Are you better off than you were 6 yrs ago????

Simple question - Easy answer for most. NO.

But I digress....Monday Political update

Monday SCOTUS rulings punish the fraud sitting in the White House. Awesome.

The political mood in America has never been worse.  The media and Dems said this same statement in 2008 and promised to make things better.  Another lie told to Voters.

Things are bad all over.  Latest economic news states economy shrank by 2.9% in the 1st qtr of 2014.  Damn, that is NOT GOOD.   White House reaction??  Blame it on bad winter weather.

This is one more sign that voters were stupid to elect the Moron in the White House in 2008 and stupider to do so again in 2012.  He's a total lame duck now and has been for some time.  He emboldens our enemies abroad as they see his weakness.  He's the biggest empty suit of all time....

Can't wait to see the 2014 Midterms - Hopefully, voters will turn out in force to strip DEMS of Senate majority and then start reversing the crappola that was voted through like OCare.... Can't happen quick enough....

Boston and Benghazi - We deserve answers from our government

I have a unique point of view when it comes to the terror attacks that have occurred over the last dozen years.

I lost a high school friend on 09/11/01.  He was on the 104th Fl of Tower Two at World Trade. I was on duty with the US Navy serving on an exercise in Egypt when it all went down.  I was unable to come home for over a month. It was a terrible time and we were unable to help our people at home.

I lost a shipmate of mine when he was killed on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 12th 2000.  He was a shipmate of mine from the USS Constitution when we were on the Under Sail Operation in July 1997 in Boston.  I was home this time and unable to help those on the USS Cole which is what any Sailor would want to do.

Now, the attack was in my home city of Boston, killing 4 people (including the MIT Police officer gunned down by the terrorists) and injuring almost 200 others.  Once again, I found myself overseas, this time in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  I was only able to follow the story, send out messages via twitter and pray they got the Bastards.  Prayers answered.

In the last 7 months, we also suffered the loss of 4 of our people in Benghazi, Libya including 2 US Navy SEALS who are my Navy Brothers. Once again, I was in Kandahar when this happened and unable to do anything to help. The way this terrorism incident was handled was so poorly done, it defies logic.  The way the President and Hillary Clinton acted was shameful and without honor.  We were lied to about what happened, plain and simple.

I take all of this very seriously and find the response from the White House on both attacks to be highly unsatisfactory.  The White House is an impediment to finding the truth and stonewall more than the Nixon White House, which is no small feat.

We, the American people, need answers on what happened in Boston and Benghazi.  What is most unsettling is we have the most inexperienced President in the history of our nation and his administration has done nothing but pump a pile of BS out to the people he serves.  I don't expect every last piece of info but we need more reliable info than we are being given.

They hit my city and my people.  The terrorists have done this before and now done it again.  At the same time, a BS artist and his half-arsed administration told the world they have this covered and that the terrorists are done.

What is "done" is the confidence that the American people have in those in Washington DC as they have proven to be as incompetent as they come.  They are worse than incompetent as they continue to brag about how well they are doing when they are failing miserably.

The people of Boston and our local Police are the ones who got it done in Boston.  Seven months after Benghazi, we have no answers and no one has been held responsible. 
I would say under any measure of things, BOSTON gets it done while the Obama Administration, not at all.  The people of Boston got it done as they stepped up to help our local law enforcement.  The FBI and ATF was in support but the credit goes to the local law enforcement.

Some people smarter than me write about what to do with the captured terrorist in the WSJ.  I leave it to you.  I feel we deserve much better response and answers than a bunch of BS artists slapping themselves on the back in Washington telling us to trust them when they have proven to be totally untrustworthy.

We need answers on Boston and Benghazi.  Period. Now.

Enemy Combatants in Boston

Was there a FISA order issued for Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

Wall Street Journal - 04/22/13

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A row has broken out over whether the Obama Administration is violating the legal due process of Boston terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by not reading him his Miranda rights before questioning. The more relevant question for the safety of the U.S. homeland is why the Administration has declined to designate him as a terrorist enemy combatant.

With Dzhokhar wounded and in custody and his brother Tamerlan dead, the focus is shifting to how the brothers became radicalized and whether they had links to foreign or domestic terror networks. It's becoming clearer by the day that elder brother Tamerlan had become increasingly religious and that his motive last week was Islamic jihad against America.

 

 

U.S. officials say he spent months overseas in 2012, including time in Chechnya. Media reports say the FBI questioned him after a warning from a foreign intelligence service (presumably Russia's). Yet the FBI appears not to have kept an eye on him, though media reports now say that within a month of returning from Russia he was posting jihadist videos on websites.

The FBI has some explaining to do, and more than merely claiming that it can't track everyone who pops up on a foreign intelligence list. One question is whether anyone in government requested that the federal FISA court issue a warrant so Tamerlan could have his Web postings or phone calls surveilled electronically. This doesn't mean G-men in a car following him 24-7. It means putting him into a National Security Agency program so that pro-jihad postings would be noticed.

