Miss This Guy Yet?

George Bush admits that his 700 billion bank bailout went against his free market instincts. I believe him. I also believe that the same can not be said of Obama in any way shape or form.

For a great post on what can be said about Obama, see Mark Hyman at the American Spectator, who wrote an epic post sure to make liberal heads explode: The Man Who Despises America.

Barack Obama despises America.

When people who voted for Obama in 2008 — including registered Democrats — start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it “in for America,” then it’s clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

The central conviction of Obama’s ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world’s ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.

The 30-years of Obama’s post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.

Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.

Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life’s accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.

Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader’s most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.

Read on as Hyman counts the ways Obama has shown his enmity of America. It’s a devastating account.

And now we can add the Obama administration’s bombshell decision to try the architect of 9/11 along with other terrorists on American soil.

Many people, including Democrats have sensed this antipathy, and they are becoming nostalgic for the Bushes… I see them  in my comment section…I read their posts online.

Caroline Glick said it most poignantly after she heard the news of the Bush’s visit to Fort Hood to comfort wounded soldiers:

When I heard the news, I felt this pain that hasn’t gone away. It’s a pain that I have been feeling fairly often since last November.

***

With everything going on in the world today, it is all but impossible for me to feel safe in a world where the President of the United States is a man who would never think of flying to Ft. Hood to be with wounded soldiers – not even with the entire national press corps in tow. And so I wake up in the middle of the night, with this pain, and I feel like crying when I think of how George and Laura felt so horrible about the massacre that they paid a quiet, private visit to the post to comfort the wounded warriors. For all that he disappointed me, I miss George W. Bush. I really do.

For all his imperfections, we knew that Bush truly loved his country, and we miss having that secure feeling of going to bed each night, knowing that the country is in the hands of a decent and caring man.

You can show your appreciation for George Bush by adding your own personal note to the list of Americans thanking George W. Bush for keeping us safe.

The organizers of this site are planning to present the comments  to George W. Bush’s Presidential Library on September 11, 2011. So far there are only 84, 443 people from around the world who have thanked the President. That’s pitiful considering the website has been up since January. We had more than that number attend one tea party in DC on 9/12.

RELATED:

Army says morale down among troops in Afghanistan

Smartest guy in the room on Afghanistan

The Politics of Fort Hood

Holder’s Hidden Agenda, cont’d

Andrew McCarthy fears the worst about the the Obama administration’s planned terrorist trials in Manhattan:

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America. Since that will be their “defense,” the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America’s defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

Baseball Crank: WAR: The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Lower Manhattan Reunion Tour

It’s impossible, really, to caricature this White House; even Josiah Bartlett didn’t run through this many liberal stereotypes in his first season. Obama needs new writers. Blow up the World Trade Center and kill 3,000 Americans? Jail! Don’t buy health insurance? Jail! Win the Nobel Prize for doing jack squat. Travel to Copenhagen to beg and grovel unsuccessfully for the Olympics, and pledge to go visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but blow off traveling to Berlin to commemorate the victory of freedom over Communism (then give a tepid speech on the subject that refuses to acknowledge Ronald Reagan). Commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland by unilaterally abandoning missile defense installations in Poland. Insult and disdain one faithful ally after another – Britain, India, Israel, Poland, Colombia, you name it – and cozy up to our enemies, with nothing to show for it – nothing to show for anything he’s done in foreign affairs. All but ignore democratic protests in Iran while supporting an illegal effort by Honduras’ president to stay on beyond the end of his term. Suddenly complain about corruption and electoral fraud in Afghanistan, while seeking the favor of Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Vladimir Putin – heck, Obama endorsed half a dozen people in Chicago more corrupt than Hamid Karzai. On and on and on we go, with President Apology constantly straining to run down his country’s record and talk up the propagandized view of history of its enemies. He’s taken more time to “evaluate” General McChrystal’s recommendations about Afghan policy than it took George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan and capture Kabul after September 11. It would be funny if it wasn’t tragically stupid and bound to get people killed. There is no mistake of our past that Obama is unwilling to remake.

