Lookin' like a fool with your boots on the ground...

Once upon a time there was a leftist liberal with no qualifications or experience. In an act of sheer stupidity, the American people actually elected this clown to lead them, and lead them he did, right over the cliffs with his lemmings in tow, and dragging the rest of us kicking & screaming along with them to the precipice.

He made airy promises that he soon found he could not possibly keep (if ever he truly did in the first place) once faced with a harsh word called REALITY. Those pesky little security briefings that one gets when elected to be Commander In Chief showed the Dear Leader that there was no way he could close Gitmo in 30 days. There was no way to bring everyone home from Iraq inside of a year. There was no way to bring everyone home from Afghanistan in a few months.

And while listening not one iota to the people around him who called for him to do the right things, the intelligent things, as he dragged our country deeper into debt and ruination, The Anointed One told the leaders of other nations who had been in power for decades to step aside and acquiesce to the demands of their subjects.....calling for leaders in Egypt, Libya, and Syria to step down.

Nearly three years into his disastrous reign of Pharaoh Obama The Magnificent, Gitmo is still open but trickling dangerous enemies of America back out into the world to continue waging Jihad against us. Thousands of US troops are indeed gone from Iraq without that country being truly stable or safe (leaving a further several thousand still there on a rotating basis and still occasionally getting killed). Instead of staying at home these troops are now available to be funneled into Afghanistan, which has become longer than World War Two and seems to be on a course to beat Vietnam for length of conflict. I pray that the casualties don't rival those of Vietnam.

The Great Man takes credit for things that happened under his watch that were continuations of policies and actions set in place by his predecessor, a man he generally mocks and blames at every turn, taking credit for the terminations of Bin Laden, Anwar al Awlaki, and Awlaki's son. His zombie followers hand him credit for toppling Muammar Khadaffi, a man still at large & waging war against his enemies.

And all the while, he claims to have no "boots on the ground", leading me to the actual point of today's discussion. This little fracas we're involved in over Libya was supposed to take a few days. A few months & a few million dollars later we're still involved. Oh, lookie, another psuedo-war we're involved with directed by our Nobel Peace Prize Winner. The original claims were that we'd help out for a bit but that NATO was gonna need to shoulder the burden, and yeah, we did step back and the Leftist Blamestream Media stopped covering the fact that the other NATO countries soon ran out of essentials like, oh, BOMBS for the planes and asked us for more, and, um, EXPERTISE, and called on us for more help.

Now, allegedly we only have a couple people they'll admit to being actually on the ground, four in fact, working under the State Department's chief of mission to assist in rebuilding the U.S. Embassy. Two of the military personnel are explosive-ordnance experts who will be used to disable any explosive traps left in the embassy. The other two are "general security," according to a spokes-weasel. To me, "general security" means Special Operations guys fluent in Arabic and skilled in intelligence gathering as well as being able to shoot their way out of Tripoli if need be. You don't send a couple of 19-year old privates to do a job like this. And I don't care what the White House says; if our planes were there for a number of missions dropping precision guided munitions (that's fancy speak for Smart Bombs) you can be damned sure we had more Special Operations guys on the ground with laser target designators to illuminate the intended targets for the bombs to hit and to do intel gathering & bomb damage assessments. It's only "boots on the ground" if the media says something about it, I guess.

And now we have a hundred or so guys headed to yet another Third World Unstable Turdpile. Welcome to Uganda, boys. You're supposed to just advise and observe, but you'll be fully combat-capable, just like our advisors were in Vietnam and every other bush war in the past 60 years. Read all about it directly from Uganda's online newspaper. They could be sending you to several unfriendly countries in search of Evil Doers.

So, Mister Nobel Peace Prize....you have troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Uganda, and are we still helping them find rebels in the Philippines or did you stop that since the rebels are fellow communists? How's that Gitmo closing going? Not that it should be closed, mind you, unless we stand them all up against a wall with a blindfold & a smoke first.

Perhaps you should instead be preparing for an upcoming war with IRAN......

America in the grips of NIMBY Syndrome

And we’re off to the rodeo…

Barely three days into the Obama presidency, and the un-Bushing of America has begun. President Obama has suspended the ongoing trials of terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay and declared that the facility will itself be closed a year from now.

Well, okay. This just begs the question: What the hell are we gonna do with our Muslim cousins being held in stasis for trying to kill us all? Do we just set the buggers loose to go back to setting off truck bombs and flying airliners into skyscrapers? Or do we simply house them elsewhere, moving the operation to another exotic overseas locale? Barring that, do we just ship the sunzabitches stateside to some secure facility here?

