The global war on terror took an foul turn on Fox News today when the usually well-spoken Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret.) made a humorous verbal gaffe in a discussion about the U.S. war in Afghanistan..
Peters was on America’s Newsroom, to give his take on the Pentagon’s recent forecast that “it may take decades until an American presence is no longer needed in Afghanistan.”
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters sounded a pessimistic tone, saying the U.S. won’t be withdrawing troops anytime soon because “we keep lying to ourselves…about the enemy.”
“We’re faced with this malignant cancer of Islamist terrorism, and told ourselves it’s just a skin rash.”
Peters gave his prescription to deal with the cancer: “We can’t afford to dump money on these problems anymore, we’ve got to smite fart!” he said with gusto.
Talk about your “unconventional warfare,” huh?
Immediately realizing his mistake, he laughingly corrected himself: “Fight smart!
Fox News host Heather Childers graciously offered some cover, “we understand what you’re saying.”
An estimated 800,000 Royals fans came out to celebrate their beloved boys in blue, Tuesday – an impressive number given the city’s population is only 470,000.
In case you missed it – the Kansas City Royals won the World Series Sunday, beating the Mets by a score of 7-2 after 11 innings.
The last World Series win for the Royals happened in 1985 – 30 years ago! In the decades following that win, the Royals sort of lost their zip. Year after year, the team ended up at the bottom of the MLB standings – the stadium nearly empty for most their games. Those were 30 long, dry years for a city that loves baseball.
The tide began to turn for the Royals in 2013. That year, the team finally won more games than they lost and came in third in their division. That was a huge improvement for them. In 2014, they made it to the play-offs by the skin of their teeth in the wildest of Wild Card games. And they almost went all the way – losing to San Francisco in the 9th inning of the 7th World Series game.
Long suffering Royals fans are ecstatic – and so are those of us who lost interest in baseball during those dry years. The city is united in their love and appreciation of this amazing team and everyone wanted to come to the victory parade on Tuesday to celebrate.
The kids were even off school because of election day. So it was a perfect storm for the ultimate turnout.
I headed toward downtown with my teenage daughter shortly after 9:00 for the parade that was set to start at noon. The parade route was the 2.3 mile stretch between the starting point at the downtown Power and Light District, down Grand Ave to Union Station.
I naively thought that I would be able to park in either the Union Station or Crown Center parking garages, as I *thought* I was getting a good start, but it soon became obvious that that was a fool’s errand. As soon as I turned onto 71 heading into the city, it was bumper to bumper, barely moving traffic. Luckily I know my way around town pretty well, so I decided to try an alternative route. No way was I going to stay on 71 at that rate, so I got off on Hickman Mills and took Troost north toward the city. Traffic was heavy – but we were moving. As I got onto Main Street and headed North through the Plaza, I could see that a large number of Royals fans had already parked their cars at the Plaza, to walk the rest of the way to Union Station – more than 20 blocks away!
I thought I could do better, and finally settled on a spot about ten blocks away from Union Station – but further away from our final destination – which was at the beginning of the parade route where my other daughter was. She and some friends had gotten a room for the night at the Downtown Hilton. Smart thinking, all things considered.
My commute from Lee’s Summit to Crown center usually takes about a half an hour. Yesterday it took over an hour. But we did better than a lot of folks.
It took some people hours to travel a few miles into downtown. Some even abandoned their cars to walk to the parade route.
KCTV5 video showed cars along Interstate 35 that people had dumped to walk to Union Station. It looked like an apocalypse with the abandoned cars and the thousands of people herding towards the parade route.
Kevin Hanson and his family listened to Monday’s advice from the Kansas City Sports Commission to carpool and arrive early.
“I’ve been here since 6 a.m. standing right here. Had one glass of water and I won’t tell you where the rest of it went, but I’m having an awesome time,” Hanson said.
6:00 a.m.Are you keeding me? Dude.
A lot of people were relying on public transportation to get downtown for the festivities. Each location for the free shuttle pick-ups had lines that stretched around blocks. At the Olathe, KS, location, hundreds if not thousands of eager fans waited for a seat on one of the buses.
“We live in Bonner Springs so this was the closest as opposed to driving all the way downtown. We figured it’d be easier this way,” James Lawson said.
When some were tired of the long lines or the long wait times or were turned away, they gave up and either chose alternate means or went home.
“We’ve never done this before, obviously. We had no idea what to expect. We only have a certain number of buses, we ran our normal schedule today,” said Shawn Strate with KCATA.
In retrospect, I think we did extremely well.
After parking, we began our long walk down Main Street toward the parade area. There were many people – hundreds of them – doing the same thing.
This was at around 10:30 a.m. The parade was beginning on the other end of town (where the tall buildings are) at 12:00.