If there’s an upside to all this, after months of watching KSM up close, even liberal New Yorkers may be ready to give Dick Cheney a medal.

That’s all I’m  sayin’.

 

Governor Perry: “The Obama Administration Is Punishing Texas”

Governor Perry charges that the Obama Adminisration, through the  Alien Transfer and Exit program, is dumping  illegal aliens, captured in Nogales, AZ on the border between Presidio, TX, and the Chihuahua desert. He thinks that most illegals faced with the decision of heading toward the Chihuahua desert, and Texas, are going to choose Texas, and the small town of Presidio is not equipped to handle the influx of people, (92 a day) that will be needing social services, etc.

Perry has been steadfastly opposed to the program, and believes that the Obama administration is punishing Texas.

He exhorts: “I say it’s time to make tea parties twice as big a what they were”!

“This is an administration hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”

Hat tip: Breitbart T.V.

Obama To Purge Republicans From The Civil Service

I swear to God, all of our worst fears about this man keep getting fulfilled nearly every day.

Erick Erickson at Red State says “This is what happens in third world kleptocracies and totalitarian regimes.”:

Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy.

You can read the OPM memo here.

It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires — usually at the conclusion of one administration. What often happens as well is Congressional staffers, before an election or shortly thereafter, will move over to the Executive Branch placed into the civil service, in effect, by appointment.

So, for example, when George Bush became President in 2001, a number of Clinton political appointees became civil service employees. As a result, they became subject to civil service hiring and firing rules, which meant they could no longer be replaced simply for having been a Democratic appointee.

Barack Obama is changing that. He intends to purge all Republicans from the federal bureaucracy retroactive to five years ago.

Much more at Red State.

Does Obama even care at this point that his popularity ratings are falling? People are slowly waking up to the fact that we have a radical in the White House. This will only reinforce that notion.

UPDATE:

Rush addressed this issue on his show, today, comparing the Obama administration to Venezuela’s  Chavez administration:

Video via Gateway Pundit.

“This is what Marxists do”.

MORE:

Erickson thinks that the recent leaks that have come out of the Pentagon, State Dept. and CIA may be spurring this on:

The Obama administration is increasingly exasperated by leaks of national-security-related information and is planning a major effort to root out and punish those responsible, top officials said Thursday.

ACORN Sues Feds Over Defunding

You’ve got to be kidding me. They were only defunded for *one month. The outrage is that the federal government continues to fund a blatantly partisan political outfit masquerading as a nonprofit. Why would they want to draw more attention to themselves…especially in the courts? Jake Sherman at the Politico, reported:

A non-profit organization filed a lawsuit against the federal government Thursday morning, seeking to overturn a law stopping the flow of federal funds to ACORN.

The suit, filed in federal court in New York, claims that bills passed by the House and Senate to defund the group qualify as bills of attainder, legislation that unfairly targets one group. Such bills are unconstitutional.

The suit will seek to restore funding and roll-back the ban, which was passed as part of the legislative branch appropriations bill in September.

ACORN claims that the legislation was of “malicious and punitive intent.” The suit also claims Congress violated the Fifth Amendment by skirting due process before doling out the punishment of the funding cut. OMB Director Peter Orszag and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are listed as co-defendants in the suit.

ACORN has repeatedly claimed that  the money it receives from the federal government is not essential to its existence, which of course begs the question…why take these extraordinary measures, then?

The organization that filed the lawsuit, The Center For Constitutional Rights claims:

“It’s not the job of Congress to be the judge, jury, and executioner. We have due process in this country, and our Constitution forbids lawmakers from singling out a person or group for punishment without a fair investigation and trial. Congress, as well as individuals and organizations must abide by the rule of law.”

*Correction: If this report from Byron York is correct, the ACORN funding ban is continuing through December.

Hat tip: Jackstraw

More at Big Government

Related:

Speaking of lawsuits…guess who’s right in the middle of a Staten Island imbroglio involving ACORN and a defeated Dem candidate for City Council?

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

A coalition of community groups, ACORN has been ensnared in controversy over hidden-camera videos and other incidents that have spawned law enforcement probes.

