Just so I’m understanding this here: a cowardly politician who flees the state to keep from doing his taxpayer-funded job is just like a brave soldier being shipped off to a war zone where he/she may not return home alive.  Got it.  Thanks for the clarification, you douchebag.

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s crackdown on Bay State gardening clubs for failing to file financial disclosure forms has left some green thumbs fearing arrest – and many sore at the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

Linda Jean Smith, president of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, has been besieged with calls from frightened, angry members after a prickly Jan. 4 letter from Coakley’s office declared many of them were breaking the law for failing to file their financial records for the past four years.

“One club president asked me if she was going to be led away in handcuffs,” said Smith, adding that many members are in nursing homes or in Florida. “These ladies are confused.”

Way to aim for the little old ladies demographic, Martha.

Coakley supports a pullout of Afghanistan, and now we see why: Having a presence in Afghanistan only diverts us from the real threat here at home.

Exit question: If she gets elected to the Senate, should I notify her or DHS about my neighbor who grows magnolias in his back yard?  He kind of creeps me out, you know.

“You guys make a pretty good photo op,” the president said.

And there you have it…

What’s worse than lying?  How about not knowing who our enemies are in a shameless attempt to demoralize our troops and lose the war that left swore must be won?  Details:

Bowing to the reality that the Taliban is too ingrained in Afghanistan’s culture to be entirely defeated, the administration is prepared, as it has been for some time, to accept some Taliban role in parts of Afghanistan, the official said. That could mean paving the way for Taliban members willing to renounce violence to participate in a central government — though there has been little receptiveness to this among the Taliban. It might even mean ceding some regions of the country to the Taliban…

Obama kept returning to one question for his advisers: Who is our adversary, the official said.

Hint: the adversary is not George Bush!

For those of you who voted for Chairman Zero: Congrats on saddling this country with a vaginal orifice for a commander-in-chief.  I just hate that you had to jeopardize the rest of us normal Americans with you.

To quote the great Vincent Gambini from My Cousin Vinny: “Everything that guy just said was bull$h!t.  Thank you.”  Details:

Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.

There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”

Refreshingly honest, no?  A leftist admits that the left doesn’t really like or support the military, but considering the public as a whole adores the military, then said leftist knows that his side must pretend to love and support the military, too.

As I was crafting my retort, I read Ace’s take and decided to quote him instead, since his take is much more eloquently stated that my own:

You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?

You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?

We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.

Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.

If you voted for B.O. in part because you honestly thought he was more commited to Afghanistan (which, before now, was the left’s “war that must be won”), I’ve got some swampland I’d like to sell you.

A BBC news girl attacked TV yesterday for failing to show viewers the Taliban’s “humanity”.

Presenter Lyse Doucet’s astonishing statement comes as an Apache gunship hero revealed the fanatics aim to capture a British soldier and SKIN HIM LIVE on the internet.

Military Cross winner Ed Macy — whose book Apache is serialised in The Sun from today — tells how an intelligence officer gave details of the Taliban butchers’ sick plan.

It made Army Air Corps Warrant Officer Macy and his comrades even more determined to rescue a mortally wounded Marine from a Taliban stronghold — which they did with four soldiers strapped to the outside of two Apaches.

But BBC World News correspondent Doucet claimed the public also want to seeing the kinder side of the Afghan extremists.

Asked what was missing in media coverage, she said: “It may sound odd but the humanity of the Taliban, because they are a wide, very diverse group of people.”

Canadian-born Doucet, 49, told the Edinburgh TV festival: “Some would like to talk to the British Government. Some of them don’t want to be fighting British troops. Some of them would. This is the ideological Taliban.”

Doucet, with the BBC since 1983, also criticised the reporting of Prince Harry’s Army service in Afghanistan.

She said: “You knew the bombs were dropping and the guns were pointing in that direction but you never got a sense of how Afghans are as a people.” …

Unfriggingbelievable!

