An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Archive for April 2009
Audacity of the Dope
Awesome!
H/T: J.C. Bowman via Facebook
What the …..!
When I think of the Pentagon, I think of a very large complex, where men and women work hard to keep our country safe from our enemies. What I don’t want to see is a moonbat from hell having ANYTHING to do with the security of my grandchildren, or yours, for that matter!
She believes al-Qaida was an “obscure group” turned into a massive threat due to U.S. policies.
She’s referred to former President Bush as “our torturer in chief” and a “psychotic who need(s) treatment” while comparing Bush’s arguments for waging a war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler’s use of political propaganda.
She’s worked on behalf of George Soros’ philanthropic foundation.
Meet Rosa Brooks, the Obama administration’s new adviser to Michelle Fluornoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a position described as one of the most influential in the Pentagon. (source)
Call me old fashioned, but having a hormonal female, in charge of anything to do with the military, makes me more than just nervous. When she’s totally off the deep end? That makes me down right terrified! She can’t help it if she’s a couple of beers short of a six pack. Well, she could, if she was so inclined. I’m quite sure there is some sort of therapy who could help her overcome her brand of insanity. No, who I’m BLAMING is an incompetent, inexperienced, arrogant, narcissistic little boy who is currently residing in the White House.
Under former President Clinton’s watch:
1993 – World Trade Center, New York City: 6 killed, 1,040 injured, suspected al-Qaeda involvement. (source)
1993 – Black Hawk, Somalia: 18 Marines killed, suspected al-Qaeda involvement. (source)
1998 – U.S. Embassies, Kenya and Tanzania: 227 killed, 4,500 injured, al-Qaeda involvement.
2000 – U.S.S. Cole, Yemen: 17 sailors killed, al-Qaeda linked.
Since the U.S. did nothing to retaliate against these attacks, I suppose Brooks considered them nothing more than an annoying gnat? Numerous members of Congress stated their concerns about the growing acts of terrorism against U.S. interests, and her allies. Nothing happened.
Then, came that morning, full of sunshine, in September of 2001. Bush had been in office barely 9 months. Yet, it seems that all the blame continues to be put on his shoulders for the behavior of raving lunatics? Got it.
It seems to me this woman has no idea the depth of insanity of America’s enemies. Perhaps she should actually look at the FULL history of Islam, and what it is, exactly, that breeds such pigs.
I am not going to lay blame on Clinton for the attacks. I’m going to blame those who carried out the attacks.
Obama’s continued bad choices, for cabinet apointments, and positions of power, put us all in danger. He confuses pride with arrogance, apologizes to nations we have aided, cozies up with murderous dicatators, yet thumbs his nose at true allies.
Uncle Ted Speaks Sense
More Guns, Less Violent Crime as the Bad Guys Run or Die
Water, water, everywhere water. Know it, embrace it, manage it, or drown. Same goes for cars, trucks, chainsaws, knives, crowbars, blowtorches, and guns. Based on the inept, clumsy, irresponsible failure of brain-dead, uncoordinated numbnuts, I will not be denied the pragmatic, functional utility of anything.
I will not drown, nor will I drink and drive, chainsaw-massacre anyone, stumble, slice, burn, or shoot myself, nor will I ever hold up a bank. So the best advice would be to think, improvise, adapt, and overcome, man up, but by all means, leave me the hell alone. You don’t ban electric guitars just because someone may have a lapse in logic, goodwill, and decency and spontaneously break out into country and western music. The vast majority of sensible people will use electric guitars as God intended and whip out good, sexy rock-n-roll licks.
I need my water, cars, trucks, chainsaws, knives, crowbars, blowtorches, and guns. I have mastered them all; they are all wonderful ingredients for my American Dream of rugged individualism, declared independence, and self-sufficiency. They all serve me well, and I am not giving any of them up. Ever.
The masses must never be controlled for the sake of the lunatic fringe. Remember “Don’t Tread on Me”? Don’t.
Are you a Terrorist?
Take the test!
I passed. Will you?
H/T: Texas Fred’s
Planned Parenthood Continues….
….the infanticide through deceit.
Yom HaShoah
“Nazism was defeated, but anti-Semitism still lives. The gases evaporated, but the poisons remained,” Peres said. “There are still Holocaust deniers, skinheads and hotheads, filled with a deep hatred, ready to kill in the name of racial supremacy.
“Anti-Semitism is a disease…. It’s hard to understand why the greatest tyrants, such as the Nazi Hitler, the Bolshevik Stalin, or the Persian Ahmadinejad chose Jews as the target of their hatred, their insanity, their violence,” Peres continued.
