I cannot say that I am totally surprised. Republicans and Democrats have been in the pocket of the House of Saud ever since 1944. God Bless Rand Paul.
hat tip for all three articles - Powerline
by Andrew C. McCarthy
I’m done grumbling about how President Obama is empowering America’s enemies. After all, it is not just Obama. When it comes to abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, Republicans are right there with him.
Not all of them, of course. This week, for example, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment that would have prohibited our government from transferring F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government. This lunatic plan is not just an Obama initiative. It is also a GOP brainstorm — of a piece with 2011’s Libya debacle, in which Republican leaders cheered as Obama, upon consulting with the Arab League, ignored Congress and levied war on behalf of the very jihadists who, quite predictably, have since raided Qaddafi’s arsenal, besieged northern Africa, and massacred Americans in Benghazi.
A few weeks back, the John McCain & Lindsey Graham roadshow made its way to Brotherhood Central in Cairo, with newcomer Kelly Ayotte in tow. Senator Ayotte appears to have filled the void created by Joe Lieberman’s retirement — after all, when you have Republicans, who needs another Democrat? The former trio is best remembered for its Tripoli triumph of late 2009, when the three kicked back in the Qaddafi compound and toasted our newly cozy relations with the dictator. The bipartisan solons then winged their way home in time to second the Obama State Department’s increase in funding for the Libyan dictator’s regime. After all, they reasoned, Qaddafi was our hedge against Libya’s jihadists. As is their wont, though, the solons soon dazzled us with a 180, suddenly deciding that what we really needed to do was back Libya’s jihadists in their war against Qaddafi. The rest, as they say in Mali, is history.
So the GOP brain trust now brings this Midas touch to Egypt, rallying behind Obama’s cozy relations with the new “Islamic democracy.” [.......]
Senator Paul, by contrast, has three ideas that seem positively batty to the McCain gang. First, he thinks that American foreign policy ought to be premised on American national interests, not on the shifting notions of “global stability” popular at the Wilson School and the Council on Foreign Relations. Second, he suggests that when we give aid and arms to anti-American Islamists, bad things tend to happen to America. Finally, Paul believes the foundation of American foreign policy is, of all quaint things, the United States Constitution. The Framers gave Congress not merely the authority but the duty to thwart executive excess. On the international stage, that primarily means the power of the purse, which enables the people’s representatives to defund such madness as the arming of Islamic supremacists.
So Senator Paul tried to stop weapons transfer. His amendment, however, was defeated 79–19, because 23 Republican senators opted to follow the lead of McCain, Graham, and Ayotte. They joined all Senate Democrats (and a couple of nominal “independents” who are, in effect, Democrats) in voting to “table” the Paul Amendment. “Tabling” is a bit of procedural chicanery, allowing senators to defeat Paul’s amendment yet pretend to the folks back home that they didn’t actually vote “against” it.
Don’t be fooled. The choice here was simple: Stand with the Muslim Brotherhood or stand with the American people. Nearly two-thirds of Senate Republicans went with the Brothers.
Let’s be clear about whom Republicans have voted to arm. In late 2010, as I detail in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, Mohammed Badi, head of the Muslim Brotherhood, called for violent jihad against the United States and Israel. The “Supreme Guide” gleefully added, “The United States is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.” The Brotherhood took pains to post this speech on its Arabic-language website, reflecting its official position.
Badi’s sentiments would have been no surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. It had not been long, after all, since the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which the Justice Department proved that the Brotherhood regards the core mission of its U.S.-based affiliates (such organizations as CAIR, the Muslim Students Association, and the Islamic Society of North America) to be, as the Brothers themselves put it, “a grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” by “sabotage.” [........]
Mohamed Morsi, a leading Brotherhood official, became Egypt’s president last summer — just as his close associate, the aforementioned Supreme Guide, was railing that all Muslims, including rulers, must “wage jihad in Allah’s way” in order to reverse the “usurpation” of Palestine by the “murdering Zionist criminals.” In his very first public pronouncement after winning the presidency, Morsi called for the United States to release Omar Abdel Rahman. That would be the “Blind Sheikh,” who is serving a life sentence for terrorism convictions, and who has been credited by Osama bin Laden with issuing the fatwa that approved the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda quite sensibly gleaned that fatwa from this statement about Americans that Abdel Rahman made following his conviction:
Muslims everywhere . . . dismember their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, provoke their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, . . . shoot down their planes, [and] kill them on land, at sea, and in the air. Kill them wherever you find them.
