"What a tangled web we weave,
when we practice to deceive." -- Old proverb
From the Houston Chronicle: "At Monday's hearing, committee Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said he had been shocked (shocked!) to see killings and beheadings 'just a stone's throw across the Rio Grande from where we're sitting this morning.' (Apparently he's never been to the South Texas border with Mexico before!)
Kerry called for a ban on the imports of assault rifles, such as the AK-47, into the United States."
If Senator Kerry isn't the most ignorant person in the US Senate (especially since Biden moved up), then he's the most cynical. Assault rifles, including the AK-47, have been banned from importation into the United States for decades. So, following the argument his solution is begging, why hasn't that already stopped their export to Mexico from here?
The article continues: "Assault rifles bought in the United States are favorites among cartel gunmen, who find them effective for the urban warfare, William McMahon, deputy assistant director of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, told the committee. ATF agents have traced many guns confiscated in Mexico to purchases in the United States, McMahon said."
Really?
Bought in the US? That implies that their purchases were legal through loopholes in US law. Did these law-abiding folks then take them to the customs checkpoints on the border, declare them, pay taxes, and get Mexican permits for them? Or, after exposing their identities to federal authorities through required FBI background checks and filling out all the required documentation for McMahon's agents to trace, only then did they resort to illegally smuggling them across the border?
Why would any self-respecting cartel member go to all the trouble and risk to BUY semi-automatic rifles in the USA, when they can get full-automatic (real) assault rifles cheaper elsewhere? Is it because they're getting bored and, since money is no object, they just enjoy the low-challenge game of outwitting McMahon and Kerry, while tweaking the noses of law enforcement agencies?
REAL AK-47's are readily available from most Central American countries through corrupt military and police officials, leftist and anarchist"revolutionaries," and other criminals, because those countries have been awash in them since the 1970's when Cuba and Russia were (and still are) exporting them. Also, as with any supply-and-demand situation, because they're so plentiful down there, they're CHEAP! Way cheaper than the semi-automatic, far less effective knock-offs that Senator Kerry wants to ban here. And they don't require potentially risky exposure to US law enforcement agents.
Also, despite being reported widely, Kerry and McMahon are apparently unaware of the corrupt military and police officials in Mexico who are stealing the high capacity fully automatic military rifles that were sent by the US government to Mexican authorities to engage the cartels in the War on Drugs. I wonder if Kerry is aware of the real, loaded assault rifles coming NORTH of the highly porous border in the hands of renegade Mexican Army units who have been encountered on US soil by US authorities ?
The truth is this: Kerry, McMahon, Clinton, Holder, and others have been referring to semi-automatic military look-alike rifles as "assault" rifles for so long that, when faced with the real thing, they're unable -- or unwilling -- to understand the distinction. Since their objective is a disarmed, subjugated society unable to oppose confiscatory taxes, government intrusion, property and wealth redistribution, and the suppression of freedom and individual liberty, this is merely an excuse to further their agenda.
If the problem is real or pretend assault rifles going south across the border, prove it by sealing the border. A border effectively sealed against illegal immigrants and drugs coming north will also be effectively sealed against guns going south.
That's not an option, because the leader of Senator Kerry's party has announced he intends to help illegals get jobs, join unions -- and vote for him.
But that, children, is a story for another day.
A few weeks ago, I listened to a speech given by President Obama at a Marine Corps base in which he praised our military men and women, and announced the deployment of 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. I also noticed that nobody in the press or Congress has asked Mr Obama about an exit strategy from Afghanistan, or whether he has a timetable for withdrawal.
At the end of his speech, in what must have been an effort to evoke an emotional tie to these Marines, he said in a flat, unemotional tone "Semper Fi. Oorah." I don't know if he was successful, but it left this old veteran with a sense of disgust.
I wasn't a Marine, but I have enough respect for members of that service to leave their internal salutations to them. As far as I'm concerned, a person who hasn't served as one of them has no right to appropriate their terms of recognition and mutual respect.
Now President Obama has put forth a policy position whereby our military members and veterans would be required to pay for medical treatment made necessary as a result of service-connected wounds and injuries!
This is truly beyond the pale!
If I thought his speech was chilly and unemotional, this announcement was demonstrably cold and soulless. To me, it unmasked his true feelings toward those who volunteer to serve and sacrifice for our country in meaningful ways and in hazardous occupations and environments. It also laid bare how little regard he really has for their families and what they endure.