FBI officials were clearly major sources for the Associated Press stories in 2011 that attacked the New York Police Department for its antiterror surveillance program, in part for reasons of bureaucratic competition. But in the Boston case, we only wish the NYPD had been in charge. Instead the FBI interviewed Tamerlan, then apparently lost interest or focus even as he was showing signs of radicalization, so the homegrown jihadist was able to engineer the most successful terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

Which brings us to interrogating 19-year-old Dzhokhar if he recovers from his wounds. The flap over reading his Miranda rights is a largely irrelevant distraction. Under a 1984 Supreme Court decision (New York v. Quarles), police can invoke a "public-safety exception" to Miranda for a short period of time. Attorney General Eric Holder has embraced this exception as a way to show that the criminal-justice system can handle terrorists as well as the law-of-war paradigm favored by the Bush Administration.

But this is mainly for political show. The only real issue in letting Dzhokhar lawyer-up under Miranda is whether evidence gathered during interrogation can be used in court. There's already plenty of video and other evidence linking him to the bombings.

The important security issue isn't convicting Dzhokhar but finding out what he knows that might prevent a future attack or break up a terror network. This is where naming him an enemy combatant would be useful. Such a designation allows for extensive, long-term interrogation without a lawyer. Especially because President Obama has barred enhanced-interrogation techniques, such long-term psychological pressure can be crucial to learning if the brothers worked with anyone else, if they received terrorist training, and more.

This is why Senators Kelly Ayotte, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are urging the Administration to label Dkhokhar an enemy combatant. The Supreme Court has ruled that even American citizens—Dkhokhar is one—can be held indefinitely as enemy combatants. If he cooperates, the combatant designation can be revoked and he can always be transferred to the criminal-justice system for prosecution.

The Boston bombing also ought to chasten Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee and other libertarians who keep insisting that the U.S. homeland is not part of the terror battlefield.

"It's different overseas than it will be here. It's different in the battlefield than it will be here," Mr. Paul told Fox News earlier this year. "Which gets precisely to the argument I have with some other Republicans who say, well, 'the battlefield is everywhere, there is no limitation.' President Obama says this. Some members of my party say the battle has no geographic limitations and the laws of war apply. It's important to know that the law of war that they're talking about means no due process."
Boylston Street sure looked like a battlefield on Monday, and so did Watertown on Thursday night. The artificial distinction is Mr. Paul's focus on geography. The vital distinction for public safety is between common criminals, who deserve due process protections, and enemy combatants at war with the U.S., wherever they are.

As for due process, the greatest danger to liberty would be to allow more such attacks that would inspire an even greater public backlash against Muslims or free speech or worse. The anti-antiterror types on the left and GOP Senators who agree that the U.S. isn't part of the battlefield are making the U.S. more vulnerable.

Americans erupted in understandable relief and gratitude on Friday with the rapid capture of the terrorist brothers. But we shouldn't forget that their attack succeeded, with horrific consequences for the dead, the wounded and their loved ones. The main goal now is to prevent the next attack.

Correction: The FBI says it interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011. An earlier version of this story cited erroneous media reports saying he was interviewed in 2012.

A version of this article appeared April 22, 2013, on page A14 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Enemy Combatants in Boston

That 3 a.m. phone call from Egypt...

Thanks Obama voters - you made this possible

LV Journal Editorial - Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief

The LAS VEGAS REVIEW JOURNAL editorial lays it out bare.  Good Men DIED, and OBAMA LIED.

There can be no more damning failure than to leave good men w/o proper security and failing to respond when they call for help - not once but THREE TIMES.

All Obama's other failures are explainable as he was never the right person to be President, this failure to protect our people is due to cowardice and making decisions based on polling/politics. Let's not forget all in the MEDIA who have tried to assist Obama and his ilk in covering this story up/trying to make it go away.  They are guilty of being accessories after the fact.

Let's remember that Obama went to bed when the attack was going on, got up the next morning, made a speech that was not unlike someone reading a menu and then flew off to LAS VEGAS for a fundraiser - Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot ??????

LIBS can try to spin this away but there is no defense for his actions.  He is responsible and needs to be voted out of office, then investigated and ultimately prosecuted for failure of his responsibilities as CIC and lying to the American people.

He is liable for the deaths of 4 good men, an Ambassador and three support staff including 2 NAVY SEALs.  There is no defense for this failure.

EDITORIAL

Benghazi blunder: Obama unworthy commander-in-chief

Posted: Nov. 1, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in a well-planned military assault on their diplomatic mission in Benghazi seven weeks ago, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. So why are details surfacing, piecemeal, only now?

The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday's election.

Charles Woods, father of former Navy SEAL and Henderson resident Tyrone Woods, 41, says his son died slumped over his machine gun after he and fellow ex-SEAL Glen Doherty - not the two locals who were the only bodyguards Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration would authorize - held off the enemy for seven hours.

The Obama administration was warned. They received an embassy cable June 25 expressing concern over rising Islamic extremism in Benghazi, noting the black flag of al-Qaida "has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities." The Obama administration removed a well-armed, 16-member security detail from Libya in August, The Wall Street Journal reported last month, replacing it with a couple of locals. Mr. Stevens sent a cable Aug. 2 requesting 11 additional body guards, noting "Host nation security support is lacking and cannot be depended on," reports Peter Ferrara at Forbes.com. But these requests were denied, officials testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier this month.