Sen. Barack Obama has not been a fan of private police like Blackwater in war zones, and some news outlets even reported that they were spurned for his trip last week to Afghanistan and Iraq. But Whispers confirms that Blackwater did handle the Democratic presidential candidate’s security in Afghanistan and helped out in Iraq. What’s more, Obama was overheard saying: “Blackwater is getting a bad rap.” Since everything appeared to go swimmingly, maybe he will take firms like Blackwater out of his sights, the company’s supporters hope.

Must not have been “the Blackwater I knew”!

AM I the only one who’s noticed the silence? Mere months ago, left-wing bloggers and demonstrators were wailing Support our troops, bring them home! seven days a week.

Now their presidential candidate has announced that he won’t bring all those troops home, but will simply transfer combat forces from Iraq to Afghanistan – expanding that war. (He’s discussed possibly invading Pakistan, too.)

And the left’s quiet as a graveyard at midnight.

Where are the outraged protests from MoveOn or the DailyKos? I thought the extreme left felt sorry for our service members in harm’s way and wanted to reunite them with their families.

What happened?

We all know exactly what happened. The left has nothing against foreign wars (as long as they don’t have to fight in person). They just want to pick our wars themselves.

The problem with Iraq wasn’t that America toppled Saddam Hussein, but that George W. Bush did it. I’ve been saying it for years: Had Bill Clinton done the job, the left would’ve celebrated him as the greatest liberator since Abraham Lincoln. …

Hit the nail on the head with that one, didn’t he?  Think about it: Bosnia was kosher for the left, since the Clenis was the one prosecuting it.  Sure, there were no American interests involved, but by golly, if the Chief Diddler of Portly Interns said it was needed, then that’s all we peasants needed to know!

If we had a “Most Offensive Quote of the Day” every day, Joe Biden would probably come to own the prize. But even by the senator’s lofty standards of chronic obtuseness, he outdid himself this afternoon:

“If John (McCain) wants to know where the bad guys live, come back with me to Afghanistan. We know where they reside. And it’s not in Iraq.”

I know Democrats get a certain tingling in their thighs when their politicos talk butch (“talk butch”…I love it! LOL! – Ed.) in such a manner, but this comment is so over the top, somewhere in America Wesley Clark is probably feeling much better about his public relations acumen. What’s more, Biden’s comment turns what ought to be a serious conversation about two vital foreign theatres into a juvenile schoolyard taunt.

I have a suggestion for the senator: Perhaps he could bring his newly benign assessment to our soldiers who are serving in Iraq and the veterans who have served there. It would surely come as a huge relief to our soldiers currently in Iraq that their work has suddenly become “bad guy free.” Perhaps Biden should also bring his crass bad-guy-appraisal to the attention of all of the Iraqis who have stood by us and who, like our soldiers, have given and still are giving so much for that nation’s freedom. …

But hey…Plagiarist Joe “supports the troops”, right?

Worse news for the left: We’re winning the war on terror on every front.

Sorry ’bout that.

Also seriously wounded in the fighting was the conventional wisdom that we are losing in Afghanistan and that operations in Iraq are making it easier for the Taliban to regain power.

Heh.

A Taliban spokesman says the house of Taliban leader Maulvi Ubaidullah was targeted in a suspected US missile strike; at least 14 dead.
…
Villager Ibrahim Khan said local Taliban leaders had gathered for a feast at the targeted house, and at least 15 people were killed. 

My muckrakers “invesitgative in-the-field journalists” from the Crush Liberalism Objective World News Service (CLOWNS) were able to make up out of whole cloth transcribe the final festive moments before Ubaid-bom-ba-ba-bom-a-dang-a-dang-dang-a-ding-a-dong-ding-doo-Blue-Moon was dispatched to greet his 72 grapes:

Ubaidallah:  Ibrahim, pass the goat.

Ibrahim:  Here you go.

Ubaidallah: No, not the live goat!  The one on the silver platter at the end of the table!

Ibrahim:  Sorry, man.  I thought you were ready to satisfy your loins.  I thought it odd to do that at the dinner table, but hey…different strokes for different folks.