You send them overseas to somewhere else, and you run into the problem of security and trustworthiness of the host nation’s government and general populace. Certain of our supposed allies I wouldn’t trust to co-sponsor a frikkin’ bake sale with us, let alone hold onto our most dire enemies without letting them loose “accidentally” to rejoin their brethren.And you know they will.

A Saudi man who was released from Guantanamo after spending six years inside the camp has joined Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen and is now the terror group's No. 2 in the country, according to a purported Internet statement from Al Qaeda. Documents released by the U.S. Defense Department show that Ali al-Shihri was released from the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in November 2007 and transferred to his homeland. The documents confirmed his prisoner number was 372. An alleged travel coordinator for Al Qaeda, Al-Shihri allegedly traveled to Afghanistan two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, provided money to other fighters and trained at an urban warfare at a camp north of Kabul. Seems that once you let the little turds go, they trot right back to Bad Guy Land and do Bad Shit all over again. So, setting up shop again overseas is definitely problematic.

The bigger problem though is America’s steadfast adherence to NIMBY. That means Not In My Back Yard, as in, go ahead and build what we need, just not near me. Sure, a landfill? Great, but I don’t want it in my back yard. A nuclear waste dump? Not in my back yard. Three hundred sworn enemies of America who want to kill us all? Sure, put ‘em in jail, but not in my back yard.

Everyone wants ‘em put away, but no one wants the facility anywhere near themselves. I even heard one erstwhile genius exclaim, “Put them over on Alcatraz. No one escaped there.” Great, Einstein. An abandoned jail that closed in 1961, where several buildings are fire-damaged and everything’s suffered 75 years of salt water damage.

So far the only guy who said to put them in his back yard is Representative Jack Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who chairs the defense subcommittee for appropriations, renowned for his ability to steer earmarked dollars to his district. He’s looking at this as an opportunity to snag an instant stimulus package of jobs and federal money to build a new prison in his district, since all of his local prisons are already full and his voter base needs jobs.

A stream of congress members and senators voiced concerns about where the detainees would go. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), said he's been "pleading" with Obama's staff not to bring them to Fort Leavenworth in his home state -- something he believes is being considered. Leavenworth is a multi-prison complex comprising a federal penitentiary and the military’s Disciplinary Barracks.

Welcome to South Carolina, Achmed!!! Naval Brig Charleston, baby!


Locally, our own Congress-creatures are pissing and moaning the NIMBY argument too. I’m honestly not sure if they aren’t doing it just to toe the Republican Party line and balk at Obama’s policy or if they just figure that NIMBY will keep them in office. See, one of the facilities being discussed other than Leavenworth is our own Consolidated Naval Brig over in the Charleston suburb of Hanahan. Representative Brown said he hasn't been briefed on any plans to close the facility at Gitmo, but he questioned the need to make a change. Brown said he isn't worried so much about escapees but rather about how their presence would make Hanahan and the surrounding areas more of a potential target. Also, it could require security upgrades that could inconvenience people who live or work nearby. Senator Jim DeMint sent out a press release warning the move would endanger Americans. "And if the new administration tries to move these known terrorists to South Carolina, they should be ready for a fight," he wrote.

Brown said he hasn't heard much feedback on the issue. "I think once people focus on it," he said, "…they'll realize that's something they would not like to see in their neighborhood."

And that proves my point.

People, the federal government owns those prisons, regardless of what state they happen to be in. And if they wanna house federal prisoners in their federal prisons, suck it up and deal with it. The brig in Hanahan held convicted terrorist Jose Padilla, who is now is the ADX Supermax Prison in Colorado, for over three years quite safely & securely. It currently houses Ali Saleh Al-Mirri, a purported enemy combatant who allegedly was tapped by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheihk Mohammed to plan more attacks in the Los Angeles area. Al-Mirri has been a guest of Lowcountry hospitality for six years, and 99% of you had no idea he was even here.

Several of my friends are current or former cage-kickers; i.e.: military correctional specialists. I myself worked at an Army correctional facility for two years. Do you people have so little faith in the soldiers and Marines who keep these prisons secure? Personally, I have implicit faith in the professionalism and ability of the men & women of our military’s correctional units to keep 245 dirtbags under wraps.

Hell, we could always send them to Maricopa County, Arizona. Sheriff Joe Arpaio is known worldwide as the toughest sheriff in America. He houses inmates in a rudimentary tent city in the desert, only feeds them twice a day (bologna sandwiches. I kid you not. He says it costs 40 cents a day to feed an inmate, and it costs $1.40 a day to feed a guard dog) and makes the inmates wear pink undies. Then again, would it be such a hardship for these assclowns to be held in the desert after half of them have spent a lifetime in Arab deserts or living in caves?
Go ahead and close Gitmo. It never should have been opened in the first place, because those cretins should have been shot on sight as vermin instead of sucking up taxpayer dollars to give them 3 hots & a cot, a new Koran and a new prayer rug, and all they have to do it sit on a tropical island and talk to Allah.


