Prepare For War

Corruptocrat, former First Lady, New York senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will officially announce, via video and social media, her intention to seek the 2016 Democratic nomination for president today.

The Hag is renowned for being a sham, aggravating and programmed in each and every response.  She’s absurdly inauthentic, as evidenced by her 2007 campaign bullshit speech about being “no ways tired.”  She is eternally conspiracy-minded and a brazen fabulist. 

She will attempt to divide the nation on cultural issues because she cannot formulate a cogent economic or foreign policy.  She will enter the election believing the “culture wars” to be the best and safest political ground for her. She will portray Republicans as engaged in a “war on women” in such a way that past efforts will look like a walk in the park.

The New York Post’s Michael Goodwin opines, “So far, something about Hillary does not seem right for the present, let alone the future. Aides have been discounting the early going as a false measure, and assuring backers that she’ll right the ship once she launches.”

“Perhaps, but she is taking on much more water than they had expected, and her margin for error is shrinking fast. The polls suggest there is a tipping point with voters and inevitable stumbles and scandals could make 2016 look like 2008.”

If you doubt there is a disturbance in the force, consider Saturday Night Live’s Cold Open last night:

Imagine There's No Substance

Original art by John Cox. More at John Cox Art

Appalling Rag Silent On Guilty Verdict Of Their “Dreamy Jihad Cover Boy”

We are still awaiting coverage of the guilty verdicts imposed on the “beautiful, tousle-haired boy with the gentle demeanor, soulful brown eyes and the kind of shy, laid-back manner that ‘made him that dude you could always just vibe with.’”

Checking the Rolling Stone website you won’t find a peep.  Same for their Twitter feed.

While there are those who oppose the death penalty, those same people should refrain from taking that stance in the case of Dzokhar Tsarnaev.  The same sense of resolve and justice the jury employed when they found him guilty on all 30 charges should be the benchmark as they deliberate the death penalty phase of his trial.

Tsarnaev is a baby killer.

Bill Richard sat on the witness stand 10 feet away from the man who murdered his 8-year-old son Martin.  According to a published report, Richard spoke with remarkable composure testifying, "I saw my son alive, barely, for the last time.  I saw a little boy who had been severely damaged by an explosion. I just knew, from what I saw, that there was no chance." 

He made a choice to leave his dying son’s side to help his daughter who still had a chance of survival.  He picked her up noticing her leg.  “She didn’t have it.  It was blown off.”

Mr. Richard shielded his son Henry’s eyes from the gore and boarded the ambulance with his injured daughter and traumatized son.  Moments later, his wife called to tell him his son Martin was dead.  “I know,” he said.

According to The Boston Globe, Tsarnaev looked away from the witness stand. He watched the images of the carnage on video monitors and saw the photo of Richard struggling to lift a barricade off his wife and children.

Richard still suffers hearing loss, but he showed a steely resolve on the witness stand. "I can still hear you," he told the prosecutor. "And I can still hear the beautiful voices of my family."

As I See It

On Tuesday morning following the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Game, the front page of The Wisconsin State Journal carried the headline:  Out-Duked.  The Herald Sun in Durham boasted:  Devils Take 5.

The Badgers were thought to be the team with more momentum going into the game having defeated the perfect 38-0 star-laden Kentucky Wildcats.  I listened to countless sports analysts like Jim Nantz, Greg Gumbel, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Clark Kellogg and Ernie Johnson, Jr. prattle on and on about their “predictions” for a Wisconsin win over Duke.

I understand, believe me I do, that there is widespread dislike for Duke.  There will always be haters. In an open thread at Ace of Spades, Y-Not wrote before the semifinal games last Saturday night, “True Americans will be rooting for the Spartans and the Badgers.  Just sayin’.” 

Die-hard Badger fan and blogger friend Steve, proprietor of Grandpa John blog, was nothing but a class act before and after the big game between the two schools.  He offered a correction to my brackets saying, “Sorry in advance for my Wisconsin drubbing North Carolina.”  Of course, he was right.  I had picked the Tarheels of North Carolina to advance to the Final Four against the Badgers.  When they lost I began rooting for Wisconsin because I, like so many others, dislike Kentucky (the second-most hated basketball team in America).