Ubaidallah:  Anywho, never mind that.  I propose a toast!  To Ahmed, who risked capture by the infidel forces so he could do Allah’s work and blow up that girl’s school across the canyon.  Salut!

Ahmed:  You’re too kind, my friends.  Fortunately, I was able to wash off the blood from those seven-year-olds before the feast tonight.  I got my monthly bath out of the way, too, so there’s that.

Ubaidallah:  Excellent! You always were the clever…(pauses)  Did you guys hear something?

Ahmed:  It may have been my stomach.  I ate a bit too much couscous for lunch, and my gut’s been rumbling ever since.  But worry not, for I still have room for the goat and falafel on the plate in front of…

Ubaidallah:  Shhhhhhh!  I’m serious, brethren!  Don’t you hear something?

Yasser:  OK, fine, I farted!  Geez, you have impeccable hearing.

Ubaidallah:  No, that’s not it! (pauses, looks out the window)  Hey, why are all of the villagers running into their huts?

Mahmoud:  Isn’t “American Infidel” on TV right now?  Man, that Sanjaya sure can belt out…

Ubaidallah:  No, that’s not it!  I could have sworn I heard a…(pauses)  Aw, sh…KABOOM!

At this point, the transcript ends, but I think CLOWNS did a wonderful job bringing the final moments for Ubeedoobie and his pals to you. 

ABC News’ David Wright and Sunlen Miller Report: Sporting a shiny new American flag pin at an appearance in Rush Limbaugh’s hometown, Sen. Barack Obama came up with some novel reasons why the U.S. may be struggling in the war in Afghanistan.

“We don’t have enough capacity right now to deal with it — and it’s not just the troops,” Obama, D-Ill., told a crowd in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Obama posited — incorrectly — that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan — forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don’t speak Arabic.

“We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan,” Obama said.

The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.
Naturally they speak the local language. In Iraq, that’s Arabic or Kurdish. In Afghanistan, it’s any of a half dozen other languages — including Pashtu, Dari, and Farsi.

No sooner did Obama realize his mistake — and correct himself — but he immediately made another.

“We need agricultural specialists in Afghanistan, people who can help them develop other crops than heroin poppies, because the drug trade in Afghanistan is what is driving and financing these terrorist networks. So we need agricultural specialists,” he said.

So far, so good.

“But if we are sending them to Baghdad, they’re not in Afghanistan,” Obama said.

Iraq has many problems, but encouraging farmers to grow food instead of opium poppies isn’t one of them. In Iraq, oil fields not poppy fields are a major source of U.S. technical assistance.

There are other infrastructure problems both countries share that U.S. advisors have struggled to address — a lack of safe roads, schools, adequate electricity, etc. — but Obama did not mention these.

Obama’s overall point may well be true: that U.S. efforts in Iraq have come at the expense of the battle against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Still it’s not asking too much to expect the man many say will soon be the Democratic nominee to cite the right facts to back up his thesis.

Facts?  The left doesn’t need no stinkin’ facts!  They’ve gone this long without facts, so why change now?

Barry O’s team responds with righteous indignation, and in the process, keeps tasting their Reeboks:

…This poorly researched and written piece is inaccurate in that it just completely ignores the need for Arabic translators in Afghanistan, and the need for agricultural specialists in Iraq. It is irresponsible to report such issues so matter-of-factly without checking out the actual facts. …

The “the need for Arabic translators in Afghanistan”?  The author didn’t let that nugget of ignorance go unanswered:

As for the point about Arabic translators needed for Afghanistan, the Obama campaign points to the well-documented presence of foreign fighters there, many of whom do speak Arabic. However, these folks are mostly shooting at NATO troops, not talking to them.

Then again, dude wants to negotiate with terrorist nations like Iran.  Such a predisposition towards lethal naivete would explain this Freudian slip.

How much more proof do you need before coming to the only reasonable conclusion, that the dude is an empty suit?