Levenson, ACORN’s national spokesman, said it was a “true sign of political immaturity to scapegoat anyone for Janine’sloss.”

The two sides had a meeting in Levenson’s Manhattan office, last week, which turned ugly with police eventually being called in. No arrests were made.

Big Government has more on this one, too.

Obama To Hold “Job Summit” In December

He should have done this back in February, instead of the disastrous “stimulus package”…now it’s too little, too late. Fox News reports:

President Obama took time Thursday — before jetting off to Asia for a 10-day tour — to announce a December jobs summit aimed at synching job growth with the massive government spending meant to “break the back” of the recession.

The announcement came as the Labor Department reported another 502,000 new jobless claims, two high-tech mainstays announced big layoffs and the unemployment rate reached 10.2 percent.

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups “to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again.”

Yael T. Abouhalkah at the Kansas City Star thinks it’s a “silly” idea, and explores the real reason for such a move:

The idea — announced Thursday — looks self-serving and too late now. The better time for holding one would have been about six months ago — before the nation’s unemployment rate rose above 10 percent.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that Obama is puffing up the idea now because he realizes the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. In other words, even though the economy is improving on many fronts, job losses have continued.

But that fact is likely to turn around in the next three to six months. So if Obama can hold a “jobs summit” and, in a few months, crow about all the jobs suddenly being created, he can take credit for that fact.

As Rush just said on his show (paraphrased).… a lot of talking, and no action…it’s what community organizers do.

John Boehner issued this statement on his House blog:

Boehner on Jobs: No More Stunts, Time for Solutions

GOP Leader: “Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs’ but all they are getting from out-of-touch Washington Democrats is more spending, more debt, and now, more talk.”

The nation’s jobs crisis demands immediate action, which is why Republicans sent a letter to the President last month reiterating our common-sense solutions to help small businesses create jobs and get the economy moving again.

“Washington Democrats’ half-hearted approach to the jobs crisis pales in comparison to the fierce urgency with which they rammed through Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2,000-page government takeover of health care. As a matter of fact, Speaker Pelosi recently hosted a similar ‘summit’ with the same economists who helped create the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that has failed to create jobs immediately as the American people were promised. Unsurprisingly, that PR stunt failed to produce the bipartisan job creation plan out-of-work families struggling to make ends meet are looking for.”

NOTE: Last month, House Republican leaders sent a letter to the President urging him to consider common-sense solutions to help put Americans back to work. These proposals, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups. The Economic Recovery Solutions Group, led by Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), is also developing additional proposals to spur job creation.

Hoffman Still Has A Remote Shot In New York-23

Dang it. After hearing about the voting machine glitches on election day, I remember thinking that Hoffman had conceded too early, but I didn’t want to say anything at the time…

Now, it turns out that Owens’ lead was not as great as was thought due to those glitches, and Hoffman campaign officials are saying that with more military and absentee votes to be counted, they may have conceded too early.

Syracuse Post-Standard reports:

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession — based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted — set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

***

“I don’t know if we would have conceded on election night,” Rob Ryan, Hoffman’s campaign spokesman, said Wednesday while discussing the latest results of the recanvassing. “I’m someone who doesn’t like to look back. But would we have taken longer to make a decision on election night? Probably, if we knew it was only 3,000 votes making the difference.”

Ryan, while acknowledging that Hoffman’s chances of pulling off a come-from-behind victory are still remote, said the campaign is looking at its legal options.

“We’re basically watching and waiting,” Ryan said. “We’ve been looking very closely at the recanvass. We’re going to see how this week shapes up, and then we’re going to determine what to do.”

Ryan said an important factor in the decision to concede was the unexpected — and erroneous — close vote in Oswego County, where polls had Hoffman with a double digit percentage point lead heading into Election Day.

“That’s the thing that threw us off,” Ryan said.

The race will be decided by the 10,200 absentee ballots that were distributed, including thousands of military and overseas ballots.

As Jim Geraghty has noted, “it would be really tough to make up a 3,000-vote margin in a three-way race among 10,000 absentee ballots”.

But not impossible. Stay tuned.

