The White House confirmed Monday that they were sending “about” four CV-22 Osprey aircraft and up to 150 special operations air force personnel to Uganda.  The Osprey is the tilt rotor aircraft that flies like a plane but takes off and lands as a helicopter.  The plane only costs about $70 million per plane.  Their mission:  assist local forces in fighting the Lord’s Resistance Army.

I didn’t recall us having troops in Uganda.  I was wrong.

We first sent 100 special-forces to Uganda in October, 2011.  Obama announced the movement in a letter to Speaker Boehner.  In the letter, Obama stated that even though the troops “are combat equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces.”  Obama stated that deploying these troops “furthers US national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution to ward counter-LRA efforts in Central Africa.”

It seems our own Congress voted on and passed the Lord’s Army Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in 2010.

The LRA leader, a Joseph Kony likes to forcibly induct young boys into this army.  They rape, pillage, and burn, committing atrocities where ever they go.  The mission then:  “remove from the battlefield, Joseph Kony.”  (That means capture or kill.)  Now, we are sending another 150 troops and $280 million worth in planes.

Anyone else see the mission creep that just happened?  First, we were to assist local forces in fighting the LRA (leading from behind).  Now we are to remove this guy from the battle field.  We are not assisting anymore.

This, sports fans, is how we get involved in foreign lands doing more than we can, with less than we should, without a clear mission or mandate from the host.  This is how our Soldiers get killed and our resources spent without any return on investment.

Can someone explain to me any serious strategic interest we have in Uganda?  Sure they make coffee, cork, and export some precious metals.  They are landlocked, so there is no port of use.  Theirs is a fertile land and properly cultivated could solve many of Africa’s starvation problems.  I’m not so shallow to believe that this is the underlying mission as set forth from this administration.  I think he was looking for some low-hanging fruit and we’ve just learned that this crop has spoiled on the vine.  We have to dig deeper into the tree to find freshness.  Barry is all too happy to do that—with someone else’s hide on the line.

Look at any retailer—the signs in the store, any ad, most closed-captioned TV shows, hell, most items in the grocery.  Everything these days is bilingual—English and Spanish.  Why is that?  Are Hispanics the only other ethnic group here?  Hardly.

In fact, the largest ethnic group in the United States is called—White American,  Whites are the majority in 49 of the 50 states, with Hawaii being the lone exception.  The District of Columbia (which is not a state) has a non-white majority.  (The money is doled out from here, so surprise cannot be a real factor.)  Non-Hispanic whites are the majority in all states except California, Texas, New Mexico, and Hawaii.  I’ll give everyone just one guess what country borders all three of the continental states where whites are not the majority.  The Non-Hispanic white majority decreases every year.  (Imagine that.)

Let’s look at how census takers self-identified.  Most said they were German-American, followed by Irish-American.  From central Europe, the largest group identified themselves as Polish, and the largest group from eastern Europe said they were Russian.  Only 47 million of the 2008 census population identified themselves as Hispanic.

Why are the signs we see daily not in German?  Why not Polish or Russian?  Only about 12% of the population identifies as Hispanic, so why do we print everything in their native language?

Now, I know that when someone goes to vote or to the DMV, they can request an interpreter in just about any language or documents to be printed in their native tongue.  But my hotel (I’m on a business trip right now.) greeting book is in English and Spanish.  The signs in stores (Target, Wal-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot) are all in English with Spanish beneath.

We cater to the Spanish speaker.  Why is that?

I have neighbors in many ethnicities.  Until recently, I had two neighbors from South Africa.  The primary language there is Afrikaans.  They learned English just to come here.  I had neighbors from Russian.  Obviously, Russian is their native tongue.  They learned English to immigrate to here.  In Mexico, the official language is Spanish.  They don’t have to learn shit to come here.

We enable them to come here and continue in their own subculture.  We make every other ethnicity learn English but allow the Spanish speaker to continue blissfully along.  When we went on vacation to Italy, the entire menu was not in English.  There may have been a portion of it that was.  But we had to figure a large part of it out.  When we went to Germany, the language in many cities was not English.  I had to rely on my knowledge from eighth and ninth grade German classes.  We had to adapt.  Spanish speakers here do not.  We must think they are too stupid to learn English so we adapt ourselves to their language.

Wouldn’t that piss you off?

