ten yards from where I spoke [about allowing criminals to vote] is where Abraham Lincoln addressed the freed slaves 151 years ago this month.”

Is he really equating his action - allowing convicted rapists and murderers to vote - to freeing innocent people from being enslaved? Other than both groups consisting of mostly black people (not being racist, but merely stating facts - McAuliffe himself acknowledges that the ban on felon voting “disproportionately affects racial minorities") I don't see any similarity. Why aren't the professional 'racism is everywhere' whiners all over this?

It's also worth noting that McAuliffe did not restore the right to keep and bear arms to those felons. I could make a pretty good argument that it is less harmful to society to shoot the wrong person than to elect the wrong person. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, there is no doubt that this is a blatantly political move.

... (Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe's) order will allow more than 200,000 ex-cons in Virginia to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Everyone understands that the Democratic candidate, presumably Hillary Clinton (for whom McAuliffe has carried much water), will gobble up the overwhelming majority of these vote.

No doubt. So why do I bring this up now, days after McAuliffe's announcement?

Because this just came to light.

Donald Trump Donated to the Democrat Governor Who Just Gave Felons the Right to Vote

The governor who just upended the Virginia constitution to allow over 200,000 felons vote for Hillary — well turns out that Donald Trump donated to him as well:

     ... among the many liberal Democrats Trump supported throughout his career was Terry McAuliffe in his first bid for the Virginia’s governor’s mansion in 2009. We are not talking ancient history here. The frontrunner for the GOP nomination gave $25,000 to one of the sleaziest Democrats of our generation just seven years ago, a man who served as the Chairman of the DNC.

      As late as September 2014, Trump was still rubbing shoulders with the man:

This has just confirmed what I have slowly come to suspect. Donald Trump is not a political outsider. Sure, he may not be a member of the republican establishment. But he's mingled and traded favors with politicians of both sides in an ongoing effort to feather his own nest. He's no different from the rest of the lying two-faced hypocritical weasels that run both political parties, and the special interest groups they consort with.

A pox on them all - including Trump.

Deja Vu In The Baltics

A few days ago I posted something about the ongoing Russian military buildup in the Baltics and subsequent sabre rattling, as evidenced by the buzzing of a U.S. Navy destroyer. I closed that post by making fun of the Navy's administration-mandated response: moving toward gender-neutral uniforms.

Lo and behold - yesterday there was a story about Russian fighters buzzing a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane flying over the Baltic Sea.

A U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane was intercepted by a Russian fighter plane over the Baltic Sea in what American officials said on Sunday was an unsafe and unprofessional manner, the second such instance in a week.

The Russian jet came to within 50 feet of the Air Force plane and then executed a barrel roll over the American plane’s left side to its right...

Even though the incident involved an Air Force plane, the Navy responded immediately.*

Navy Secretary Bends Rules About Ship Naming to Honor Democratic Politician

(*Okay, that wasn't really the Navy's response. The ship-naming fiasco took place a few days ago, but still, it highlights the ineffectiveness - one might even say the timidness - of the obama administration when confronted by Russian provocation.)

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus is under fire for bending service rules in order to name the next Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer after a retired Democratic politician.

Mabus, who has previously been accused of politicizing the ship-naming process, announced Monday that the destroyer will be named after Carl Levin, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Michigan who is still alive and did not serve in the U.S. military.

Mabus disregarded Navy ship-naming rules stipulating that destroyers should be named for deceased members of the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard, including secretaries of the Navy.

There have been exceptions made in the past. However, those exceptions are typically reserved for people of unquestioned stature, not political hacks.

“There are the typical exceptions,” the Navy explains in an online document produced by the History and Heritage Command. “Roosevelt was named in honor of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, while Winston Churchill honors the great war leader of World War II.”

Other exceptions include "destroyers named for Thomas Hudner, a retired Navy flag officer, Paul Ignatius, a former Navy secretary, and former Sen. Daniel Inouye, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for World War II Army combat service in Italy."

