Monday, November 13, 2017

"Why?" by Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Matt Gaetz

Reps. Jordan and Gaetz: Special counsel needed as questions mount on Clinton, Comey, Russian Dossier and more

"Mr. Attorney General, it’s time to do your job.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

"One Marine, One Ship" by Vin Suprynowicz

"I continued the trigger bursts until the barrel began to steam. In front of me was a large pile of dead bodies. I ran around the ridge from gun to gun trying to keep each gun firing, but at each emplacement I only found dead Marine gunners. I knew then that I must be all alone."--Sgt. Mitchell Paige

(From Oct. 22, 2000)

Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year.
Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks — five more days to stock up for Halloween?
It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they did 58 years ago, they did precisely so their grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty.
Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms they fought to leave us, may be a discussion best left for another day. Today we struggle to envision — or, for a few of us, to remember — how the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few thousand lonely American Marines had been put ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken malarial jungle island which just happened to lie like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago — the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.
On Guadalcanal the Marines built an air field. And Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships during any future operations to the south. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.
World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they'd devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out to establish their last, thin defensive line on that ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not have been much encouraged to know how those remaining American aircraft carriers were faring offshore.
(The next day, their Mark XV torpedoes — carrying faulty magnetic detonators reverse-engineered from a First World War German design — proved so ineffective that the United States Navy couldn't even scuttle the doomed and listing carrier Hornet with eight carefully aimed torpedoes. Instead, our forces suffered the ignominy of leaving the abandoned ship to be polished off by the enemy ... only after Japanese commanders determined she was damaged too badly to be successfully towed back to Tokyo as a trophy.)

As Paige — then a platoon sergeant — and his riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled Brownings, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?
The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942.
But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks, then springing his traps "with the steel vise of firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval historian David Lippman.
The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good. Still, the American forces had so little to work with that Paige's men would have only the four 30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.
By the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."
Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.
The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."
In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings — the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition at its first U.S. Army trial — and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.
The weapon did not fail.
Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?
On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.
One hill: one Marine.
But that was the second problem. Part of the American line had fallen to the last Japanese attack. "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."
For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." In the end, "The element of surprise permitted the small force to clear the crest."
And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal. Because of a handful of U.S. Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta, Calif.

But while the Marines had won their battle on land, it would be meaningless unless the U.S. Navy could figure out a way to stop losing night battles in "The Slot" to the northwest of the island, through which the Japanese kept sending in barges filled with supplies and reinforcements for their own desperate forces on Guadalcanal.
The U.S. Navy had lost so many ships in those dreaded night actions that the waters off Savo were given the grisly sailor's nickname by which they're still known today: Ironbottom Sound.
So desperate did things become that finally, 18 days after Mitchell Paige won his Congressional Medal of Honor on that ridge above Henderson Field, Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern War College edict — the one against committing capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.
In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the right man at the right pla4ce, gunnery expert Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee. Lee's flag flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by Captain Glenn Davis.
Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. "He tested every gunnery-book rule with exercises," Lippman writes, "and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions — turret firing with relief crews, anything that might simulate the freakishness of battle."
As it turned out, the American destroyers need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of the four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame, while the South Dakota — known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship — managed to damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.

"Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force," Lippman writes. "In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo's ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ...

"On Washington's bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter still had the conn. He had just heard that South Dakota had gone off the air and had seen (destroyers) Walke and Preston "blow sky high." Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while hundreds of men were swimming in the water and Japanese ships were racing in.
"Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war. 'Come left,' he said, and Washington straightened out on a course parallel to the one on which she (had been) steaming. Washington's rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.
"The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ...
"Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas. Everyone could see dozens of men in the water clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant Raymond Thompson said, "Seeing that burning, sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do about it, was a devastating experience.'
"Commander Ayrault, Washington's executive officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart Stoodley's damage-control post, and ordered Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot of lives. But the men in the water had some fight left in them. One was heard to scream, 'Get after them, Washington!' "
Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance. The Washington was fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns. And, thanks to Lt. Hunter's course change, she was also now invisible to the enemy.
Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee and Davis could positively identify an enemy target.
The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control system worked perfectly. Between midnight and 12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the "last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet" stunned the battleship Kirishima with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the Kirishima, it rained steel.
In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25 a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew. Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to the emperor — withdrawal from Guadalcanal.

