You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
GALLERY OF BITTER SMALL-TOWNERS
CLINGING TO GUNS....
[BANG BANG -- I GOTCHA!]
[OKAY, I SURRENDER.]
AND RELIGION
OUR INTREPID REPORTER, self-embedded war correspondent MICHAEL YON, gets a very, very, very timely op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. As usual, he produces the unexpected, perhaps even the counter-intuitive. This leads us to the most out-of-date aspect of the Senate debate: the argument about the pace of troop withdrawals. Precisely because we have made so much political progress in the past year, rather than talking about force reduction, Congress should be figuring ways and means to increase troop levels. For all our successes, we still do not have enough troops. This makes the fight longer and more lethal for the troops who are fighting. To give one example, I just returned this week from Nineveh province, where I have spent probably eight months between 2005 to 2008, and it is clear that we remain stretched very thin from the Syrian border and through Mosul. Vast swaths of Nineveh are patrolled mostly by occasional overflights.
It would take an air-traffic controller to sort out the lawsuits flying back and forth over Canadian skies, in the ongoing effort to make sure that Canadian standards of civility are maintained, those standards being: 
McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.
Fisking this piece of fetid political feces isn't really worth the key-strokes. (The most fun part is that the laser-guided missile hadn't been invented yet when McCain was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 -- tied for second place in fun-ness is (a) the fact that he was hit at 4,500 feet, and (b) it took him 5 1/2 years to be "long gone".)
NRO's The Corner says it so well: "Senator Jay Rockefeller, jerk." Full metal train-wreck is here.
Like somebody once said, "I love the smell of Napalm when some politician makes a meal of it."
Over at the Vets for Freedom rally yesterday, attended by Senators McCain and Lieberman, among others, the crowd was treated to this definition of "we're against the war but support the troops" by one veteran/speaker:
This is like somebody coming along, punching you in the gut, and saying, 'oh, I didn't mean that for you, I meant that for your boss.' We despise 'support' like that.Later, the occasionally impossible Senator Lindsay Graham weighed in at the rally, addressing the assembled military folks:
You want to know who wants you to come home more than anybody? Al Qaeda, because you're kicking their ass.Indeed.
GOOD - 1%U.S. in a recession? YES - 66% NO - 27%
FAIRLY GOOD - 20%
FAIRLY BAD - 48%
STINKIN' BAD - 30%
Number of states requiring one course in Economics for High School graduation -- 15
Number of states requiring one course in Personal Finance -- 7
up. I haven't scoured enough of his back-story yet (he's only been at it since November, so I should be able to get to all of it), but I thought this one from a couple months ago was terrific. Memo to the Pentagon: this bud's for you. Lt. G writes:The gripe: A military tradition as time-honored as dehumanizing the enemy, as expected as giving your rifle a feminine name and persona, and as innate in the soldier’s soul as feeling abandoned by the kinsmen they fight for. After all, you don’t worry about the soldiers who bitch, you worry about the ones who aren’t bitching.[A sample of Lt. G's gripe-based proposed reforms:]
Such comprehension doesn’t change the fact that bullshit always rolls downhill - or that at the platoon level, said bullshit rolls in like a crashing avalanche, steadily progressing in size and strength, arriving with a reeking stench of mundane regulations and asinine humorlessness...
Let’s just say that if LT G were Lord Protectorate G of the Desert Cavalry of Pure Raw Awesomeness, things would be a little different.
-- (*Some*) Field grade officers would have more serious things to worry about during a war than the size of PV2 Van Wilder’s moustache, or LT G’s wear of the Army-issued fleece cap during the day while off-duty. (Hey, I’m a skinny guy. I get cold easily.) Like, oh I don’t know, ensuring that the Iraqi Police have an equal balance of Sunnis and Shi’as on their force to avoid allegations of corruption. That might a good place to start.This definition of "the gripe" is one for the books -- or at least for the notebooks of journalists and documentary-hacks who trawl the rank and file looking for discontent and then file their pre-determined stories, as if each man who exercises his military prerogative to bitch is to be taken (a) too too seriously, and (b) as representative of everybody else. [On the other hand, perhaps the brass would be well-advised not to take the gripes too too lightly -- should they ever give them an ear.]
-- 12 hours of a bureaucratic trail of tears and papercuts would not be what sends a detainee to jail; finding a freakin’ Soviet-era sniper rifle in his backyard in a water pipe would be enough.
-- I would never go to bed weary and sore and drained, absolutely convinced that the details of me and my men’s lives were nothing more than a PowerPoint slide being passed up the chain-of-command on memory drives. Not even our own presentation. Just one little slide. This happens at least once a week.
Read it all. And wonder whether anywhere south of the 49th parallel there will be journalists who dare to make this unhappy connection on the anniversary of that day [as U2 would headline it] "Thursday morning, April 4th, shots ring out in the Memphis sky."For King admirers, accustomed to his prophetic denunciations of violence and injustice, it is almost painful listening to him distinguish between the rioters' violence against property, rather than persons...
While the earlier King emphasized the virtue, discipline and community strength of black America as the means for achieving their emancipation, the later King takes a more statist tone, blaming an economic system that can only be changed by massive government spending... The Massey Lectures have the tone not of prophetic emancipation, but rather a campaign brief for the Great Society expansion of the welfare state.