Chillin' at Club Gitmo with Khalid and Richard. Shoe bombs, anyone?

A .250 average sucks unless it's baseball

Y’know, where I come from, only getting 1 thing right out of 4 is a 25% success rate. So screwing three outta tfour up is a 75% failure rate. That’s not exactly a stellar performance. Hitting .250 in baseball is acceptable, but not when you’re the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

In the past month or so, the Unites States Supreme Court has handed down four decisions that caught my attention, enough so that after letting them fester a bit, I need to puncture the boil and let the pus drain out.

First up is the ridiculous notion that terrorists are somehow on an equal par with American citizens. The Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention and that the guarantee of habeas corpus applies at the Navy base in Cuba, the court said, and the truncated alternative procedure that Congress set up was not an adequate substitute. A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another's detention or imprisonment.

In essence, this gives the Gitmo detainees access to the American courts just like they were American citizens instead of detained insurgents and hostile enemy combatants against the United States. Last I checked we weren’t traipsing the 380,000 German prisoners of war that were brought stateside to POW camps through our courts to let them have the same rights as Americans back in World War Two. Nor did we offer habeas corpus to the estimated 140,000 or so Chinese and North Korean POW’s from the Korean War. Anyone we took prisoner in Vietnam, well, they were turned over to “Marvin the ARVN” and probably got shot long before they could complain.

But giving access to American courts to non-American enemies of the state is just folly. I suppose we taxpayers can foot the bill for them to have free legal counsel too. Sheesh, these dudes were living in caves before we captured them; now they get three hots & a cot, a brand-new Koran, and a pretty fly new rug to kneel on for Allah-time. They’re getting free medical care. They’re living far better in captivity than they would be out in the Afghan mountains, so they oughtta just be happy for that alone, because if it was the Israeli Mossad holding them, they’d be in a world of hurt far worse than a nice tropical Club Gitmo vacationland. Last I checked, Gitmo was in another country, and I do believe they ruled once before that other countries are out of he jurisdiction of habeas corpus.

Here in the good ole’ US of A, the court ruled that the Constitution prohibits the death penalty for the rape of a child. The decision overturned laws in Louisiana and five other states that had recently extended their death penalty laws to cover child rape. Two men were on death row, both in Louisiana, for raping young girls.

Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority that death was a disproportionate penalty for even so “devastating” a crime when the death of the victim did not result. Excuse me? You’ve got a turd who’s raped a young girl and probably torn her innards to a pulp, psychologically scarred her possibly forever, and even if she does recover through serious counseling she’ll have trust and intimacy issues for a damned long time, and you’re telling me that the death penalty is too severe? What about the damage the victims have to live with? Go down to Blockbuster & rent “A Time to Kill”, sir.

And in a second death penalty decision, the court rejected a challenge to Kentucky’s method of execution by lethal injection, ruling that there was insufficient evidence that the state administered a common sequence of three drugs in a manner that posed an unconstitutional risk of pain and suffering.

The decision raised the question of whether a challenge based on more compelling evidence — the plaintiff’s lawyers could not demonstrate that a Kentucky execution had encountered a problem — might succeed where this case had failed. The answer is unclear. The court promptly allowed several lethal-injection executions to take place, ending an informal six-month moratorium on executions. Justice Stevens, while voting with the majority, used this case to call for abolition of the death penalty. Problem here is that it just postpones the whole debate over lethal injection and holds it over for another round of argument. It solves nothing and passes the buck. I call this another failure.

And besides, how easy are we supposed to make the death penalty anyways? We’re killing someone. The condemned is put to sleep and rendered unconscious before the second drug causes the death itself. The only real feeling is the prick of the needle, which when compared to the pain & suffering of the condemned’s victims, who could have been stabbed repeatedly, shot, bludgeoned, strangled, etc., is pretty much negligible. It’s a lot more humane than electrocution or hanging. The only thing that makes death quicker and painless, since it happens so fast the condemned can’t feel it, is beheading by a guillotine.

Overturning the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, the court ruled that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to own a gun for private use — not only in connection with service in a militia. The 5-to-4 decision left unanswered questions, but also much room for continued gun regulation, short of an absolute ban.

In finding the District’s law against handgun ownership unconstitutional, the high court determined that Americans have the right to own guns for self-defense and hunting. It was the first time in nearly 70 years that the court had taken up broad questions about the 2nd Amendment's protections of the right to bear arms.