Speaking of Medal of Honor awardees, there are nearly 200 Navy and Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipients who have never had ships named after them. How does Carl Levin, who never served a single day in the military, jump ahead of them? What was his significant contribution that warrants the honor of a ship named after him?

Mr. Levin presided over the committee during the Obama administration’s major drawdown of troops and weapons systems. Joint Chiefs of Staff officers testified in recent months that they doubt they can fight one major war on the schedule outlined in the National Military Strategy.

This is just the latest in a series of obama administration moves towards politicizing the Navy.

An examination by The Washington Times of the 71 Arleigh Burke monikers shows Mr. Levin is the only one — except Winston Churchill — who does not meet the Navy guideline for destroyers. Most Arleigh Burke honorees are naval war heroes; a significant number earned the Medal of Honor. There are several Navy secretaries.

(Secretary of the Navy) Mabus, a former Democratic governor of Mississippi, has irked some Republicans for veering from tradition by naming warships after social activists and politicians with no link to the military.

Since the start of the Obama administration, Mr. Mabus has named combat logistics supply ships after civil rights leader Medgar Evers and leftist farmworker Cesar Chavez.

All previous Lewis and Clark-class cargo ships had been named for famous explorers or people who made significant contributions to the military, as called for in Navy conventions.

He named a littoral combat ship after former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona Democrat, who was seriously wounded in a January 2011 assassination attempt.

In January Mr. Mabus again broke with past tradition. He named a fleet replenishment oiler, TAO-205, after civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat. Mr. Lewis voted for removing all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2007 and from Afghanistan in 2011.

Navy guidelines had said such ships are named for rivers or people instrumental to maritime and aviation design and production.

But Mr. Mabus changed the convention last year, saying the 17 oilers will be named after civil and human rights activists.

Ah, yes. Hope and Change. Fundamental Transformation.

obama is not politicizing the military.

He's pussifying it...

$20 Bill

Pull a twenty dollar bill out of your wallet and take a look at it (hopefully you have a $20 handy).

Who do you see on it?

That's right - Andrew Jackson.

Might the next generation of twenties have Donald Trump on them?

An outspoken and highly successful businessman, he has been described as an egotistical and irascible outsider who bristled at the political establishment, saying things not repeated in polite society while claiming to be the defender of average Americans during his unconventional run for president.

Donald Trump?

Try Andrew Jackson in 1828, the year the rough-cut Tennessean, was elected to the White House after a nasty campaign that spun from one personal attack to another, seemingly much the same track the current GOP slugfest has taken.

In an emerging lesson from history, as billionaire real estate mogul Trump continues his push to capture the Republican nomination, political observers and experts liken the current break-the-mold race to Jackson’s rise to the presidency 188 years ago.

“He was a boorish guy at a time when that was not tolerated in politics, who said what he thought and said whoever disagreed with him was wrong,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston who specializes in presidential governance. “At times, when voters have elected an outsider, it has been a candidate who has been famous, a celebrity, who has the ability to command an audience. Andrew Jackson did that.”

Think that sounds like Trump? Read on.

A man of quick temper known for his fits of vengeance, Jackson was a social outcast before being elected president, and was legendary for brawling and dueling, including one duel in 1806 over his wife’s honor where a bullet lodged too close to his heart to ever be removed. Though wounded, he shot and killed his opponent.

As he left Washington, he listed two regrets that reflected his blunt personal style: That he was “unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun”— referring to two political opponents in Congress.

Sounds an awful lot like something The Donald would say.

“Jackson’s appeal was to less-educated people, the people who felt excluded and disenfranchised from the political establishment,” said Michael Mezey, a political science professor at Chicago’s DePaul University who is completing a book on presidential campaigns. “Jackson was the first of what was considered to be modern campaigning, where they went around handing out free booze and food and did rabble rousing to get elected. Trump has a populist message. Jackson may have been the first populist. He struck fear into the hearts of the establishment in Washington, and so does Trump.”

When Jackson was elected in 1828, he was accused by the establishment of hijacking American politics.

At this point, American politics need hijacking.