In addition to calling for the Blind Sheikh’s return to Egypt, where such sentiments are common, Morsi has directed the release of many terrorists who had been incarcerated during President Hosni Mubarak’s tenure — Mubarak having had a close counterterrorism partnership with the United States. Morsi further failed to protect the American embassy from being overrun by Islamist rioters. [........]
Prior to his election, Morsi promised that his top imperative would be the imposition of sharia, Islam’s totalitarian legal code and societal framework. He has been true to his word, recently orchestrating the imposition of a new sharia constitution — the heavy-handed gambit that has horrified minorities and sent Egypt reeling into its latest chaos. Sharia constitutions are apparently fine with Senator McCain these days, but as we saw in his vertiginous positions on Qaddafi, the GOP’s guru of choice is not exactly a model of consistency on this point.
In a 2011 interview with Der Spiegel, the senator declared, quite correctly, that “sharia law . . . in itself is anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned.” Thus McCain then insisted that the sharia-driven Brotherhood — which he accurately described as “a radical group” that “has been involved with other terrorist organizations” — “should be specifically excluded from any transition government” in Egypt. [.......]
Meanwhile, under Morsi’s leadership, Egypt is seeing the widespread persecution of Christians and other religious minorities. In many areas, police and Islamist vigilantes now enforce sharia standards on the streets, just as they do in Saudi Arabia and Iran. And recordings recently surfaced of Morsi calling Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs” — “blood-suckers” for whom Muslims “must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred,” including “hatred . . . for all those who support them.” [Memo to Republicans: “Those who support them” refers to . . . the American people.]
I could go on, but as Beltway supporters of America-hating Islamists like to say, “What difference does it make?” Still, just in case it makes any difference to you, here are the Republican senators who shamefully voted to provide Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government with F-16s and Abrams tanks: Alexander, Ayotte, Barasso, Blunt, Burr, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Collins, Corker, Enzi, Flake, Graham, Hatch, Hoeven, Inhofe, Isakson, Johanns, Johnson, Kirk, McCain, McConnell, Murkowski, Portman, Toomey, and Wicker.
Kudos to the 18 Republicans who joined Senator Paul in trying to stop the arming of America’s enemies: Boozman, Coats, Cornyn, Crapo, Cruz, Fischer, Grassley, Heller, Lee, Moran, Risch, Roberts, Rubio, Scott, Sessions, Shelby, Thune, and Vitter. Common sense is on their side. Sadly, history is sure to follow, and probably soon.
Read the rest – Senate Republicans arm the Brotherhood
I love Mark Steyn’s description of Chuck Hagel as being an oversedated Elmer Fudd. Some commenter wrote ” ‘It would seem Obama has little shame putting forth nominees who have “no other merit than that of… [being] personally allied to him’ ”
by Mark Steyn
You don’t have to be that good to fend off a committee of showboating senatorial blowhards. Hillary Clinton demonstrated that a week or so back when she unleashed what’s apparently the last word in withering putdowns: What difference does it make?
Quite a bit of difference, it seems. This week, an oversedated Elmer Fudd showed up at the Senate claiming to be the president’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, and even the kindliest interrogators on the committee couldn’t prevent the poor chap shooting himself in the foot.
Twenty minutes in, Chuck Hagel was all out of appendages.
He warmed up with a little light “misspeaking” on Iran. “I support the president’s strong position on containment,” he declared. Breaking news!
Obama comes clean on Iran! According to Hagel, the administration favors “containment.” I could barely “contain” my excitement! Despite official denials, many of us had long suspected that, lacking any stomach for preventing a nuclear Tehran, Washington would settle for “containing” them. Hagel has been a containment man for years: It worked with the Soviets, so why not with apocalyptic ayatollahs? As he said in a 2007 speech, “The core tenets of George Kennan’s ‘The Long Telegram’ and the strategy of containment remain relevant today.” Recent history of pre-nuclear Iran – authorizing successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, bombing Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, seeding client regimes in Lebanon and Gaza – suggests that these are fellows disinclined to be “contained” even at the best of times. But, even if Iran can be “contained” from nuking Tel Aviv, how do you “contain” Iran’s exercise of its nuclear status to advance its interests more discreetly, or “contain” the mullahs’ generosity to states and non-state actors less squeamish about using the technology? How do you “contain” a nuclear Iran from de facto control of Persian Gulf oil, including setting the price and determining the customers?