“It could be their hatred for the Jewish people is because of our powerful spirit. Those who seek to break our spirit are themselves broken,” he concluded.
“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.” ~ Adolf Hitler
In 1939, there were approximately 9,297,000 Jews in 21 countries. At the end of World War II, there 3,937,000 left.
Today, I’d like to honor those who were lost, those who survived, and those who continue to carry their message….NEVER FORGET!
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Get your handy dandy barf bags ready!
CNN to treat Obama’s 100th day like election night
CNN is marking President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office with prime-time coverage that will recall last year’s primary and general election nights, right down to John King’s magic wall.
The network says it will compile a national report card of Obama’s performance, using opinion polls and a series of viewer surveys.
How can they have a ‘viewer poll’ if they have no viewers?
“This is the perfect day to have commentary about how the president is doing and the perfect day to ask the public how they think the president is doing,” said Sam Feist, CNN’s political director. He’s been planning the 100th and 200th day specials since shortly after the election.
The 100-day marker is a journalistic contrivance often used to evaluate new administrations. CNN is giving extra importance to this one because of the two wars and economic meltdown.
I tried to find a reference of such coverage on CNN of Bush’s first 100 days, but so far, haven’t had any luck. Since I quit watching them prior to Bush’s election, when they were better known as the Clinton New Network, I obviously don’t remember any such coverage.
CNN won a Peabody Award for its primary and debate night coverage last year and, given consistently high ratings for these political nights, would love an encore. Prime-time has also been a weakness for the network, as CNN finished third in prime-time viewers behind Fox News Channel and MSNBC for the first time ever during the first quarter of the year.
This is another reason not to take those awards very seriously. They have become just as irrelevant as the Oscars and the Nobel Peace Prize.
If you are an anorexic, and you need something to aid in your scarf and barf, this would be a perfect opportunity.
Kids and Ethics Part I
Over the weekend, I was at a retreat that I participate in every year. The retreat is held at a monastery, which means no internet, no TV and very sporadic cell phone reception. This “forces” one to be introspective and reflect. It is something I look forward to every year. I share a room at the monastery with one of my closest friends, who teaches business courses at the high school level. One of our traditions is that on Saturday evening, I help her grade papers. Usually it’s various types of correspondence, resumes, etc. This year, however, it was something completely different.
The children, who are juniors and seniors, were asked three questions regarding ethics. The responses they gave so stunned me that I asked permission to use their answers on this blog. I will do a separate post for each question asked, and would be most grateful for your input. The first question was:
If you could succeed at someone else’s expense, would you do it? There is a chance you could get caught; if you do, jail time. If not, you are free and a rich person.
Depending on what it is I probably wouldn’t do it. If it was for billions of dollars of course I would because it’s all about risk reward and I figure even if I do jail time I would at least be able to hide some money and have it when I get out.
I would not succeed at someone else’s expense because that is not right…I would rather not be rich then possibly get in trouble and take something from someone. Something they probably worked really hard on for a long time. I also would not do it because I believe what comes around goes around and it is not worth the risk
I would not succeed at someone else’s expense because that is just wrong. There is a fine line between wanting to succeed yourself and using someone else to succeed. I also wouldn’t feel good about myself because I used someone else to succeed.
If I could succeed at someone else’s expense, and there was a risk of jail time if I was caught, but if I made it out alive was a rich person, I think I would not do it. Reason being is because to succeed and get money has a certain level of satisfaction. You feel great about the hard work you just put forth and the reward you get once you see that pay check, or that new care or house. That you just bought with the money you worked hard to get. So to cheat and make someone else pay for it I feel is wrong and not worth it. In the end you would always be thinking about how you just screwed that guy over. The money you just got would not feel right. You also would not have earned it, you wouldn’t feel that extra reward.
If there was a chance that I could succeed at someone’s expense would I do it or not. Yes I would do it I’m not going to lie. I know that succeeding at someone’s expense means that I win and they lose but that’s a chance I would have to take and even thought I could get caught and do possible jail time but that’s a chance I’m willing to take because I know that if I don’t get caught I will be rich and a free man.
If I had the chance I would succeed at someone else’s expense. If you do get caught then you are going to go to court and let the jury decide. There is always room for risk.
No. I would only do that if there was no jail time if I got caught. That is kind of obvious. Why would I risk going to jail. Now if there was no penalty and it was benefiting me and my family, I would do it.
I might do it depending on whose expense it was and how it would benefit me. Some reasons that I would do it would be if I get a lot of money and knew that I would not get caught. On the other hand if I knew there was a good chance that I might get caught then I probably would not do it.