I'm still dithering over who to vote for. I heard Newt Gingrich - a man I have a lot of respect and admiration for - talking about the republican race. His point was that 70% of the aggregate vote in the primaries so far as gone to what he calls the insurgents: Trump, Cruz, and Carson. That's a powerful message the GOP fat cats are ignoring.

Newt also said that Trump's image and message are being distorted by the media and the establishment. I'll have more on that later, but IMO he has a valid point.

I'm not necessarily a Trumpster at this point, but I'm going to give him a second, closer look.

Anyone who pisses off the establishment can't be all bad...

Middle Finger Surprise

This election season has been unusual, to say the least. The rise - and staying power - of anti-establishment candidates on both sides has surprised political 'experts' and casual observers alike. Could we be in for one more HUGE surprise?

From the American Thinker:

Most will agree that this has been an election season unlike any other. The standard rules have been tossed aside. Reaching for a wrecking ball has replaced reaching across the aisle. Political incorrectness has replaced genuflection before the party elders. What else explains Donald Trump galloping toward the Republican nomination while the Republican chosen son and brother, Jeb Bush, quit the race before even leaving the starting gate?

On the other side of the proverbial aisle that only the establishment brags about reaching across is a self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and lived as a hobo until age 40. He is mounting a formidable challenge to the anointed candidate of the Democrat crony establishment, Hillary Clinton.

Will the establishments sit back and allow outsiders, such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, to waltz in and grab the nomination? Will they permit we the people to override we the donors in choosing our next president?

(There is speculation that the Republican establishment is) scheming and plotting in their now smoke-free rooms over how to pull the rug out from Trump and hand the nomination to Rubio or Kasich.

The Democrat establishment has superdelegates doing their dirty work. Despite barely winning two contests and getting shellacked in New Hampshire, Clinton now has 502 delegates compared to Sanders’s 70. That’s like giving Hillary a 20-yard head start in a 100-yard dash.

Suppose both establishments rig the nominating process, pushing Trump and Sanders to the side, deliberately ignoring their respective voter bases. Imagine the outrage, or better yet revolution, among a large swath of voters, fed up with business-as-usual establishment shenanigans.

Here's where the article leads us into FantasyLand. The author imagines a scenario where the outcome of such shenanigans is a Trump/Sanders ticket.

Yes, you read that right. An independent candidacy featuring Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders running together on the same ticket. 

Crazy? Probably. Impossible? Hardly.

How different are the two candidates? Policy wise, quite different. But this isn’t an election respecting the usual political boundaries of political philosophy and policy. Instead it’s contest between establishment and anti-establishment. The establishment candidates are, or were, Bush, Rubio, Kasich, and Clinton. The anti-establishment candidates are Trump, Carson, Cruz, and Sanders.

How similar are Donald and Bernie? Consider this exchange with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski last week.

“I wanted to describe a candidate to you,” she began. “The candidate is considered a political outsider by all the pundits. He’s tapping into the anger of the voters, delivers a populist message. He believes everyone in the country should have healthcare, he advocates for hedge fund managers to pay higher taxes, he’s drawing thousands of people at his rallies and bringing in a lot of new voters to the political process, and he’s not beholden to any super PAC. Who am I describing?” she asked.

Trump took the bait and answered, “You’re describing Donald Trump.” Wrong answer – you’re fired! She was describing Bernie Sanders.

Twin sons of different mothers? Both pariahs of their establishments. Why not join forces? In broad strokes, they are more alike than different. The policy differences can be negotiated between the two candidates in the ultimate sequel to “The Art of the Deal.”

If both party establishments gave their respective voters the big middle finger, the voters just might give both middle fingers back to the establishments, supporting a Trump/Sanders ticket.

Improbable? Absolutely. So was the idea, a year or two ago, of Donald Trump leading the Republican field and an avowed socialist beating the anointed one in almost every key demographic.

If anything, it’s something to ponder. And the fact that I would even put forth such a scenario is a sign of the desperation of the establishments. In their minds, desperate times call for desperate measures. Thwarting the will of their voters in the pursuit of continued power and money would not be a surprise. And neither would be a third party response.

