Sad: A soldier’s dying letter

If this one does not make you misty eyed, nothing ever will. Sad Crying

Via AlterNet: (Update: Original found here)

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
[…]
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

This letter saddens me to my core. The Republican Party should read this, and really take stock of whom they choose for President of the United States of America. This above is why I started “The Populist” back in 2006. Because I knew what George W. Bush was doing in Iraq was simply wrong. Furthermore, I knew he was moving the goal posts on Iraq as well.

In 2007, my blog was hacked, either by Conservatives who didn’t like me or by hackers from another Country. Either way, by that time, I had began to feel that the Democrats had begun to lose it anyhow. So, I started “Political Byline” for two reasons. One, to continue where I left off with the earlier blog and secondly to go after some of the more idiotic elements of the left. What that blog became, however, was a “Tea Party” blog and sometimes, I sort of regret that. I fully admit, that at time, I got caught up in the furor of Anti-Obama’ism. At some point, I realized that I was not writing what I truly felt, and because of that; I backed away from the right.

In 2011, after President Obama declared, for all intents and purposes, the Iraq War over; I ended Political Byline’s tenure and put it into inactive status. I wrote there for from December of 2007 till October 2011. I fought the fight that I came to fight against. My politics did change a good deal. I never was much of a partisan at all, which was, most likely my downfall. Which might explain why this blog here, is not very popular at all. Sad

I did, however, come to respect what Bush did, and why he did it and I also learned that a good deal of what the liberal left says about Iraq; this letter above being a perfect example of that — was and still is, a big lie. Some of it is true, and some of it; is nothing more than anti-war propaganda.

Still again, I believe that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party both, their leaders; need to read this letter above and really think long and hard about electing a Wilsonian Presidential candidate. Because this above ought to be a textbook example, of why the United States of America should never pursue an Wilsonian foreign policy agenda, ever again.

My thoughts and prayers go to this young man, may he find the peace and comfort; and yes, even rest, that he truly deserves. Praying

I dedicate this video, to ALL of the Military people that we lost in a very, very unpopular war:

Good: Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s gun ban bill goes down in flames!

Via First Read:

Whither assault weapons ban: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democratic gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month,” Politico notes. “After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.”

My first reaction was one of relief. The bill was idiotic at best. The reason why this bill died is because Democrats know what many of the rest of America know –that America is gun nation; it always has been and always will be. America’s freedom from the British was done at the hands of guns. Furthermore, the Democrats tried this once before, in the 1990’s and they paid a terrible price for it. Harry Reid might be a liberal Democrat, but he is no idiot; he does want to be reelected to office again.

The point is this; and even my own Democratic Party voting Mother believes this — that outlawing guns of any sort is not going to stop crime. Because the criminals are always going to be able to get guns, no matter what the Government does to try to prevent it. Because there is this thing, called the “Black Market” and it does not go empty very often. Especially seeing how we let some guns walk across the border. I would not be shocked to see some of those guns end up back in the States eventually and someone killed with them.

In closing: Everyone, including me, wants to see an end to shootings, of any sort. But, passing such idiotic bills, such as this one here, is simply not the answer to the problem. The answer is encouraging parents to be involved with their children’s lives. Another good idea, and as much as I know this is going to sound like a cliché; it is the truth —- getting children involved in Church is not a bad idea. It worked for me. I spent most of my young life in Church. If anything at all; it served as good alternative to the streets and the trouble that I could have gotten into in them in Detroit. I did have parents who were strict and involved in my life, but the Church was a big part of that too.

We just cannot legislate our way to an utopian society, it just does not work. It has been tried and it has failed every time.

Just my opinion.

Others: Daily Kos, The Gateway Pundit, Outside the Beltway, Pirate’s Cove, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers and The PJ Tatler (via Memeorandum)

Amazon: Bullet Shaped USB Flash Drive

Yep, you read that correctly.

Some specs on it:

USB bullet shaped flash drive that includes keychain
Holds 8 GBs of data for all your storage
Shaped like a golden bullet! ; Color: Gold ; Size: 3.5″ / 8.89cm
Twist off cap protects your drive from dirt and debris

Here it is:

Most of the reviews are good, a few are not so good. It’s a novelty item, keep that in mind when buying it. Also too, don’t blame me or try to sue me, if the thing sucks. I’m just a writer, not a computer professional. 😀

Quote of the Day

Over the past 10 years, there have been few days when the war in Iraq was absent from my thoughts. People often ask me whether I have regrets. It seems absurdly presumptuous to answer the question. I could have set myself on fire in protest on the White House lawn and the war would have proceeded without me. And yet … all of us who advocated for the war have had to do some reckoning. If the war achieved some positive gains, its unnecessary costs—in human life, in money, to the prestige and credibility of the U.S. government—are daunting and dismaying. If we’d found the WMD, it would have been different. If we’d kept better order in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam, it would have been different. If more Iraqis had welcomed the invasion as we expected, it would have been different. If the case for the war had been argued in a less contrived and predetermined way, it would have been different.
But it wasn’t different. Those of us who were involved—in whatever way—bear the responsibility.

PayPal button fixed

I noticed someone clicked my PayPal button and so, I did too. I used a saved button, which was pointing to an old e-mail address that I once used.

So, I tossed it and created a new button.

oopsie. 😳

Anyway, it is now fixed; so feel free to donate to your heart’s content. (please!)

That is all…

Great Stuff from CPAC

This follows up this posting here.

