With this guy on our side, we’re in deep $hit! Now he suggests that impeachment, in the middle of a war, is essentially a way to “influence” the president. What a guy; what a patriot; what an a$$! Can we trade him for OBL or Ahmadinejad? At least they do not masquerade as something they are not.
Archive for April 2007
What a Guy – Part II
April 29, 2007Go Home Jack Murtha…
April 25, 2007You have sold your soul for a few minutes of political “air time,” and are no longer useful to those you purport to ‘serve.’ I wonder if this ‘former’ Marine will publicly apologize to the gallant men he falsely accused of killing unarmed men and innocent women and children in a murderous spree executed “in cold blood.” When the Corps finally exonerates the Marines accused of the Haditha massacre of any wrong-doing, and all charges are dropped, will Representative Jack Murtha demand a public microphone by which to apologize to these courageous men who volunteered to selflessly serve this nation? Will he come forward and apologize for contributing to the pressure placed upon DOD and the Corps to prosecute these Marines by way of example? Will he reimburse the taxpayers the money needlessly spent pursuing an unjust prosecution? Will Congressman Murtha come forward and apologize to the American people for the damage he has inflicted upon our efforts to prosecute the war in Iraq; will he apologize for the propaganda material he provided to our enemy? Will he apologize to the wives, husbands, children, parents, brothers and sisters, and friends of those soldiers killed as a result of an emboldened enemy – hyped on the propaganda he supplied? Will he accept disgrace and do the right thing – resign from Congress? Odds are we will hear not a peep out of Jack Murtha or ‘Time’ or any other MSN when these fine young Americans are finally exonerated.
Why the terse words? Read about it here.
A Little More Progress
April 23, 2007
(Click on the picture to enlarge.)
A bit more progress: bricks, mortar, stone and sand are delivered awaiting the mason. The roof is complete and the windows are in. Still about two weeks away from the mason starting the brick work and about 3 weeks away from the front doors arriving (they are coming from Honduras). I’ve begun the interior wiring. Once the bricks are up and the trim completed, I’ll post some more photos.
Move-in target date is sometime before Thanksgiving – hopefully
What a Guy!
April 21, 2007A man who never spent a day in uniformed service has pronounced the war in Iraq as “lost.” I’m sure this fine fellow will continue to do everything within his power to ensure that we leave Iraq in defeat. Who is it that I write about? Why, it is none other than our illustrious Senate Majority Leader, the Honorable (?) Harry Reid.
From ‘MyWay’ (via ‘The Drudge Report‘) comes the article, “Reid Offers Bleak Assessment of Iraq War,” written by Anne Flaherty.
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and – you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows – (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday,” said Reid, D-Nev.
…
“I can’t begin to imagine how our troops in the field, who are risking their lives every day, are going to react when they get back to base and hear that the Democrat leader of the United States Senate has declared the war is lost,” said Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
No wonder Harry wants to throw in the towel as quickly as possible; he can smell defeat and longs to be able to taste it. What a guy, indeed!
And this little gem reminds me why I’m FROM New England rather than living in New England. The few sane Democrats left in the party really should come forward to moderate the extremism that has crept into party; otherwise the ’08 elections will oscillate back to the Republicans – and we all know how corrupt they are…
A New Approach
April 18, 2007Since I am frequently strapped for time, I want to try a slightly different approach to blogging from time to time. I’ll pick the topic and ask you to comment regarding your position.
Today a timely topic seems to be “Gun Control.”
Are you in favor of gun control or do you oppose it; why; what would you propose regarding your position?
CODEL, Junket, or Disreputable Behavior?
April 16, 2007Let me see, as I recall, the Dem’s campaigned upon a platform that included Republican corruption which was partially predicated upon the GOP lawmaker’s propensity to travel abroad (and domestically) at lobbyist’s expense; ‘influence peddling’ I believe was one term the Dem’s liked to assign to the issue. Now, according to ‘Examiner.com‘ (via, who else? ‘The Drudge Report‘) we have taxpayer funded trips for law-makers to exotic places. That in and of itself is hard enough to swallow, but the law-makers being accompanied by their spouses make it almost impossible to accept as plausibly business related.
