November 01, 2006

I Botched the Joke?!?!?!

Here is the email I am submitting to Senator Kerry:

I am incensed about your remarks today concerning my and my fellow enlisted soldiers' intelligence. I also read your follow-up explanation that it was a failed joke - I hope you also do not believe the rest of the country as stupid as me, because I have a really hard time believing it was a joke after being able to view the speech (yes, in context) online.

I have a BA from Columbia University. Maybe you have heard of it. I would be willing any day of the week to put my French language skills up agaist yours. I also attended a certain private high school in Exeter, NH. Maybe you have heard of that one? I enlisted in the US Army after 9/11. Am I stupid?

I went to basic combat training with a guy who has a BS in Aeronautical Engineering. He is, literally, a rocket scientist. He also enlisted soldier in the US Army after 9/11. Is he stupid?

I currently work with another guy who has a Masters in Philosophy and was very close to finishing his dissertation for his PhD. He, by the way, is very liberal politically, but I would be willing to bet that in an exercise of debate, with him taking the other side, he would talk circles around you, or any of your 99 colleagues in Washington. He enlisted in the US Army after 9/11 out of patriotism. Is he stupid?

College degrees in my company in the enlisted ranks outnumber those in the officers'. We obviously did our homework and worked hard during our years in school. Maybe you are out of touch and do not realize just how much things have changed since you were in the military (that is if, in fact, you had an idea about it then). I think you may get too many of your ideas from movies and television, because it is painfully obvious that you have not ever taken the time to really speak with an enlisted member of today's US military.

To my relatives and friends in MA: Please, please, please do not send this elitist buffoon back to Washington the next time he is up for re-election. This is not the first time he has made disparaging remarks about the military, or the general population at large. Listen to his speeches and he will always mention the "working class". We don't have classes in the United States. Our ancestors left Europe because they hated the fact that they were part of the toiling masses which supported a small, elite aristocracy who ran everything. In America, anyone can work hard, become successful and live the good life - ANYONE. Bill Gates dropped out of college to write MS-DOS, the precursor to Windows. Wal-Mart started as one family-run store in Arkansas. Nike was a track coach's dream in Oregon. Next time you hear a John Kerry speech, listen closely and when he refers to "working class Americans" it will be in the 3rd person. That is because he does not see himself as part of that group - he sees himself as part of a small, elite aristocracy.

Posted by TJ at 06:11 AM | Comments (1)

 

June 16, 2006

More media bias

If the mainstream media has a target that it loves to condemn more than the United States, it is Israel. Last week, an explosion on a beach in Gaza killed 7 people. Everyone was quick to blame the IDF, especially the Palestinians because they know that the MSM won't fact-check anything they say. Problem was, the IDF stopped firing 15 minutes before this particular explosion. Forensic and military experts now say that a week after Israel apologized and promised to make ammends to the families of the victims, all evidence points to this explosion as being caused by a mine, probably planted to thwart a perceived marine assault threat, and not an artillery shell after all.

So the press reports that "Hamas fired at least 15 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel on Saturday, ending a tattered 16-month truce with Israel, a day after eight Palestinians were killed on a Gaza beach, apparently by an errant Israeli shell." I guess that is accurate if your idea of a "truce" involves firing over 1000 rockets at Israel over the past 10 months...

The world press, very much including the mainstream U.S. media, tends to take the word of Palestinian spokesmen about civilian deaths, although experience should have taught them by now to be more guarded. In 2005, a 10-year-old Palestinian girl was killed by gunfire. U.N. and Palestinian officials blamed her death on Israel until it was determined that a bullet fired by Palestinians shooting into the air to celebrate their pilgrimage to Mecca hit her. Muhammad al-Dura, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy supposedly shot by Israelis has become a worldwide symbol of Israeli brutality, though it has since been firmly established that Israelis could not and did not kill him. And, of course, the "Jenin Massacre" proclaimed by Palestinians high and low (5,000 innocents were slaughtered, they claimed) and condemned by the United Nations, turned out to be a complete lie (only 52 were killed, along with 23 Israeli soldiers who went house to house to avoid civilian casualties).

And here is the saddest, yet most telling paragraph on how the world views the only true democracy in the Middle East (hopefully Iraq will be solidly in that club soon).

In the aftermath of the Gaza incident, Prime Minister Olmert spoke by phone with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan demanded an explanation for the Gaza deaths. When Olmert asked why Annan had not shown similar concern about the scores of missiles hitting Israel, Annan was nonplussed. "What missiles?" he asked.