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was — the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?

In the autumn of 1942.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.
But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "GI Joe."
And now you know.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Smearing Roy Moore: What Rough Beast Slouches Toward the Newsroom?

The Justice Will Prevail

All Fake, All the Time

Don Surber: Why should we believe the Washington Post?

"...I doubt it is true because the story stems from the Washington Post.

This publication lies -- repeatedly.

Oh, I don't have to go back 36 years ago when Bob Woodward's protege Janet Cooke invented an 8-year-old heroin addict and won a Pulitzer.

Let's just look in the past year, shall we?

November 24, 2016: "Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say."

The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.

Lies.

All of it.".......

Mr. Surber goes on to list many other front-page whoppers told by the Post just this year alone.

Gateway Pundit: BUSTED: WaPo Failed To Disclose Roy Moore Accuser Worked As Sign Language Interpreter For Hillary & Biden — Openly Supports Doug Jones

"Newsmax columnist James Hirsen tweeted the “Washington Post failed to disclose that one of Moore’s accusers was a sign language interpreter for Joe Biden and is a volunteer for Moore’s Democrat opponent.”

Gibson shared a story from New York Magazine, highlighting Doug Jones’ seemingly good chances of beating Moore. At the time of publication, both posts on Jones and Moore were deleted from her page.".......

Mark [Levin] asked his audience: How did the WaPo know there were four women, who they were, and how to contact them?… A Washington Post reporter just happens to be in Alabama talking to Roy Moore supporters… And he happens to hear what no one has reported in 38 years, no political opponents – No one… That Roy Moore, 38 years ago, made advances to teenage girls. Four of them. Now, the four girls do not know each other, they have never met. Yet the person who the Post reporter happened to run into and speak to, the person who supposedly told the reporter the story about the four girls, happened to know all four girls and how to contact them?

Seriously?".......

We don't really have "news" anymore. We have a non-stop assault of agitation-propaganda, or agit-prop, designed to affect the outcome of events, not to observe and report them.

Roy Moore doesn't have a history of lying.

The Washington Post, however, has lied to me all my life and now does almost nothing else but lie. They are not disinterested reporters of fact. They are confirmed, serial, Professional Liars who are actively trying to elect the Democrat they have endorsed.

Roy Moore has been at the center of bitter national controversy for years and years and this only comes out now? Forty years later? And conveniently timed after the Democrats' "victory" in keeping their Hillary states? And after the deadlines to replace?

No. I don't believe a damned word that comes out of their mouths. Don't fall for it. This is the way the Swamp plays today. They know their day is coming and they're desperate and unprincipled.

Professional Liars can lie with headlines. They lie with half-truths, manipulated photographs, phony statistics, quotes out of context, paying "witnesses" and buying Fusion GPS disinformation--or do they sell column space to Fusion? And is there really any difference anymore?

That's why they're professionals. They have more ways to lie than Hillary Clinton at a phony FBI deposition.

For example, all of Official Washington suddenly decided it was a swell idea to let the Russians own 20% of our uranium supply. Have you ever heard any Washington Post reporter ask Obama, Clinton or any other official who signed off on that deal why it was such a great idea?

No, you haven't. It's the most obvious question and yet not one single reporter has ever asked it. And that's #FakeNews too; lying by omission. "Professionals".

Which brings us to Judge Moore.

The Professional Liars have decided anyone who goes up against the Swamp will get their own Dossier.