The case started as District of Columbia vs. Dick Heller, beginning as a group of plaintiffs suing over D.C.'s local gun ordinances, including one barring the registration of handguns by private individuals. Heller was a security guard at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington who could have a handgun at work but not at home, and his lawyers argued the 2nd Amendment creates an individual right of handgun ownership.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's ruling that had dismissed Heller's suit, finding that the 2nd Amendment did protect an individual's right to bear arms. The Supreme Court took the case and heard oral arguments in March.

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. I know that’s a tired old cliché, but it’s true. Banning guns does NOT deter gun crime. In fact, it makes it easier for criminals to engage in heinous crimes. How many criminals stop and go, “Damn, I better not shoot this guy in the back of the head; guns are illegal here…”?

Be real. Grow up. If you won’t smell the coffee, at least acknowledge that the beans have been ground & the water’s been boiled, sport. A criminal will do what criminals do, regardless of the laws. However, if a would-be rapist or purse-snatcher or home invader has a strong suspicion that they very well could get their rib cage ventilated by a 230-grain .45-caliber handgun round, they very well may think twice before messing with you.

I know that I sleep a lot more soundly knowing that I have a large-caliber handgun within arm’s reach and that I am well-versed in how to use it to defend me and mine.

The decision has caused a veritable panic amongst liberals and Democrats who view all of us gun owners as cavemen and criminals. Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago was apoplectic at the idea that someone might dare to challenge Chicago’s 26-year old ban on handgun ownership, despite Chicago Police Department statistics showing that from 2004 to November 2007 there were 43,685 firearms-related violent crimes in the city. Gee, Dick, how many of those crimes were because no one could defend themselves?

How many Virginia Tech students might have lived had there not been a campus gun ban? The shooter didn’t abide by the ban, but everyone else did. Maybe some quick-reacting student or teacher with a carry permit could have prevented some deaths.

Of course, no sooner did the Court decide that D.C.’s ban was unconstitutional than the City Council put forth some delusional ruling that when you’re not using your gun to defend yourself, it has to be kept unloaded and either disassembled, or secured with a trigger lock or kept in a gun safe. Are you frikkin’ kidding me? Hey, Mister Criminal, please wait a moment and don’t drill me with a round to the forehead while I take a minute to unlock my gun, reassemble the pieces, load it, and then defend myself….

The city continues to maintain that "most semiautomatic pistols" remain illegal under D.C.'s "machine gun" ban, which bizarrely covers not just automatic weapons but "any firearm which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot...more than 12 shots without manual reloading," even if each trigger pull fires just one round. Sweet Jesus, people. Sure, my personal handgun only holds 7 rounds, but most semi-auto pistols, at least in the ever popular 9mm round, can hold 15 to 18 rounds, depending on the manufacturer.

Meanwhile, the procedure for legally owning whichever handguns are allowed sounds pretty much like jumping through flaming hoops:

•A District resident who seeks to register a handgun must obtain an application form from the police department's Firearms Registration Section and take it to a firearms dealer for assistance in completing it.
•The applicant must submit photos, proof of residency and proof of good vision (such as a driver's license or doctor's letter), and pass a written firearms test.
•If the applicant is successful on the test, s(he) must pay registration fees and submit to fingerprinting. The police will file one set of fingerprints and submit the other to the FBI for analysis and criminal background check.
•Police will notify the applicant whether all registration requirements are satisfied. At that point, the applicant returns to the Firearms Registration Section to complete the process and receive a departmental seal on the application.
•The applicant takes his or her completed application to a licensed firearm dealer to take delivery of the pistol. If the dealer is outside the District, the dealer transports the pistol to a licensed dealer in the District to complete the transaction.
•The applicant takes the pistol to the Firearms Registration Section for ballistics testing. When testing is complete, the applicant may retrieve the pistol and take it home.

Holy shit. What a fiasco. You get an application so cumbersome that you have to go to a gun dealer just to fill it out, pass a test, pay fees, get printed (the PD will be checking those prints against unsolved crimes and storing them against future crimes), go back to the bureaucrats to complete processing, go BACK to the dealer, or drag some poor dealer from Maryland or Virginia into DC to monkeydick around with a DC dealer, then go get the gun tested to see if it’s been used in a crime and to have the results databased for future crimes, and then you get to take it home. What a complete & utter Scandinavian Squirrel-Screw.

Know what I did? Walked into the shop, said I wanted to buy it, filled out a very simple form, gave the dude my license, he made a 5 minute phone call to check my bona fides, took my money and handed me my gun. Total process: 10 minutes.

At least the Supreme Court Jesters got this one right, so that law-abiding citizens can legally defend themselves and shoot for fun & recreation. However, at least three other decisions got botched, so that’s a 25% success rate. Not that stellar for the finest legal minds our country has to offer.