Congressional Delegation (or CODEL) trips are nothing new; neither is a law-maker being accompanied by his/her spouse (at taxpayer expense). However, when a party runs upon a platform of cleaning up the corruption in the Congress, you would expect they would at least wait a year or two before screwing the taxpayers for questionable trips (known as junkets) that include their spouse.
Before someone jumps in and accuses me of slamming the Dem’s for doing much the same as previous GOPers, let me make it emphatically clear that (party-immaterial) if you are employed by the taxpayers (elected or selected) you owe the people purity in your service. In other words, you don’t take your spouse on a business trip at government expense. Such actions present an air of impropriety and rightfully foment suspicion and dissatisfaction among the governed.
I maintain that there are only a handful of true ‘representatives’ in our Congress – the rest are professional politicians out to promote and exalt ‘self.’ I strongly believe it is time to amend our constitution so as to impose one six-year tern limit upon all Congressmen/women whether elected to the Senate or the House. I believe our forefathers envisioned a representative Congress made up of representative citizens – not professional politicians! Professional politicians serve only themselves – not their electorate. There are elements of the government that benefit from professional service, but the Congress is not one of them!
If you haven’t already, go read the article and add your comments to my thoughts.
Truth or Fiction?
April 11, 2007I received the following in an email.
Subject: The Desks
Hooray for this Teacher! Too bad there aren’t more like her.
Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock, did something not to be forgotten.
On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.
The kids came into first period and there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, “Ms. Cothren, where’s our desk?” And she said, “You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn them.”
They thought, “Well, maybe it’s our grades.”
“No,” she said.
“Maybe it’s our behavior.”
And she told them, “No, it’s not even your behavior.”
And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing, third period too. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren’s class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.
The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. And she says, “Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily.” She said, “Now I’m going to tell you.”
Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. And by the time they had finished placing those desks, those kids, for the first time I think perhaps in their lives, understood how they earned those desks.
Martha said, “You don’t have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it’s up to you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don’t ever forget it.”
Friends, I think sometimes we forget that the freedoms that we have are freedoms not because of celebrities. The freedoms are because of ordinary people who did extraordinary things, who loved this country more than life itself, and who not only earned a school desk for a kid at the Robinson High School in Little Rock, but who earned a seat for you and me to enjoy this great land we call home, this wonderful nation that we better love enough to protect and preserve with the kind of conservative, solid values and principles that made us a great nation.
“We live in the Land of the Free because of the brave.”
Please remember our Troops!
Sounds like one of those veteran-patronizing feel good stories, doesn’t it? Well…, is it truth or fiction? Make your choice, and then find out HERE.
Move Over, Condi – Nancy is Taking Over!
April 11, 2007By way of ‘The Drudge Report,’ this ‘SFGate.com’ article entitled “Pelosi, Lantos may be interested in a diplomatic trip to Iran,” written by Carla Marinucci pretty much substantiates my article title. From the article…
(04-10) 18:42 PDT — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, just back from a trip to Syria that sparked sharp criticism from Republicans and the Bush administration, suggested Tuesday that they may be interested in taking another diplomatic trip – to open a dialogue with Iran.
The Democratic speaker from San Francisco and Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, were asked at a press conference in San Francisco Tuesday whether on the heels of their recent trip to the Middle East they would be interested in extending their diplomacy in the troubled region with a visit to Iran.
“Speaking just for myself, I would be ready to get on a plane tomorrow morning, because however objectionable, unfair and inaccurate many of (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s) statements are, it is important that we have a dialogue with him,” Lantos said. “Speaking for myself, I’m ready to go — and knowing the speaker, I think that she might be.”
