There’s principled…

…and then there’s stupid and gullible.

And the Republican House caucus is…?

They voted for the Stupid Stupak Amendment to the Trojan the Healthcare Industry Takeover Bill, banning it from funding abortion and thereby paving the way for the Democrats to pass the whole bill.  Because, according to the Republican anti-abortion caucus, “We don’t play politics with life.”

No stupid, BUT THE DEMOCRATS DO!  And principles aren’t supported by playing the fool.  The best way to keep Obamacare from funding abortion is to KILL THE HEALTHCARE TAKEOVER BILL!  GAWD!  I’m flaming in caps like Gateway Pundit!

Killing the bill is the only way to stop all of the bad provisions in the bill because the problem isn’t  the provisions.  It’s the entire bill itself.  Because a one sentence amendment to eliminate a clause can be undone by another one sentence clause buried in a another Democratic 1,000 page spending atrocity passed in the middle of the night because that’s the only way they can their trash passed.  Or as promised by the Democrats themselves, the amendment won’t even make it to Obama’s desk because it will be killed in conference committee.

Principles are served by WINNING!  If you have a priceless Ming Vase and somebody is trying to take it from you, you don’t defend it by HOLDING IT OUT IN FRONT OF YOU, MORONS!

Gee, and the Republicans can’t understand why people don’t identify with them anymore.

Is it just me…

Naw.  He doesn’t have a point.

HEY! If you can’t make fun of mass murders, who can you make fun of?

Veteran’s Day Parade

Piped in the St. Louis Veteran’s Day Parade today.  (Is it a Veteran’s Day Parade if it doesn’t take place on Veteran’s Day?  Would that just make it a Veteran’s Parade?)

Saw an interesting thing I don’t remember seeing previous years.  There was a guy pushing through a crowd with a big and very simple sign that said

Russian WW II
Veterans

I looked at the guy carrying it, who was about my age (I would have been a Vietnam Vet if they had ‘asked’) and thought, “No, he’s not a WW II vet.”  Then the old guys showed up.  Maybe 8-10 very old gentlemen.  They would be at least in their mid-80s.  One wore a peaked cap and several wore whole chestfuls of rather gaudy medals.  Of course these guys wouldn’t have been Russian.  They would have been Soviets.  And they would have been in the Red Army.  I wonder how many of the veterans in the parade had fought the Red Army and its surrogates in Korea, Vietnam and various little advertised conflicts that flared up around the world during the Cold War.  Of course, the Red Army was on our side back then.  I enjoyed seeing them there.  First, it was a bit of a curiosity.  Kind of like the game Five Degrees of Separation From Kevin Bacon.  If you spoke to them, you would be one degree of separation away from the Easter Front.  One of the other members of the band thought what kind of stories could they tell.  The reason for all the medals was probably because they got one for each day they survived on the Eastern Front (Western Front in the Soviet’s eyes).  The Soviets lost something like 20 million men during WW II.

It wouldn’t even have bothered me if they had said “Soviet Vietnam Veterans”  (yes, they were there), I’m sure that there would have been a lot of people who would have objected, but that war is over.  It’s time to get over it.

Then I thought about how many men in St. Louis had been in the Wehrmacht.  Could the day come when they too could march as veterans here.  They did the same thing every other veteran in the world has done, forever.  Whether professional soldier or draftee, they answered the call, saluted smartly, and walked into a meatgrinder at there country’s behest.  I met a member of the Wehrmacht once.  He came from Berlin, which at the time I met him was West Berlin.  He had completed technical school shortly before the end of the war, at which point he was drafted.  And speaking of Degrees of Separation, he won a national competition while in school that was handed out by Hitler himself.  Now that’s a curiosity.
After just a few months, Germany surrendered and he was marched off to spend the next four year is Siberia…where the compatriots of the Russian WW II Veterans mentioned above entertained themselves by firing rifle shots through the walls of the barracks to see who could hit more Germans with one round.  Every side was heroic and every side did unthinkable things.  But all of those who served should be able to look at each other and say, “That was a good fight.  Glad it’s over.”  Unfortunately, I don’t think that could happen before all of those men have passed on.  Too bad.

On April 11, 1945 a Japanese kamikaze flew his airplane into the side of the USS Missouri.  No US sailors were lost (battleships are really hard), but the pilot’s broken body was found on the ship.  The Missouri’s Captain William M. Callaghan ordered the pilot, Second Class Sargent Setsuo Ishino buried at sea the next day with full military honors, as befitted a serviceman who died fighting for his country.  Two sailors sat up the night to sew together a Japanese Imperial Flag (for some reason, US Navy ships didn’t carry them).  It was a good thing, I think, that enemies can at show respect when the fight is over.  The fight was over for Ishino.