Could such a ticket win? Who knows? If half of each party’s voters are fed up enough to vote for such a ticket, the plurality might be enough to win.

I'm doubtful that such a ticket will ever come to pass. But it sure would be fun to watch it happen.

Hey Political Establishment - This One's for YOU!!!

Fast Food Politics

It's only mid-February, and  we're already drowning in a sea of endless babble from politicians on the campaign trail. It's gotten so bad that even schlubs applying for minimum wage jobs have started talking like they're running for office.

I am here to announce my application for the position of line cook at this McDonald’s location. You don’t know me, so let me take a moment to introduce myself. There are a few things that set me apart from the other candidates hovering in the lobby and sipping complimentary fountain drinks.

First and foremost, I am a fast food outsider. I did not graduate from McDonald’s University. I have never set foot in one of these places, or any fast food restaurant for that matter. What that means is, I won’t just come in here and accept business-as-usual. I will ask questions. Why do we need to empty the grease trap? How does the cash register work? What is the maximum holding time for a pan of chicken patties?

What I bring to the table is a common-sense, home cook’s approach to making hamburgers. We don’t need some corporate manual and volumes of market research to tell us how to cook a Big Mac. All we need is a hot griddle and old-fashioned American know-how. Also, we will eventually need a bun and toppings, but you see where I’m going with this.

It’s important to remember where we came from. The hamburger has been a cornerstone of this great nation for generations. Our forefathers had a simple but powerful vision: A cooked beef patty served on a bun. We’ve lost sight of that.

Our grandparents didn’t need fancy timers and thermometers to tell them when their food was cooked. They didn’t worry about egghead concepts like maximum customer waiting time or salmonella. That was a simpler time, and I believe we can still go back to that simple time.

I am ready to roll up my sleeves, put on a hairnet and non-skid shoes, and get to work. I will stand up for my convictions and not be swayed by any crew leader or assistant manager.

Some of my opponents don’t see things the way I do. They’ve spent years in the fast food beltway, a revolving door from Burger King to Wendy’s, with brief stops in community college and/or prison. They call this “experience.” I call it just more of the same. Those are the people who got us to where we are now: At a small table between the ice machine and the cardboard boxes that need to be run out to the dumpster.

I have no intention of becoming one of these McDonald’s lifers. If you hire me, I will serve my time, but mark my words: When my shift ends, you won’t find me in the back room, hobnobbing with dishwashers and dining room staff. I will head back home to cook my own meals, or possibly, on occasion, stop by the Chipotle over by the new Target.

There’s so much to be done, and I’m ready to get to work. But I can’t do it without your support. That’s why I’m asking you to hire me as your new weekday line cook, except Thursdays when I’ve got this other thing and also I need next week off.

I Love This Idea

The problem:

Congress passes huge bills, like Obamacare or the recent omnibus spending bill, that contain hundreds of provisions, and occupy thousands of pages — or tens of thousands if you include the ensuing pages of regulations. These bills are so long that literally no one has read the whole thing. They’re not so much bills, really, as Christmas trees on which lobbyists and legislators hang their goodies...

Legislators, and special interests, have a vested interest in sticking together and being sure that the whole bill passes. Individually, most of these lousy provisions wouldn’t pass, but when banded together for mutual protection they can...

... Often, most of the provisions are written by lobbyists and inserted by tame members of Congress. The public isn’t really represented at all. That’s not an accident — it’s by design.

The solution:

... This month, Representative Mia Love, a Republican from Utah, proposed H.R. 4335: One Subject at a Time Act. If passed, the bill would officially limit subsequent legislation to covering one subject at a time, therefore blocking lawmakers from trying to cram gratuitous amendments into unrelated bills... It all seems like a smart way to keep politics a little more honest.

Yes it does, but...

That doesn’t mean D.C. politicians are going to go for it, though. (Some) will oppose it because they’ve personally benefited from the existing loopholes... (Others) aren't going to be keen on this idea since it would inevitably require more work... the process of voting on each topic one vote at a time would prove significantly more time consuming for members of Congress...