Based on documents released by the committee, on the day of the attack the Pentagon dispatched a drone with a video camera so everyone in Washington could see what was happening in real time. The drone documented no crowds protesting any video. But around 4 p.m. Washington received an email from the Benghazi mission saying it was under a military-style attack. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA were able to watch the live video feed. An email sent later that day reported "Ansar al-Sharia claims responsibility for Benghazi attack."

Not only did the White House do nothing, there are now reports that a counterterrorism team ready to launch a rescue mission was ordered to stand down.

The official explanation for the inadequate security? This administration didn't want to "offend the sensibilities" of the new radical Islamic regime which American and British arms had so recently helped install in Libya.

The official explanation for why Obama administration officials watched the attack unfold for seven hours, refusing repeated requests to send the air support and relief forces that sat less than two hours away in Italy? Silence.

An open discussion of these issues, of course, would lead to difficult questions about the wisdom of underwriting and celebrating the so-called Arab Spring revolts in the first place. While the removal of tyrants can be laudable, the results show a disturbing pattern of merely installing new tyrannies - theocracies of medieval mullahs who immediately start savaging the rights of women (including the basic right to education) and who are openly hostile to American interests.

When Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney promptly criticized the security failures in Benghazi, the White House and its lapdog media jumped all over him for another "gaffe," for speaking out too promptly and too strongly. Prompt and strong action from the White House on Sept. 11 might have saved American lives, as well as America's reputation as a nation not to be messed with. Weakness and dithering and flying to Las Vegas the next day for celebrity fund-raising parties are somehow better?

This administration is an embarrassment on foreign policy and incompetent at best on the economy - though a more careful analysis shows what can only be a perverse and willful attempt to destroy our prosperity. Back in January 2008, Barack Obama told the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." He added, "Under my plan ... electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." It was also in 2008 that Mr. Obama's future Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, famously said it would be necessary to "figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" - $9 a gallon.

Yet the president now claims he's in favor of oil development and pipelines, taking credit for increased oil production on private lands where he's powerless to block it, after he halted the Keystone XL Pipeline and oversaw a 50 percent reduction in oil leases on public lands.
These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.

Candidate Obama said if he couldn't fix the economy in four years, his would be a one-term presidency.

Mitt Romney is moral, capable and responsible man. Just this once, it's time to hold Barack Obama to his word. Maybe we can all do something about that, come Tuesday

Gov. Deval Patrick - Obama's BFF and "Mini Me" - A pair of Failed POLS

Benghazi will be remembered as when good men died due to an ineffective and failed President who lied his way into the highest office in the land.  People who voted for him who were more interested in electing the "cool" factor than a good leader.  Ugh.

What could be possibly worse than more of Obama, a feckless politician who has been proven to be a liar, fraud and failed charlatan??

How about his BEST FRIEND FOREVER ( BFF ) Governor Deval Patrick - another failed lefty looney liberal moonbat who has proven to be, as my Dad would say, as
" shallow as piss on a flat rock ".  He has made Massachusetts a laughing stock as we are recognized as having one of the more corrupt state governments in the land.  An Afghan writer said that MASSACHUSETTS politics was more corrupt than KABUL and he made some pretty good points.

Giving licenses to illegal immigrants ?  More EBT cards with cash benefits that can be spent at casinos, cruise ships and tattoo parlors?  More patronage jobs and lifetime EVERYTHING for lazy state workers who don't even know what the meaning of real work is???  A public transit system ( MBTA ) that is a sinkhole for $$$ ???? 

IF you like all these things, than DEVAL is your man -

A empty suit cut from the same unethical and morally bankrupt cloth as his buddy Obama.

What a pair of clowns and worse yet are those who voted for these two putzes.

Howie Carr gives us a write up that needs to be remembered as Deval wants to follow his best buddy's path to national politics - Heavens protect us, please.

We need more of these two failed fools like we all need kick in the b*lls.

Gusts of hot air forecast for gov

By Howie Carr
Sunday, October 28, 2012 -  Boston Herald

Boston Herald Columnist

Thanks to Sandy, we’ll be seeing a lot of Gov. Deval Patrick over the next few days, live from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency bunker in Framingham, all 67 inches of him.

He’ll be wearing that boss leather jacket, talking tough to the utilities like he did the other day. Some reporter asked him if the utilities will be ready for Frankenstorm, and he replied in that squeaky little voice of his, “They’d better be.”

Ooooooh, I’ll bet they were petrified. If they don’t keep the lights on next week, the utilities can count on a scorching ... invitation to his next fundraiser.

 

Deval’s governorship is winding down, like T.S. Eliot’s world, not with a bang but a whimper. Deval’s favorite Roman emperor? Nero, because he, too, fiddled while Rome burned.

Beyond this pending temporary return to the limelight, Deval has become Dukakis Redux. His governorship consists of little more than rounding up the usual suspects. Almost daily he is shocked to learn that there is gambling going on in the casino.

His cops raid the compounding pharmacy in Framingham ... after 23 people are dead. He sets up a “war room” to deal with the Annie Dookhan scandal at the forensic laboratory — surrender room would be more like it, as they cut loose drug dealer after drug dealer. And Deval claims it’s only going to cost the state $50 million?