I do not foolish enough to believe that warfare will ever end.  Conflict is a part of life.  But as long as the wars end, and the troops can crawl out of their trenches and shake hands with the people they tried so desperately to kill the day before, there is hope that good days can be had.  When they can say “We were enemies.” there is hope.  There are two gentlemen, who’s names unfortunately I don’t remember, who were both at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  One was looking up at the planes.  The other was looking down at the ships.  They met after the war and became friends.  There is hope.  I know a person who, who is Jewish, who will not buy anything German or have anything to do with anything German.  That’s too bad.  Who does this person think is being punished?  How does this prevent the badness from happening again?  By promoting the very kinds of prejudices that caused them in the first place?  I dunno’.  But I have hope.

This is what those Soviet Red Army veterans walking with the American veterans made me think today.

Ft. Hood

I don’t have any opinions on the shooter that a short length of rope couldn’t express better.  The radio commentator I was listening to at the gym kept calling him a jihadist sympathizer.  No.  He’s a jihadist.  period.  That fact that he didn’t have the decency to die during his attack just means we have an opportunity to make him live on ham, bacon and pork rinds for the rest of his life.

I am expecting to get an e-mail today from my favorite “let’s uninvent the gun”er who I used to work for.  I always made the point that mass shootings always take place in so-called ‘gun free zones’.  In reality, ‘Gun free zones’ = ‘Free Fire Zones For Mass Killers”.  Let’s face it.  How many mass shootings have you heard of at NRA conventions.  My old boss is going to claim that a mass shooting at a military base disproves my contention that an armed society would prevent mass shootings because everybody in the military has guns and they still weren’t able to stop the killings.

But the reality is that Fort Hood proves my case.  Domestic military bases are some of the largest gun free zones in United States.  When you wander through a military installation, the only people packing heat are the military police at the gate.  Unlike the vast majorities of states, I don’t believe concealed carry is allowed on military bases.  All weapons are locked up in armories that are generally far from the housing areas.  The position of Sargent-at-Arms was created to identify the person who traditionally held the keys to the arms lockers.  The personnel at Ft. Hood were actually at greater risk to a mass shooting than the general public because it’s pretty much guaranteed that no Good Samaritan with a Concealed Carry Weapon permit was going step up and stop the carnage.

Hard lessons.  Too bad nobody learns from them.

MSM: Field Marshall Rommel advises Gen Eisenhower

Dateline 1944:  Main Stream Media outlets today carried the message from the Former Commander of the much heralded Afrika Corp and architect of  Hitler’s Atlantic Wall for the defense of the Reich to the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe today.

“The Great General should not succumb to the temptation to carry out extremist military operations if he ever wants to recapture the European mainland.” the dashing Field Marshall told reporters.  “Such actions as attempting to launch an invasion against the Normandy or Brittany coasts will simply result in perpetuation of the Allied Armies as outsiders from the Continent.  It will cause them to remain a minor party in the affairs of Europe.  Indirect action that results in vastly extended supply lines, delays direct confrontation, and causes the scattering and diffusion of the General’s forces over vast stretches of inhospitable countryside will surely lead him to ruin.”  Asked what Erwin, as he likes to be addressed by the press, would recommend Gen Eisenhower do, he replied, “The direct approach is always the best.  Go straight to the heart of the matter.  Clearly the most direct approach is to land at Calais directly across the English Channel from England.  It is where we have massed the largest part of our forces.  Only 43 kilometers of water and he will be able to directly engage our strategic center.  Wars are not won by conquering territory.  They are won by smashing armies, and ours is at Calais.  The superiority of the approach is obvious.  It is the surely the path that Mein Fuhrer would take if he were in Gen Eisenhower’s shoes.”

Ahhhh… The fallout

The Day After Election Day (DEAD spelled backwards) and everyone has an opinion to express.  Well, given the name of the blog, express I must.

A comment on Daniel Henninger’s article on Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Page (my site feels so at home there).  Henninger describes the new American Voter as a herd of cattle and coins the term “cattle stampede” to describe how this new voter group chased politically left and right.  First, how much better to be portrayed as raging bulls than the sheeple the Democrats hoped we would be and still want us to become.  But secondly, he is wrong about the voting herd chasing left after Obama and switching right now.  The independent voters who voted for Obama did not vote for a leftist.  He ran as a moderate.  The fawning press went out of its way to bury his Marxist associations so only us political junkies knew just how far out in left field this guy was.  The Democrats blasted the idiot Republicans for their irresponsible spending, expansion of government and unbridled personal corruption.  The herd wasn’t told that what the Democratic Axis was going to bring would make Republican Democrat Lite governance look positively miserly, restrained and saintly in comparison.