Outside Crown Center, we walked into a massive throng of people. All of a sudden we were packed like sardines and could see nothing but people clad in blue in all directions. We needed to get through that to meet up with my other daughter and friends about eight more blocks away. But we couldn’t seem to budge. Very gradually we pushed our way through the crowd until it had thinned out enough that we had room to walk. We headed toward McGee – which runs parallel to Grand, to walk to the beginning of the parade route.
It was impossible to get onto Grand because the crowd was too thick. On McGee, there were several food vendors set up and even though they were off the parade route, they were doing brisk business. We decided to resist temptation and keep walking.
There were a lot of people who – like us – were walking North on McGee to find the perfect spot on the parade route.
We finally settled on 16th and Grand because we couldn’t get cell service to make calls or even text Lizzy to find out exactly where to meet up. We caught up with them after the parade.
We watched the victory rally – which was held at Union Station – on a big screen TV at the Downtown Hilton Drum Room.
Our hands down favorite speech was from a new Royal who didn’t get to play any post season games, but still contributed mightily to the team, Jonny Gomes:
You can read my write-up on Gomes – an American original – at PJ Media.
Here are some sights and sounds from the parade (that I took on my iphone):
We heard over the weekend that the Pentagon was ordering U.S. Marine Corps recruiters to stop wearing uniforms at work as part of an overall security strategy, post Chattanooga. This on top of the continued directive that no guns be allowed on military bases – a rule that Obama could change at any time at the stroke of his fabled pen. But that’s something a president who actually cares about the troops would do. And we’re talking about lame-duck, mask-slipping, in his most dangerous phase, Obama here. This honey badger really don’t give a sh*t.
We have just confirmed here at FOX from the Pentagon, that the head of the US Northern Command has now issued a directive to authorize recruiters not to be able to carry weapons at the centers but he wants them to implement new security measures like “closing the blinds at the office.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is moving swiftly on a much more pressing issue:
Pentagon leaders are finalizing plans aimed at lifting the ban on transgender individuals in the military, with the goal of formally ending one of the last gender- or sexuality-based barriers to military service, senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press.
An announcement is expected this week, and the services would have six months to assess the impact of the change and work out the details, the officials said Monday. Military chiefs wanted time to methodically work through the legal, medical and administrative issues and develop training to ease any transition, and senior leaders believed six months would be sufficient.
By golly, that’s just awesome.
Obama will be speaking at the 116th National Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars at David Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, PA at 11:20, Tuesday morning.
Think about it: The Commander in Chief is fresh off his heinous nuclear deal with Iran that no one with a brain likes.
Will he address our new duck-and-hide posture for fighting terrorism on the home front and wax eloquent on our exciting, soon-to-be tranny forces?
Standard boilerplate for Obama speeches in front of military audiences now includes fervent warnings about (what the Regime considers to be ) the most dire national security threat facing the nation – global warming. {{{dramatic chipmunk}}}
Obama’s speech will be a lame rewrite of past VFW speeches – and his speechwriters won’t even bother to update the applause lines so they make sense in 2015. You watch.
Stay tuned – I fully expect the reception to be exceedingly cool. And that at least will be good for a laugh.
A 108-year-old woman made history Saturday when she became the oldest person to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.
Evelyn Jones threw out the pitch at the Seattle Mariners’ Safeco Field before a game against the Los Angeles Angels.
They let her throw the pitch in front of the mound – okay waaaay in front of the mound – okay just a couple of feet away from the catcher – but she still throws better than a certain somebody who stopped throwing ceremonial first pitches after embarrassing himself two years in a row.
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage, America’s top diplomat in the Dominican Republic showed his “gay pride” by throwing a fabulous pool party – with bevy of hot studs – at the embassy pool.
Brewster formerly served on the national board of directors for the Human Rights Campaign, the radical gay rights group that *illegally obtained from the IRS, the confidential donor list of the National Organization for Marriage.
“My first pool party celebrating equality !!!” the diplomat’s husband, Bob J. Satawake gushed in a Facebook post.
When Obama announced Brewster’s appointment in June of 2013, scandalized religious groups in the majority Catholic country protested.
Church leaders considered it a sign of a lack of respect from Obama.
“He has not considered the particularities of our people. The United States is trying to impose on us marriage between gays and lesbians as well as adoption by these couples,” said Father Luis Rosario, director of youth ministries for the church.
Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez has also criticized Brewster’s selection several times since Obama announced his appointment over the summer.
Local media reported that an evangelical church called for “black Monday” protests, asking people to show their opposition to Brewster by tying black ribbons on their cars, according to local media reports.
Fast forward two years and you can see how this exquisite, culturally sensitive appointment is working out in the 68.9% Roman Catholic country.
As part of the celebration, the US ambassador to RD, Wally Brewster, held a meeting at the pool of the embassy, on 28 June, LGBT Pride Day. ” My first pool party celebrating equality !!! is the text accompanying the picture of activity, published in the Facebook profile diplomat husband, Bob J. Satawake.