Monday afternoon, well before tipoff, Steve posted a comment asking, “Whatcha doin’ this evening?  It oughta be good, both teams are HOT!”  On Tuesday after Duke’s spectacular victory Steve wrote, “Congratulations! Duke did a great job. (Whimper, whimper.)”

This year’s tournament was filled with upsets and heroes and some of the most unforgettable moments I’ve ever witnessed.  It was heartbreaking to watch the hurt the Badgers felt when they lost.  One photograph told the story most poignantly.  It depicted all five Wisconsin players leaving the court with their hands on their heads in disbelief, confetti falling all around them, realizing their historic run in the tourney was over.

At the same time, Duke fans were euphoric.  I was among them.  I wanted to post an article here right after the game, but decided against it.  It would have sounded like bragging.  I didn’t want to do that.  Instead, I’ve waited a few days so that I might congratulate Wisconsin on a courageous game—a game that was hard-fought, physical, emotional and charged with electricity.  The basketball world may have wanted a Duke-Kentucky championship game, but what they got was a magnificent game played with tremendous heart.

Who knew the headband message “De5tiny” (the piece of tape the Blue Devil mascot wears across its forehead) would come true?

Nike Basketball tweeted this inspiring message:

Play for a legend. Win for the legacy. #justdoit pic.twitter.com/0A02bpLeUv
— Nike Basketball (@nikebasketball) April 7, 2015

By now the tears have dried for Kaminsky, Dekker, Koenig, Hayes, Gasser, Showalter, Jackson and Dukan.  It’ll be hard to put aside the disappointment, but years from now they will have a story to tell of how they won more games than any other in their program history.  It was a remarkable journey that was 74 years in the making.  They should be proud.  They were a formidable opponent.  It was “One Shining Moment.” 

The Dzhokhar is Guilty

On all 30 counts.

Flowing Curves Of Beauty

“Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.” ― Anaïs Nin

Happy Easter

As you celebrate Easter, may you be blessed with peace and happiness.

Farsi Farce-y

John Podhoretz’s piece at Commentary Magazine entitled “The Tricks Obama Is Trying To Play With The Iran Announcement” maintains that Obama’s tone of triumph in his Rose Garden statement Thursday afternoon “was mixed with sharp reminders that the deal is actually not yet done—and that is entirely the point of this exercise from a domestic standpoint.  The triumph signals his troops and apologists that the time has come for them to stand with him, praise the deal sheet and pretend it’s a deal, declare it historic and generally act as though the world has been delivered from a dreadful confrontation by Obama and Kerry.”

While Javad Zarif, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs was speaking from the dais in Lausanne, Switzerland the State Department issued a “fact sheet”.  Afterwards he tweeted this:

The solutions are good for all, as they stand. There is no need to spin using "fact sheets" so early on.
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) April 2, 2015

There is no evidence of a meeting of the minds on the fundamental elements of a deal the “fact sheet” purported to describe. Two days before, Zarif rejected the White House version of the deal alleging it misleads the American public.  According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Just hours after the announcement of what the United States characterized as a historic agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, the country’s leading negotiator lashed out at the Obama administration for lying about the details of a tentative framework.”

Abe Greenwald enlightens us with these tidbits:

Iran would be allowed to continue operating 6,100 uranium-enriching centrifuges for ten years. Experts agree that’s enough to fuel one nuclear bomb per year. Before the Obama administration began talks with Iran, United Nations resolutions had prohibited Iran from enriching uranium, period.

Iran is permitted to keep its underground enrichment facility at Fordow. The administration claims it will be transformed into a “nuclear, physics, technology, research center” that won’t enrich uranium for 15 years. But as Barack Obama has previously said, “We know they [Iran] don’t need to have an underground, fortified facility like Fordow in order to have a peaceful program.” 