It's also instructive in why he would demand cuts in the military budget, and his blind allegiance to the "missile defense system won't work" mantra, even as China and Russia announce dramatic military budget increases and force expansions, North Korea and Iran launch missiles and develop nuclear weapons, and Cuba and Venezuela offer host agreements to Russian military forces.
I applauded the efforts of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and his successor Defense Secretary Gates to cut unnecessary and wasteful programs from the DoD budget -- actions that were long overdue, and vigorously opposed by self-serving senators and congressmen. However, I'm concerned that Mr Obama's dogmatic, reflexive anti-military attitude will deprive our volunteer forces of the state-of-the-art equipment and training they will need for successful accomplishment of the missions he assigns them, and in the long run, will cause demoralization of our military personnel.
As a military veteran, I've already lived through that scenario under another anti-military Democrat president. I don't wish those dark days to be visited upon this generation.
Definition of a "Progressive:" One who believes in the progressive enlargement and expansion of a progressively intrusive and controlling government. One who believes that the progressive encroachment on your Rights is inconsequential if it leads to progressive centralization of power in said progressive government. For a "progressive," success will be achieved when the progressive diminution of your individual Rights results in their complete elimination, and the progressive expansion of central government results in only the government having Rights.
"NAACP plans protest tonight over what it calls racist jokes forwarded by a CEC member"
By DEBORAH YOUNG, STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
Monday, March 02, 2009
"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An email ripe with racist slurs -- crudely presented as a mock debate between President Obama and Sen. John McCain -- sent by a member of Staten Island's Community Education Council to dozens of recipients, including other members of the public schools' parent advisory board, is stirring outrage among African American leaders, who anonymously received a copy of the offensive communiqué and plan to take action.
The mock photo strip, sent Jan. 4 by Salvatore Ballarino, the borough president's appointee to the volunteer board, features cartoon-like speech balloons drawn out of McCain's mouth referencing lynching African Americans and equating African American babies with excrement.
The widely forwarded email also questions black fathers' ability to support their families and states Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles are always smiling, because they did not know they were black. After each "punch line" the cartoon-like strip shows a photo of Obama's face, positioned in such a way to make him look stunned and dumbstruck.
Dozens of African American parents, school children and educators are expected to attend the meeting of the Community Education Council tonight at Petrides Educational Complex, Sunnyside, to question how somebody charged with representing all Staten Islanders could find the material funny, and then have the bad judgment to forward the email around."
The article continued in the same vein about the outrage of the NAACP, black parents, teachers, and several other groups incensed that Mr Ballarino forwarded this drivel via e-mail, and the blatant racism it represented. Fine. All people should be incensed about something like this being passed off as "humor."
But nowhere in the entire article was there ever addressed -- by the author, or the NAACP, or any of the other groups involved or quoted -- the fact that the "cartoonist" portrayed SENATOR JOHN McCAIN as uttering this vile and offensive filth!
If anybody was undeserving of being portrayed in such a way, especially in light of his conduct of his losing presidential campaign, surely it was he. Senator McCain went out of his way to disassociate himself from, and publicly repudiate, elements within our society that would have supported his campaign simply because of the race of his opponent. Yet it either eluded the reporter, or the people the reporter covered, that the slander represented in this cartoon against Senator McCain's character was equally as bad, or worse, than the racist message it conveyed.
A week earlier, a cartoon in the New York Post drew outrage from members of the black community. It depicted two police officers shooting a chimpanzee. The cartoonist labeled the chimp "stimulus" in an effort to illustrate how some people perceive the economic stimulus package as a threat to the national economy. Yet some in the black community immediately reacted loudly by claiming that the chimp/stimulus was a subtle personification of President Obama, and therefore had racist, and perhaps even president-threatening overtones. Many whites were astonished at this, assuming that the cartoonist was transferring metaphorically an incident in which a chimp had been shot to death by police after it had attacked its owner's friend. The bewildered publisher apologized for any perceived and, presumably, wholly unintentional offense.
Attorney General Eric Holder claimed recently that we are a nation of cowards who refuse to have a conversation about race. Maybe he could begin the conversation by explaining how one cartoon depicting a chimpanzee can invoke such outrage in the black community, while the slanderous depiction of an honorable man and patriot as a racist can go completely unremarked in the same community.