[.......]
Unfortunately, as Hillary said the other day, “our policy is prevention, not containment”. So five minutes later the handlers discreetly swung into action to “contain” Hagel. “I was just handed a note that I misspoke,” he announced, “that I said I supported the President’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say that we don’t have a position on containment.” Hagel’s revised position is that there is no position on containment for him to have a position on.[........]
Containment? Prevention? What difference does it make? Could happen to anyone. I well remember when Neville Chamberlain landed at Heston Aerodrome in 1938 and announced the latest breakthrough in appeasement: “I have here a piece of paper from Herr Hitler.” Two minutes later, he announced, “I have here a second piece of paper from my staffer saying that I misspoke.” Who can forget Churchill’s stirring words in the House of Commons? “If, indeed, it is the case that I said, ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall never surrender!,’ then I misspoke. I meant to say that we’re keeping the situation under review and remain committed to exploring all options.”
It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re as expert in all the nuances of Iranian affairs as Chuck Hagel. After he’d hailed Iran’s “elected, legitimate government,” it fell to another Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand, to prompt Hagel to walk it back. Okay, delete “elected” and “legitimate”: “What I meant to say, should have said, is that it’s recognizable.”
“Recognizable”? In the sense that, if you wake up one morning to a big mushroom cloud on the horizon, you’d recognize it as the work of the Iranian government? No, by “recognizable,” he meant that the Iranian government is “recognized” as the government of Iran.
“I don’t understand Iranian politics,” he announced in perhaps his least-misspoken statement of the day. But the Iranians understand ours, which is why, in an amusing touch, the Foreign Ministry in Tehran has enthusiastically endorsed Hagel.
Fortunately, Iran is entirely peripheral to global affairs – it’s not like Chad or the Solomon Islands or the other burning questions the great powers are currently wrestling with – so it would be entirely unreasonable to expect Hagel to understand anything much about what’s going on over there. So what of his other, non-Iranian interests?
“There are a lot of things I don’t know about,” said Hagel. “If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.”
[........]
Really? So what’s the job for, then? Just showing up at the office and the occasional black-tie NATO banquet? Most misspeakers loose off one round and then have to re-load, but Chuck Hagel is a big scary “military-style assault weapon” of a misspeaker, effortlessly peppering the Senate wainscoting for hours on end. Late in the day, after five o’clock, he pronounced definitively: “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It does matter what you think,” insisted New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte.
With respect to my own senator, I think it matters that he seems incapable of thinking – or at least of thinking through his own Great Thoughts.
There are over 300 million Americans, and another 20 million Undocumented-Americans about to be fast-tracked down the soi-disant “path to citizenship.” Surely, from this vast talent pool, it should be possible to find someone who’s sufficiently interested in running the planet’s biggest military not to present himself on the world stage as a woozy, unfocused stumblebum. In an exquisite touch, responding to reports that Hagel was “ill-prepared,” someone in the White House leaked that he had been thoroughly “coached.” In other words, don’t blame us: We put him through the federally mandated Confirmation Hearing For Dummies course. [........]
Hagel may know nothing about Iran, but he’s an incisive expert on America.
During an appearance on al-Jazeera in 2009, a caller asked him about “the perception and the reality” that America is “the world’s bully” – and Hagel told viewers that he agreed. Confronted with this exchange by Sen. Ted Cruz, Hagel floundered. There was no aide to slip him a note explaining that the incoming SecDef takes no formal position on whether or not his own nation is “the world’s bully.”
Ah, if only. In the chancelleries of Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Cairo, Pyongyang, the world’s bullied are laughing their heads off.
Read the rest - Easy to see why Tehran endorses Hagel
There are reports circulating that the Israelis hit a biological facility outside of Damascus last week. I would sure hope so.
by Michal Shmulovich
In air raids on Syria overnight Tuesday, Israeli jets targeted several sites, including a biological weapons research center, which hadn’t previously been mentioned in the media, TIME magazine claimed Friday.
