Category Archives: Good Riddance

Second takes…

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I was listening to a local radio station this morning. The host was on a tirade about the flu and hospitals. The flu is in full swing in the KC area at the moment. Elsewhere, too.

A news item said that a woman had died of the flu. However, when you read the body of the announcement, it said she died of a staph infection as a complication of the flu. The situation is not uncommon. People, weakened by disease, often fall to other conditions as a side effect of their primary contribution of their death.

Then the host went off on the hospital. It said the woman died of a ‘staff’ infection, an infection the woman had acquired from the ‘staff’ in the hospital. I think someone took him aside and explained to him the difference between ‘staff’ and ‘staph’. One is people, the other is a class of infectious bacteria, staphylococcus. A few minutes later he attempted to backtrack and then wandered off onto another topic, immunizations, repeating the myths and ‘urban knowledge’ of falsehoods about that subject. The ignorance and outright stupidity of presumed adults continues to astound me. It’s a reminder of the degradation of education over the last fifty years.

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In 1967, Adam Clayton Powell was unseated from the US House for corruption. The House and Senate has the right to not recognize members for specific reasons. Powell subsequently sued and was reelected in 1969. Congress then passed more legislation to solidify the process and justification for refusal to seat a member. That legislation was a result of the Powell controversy. It was a pyrrhic victor for Powell. He died in 1972.

Another New York City Congressman is in a similar situation.

U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm will resign from the House this week after having pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion, the New York Daily News reported Monday night. — The Washington Times.

At first reports, Grimm stated he would remain in Congress. Evidently, someone spoke to him and explained to him the realities of his situation.

Perhaps, NYC Mayor de Blasio should take a tip from Michael Grimm and resign, too. It has been said that no Mayor of a large metropolitan city can be successful without the support of the police. De Blasio has lost that support in New York City.

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John Boehner thinks he has the Speakership in the bag. Truth is he is probably right. Not everyone, however, will rollover, unlike our local Vicky Hartzler, and rubberstamp vote for Boehner next week.

Conservative Lawmakers Plan To Vote Against Boehner For Speaker

Alex Pappas, 9:57 PM 12/29/2014

Some disaffected conservative House Republicans are planning to rebel and vote against John Boehner for speaker of the House when the new Congress convenes next week.

The official speaker’s election is set for Jan. 6., when the House will convene for a public floor vote to open the new Congress.

While the vote is usually just a formality, these conservative lawmakers are planning to vote for someone other than the Ohio Republican who has been speaker since 2011. (The column continues here.)

The Daily Caller can’t be labeled a conservative news outlet. Given that, they usually are more balanced that most of the MSM. I’m happy to see that there are still a few ‘Pubs in Washington who stand by the principles that elected them to office.

 

 

 

 

 

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Hugo the Clown is dead

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All the leftist are mourning—Sean Penn, Jimmy Cahtah, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Oliver Stone. Boo. Hoo. Expatriate Venezuelans, however, are celebrating. It is interesting to note that Chavez amassed an estate valued over $2 Billion.

I don’t mourn Hugo Chavez. He was nothing more than an thug, a tinpot dictator who pillaged Venezuela’s economy.

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Hitler had his SS, SD and Gestapo. Stalin had his NKVD and KGB. Obama has his DHS.

Let’s be frank. Bush was an idiot to create that department. Something had to be done to resolve the turf wars between the multiple intelligence and investigative agencies, particularly between the CIA and the FBI but the Department of Homeland Security was not the solution.

There was a balance of power between the various competing agencies. With the DHS, that safeguard and balance of power, of “watchers watching watchers” is gone. Under Obama and the dems, the DHS and its subordinate, the TSA, has morphed—not evolved, but purposely redirected from protecting the US from outside threats to internals threats, real or fantasized. Why don’t we just call it what it is—Internal Security.

Over the last few years, we have seen growing militarization of government. Local police departments everywhere now have or have access to paramilitary assault squads. Oh, they have fancy names like SWAT but the reality is that they are assault troops with the mindset of assault troops, not police.