That would certainly cut into their boondoggles and reelection efforts.

It also doesn’t help that both major political parties participate in adding “pork” to bills that are considered “must-pass,” meaning that no one’s going to vote against multi-billion dollar budget proposals just because a politician snuck in $2 million for his town to have a government-funded water taxi service...

Love is not the first person in Congress to advocate for this type of change. This past summer, Senator Rand Paul introduced “One Subject at a Time” legislation from his end in the Senate, though his bill never made it through committee. A noted advocate for political transparency, Paul believes that making bills one topic at a time will allow citizens to better understand what’s actually being voted on..

He's right, of course, but that doesn't mean diddly-squat when it comes to the fat cats in D.C.

While Love has eleven cosponsors on her bill, none of them are Democrats. Despite this issue being nonpartisan in theory, it’s probably not something that liberals would push for while they’re in the minority in Congress. If lawmakers had to vote on each item in a budget separately, organizations like Planned Parenthood probably wouldn’t stand a chance, whereas Democrats can currently defend it as part of a bipartisan compromise in a larger spending bill.

As such, political analysts give the bill essentially no chance of passing. Maybe Love should try slipping H.R. 4335 into more popular legislation!

More on H.R. 4335 - it would:

Require that each bill enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject;

End the practice of attaching controversial legislation to unrelated, must-pass bills;

Require the subject of a bill to be clearly state in its title;

Make void in appropriations bills, general legislation that does not pertain to the underlying (appropriations) bill;

Make the legislative process more transparent to the public

Importantly, the bill also provides for judicial review, allowing a court to strike legislation that doesn’t comply.

Our traditional legislative process has gradually broken down over the years  with the growth of gigantic omnibus bills. Once the beltway sleazeballs realized they could get away with it, this all-inclusive CYA approach to legislation became the norm.

As Rep. Love notes, this is how we wound up with an enormous debt and with a Congress that few Americans respect.

Getting the bill passed is a long shot, but it damn sure is worth a try. I've already contacted my congresscritter urging him to support it. I strongly suggest you do the same.

Side note: here's a picture of Rep. Love (R-Utah). Not what I expected, but a great illustration that the republicans aren't a good ol' boys club.

My Give A Damn's Busted

Following up on a recent post about accountability - or the lack thereof - we have this unbelievable nonsense from senior officials in the VA.

American Legion to VA: ‘Hold People Accountable’

American Legion National Commander Dale Barnett called a senior VA official’s concession during a congressional hearing tonight that the department has an accountability problem “one of the understatements of the year.”

Based on the following, it appears that Barnett's statement is also quite an understatement.

VA directors plead Fifth at House committee hearing

“Upon advice of counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question,” Philadelphia VA Regional Office Director Diana Rubens said repeatedly under tough questioning from House Committee on Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla.

... Rubens and St. Paul VA Regional Director Kimberly Graves (are) both accused by the VA Office of Inspector General of serious malfeasance... The actions spurred a criminal complaint the IG referred to the Department of Justice, and the VA has recommended both directors be punished.

Rubens and Graves sat grimly through the questioning and the testimony of LA VA Regional Director Robert McKenrick and Baltimore VA Regional Director Antione Waller, who said they had been pressured into leaving the posts that Rubens and Graves filled.

“If VA put half of the effort into pushing for true accountability or protecting their employees who come forth as whistleblowers as they have for the individuals investigated in this IG report, then I honestly think the department would be in a much better place,” Miller said. “VA exists for veterans, not for itself or the unjust enrichment of its senior employees.” (emphasis added - along with an "Amen!" or two)

It’s the latest black eye for the VA, which has been under fire since a scandal in veterans health care broke more than a year and a half ago with revelations of patients dying while lingering on secret wait lists at the Phoenix VA Medical Center. The scandal cost former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki his job, but many lawmakers have grown impatient with what they see as a slow pace of departmental reforms.