Posted by TJ at 06:16 PM | Comments (1)

 

May 26, 2006

`Nuff said

UPDATE: Actually, no, not enough said. Add today's Senate vote on S2611 to the wagon-circling antics of the last couple days (separation of powers? No, Mr. Hastert, our system of checks and balances is made to ensure that one branch of government can't get away with things such as believing they are above the law), and not a single incumbant on my ballot gets a vote in November. Not one.

And Judd Gregg gets a nay when he's up again.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants and what the Senate did today is disrespect every immigrant who ever came to America and played by the rules in order to give themselves, their family (and thus, you) a better life. That immigrant may be you, your parents, your grandparents... somewhere in your ancestry there are good, honest, hardworking people who came to America from somewhere else - and 62 senators just call them suckers and spit in their faces.

Here are those "distinguished" ladies and gentlemen who need to be tossed to the curb in November: Akaka (D-HI), Bingaman (D-NM), Cantwell (D-WA), Carper (D-DE), Chafee (R-RI), Clinton (D-NY), Conrad (D-ND), Dayton (D-MN), DeWine (R-OH), Feinstein (D-CA), Frist (R-TN), Jeffords (I-VT), Kennedy (D-MA), Kohl (D-WI), Lieberman (D-CT), Lugar (R-IN), Menendez (D-NJ), Nelson (D-FL), Sarbanes (D-MD), Snowe (R-ME)

They can deny this all they want (and they will) but this is amnesty, pure and simple. Rewarding bad behavior only encourages more. Hopefully the House will have more sense, but somehow, I doubt it.

Posted by TJ at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

 

December 02, 2005

Who elects these idiots?

LATROBE, Pa. - Most U.S. troops will leave Iraq within a year because the Army is "broken, worn out" and "living hand to mouth," Rep. John Murtha told a civic group.

First of all, of course most US troops will leave Iraq within a year because deployment rotations are usually a year long at most. Maybe just a bad choice of words...

Second. I look around me and see everyone doing their jobs, doing them well. The gym is full. Soldiers are running outside more now that the weather is cooler. And despite being in a warzone, there is fun and joking and more than just a few smiles.

Yeah, sounds "broken" and "worn out" to me.

Murtha, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, said the Pennsylvania National Guard is "stretched so thin" that it won't be able to send fully equipped units to Iraq next year

Not to slight the PA National Guard, but obviously, if the Pennsylvania National Guard can't get something done, than nobody can!

some guard units had to leave equipment in Iraq when they returned to the United States, which could cause training problems here

You see, Mr Murtha, that is how the military solved alot of the under-equipment problems such as body armor and armored humvees. When a lot of this equipment arrives in Iraq, it gets signed over the unit that replaces you so they are even more prepared than you were. What is not mentioned is that if the PA National Guard returns to Iraq, it will receive alot of the equipment it needs that it does not now have.

Something tells me that if every unit brought back all their equipment, we would hear Rep Murtha complaining about how the PA National Guard was sent to Iraq under-equipped and ill-prepared to face the challenges confronting it. But then again this is probably just another case of any excuse to bash President Bush with as great an audience as possible, and these days, doing it under the guise of "supporting our troops" is the cliche-du-jour.

Congress called this buffoon's bluff just 2 weeks ago when he said he wanted an immediate troop pullout and they put it to a house vote. It failed 403-3. He even voted against it because it seems he doesn't even have the courage to vote his own convictions. Let's hope the people of Latrobe have the good sense to send someone else to congress next year.

Thank God people like Mr Murtha were not in the US congress in the early 1940's when the US Army was conducting 5-year deployments, storming beaches under massive machine-gun fire, marching thousands of miles across continents under fire with absolutely no body armor, shortages of food and ammunition, and facing an enemy a thousand times the strength of our current adversary and with just as much fanatacism.

Posted by TJ at 07:12 AM | Comments (7)

 

October 29, 2005

Shame on the New York Times

The NY Times just can't seem to stop spinning the news to meet it's adjenda. In their so-called tribute piece about the 2000th death in Iraq, they profile CPL Jeffrey B Starr who died in Ramadi on April 30.

Sifting through Corporal Starr's laptop computer after his death, his father found a letter to be delivered to the marine's girlfriend. "I kind of predicted this," Corporal Starr wrote of his own death. "A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances."

"A third time" refers to his 3rd deployment to Iraq.