The center was “flattened out of concern that it might fall into the hands of Islamist extremists fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad,” the report said, quoting Western intelligence officials.
The article also claimed Washington has given Israel a “green light” to carry out more such raids if it deems them necessary.
TIME added that Israel has raised security at embassies “and other potential targets overseas,” for fear of a Hezbollah-orchestrated retaliatory attack.
Thus far, the TIME article noted, only two airstrikes had been mentioned in the media: One attack, announced by Syria, was allegedly on a scientific research center in Jamarya, northwest of Damascus; the other, reported by various news organizations, claimed Israeli jets struck a convoy carrying advanced anti-aircraft defense systems toward Lebanon, presumably to Hezbollah, the Shi’ite group allied to Iran and Assad.
[........]
Regarding the strike at Jamarya, the magazine added new details: “Among the buildings leveled at the military complex at Jamarya, outside Damascus, were warehouses stocked with equipment necessary for the deployment of chemical and biological weapons, relatively complicated systems typically manned by specially trained forces,” it said.
The biological warfare labs were considered to be of particular concern — in part because of the grave damage small amounts of biological agents can cause, and also due to the stated interest in such weapons by terror groups, namely Osama bin Laden’s successor as head of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The TIME story added that the US was prepared to carry out raids of its own in the Aleppo area if it feared rebels might otherwise gain control of weapons of mass destruction in that area of Syria.
On Wednesday, US officials told The New York Times that Israel had notified the United States about an airstrike it carried out overnight Tuesday near the Lebanese-Syrian border. The officials said that they believed the target of the strike was a convoy carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry intended to reach Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
An unnamed Western official told the Wall Street Journal that the convoy was carrying sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons, which could constitute a strategic game-changer were Hezbollah to possess them.
A former Syrian general said Friday that the facility reportedly struck by Israel produced non-conventional weapons, in addition to conventional arms. Maj. Gen. Adnan Sillu was previously in charge of the country’s chemical weapons training program.
[.........]
Read the rest - Israel’s strike on Syria also hit biological facility says report
Tags: Andrew C. McCarthy, Chuck Hagel, Mark Steyn, Michal Shmulovich, Mohammad Morsi
Containment never worked that well on the Soviets, either. True, we were able to keep them out of Western Europe (for which we are reviled by Western Europeans to this day), but when Reagan took over the Soviets were on the march all over the world. What defeated the Soviets was defeat, not containment. That is something that Barack Hussein Obama is unwilling to mete out to the Mad Mullahs of Iran. Indeed, Chuck Hagel was no doubt chosen as Sec Def becuase he is exactly the kind of man that Obama wants as Sec Def. He’ll gleefully preside over the dismantling of American military might, and will “contain” the Mad Mullahs with sweet words backed by, well, nothing of consequence.
Today Rand Paul is our savior…how long before he too can’t live up to the our highest purity test?
It’s too bad Israel didn’t take out that non-conventional weapons factory near Damascus with a non-conventional weapon of its own!
Tanker wrote:
anyone who is good on the 2d amendment and is for smaller fedgov (fiscon) is fine by me, pretty standard ‘republican’ right there and easy to meet these simple criteria.
see, i expect republicans to be for smaller government. its supposed to be part of the party platform. sort of a ‘by definition’ thing. so if they cant meet that simple ‘by definition’ thing, they aren’t republicans. democrats are supposed to be for ever expanding fedgov.
the fiscon thing works great because it satisfies these: personal liberty, smaller fedgov, and then greater states rights follows.
coldwarrior wrote:
I agree with all you say!
But I wouldn’t survive the purity test in that I still believe without social values (Fed or State) we will never stand, no matter how rich we are!
Tanker wrote:
Already he has said that the Republican Party in order to be a “national party” has to tone down some of the red meat rhetoric and adopt more of a small “l” libertarian view on social issues. He laments the fact that the GOP writes off huge swaths of the country in pursuit of the Rovian “50 + 1″ strategy which leaves no room for error.
coldwarrior wrote:
Insted of “smaller government” we should say “efficient government”. Too many people are psychologically dependent on Medicare and Social security and they unfortunately will hear the term “smaller government” and will think that they are being thrown out into a “sink or swim ” environment. “efficient government” is in reality “smaller government”.