UPDATE:

Ed Morrisey throws cold water on the whole thing:

Now that Owens has taken the oath of office, the count of absentee ballots is technically moot.  The House would have to reject Owens in a floor challenge in order to seat Hoffman instead.  That’s even less likely than Hoffman winning the election with a 3026-vote gap prior to the absentee ballot count.

Sooo…pretty close to impossible.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

Egad…NO

Did Nancy Pelosi actually say that she’s confident that she’ll have a health care bill as a “Christmas present to the American people”?

No…she wouldn’t that obtuse…would she?

She would?

OMG.

Hat tip: Breitbart T.V.

Lou Dobbs Quits CNN

The “strong winds of change” have buffeted Lou Dobbs right out of his job at CNN:

Transcript of his announcement, here.

The notoriously “cute“, Allahpundit linked to a John Fund article from November 15, 200 7, which he hints could hold the key to Dobbs’ future plans:

Lou Dobbs for President? Don’t laugh. After months of telling reporters that he “absolutely” would not consider leaving his highly-rated CNN show in which he crusades against free trade and illegal immigration, Mr. Dobbs posted a commentary on his Web site last week predicting a surprise new presidential candidate in 2008. The mystery candidate is an “independent populist . . . who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites.

The other theory is that he will soon be joining Fox.

Verrry interesting…it reminds me of when Sarah Palin quit her post as Governor of Alaska…totally unexpected, apparently due to  external upheavals, and with hints of great things to come….

2009 Weblog Awards

Oh, in case you’re wondering about the 2009 Weblog Awards widget on my upper left sidebar… it’s that time of year again. In fact, they’ve been taking blog nominations in the different categories since November 2.

Nice Deb has been already been nominated (yes, I nominated myself) in the Best Very Large Blog category, if you can believe that. I can’t. I keep thinking that my Technorati “authority” score is a mistake, because it jumped up substantially, earlier this year. But as it stands, I’m now in “Best very large blog”. ….Sooo, you can go over and give me  thumbs up, if you like. Or not. I don’t think it makes that much difference.

The master list of categories is here, so you can nominate all your favorite blogs, (including your own).

 

Fort Hood Massacre Quotes of the Day

First place has to go to the inimitable Ann Coulter:

Before shooting up a medical facility on that Army base, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar.”

While Hasan gave a shout-out to Allah before shooting, President Obama gave a shout-out to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow” before getting around to mentioning the massacre on the day it happened.

President Obama’s response to abortionist George Tiller was “I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller.”

President Obama’s response to the slaughter of 13 Americans by a Muslim at a U.S. military installation was to instruct Americans not to “jump to any conclusions.”

There was a risk that right-wingers’s would start playing the old “Blame The Perpetrator” game.

Ya gotta love that woman.

A close close second, Patterico:

When Greenwald characterizes as “repellent” the claim that shouting “Allahu Akbar” suggests terrorism, he is engaging in the same sort of political correctness that caused military brass to turn a blind eye to Hasan’s extremist support of Muslim terrorism.

Which is to say, it’s attitudes like Greenwald’s that helped Nidal Hasan kill 13 people at Fort Hood.

But at least it gives him a little frisson of self-righteousness to accuse others of religious bigotry. And in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?

Jonah Goldberg wrote a thoughtful piece at NRO, addressing this conundrum: What to do about a problematic religion, when pointing out the problems makes things  worse?

The problem with formulating a serious public policy based on the assertion that Islam is the problem is that you guarantee Islam become even more of a problem. It’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. Right now Islam is both problem and solution. If we decide on one, we foreclose the possibility of the other. People who say Islam is The Problem often overlook the fact that there are millions of Muslims who are peaceful, do not support terrorist Jihad, and so on. If all of a sudden you claim their faith in and of itself is a threat to us, you push them toward the Jihadists. The Kurds in Kurdistan are Muslims, should we stop working with them? There are millions of moderate Muslims in Pakistan, should we send the signal that they are indistinguishable from the terrorists because they share the same faith?

