A great tribute for Memorial Day is this post from Blackfive - “Bagpipes Cryin”, sung by Rushlow Harris and based on a poem written by Commander Mark Waddell as a tribute to SEALS he commanded in the Mid East. Really a fine post.
And The Anchoress has a great post of an article written last November by an Englishman, Andrew Gimson, on just who Americans really are. And what we’re made of.
Fly your flag. If you don’t have one, you owe it to yourself and your country to get one.
Gen. George Patton gave us pause when he remarked -
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived”.
That sentiment is much more easily digested when you remember what Thomas Jefferson said in the 2nd Inaugural Address -
“We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.”
May 27th, 2007
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The Anchoress is a website I have just begun reading - and will continue to do so after a recent post on impeaching Bush. Seems that the moronic Joy Behar (a member of “The View”) has all sorts of emotionally well quantified reasons to do so:
JOY BEHAR: I was watching Al Gore on, on “Larry King” last night and, you know, he has a new book out, Al Gore, where he basically really says that Bush was the worst president that we’ve ever had in the history of the country…Does anyone have any idea why we can’t get rid of this guy who stole the election in 2000, killed the surplus with tax cuts…Wanting to privatize social security. Let me get through the list. He withdrew us from the Kyoto Treaty, John Ashcroft. Sat in the classroom after learning about 9/11…He lied to us to get us into the war. He awarded a no-bid contract to Halliburton, Abu Ghraib. He promoted his friend Michael Brown to take care of Katrina. Heck of a job, Brownie. Remember that? He doesn’t listen to the Iraq Study Group. He choked on a pretzel…He waited a week to visit New Orleans and then only to watch some jazz. He stood by Alberto Gonzales…and he stood by Rumsfeld, who some people think is a war criminal. He can’t pronounce the word “nuclear.” These are just some of the reasons…this guy needs to be thrown out of office.
Well, The Anchoress urges her on in fine fashion. Just dealing with the first item of Behar’s rant:
Let’s do it; let’s Impeach Bush
1) Bush Stole the Election!
Let’s have the editors of the NY Times and the consortium of newspapers who took the time to actually Recount Florida Gore’s Way testify - under oath - that their 10,000 word article admits that yes, Bush really did win the election, or that no, their piece was a lie. Let’s get it on the record.
And while we’re at it, let’s shine a little light on some real voter fraud.
This post is well worth the read if you’re ready to get rid of Bush.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you ahead of time that you will lose.
But please, go ahead and try. I’m ready for some entertainment from the tinfoil set.
May 26th, 2007
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The Immigration Reform legislation that is meandering through our elected representatives offices is receiving a lot of publicity. Not much of it is positive, though Dafyyd at Big Lizards does see many reasons to be optimistic. However, he bases most of his argument on the general knowledge by the public of the particulars in this bill - though in defense of the public, the wording of the bill seemed to be difficult to obtain. However, it is now available, though in working form. And while I won’t disagree with Dafyyd’s points, there are several issues that he does not address that others have - like Hugh Hewitt regarding the (for lack of a title) “terrorist” clause. It all comes from a bombshell by a San Antonio Express investigative reporter, Todd Bensman:
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehension numbers, agentsalong both borders have caught more than 5,700 special-interest immigrants since 2001. But as many as 20,000 to 60,000 others are presumed to have slipped through, based on rule-of-thumb estimates typically used by homeland securityagencies.
Well, that’s cause for concern. Dafyyd addresses this issue by using oher parts of law enforcement that presently aren’t very popular:
Thus, I would much rather expand the NSA-al-Qaeda intercept program, the SWIFT surveillance program, Total Information Awareness, and other terrorism surveillance and intelligence programs… and then hook the terrorism-intelligence database up to the USCIS along with the National Crime Information Center. Then, as part of the records check — not full field background investigation, which takes months, as I know from personal experience — every illegal seeking a provisional Z-visa will be checked against every possible datum that might identify a terrorist.
Even if he comes from, oh, I don’t know… England.
Dafyyd also reminds us that both houses are controlled by the dumocrats who hate these programs and got a lot of mileage in criticizing them. I see a train wreck happening when the tracking laws hook up to “the database” solution. If it could ever gets that far.
I do think Dafyyd is right - that most of us don’t know what’s in the immigration bill and several studies and polls seem to support that. The Rasmussen poll Dafyyd references does, in fact, support our ignorance of what’s in the bill and what we would like to see. Dafyyd also has an interesting list of amendments to add to the bill - and some are now actually in the bill.