Bezos bought the Washington Post so he could publish Democrat Party handouts under the cover of the WaPo byline, to milk whatever fading cachet that name might have once conjured. That's not just Fake, but foundationally dishonest.

Bezos makes scaredy-cat RINO's jump at their own shadows on his command. They've been well-trained. May all their weightless words fall to the floor.

The Judge: "I don't know Ms. Corfman from anybody. I've never talked to her. Never had any contact with her. Allegations of sexual misconduct are completely false. I believe they are politically motivated."

When he was a young man, he dated young women. Shocking!

Roy Moore is guilty--guilty of believing in the Actual Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

That makes him an arrow aimed at the very heart of the Swamp Beast, which is why the Beast is howling so madly.

And why Judge Moore deserves our support.

"I will NEVER GIVE UP the fight!"

The Dogs Aren't Eating the Dog Food-UPDATE:

Multiple Standing Ovations for Judge Roy Moore as He Hammers Washington Post Smears at Veterans Day Event

“Now I want to address something that some people have come here to hear about. Shortly after becoming the Republican nominee for the United States Senate, the Washington Post began an attack on the Foundation for Moral Law, on my wife, and on me. For weeks, we read about my salary which they distorted, about taxes where they said we were paid money we never got. But we endured that. Later, they came out and endorsed my opponent in this race. Just two days ago, the Washington Post published yet another attack on my character and reputation in a desperate attempt to stop my political campaign for the United States Senate. These attacks about a minor are completely false and untrue about something that happened nearly 40 years ago. But more than being completely false and untrue, they are very hurtful to me personally.

I’ve been married to my wife Kayla for nearly 33 years. We have four children. I have one daughter, and I have five granddaughters. I have the highest regard for the protection of young children. When I returned to Gadsen 40 years ago after military service, I went to work for the office of the District Attorney. As a student of the law, I have served in public office off and on for the last 40 years. To be attacked for allegations of sexual misconduct contradicts my entire career in law. I wanted to make it clear to the media present and the people present, I have not provided alcoholic beverages—beer or anything else—to a minor. I have not been guilty of sexual misconduct with anyone. These allegations came only four and a half weeks before the general election on Dec. 12. Why now?

For forty years I have been closely scrutinized in the press and the public media. I have had investigations by the attorney general, I’ve had investigations by the judicial inquiry commission on more than one occasion, I’ve had investigations by the court of the judiciary, I’ve been in five statewide campaigns in which they do opposition research—they do investigations, as you can see in every one I’ve ever run—and three county elections and two major controversies over religious liberty and the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage. I’ve been investigated more than any other person in this country. That grown women would wait forty years to come right before an election to bring charges is absolutely unbelievable. The Democrats, and the Republican establishment, know the importance of this election. In fact, most people in America know the importance of this election. They view it as a prelude to the elections coming in 2018. It may very well determine the future of our country.

My opponent is 11 points behind—that came out just days before this article. They’re desperate. This article is a prime example of fake news, an attempt to divert attention from the true issues that face our country like healthcare, military readiness, tax reform, immigration, and the national debt. We do not intend to let the Democrats or the establishment Republicans or anybody else behind this story stop this campaign. There are investigations going on. In the next few days, there will be revelations about the motivations and the content of this article. They will be brought to the public. We fully expect the people of Alabama to see through this charade and to vote in the [election] coming up. As Mr. Armistead said, we do not engage in negative campaigning. We haven’t, and I’ve been blistered with articles and attacks the last two to three months and on television. I do not expect the Washington Post to stop. I think they have a political agenda. And I think they are running that agenda, and everybody in this room and every person watching on these cameras should ask themselves that isn’t it strange that after 40 years of constant investigation these people have waited until four weeks prior to the general election to bring their complaints? It’s not a coincidence. It’s an intentional act to stop my campaign. May God bless you, the state of Alabama, and the United States of America.”

