Hump Day Link-Around: 10th Anniversary of the Start of Iraq War Edition

Via The Washington Free Beacon: 8 Stories of Heroism from the Iraq War:

Early in the Iraq war, on April 7, 2003, ground forces ran into trouble on the North Baghdad Bridge. Enemy fighters had blocked the site, with allies advancing. A-10 fighter pilot and then-Capt. Kim Campbell was called in to provide air support. Campbell, call sign “Killer Chick,” deployed explosive rockets and scored a direct hit. But returning from that weapons pass, her A-10 sustained heavy damage. The jet rolled left, pointed toward the ground. Nothing Campbell did worked. She had lost all the jet’s hydraulics. At that point, Campbell flipped the jet into manual reversion—still with no steering, no brakes—regained control, flew the jet more than a 100 miles back to Kuwait, and became one of just a handful of people to land an A-10 manually. Lt. Col. Campbell was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for her efforts.

Continue reading all of the stories, here.

John Nolte asks at The Conversation: Why Aren’t the Bushies Out Defending the Iraq War?:

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the media would use the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War as an opportunity to try and cement the dishonest failure-narrative they crafted in 2004 to hand the presidency over to John F’n Kerry.

So why aren’t Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al. out in force pushing back?

Fox New Insider: 10th Anniversary of Iraq War Marked by Bombings, Making It the Deadliest Day This Year:

Insurgents in Iraq left a bloody anniversary message on the day that marks the 10th anniversary of the Iraq war. Today was the deadliest day in Iraq this year. Almost two dozen bombings left at least 65 people dead and more than 200 wounded.

10 years ago tonight at 10:16 p.m. ET, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. 1.5 million American troops have served in the war, 4,488 service members were killed, 32,221 service members were wounded, and more than 1,000 Iraqis died.

It has been over a year since U.S. troops left Iraq, but the country remains a bloody battlefield. Bret Baier reported that the death toll from today’s apparently coordinated bombings could still rise.

Weasel Zippers: What Sequester? Feds To Continue Funding Study On “Duck Penis Length”…

Let me guess… they’re very small?

(CNSnews.com) – The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $384,949 grant to Yale University for a study on “Sexual Conflict, Social Behavior and the Evolution of Waterfowl Genitalia”, according to the recovery.gov website.

 

Thank God this important work is still being done.

The Other McCain: S.C. Primary: Will Tea Party Rally Behind Curtis Bostic Against Mark Sanford?

Dana Loesch this morning expressed disappointment that disgraced former Gov. Mark Sanford finished first in the South Carolina GOP congressional special-election primary. But it’s a runoff state, and Sanford only got 37 percent of the vote, while former Charleston City Councilman Curtis Bostic was second with 13 percent in the 16-candidate field. There are only two weeks until the April 1 runoff and, as National Review‘s Jim Geraghty notes, the Republican establishment seems to be lining up behind Sanford, so . . .

What about Curtis Bostic? His campaign page is StopSpending.com — a basic Tea Party theme — and it seems entirely possible that the grassroots, tired of the corrupt GOP establishment’s old-boy style of politics, could rally behind Bostic.

Ace of Spades HQ: Kermit Gosnell: This Prosecution for a Dozen Murders is Nothing More Than a “Lynching”:

Moton sobbed as she recalled taking a cellphone photograph of one baby because he was bigger than any she had seen aborted before. She measured the fetus at nearly 30 weeks, and thought he could have survived, given his size and pinkish color. Gosnell later joked that the baby was so big he could have walked to the bus stop, she said.

He’s talking about killing babies the way hunters might talk about their biggest deer.

Another Gruesome Tale:He gave a fifteen year old a forcible abortion against her will.

The teen’s grandmother had brought her to the clinic. But she didn’t want the abortion herself. That didn’t faze Gosnell, who strapped her to the operating table.

Etc. Ace says the media is reluctant to cover the Gosnell story because it’s so grim and it puts abortion in such a negative light.  Another possible reason – – Gosnell is being tried for murdering babies born as the result of botched abortions – the type of babies Obama fought so hard to keep the state from protecting when he was a State Senator in Illinois.

The Conversation: Does Ted Cruz Really Oppose Multiple Sclerosis resolution?

As we know from past experience, those who earn that top spot don’t even have to do anything particularly  controversial for the media to go on the attack. The mere act of eating, drinking, breathing, or looking over bills before they pass them, is enough to inspire a blizzard of media attacks.