But I don’t think we’re gonna fix this terrorist import issue with this bill no matter what Congress says it’s doing.
Buy more ammo.
May 26th, 2007
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I took a week off. It was nice. I thought I felt guilty not posting material then realized it wasn’t guilt - I was hungry for more news.
Cindy Sheehan is thinking about running for Congress according to Crotchety Old Bastard. But cobdanny sums up the probable outcome well -
Sheehan says ideally a Congressional Campaign for 2008 would have already begun, but because of name recognition believes there still is more time to “evaluate things.”
Cindy, name recognition ain’t gonna get it done. General Sherman had great “name recognition” in Georgia after the Civil War but he sure as hell wasn’t about to get elected there for anything.
……….
Kim at Wizbang has the noxious story of fatback Jack Murtha and his ethics charades. Seems that Murtha took care of an “untimely” ethics violation by donating $50,000 to House freshman dumocrats - who naturally voted to clear him.
On May 16, Democrat lawmakers held a news conference in Washington, DC, where more than two dozen freshmen announced a push for stronger ethics enforcement. The members followed up that event with local media, garnering widespread attention for vowing to reform Congress.
“Members of Congress must know that if they break the rules,” Ohio’s Zack Space told C-SPAN, “they will be caught and punished.”
But when Space was given the chance to punish one of his own, Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha, he refused. Murtha contributed $2,000 to Space’s campaign last fall.
In fact, twenty-two of the twenty three freshmen who spent last week promoting tougher House ethics voted on Tuesday to kill the reprimand. One, North Carolina’s Heath Shuler, voted “present.” Shuler did not receive any funds from Murtha during his campaign.
……………..
Neptunus Lex grandly - as he is quite capable of doing - takes down Keith Olberman who goes off ranting at the dumocrats for being the spineless wimps they are and misuses the word “impunity” and instead says “impugnity”. Says Lex:
I think the word you’re looking for is “impunity,” Keith. You have “impugned” the democratic process, something you can do with “impunity” because your rights are protected by far better men than you who want to complete their mission in the defining struggle of our times.
And well said.
Lex also notes an interesting website. Find out if YOUR website is blocked in China. Lex wasn’t.
But they got him.
………………
And from Smiley Anders column in the Baton Rouge Advocate:
Saved by an accent
Kitty Gantt, a teacher at St. Jean Vianney Catholic School, was playing “rhyming bingo” with her first-graders when she asked for a word to rhyme with “corn” and “a sweet little boy” answered, “Porn.”
Says Kitty: “He must have seen the horrified look on my face, so he looked up to me and said, ‘You know, like when the rain is porn down.’
“Thank goodness for Southern accents, innocent first-graders, and the approaching summer days!”
Whew! That was close!
May 24th, 2007
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The Washington Post is carrying a story that says PBS will now air the documentary Islam vs. Islamists. This documentary was pulled from a six-part series “America at a Crossroads” for political reasons.
A documentary billed as “the film PBS doesn’t want you to see” will at long last get a national audience.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) announced a joint agreement yesterday to make “Islam vs. Islamists” available to the 354 Public Broadcasting Service member stations across the nation as a “stand-alone” TV program, with a little extra embellishment.
”We plan to distribute the film to any public broadcasting station that wants it. We’ll package it and also produce some sort of discussion to accompany the film, and give it some context,” OPB President Steve Bass told The Washington Times yesterday.
”There has been a lot of debate on whether this program needed editing. Some said yes, some no. When you’re dealing with an object of controversy, it is better to let the audience draw their own conclusions,” Mr. Bass said.
”As stewards of the investment in public broadcasting, this fulfills our responsibility to the taxpayer,” CPB President Patricia Harrison said yesterday.
The often-disquieting 52-minute film explores the struggles of moderate American Muslims at the hands of their radical brethren and gives details about a “parallel” Islamist society that is slowly but surely developing within the U.S. borders. The film was produced by conservative columnist Frank Gaffney Jr., founder of the Center for Security Policy, filmmaker Martyn Burke and Middle East scholar Alex Alexiev.
I’m looking foward to this one. H/T to LGF.