The VA IG investigation found that Rubens and Graves gamed the department’s hiring system to create vacancies in locations to which they wanted to move in jobs with fewer responsibilities while maintaining their salaries.

Between them, Rubens and Graves also received roughly $400,000 in moving expense reimbursement as part of a VA program to entice candidates into hard-to-fill jobs, despite apparently seeking the positions...

Despite the accusations against them, Rubens and Graves are all still on the job...

Kristen Ruell, a Philadelphia VA Regional Office employee who has testified about malfeasance at the office, said having Rubens continue in her job is hurting morale for rank-and-file workers.

“People are depressed because employees have been fired for less and they don’t understand how she’s still making decisions,” she said in phone interview with Stars and Stripes.

I wish I could conjure up some outrage at this, but I've heard so many verses of the same old song that, to quote Jo Dee Messina, "My Give a Damn's Busted."

Accountability Is A Dirty Word

Unless one of you out there has recently won the lottery, I'm going to assume that we all have to live on some sort of budget. That's a foreign concept to the federal government, as these two stories will attest.

Pentagon Blows $43 Million on a Useless Gas Station

U.S. taxpayers footed the bill for a $43 million natural-gas filling station in Afghanistan, a boondoggle that should have cost $500,000 and has virtually no value to average Afghans, the government watchdog for reconstruction in Afghanistan announced Monday.

A Pentagon task force awarded a $3 million contract to build the station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan...

Stop right there. $3M for a gas station?!? What, are the nozzles gold-plated? Does champagne spout from the drinking fountain? GMAFB!

... but ended up spending $12 million in construction costs and $30 million in "overhead" between 2011 and 2014, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found.

In this case, "overhead" = consulting fees and bribes.

Meanwhile, a similar gas station built in neighboring Pakistan cost $500,000. (emphasis added)

"It's hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs 8,000% more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that's been wasted...

That the Pentagon "shirked its responsibility to fully account for taxpayer money that's been wasted" is no great surprise.

That a democrat politician is outraged at government waste is a BIG surprise.

Then there's the little matter of pre-planning and feasibility studies.

The compressed-natural gas station was designed to show the viability of tapping the country's natural gas reserves. But the inspector general determined that Pentagon's Task Force for Stability and Business Operations failed to conduct a feasibility study before launching the project.

If they had, the inspector general noted in his report, the Pentagon would have found most Afghans have little use for it. The Pentagon's own contractor stated that converting a car to compressed natural gas costs $700 in Afghanistan. The average annual income there is $690.

So some bright boy or girl in the Pentagon decided that the average Afghani would spend a year's income to convert whatever heap they're driving to natural gas.

Probably the same person or persons responsible for the F-35 boondoggle.

As for accountability - same old story.

John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), is outraged:

“I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don’t know anything about a program [TFBSO].

Who’s in charge? Why won’t they talk? We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan.”

Sopko says that his office has received allegations of criminal activity by the Task Force from former employees, but that no one at the DOD is answering questions:

"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense. It’s almost like it’s pixie dust.”

In late October, Sopko sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, demanding to know why no one was answering questions about a Task Force that reported directly to Carter himself.

* crickets *

In a similar story that echoes the themes of poor planning, excessive expenditures, and no accountability, we have this news from obama's Dept. of Energy.

Despite concerns about its costs to taxpayers and effect on a fragile desert environment, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was approved by the Obama Department of Energy, cleared regulatory hurdles of the Department of the Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Wildlife, Fish & Game, S.E.C, I.R.S and others and construction was begun in 2010. The Dept. of Energy granted Ivanpah $1.6 billion in loan guarantees plus as a ‘green-energy’ project it also qualified for and received more than $600 million in federal tax credits!

So proud of this ‘advance’ in power production was President Obama that he routinely heaped praised upon the project as a shining example of America’s clean energy future. In October of 2010, from the future site of the facility, on his weekly radio address the President said, “With projects like this one we’re putting Americans to work producing clean, home-grown American energy.”

Well, Ivanpah is completed, up, running and functional and guess what?