Pelosi did not dispute that statement, and noted that Lantos — a Hungarian-born survivor of the Holocaust — brought “great experience, knowledge and judgment” to the recent bipartisan congressional delegation trip to Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in addition to Syria.
I guess Ms. Pelosi fancies herself the Chief Executive in addition to being the Speaker of the House. How else could she appoint herself to be Secretary Rice’s replacement? The odd thing is… I do not recall Ms. Rice being dismissed.
I must have missed something in my Civics classes so many years ago. I just cannot recall that the Speaker of the House could arbitrarily replace an executive-appointed cabinet Secretary. If it were not so damaging to the president’s foreign policy, the situation might be laughable. Nancy needs some better informed advisors; ones that are familiar with the actual duties and responsibilities of the Speaker and who understand our constitutional separation of powers. The Democratic presidential hopefuls should consider reigning Nancy in if for no other reason than to prevent having total chaos should one actually take the White House in ’08.
Knowing how much the Democrats love a good conspiracy to investigate; perhaps the Attorney General’s Office should consider investigating and prosecuting Nancy under the Logan Act. In her case the shoe fits like a glove!
Still more Pelosi…
April 10, 2007Because I do not wish to comment about the Imus controversy, and writing about our border insecurity makes my blood boil; I will stick to Nancy’s blunder in the Middle East.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s unauthorized diplomacy in the Middle East, including a gesture of peace toward the terrorist-supporting Damascus regime, is having a “chilling” effect on reformers in the region, charges a Syrian political party in exile.
“For Nancy Pelosi to cajole with Assad who has facilitated the killing of American soldiers is a travesty,” declared the Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based opposition party to the Assad regime that says it formed as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“Five years of investment by the U.S. State Department and the Bush administration in organizations and people who have committed their lives to helping their oppressed countries is being flushed away by the Democrats in Congress who, with the visit of Pelosi to Syria, have shown that they favor the stability of dictatorships to freedom even if they had a direct hand in killing American troops in Iraq,” the party said in a statement.
…
While many Democrats are aware, because of the intelligence they receive, the U.S. public has not been informed Assad has built four different bases in Syria to train terrorists to send them to Iraq, the statement said.
“Nancy Pelosi’s disingenuous attempt at extending a lifeline to the Assad regime by visiting him when the Bush administration is on the brink of successfully breaking him down through pressure and isolation demonstrates how much we can trust the Democrats to do the right thing when it comes to the security of the U.S.” the party asserted.
If the shoe were on the other foot; that is to say… if the Democrats had the White House, and a Republican Speaker attempted to broker peace with an enemy state against the administration’s policies, the Democrats would be incensed and demanding an investigation.
For the Democrats, there is no sauce for the gander, only the goose. Too, the incident would still be page one news for the MSN. Go figure…
I Cannot Say It Any Better!
April 5, 2007From ‘Washingtonpost.com‘ comes the following article. I am reproducing the entire article because it is short and on target.
Pratfall in Damascus
Nancy Pelosi’s foolish shuttle diplomacyThursday, April 5, 2007; A16
HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that “Israel was ready to engage in peace talks” with Syria. What’s more, she added, Mr. Assad was ready to “resume the peace process” as well. Having announced this seeming diplomatic breakthrough, Ms. Pelosi suggested that her Kissingerian shuttle diplomacy was just getting started. “We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria,” she said.
Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. “What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel,” said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister’s office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that “a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel.” In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel’s position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad’s words were mere propaganda.
Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration — rightly or wrongly — has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker’s freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That’s true enough — but those other congressmen didn’t try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. “We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.
Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president. Two weeks ago Ms. Pelosi rammed legislation through the House of Representatives that would strip Mr. Bush of his authority as commander in chief to manage troop movements in Iraq. Now she is attempting to introduce a new Middle East policy that directly conflicts with that of the president. We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush’s military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi’s attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.
Update: More of the same: also a short read.
Old Soldier 