With ever increasing regularity, lawmakers are beginning to wonder if there should not be some stipulations attached to receiving government assistance.  You think?  I’ve been saying this for over two decades.  It really chaps my ass when I see someone in line at the grocery buying “staples” (milk, bread, cheese, eggs, meat, etc.) with food stamps.  Then they buy the cigarettes and booze with a wad of twenties thick enough to choke a horse.  Then they have the groceries walked out to their car and loaded into the rear of a new Lexus or Escalade.  Oh, and while the food is being rung up they are on a new Galaxy S37 while I reboot my two year old RAZR.

If you drive a luxury car and/or talk on the latest whiz toy, you probably do not need food stamps and are bilking the system.  Doing it in front of me only adds a slap to the face.

Often times, the situation is more dire.  Food stamps or the electronic funds card is sold for hard currency in order to buy drugs.  Some in Congress wants to mandate that you are drug tested before being given “your” monthly allotment.  Naturally, the feeble among the legal minded sideliners cry out against a Fourth and Fifth Amendment violation.  Taking bodily fluids without consent violates the Fourth.  Making them doing so knowing that they are “hot” self incriminates which violates the Fifth.

What these cretins get wrong is the assumption that the taking and testing of fluids to check for drug use will then be passed off to law enforcement for prosecution.  I have not heard a single advocate for drug testing say this was their plan.  They simply want to test for the use of drugs before the person taking government assistance gets paid to do it some more.  Trust me, if they are stupid enough to do drugs, they’ll get caught on their own without a separate government agency “setting them up.”  So their argument is invalid.

This argument is just as stupid as the one the left makes about voter ID laws.  It is somehow disenfranchising minority voters by making them prove citizenship before allowing them to punch chad holes into a ballot.  Huh?  They can’t afford it, the left says.  You are singling them out, the left says.

These are the same people who, no doubt, have to show ID in order to pick up their government food stamps and other welfare payments.  If they fly anywhere, they have to show ID.  If they cash a check or make a payment by check, they have to show ID.  In many stores and bars, they have to show ID in order to buy liquor or cigarettes.  At theaters, people are often carded to prove age.  When I go to my doctor, I have to show both my Kaiser card as well as my ID.  When I use my credit card, many vendors want to see an ID to make sure I am the person whose name is embossed on the card.

Last year, Attorney General of the United States, Eric “lower the drug conviction penalties” Holder held a conference on the inconveniences minorities experienced in the voting process.  In order to gain entrance, attendees had to what?  Yes, show ID.  People have to show ID for any multitude of daily activities.  Showing ID to vote only enhances the purity of the process.  And THAT, boys and girls, is where their problem really lies.

See, minorities who are receiving hundreds to thousands per month in subsidies they didn’t earn, paid to them by people whose money it is not, tend to vote for those people paying them.  Why upset the applecart?  Lyndon Johnson is credited (wrong word?) with the quote, “I’ll have those n****** voting Democrat for the next 200 years.” His method?  Lock them into a dependency on government payouts.  And it has worked.

Bin Laden has been dead for almost three years.  There floats around on the internet a picture of his death mask, almost certainly a fake.  I have a copy on my phone, certainly.  I hope it is real.  I hope it is what he looked like at his death because it looked like he was in a lot of pain.

Now comes along another theory as to why we won’t release actual photos.  Those dirty, nasty, criminal, psychopath SEALS fired endless magazines of ammunition into his body.  The turned him into some sort of Swiss cheese burping out 55 grain slugs like some strange exhaust.

Of course they did.  See, it is standard procedure to keep shooting at a supine figure long after the weapon is removed from their hands and it is clear he is no longer sucking in air.  At least for the SEALS, it must be.  These are the best trained, most capable, highest disciplined tool in our kit.  And to a man on this raid, they are all going to pump 30 rounds in to him and then keep their mouths shut.

See, it’s the PTSD.  Once you “catch it” you can’t stop yourself.

Author of the article, Jack Murphy, himself a veteran and according to his bio and Ranger qualified, sniper SF operator, diminishes the tip of our spear, their accomplishments and his own by opining such rubbish.  Stick to your fiction, Jack.

I watched some footage today of Vladamir Putin signing some decree.  It was in the midst of this Crimea thing, but it could have been file footage from anything.  There he was sitting at his desk.  No crowd of onlookers, no little boy who needs health care, no speaker of the house looking like a grinning ghoul with a face so stretched it might burst.  Just Vlad sitting at his desk and using a single pen signing the document.