It’s not so “clean” after all AND to add insult to injury, it’s inefficient too!

Turns out Ivanpah uses a lot of fossil fuel, primarily natural gas, to pre-heat water at the top of its towers prior to sunrise and it has massive auxiliary gas boilers that come on ….when there’s cloud cover blocking the sun.

... data from the California Energy Commission shows the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 — its first year of operation — to emit more than 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s nearly twice the pollution threshold for power plants or factories in California to be required to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions.

At the direction of White House then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar,
expanses of public land were freed up for the plant’s construction despite environmentalist’s concerns about wildlife habitat and the loss of open space. (Imagine if Exxon-Mobile had made a similar land grant request, how do you think that would’ve gone?)

Ivanpah was built on mostly undisturbed public land that was home to desert tortoises, a species threatened with extinction, among other wildlife. Now the whole episode has greenies hopping mad and feeling betrayed.

The facility is cooking birds mid-flight, over 3,500 of them in its first year, according to the Desert Sun.

Biologists discovered scores of desert tortoises during the construction Ivanpah and teams of them gathered more than 175 of the reptiles from the site plus found another 50 tortoise eggs that were later hatched in captivity. In all. $56 million was spent capturing, housing, relocating, and preserving and restoring tortoise habitat elsewhere.

And now for all those billions spent, for all that destroyed pristine desert-scape, dead birds, displaced tortoises and more – the darn thing emits more CO2 than an ordinary power plant would’ve anyway.

On behalf of all us taxpayers struggling to get by on a budget that is hit harder and harder by increasing taxes and government fees (can you say "obamacare"?):

Dear Federal Government,

Please go take a flying leap and f**k yourself.

Sincerely,

U.S. Taxpayer

Thank You Charlie Daniels

Thank you, Charlie Daniels, for your music.

Thank you as well for giving me an easy way out of having to come up with something original for today's post.

But most of all think you for your penetrating words laying open the putrid  pile of bile that is today's congress.

Charlie Daniels' Open Letter to Congress: 'You've Betrayed Your Country'

By Charlie Daniels | August 25, 2015

I am a proud American who believes that America has held – and still holds – a very sensitive and special place in the affairs of mankind on Planet Earth. I believe that America has been divinely blessed and protected in our two centuries plus of existence.

I believe that America has been a counter balance that has cancelled out a lot of tyranny, evil and conquest, and admittedly, we have made a lot of mistakes. But on balance we have exerted a certain Pax Americana in the international affairs of mankind.

It took a lot of old fashioned guts for the Continental Congress to stand up to the world's mightiest military and tell them that we demanded our independence, even at the peril of going up against a far superior force on land and sea, and with only a ragtag army of untrained citizens, many of whom had to supply their own firearms.

It took courage above and beyond for Abraham Lincoln to push the country into a Civil War that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would divide this nation for decades.

It took guts to give the order for American troops to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, straight into the face of artillery and machine gunfire, wave after wave being cut to ribbons by German shore emplacements.

The history of this nation is written in the blood and courage of men who stood in the face of overwhelming odds – politicians, soldiers, statesmen and ordinary citizens who sought to do the right thing regardless of the cost or the consequences.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the United States Congress, it seems that that particular pen has run out of ink. The courageous politicians that once championed this nation have been replaced, for the most part, by a breed of milksop, politically correct, scared of their own shadow, pushover, pathetic excuses for public servants who are supposed to be representing a constituency of citizens who have to live with the circumstances of their timid folly.

You don't even have the courage to face down an out of control president, even when he makes a deal with the devil. Don't you bunch of timid capons even care what kind of world you're leaving to your children and grandchildren, not to even mention the rest of us? Are you really party partisans before your parents and grandparents or even human beings?

Be honest with yourselves a minute. Go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and ask the person you see this question: "Do I really believe that Iran will not use the money we're releasing to them to finance terrorists to kill Americans, and, when, not if, but when, the Iranians develop their nuclear device, will they really use it against America and Israel?"

You can’t hide from the truthful answer to that question forever, an answer will be required of you one day.