What happens when the freed drug dealers start shooting civilians, or providing them with hot shots? How about all those second-generation lawsuits? Then there’s his new MBTA boss, who fled Atlanta leaving Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority in shambles, with out-of-control absenteeism and pension costs and an unsustainable economic model. Sound familiar?

“She is exactly what we need,” Deval said with a straight face.

Deval has long served as Mini-Me to Obama’s Dr. Evil. So how come he’s not a campaign surrogate anymore? During the last presidential debate in Boca, Deval spent the evening in Ashland, trying to save a moonbat rep who votes with the speaker 99.4 percent of the time. (His one vote against the speaker was to oppose any EBT reform — no wonder Deval loves the guy.)

Now Sandy’s rolling north, just in time for the first anniversary of the freak Halloween storm. We all remember what happened back then — Lt. Gov. Tim Murray achieved liftoff at 108 mph in his state-issued Crown Vic. And Deval is still stonewalling on release of embattled Murray’s cellphone records.

And next year, will Murray be a witness at any possible trials of his dear friend, Mike McLaughlin, the $360,000-a-year Chelsea Housing Authority director?

Deval can forget the U.S. Supreme Court. That sketchy background of his will kill him. Remember Ameriquest? He can likewise forget about anything that requires Senate confirmation. As Bill Weld found out, it only takes one senator to deep-six your nomination.

And anyway, does Deval want any of that stuff? Ambassadorships are for the likes of Ray Flynn and Brian Donnelly. Secretary of, say, transportation? That’s for the Andy Cards of the world.

Pre-governorship, Deval had a pretty good racket going. He learned it from his mentor, Jesse Jackson. King had a dream, Jesse had a scheme. Jesse called his Operation Push. Deval’s was Operation Grab.

Deval would go to some corporation that needed some racial cover — “steam control,” as Tom Wolfe put it. After a few months, Deval would get all huffy and then walk away with a few million and a non-disclosure agreement. Wash, rinse, repeat. It worked with Coke, it worked with Texaco, but by 2005 Deval had worn out the grift.

What’s next? One thing we know it won’t be — another $1.35 million advance for a “book” that sells 6,000 copies.

Performance Evaluation

As a HR professional, I have handled many performance evaluations and counseled managers on the finer points of how to fairly evaluate the performance of a staff member.

In this case, this person would be in line with the kind of evaluation you give a CEO.  The Board and shareholders would hold the CEO accountable for performance and making sure that things were done right.

In the case of this employee, he would have been let go years ago if it were possible.  He has failed on every level.  The only successes he can claim are soley due to the actions of others.

I agree with this write up.  Time to put an end to this person being in charge and get ADULT LEADERSHIP in place ASAP.

Presidential Performance Review

Mr. Obama, your performance has been unsatisfactory.

By Kevin D. Williamson

Memo From: Performance Review Committee

Employee: Barack Obama
Employee Code: USAPOTUS0044\
Contract Term: 4 Years

Recommendation: Do Not Renew (“Shoebox”)

Dear Mr. Obama:

It is with a measure of regret that I must recommend to the review committee that our firm decline to renew your contract, based on non-performance of the following deliverables:

Deliverable 1: National Security. This is the key deliverable for your role in our organization. Failure here is critical, and, while there will be inevitable setbacks and unforeseen developments, your performance here has been substandard. While I have frequently recommended to the management a more restrained policy on overseas matters — a position you endorsed during your interview process — you have managed to combine the worst aspects of your predecessor with the worst aspects of the opposing view. For example, you used the firm’s military and diplomatic pressure in service to what I think we can agree turned out to be the wrong side in Egypt and Libya, and your deployment of military assets to Uganda and the Congo is, in my view, a proposition with zero profit opportunities for the firm, horrific as that conflict is.

On the other hand, an attack on the firm’s representatives in Libya is an attack on the firm itself, i.e., precisely the time for using military force, and, more important, for taking proactive steps to prevent it in the first place — especially when such steps have been specifically requested. You don’t sit around in the executive suite and watch it happen while doing nothing — and you don’t run off to Vegas on the company jet afterward, either.
Worse, you compounded your mistakes in Benghazi by spending two weeks offering our shareholders misleading information about the nature of the episode, a firing offense. If your record were otherwise immaculate, I would still be recommending your termination to the committee for this mistake.

Deliverable 2: Public Safety. Under your management, violent crime is up 18 percent — the first such increase in 20 years. Your “Fast and Furious” project has caused serious damage to the balance sheet: one dead federal officer, more than a hundred dead civilians, a seriously cheesed-off next-door business partner, and zero cartel convictions — the lattermost being, if I understand your business strategy, the whole point of this mess. Your performance reports here have been remarkably obstructive, which is why you should have on our advice terminated Eric Holder.

Deliverable 3: Energy. When interviewing for this position, you said, and I quote, “We could have headed off $4-a-gallon gas.” We’ve seen gas prices above or near $4 for most of your term, and above $5 in some parts of the country under the management of your associates. Energy production on the firm’s lands is down substantially year-over-year.