Look at anything Obama signs into law but particularly signature pieces of legislation.  For the farce that has become and still is Obamacare, he used 22 pens, one for each letter of his name.  It took him a minute and a half to sign his damn name.  And the pens?  The run about $140 each.  So $3080 tax payer dollars spent so that he can feel even better about himself by giving the pens away.

Does the pen that made the “O” have more value than the other letters?  Pretty soon, I bet you’ll find plenty of them on Ebay.

If you look at pictures of the signing you’ll also see that the box housing the pens is exactly the right size for all 22 pens.  Now 22 is an odd number.  Pens do not come in that quantity; usually 12 or 6.  So the ornate, polished, and felt lined box had to be custom made as well.  More money down the toilet.

The thing is, everything is a ceremony for this guy.  He invokes himself into everything.  Moochelle does too.  I was watching the premier showing of Cosmos on Fox (Fox!) the other day.  Great show full of computer graphics and theories about the start of the universe.  There’s Barry introducing the show.  How many times has he been on the View?  Who watches that show, anyway?

Moochelle had to have an episode of The Biggest Loser.  Barry injects himself into all sorts of legal issues from Trayvon Martin (“if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”) to the Henry Louis Gates fiasco where he said the “Cambridge police acted stupidly.” before any serious facts of the case were established.  Oh, and in that scenario, when the officer, Gates, Obama and Biden got together for a backyard beer?  Who helped the elderly Gates down the steps?  Yes, Officer James Crowley.  Biden and Barry are walking ahead oblivious to the struggles of the elderly Gates on his cane.

Obama thinks the world is his stage and everyone on the planet are members of his personal audience.  We’re supposed to watch in awe as he makes decisions and clap in amazement whenever he mounts those steps at a measured trot.

Got news for you, buddy.  The world has figured out that you are far more actor than leader.  You are out of your depth and do not have the resolve, stomach, back bone (pick your example) for making tough, sound, strategic decisions.  More sanctions are expected against ole’ Vlad by Barry.  Of course, Putin will be in Kiev before Obama finishes signing the document.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai says that Afghanistan does not need US troops to stay beyond the currently agreed upon departure date at the end of 2014.  He stated that his country’s forces are fully trained to be able to repel any foreign invaders.  He included any Special Forces operators in this unequivocal renouncement of any dependence on the US.  He also reiterated again that he will not sign a pact already negotiated and agreed upon between our country and his country’s ruling tribal leaders.  This pact would have allowed for a token force of human targe… er… Soldiers to train his military and operators to hunt and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban.  If we want to bring peace to Afghanistan, we should attack Pakistan, he says.

I say, give him what he wants.  He wants us out, let us leave.  We do not have to wait until the end of the year.  He will not be in power by then and will certainly blame the fall of his country on either his successor or the US (likely both).  If we left now, we could be gone before their elections and he could preside over the demise of his backward country.  He’ll likely use the attacks that will come as a catalyst to return to power against their own constitution.  But hell, he has learned from our own leaders that the Constitution is but a mere tool to gain and retain power.  We can use the parts we like and trounce on the parts we do not.

Does anyone really think he is going to simply move out of the presidential palace and go back to his mud hut in the Karz region of Kandahar?  No, he is going to take the billions of US tax payer dollars he has siphoned from our military and economic support and retire to a villa in France or some other posh resort where people overlook his rancid traits because he pays them well.

Nope, I say expedite his wishes.  Let’s get the fuck out of there using a scorched earth process.  The first thing scorched?  The poppy fields which produce the ingredients needed for the production of heroin–their chief export.  We leave nothing we built intact and erect.  No vehicles, no trainers, no spare parts, no caches of ammunition, weapons or food.  And the last thing we take?  Our aid.  Not a damn dime.  The first thing we deny? Technology.

“The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of    iron, copper,  cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so     many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”

The deposits were discovered in 2010 by a team Pentagon officials and American geologists.  Not Afghan officials or goat farmers from local villages.  Americans.  There are wide veins of gold, copper, iron ore, oil, lithium, and coal.  Estimates of their value range from one to three trillion dollars and could easily propel Afghanistan away from a country producing heroin to one rich in industry and high paying employment.  But they are not going get that shit out of the ground with their farming hoes and sheep switches.  No, you need drills and other heavy moving equipment–shit we have a lot of and build more of.