You have allowed Obama to tilt the Supreme Court so far to the left that they're little more than a shameful extension of the Executive Branch.

You have talked for decades about the porous southern border but have done absolutely nothing about it.

You have allowed cities in this nation to declare themselves sanctuary cities where they protect the worst of the worst criminal aliens, and American citizens are paying an awful price for your silence.

You watch an impossible National Debt balloon completely out of control, knowing full well that a day of reckoning is coming that will seriously curtail the quality of life for coming generations.

You allow corrupt government agencies like the IRS to run over the very people you are sworn to protect and allow the entitlement society to expand exponentially. All the while, you are actually entertaining the idea of raising taxes on those who still work and shoulder the burden.

You compose a third of the constitutionally mandated ruling system,and you shirk your duty and allow this nation to move a little closer to the edge every day.

Your ratings are in the single digits; your morals are in the gutter; your minds are on self-preservation; and somewhere along the way, you’ve traded your honor for political expediency.

You've violated your oaths; you've betrayed your country; you've feathered your nests; and you've sat on your hands while an imperial president has rubbed your noses in the dirt time after time.

You're no longer men. You're puppets, caricatures, jokes, a gaggle of fading prostitutes for sale to anybody who can do you a political favor.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Well said, Mr. Daniels.

A Flying Edsel

Here's a classic example of a pork barrel political boondoggle that eats up our defense budget while doing little to enhance our national security, and even less to protect our troops on the ground.

The Obama White House is threatening to veto the annual defense authorization bill proposed by the U.S. Senate, in part because it moves to save aircraft...

And which aircraft might those be?

Tuesday's message from the Office of Management and Budget, which said it would recommend vetoing the bill if it passed both chambers of Congress, continues the Obama administration's push to retire A10 aircraft within several years. (emphasis added)

A provision in the defense authorization bill prohibits retirement of the A10s.

The OMB said such a prohibition restricting the Defense Department's ability to ground the aircraft and requiring an independent study into the capabilities of the aircraft puts at risk efforts to modernize the Air Force fleet since the Pentagon believes "the Joint Strike Fighter and other multi-mission aircraft will replace the A10's singular mission of close air support."

Not everyone shares that belief.

The fact that the USAF is so willing to throw away 300 of the finest close air support platforms ever invented just to save the cost equivalent of 30 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters is total bullshit and both the American taxpayer and those who bravely fight our wars on the ground should be furious.

The Air Force wants to "replace" the A-10 some time in the future, hopefully, with something not nearly as "elegant," to use their own words, but still capable of the basic close air support (CAS) mission. Elegant is not a term not usually associated with this brutish killing machine, but there is little doubt that the Warthog accomplishes its mission with almost an artistic flare. This "something" the USAF brass touts is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. In the meantime, our soldiers will be left getting close air support from "adequate" high-performance fighter aircraft, Predator and Reaper unmanned systems, and huge aircraft built originally as strategic bombers.

As for the 'multi-mission Joint Strike Fighter' (the F-35) intended to replace the A-10, it is pork barrel politics at its finest.

The Pentagon envisioned the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an affordable, state-of-the-art stealth jet serving three military branches and U.S. allies.

Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.

It is also the defense project too big to kill. The F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors that includes Northrop Grumman Corp. and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs -- and more in nine other countries, according to Lockheed. The F-35 is an example of how large weapons programs can plow ahead amid questions about their strategic necessity and their failure to arrive on time and on budget.

“It’s got a lot of political protection,” said Winslow Wheeler, a director at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information in Washington. “In that environment, very, very few members of Congress are willing to say this is an unaffordable dog and we need to get rid of it.”

Here's a suggestion. Ask the grunts on the ground which they'd rather see overhead during a firefight - a low and slow flying Gatling gun or a shiny pointy-nosed flying Swiss army knife plagued with numerous and ongoing significant problems, including an inability to fly if its fuel gets warm - like what would happen if fuel trucks sit in the hot sun in an operating area like, oh, I don't know - maybe the Mid-East...

Can you say boondoggle...?