Alabama TV Station Can’t Find a Single Person Who Believes Vicious WaPo Hit Piece on Judge Roy Moore (Video)

Not everybody jumps like a trained monkey just because the Washington Post told them to.

Friday, November 10, 2017

Veterans Day 2017

"Remember that no courage can ever atone for lack of that preparedness which makes the courage valuable; and yet if the courage is there, if the dauntless heart is there, its presence will sometimes make up for other shortcomings; while if with it are combined the other military qualities the fortunate owner becomes literally invincible."--President Theodore Roosevelt, Annapolis, April 24, 1906.

Teddy Roosevelt, a veteran himself, also said "I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds."

Our vets have backed up their word by their deeds...and then some. From the French and Indian War to Fallujah, from Gettysburg to Grenada and Château-Thierry to Syria, America's citizen-soldiers have answered the call. Always.

Politicians come and go. But always the dauntless hearts of America's citizen-soldiers have beat steady and true--and never more so than today.

Another American Thinker put it this way:

"I have lived in America all my life, for 56 years now, and every single night when I have laid my head upon my pillow, you were somewhere watching over my safety. For every single one of those nights of peaceful rest, I simply say, "Thank you!""

Amen.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

American Alone

"Desperate courage makes One a majority."--Pres. Andrew Jackson

Excerpts from Victor Davis Hanson's Crossing the Trump Rubicon:

"We are in a veritable war of competing visions. The strife inside the two parties is irrelevant—when compared to the larger existential war for the soul of America.

Like it or not, Donald Trump in fits and starts has chosen not to accommodate the progressive vision. But in most unlikely fashion he leads the fight against it.

We are no longer in the late 1950s era of liberal reform. It is now a postmodern world of intolerance and lockstep orthodoxy.

Networks such as CNN see their role actively on the barricades, devoted to the higher cause of destroying the Trump presidency, not as reporting its successes or failures. The danger to free expression and a free media is not even Trumpian bombast. It is the far more deliberate and insidious transformation (begun in full under Obama) of journalism into a progressive ministry of truth. Even if he wished, Trump could not take away what the professional press already surrendered voluntarily.

After the nocturnal effort to tear down historic statuary, the NFL player psychodramas, the therapeutic reactions to radical Islamic terror attacks inside the United States, and the often unhinged profanity and assassination chic of the anti-Trump “Resistance,” Trump almost alone seems to sound off in opposition.

There is no longer a Democratic workers party akin to something that Hubert Humphrey once championed. In sum, the gap between Trumpian conservative economics and progressives is as wide as at any time in American history. The new Democratic Party is the updated vision of Eugene Debs. Its dream is a uniform coastal California culture, a San Francisco of renters and Presidio Heights spreading from the Pacific to the Atlantic. For now, the unlikely Trump is the only road bump left on such an expressway to a medieval world of masters and peasants with few in between.

Looking back, the improbable election of 2016 proved a Rubicon moment. Once Trump crossed over the Rubicon, carried by his base of “crazies,” “irredeemables,” and “deplorables,” the die had been cast, and those who were fearful where America had been headed had no choice but to follow him through the river.

Either Trump will restore economic growth, national security, the melting pot, legality, and individual liberty or he will fail and we will go the way of Europe.

For now, there is no one else in the opposition standing in the way of radical progressivism.".......

Full-Mao--UPDATE: Just like the day President Trump was elected, Nov. 7 is

National Day for the Victims of Communism

"Today, the National Day for the Victims of Communism, marks 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. The Bolshevik Revolution gave rise to the Soviet Union and its dark decades of oppressive communism, a political philosophy incompatible with liberty, prosperity, and the dignity of human life.

Over the past century, communist totalitarian regimes around the world have killed more than 100 million people and subjected countless more to exploitation, violence, and untold devastation. These movements, under the false pretense of liberation, systematically robbed innocent people of their God-given rights of free worship, freedom of association, and countless other rights we hold sacrosanct. Citizens yearning for freedom were subjugated by the state through the use of coercion, violence, and fear.