I probably would not do it because the consequences of getting caught would prevent me from going through with it. I think there are better ways to get rich. However it depends on if I absolutely needed the money then my decision would most likely be different.
I would take the opportunity to become rich over someone else because in this world everyone is looking out for themselves and the person that I would be doing this to would more than likely do the same thing to me so there is no point in worrying about other people’s feelings.
No, I would not succeed at someone else’s expense if there was a chance of getting caught. I would choose my freedom over getting rich any day. You could still end up getting rich without doing it through someone else’s expense and without the risk of getting put in jail.
I wouldn’t because money isn’t worth jail time. I would just work hard and be successful without hurting someone else.
No, because I wouldn’t think it would be right and that someone will find out and eventually gets caught. I wouldn’t want that type of pressure on me for the situation and would want that haunting me in the future. I wouldn’t want karma to get back at me.
Note that of those who said they would not take the risk, most stated that the reason is the fear of being caught…NOT because it’s just the wrong thing to do. What are we teaching these kids? What ever happened to right and wrong? Of course, current events certainly don’t help. After all, there is the former governor of Illinois who will stand trial for corruption, yet may be starring in a reality TV show. We have tax cheats appointed to the president’s cabinet.
My question to you is this: Are you surprised at these answers? Saddened? What was your first thought when you read this?
One Smart Cookie!
I would dispute one thing, and that would be in the title of Mr. Breitbart’s column. There is nothing democratic about the Democrats.
Question Democratic authority? Not!
Andrew Breitbart
On April 15, I joined hundreds of thousands of everyday Americans across the nation at the tax day “tea party” protests. I wasn’t told to go there by Fox News or by billionaires or millionaires. But what if I had?
The mainstream media and the Democratic Party – one and the same these days – spent much of the last week furiously attacking the grass-roots tea party protest movement as somehow illegitimate – or worse.
Days before the uniformly peaceful and patriotic gatherings took place, Homeland Security czar Janet Napolitano conveniently issued a bizarre report slandering military veterans and assorted right-leaning groups as racist, homegrown terrorism threats.
News anchors resorted to prime-time “tea-bagging” jokes in frequent attempts to mock the participants’ grievances. On Keith Olbermann’s hate crime of a show on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo fused two memes to declare tens of thousands of Americans as “tea-bagging rednecks.”
The Rest of the Story – Part II
In this post, I linked to a video which CNN has since yanked claiming copyright violations. Well guess what – it’s baacckk!!
Cable television news network CNN has attempted to block a video on YouTube.com that shows “tea party” protesters in Chicago confronting the network’s reporter Susan Roesgen over her allegedly biased and “not fair” coverage of the event.
Members of Founding Bloggers.com were on hand to videotape the crowd’s response to Roesgen’s report, in which she badgered protesters on air, summarizing her report by describing the tea party as “anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing, conservative network Fox.”
Roesgen’s report included arguments with the tea partiers, tossing out contrary positions and demanding her subjects justify their positions, as well as an antagonistic interview with a protester whose sign read, “Obama is a fascist.”
“That’s not representative of most of the people out here,” charged an unidentified woman after the CNN cameras were turned off. Confronting Roesgen, she added, “You are not talking to regular, mainstream people; you picked people to talk to. … We’ve watched what you’ve been doing here, and it’s not fair.”
The man Roesgen had been interviewing right before CNN’s coverage stopped was also captured by the Founding Bloggers camera, saying, “We don’t have any respect for CNN, because it doesn’t respect us.”
When the blog posted the video on YouTube – showing a portion of Roesgen’s report, followed by its own footage – however, the clip was scrubbed and replaced with the message, “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Cable News Network, Inc.”
News of CNN squelching the video in a copyright claim, despite the majority of the video consisting of original Founding Bloggers material, quickly spread through the blogosphere.
“It is hard to avoid the inference that in this case,” writes John H. Hinderaker of the Power Line blog. “CNN was motivated not by a desire to protect its intellectual property but by a desire to avoid embarrassment caused by the unprofessional performance of its reporter.”
“Obviously we hit a nerve with CNN because they forced YouTube to pull the video down, along with all of the comments people posted,” Founding Bloggers responded. “We are in the process of consulting our Founding Bloggers legal team to decide if we are going to file a counter claim against CNN. We believe that we are well within our rights under fair use, but we are not attorneys so….we’ll see.”
See the video and read the rest here. Do you think CNN is embarrassed? Nah – I didn’t think so.
Redneck Birthday
‘Hello, is this the Sheriff’s Office?’
‘Yes. What can I do for you?’