Speranza wrote:
I keep seeing the small “l” libertarian. I can find the Libertarian platform, but can’t seem to find this small “l” platform. Can you provide some insight into this info. No sarc, just would like to see it!
Tanker wrote:
Values are internal. America in 1980-88 had pretty much the same social values it has today and we thrived. A working country is a happy country and a happy country does not self destruct. We cannot allow ourselves to be perceived as a Party of kill-joys and scolds.
Tanker wrote:
My definition of small “l” libertarian is that if it does not hurt me or the country then I do not get worked up over it. If someone wants to listen to rap music be my guest. A lot of people I know can describe themselves as “pro life” in that they hate abortion but do not want to criminalize abortion, in a sense they agree with Bill Clinton with the “safe, legal, and rare” proposition. They believe in persuasion and convincing, and prefer to say “We don’t want to fund Planned Parenthood (not shut it down) because that is not the role of government. P.P. can raise lots of money with fundraisers from Hollywood and other liberal organizations”.
Tanker wrote:
which is where you are misunderstanding. social values are fine, as long as they dont infringe on personal liberty or mean bigger government…compassionate conservatism that puts a 5 trillion dollar hole in the budget. most of these social issues should be states issues anyway. for example, the state issues marriage certificates (gay marriage), if the voters in NY want that, no skin off my nose here in PA. as example.
the abortion laws (roe) is so poorly formed and it will never get fixed so it is what it is, sadly.
@ Speranza:
ISTR that a number of states had legalized abortion in the 1960s, yet PP framed the argument that if Roe v. Wade we’re overturned everything would go back to coat hangers. What a bunch of BULL-SHIT!
Speranza wrote:
no…smaller.
i dont want efficient, i want smaller. i want less regulation, less bureaucrats to keep me in the ever smaller box of compliance. less taxes. less spending. less ridiculous laws.
as for SS and medicare, we are stuck with these for now. there is no reason why we have to be stuck with them 40 years from now.
smaller.
@ Speranza:
sounds ok to me.
i want 20% unemployment in the parasite class that lives in NOVA.
I saw a video this morning that somebody had posted on their FB page (my wife had to show me, as Mikey don’t do FB) with the old cliche of “The founders wrote the 2nd thinking of muskets, not modern military weapons.” The best (or at least most novel) response I’ve heard to this strawman recently is to ask the proponent what their understanding is of the 3rd amendment and it’s justification. First off, most of them can’t identify the 3rd without a quick glance at Wiki. The 3rd is the “vestigal appendix” of the Bill of Rights. So why is it there? What made that issue seem so important to the constitutional convention that it justified a seperate amendment of it’s own? It does, in fact, speak to the rational behind the other 9 initial amendments and the main body of the constitution itself.
@ coldwarrior:
YOu’ve got to sell that to the masses. That’s the problem. We’ve been preached to all our lives that governent is the solution to every problem, and that the money to pay for it is no nevermind. We are taught that in public schools, preached it in the sit-coms we watch on TV, and so forth. You have to counter that message if you want to get anywhere with shrinking government. We will get smaller government eventually. Sooner or later people are going to stop loaning us money, and contra Krugman, we can[‘t just print all we need. Government will perfoce shrink, because there simpl won’t be the money to pay for the government that we have. One problem with this is that the military, where we should be spending money, will be the first thing that they cut. The last thing that they’ll cut will be entitlements and government salaries. Those interests have too much political clout to be shrunk easily.
coldwarrior wrote:
Would be great if it actually worked that way. What happens in one states do effect other states. People move, and thus it becomes an issue.
The abortion issue is way to personal (directly) for me to even get into it on any forum.
Tanker wrote:
“your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”
is a good place to start both from the swinger and the nose’s persective
Tanker wrote:
i cant ccw in ohio, i can in pa and florida
@ Iron Fist:
it took us 30 years to get here. bush-clinton-bush-obama. longer if ya go back past reagan who at least tried to *pause* the leviathan. and its gonna take a long time to get us out of this hole.
-long is the struggle, hard the fight.
@ Tanker:
But that was the whole idea, initially. There would be (then) 13 states, free to adopt whatever laws seemed reasonable to them, minus the very few areas reserved to the federal government. A giant laboratory experiment in government. The states would try different approaches to things -- some would prove successful, others not. The people would either change the laws in their states to the successful models, or just get up and go to the states that had successful models. This is the core basis of constitutional federalism.
coldwarrior wrote:
You can do anything you want…it’s the getting caught that’s the problem. I carry and that’s just the way it is..period!