David Horowitz has no patience for the PC, appeasement crowd:

This extremist said to an audience of doctors in university lecture (a military university no less) that those who do not believe in Islam should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

And liberals are too polite (too “politically correct”?) to notice. Actually it’s not polite that they are (they are actually quite rude) but in denial. And why is that? It is the same denial that progressives maintained through the 70 years of the Communist nightmare, denial that mass slaughters were being conducted by their Soviet comrades, that Russia and China were vast prison camps, and that the same fate awaited us in the West if we didn’t wage a cold war against their expansionist designs. It does sound familiar doesn’t it?

The only mystery is why progressives (so-called) like Tomasky and Fallows (and President Obama) should bend over backwards to protect medieval psychos — and I am speaking here of the tens of millions — of Muslims who idolize Osama Bin Laden, Hamas, and Hezbollah and embrace their genocidal agendas. There is only one possible answer to this question and that is that, to one degree or another, leftists regard America as the Great Satan and Israel as the Little Satan or believe at the very least that the policies of these two countries are the real cause of the violence against them.

Cal Thomas:

Suddenly, the issue of gays in the military doesn’t seem as important as jihadists in the military.

Veterans Day: A Tribute and Linkfest

A tribute the men and women who serve this Country, past present and future.

No matter who is in the Oval Office, the American people can sleep peacefully at night, knowing they are on the job.

Veterans Day Links:

IBD brings us some War on Terror Hero stories.

On PBS, tonight, The Way We Get By:

On call 24 hours a day for the past five years, a group of senior citizens has made history by greeting over 900,000 American troops at a tiny airport in Bangor, Maine. The Way We Get By is an intimate look at three of these greeters as they confront the universal losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living.

Date night! Free food for vets:

…to celebrate Veteran’s Day — next Wednesday, several major casual-dining restaurants — including Applebee’s, McCormick & Schmick’s and Golden Corral — are offering free food to the nation’s military vets and active-duty personnel, USA Today reports.

Outback Steakhouse is offering a free Bloomin’ Onion appetizer and a drink to vets and current military personnel on Wednesday. Krispy Kreme is giving away donuts, and even Home Depot and Lowe’s are getting in on the action offering 10-percent discounts to military.

Michelle Malkin: Veterans Day 2009

Another heart-felt thank-you from Atlas Shrugs.

Fox News:

For 90 years, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month has been a remembrance of those who served America in a time of war.

Saints and Heroes, a site dedicated to honoring veterans.

Right Wing and Right Minded: On this Veterans Day, we say thank you.

Rassmussen Reports:

This Veterans Day, 81% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. military. Thirty-six percent (36%) had a close friend or relative who gave their life for our country. A Rasmussen video report notes that 69% say that military service is good for young people.

Blackfive: Veterans Day – Part 1 – We Start With the Late Great Mike Royko

Mudville Gazette: Dawn Patrol – Veteran’s Day 2009

Villainous Company: Those Who Serve

Bob McCarty: Unexpected Emotions Surface on Veterans Day

Pundit and Pundette: Gratitude For Our Veterans

Up Hill Both Ways: When the Boys Come Home

A Year Of Happy: Veterans Day—a tribute from 1981

The Other Officer Who Took Down Nidal Malik Hasan

Did you know that there were two officers involved with the take down of Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan?  The MSM has only been focused on one of them, Fort Hood hero, Sgt. Kimberly Munley.  While I applaud the bravery of officer Munley, I wonder why the other officer hasn’t received the same amount of recognition.

Have you heard the name, Sgt. Mark Todd?

Me neither.

This piece from KWTX.com appeared on November 7th:

Todd, who’s assigned to the department’s K-9 Division, joined Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who was hailed as a hero Friday for her actions, in a firefight with Maj. Nidal Milak Hasan that lasted less than a minute Thursday afternoon.

The two officers responded within minutes of the report of the shooting.

Todd said Hasan started firing on him and Munley, who took cover behind a vehicle.

He said Munley left the cover to pursue Hasan, while Todd followed around the other side of the building.

Using her standard issue 9-mm Beretta, Munley exchanged gunfire with Hasan, striking him at least once, Fort Hood officials said Friday.