‘I’m calling to report ’bout my neighbor Virgil Smith …He’s hidin’ marijuana inside his firewood! Don’t quite know how he gets it inside them logs, but he’s hidin’ it there.’
‘Thank you very much for the call, sir.’
The next day, the Sheriff’s Deputies descend on Virgil’s house. They search the shed where the firewood is kept. Using axes, they bust open every piece of wood, but find no marijuana. They sneer at Virgil and leave.
Shortly, the phone rings at Virgil’s house.
‘Hey Virgil! This here’s Floyd….Did the Sheriff come?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Did they chop your firewood?’
‘Yep!’
‘Happy Birthday, buddy!’
Courtesy of brother in law Tom.
Cheating the Kids, and the Taxpayers
Memphis City Schools has rung up problems with cells
Poor oversight of phones hits taxpayers in wallets
Memphis City Schools provides many employees with cell phones to handle district business, but taxpayers picked up the tab for plenty more than monthly service charges.
They paid for ring tones and screen savers, psychic alerts, directory assistance, sex chats and, conversely, phones that went unused for months.
MCS spent $622,733 in the 2007-08 school year for 1,255 cell phones and other electronic devices (pagers, BlackBerrys, etc.) — the majority of the cost covered by a federal program funded through a surcharge on telephone users.
Uh huh. Sounds like an awful lot of money, doesn’t it. When you start breaking it down, it comes out to a few bucks short of $52,000 a month for the year. Dang. Still sounds like a lot of money. Once to you break it down per phone, it’s only about $41 per phone. Not so bad, eh?
Well….not quite so fast. This is a school system that is deep in debt, has had scandal after scandal, throwing more and more money at problems, that never get solved.
A sample of records reviewed by The Commercial Appeal found significant abuse of taxpayer-provided cell phones, enabled by poor oversight and a lack of internal controls.
Employees were allowed to use their phones with impunity, running up bills borne by the school district, despite a board policy requiring phones to be issued to a limited number of employees needing them for essential business.
Why do 1,255 employees need taxpayer funded phones? That doesn’t sound very limited to me. And why would ANY employee who was issued a phone, believe that psychic updates are essential business?
I would suggest that the schools take away the employees toys. I would further suggest that if they believe an employee absolutely needs a phone for essential school business, they have said employee go get themselves a Tracfone, or some similar prepaid basic phone. IF the school system’s accountant, or whoever is in charge of this kind of thing, deems the phone has been used for strickly school business, reimburse the employee for the fees. If it is found that said employee has been using the phone for something other than school business, like sex chats, put that employee on suspension for a certain amount of time. If the system finds contiued abuse of the tax payer money, fire their sorry hind ends!
There’s a possibility that I could be way offbase, and Memphis school system’s employees really do need their daily psychic updates. Perhaps the need for sex chats make them better employees? But seriously, I don’t think so.
Commander in Chief?
How Obama actually delayed pirate rescue
While Barack Obama is basking in praise for his “decisive” handling of the Somali pirate attack on a merchant ship in the India Ocean, reliable military sources close to the scene are painting a much different picture of the incident – accusing the president of employing restrictive rules of engagement that actually hampered the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips and extended the drama at sea for days.
(…)
They say the response duty office at the Pentagon was initially unwilling to grant an order to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. They also report the White House refused to authorize deployment of a Navy SEAL team to the location for 36 hours, despite the recommendation of the on-scene commander.
The White House also turned down two rescue plans offered up by the Seal commander on the scene and the captain of the USS Bainbridge.
The last thing this country needs is a waffling, incompetent Commander in Chief. Some will say that decisive moves will cause deaths. In my opinion, indecision will cause MORE deaths.
In fact, when the USS Bainbridge dispatched a rigid-hull inflatable boat to bring supplies to the Maersk Alabama, it came under fire that could not be returned even though the SEAL team had the pirates in their sights.
Many hours before the fatal shots were fired, taking out the three young pirates, Phillips jumped into the Indian Ocean with the idea of giving the snipers a clear target. However, the SEAL team was still under orders not to shoot.
As much as I would like to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, on a few issues, I just can’t. His recent appointees, his action, or in this case, lack of action, gives more and more credence to the idea that this man is NOT what this country needed for a comprehensive change.
What will happen if, and more likely when, our country is attacked again? Will he be able to make snap decisions? Or, will he consult with advisors, while Americans die?
Update: Looks like the folks at Stop the ACLU has a lot more details.
Wait A Minute!
I thought the left was all up in arms about the Tea Parties being a “racist” event? Then how do they explain Kevin? Hmmmm….