We are seeing more of that mindset in the federal government from the IRS issuing orders for weapons to the Department of Education who used their assault troops to invade a home for—overdue education loans! Now we see the DHS stockpiling ammunition and acquiring “surplus” armored Army vehicles—2700 armored troop carriers.

The militarization and buildup of the DHS and other governmental agencies has drawn the notice of many in the conservative media…rational journalists who are not members of the tin-foil hat brigade. The leftist poo-poo the idea. Of course. 

The Investor’s Business Daily editorial board asks this question:

Why Is Obama’s Growing DHS Army Buying Armored Vehicles?

 Posted 03/05/2013 06:26 PM ET

Security: In addition to stockpiling over a billion bullets and thousands of semiautomatic weapons the feds would deny U.S. citizens, the vehicle of choice for fighting the counterinsurgency war in Iraq is appearing on U.S. streets.

The sequestration question du jour is why the Department of Homeland Security, busy releasing hundreds, if not thousands, of deportable and detained illegal aliens due to budget constraints, is buying several thousand Mine Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles?

And just who are they intended to be used against?

This acquisition comes on top of the recent news of the stockpiling by DHS of more than 1.6 billion (with a ‘b’) bullets of various calibers, enough by one calculation to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq War, and the ordering of some 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) — also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians.

Additionally, DHS is asking for 30 round magazines that “have a capacity to hold thirty (30) 5.56x45mm NATO rounds.”

The Department of Homeland Security (through the U.S. Army Forces Command) recently retrofitted 2,717 of these MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the U.S. They were formerly used for counterinsurgency in Iraq.

These vehicles are specifically designed to resist mines and ambush attacks. They use bulletproof windows and are designed to withstand small-arms fire, including smaller-caliber rifles such as a .223 Remington. Does DHS expect a counterinsurgency here?

After IEDs began to take a toll on U.S. military forces in Iraq, the Pentagon ordered a large supply of MRAPs.

“They’ve taken hits, many, many hits that would have killed soldiers and marines in uparmored Humvees,” Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a recent interview.

A DHS officer, Robert Whitaker, stationed in El Paso, Texas, recently proudly described the agency’s new armored toy as “Mine-resistant … we use to deliver our team to high-risk warrant services … (with) gun ports so we can actually shoot from within the vehicle; you may think it’s pretty loud but actually it’s not too bad … we have gun ports there in the back and two on the sides as well. They are designed for .50-caliber weapons.”

This is needed to serve warrants? Perhaps it might have been useful at Waco.

So the question is what does DHS need 1.6 billion bullets, 7,000 Ar-15s and 2,700 armored vehicles for?

What are they anticipating or planning for, and why are few in the media and Congress asking about it, particularly in the light of daily apocalyptic bleats from the administration about sequestration cuts?

We have asked if this has anything to do with then-candidate Obama’s proposal for a national security force as powerful as the U.S. Army.

In a July 2, 2008, speech in Colorado Springs, Colo., candidate Obama said: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

As Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News contributor, recently opined in the Washington Times, “The historical reality of the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms is not that it protects the right to shoot deer. It protects the right to shoot tyrants, and it protects the right to shoot at them effectively, with the same instruments they would use upon us.”

No, we are not scanning the sky for black helicopters.

But we are concerned about an administration pushing for ever stricter gun control and de facto gun registration in the form of allegedly universal background checks to which criminals and gangbangers won’t comply is arming itself to the teeth.

If weapons of war don’t belong on the street, Mr. President, explain these purchases.

Others are asking that same question and the run by citizens to acquire weapons and ammunition continues.

 

Breaking: Senator Robert C. Byrd (D) dead at 92

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Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, AKA “Sheets”, died this morning in a Fairfax, VA hospital. There’s one less democrat in the senate—for a while.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, a Democrat, will appoint a replacement for Byrd, leaving the seat in Democratic hands. — San Francisco Chronicle Online, June 28, 2010

However, Governor Manchin provided no time-line for choosing Byrd’s replacement. Byrd, a Kleagel, or recruiter, and a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, acquired the nickname, “Sheets” due to his membership in the Klan. Byrd is also the last surviving democrat in office who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As for me, he will not be missed. He retained his senate seat by being the senate’s most prolific user of bribes pork projects for his state of West Virginia.