In 1967, King is greatly preoccupied with the injustice of the Vietnam War, which he opposed strongly. But he has allowed himself to be seduced by the anti-Americanism that tainted the antiwar movement: "I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own Government."It is painful to read that. Whatever American sins were in Vietnam, it is impossible to justify that claim, while hundreds of millions were imprisoned behind the Iron Curtain, while millions were starved off the land in the Great Leap Forward.
... in giving comfort to that view, he helped sow seeds that produced the vitriolic anti-Americanism that Reverend Wright demonstrated is now commonplace in parts of black America.
from Obama himself, and it would be hard to write anything more damning. Think he threw his white Grandma under the bus in his apologetic for Pastor Wright? [de-constructed brilliantly here by Mark Steyn] Well, he had long ago thrown Mama from the train in a much more vicious way. After reassuring his worried mother that he wasn't into drugs (was this even true?) with a pat on the hand, he goes on "to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people." [Coulter] It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.He's talking about his mother -- like some stranger on a bus or in a shop for whom he needs to act out this soothing pantomime to check some reflexive panic generated by her own son based on his skin-tone! This is deeply twisted.
neral counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who "fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career."engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the investigation. Why would they want to do that? Because, according to Zeifman, they feared putting Watergate break-in mastermind E. Howard Hunt on the stand to be cross-examined by counsel to the president. Hunt, Zeifman said, had the goods on nefarious activities in the Kennedy Administration that would have made Watergate look like a day at the beach...Munch on the whole thing here. [hat-tip: Hot Air, via Instapundit]
THE BULLET MRS. CLINTON WAS REALLY DODGING
itchens unloads one of his typically vein-popping demolition-jobs on Hillary Clinton, to the effect thatThe key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.
of domestic terrorist acts committed between 1974 and 1982 in New York and Chicago by Puerto Rican terrorists pardoned by Bill Clinton in 1999, during his legacy-building, Hillary-for-senator-boosting executive pardon binge [get a coffee and donut before settling in to read this list -- IT'S HUGE-- more here] in his last presidential days before leaving office (with armloads of office supplies and home furnishings). Apparently it was all his staff's fault (everything is always someone else's fault if you're a Clinton) -- seems they were busy doing more than just vandalizing the typewriters.Two days before the president announced the clemency deal, New York City Councilman Jose Rivera personally presented Hillary with a packet on clemency, including a letter asking her to 'speak to the president and ask him to consider granting executive clemency' to the prisoners.[h/t Jewish World Review]
...Even in those pre-9/11 days, pardoning terrorists who weren't even remorseful drew public outrage; candidate Hillary soon wound up condemning Bill's decision.
(1) The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.I don't know what this last bit has to do with the environment, but I feel my personal environment improves exponentially when somebody stuffs it to Ted Kennedy. More O'Rourke jewels here.
(2) The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself."
In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.
(3) Sen. Ted Kennedy: "And when the Reagan administration was selling arms to Iran, WHERE WAS GEORGE?"
Answer: Dry, sober, and at home with his wife.
GOOD NEWS FROM THE FRONT 
Ooh-rah.
as found dead today, after having been kidnapped two weeks ago and held for an enormous ransom of weapons and money. He had just finished saying the Stations of the Cross at the Church of the Holy Spirit, and was about leave in a car with three unarmed companions, all of whom were killed when their car was attacked. The Archbishop was then kidnapped at gunpoint.Church officials said Thursday, however, that Archbishop Rahho was shot in the leg when he was abducted on Feb. 29. Gunmen sprayed his car with bullets, killed two bodyguards and shoved the archbishop into the trunk of a car, the church officials said. In the darkness, he managed to pull out his cellphone and call the church, telling officials not to pay a ransom for his release, they said.“He believed that this money would not be paid for good works and would be used for killing and more evil actions,” the officials said. [h/t New York Times]
Appeals from the Vatican and the Iraqi government for his safe return were ignored. If there were formal appeals from the U.S. government they did not make headlines, but American soldiers accompanied Iraqi special forces in the hunt for the Archbishop.
Authorities were tipped off by the Archbishop's murderers about the location of his body, which was found in a shallow grave outside Mosul. He had been dead for as much as five days.
Looks like a real trouble-maker, doesn't he? Oh, yeah, this guy had to go.
...to practice judaism, which is following the doctrine of the law of moses the lawgiver in the old testament of the bible, according to orthodox jews is the true judaism. To exploit people, particularly BLACK people, feeding on them and taking money out of the BLACK community charging exorbitant prices for cheaply made goods and services, is someone that is practicing a gutter religion by using BLACK people to enrich the jewish community.Ah. You see how these things can get blown all out of proportion?
If you are a NEW ACCESSION attending ODS, DCO, OCS, you are not required to complete the NKO portion of the CBT's until arrival to OTC.
To establish a NKO/e-Learning Account, click on the links below:
Mmm-kay.....All prior enlisted personnel, ODS, LDO/CWO, DCO, OCS, NSI, BOOST,
are required to complete the online courses
Ahoy-vay!