We’re going to inherit so many challenges from President Bush.  When you think about it, we have two wars, not one.  We don’t talk about Afghanistan enough.  We’ve got two wars.  We’ve got to end one, we’ve got to win the other. 

Got that?  We need to win the war in Afghanistan, but not the one in Iraq.  Got it.  Thanks for the clarification.

But hey…they “support the troops”, right?

IN A PAGE-ONE STORY published Sunday, January 13, 2008, “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles,” the New York Times reported on homicides by veterans of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seven Times reporters contributed to the lengthy story, which was co-authored by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez.

The Times “found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.” All but one case involved male veterans. They speculated that their research “most likely uncovered only the minimum number of such cases, given that not all killings” were “reported publicly or in detail,” and because “it was often not possible to determine the deployment history of other service members arrested on homicide charges.” 
…
The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and other veterans’ advocacy groups are absolutely correct that not merely “many” but the vast majority of veterans not only remain completely law-abiding but go on to lead stable and productive personal, professional, and civic lives. Assuming 121 homicide cases in relation to 749,932 total discharges through 2007, 99.98 percent of all discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have not committed or been charged with homicide.

And assuming 121 cases and 749,932 total discharges, the homicide offending rate for the discharged veterans would be 16.1 per 100,000. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has demographic data aplenty on homicide offending rates. For instance, in 2005, for white males aged 18-24, the rate was about 20 per 100,000. The Times opined that 121 was the “minimum” number, even as it counted veterans charged but not convicted with veterans tried and found guilty. Doubling the number to 242 would double the rate to 32.2 per 100,000.

Such crude but contextualizing calculations aside, the right question to ask is whether the veterans, other things being equal (controlling for age, race, gender, education, income, prior criminal history, and other variables), offend at rates that are significantly different from otherwise comparable groups (including groups that have an extreme PTSD incidence). Without doing the relevant statistical (multiple-regression) analyses with all the requisite empirical data, it is impossible to say. 

Borrowing on that line of reasoning, I am likely to go postal on someone, since I’ve been to Memphis. In 2005, Memphis had a population of 672,277 and had 153 murders. That comes out to roughly 22.76 murders per 100,000…higher than the 16.1 murder rate of the “wacko-vets come home” rate. I’m a ticking time bomb. So don’t p#ss me off!

Nope…no liberal media bias!

My guess is the Taliban and al Qaeda will be begging NATO to send more troops, hell they might even chip in some money. I mean if you were a terrorist thug, who would you want hunting your ass down, some Scandi guy in a soldier suit or a US Marine? 

Semper Fi.

The news is stunning. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will announce that, “in a bid to end the war in Afghanistan,” he will begin negotiations with the Taliban. The quote from the “senior source” merely adds an exclamation point to it all.

The change of tack will be seen as the latest attempt by the prime minister to distance himself from the foreign policy of Tony Blair and his ally George Bush.

In a landmark statement in the Commons he will say that the Cabinet has agreed a three pronged strategy for Afghanistan which will [include] security guaranteed by NATO and the Afghan national army followed by economic and political development in the country.

The third prong of the plan is likely to be most controversial — to engage Taliban leaders in constructive dialogue.

A senior source said last night: “We need to ask who are we fighting? Do we need to fight them — can we be talking to them?”

Do we need to fight them? Do we need to fight them??? I am at a loss for words. Stunned.
…
Expect al-Qaeda’s propaganda machine, relentless in engaging the Information War, to bat this out of the park in short order. Recall that bin Laden’s latest message to Europe was a reminder of Russia’s futile struggle in Afghanistan. This, for him and for furthering his message in the region, serves to help bin Laden bolster the parallel.

One prays that Mark Steyn was not more right — and sooner — than we care to admit.

Yet, on the other hand, I prefer to be alone than anywhere near the new British policy.

Is it so inconceivable to end a war by winning it?

General Petraeus, if you have some free time in the relative near future, sir . . . 