*Hans Von Spakovsky and John Fundreported last July on the corrupt collusion between Obama’s IRS and the Human Right’s campaign and the resulting wrist slap they received:
Despite its agreement to settle a lawsuit filed by the National Organization for Marriage against the IRS for the illegal disclosure of confidential tax information, it has not prosecuted any of the individuals or organizations who illegally disclosed and published that information.
The IRS, which was represented by Justice Department lawyers in the civil case, agreed to pay NOM $50,000 at the end of June over the agency’s illegal disclosure of confidential tax return information. 501(c)(4) organizations like NOM are required to file an IRS tax form, Schedule B, listing all of their donors who have contributed more than $5,000. But under federal law, that information is not available to the public since forced disclosure would obviously violate the First Amendment rights of the organization.
In March of 2012, NOM discovered that its Schedule B with all of its confidential information had been posted on the website of the Human Rights Campaign and the Huffington Post, disclosing the names and addresses of major donors. NOM is a conservative organization trying to preserve traditional marriage and the Human Rights Campaign is a very liberal, pro-gay rights organization that is a big ally of the Obama administration and devoted political enemy of NOM. In fact, HRC’s president at the time was Joe Solmonese, the co-chair of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. This list generated stories such as in the Huffington Post critical of Mitt Romney because a political action committee linked to Romney had contributed to NOM.
The Christian community that was targeted by a white supremacist in Charleston earlier this month, has from the first moments, handled the massacre of nine fellow churchgoers with dignity and grace. No race-baiting. No calls for political reforms. No lashing out at political enemies….All that has been done. But by professional race-baiters and the Community Organizer in Chief – not the people of Charleston.
That has been the one blessing that has come out of this horrific incident.
David Forsmark at PJ Media thinks “Obama seems awfully disappointed by how Christians in Charleston have used the Charleston atrocity to glorify God from the pulpit of Emanuel AME Church instead of looking to his Bully Pulpit.”
(And Obama really knows how to put the “bully” in the bully pulpit.”)
He and his Soros-funded shock troops were ready to exploit the hell out of this tragedy in the name of the nine victims. But the community had other ideas.
In fact, the president got so pathetically desperate for attention this weekend that while people in Charleston were praising Jesus, he went on Marc Maron’s cult podcast and dropped an N-bomb.
There, THAT ought to get everybody’s attention!
However, it really didn’t. Even the president doing a professorial version of Snoop Dogg became a side issue, as the only speech that riveted the nation this week, about how we all ought to act as children of God, came from Rev. Norvell Goff of Emanuel AME Church.
Democrats spent the weekend trying to get the focus back on Obama and their agenda, where they think it belongs. Congresswoman Donna Edwards on Fox News Sunday lamented that it would be a shame if all that came out of the Congress after this event was “a moment of silence,” while on Howard Kurtz’s Media Buzz, Joe Trippi lamented at the unlikelihood of any legislation coming from this.
And while the Sunday hosts were uncomfortable directly addressing concepts of Christianity (even as they broadcast the church service at Emanuel), they too tried to turn the topic to politics with the family members who were their big “gets” for the day as interview subjects.
But it was to no avail. “Today is not about politics,” came the firm answer in one form or another from all of them. And while the families of the murdered Charleston Christians meant it for the glory of God, it was unintentionally directly opposed to the agenda of Barack Obama.
“It’s not black lives that matter anymore. ALL LIVES MATTER,” a black speaker said to thunderous applause.
Wow.
I wonder if the gentleman understood how politically incorrect those words were? Hillary Clinton got lambasted today for having the presumption of saying those same words at a church in Florissant, Mo.
See Twitchy for the (almost comical if it wasn’t so sad) unhinged reactions of racialist lefties on Twitter.
The Twitter hashtag #GoHomeDeray trended over the weekend as #BlackLivesMatter activist Deray Mckesson (of Ferguson, New York, Baltimore and McKinney fame) brought his toxic, race-baiting roadshow to Charleston.
Charleston turned their back on hate, and did so without occupying a park, torching a business, smashing up a single cop car, or burning a single American flag. It’s a country we aren’t used to seeing anymore, which is why the images from worshippers joining hands and embracing each other in faith felt so viscerally moving to so many. It’s something we haven’t seen in awhile and it’s not something the far left wants us to see. Progressive and network media were happy to wrap themselves in a biased political narrative about an outdated flag. The rest of the country wrapped itself in the of the arms of the victims, their families, and the congregants of Emanuel A.M.E. Church, and let it be known loud and clear that they were not alone. Charleston, like New York or Boston, is not alone.
That is the country we are.
I would never have guessed that a white on black mass-shooting in a Southern church would be the impetus for people to turn away from the toxic, racial grievance industry – but that seems to be what’s happening. God surely works in mysterious ways.
Nice Deb 