We went there and saved his ass and his country’s.  And this is gratitude?  Fuck him.  And anyone like him.

If you don’t buy health insurance you will be fined (not taxed).  Period.  That is, unless you won’t be.

Since the implementation of ObamaCare (remember, not a single Republican voted in favor–this is a wholly Democrat sponsored bill) there have been 13 separation exemptions approved and added for sectors of society (individuals) to not have to buy health insurance.  These include people who are homeless, people who have filed for bankruptcy, people who have experienced a fire or other financial emergency.

This broad swath of exemptions already includes millions of people.  They don’t have to buy insurance.  But they also will not be denied health care.  They show up to the emergency room and are treated.  The E.R. doctor or triage nurse takes the place of their Primary Care Physician.  So who pays for it?  You and I do.

These exemptions were extended conveniently to be in effect until when?  After the mid-term elections in 2016, of course.

Now, there is a new exemption that actually was added quietly back in December.  This exemption includes those people who have or will lose their insurance because it was one of the “old, outdated” policies that did not meet the minimum standards for inclusion into the health care law.

How does one apply for the new exemption?  Simply state that you lost your insurance and can’t find an affordable one in the exchanges.  The change to the law (illegal, as it is) does not define what “hardship” means either.  If someone is claiming the exemption be reason of a hardship, they are encouraged (not required) to submit documentation, “if possible”.  The exemption even applies to people who live in one of the states that opted to not extend Medicare eligibility.  That sounds like discrimination to me.  Why should someone be fined for not buying insurance just because their state is more financially solvent than another?

HHS Secretary Sebelius defends the law saying that, “It’s been really aimed at people who could not afford coverage one way or another.”  Wait a minute.  I thought we were supposed to cancel our cable and cell phone bills in order to afford ObamaCare.

Once the individual mandate is loosened to the point of no longer being a mandate, does not this law lose its main purpose?  There will not be enough people buying insurance to keep premiums down for everyone else.  The whole house of cards is about to come down.  I, for one, look forward to a reshuffling of this particular deck.

So, in mid-February of this same year, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein goes on record defending the NSA and their intelligence gathering methods.  These included scooping up data on private phone calls made from citizens without their knowledge, consent, or a warrant.  Feinstein said it was important for the public safety that the government agency be able to continue this practice.

A month later, Feinstein is complaining that the CIA is breaking the law by possibly, POSSIBLY spying on a computer network designed for Congress and their staffers.  She is using the network to dig up dirt on President Bush (still?) and the enhanced interrogation techniques used in what was formerly known as the War on Terror.  (We’ve rebranded it as Man-Made Contingency Operations.)  She claims the CIA is spying on their work and thwarting it where they can.  She is against this type of digital surveillance.

It is fine when the government spies on you.  She’s not so big a fan when it might, MIGHT be happening to her.

This is the same Senator from California who is against private citizens owning those scary black rifles known in the media as “assault rifles”.  Yet her own team of armed body guards practice continually not against a known or perceived terror threat, but against an angry citizen threat.

She is just a classic example of the political elite class who dream up, draft and enact laws the limit your abilities and liberties while exempting themselves from their strictures.

2013 budget $525.4 billion.  (Preparing the report for the budget request and printing it cost $34,000).

Overseas Contingency Operations (those pesky wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) is another $88.5 billion and is not part of the “real” defense budget.  (This was always part of the problem.  We never raised taxes to pay for the wars or asked the citizenry to sacrifice in any way to finance them.  We just borrowed more money.)

2012 budget $530.6 billion, with OCO budget of an additional $115.1 billion.

2011 budget $528.2 billion plus OCO budget of $158.8 billion.

The DoD has learned from prior draw downs that it is impossible to generate the savings they seek by just becoming efficient.  They have to get rid of programs.  Personnel costs account for 1/3 of the budget.

In 2014, this ratio jumped to one-half.  Somehow–unexplained.

Here is where the numbers and math start to go fuzzy.  (Fancy talk for “They are lying to you.”)

See, the real budget for 2012 was $530.6 billion.  The proposed budget was $570.7 billion.  $40.1 billion higher.  The proposed budget for 2013 was $525.4 billion.  They tell you they cut the budget by $45.3 billion.  Quite a savings, yes?  But they only cut $5.2 billion in real dollars.  You can not count the $40 billion that you didn’t get (and thus did not spend) as savings.