May 24th, 2007
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Pajamas Media blogger Martin Solomon has posted a disturbing article on the attempts by the Islamic Society of Boston to silence its critics by simply suing the crap out of them. The article, while somewhat lengthy and detailed, is a must read to see just how the export of Wahhabi Islam from Saudi Arabia is being tightly managed by those mosques and Islamic organizations they are exporting to - particularly the ones in America. In this case, Solomon describes the deals that the City of Boston made with a new mosque that is being built by selling the mosque land on the cheap - about 1/4 of it’s retail worth and perhaps even 1/10th.
To see how this can be viewed as a danger, step back and read this article and try to remember that this isn’t any local church or religion trying to expand its base. This effort is being directed and supported by Saudi dollars. And the delivery of the real story is in the details that are presented in “The Silencing“. Solomon points out toward the article’s end that the Saudi version of proselytizing comes with a price:
It’s possible that there are what we would recognize as moderate Muslims somewhere in Saudi Arabia, but that is not the type of Islam that is being exported and financed world-wide from the Kingdom. On the contrary, the intolerant export-version of Wahhabi Islam, driven by petrodollars, has made itself a scourge the world over — in the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa, and Asia…Saudi Wahhabism has made sure it is the Islam people find when newcomers look to discover Islam, and when nominal Muslims seek to rediscover their religion.
One need only look at the Kingdom itself to see where its image of Islam leads — misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamic supremacism, contempt and the most extreme intolerance for non-Muslims…Jihad. It’s not hard to understand why anyone would be urging a loud NO to any institution with funding from Saudi Arabia, or even significant funding from anywhere else in the Middle East.
Be aware that knowledge of this information may make you less tolerant of Islamic bullies who would be happy to simply refer to you as “Islamaphobic”, utter the usual “victimization” platitudes, and put you off with unsupported denials rather than engage in any conversation that may reveal their true intentions.
But ain’t that the point? Jihad never reveals its true intent. They’re just following the script.
(And a hat tip to LGF for the link)
May 17th, 2007
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While John Edwards attempts to promote defeat as patriotism, what I will be remembering next weekend is the battle scarred unit which has suffered a huge loss this week - the Army’s 10th Mountain Division from Ft. Drum, New York. My son is assigned to this unit and while I haven’t heard from him since this event happened, I know that it’s because he is probably working 24/7 to help find these people. He runs the UAV’s that ground units need for their efforts. I can only speculate on his grief and determination. I’ve had a heavy heart since I heard this story - even before the first announcement of the units involved. I knew it was his AO but didn’t know the loss would be so great.
I only wish that he and his brothers would be able to function without the heavy handed dumocrats spouting the defeat meme that has become a wedge in the daily lives of our soldiers. His emails to me (prior to this loss) were ripe with incredulous and disparaging comments about the defeat attitude that seems to permeate the dumocrats. He cannot believe that no one has been charged with treason since that is exactly what the “ruling” party promulgates. I only hope he can perform without that “what the hell are we doing this for” thought in the back of his head, pushed in by people so devoid of the ability to see freedom for its value rather than a voting poll statistic. “Doing the right thing” has become so interpretive of the speaker that “right” has now become synonymous with “abandonment” by speakers on the dumocrat left. And since no one within the dumocrat ranks ever speaks of the result of abandonment, it’s easy for them to tout the irresponsible line “We’ll take care of it later.” Just like we did with Cambodia and South Vietnam. Three and half million lives later we didn’t need to get involved. No one was alive to fight.
In Iraq’s case, there will will be plenty left to fight. How you gonna take care of that Hillary, Johnboy, and Teddy?
Move to Nantucket? Canada? Venezuela?
“Negotiate”? With what? Your good looks? (That’s a scary thought.)
Thanks, but forget it. I’ll trust my lot with Petraeus and what the military chain of command, including George Bush, think ought to happen. I have zero confidence that the dumocrats pleas for capitulation will make us better off.
May 17th, 2007
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Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has an excellent takedown on the “Support the Troops - Abandon Iraq” meme of presidential aspirant John Edwards. Edwards is attempting to create a tsunami of pressure to bear by getting everyone out this week for a Memorial Day gala supporting the troops while denouncing the war. Goldstein takes him to task to the woodshed:
Presidential wannabe John Edwards wants YOU to help “reclaim patriotism”. And just how do you do that? Well, the answer might seem counterintuitive to those of us in whichever of the two Americas it is where protesting the war on Memorial Day seems a bit loathsome and opportunistic.