Here’s how a negotiation with terrorist regimes go:

Good guys (for those of you on the left, that would be the US and its allies): So what do you want?

Taliban: Yes. Trust us (*snicker*snicker*)!

Why didn’t we try this a long time ago, right?  For those of you on the left, the prior sentence was sarcasm.

Every major daily paper in New York took note of President Bush’s decision to bestow the first Medal of Honor of Operation Enduring Freedom on Navy SEAL Lt. Michael Murphy – a Long Islander who gave his life for his country and his fellow SEALs.

Every paper but one, that is.

And it shouldn’t be particularly hard to guess which one.

By now, most folks know exactly how much The New York Times despises the U.S. military.

How it detests any mission that involves U.S. troops – whether to protect Americans by killing terrorists or to help stave off a bloodbath in the Middle East.

How the paper works tirelessly to promote its anti-war, anti-military agenda – even in its supposedly objective news pages.

So while Bush’s announcement merited stories and appreciative editorials in The Post, The New York Sun, the Daily News and even the front page of liberal Newsday, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that the Times didn’t publish a single word about Murphy’s well-deserved honor.

What did the paper of record focus on yesterday? No fewer than three stories reported on how Americans had killed innocent Iraqi civilians.

Regarding the war, of course, the Times’ “coverage” was pernicious long before the fighting began.

Since then, it has focused obsessively on the mistakes and sins of American GIs (Abu Ghraib, anyone?) – and rarely has it played up U.S. victories.

Indeed, it would be hard to cite a news outlet more responsible for sapping U.S. morale – and emboldening America’s enemies – than the Times.

But Murphy was a New Yorker.

He served with unusual valor and distinction in Afghanistan.

When Taliban militants ambushed his four-man team in 2005, he risked his life scrambling to an open spot to radio for help. He got his call through, but was later killed in the battle.

Surely even editors at the Times could have had the heart to report - if not honor – such courage and self-sacrifice.

Unless, of course, they’re so blinded by their disdain for America’s fighting men and women and their missions that they just can’t muster the decency to do so.

That must be it. 

One of their own, the first to win a prestigious (unlike the Nobel “Peace” Prize) award, and the Old Gray Hag can’t see fit to put it in their fishwrap?  You can be sure that had this guy been accused in a Murthaesque fashion of killing innocent civilians, the NYT would have been on that story like Jimmah Carter on peanut butter.

Nope…no liberal media bias!

Good grief…

U.S. fire scatters crowd after Afghan bomb: witness
By Noor Mohammad Sherzai

BATI KOT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – At least one U.S.soldier opened fire to scatter a crowd of civilians and police on Thursday after failed suicide bomb attacks on a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military and witnesses said.

A car bomb targeting a U.S. convoy in the village of Bati Kot, 15 km (9 miles) east of Jalalabad, killed the driver, two passengers and a nearby civilian, but none of the soldiers was hurt, the U.S. military said in a statement.

Afghan police securing the site in eastern Afghanistan were then attacked by an insurgent dressed in police uniform. He was killed by the police and coalition troops before he could detonate his suicide vest, the statement said.

To add to the confusion, a fire brigade vehicle speeding to the scene rammed into the U.S. and Afghan vehicles.

“I saw the fire brigade vehicle rushing to the area at top speed. Somehow its brakes failed and hit one police vehicle and coalition vehicles, then the Americans started firing,” said Reuters correspondent Noor Mohammad Sherzai.

So the premise of the article is that a witness saw at least one US soldier scatter a crowd around an Afghan suicide bombing by opening fire, and that one witness just happens to also be the author of the story.

Professional.  You can’t tell me that in the entire crowd with Sherzai couldn’t fine one single person to get a quote from aside from himself.

By the way, you gotta love how they make it sound as though the troop started firing into the crowd of police and civilians to disperse them.  We don’t learn until the end of the article that the soldier fired shots away from the crowd in order to break them up in case there should be another bombing. 

Nope…no liberal media bias! Not that this should come as a surprise from al-Reuters, the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” network.