Consider these recent headlines from Wonkette, Raw Story, Daily Kos, and others in the left-wing fever swamps:

“Hero Senator Ted Cruz Will Death Panel Everyone With M.S.”

Ted Cruz: Multiple sclerosis commemoration is part of a Democratic plot to ‘malign’ me

Ted Cruz objects to Multiple Sclerosis resolution

Crazy Ted Cruz Opposes Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week …

Crazy Tea Party Guy Ted Cruz Opposes Honoring Multiple Sclerosis …

There’s much more, but you get the idea. What on earth are they talking about?

Michael Bates from Batesline looked into it:

Politico, at least, posted Cruz’s side of the story, albeit under the false and misleading headline, “Cruz opposes MS resolution.”

“The Senator, like many of his colleagues, will not grant consent to call up and pass a resolution or bill at the last minute without time for review,” spokesman Sean Rushton said in a statement. “The Texans who sent him to Washington expect nothing less.”After the story was posted about Cruz’s opposition to the resolution, his office pushed back harder.

“Senator Cruz does not oppose the substance of the MS resolution, and he never did,” his spokesman said. “Unfortunately, the sponsors of this resolution circulated their request for unanimous consent less than 48 hours before they wanted it passed. A member of Sen. Cruz’s staff–who herself suffers from MS–asked for time to review the language, and to perhaps suggest revisions to the language, as is typical. It appears that Senate Democratic staff, instead of working to ensure unanimous consent, instead decided to leak this story to try to malign Senator Cruz.”

Matthew Boyle, Big Government: House GOP Not Backing Off Fast & Furious Lawsuit Despite Media Claims:

House Republicans are standing strong in their pursuit of Operation Fast and Furious documents, The Hill’s Jordy Yager reports, undercutting a narrative the Department of Justice has tried to seep into the media.

President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege over the documents minutes before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted Attorney General Eric Holder into both civil and criminal contempt of Congress last summer. The full House followed up voting on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt shortly thereafter, spurning the current lawsuit against the administration for the documents. The DOJ has declined to pursue criminal charges against Holder.

“A fight over President Obama’s use of executive privilege on the documents that led to Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt charges is increasingly likely to be decided in court,” Yager wrote on Tuesday. “The way the court decides could drastically limit congressional subpoena powers — or curb the extent to which the president can claim executive privilege.”

Quin Hillyer, The American Spectator: The Labor Nominee’s Other Lies:

Thomas Perez is a multiple prevaricator.

When the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (henceforth DoJ) last week issued a report blistering DoJ’s Civil Rights Division, much attention focused on the IG’s recognition that division chief Perez, under oath, had “not reflect[ed] the entire story regarding the involvement of political appointees” in the now-infamous 2009 decision to dismiss voter-intimidation cases against several New Black Panthers in Philadelphia.

While this aspect of Perez’s dishonesty deserves all the attention it can garner (also deserving attention is the extreme dubiousness of the IG’s assertion that Perez’s lies about political-appointee interference were not “intentional”), it is far from the only example, from that very same testimony, of Perez pushing stories that were flagrantly false.

Perez came awfully close to perjury, and some might argue that he committed it, when discussing the far more important, broader issue that was the main focus of the IG report. (It boggles belief, by the way, that the IG never even discussed this untruth, considering that it so directly involved the larger substance of his report.) That broader issue was the question, fairly definitively answered in the affirmative by the IG, of whether the Civil Rights Division is a hotbed of hostility against the very idea of race-neutral enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws.

Michelle Malkin: Penny Pritzker: A Chicago Fat Cat for Commerce Secretary?

Will President Obama really nominate billionaire Chicago gal pal Penny Pritzker to head his Commerce Department? “It’s a done deal,” according to a White House source close to the Chicago Sun Times. As further confirmation, Pritzker resigned abruptly from the Windy City’s school board late last week. The crony fix seems to be in.

Taxpayers, beware. Pritzker is a deep-pocketed doyenne with a family history of dodging taxes — or siphoning them away from the public for her own family’s gargantuan private gain. If you want to see how she’ll oversee a $10 billion government agency, look at her own wealth redistribution record.

Most notoriously, Pritzker headed up subprime lender Superior Bank. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 mostly poor and minority customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. As I’ve reported previously, Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over a discounted $460 million settlement over 15 years after the bank collapsed.