In the other America, though, here’s how you can reclaim patriotism from people who actually support the troops rather than condescend to them, support the Iraqi people rather than agitate for our country to abandon and betray them, and support the Commander in Chief and General Petraeus rather than work tirelessly to undermine US foreign policy for political gains—and doing so based on a husk of lies and collective amnesia that fancies itself a glittering beacon of freedom (approximately 24,000 sq. ft worth, if I’m remembering correctly…)!
Jeff then goes on to laugh at Edwards “10 Things You Can Do” list and ends by supplying the transcript of Edwards interview with Chris Matthews in October of 2003 on his vote in support of the war. Yes, this is a “must read” post.
And over at Wizbang, Jay Tea has another must read on how we are accomodating Islam and a correction needs to happen:
But I would like to suggest that this beginning of a backlash is long overdue. We, as a society, need to start being a tad more heavy-handed.
The First Amendment is quite clear: the government can not and will not endorse any one religion, nor — within reason — interfere with any. (When there is a conflict between the actions of a religion and the law, the law prevails — hence the bans on polygamy, restrictions on animal sacrifice, and enforcement of age of consent to marriage laws, just to name three.) The ACLU has succeeded wonderfully at laying the groundwork for the battle against these submissions to Islamist demands: we have literally volumes of precedent saying that public funds and resources shall not be used to subsidize or promulgate any single faith — or even faith itself.
What is happening right now is a very bad thing. We are responding to threats and demands by making concessions — and, as has been proven repeatedly throughout history, giving in to such demands never works well. “Once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.”
I couldn’t agree more. And sums up what needs to be said - LOUDLY - :
The message needs to be sent, loud and clear: America will tolerate religions, but it will not adapt to them. The faiths need to adapt to America. The Constitution is our “Holy Book”, our highest law. If you want to change it, that’s fine — there’s a very clear process that has been used more than two dozen times.
But you will NOT supplant it.
Let ‘em try.
May 15th, 2007
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New York’s Catskill Mountains is an area I have seen. As a teenager, my father had to go through technical school in Poughkeepsie, New York and we lived in Kingston while he did that - twice. The Catskills are absolutely beautiful. An area I used to hunt in with a few of the natives was dubbed “The Valley of the Blue Moon” by us - it didn’t matter which way you looked, the view was always gorgeous.
Now it seems that a training camp for radical Islamics is located next to this American beauty. There seems to be all sorts of information about how dangerous, threatening, and intimidating the occupants are - including a helluva lot of gunfire. Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch has noted the most recent story in the Canada Free Press:
Islamberg is not as benign as a Buddhist monastery or a Carmelite convent. Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of “retaliation.” “We don’t even dare to slow down when we drive by,” one resident said. “They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can’t even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that?”
The complex serves to scare the bejeesus out of the local residents. “If you go there, you better wear body armor,” a customer at the Circle E Diner in Hancock said. “They have armed guards and if they shoot you, nobody will find your body.”
CFP also notes the connections the leader of this group, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, an Islamic Pakistani:
Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as “the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr,” Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or “community of the impoverished,” an organization that seeks to “purify” Islam through violence.
A security site in India describes Jamaat ul-Fuqra in a less than positive light:
The JF, in its early phase, sought to counter what is perceived as excessive Western influence on Islam. It also concluded that violence was a significant aspect in its quest to purify Islam. In its ideological moorings, the Fuqra regards as enemies of Islam all those who do not follow the tenets of Islam as laid out in the Koran, including those Muslims who they consider as heretics as well as non-Muslims. One of Gilani’s works published by the Quranic Open University in the US and seized in a 1991-investigation instructed his cadres that their foremost duty was to wage Jehad against the ‘oppressors of Muslims’. Members of the group are described as Islamist extremists with much hatred toward their ‘enemies’.
And this isn’t the first report of this conclave. The name of this homegrown Islamic training camp is may be Islamberg but the group who runs the place has been well documented by a web site called The Politics of CP. They have a digest of the group that calls Islamberg, New York (just out of Hancock) their American home - and training camp.
In April 2005, the National Criminal Justice Reference Service made available a report (94 pages) that was published in September 2004 (as part of a federal grant) by the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C). The report is titled, “Identifying the Links between White-Collar Crime and Terrorism” [subtitle: “For the Enhancement of Local and State Law Enforcement Investigation and Prosecution”]
This report focused on the white collar crimes “associated with terrorism, including credit card fraud, insurance fraud, identity theft, intellectual property crime, investment fraud, money laundering, immigration fraud, computer crime, and tax evasion.” These crimes are committed to support other activities in which the group may be involved. The case study that made up the bulk of this report was a very large multi-agency investigation of Jamaat ul-Fuqra by officials in Colorado that spread across many states and led to several convictions.