Deliverable 4: Balance Sheet. During your interview, you proposed cutting the firm’s current operating deficit in half. In fact, the firm has acquired trillions of dollars of new debt under your management, along with new unfunded liabilities that our accountants are still trying to work out. When you were presented recommendations from a committee named by you and your management team, you refused even to consider implementing them. You are on track to add another $1 trillion in debt this year.

Deliverable 5: Growth. The first and second quarters of this year saw 1.2 percent and 2 percent growth, respectively, well under the firm’s historic average and less than half of your own team’s assumptions.

Deliverable 6: Human-Capital Deployment. We lose money when our people aren’t working. On the day you were hired, we had 65.7 percent of them on the job; today we have only 63.6 percent. We understand that the recession presented challenges, but if you had kept pace with prior post-recession human-capital deployment, we’d have 6 million more workers on the job today.

Deliverable 7: Retained Shareholder Earnings by Unit. Household incomes are down in real terms by $3,002.96 since you’ve been on the job. In case you haven’t been informed, we were hoping to get them moving in the other direction. Losing money for our shareholders is not our business model.

Deliverable 8: Cost Control. Welfare expenditures are up 32 percent since we hired you and your team. Instead of paying our people to work, we’re paying them not to work. As you might say, this is “not optimal.”

On a personal note, I’d like to say that the first time I ever had to fire anybody, I felt really bad about it. She was a nice young woman in her first real job, courteous, well-liked, always on time, and eager to do a good job. She had, unfortunately, been hired for a position that required more than her talents and experience enabled her to deliver. This is also true of you, with the exception of being courteous, likable, and punctual. If I could, I would fire you twice.

Alice from personnel will provide you with a shoebox in which to put your Nobel medal and other personal items; I’m told you won’t need a bigger box for that Churchill bust. Fortunately for you, we have a generous severance package and benefits, even in cases of gross nonperformance of duties. Please see to it that Mr. Biden gets the message — he hasn’t been answering his phone for two weeks now, and, frankly, we’re a little worried about him.

I’m also issuing a reprimand for the committee that screens our applications and hired you in the first place.

Time to go. Now.

Bayonets & Horses?? Oh yeah, they are part of our military DNA

Well we heard and have seen how much POTUS cares about the military and our Veterans.  That is why he directed that Veterans must pay more for the benefits and healthcare they deserve.  He is not fooling anyone as he hates and holds distain for all military.

We deserve better than the failed fool who we have suffered under for the last 4 years.

Bayonets & Horses??  Oh yeah, they are part of our military DNA, not that Obama would know that.

If you need a reminder, please see the enclosed picture I took in Sept. 2010 when I attended the funeral of a fallen Marine at Arlington National Cemetery who was a shipmate of mine.

 

Obama line about horses, bayonets fails - www.dailycaller.com

 

In a debate exchange Monday night that set Twitter on fire, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney crossed swords over the kinds of equipment and materials the U.S. military uses for modern warfare.

In a response to Romney’s barb that Obama has allowed the U.S. Navy’s inventory of battleships to approach a historic low mark, Obama snarked that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

But horses and bayonets both remain vital parts of the U.S arsenal.

The Daily Caller won a prestigious Edward R. Murrow award this year for a war report about the American soldiers who — riding on horseback — were the first U.S. forces to fight in Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks.

And bayonets remain a fixture in Army infantry training and deployment. On August 6 a blogger at the Gizmodo technology website reported that the military was trading in bayonets for a “tomahawk”-like hand-to-hand combat weapon, but it later emerged that the source of that erroneous report was Duffelblog — a military spoof website modeled on The Onion.

“I think Gov. Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” Obama claimed Monday night.

“You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

"The house is burning down, and the Democratic constituencies want free ice cream."

Jennifer Rubin from the WAPO puts it succinctly - The DEMS haven't got a clue and we need ADULT LEADERSHIP, not a President who acts like a petulant teenager on a spending spree with our national credit card.

Whistling past the graveyard at the Democratic convention By Jennifer Rubin - Washington Post

If you had been dropped from outer space into the Democratic National Convention, you would have thought that we enjoyed full employment, reduced poverty and stared down Iran, leaving us with deeply important issues like paying for birth control for grown women. You would have thought that a large majority of Americans weren’t sympathetic to Israel and weren’t religious. You’d have thought that the federal government had money to burn and no looming debt crisis. You would never have thought that Obama had signed a “historic” health-care bill. And you’d have thought that the political heavyweight in the Obama household was Michelle. (Well, you might have been right about the last one.)

But knowing that the America of 2012 is so very different than the convention portrait, it’s worth asking how the Democrats’ convention became so divorced from reality.

We saw a party in which the inability to tackle the monumental problems of our time ( entitlement reform, fiscal crisis, endemic high unemployment, a nuclear-armed Iran) has left a large gaping hole where its core should be. As our problems have gotten bigger, the party has gotten smaller, angrier and less grown-up. The house is burning down, and the Democratic constituencies want free ice cream.

So, how does it happen that days are spent on abortion on demand (which we essentially have anyway until the Supreme Court decides differently) and contraception, while big-ticket items are ignored?

The answer is twofold, I think. The current state of the Democratic Party is both the natural consequences of a longtime trend and the reflection of a president who is tragically unequipped to do his job.