Today, we remember those who have died and all who continue to suffer under communism. In their memory and in honor of the indomitable spirit of those who have fought courageously to spread freedom and opportunity around the world, our Nation reaffirms its steadfast resolve to shine the light of liberty for all who yearn for a brighter, freer future.".......

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Mark Twain, Science Denier

The Settled is Science!

"Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend; and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in aggregate, sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles or more.

Therefore the Mississippi between Cairo [Illinois] and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and "let on" to prove what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in the late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor "development of species," either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. This is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolithic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined there streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."-- Life on the Mississippi (1883)

I'm not crying because that was so funny; I'm crying because we'll never get to see Al Gore trying to sell Mark Twain a carbon offset. (You remember Carbon Offsets, don't you? That's what Democrats sold before Russian Onsets).

Mark Twain was even a skeptic about Mark Twain:

"I was a cub pilot on the Mississippi River then, and one day I wrote a rude and crude satire which was leveled at Captain Isaiah Sellers, the oldest steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and the most respected, esteemed, and revered. For many years he had occasionally written brief paragraphs concerning the river and the changes which it had undergone under his observation during fifty years, and had signed these paragraphs "Mark Twain" and published them in the St. Louis and New Orleans journals. In my satire I made rude game of his reminiscences. It was a shabby poor performance, but I didn't know it, and the pilots didn't know it. The pilots thought it was brilliant. They were jealous of Sellers, because when the gray-heads among them pleased their vanity by detailing in the hearing of the younger craftsmen marvels which they had seen in the long ago on the river, Sellers was always likely to step in at the psychological moment and snuff them out with wonders of his own which made their small marvels look pale and sick. However, I have told all about this in "Old Times on the Mississippi." The pilots handed my extravagant satire to a river reporter, and it was published in the New Orleans True Delta. That poor old Captain Sellers was deeply wounded. He had never been held up to ridicule before; he was sensitive, and he never got over the hurt which I had wantonly and stupidly inflicted upon his dignity. I was proud of my performance for a while, and considered it quite wonderful, but I have changed my opinion of it long ago. Sellers never published another paragraph nor ever used his nom de guerre again."--Autobiography of Mark Twain (1906)

Friday, November 3, 2017

Col. Jeffrey R. Nance Helped Bowe Bergdahl Get Away With the Murder of Real Soldiers

You're Honor-less: Obama's Mainstreaming of Treason Continues

Unfit for Duty: Hack "Judge" Jeffrey R. Nance

Bowe Bergdahl got more American servicemen killed than many jihadis. He didn't just get other servicemen wounded as he and his Media pals like to pretend. He got at least six other service-members killed while looking for him, in addition to those who were severely-wounded.

And how many soldiers were killed capturing the Taliban Five? And how many more after the Five returned to the battlefield after being traded for a slimy little traitor?

Nor was Bergdahl a prisoner as his pet judge stated. Bergdahl was a partner of the Taliban, a volunteer bargaining chip.

But the deaths, maimings and outright treason didn't matter to Nance. He had a score to settle. The "judge" admitted he was planning to throw a Never-Trump Temper Tantrum and call it "justice":

“I will consider the president's comments as mitigation evidence as I arrive at an appropriate sentence.”

Why consider Candidate Trump's condemnation of Bergdahl--or for that matter, President Obama's praise for his fellow traitor? Clearly this hack judge is a Trump-hater and let Bergdahl go free to score political points.

We're used to corrupt, honorless civilian judges, but to see it in the military is still shocking. I guess after having a traitor in the White House for the last eight years, we shouldn't be surprised at how deep the rot runs, even in our military.

Col. Kurt Schlichter:

"We have a Navy that can't sail its ships; we have a United States Army Military Academy that is graduating people who are openly communist and anti-American. And now a man who betrays his country, who deserts his men in the face of the enemy, who gets men killed and wounded, gets no jail time!