Any nuclear deal would not be indefinite, but time-limited. John Kerry assured the American people that a deal would not include “sunsets,” but that’s precisely what these 10-year and 15-year limits are. Extending a deal would require that the Iranians choose to extend it. 

All American and European nuclear-related sanctions on Iran will terminate at the start of a deal, not in response to Iranian compliance. If this is true, it is a dangerous American capitulation: What incentive would Iran have for keeping up its side of the bargain? If Zarif is lying, it goes to show just how far from a good-faith deal we are.The framework includes only the vaguest of language about Iran’s responsibility to detail the possible military dimensions (PMD) of its nuclear program to date. This is important because without a baseline understanding of Iran’s nuclear weaponization efforts, the United States cannot accurately confirm any progress on this front.

The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer continues to demonstrate his naïveté and blindness to Tehran’s basic nature.  So desperate is he for a deal that he believes Supreme Leader Khamenei will amend his cry of “Death to America” to “Death to America for research purposes only.”

He reminds me of the model on The Price Is Right who accidentally gave away a car just hours before the Farsi Farce-y in the Rose Garden. 

Video: Statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Lausanne Talks https://t.co/njqobOdx75 #IranTalks
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) April 1, 2015

BREAKING: PM Netanuahu demands that every final deal with Iran will include Iranian recognition of Israel's right to exist

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 3, 2015

"How I Met Your Mullah" More Popular Than MSNBC

Unlike Mark Twain, reports of the death of MSNBC have not been greatly exaggerated. Mediaite says so.  Politico says so.  Even Deadline Hollywood says so.

Nope, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke.  More people are watching Al-Jazeera than the Many Stooges of the National Blowhard Channel.

Andrew Lack, the new NBC News Group chairman, hopes to create more news programming and less dour squawking and race-baiting.  So long as the network is closely tied to the administration of The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer it will continue its steep decline.  There’s a hole in the boat and the boat won’t float.

She Who Shall Not Be Named

On Monday, March 30, 2014 the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate was dedicated in Boston.  The $79 million institute was erected next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

The Who’s Who of the Democrat Party were all in attendance.  There was soaring oratory from The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer asking, “What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy?”

Ponder that question for a moment.  For years ‘ol Teddy was photographed in the Kennedy family’s beloved Hyannis Port looking like a tub of shit.

Teddy was one of three debauched sons of privilege (four, if you count Joe who was killed during World War II).  It was that very privilege which saved his neck from being convicted of depraved indifference in the drowning death murder of Mary Jo Kopechne.  After pleading guilty to leaving the scene of the “accident” he received a two-month suspended sentence and his driver’s license was suspended for one year.

The parents of Mary Jo refused to have an autopsy performed on their daughter due to fears that it would reveal she was pregnant at the time of her death.  They received a settlement of $140,904 from Kennedy and his insurance company.

For 40 years, from 1969 until his death in 2003, Joseph A. Kopechne was haunted by the knowledge that his daughter did not drown in Kennedy’s Oldsmobile but asphyxiated gasping for air.  She could have been saved had Kennedy reported the incident right away rather than waiting 10 hours to do so.  Mary Jo’s mom passed away in 2007 and said that Kennedy never told her he was sorry.

There were a handful of websites that provided a link to a piece at Vanity Fair written by Henry Rollins following the death of Kennedy.  The link is dead in every instance that I have tried.  It is important to note that Rollins consistently lobbed harsh criticism at conservative politicians and pundits so it came as a bit of a shock when he penned the following in the online version of Vanity Fair:

“…I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life. That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness? I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean? After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life? You wouldn’t forget about her, would you? That would be negligent.”

An article found in the Daily Mail describing the replica of his office included a photograph that rests on a desk that Kennedy once owned showing him with his grandchildren on a yacht.  I added a framed photograph of Mary Jo.

Liberals expect us to kneel in worshipful awe to their “Lion of the Senate”.  Kennedy was a drunken, lecherous aberration.  There was nothing heroic about the man. His grave should be pissed on and his “legacy” mocked often.