Once the “contingency operations” end are we going to claim another $85 billion in savings?  I mean, we simply borrowed that money from China.  If you stop borrowing money, it the reduction in expenditures really a savings?

One of the ten missions we were supposed to focus on with the reshaping of our drawn down forces was to “deter and defeat aggression”.  Another was to “provide a stabilizing presence”.  Sure.  Ask the Ukraine how we are doing on those two fronts.  Compare these to the four missions in the 2014 budget proposal.

1. Act as good stewards of the public funds.

2. Implement and deepen program alignment to the new defense strategy.

3. Create a force that is ready across a spectrum of missions.

4. Keep people central to our plans.

Not a word about being able to defeat enemies, defend the homeland, protect allies, maintain global military supremacy.  These sound like the feel good goals and a mission statement for a marketing firm.

Now here is the kicker.  The defense budget request is for $526.6 billion, and increase of only $1.2 billion.  However, secretary Hagel is seeking to cut 70,000 troops.  That is a minimum of 2 Army Divisions.  We only have ten active divisions.  He is also seeking to eliminate the A-10 aircraft, the best close air support platform ever flown.  The U2 spy plane is a victim to the budget as well, even though it has been around for fifty some years and is still quite a capable SIGINT and photographic intelligence collection platform.  It times time and fuel to redirect a satellite.  A plane sortie can be planned in hours.  The Navy is not immune.  They are looking at losing an aircraft carrier with its air wing, a nuclear sub, three destroyers, three support ships.  The Air Force will have to retire its entire fleet of KC10 tankers as well as some of the Global Hawk drones (a cheaper plane that could also do the U2 mission.)

With a force this much smaller, with this many fewer ships, planes, and people, why is the budget proposal larger–even nominally?  Should it not be radically smaller?  Where is the stewardship for the public funds?

Obamacare–the most illegally changed law in history.  The premise of the law was to provide lower cost health care to all, even free to some.  The 26-million citizens touted to not have any health insurance for whatever reason were supposed to be able to get affordable health care because of the law.

Negotiations on what the bill would include (and cost) were held in private sessions, not open to public viewing or scrutiny.  In the end, not a single Republican voted for the law.  Not one.  But having the majority in both houses of Congress, they were able to pass the law “so that we could see what was in it.”

It seems there was a lot that Congress and the president didn’t like.  As of November 2013, there have been 27 changes to the law.

They exempted themselves and their staff from being subject to the law.  I guess it is not as good as they make it out to be if they want no part of it.  Instead, they get to keep their “Cadillac plans”–that you and I subsidize, of course.  They changed the mandatory enrollment date–the first one.  The system was not ready to accept enrollees, plus there just wasn’t anybody in a hurry to sign up.

There was language in the law that stated specific changes could NOT be made.  Like the employer mandate.  This was a hard, iron-clad rule.  Until it was changed–in direct contravention to the law.  There was a rule about having to prove one’s income since the applicant got higher subsidies the lower their income was.  They took this out so that the government took the applicant at his word what his income was.  Think anybody gamed the system?

I thought this was supposed to be the perfect health care system, providing for all?  Instead, it was just a power play–a grab by the government to take over a sixth of our economy so they could tax it to have a cash cow to pay for every other social program they can dream up.

Statistics from the other day revealed that of the millions who did not have insurance before the law, 90% of them still do not.  They have not bothered to sign up.  Many of the uninsured are also not technically savvy and do not even know what all they law could do for them.  Of the 10% who have signed up, half of them have not paid their premiums.  So, we gone through all of this shit for 5% of the target audience.  A 2-3 trillion dollar expense that the middle class will pay for– for what, a million people?

And now, now that the mid-term elections are on the horizon, Obama has decided to change the law–illegally–again by delaying the individual sign up mandate until after the 2014 elections as well as allowing people to keep insurance plans that do not meet the minimum requirements until when?  You got it.  Until after the election.

This is not how laws work.  the president does not have the legal authority to do what he is doing by the stroke of a pen.  Why he is not being challenged is just another example of how weak willed our elected leaders are.

http://www.galen.org/topics/at-least-27-significant-changes-already-have-been-made-to-obamacare/