Our military is more broken than I ever feared possible. I'm stunned and disgusted.".......

Why wouldn't a soldier now be within his rights to refuse an order to chase a deserter? Why risk his life if the deserter goes free? Surely the punishment for refusing an order can't be worse than the overdue book fine that "Judge" Nance imposed in this case.

What a putz.

Just like his buddy Bowe, Col. Jeffrey R. Nance is a disgrace to the uniform. And just like Mueller and Rosenstein deserve their own Special Counsel, "Judge" Nance deserves his own court martial.

AP: "Prosecutors cited two missions that resulted in wounds, including a soldier whose hand was shattered by a rocket-propelled grenade and another who suffered a head wound that put him in a wheelchair and rendered him unable to speak. A Navy SEAL suffered a career-ending leg wound, and a military dog was killed by an insurgent firing an AK-47.

The judge ruled that those firefights would not have happened if not for Bergdahl.

One of the wounded soldiers, Jonathan Morita of California, still doesn't have full use of his dominant hand after bones were shattered when he was hit by an RPG, which didn't explode.

Asked by phone about his reaction to Bergdahl's sentence, he said: "I've had had better days."

He added: "The dishonorable discharge means he can't receive any of these services like I can. He'll pay the fine like people get fined for illegal fishing. OK, whoop-de-do."

Referring to the lack of prison time, he said: "That's the one that's completely unacceptable. It should have maybe not been the life sentence, but it should have been something."".......

Moana Democrats: "Identity Politics Above All!"

Even If It Kills You

"I used to joke a few years ago that 'Allahu Akbar!' is Arabic for 'Nothing to see here', but it's actually evolved now. I now think it's Arabic for 'Nothing can be done'. The governor of New York, the mayor of London, the prime minister of France all tell their citizens you have to get used to being blown up and run over."--Mark Steyn

Democrats demanded that Disney produce more ethnically-diverse characters as role models. Then, when Disney complied by producing the Polynesian "Moana", they complained that little white girls who wanted to dress as Moana for Halloween were racist--and their parents. Like a cranky three year-old throwing a tantrum, there is just no pleasing these Democrats.

And while we face life-and-death issues of public policy, Democrats are focused on Halloween costumes and the True Threat to the Republic: Klan princesses prowling the streets of suburbia in search of candy.

If only they felt as strongly about terrorists.

The New, Improved Sarsour/ de Blasio World Trade Center Memorial Bike Path
Helmets Mandatory!

After the Halloween Truck Terror Attack, pedestrian Jake Tapper got some pushback.

Ace of Spades: "CNN: He Said "God Is Great."

.@CNN -he was NOT yelling “God is great”, take that OUT of quotation marks. #DoYourJob @jaketapper @cnnbrk #NYC pic.twitter.com/eRJsKtqHuo
— Jenn (@JennJacques) October 31, 2017

i really have no idea what you're objecting to. We said what he said in Arabic and provided rough translation.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) October 31, 2017

I'm pretty sure Americans have by now learned at some great misery what "Allahu Akbar" means, and I'm not getting why Jake Tapper thinks he needs to "translate" a direct reference to the Islamic god into a generic god who might be worshipped by anyone.".......

Don't translate for us, Jake; we already don't trust you in English.

In fact, "Allah Akbar" means "Allah is the Greatest God". It is a statement of Islamic Supremacism.

In fact, the phrase is not from the Koran, but in a hadith which glorifies a Jewish genocide.

Democrats can detect White Supremacism is a little girl's Disney costume, but their race-dar radar goes blank when a Islamist killer screams a death chant while speeding down a bike-path using pedestrians as human speed bumps.