She was shot in legs and the wrist, said Chuck Medley, Fort Hood’s director of emergency response services.

When Todd looked around the corner of the building, he said he saw Munley on the ground and Hasan hiding behind a post firing at people who were trying to escape.

Todd said he fired five shots and Hasan fell.

He said he took away the wounded psychiatrist’s guns and then handcuffed him.

“We did just like we were trained to do…shouting commands and working as a team,” Todd said.

“We had no time to feel anything, just to react.”

Todd then turned his attention to helping injured soldiers.

“I felt so much for the wounded and the dead and their families,” he said.

And the AP via PoliceOne.com reported November 8th:

There has been confusion since Thursday’s rampage about whose bullets actually brought Hasan down. At first, Munley’s supervisor said it was her shot to Hasan’s torso that leveled him, but Army officials would only say that an investigation was under way.

Munley was down by the time he engaged Hasan, Todd said. He wasn’t sure if Munley had wounded the suspect, because “once he started firing at me, I lost track of her.”

Todd said he fired his Beretta at Hasan. Hasan flinched, Todd said, then slid down against a telephone pole and fell on his back. Todd says he then heard bystanders say “two more, two more.”

At first he thought the soldiers meant there were two more suspects, but then he realized they were urging him to fire two more rounds at Hasan, thinking he was still posing a threat.

Todd approached the suspect and saw that he still had a weapon in his hand. Todd kicked away the gun, which he said had a laser-aiming device attached to it.

“He was breathing, his eyes were blinking. You could tell that he was fading out. He didn’t say anything. He was just kind of blinking,” said Todd.

Todd handcuffed Hasan and checked to see if he was still alive. “He had a good pulse,” said Todd. He also cut off pieces of Hasan’s clothes so he could get first aid and noticed Hasan had gunshot wounds on his side and back.

From the time he got to the scene until Hasan dropped was just 30-45 seconds, Todd said. “It was pretty intense. There was a lot of people shouting, a lot of people giving directions,” he said.

Munley, whose injuries weren’t believed to be life threatening, won wide praise after the incident. Facebook fan pages quickly sprouted up, with well-wishers cheering her heroism and crediting the officers with saving lives.

I think Sgt. Todd deserves a Facebook fan page, too.

Video: Ralph Peters On Deadly Political Correctness

I think we can put Ralph Peters in the “not psychological distress column” of pundit opinion on the Fort Hood Jihadist, Nidal Hasan.

Peters also made some interesting points in his piece in The NY post, today:

On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan’s medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.

Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word “terrorism,” needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan’s promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.

This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a “real” officer or an affirmative-action baby.

Affirmative action in the military. Brilliant. Another scourge on the nation we can thank libs for.

Also…how Peters wants to know how a guy making a six figure salary was living in squalor:

Meanwhile, the media try to turn Hasan into a victim. A sickening (and amateurish) Washington Post article portrayed him as a poor, impoverished minority living in a $320-a-month rathole apartment and driving a down-market car — as if the squalor made him a terrorist.

Squalor he chose to live in, by the way: As a major drawing added professional pay for his medical credentials, plus his benefits, Hasan made a six-figure income. And he was single, without college loans or medical bills. Has anybody asked where the money went? I’ll bet a chunk of it disappeared in cash donations to hard-core Islamist causes. Will a single journalist track the missing bucks?

We can probably count The Washington Post out.

Hat tip: Hot Air.

 

 

Krauthammer: “Political correctness is not just a moral abomination, it’s a danger”

Obama: “There are going to be instances in which an individual cracks”.

During his interview with Jake Tapper, this morning, Obama weakly tried to promote the theory that Fort Hood Jihadi, Nidal Hasan might have been suffering from a stress related disorder:

Well, look, we — we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable. Even within the extraordinary military that we have — and I think everybody understands how outstanding the young men and women in uniform are under the most severe stress — there are going to be instances in which an individual cracks. I think the questions that we’re asking now and we don’t have yet complete answers to is, is this an individual who’s acting in this way or is it some larger set of actors? You know, what are the motivations? Those are all questions that I think we have to ask ourselves. Until we have these answers buttoned down, I’d rather not comment on it.