Constituent politics is nothing new to the Democratic Party, of course. Ever since FDR strung together an alliance of urban blacks, Southern whites, labor and immigrants, the Democratic Party has been collecting interest groups like a girl collects charms for her bracelet. The groups have multiplied (gays, Native Americans, public employees), but the concept has been the same for 70 years. In exchange for votes the Democratic Party will give you lots of “free” stuff. To get free stuff you have to pay a lot of taxes and idealize government as the font of good deeds, so that citizens won’t mind an increasingly intrusive and expensive government. The point is not to solve problems or even measure success; the point is to keep the swapping (votes for free stuff) going strong.

A lot of the big-ticket items have already been doled out. So now we’re down to the really small beans ( free contraception!). Whether the giveaways are small or large (e.g., unlimited health care for all, free college education) the idea is propounded that the measure of a decent, successful society is how much free stuff you give away.

This phenomenon has been amply documented (most recently by Jay Cost in in his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic). But usually the itty-bitty items and the atomized nature of a party strung together only by the common desire to get free stuff are not so obvious. Usually, there is an overarching purpose that takes center stage, while the interest group plate-spinners carry on along the sidelines. What was so startling at this year’s Democratic convention was that there is nothing else but the interest group beg-a-thon.

And this brings us to the current president. In 2008 Barack Obama had big themes and big ambitions that gave the party coherence. Having failed to do the big things (curb the debt, stop Iran, jump-start the economy), he chose to ignore the biggest issues of our time. My colleague Michael Gerson aptly put it: “Obama made almost no mention of the continuing jobs crisis. He offered nothing new or creative on a fiscal and debt crisis that undermines economic confidence. Much of Obama’s agenda — lowering tuition costs, recruiting math and science teachers, ‘long-lasting batteries’ — sounded like a seventh-year State of the Union address, a collection of policy leavings and leftovers.”

So then it wasn’t merely that Obama let loose the rent-seekers (and birth control-seekers and free-education-seekers). No, he needed them to fill up the space and the airwaves, to promise that no matter what (fiscal crisis, recession) he will still be there to cater to the whims and demands of the constituent groups. Sure the economy is bad, but who’s going to give you free college tuition?

It’s ludicrous, of course. If the economy doesn’t improve and we don’t avoid the fiscal cliff, we’ll be taking away, not handing out stuff. This is the “austerity” against which the liberals inveigh. In fact, they are driving us ever closer to the point where we will will have to quickly and severely cut out the handouts.

It is, as conservatives have said for so long, the Western European syndrome. As we spend and cater to the demanding crowd, we push ourselves closer and closer to the point where both the excessive demands and actual needs will go unmet.

It is interesting that on Friday major financial institutions sounded the alarm about the state of the economy. James Pethokoukis quoted JPMorgan’s economist Michael Feroli:

Labor market activity was disappointing again in Aug . . . The more comprehensive employment-to-population ratio ticked down to 58.3%; this measure is a mere 0.1% above its cycle trough, indicating that once one takes account of population growth there has been essentially no progress in repairing the labor market after the recent downturn. In fact, if you go through the details it’s hard to find any redeeming aspects to this jobs report. In terms of the broader economy, today’s numbers should check any enthusiasm that the economy was gaining momentum toward the end of the summer. Instead, the economy appears to remain stuck in the mud.

“Awful,” “dreary,” weak” and “dismaying.” He sounds like the town crier straining to wake up the town. But in Charlotte the Democrats had their fingers in their ears, as if blocking out the noise would make it go away, or at least muffle others’ hearing. What’s that? The economy is near a recession? Hmm. Did I mention we’ll give you free birth control?

I like to say that the first side in a campaign to raise social issues is losing on everything else. In this case, the campaign spending three days on wedge issues and statist trinkets is getting clobbered on everything else.

Maybe the Obama cynicism is right and the public is willing to be coddled and distracted. But somehow I think not. At some point voters want to fix the big things; they might even be willing to forgo a lot of free stuff

Kabul Press calls Massachusetts more corrupt than Afghanistan

My wife and I were discussing the issue of the "Government Critters" on both sides of the world, and that there really is no real difference as the Government at home and the Government here are inhabited by the same level of ineffective and overpaid staff. They aren't very effective and are highly overpaid for the work that they do. It doesn't matter if you are in Afghanistan or the USA, these fools have taken over the Government that is supposed to work for us. Instead they have made it all about themselves.

Here's a point-of-view from the AFGHN side where the local press in Kabul describes how they see the State of Massachusetts as corrupt (if not more so)than those in Afghanistan.

With DEVAL PATRICK in charge in the State of Massachusetts, I can kinda see this guy's point. Governor Patrick is the best buddy with the President, who is the epitome of ineffective, bloated, overpaid Government. They are a pair of inept frauds who scammed their way into elective office. We would be much better off with both of them out of office and going back to some other line of work.