Mike C. wrote:
which is reason why we wont move to southern NJ (20 min from the beach) even though we would end up with a paid for house.
i hate their gun laws and their property tax system. so we dont move there and NJ loses out on our skills and revenue.
@ coldwarrior:
“Full Faith and Credit” is still in the Constitution. It applies to driver’s Licenses, not so much to CCW (though it probably should apply to CCW; the Court may change that here in th enext couple of years). I suspect that the Supereme Court will find that it applies to marriage licenses, too. Buzzsawmonkey is much better at articulating why the marriage fight is important. As for me, I used to be pro-gay marriage, but the gays themselves convinced me that 1) they didn’t really want marriage, and 2) that the drive to create gay marriage was in reality an attack on religious liberty. Obama solidified that belief with his attack on the Catholic Church over contraception and abortion.
Tanker wrote:
i cant do the time, so i dont do the crime
coldwarrior wrote:
Rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6 is my moto! Life wouldn’t be that long for me!
@ Iron Fist:
then replace gay marriage with ‘X’. simply using that as a pertinent example
if the subjects of NY wants X, then its no skin off my nose here as a citizen of PA
Tanker wrote:
i just dont go to ohio very often. they lose my $ because they dont reciprocate.
coldwarrior wrote:
It is if enough NYers decide to move to PA, bringing their ideas and votes with them. See Florida for a fine example!
coldwarrior wrote:
That. I have a family that depends on me, and I can’t afford to blow that for trivial reasons. Hopefully, I’ll get off my butt this week and get that CCW permit process rolling, but until I have one in hand, any weapons I may (or may not) have will be utilized within my current legal boundaries. And I’ll err on the side of caution, if need be.
Tanker wrote:
such is life. the political map is ever changing.
at one time the south was democrat.
Good morning. I didn’t watch the 60 Minutes interview with BHO yesterday.
Apparently from what is being reported he wants more “Revenues.”
Everybody that thought that he was just going to stick it to the rich is
in for a shock. He wants to break the Middle Class.
I really am pissed off at Republicans voting to give F16′s and M1′s to Egypt.
RIX wrote:
Harry Reid also is shilling for more “revenue”.
RIX wrote:
He wants us all dependent on the gubbimint.
Mike C. wrote:
I stay within the law. Always. I have to. They’d come down hard on me if I broke the law. One of the reasons I have invested so much time and efforts into developing my martial arts skills. I am heavily armed at all times, even if I am stripped naked in a holding cell.
Macker wrote:
By January 1973 the month of Roe v. Wade, 41 out of 50 states had some form of legalized abortion.
Is Elmer Fudd (Chuck Hagel) due back for more testimony today?
Good back and forth…work I must though! Later all!
@ Mike C.:
we arent big fans of being in the slammer i gather.
coldwarrior wrote:
no….effficient.
Smaller government leands itself to demagoguery (that is a fact by the way, see Ryan, Paul) where we have ads of Republicans throwing Granny over a cliff.
Good observation. It didn’t seem appropriate for a family ritual.
Speranza wrote:
this is the most disgusting vote i have seen in a very very long time.
Those “missing WMD’s” that the Left loves to talk about that we claimed Saddam had -- well we know where they are, they went to Syria.
Sure, that’s who he is. His crappy memoirs make it clear.
coldwarrior wrote:
American weapons in Egypt will be used to fight other American weapons in Israel. Great work!
RIX wrote:
If his first term was not a tocsin bell and he still got re-elected then I do not know what to say.
I just love it when his supporters alll him “Moderate”
A moderate Marxist?
Speranza wrote:
and we have never fought back nor even tried to explain our situation. the leadership rolled over and died on that one because the republican party does not want smaller government. it wants bigger govt just like the dems. i dont want efficinet govt efficiently enforcing more and more regulations to put me and our economy in an ever smaller box of compliance. americans can understand and have understood this concept. i have faith that more than enough will get it when we ‘preach it’ and are willing to take the fight to the dems. notice how no one on the right has made ads comparing obama to marx or lenin? why? if they can have ryan pushing gramma off the cliff then we need to fight back. the problem is our leadership has no spine and no desire to get small. they love the largess as much as the dems do.
frankly, if its up to me lets crash this economy and become greece for a few years. i look forward to the gnashing of teeth.
coldwarrior wrote:
Once upon a time, I was in one, even if only for 3 days. I cannot recomend it.