Really honestly and truly, the thundering herd of the Tea Partiers, independents and disaffected partisans is not chasing left or right.  They are chasing fiscal responsibility, restoration of civil rights and the return of Constitutional government and the Rule of Law in government.  Some people may consider that right wing.  So be it.  But that’s still not chasing left and right.  It’s looking consistently for one thing both political  parties have utterly failed to deliver.  Both political parties have failed spectacularly in this regard, one unbelievably worse than the other.  The Republicans were kicked out because they broke the Contract With America.  The Democrats will be kicked out because they never believed in it in the first place.

The Pelosi/Reid/Obama Democratic Axis will damage the Democratic Party for a generation.  They will have Tax, Spend and Domination Party tattooed down to their bones.  That will take some painful sanding to remove.

The Republicans have the opportunity to seek redemption.  Return to their roots.  Conservative governance, fiscal responsibility, for the greater good, To Create A More Perfect Union because We The People of These United States aren’t going to give them many more chances.  The Republicans need to remember than in 1856, they were the third party.

Phhhhfffftttt….

Did I say the Party of National Suicide.  Should have said the Party of Political Suicide.

For years the Republicans held off the Democrats by blasting them as the “Tax and Spend” party.  Slowly the Democrats began to outlive the label, not by being more thrifty, but simply by not being in a position to tax and spend freely because they were in the minority.  And of course they had the windfall of the Republicans using their time in the majority to basically turn into Democrats.  Finally, in 2008 the Democrats won the trifecta…and self destructed.  Drunk with power and they went on an insane spending spree.  If the Republicans, or the Tea Partiers (I don’t really care which), restore fiscal sanity, it will take the Democrats a generation to outlive the “Tax and Spend” label now.  Isn’t there some saying about the brighter the candle burns the quicker it goes out.  Burn bright Dems.

Smart diplomacy

There’s a saying that first class managers hire first class subordinates.  Second class managers hire third class subordinates.  Then there’s Obama and Hillary.

Yes, these two are the best the Democrats had to offer the country.  Just adds to the embarrassment the Republicans should be feeling for losing to these yokels.  Puts Ivy League educations in perspective, too.

The Party of National Suicide (recycled)

(I like this one so much I’m posting it again (updated).  The lazy (or busy) blogger’s path to the appearance of activity)

Things to make you go, “Hmmmmm.”

For over thirty years, the Democrats have followed a policy of National Energy Suicide.  I believe the first round of the policy’s application was Jimmy Carter trying to shut down the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor.  Since then the Democrats have consistently whined about how much oil the US imports while blocking virtually any new exploration or development of oil shale or oil sands.  All the gum flapping about “renewable energy” and they shut out the most renewable…hydroelectric.  Energy that literally falls from the sky.  The only programs they support are the ones guaranteed to not be able to feed the nation.  Their goal is not energy independence, it’s energy deficiency.

Policy of National Economic Suicide.  Underway as we speak.  Destroying the US currency, destroying the free enterprise system, destroying anybody who produces or invests in anything.  A man who has never run anything now takes the reigns of power of everything.  The finance industry reduced to zombies.  The US auto industry well on its way to being the American version of British Leland.  The energy industry to be shut down altogether.  And then there’s the…

Policy of National Hellthcare Suicide.  Government takes over entire healthcare system.  Turns it into post office.  Brain surgery, when it’s available, performed by the schmuck who keeps putting your neighbor’s mail in your mailbox.  Nationalized Healthcare is always a success because the purpose of it is not to save lives, it’s to save money.  Easiest way to save money?  Let them all die.  Except of course the politicians and their aparachiks.  The healthcare rationing is for the little people.

If the Obama Democrats’ avowed policy was the destruction of the United States, what would they do different?

Originally posted on May 17, 2009.

This is your state…

…on Democrats:  California, Michigan, New York, Illinois, New Jersey are all in effectively bankrupt.  They lead the country in unemployment as they drive out businesses that would have generated the economic activities to finance all of the liberal’s wet dreams.  aka: “Progressive”.

This is your state on Republicans:  Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Alaska.  Financially sound, with growing business bases that provide employment opportunities for people and economic life for the state.  aka: progress.

Powerline scores Texas v. California and the verdict is pretty clear.

Most people judge the influence of the party in power by looking at which party dominated the Governor’s Mansion.  This is because far too many people can’t tell the difference between a state chief executive and a monarch.  But governors generated neither tax or spending bills.  The real way to judge the influence of the parties is to see who dominated the speakership of the House in the legislature.  It doesn’t matter that California has had multiple Republican governors.  The legislature has been owned by the Democrats for decades and the result is that one of the largest economies on Earth has been reduced to a pauper trapped in a death spiral of increasing taxes on a shrinking tax base, thereby ensuring that the tax base shrinks even more.    That is inevitably, your state on Democrats.