Glenn Beck: Stopping The UN Gun Treaty:

Video: Illegal Immigrants “Dreaming” of Free Healthcare

Are they kidding me? Is this a bad joke? Because it isn’t funny…

Via Gateway Pundit:

Stand With Arizona reported on this latest movement:

A new ad campaign has been launched to extend medical coverage to illegal aliens in the state of California.

The California Endowment, a private foundation that advocates for affordable healthcare, wants county-run Medicaid expansion programs called Low-Income Health Programs to be “retooled” to provide insurance for this population – well over 1 million people!

Just what the people of California need, right? First they cut tuition assistance for citizen students by $1.2 billion.

Then they made illegal aliens eligible for in-state tuition and financial aid, with AB131 – signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

 

Check out this collectivist drivel:

California should not be a place that says some young people deserve healthcare and some don’t. Access to screenings and checkups helps people prevent problems before they start. When healthcare includes everyone, and we mean everyone, that keeps us all healthy. We’re in this together.

Check out #Health4all and help us spread the word that California’s health depends on everyone. Everyone. Learn more about us at http://www.calendow.org

It would never occur to me to move to another country illegally, and then demand free benefits. That’s takes a certain amount of brass cojones I simply do not possess.

Video: Scott Walker At CPAC: “True Freedom and Prosperity Comes Not From The Fist of the Government But From Empowering the People”

Here’s another video I took at CPAC 2013 of Scott Walker during his media availability after his Saturday morning speech, (which was one of the best speeches of CPAC, IMO.)

After expressing his objection to the idea that conservatives who want to reform entitlements, somehow don’t care about the poor,  he told the assembled reporters, “true freedom and prosperity comes not from the fist of the government, but rather from empowering the people.” It’s a positive message, and one that hopefully will resonate in 2014 and 2016.

The Washington Post reported that Walker would consider a run for president.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Saturday that he might consider a presidential run in years to come but that his list of priorities is very much focused on his goals for his day job.

“Someday, maybe once we get past all this, we’ll take a look at it,” Walker said in an interview with Post Politics at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington.

Walker noted that he has set goals for lowering the state’s unemployment rate and that he’s still got a reelection campaign in 2014. He said both of those will come before any conversations about running for president.

“That’s not anything I’ve really spent a whole lot of time thinking about,” he said.

Sounds like he’s keeping his options open.

Oversight and Reform Video: “No Leadership, No Responsibility, No Tours”

Via the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, comes a new video: “No Leadership, No Responsibility, No Tours” highlighting the White House’s crass political gamesmanship.

Oversight and Reform wanted to highlight the White House’s decision to close its doors to school groups and visitors while responsible spending reforms, like those from non-partisan Inspectors General outlined in Oversight’s March 5 Committee report, have not been implemented.

“It’s telling that the President would rather cancel White House tours during the most popular tourist season than roll up his sleeves and get to work fixing our nation’s spending crisis.” Chairman Darrell Issa said.  “Just two weeks ago, my committee released a report chronicling $67 billion in unimplemented reforms recommended by the President’s own non-partisan Inspectors General.”

 

As outlined in the video, the Administration has offered differing accounts of who decided to cancel tours.  On March 13, 2013, President Obama said, “This was not a decision that went up to the White House.”  Then later that day, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney contradicted the President admitting, “We had to cancel the tours.”

Dingy Harry’s Long, Sordid History of Verbal Diarrhea

Harry Reid has a long, sordid history of obnoxious and offensive verbal diarrhea. It’s true that most people who spend any amount of time in front of a microphone will make the occasional verbal gaffe and often times it will be funny. But Dingy Harry’s gaffes are never funny.  They’re uniformly nasty and mortifying.

When he suggested that the horrific accident that killed eight Marines in Nevada, Monday was caused by Sequester cuts, Marines were livid.

A Marine Corps official told reporter Jim Miklaszewski at NBC that he considered Dingy’s words to be “nothing but pure political posturing on the backs of these fallen Marines.” Disgraceful.

Mark Levin unloaded on him on his show, Tuesday night.

But those who remember Reid’s borderline treasonous political posturing during the Iraq war, shouldn’t be surprised.

• He called President Bush a liar who betrayed Nevada and betrayed the country” in December of 2004.