Massachusetts Corruption Dwarfs Afghan Corruption

International corruption statistics are distorted to protect Western nations and China - Saturday 18 August 2012, by Matthew J. Nasuti - Kabul Press http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article120954

Government corruption in the United States is hundreds of times more pervasive and costly than in Afghanistan. Every day American newspapers recount the scandals. One day it involves U.S. Customs officials, the next day it is the Secret Service, then the General Services Administration, then the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Every month there are new scandals involving foreign aid and other funds administered by the U.S. Department of State, the latest involved the waste of billions of dollars in “global warming” funds squandered by Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones and her predecessor, Claudia A. McMurray. Despite the State Department being perhaps worst administered agency in the Federal Government, no one dares utter even a whisper of criticism at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so the corruption continues.

While billions of dollars in domestic spending and foreign aid are misappropriated, corruptly awarded and mismanaged each year, that corruption is easier to conceal, because the U.S. is a wealthy country with many distractions. Despite the publicity, few members of the public seem able to grasp the size and scope of the cancer of corruption and nepotism that is eating away at the country.

Internationally, government corruption is ranked under a flawed system established by such groups as “Transparency International.” They rank corruption in countries like Afghanistan and the United States based on subjective “perceptions” of corruption. Because the rankings are not based on the actual volume of corruption, this system unfairly maligns developing countries. If the system were based on the dollar amount of corruption, it would list many Western, Arab and Far East nations as the most corrupt.

Supposedly non-profit groups such as Transparency International are anything but transparent. Its co-founder, Michael Hershman, is a former official with USAID and he is also the chairman of the Fairfax Group. Fairfax makes it profits from the corruption that Transparency International “discovers.” Fairfax holds itself out as an expert consultant on foreign government corruption and as a result it has been awarded numerous U.S. government anti-corruption contracts. Transparency International’s U.S. Board of Directors and Advisory Council is filled with former government officials, lawyers for major Washington, D.C. law firms, government consultants and other representatives of organizations affiliated with the U.S. Department of State. Many of these people make money from or advance their careers by pointing the corruption finger overseas, rather than where it belongs, which is at the Federal, State and local governments in the United States.

In the United States, the systemic government corruption is not limited to the loss of public funds and cronyism, but extends to a wide range of dishonest and illegal practices which shield those with political connections. American is literally a land of two peoples; those to whom the law applies and those who are above the law. The problem is too large for a single article to examine, so just one of America’s 50 states (Massachusetts) was chosen for this article and even for that state, there is only space to summarize a tiny percentage of its public corruption.

Timothy Murray Scandal: The current state government in Massachusetts is called the Patrick/Murray Administration after Governor Duval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray. On November 2, 2011, at 5:26 a.m. Murray was driving his State-owned Crown Victoria automobile in Sterling, Massachusetts, when he crashed the vehicle, completely destroying it. Murray told the police that he was driving at the legal speed limit of 55 miles per hour and lost control of the vehicle. He claimed to be on official business inspecting (in the dark) storm damage in the area. The police determined that he was driving at 108 miles per hour and fell asleep at the wheel. Every statement made to police by Murray was false. Despite that and Murray’s lack of remorse, local prosecutors refused to prosecute him for his false statements or for reckless endangerment. As a reward, Governor Patrick gave Murray a new $40,000.00 State automobile to replace the one he destroyed. Murray had previously been cited in 1992 and 2006 for speeding. Attempts by the Boston Herald to further investigate this scandal have been blocked by lawyers in the Governor’s Office, including E. Abim Thomas, who claims that the records are exempt from public release. ,br />
Chelsea Housing Authority Scandal: Massachusetts has 242 public housing authorities and some of the top jobs within these agencies have historically been patronage appointments, a system prone to abuse. For most of the past year, the Chelsea (Boston) Housing has been rocked by sandals. On June 15th of this year investigators questioned Lieutenant Governor Murray about allegations that Chelsea officials were illegally fundraising for him. Murray has refused to brief the people of Massachusetts regarding any of these allegations. Since then there have been no public updates. The concern is that this criminal investigation, like so many others, has been quietly dropped.

MBTA Scandal: On August 6, 2012, the Boston Globe reported that there were only two bidders on a $1 billion State MBTA transportation contract. Initially, 25 companies expressed an interest in bidding but except for the favored contractors (Mass Bay) and a little known French company, all the rest of the bidders ultimately declined to bid. The reason that 23 companies withdrew from the process is that there is a wide-spread belief that State officials had rigged the bidding in favor of Mass Bay. Governor Patrick has done nothing to dispel this apparently accurate assessment. Due to the lack of competition and in order to try and restore public confidence, Governor Patrick should withdraw bidding authority from MBTA General Manager Jonathan R. Davis, assign the bid evaluation to an independent panel and order that panel to rebid the work. This of course will never happen because the Governor seems quite content with the present corruption.