Steyn: Jihad on the Bike Path

"So two hours after the attack, Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and other New York bigwigs assembled for the usual press conference to give the usual passive shrug - this is the way we live now, nothing to be done about it, etc, etc. Every so often in New York, as in London as in Stockholm as in Berlin as in Nice as in Brussels as in Paris as in Manchester as in Orlando, your loved one will leave the home and never return because he went to a pop concert or a gay club or a restaurant or an airport, or just strolled the sidewalk or bicycled the bike path. "Allahu Akbar"? That's Arabic for "Nothing can be done". So Andrew Cuomo ended with some generic boilerplate about how they'll never change us:

We go forward together. And we go forward stronger than ever. We're not going to let them win...We'll go about our business. Be New Yorkers. Live your life. Don't let them change us.

But they are changing us. I've written before about what I've called the Bollardization of the Western World: the open, public areas of free cities are being fenced in by bollards, as, for example, German downtowns were after the Berlin Christmas attack, and London Bridge and Westminster Bridge were after two recent outbreaks of vehicular jihad. This is a huge windfall for bollard manufacturers - Big Bollard - and doubtless it's a huge boost for the economy, if your town's nimble enough to approve the new bollard plant on the edge of town, or if your broker is savvy enough to divest your tech stocks and go big on the bollard sector. As I write, Geraldo is on Fox demanding to know why this bike path wasn't blocked off with concrete barriers.

Why? Why does every public place have to get uglified up just because Geraldo doesn't want to address the insanity of western immigration policies that day by day advance the interests of an ideology explicitly hostile to our civilization? Instead Geraldo wants to tighten up vehicle rental. Why? Why should you have to lose an extra 15 minutes at an already sclerotic check-in counter because Hertz and Avis and UHaul have to run your name through the No-Rent list? Why should open, free societies become closed, monitored, ugly, cramped and cowering?

And now eight people are dead and dozens more injured - at the hands of a guy who came here in 2010 because he won a Green Card in the so-called "diversity lottery". Why was that stupid program not suspended on September 12th 2001?

Because even 3,000 dead cannot be allowed to question the virtues of "diversity".

[W]e're assured that an Uzbek or a Somali or a Yemeni becomes a fully functioning citizen of a free, pluralist society simply by setting foot on western soil. That's not so. And the price of maintaining the delusion is blood on the pavement.

And so, on a buckled, broken bicycle on the Hudson River Greenway, the wheel comes full circle.

America and every other major western nation thought the appropriate response to 9/11 was to show how nice we are by dramatically increasing the rate of mass Muslim immigration. Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov was among the many beneficiaries of the west's suicide by virtue-signaling. "Sayfullo" is a Central Asian rendering of "Saifallah" - or "Sword of Allah". Hmm, what a fascinating name! Do you think whichever brain-dead bureaucrat who gave Sword of Allah's online Green Card application the once-over (assuming anyone did) so much as gave the name a second glance? And so, because we did not take an act of war seriously in 2001, we are relentlessly harassed and diminished by unending micro-jihad - in Copenhagen, in Toulouse, in San Bernadino, in Calgary, Barcelona, Parsons Green ...and now on a bike path 300 feet from where we came in sixteen years ago.".......

Note to Jake Tapper: A man named "Sword of Allah" was invited to come here and kill while screaming that his namesake is Supreme, a chant first hurled at victims during a previous genocide. Translate that for us, Tapper. At least NBC is on the case:

Steyn: ""Muslims Fear Backlash from Tomorrow's Terror Attack"

"NBC's headline ['Muslim Americans Again Brace for Backlash After New York Attack']is actually saying, 'We care more about a hypothetical attack on Muslims that never comes, we care more about that than, say, for example the five dead Argentines being scraped off the pavement in lower Manhattan,'" Steyn said. "And that is actually a narcissistic and decadent intrusion upon the real news story...
"I don't know where they are having dinner tonight, but let's say Cuomo and De Blasio, whatever restaurant you are in- if you walked in and yelled "Allahu akbar," they would dive under the table like everybody else," Steyn insisted. "They understand the distinction but they are committed to framing this issue in a way that assures there will never be strategic clarity about what is going on."