Transcript via Gateway Pundit.

Charles Krauthammer, last night on Special Report, crushed the theory of “secondary PTSS”, calling the attempts to “medicalize mass murder” a “moral scandal”:

“Political correctness is not just a moral abomination, it’s a danger”.

And now we have a President of the United States, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, continuing to promote a bogus theory based on political correctness.

Just great.

 

Project Valour-IT USMC Birthday Edition

Good news from Cassandra at Villainous Company:

Two days away from the end of the competition, and on the 234th Birthday of the Marine Corps, the Marine team stands about $2000 away from our goal. We’ve worked hard, but we’re coming into the home stretch. I’d like to issue a challenge to all of you: let’s see if we can push the Marine team over the top today. With your help, I know we can do this.

Donations accepted, here!

Remember, it’s a great cause…Project Valour IT provides laptops with voice activated software to wounded soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen recovering at military medical centers all across America.

Today’s links:

Mind Numbed Robot ponders the meaning of “Semper Fidelis”:

“…the Marine Corps has never experienced a mutiny. Marines in England were revered for their loyalty to the crown, just as United States Marines are now revered for their downright fanatical dedication to each other, their service, and their country. Using Latin to characterize this quality represents its legitimization–its codification. Significantly, for Marines at least, it also provides a caste–a group that is separate and unique from any other–a group that has no desire to be like any other.What is left unsaid in the motto is also notable. The phrase is “Always faithful.” It isn’t “Sometimes Faithful.” Nor is it “Usually Faithful,” but always. It is not negotiable. It is not relative, but absolute.“

Jules takes a stroll through Hahvahd Yahd and finds a few surprises:

It’s always easy to poke fun at the World’s Greatest University across the Charles, all the more so in recent decades as, like much of academia, it sank in a wretched swamp of America-bashing leftism while continuing to survey the world down its superior nose.Did you know that Harvard can now boast no fewer than 16 Medals of Honor among its alums? Thanks to the efforts of some veterans who have long treasured their university’s military traditions and dug into military records and Harvard archives, the university can claim the highest known number outside the service academies.

Courtesy of Dr. Melissa, Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy.com gives a shout out to his fellow Marines.

No Sheeples has General Conway’s Birthday message.

The Marines have given a lot for us. Ercille has thoughts on how you can pay it forward. Bonus points for the dynamite Arty photos!

Speaking of which, the C-Square has page after page of wonderful photos of Marines doing what Marines do best. “Just keep scrolling”, as the saying goes.

Michelle Malkin rocks!!!

Mike the Marine’s Birthday video from 2008.

See also:

Drew at AoSHQ has a USMC birthday post up, as well.

MORE:

Mike the Marine’s Birthday video from 2008.

StixBlog adds birthday salutations! And a cool graphic, too:

Hope Radio sends their greetings!

Blatherings Blog offers a Birthday Toast from former Commandant General Louis H. Wilson.

Right Pundits salutes our Marine of the Day, Corporal Jason Dunham:

You can see a photo of Jason below, and watch the moving video of President George W. Bush awarding the Medal of Honor to Corporal Jason Dunham, USMC, posthumously.Ercille has more birthday thoughts – link- and history-rich!

Coalition of the Swilling weighs in on that long, unbroken line.

Jimmy sends his best. Back atcha, bro!

I am an unabashed admirer of the United States Marine Corps and those who have earned the privelege to call themselves Marines. One of my very good friends, about whom I’ve written before, is a Marine of the old-school vintage. I called him this morning, as I do every November 10th, to wish him a Happy Birthday and he answered his phone, as he does every November 10th, with “Semper Fi”. It’s not truly his natal day, but it is a birthday to him and I’m pleased to honor that, and his incredible service, with a phone call. It wasn’t a long call but I told him I missed not being able to spend as much time with him as I’d like and that I love he and his marvelous wife. When we hung up, I was smiling and I could hear the grin on his end, too. November 10 is always a good day for him.Remembering Cpl. Jason Dunham: Blatherings Blog has a tribute to Jason Dunham and video, too!