@ Speranza:
Most people weren’t listening. It wasn’t what Jon Steawart says, so it isn’t really news. The low info voters made all the difference in the last election. In order to win them we can’t rely on merely telling the truth. We need an effective counter-propaganda campaign. We really need that going on Right Now, but the only thing I am aware of in that regard is the NRA’s campaign against Obama’s gunn control, in regard to their ad reminding th evoters that while Obama doesn’t want their kids to have armed guards at their school, he daughters do have armed guards. That is a start, but there needs to be much more of this. The Left successfully demonized George Bush, partly because he wouldn’t defend himself against such attacks. We should be using the same tactics against Obama.
Speranza wrote:
makes the armament companies pretty happy tho.
yay general dynamics!
Iron Fist wrote:
bingo.
coldwarrior wrote:
That is coming. Frankly, at this point, I don’t see any way to stop it from happening. Just as the people of Greece hove rioted against austerity measures to stabilize their country, the people of the United States are addicted to this spending. It is considered “radical” to suggest going back to the levels of spending that we had under Clinton. Because things were so tight and poor under Clinton, I guess. No, it is going to take a major shock to the system to wake the majority of Americans up.
@ Iron Fist:
fine by me, lets wreck the joint!
do we have a list on who voted no to actually send weapons to egypt?
(not the amendment to make it illegal to give egypt weapons)
i say give because we are borrowing money from the chinese and giving it to the egyptians who are buying our arms with the chinese money to give to to the military industrial complex.
Iron Fist wrote:
It’s radical because guess who was the Speaker of The House under most of Clinton’s tenure….
coldwarrior wrote:
The Roll Call on Rand Paul’s amendment
idiot
Speranza wrote:
not the amendment, the actual bill:
aha:
now i see what was going on
@ coldwarrior:
Kerry is going to be so bad he’s going to make Condoleeza Rice look like Thomas Jefferson.
@ Iron Fist:
Outside of the people who got da Bama phooooooone, how do BHO
supporters view themselves?
They see themselves as sophisticated & wicked smart, the smartest.
Imo, the key is to make it look stupid to support Obama.
How tom do that?
@ coldwarrior:
this is the list is was looking for in includes the weapons to egypt:
NAYs —34
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Boozman (R-AR)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coats (R-IN)
Coburn (R-OK)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Enzi (R-WY)
Fischer (R-NE)
Flake (R-AZ)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hatch (R-UT)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kirk (R-IL)
Lee (R-UT)
Manchin (D-WV)
McConnell (R-KY)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rubio (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Sessions (R-AL)
Toomey (R-PA)
Vitter (R-LA)
RIX wrote:
a good pr firm and a great ad agency.
Iron Fist wrote:
I will be as formidable as jenjhis kahn!
-jk
coldwarrior wrote:
He will make Hillary seem competent.
RIX wrote:
YOu are right there. Liberals fancy themselves to be great intellectualls, and they will waste copious amounts of time telling you how smart they are. I’ve usually found that someone who is insisting that they are so bright usually is a second-rate intellect. Al Gore is the perfect example of this I can think of. He plays at being an “intellectual”, but he has nothing to back that up. His Global Warming is a scam. He’s a great snake-oil salesman, but there are lots of great confidence men out there.
That sounds right.
Later, gotta clear the Global Warming from the driveway.
@ Iron Fist:
And then there are the actual liberal intellectuals, who are generally bat-shit crazy:
@ lobo91:
And then we get this, the natural result of an education system that teaches students that we’re evil:
I’m sure Chomsky agrees.
Via -- TrueTheVote
No, this isn’t from The Onion:
@ lobo91:
I used to laugh at Baghdad Bob.
The shoe is on the other foot now.
OT: Question to you all-- USMC Kabar—is it worth the price or is there a better combat knife? Recommendations? This is for a gift.
I’m pretty sure that the list of things that Mika doesn’t understand would fill a good-sized library.
Forward!