I thought Governor Cuomo's remarks about New Yorkers' "resilience" - for going to work and going to school today - in particularly poor taste when five Argentines are going home in coffins. The dead had been enjoying a 30th anniversary school reunion, so the slaughter has not only blown a hole in their friends' future but also in their past, in all the school reunions to come with the classmates who aren't there.

Nevertheless, Cuomo is just applying the same repulsive strategy seen in Paris and London and Manchester, dignifying as "resilience" what is really an enfeebled passivity no better than the Eloi in H G Wells' The Time Machine, who even as their neighbors are stolen by the Morlocks in the night forget them instantly and gather in the dawn to dance and arrange flowers as if nothing has happened. Free peoples need to recover some righteous anger, or they will lose their futures - and deserve to.".......

Democrat officials in their Halloween disguise as "serious grown-ups"

The American Spectator:

"Seeking to absolve themselves of any responsibility, the assembled hacks cast Saipov as a “lone wolf” whom no one could have seen coming. Never mind that the FBI had once interviewed him about his terrorist connections. According to media reports, two suspected terrorists under investigation by the FBI and Homeland Security had listed Saipov as their “point of contact.” Some lone wolf.

Vigilant government officials uncowed by political correctness could certainly have seen him coming. A perfect storm of liberal idiocy made his terrorism possible, starting with the “diversity lottery program” that mindless multiculturalists in Congress started to ensure that foreigners who hate America had a shot at citizenship too.

It is now known that Saipov attended a mosque in Paterson, New Jersey that de Blasio prided himself on protecting from NYPD scrutiny. Before de Blasio, the NYPD used to send plainclothes detectives into it and kept an eye on new arrivals from ethnic Islamic communities.

But the agitprop Islamic activist Linda Sarsour had cast such mosque monitoring as “psychological warfare in our community” and convinced de Blasio and Bratton to shut down what was called the “Demographics Unit.” John Miller joined in this propaganda, dismissing the program as unnecessary. City officials treated Sarsour as the toast of the town, bestowing upon her various honors. Mayor de Blasio pronounced himself “deeply troubled” by the monitoring of mosques and described the dismantling of the program as a “critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve.”

All of the inane chatter after Tuesday’s terrorist attack — that Saipov was “self-radicalizing,” that he represents “no wider threat,” that he is a “lone wolf” — is exactly what you would expect from a political class unwilling to take the problem of Islamic terrorism seriously. After all, if he is “self-radicalizing,” what can they do about it? And if he is just a lone wolf who has now been caught, why not resume life as normal? Besides justifying passivity and invigilance, these rhetorical deflections are designed to whitewash Islam, to make its violent branches seem small and insignificant.

Cuomo and de Blasio have spent more time deriding Trump for his anti-Islamic “bigotry” than taking steps to prevent Islamic terrorism. After Trump in 2015 said that it “was a mistake” for New York City to end “surveillance going on in and around mosques,” de Blasio called him a “blowhard” and asked, “Who are you going to trust on security and keeping people safe? Bill Bratton or Donald Trump?” He also rejected as fanciful Trump’s claim that some Muslims in New Jersey had cheered the 9/11 attacks. Trump’s comments look prescient now. According to investigators, Saipov chose Paterson, New Jersey, as his landing spot after his stints in Ohio and Florida because of its radical Islamic community.".......

And the profoundly unserious and frankly insane Moana Democrats insist everything is just fine. We need to keep on doing exactly what we're doing. We don't need to change anything.

Except your daughter's grass skirt. Racist.

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” 3 Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler And from the perilous pestilence. 4 He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. 5 You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, 6 Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. 8 Only with your eyes shall you look, And see the reward of the wicked. 9 Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, 10 No evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; 11 For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. 12 In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone. 13 You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot. 14 “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. 15 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation.”

The Prodigy

“…What has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…. Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace.”--John Quincy Adams on the foundation of American Foreign Policy, 1821