Well, the times, true to form, has taken this quote completely out of context and the meaning of what they protray is the exact opposite as that CPL Starr wished. Here is the full context:

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark."

(Full story at Michelle Malkin)

If something happens to me over here, and anyone, anywhere takes something I said here and twists it to mean something other than I intended. I would hope that the people I knew, no matter their political leanings and feelings about this war, would not only publicly expose the fraud as did CPL Starr's uncle in this case, but also to take up legal action against the perpetrator unless they printed a retraction with as much zeal and equal or greater placement as they did the original. Which in this case would be a page 1 feature story above the fold; however, if there even is a correction, it will probably be buried in a footnote on the op-ed page. This is completely shameful and corrupt. I wonder if the people on the NY Times masthead really wonder why readership and advertising are down.

Posted by TJ at 08:08 AM | Comments (3)

 

October 24, 2005

Crickets Chirping

That is the sound you are hearing about the revelation that of the 4 US contractors who were recently killed in Iraq, 1 of them was burned alive. But OOOOH, how the world goes and gets its collective panties all up in a bunch when American soldiers burn the decaying corpses of 2 ex-terrorists that nobody wanted to claim.

Note to world: we notice this sort of thing. There were stories less than 24 hours after the Pakistan earthquake about how US aid wasn't fast enough in comming. Then it wasn't enough money, or the right kind. The same thing happened after the Dec 25 tsunami last year. Go ahead, keep it up. There is only so much you can call some of the most generous people in the world a bunch of miserly hegemonic imperialistic barbarians bent on force-feeding the world Big Macs before they say "to heck with you". I am not an isolationist, but someday, I fear, the world will find out what it's like to deal with a major disaster without American help. And it's not going to be pretty.

Posted by TJ at 07:41 PM | Comments (1)

 

October 02, 2005

Anti-war protests? Hardly.

Christopher Hitchens is one of the few mainstream writers on the left with any integrity. He refuses to blindly follow the crowd which seems to hate President Bush so much that they will embrace absolutely any person or movement that lashes out against him. He has an excellent piece at Slate about the so-called "peace" protests in DC last week. Here is an excerpt, but the entire article is well worth reading:

To be against war and militarism, in the tradition of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, is one thing. But to have a record of consistent support for war and militarism, from the Red Army in Eastern Europe to the Serbian ethnic cleansers and the Taliban, is quite another. It is really a disgrace that the liberal press refers to such enemies of liberalism as "antiwar" when in reality they are straight-out pro-war, but on the other side. Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh. And this in a week when Afghans went back to the polls, and when Iraqis were preparing to do so, under a hail of fire from those who blow up mosques and U.N. buildings, behead aid workers and journalists, proclaim fatwahs against the wrong kind of Muslim, and utter hysterical diatribes against Jews and Hindus.

Posted by TJ at 06:51 PM | Comments (1)

 

September 21, 2005

The distusting MSM Part II

I guess my concern was met and my post about hurricane Katrina was misunderstood after all. And if this person can, then people who have not known me as well or as long may as well. I admit I am a little surprised but after rereading, I can see where I went wrong.

The last people I was grilling were those that are the worst off. Families without homes. Families who lost loved ones. Families who have no idea where some of those loved ones are. I did not mean to infer that I thought that everyone was taking advantage of the aid being sent by the government and uncountable private institutions. Those who are truly in need should get what they need to get their lives back together.

That being said, my post had 2 theses:

1) The people who stayed despite all the warnings deserve most of the blame for what happened to them.

2) Those who are taking advantage of this situation for personal gain, either monetary, professional, political, etc, should be ashamed. And the rest of us need to remember who they are.

I mentioned the $200 billion from the federal government broken down and divided equally among all the displaced families would equal roughly $400,000 each. Now toss in all the privately raised funds. Does anyone really believe that any family will see anywhere near this amount? No. It will be bled away by the various middlemen agencies to do "studies", make "fact-finding trips", hire "consultants", not to mention pay the salaries and bonuses of their executives. (Non-profit does not mean non-revenue by any stretch.) Even though I feel $400k is too much, I would much rather see the government cut them checks to let them buy a home and restart elsewhere tomorrow, than watch these bloodsuckers all posture and plead in front of the cameras about how all they want to do is "help these poor, poor people", while those they claim they are trying to "help" continue to sleep on cots in the Astrodome (or wherever they are are now being moved).

Anyone who blames President Bush or Mike Brown or "white people" for these problems has no business at the big people's table and need to step aside and let serious people get something done. Period.