@ lobo91:
Never heard of her, but she doesn’t come off as the sharpest pencil in the box, does she? Maybe if somebody hauled her ass to the range and let her rip off a few, she’d get it. It’s amazing what percentage of the time that works…
Mike C. wrote:
She’s an idiot (obviously). Daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
@ Mike C.:
Yeah, they keep going back to “sporting purpose”, words that were inflicted on us by the ’68 GCA, but doesn’t target shooting qualify as a sport? Barack Obama putatively likes skeet, and that is just one form of target shooting. I prefer target shooting from something that feeds from a box or belt. I’d even enjoy target shooting with something full-auto, and have enjoyed it the times that I have actually gotten to do it. Why is my sporting purpose not good enough?
@ Iron Fist:
I think it has something to do with skin tone…
@ Iron Fist:
I am still wondering why if photo-IDs to vote is racist and encumbers the right to vote, why these admittedly ineffectual gun control schemes (Bit-me biden even said so the other day) are not.
@ citizen_q:
Yeah, it should certainly be no easier to vote than to get a gun. Voting is, in a Republic, a Privilege, not a right. The Right to keep and bear arms is a right, not something to be dismissed by the wave of a hand. That is something that the Liberals don’t want to acknowledge, or even consider. IN Heller, that right was predicated on a right to self-defense. Who dares say that semi-automatic weapons aren’t suited to self-defense? They use emotional language to obfuscate this, but it is the core truth of the matter.
citizen_q wrote:
Because they don’t apply to minorities. Everyone knows that gang members won’t comply, and the Supreme Court ruled years ago that criminals don’t have to, anyway (seriously).
Gun control isn’t about guns, it’s about control (of the white population).
@ lobo91:
No, I think not in this case. Gun control laws disproportionately affect the poor and minority communities. This is, indeed, by design, as the poor and minorities are also the perpetrators of crime more often than not. They also disproportionately make up the victims of crime. Therein lies the rub, but you don’t hear the race-hustlers defending the right of poor blacks to the means of self-defense.
lobo91 wrote:
Haynes vs. United States was has handy item this weekend. I used it to discuss my objections to the current gun control lunacy with my wife over breakfast, and in discussing the same with friends at a Super Bowl party.
citizen_q wrote:
Is that the one where they ruled criminals aren’t constitutionally oblicgated to register their weapons? That kind of blows a hole in th ewhole gun registration concept, if your goal is reducing crime. If, instead, you intend to disarm the law abiding for your own nefarious purposes, then gun registration is nearly the perfect vehicle for your goals.
@ Iron Fist:
Yes. It was decided on 5th Amendment grounds. It has no real effect on gun registration itself, since criminals were never going to comply, anyway. It does take away a potential additional charge after someone is arrested, though.
Right on cue:
@ lobo91:
Ron Paul is dispicable. The worst thing about Rand Paul is his father. I find it very difficult to trust someone raised by Ron Paul.
Iron Fist wrote:
Maybe he’s adopted
Carney needs to learn that when you’re in a hole, you should stop digging.
He’s now claiming that the picture of Obama firing a shotgun was his first time, and that he’s been regularly practicing since then.
@ lobo91:
What a bastard!
Oh, look…Obama’s getting off Air Force One with Al Franken.
lobo91 wrote:
Maybe all this has been a terrible Saturday Night Live skit???
When Ron Paul takes the eternal dirt nap my feelings will be the same as when Jimmy Carter does the same thing.
Rand Paul’s father is what will ensure that he never rises hire.
Iron Fist wrote:
The Left never addresses the black on black crime problem. I guess they cannot play the raaaaacist card.
To think Laup Nor wanted to be CiC
@ Speranza:
No, that is the real elephant in the living room as far as crime goes. Nearly half of all murders in the United States are comitted by black men between the ages of 15 and 35. Nearly all of their victims are rom the same demographic. The homicide rate in all other demographics has shrank dramatically in th elast 20 years, too. But the White House, occupied by the first Black President, would rather persue gun control measures that will have nothing to do with real crime. It shows where his real intentions lay.
@ Iron Fist:
The Left only gets worked up when the person doing the shooting is someone like Geroge Zimmerman or Bernhard Goetz.
Speranza wrote:
I disagree.
Values have gotten MUCH more debauched since then.
Political correctness has also ramped waaaaay up.
Iron Fist wrote:
Those are the thugs who help get out the vote for the Dems.