“Members of the Fuqra group have raised money by taking advantage of a variety of social services programs, including worker’s compensation, public health care, welfare, and food stamps programs. Other crimes committed by Fuqra members include the creation and use of false identification cards, birth certificates, and other forged documents…”
I read through this report and took note of a number of what I thought were some key details about the group. The group has been around awhile. The report says, “The first investigation of Fuqra was initiated by the FBI in 1983,” and it refers to Fuqra as “one of the most elusive terrorist groups resident in the U.S.”
If this sounds a little “odd”, think of it more as a little “scary”. These people are using the freedom of this country’s constitution to cover their activities - and to protect their sorry asses from having to be responsible members of a republic. Read through the above links. There’s much more information. Including a few eye opening quotes about the leader of this Islamic group - Sheik Mubarak Ali Gilani.
Spencer urges you to write your congressional representatives - in both houses I would add.
I doing just that.
May 14th, 2007
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In a clear character rip-off of Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Hamas militants now have a children’s program to advocate death and destruction to the Israeli’s and the U.S.:
Hamas militants have enlisted a figure bearing a strong resemblance to Mickey Mouse to broadcast their message of Islamic domination and armed resistance to their most impressionable audience children.
A giant black-and-white rodent named “Farfour,” or “butterfly,” but unmistakably a rip-off of the Disney character does his high-pitched preaching against the U.S. and Israel on a children’s show each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas. The militant group, sworn to Israel’s destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government.
“You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists,” Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is called “Tomorrow’s Pioneers.”
“We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.”
And the above is the ABC News version - one of the most liberal news organizations. CBS is reporting the same. CNN’s report is - well - not there in a Google lookup - except for when Glenn Beck tried to air the story and CNN shut it down. Little Green Footballs has a video link - you won’t believe how “natural” the Palestinians seem in with their cheek pinching adorable little kids they love and cherish so much that the first lesson plan in their lives involves indoctrinating them with hate and a death wish.
Walt has to be turning over in his grave.
UPDATE:
Hamas claimed to take the cartoon off the air but reneged the next day. And Cox and Forkum have noted the controversy:
May 13th, 2007
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The Washington Post isn’t my favorite newspulper. But they may have had a great idea on this one. From The Patriot Post comments:
“If you tuned in to the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates, you may have had the same reaction as many viewers looking at the crowded stages: Who’s that? The Democratic debate in South Carolina featured eight candidates, while 10 crammed into the GOP debate in California last Thursday… One possibility would be to allow viewers to vote off one candidate after each debate; it seems to work well for other TV programs.
Now why didn’t I think of that??
May 10th, 2007
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In what I would call an extremely enlightening article, D.J. Elliott from The Fourth Rail who blogs with Bill Roggio has an eye opening criticism of the OPSEC issues and who really provides the wrong info - the damn Army itself! And the bloggers the Army is so keen on shutting down are nearly painless to the OPSEC giveaways:
· 3. Military Bloggers: Despite the worries by the hierarchy, I have seen only five valid OPSEC violations in two years from Military Bloggers concerning ISF/Coalition forces (only 1 in the last year). MilBloggers tend to lose unit IDs and details in their writings in a way that PAOs should study and learn from.
I highlighted that last part in bold - I think DJ makes a very important point there. The other nine issues he has noted are far more of the OPSEC problem than any blogger has been.
Look at that list again. Despite the misfocus of the OPSEC Czars in the Army [Army OPSEC Reg], the Milblogs are comparable to SOF in the quality of their OPSEC. The troops and their families are not the problem. That is probably because they are the ones most personally affected by the results of a violation. The senior officers in their briefs and PAOs in their press releases are the ones that tend to brag on their unit(s). They provide a level of detail that is unnecessary and only useful to an intel collector. I know that they are proud of their troops and want to get their story out but, think about their lives before you speak.
I’m not going to list the other nine points DJ made - go read his post and be sure to catch the commentary following the post from an Air Force Master Sargent who argues with DJ. The points are well made. And DJ Elliott is exactly right.
PS - I have updated this with the correction to Mr. Elliott’s last name.
UPDATE:
Dafyyd at Big Lizards also posted on DJ Elliott’s article. His take is about the same except that he remarks specifically on the absolute worst security offender in the Order of Battle - The Pentagon.
May 9th, 2007
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