Finally, those who started it all - the media. All they care about is ratings, and they will put anything on that they think will make people switch from another network.

Posted by TJ at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)

 

September 20, 2005

The disgusting MSM

I got back from the gym a few days ago, and what had been on the TV made me want to throw up. All the bodies in Louisiana and Mississippi are not even found yet from hurricane Katrina and ABC news has decided to combine the always lucrative reality TV and disaster movie genres. They had a show on ABC Primetime basically showing all kinds of even worse potential disasters - hurricanes, earthquakes, pandemics, nuclear blasts in NYC... And guess what? We are not prepared for a single one of them! They trotted out expert after expert over how the federal government hasn't done this, or hasn't done that.

Well, guess what? This is America, land of opportunity and freedom (i.e. the freedom from governmental tyrrany). We all also have many individual rights; however, with the more rights comes the responsibility to exercise them properly. The federal government is not our nanny. They are not here to bail us out of every jam we get into, they are there to help us when we really need it. And some people really need it right now, and they are getting it. A couple people needed help so badly that they took their $2000 FEMA debit cards and bought $800 Louis Vitton bags with them. I could use that kind of help. Do you realize the federal government is allocating $200 billion for disaster relief? With that money, they could give $400,000 to each family left homeless by the hurricane. Ridiculous, especially when you consider all the lawsuits that will undoubtedly be piled on top of that. Welcome to America in the 21st century.

I can't believe all the carping by the pundits over how "late" relief was and how people are dieing because FEMA didnt get there in time. What???? How about all the billions of dollars spent over decades on research into technologies such as doppler radar, and the engineering required to fly a plane into the middle of a hurricane and measure its strength and direction. The people of New Orleans knew this thing was comming and yet many still decided to stay. For decades, experts have been talking about how the levees of New Orleans could barely hold back the storm surge of a category 2 storm and that since a huge portion of the city is below sea level, a larger storm would be a catastrophe. The federal government, in all their wisdom, rejected a project in the 70s (not headed by the HalliBusHitlerCo!!!) that would have strengthened the levees and provided some protection against just this sort of storm surge. I bet the cost wasn't even close to $200 billion, adjusted for inflation or not. People died because they didn't leave their homes before the storm. They were warned. They knew what would most likely happen. Darwin award anyone?

"Oh but some were so poor they didn't have cars and couldn't get away." Last I looked, Amtrack (fedrally subsidized I might add) and Greyhound weren't very expensive. Neither is a 2 or 3 night stay at a Motel 6 to wait for the storm to pass. What also thrives in the area? Churches. If someone doesnt have a car or phone and still really wants to get out and needs help, why not go to your local chruch. If they can't help you directly, and even if you're not a Christian, I guarantee the pastor has some pull in local government and can help you get out.

My rant continued a little, but it started to get off topic. Instead, I will link to this great post at Shots Across the Bow, the 1st weblog to ever link to me. Rich pretty much said everything I wanted to, but I didnt have the time. Here's a snippet:

The problems are solved and now we can all rest securely in the knowledge that, if another disaster hits New Orleans, the response will be swift, sure, and effective, all because Mike Brown, head of FEMA, has resigned. In one swift move, we know longer have to worry about things like:

Mayor Ray "Potty Mouth" Nagin failing to follow his own evacuation plan by utilizing city and school busses to transport folks out of the city.

Governor Kathleen "CryBaby" Blanco failing to call out the National Guard and refusing assistence from other State Guard units, and the Red Cross.

Thugs breaking into gun stores, stealing every weapon they could get their hands on, then using them to shoot at helicopters bringing in aid, contractors trying to restore power, and anybody that seemed to be trying to help.

Cops walking off the job, turning in their badges, or worse, joining in with the looters, making sure they got their share of the spoils.

The local government refusing to allow food and water to be staged at the Superdome because they didn't want people there anyway.

The local government failing to call for an evacuation until about 20 hours before the storm hit.

The local government failing in fact to follow virtually any part of its emergency response plan

No, we don't have to worry about any of that anymore because Mike Brown has resigned. Forget about the fact that he had no input into any of these colossal blunders. Forget about the fact that FEMA is not designed as a primary response agency. Forget about the fact that this was the biggest natural disaster ever to occur in the US, totally decimating the infrastructure which a national response would require. Forget all of these facts, because we as a nation are not interested in facts anymore; we want somebody to blame and Mike Brown is taking the fall.

Read it all.

Posted by TJ at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)