• He called President Bush a “loser” to a captive audience, (high school kids) in a civics class a few months after his second inauguration.

• In April, 2007, he declared the Iraq War to be lost, before the surge was even fully operational. We would go on to win the war, proving Dingy’s  eulogy to be devastatingly premature.

• Last year, in one of the most egregious examples of  verbal diarrhea in political history, he told the Huffington Post that Romney’s “poor father must be so embarrassed about his son.” Reid then went on to claim, while providing no evidence,  that Romney went a decade without paying any taxes.

Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office. “Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

On the Senate floor two days after the Huffington Post story broke, Reid continued with his verbal antics and said “the word’s out that (Romney) hasn’t paid any taxes for ten years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t.”  It is really odd that Reid argues that “the word is out” about a claim that he himself had made 48 hours earlier. Reid seems to be using himself as authority for declaring that “the word’s out” about a bogus claim that Romney dodged taxes for ten years.

Mitt Romney would go on to release enough of his taxes to prove that he had been paying them for the past ten years, demonstrating once again, that Dingy Harry is a contemptible liar. But as Hillary Clinton would say, “What difference does it make? The media has his back….even after slandering a Presidential candidate with spurious lies during the heat of an election – he is still the the Senate Majority Leader.

• In 2009, Sen. Reid Compared Obamacare Opponents To Supporters Of Slavery

• He called tea partiers “evil-mongers”.

• He expressed pleasure at the new Capitol Visitors Center because it meant he wouldn’t have to “smell the tourists” filling up the Capitol in the summertime.

“In the summertime, because (of) the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.”

• Reid also declared to the Reno Gazette-Journal in September of 2009 that Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death was “going to help” Democrats pass health care.

• He pronounced ObamaCare “The Most Important Thing We’ve Done For The Country And The World”

• In March of 2010, he cheerfully announced, “today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”

• He Threatened the Las Vegas Journal’s Director of Advertising at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon.  While shaking his hand, he said “I hope you go out of business.”

• He described candidate Barack Obama as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.”

• He made this nasty and unsubstantiated  comment about Clarance Thomas: “I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.”

More foot-in mouth moments, via ABC News:

• ”You Know, Joe, I Can’t Stand John McCain.” (“Reid Shares Senate Ideas,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, 08/21/08)

• On Former Majority Leader Bill Frist: “I’ve Never Seen Such Amateurish Leadership.” (Jon Frandsen, “Senate GOP To Counter Dems’ Filibusters With 30-Hour Talkathon,” USA Today, 11/10/03)

• On General Peter Pace, Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff: “Incompetent.” (John Bresnahan, “Reid Labels Military Leader ‘Incompetent,’” The Politico, 06/14/07)

• On Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman: “One Of The Biggest Political Hacks We Have In Washington.” (CNN’s “Inside Politics,” 03/03/05)

• On A Member Of The Press: “Reid told one reporter she should ‘watch the [Senate] floor more often. … You might learn something.’ … Reid asked the reporter if she ‘spoke English.’ ‘Turn up your Miracle Ear,’ Reid added.” (“Reid Flares Over Media Coverage Of Energy Proposals,” FoxNews.com, 07/24/08)

• On His Republican Colleagues:  President Bush’s “49 Puppets He Has Here In The Senate.” “Everyone within the sound of my voice should understand, if that comes to be, it can go to 16th and Pennsylvania Avenue because that is what President Bush–he is the man who is pulling the strings on the 49 puppets he has here in the Senate. That is too bad for the country.” (Sen. Reid, Congressional Record, Congressional Record, S.14731, 12/04/07)

• McCain An “Old” “Snake Oil” Salesman. “But John McCain has a vision too, which in fairness I must address. When doctors screen out the quack nostrums and phony remedies we call snake oil, they use two fundamental principles: the maxim ‘first, do no harm’ and the question ‘is it safe and effective?’ In Congress, as in medicine, when we are offered snake oil as a remedy for the nation’s energy ills … kindly old Doc McCain would like to sell it to you anyway.” (Sen. Reid, Remarks To The Democratic National Convention, 8/27/08)

Update: 

Dingy Harry’s Verbal Diarrhea Continues to Appall – Now He’s Calling Tea Partiers The Real Anarchists (May 2, 2013)

Harry Reid Finds ObamaCare Complaints Amusing – They Make Him Laugh (Video) (November 7, 2013)

Linked by Doug Ross, thanks!