Deerfield River Levee Scandal: In the Fall of 2011, a group of wealthy agri-businesses in Deerfield, Massachusetts created several kilometers of sand levees along the Deerfield River in an attempt to prevent future flooding of their low-lying farm fields. The 10-15 foot levees, in some places push into tree-lines and right up to the river’s edge. The legal issue is that State law prohibits any construction work within 200 feet of a river without a permit, which the farmers failed to apply for. The Massachusetts River Protection Act is very clear and it mandates that the levees be removed. According to informed sources, inspectors for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recommended in 2011 that enforcement action be commenced against the violators. A letter was sent on December 15, 2011 to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley from Cynthia M. Pepyne of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office requesting a State review of these potential environmental violations. To-date however nothing has happened. The reason is that the agri-businesses involved have close political ties to the Patrick-Murray Administration and party loyalty matters more to these State officials than the environment or the law. It is not clear who within Ms. Coakley’s office or the DEP quashed the enforcement action. The case is presently sitting on the desk of Brian Harrington, Assistant Administrator for DEP’s Western Region. It has been sidelined with the support of DEP attorney Kathleen Delaplain, but the real decision authorities may have been DEP Director Kenneth L. Kimmell and Western Regional Administrator Michael Gorski. In contacts with these officials, they claim that the enforcement action is still under “active consideration” but it is impossible to obtain the truth from any of these individuals.

Department of Revenue Scandal: An investigation in early 2012 revealed that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue has a new tactic that it is using against the poor. It is called the “desk audit.” For wealthy and corporate taxpayers, the Department will conduct field audits in which revenue agents travel to the home or place of business of the wealthy to review the taxpayer’s records. However, for indigent taxpayers, the Department misuses a device called the desk audit and it orders the taxpayer to copy all of his or her records for one or multiple years and mail all of them to the desk auditor. If the taxpayer cannot afford to do this, the Department labels them as “refusing to comply with the law” and rejects all their deductions, imposing large penalties on them. If the indigent taxpayer tries to appeal this unjust assessment, he or she is hit with the one-two punch by the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board (ATB). The ATB has ignored rulings from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and decided that it will not waive filing fees for the poor. As a result of this misconduct, some indigent taxpayers are barred from appealing State abuses. Even if the indigent could somehow obtain the required filing fees, the ATB requires that all hearings be held in Boston, a long trip for the elderly and in some cases an impossible trip for the poor. The ATB refuses to travel around the State in order to hear cases locally, however, the ATB will travel the circuit for wealthy parties who are contesting property tax assessments. It will hold court for property tax cases for the rich in such upscale western towns as Northampton, but it will not accommodate the poor by holding income tax hearings in Springfield or Greenfield. One of these indigent taxpayer cases is currently being prosecuted by Department of Revenue attorney John DeLosa. Commissioner of Revenue Amy Pitter and ATB Chairman Thomas W. Hammond, Jr. apparently are quite comfortable with these abuses, as they have done nothing to correct them. USDA - Massachusetts Scandal: There is an investigation currently underway by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the FBI into the corrupt awarding of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Bill funds in Massachusetts. The case has been briefed to top officials in Tom Vilsack’s office. Mr. Vilsack is the Secretary of Agriculture for the United States. The evidence is that USDA officials in Massachusetts have been awarding grants primarily to friends, family members and to a small group of wealthy farmers with close ties to the Patrick/Murray Administration. The grants are under two programs called the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) and the Environmental Quality Improvement Program (EQIP). The public has not heard about this case and it will not be hearing about this case for a while because, unfortunately, the U.S. Attorney’s investigation appears to be on hold until after the November election, so as not to embarrass President Obama. Corruption at the Federal, State and local levels within the United States varies from agency to agency, from State to State and from town to town. Overall, the sheer magnitude of abuses outstrips anything present in Afghanistan. The American metrics far outpace Afghanistan on the dollar number of funds misappropriated, number of instances of corruption and number of people and companies who are immune from and above the law. This is not to condone the level of corruption within Afghanistan, which is believed to be considerable and unacceptable. Hypocracy has always been a staple of international diplomacy and therefore Afghanistan will have to live with the condescending arrogance of American diplomats who see corruption everywhere but in their own back yard

Letter to the Editor - Romney a successful pro; Obama, a failed amateur

You have to find the right words and this gentleman from NJ puts it plain & simple

We need ADULT LEADERSHIP NOW - Not more dumb-arse Mr. Hopey Changey and his failed stupidity.

Romney a successful pro; Obama, a failed amateur

Recent polls have the presidential race in a near dead heat on votes, yet Mitt Romney continues to trail on “likability.”
It’s distressing that “cool and likeable” have become pivotal traits in a historical presidential election, traits not often associated with very successful people. Sadly, it has become obvious that irrelevant metrics and expansive government entitlements can trump clear thinking.
Maybe these voters will wake up when the economy’s tank goes dry and we fall into the Greece pit. The Obama campaign has done a desperate but effective job of personally demeaning a man who represents the American success story.
Do even the most dull and uninformed really believe that Romney could have achieved this level of success by debasing women, imposing his religious beliefs or killing jobs?
The only important fact is that our country is in the exact same place it was, and worse in some cases, as when Barack Obama took it over four years ago, without offering any new or credible plans to change it. In any other segment of life, who would give someone another shot after this kind of unashamedly failed performance?
Previous Obama supporters need to take the personal hit for being duped by a media-made amateur and save our children’s future.
You may not like your current bosses, but I’ll bet you appreciate what they are doing to maintain your way of life. Many voters don’t like Gov. Christie, but they like what he does.
Vote for the pro, not the amateur.
Terrence Garrity
Seaside Park, NJ

" You didn't build that..."

It is very likely he would have been thrown over the side......sounds like a great idea.

What an idiot.  A failure who has been exposed by his own words....Time to go Mr.Obama.