First, there’s Brent Bozell: (Via CNSNEWS.com)

Then there’s Sarah Palin: (via HotAir.com)

Oh, by the way; check out Karl Rove’s lame ass response to the barb towards him. I hate to be the one to say this, but when you have to use the lame ass liberal talking point about Sarah Palin against her and you are a so-called “Conservative”, you have a very serious problem. The problem with Karl Rove is; well, besides the fact that he was actually born and still breathes —- is that he was lucky enough to win one Presidential election. The problem was, he helped elect someone, who was about as Conservative, as I am a Communist. Everything else that he has done, has been wrong. The dude needs to bow out gracefully, go back to Texas and get a real damned job.

Just my opinion.

Racism at VDare.com towards Detroit

A perfect example of which can be found below here:

So what happened to Detroit? MLK’s “Dream” came true…America’s founding principles of liberty, equality, and democracy came true for black people, and full citizenship and civil rights were extended to millions of African-Americans, who had previously been marginalized and excluded from the mainstream of American life.
And the result was Detroit as it exists in 2013.
via Caught In The Black Undertow: Detroit—And America? | VDARE.com.

That is not the half of it; go read the rest, at the link above. There is more nuanced racism in that article linked above than you can shake a picture of George Wallace at! Like I have written many times here before, Detroit’s problems are much deeper and more problematic, than skin color. Anyone who writes anything other than this; is one of two things:

A racist bigot
A misinformed rube
Both.

Like I have also said before; if you are not from this area, you should seriously look into shutting the hell up about the City of Detroit. I, for one, as a citizen of Michigan and a former citizen of Detroit, of 19 years, I can tell you that the problems are much deeper than skin. The problems are of political and cultural nature; not race. Admittedly, the problems are of an entitlement sort, but to place the core issue of the problems on skin color just shows the racist bias of the person writing the article.

There are just as many white people, who are poor, by the way — and Latinos, who are taking part of that entitlement mentality, as there are blacks, who are taking part as well. It is not solely the blacks. Again, this goes back to the racist bigoted assumptions of the those who do not live in the City of Detroit. Hence my suggestion that these people please shut the hell up.

Two important quotes on the Republican Party Establishment

Pat Caddell:

Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a blistering attack on “racketeering” Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like “marks.”

“I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers….It’s time to stop being marks. It’s time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real,” he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants.
Caddell stole the show as a panelist in the breakout session titled “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” He spoke with a fire and passion that electrified the room. When the session began the large room was half filled, but as word spread of the fireworks going on inside, the audience streamed in. By the end, it was standing room only.
Breitbart News spoke with Caddell prior to his talk, and he promised he would deliver a “brutal critique” of the Republican establishment and its political consulting class. He did not disappoint, pulling no punches with an unyielding evisceration of a small group of Republican consultants, the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC.
“When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the ‘fantastic’ get-out-the-vote program…some of this borders on RICO [the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] violations,” Caddell told the crowd. “It’s all self dealing going on. I think it works on the RICO thing. They’re in the business of lining their pockets.”
“The Republican Party,” Caddell continued, “is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex.” Caddell described CLEC as a self serving interconnected network of individuals and organizations interested in preserving their own power far more than they’re interested in winning elections.

Jeff Goldstein:

In the years after the 2008 presidential election, and in particular, after my public chastisement of certain right wing sites for their having bought in to the establishment spin (as an aside, you don’t need to take my word for this, you can research it yourself: look at the number of links I received from the top-tier right-wing sites prior to Obama’s ascension and then afterward when I started turning my attention to the problems within the Republican Party and its strategy makers and mouthpieces, whom I called out by name), protein wisdom was very obviously relegated to some sort of networking black list; people who once linked me routinely today won’t even follow me on Twitter, much less link back to the site. Which is why I find the sudden return to a demand for conservative principles from some of those same sites who worked so determinedly to marginalize me both ironic and galling, and yet humorous in their cynical transparency. That is, for those who wish to naval gaze.
All of which I mention only as a prelude to what many of us can feel is happening right now within the GOP: a civil war, one in which the young TEA Party constitutionalists, far from backing down from the establishment old bulls (who are content to foist symbolic but feckless votes on us to “prove” they stand with us, while simultaneously surrendering their leverage in advance of every procedural battle in which they might actually affect change and slow down the march of progressive government growth and institutionalization), are actively — and, more importantly, publicly — challenging them.
[…]
Aside from a few people left on the network, FOX News is not a conservative outlet. It is the white-boarded symbol of GOP status-quo governance. Similarly, the suddenly red-meat conservative commentators popping up in the online opinion circles? I’d advise you go back and look at what they were writing in from 2008 before the TEA Party revolution, many of them having been caught completely off guard by it. I’d invite you to examine — regardless of the awards they are granted, or the incestuousness of the networking that keeps them extraordinarily influential — which types of Republicans they attack and which they support; if they have been pro-incumbent or pro-primary challenge; if they have counseled pragmatism or principle. If they’ve joined the chorus demeaning the “True Believers” and Hobbits and Visigoths, until such time as it became apparent to them that such people, and their message, is beginning to resonate with a revived and energized base.
Because these are the kinds of people who benefit from a perpetual state of political expedience, who blow with the political winds, as it were. They dislike being criticized, and they are perfectly happy to freeze out those who they believe muddle the communication strategy they have determined is the right one — often quite wrongly. They dislike debate and a free exchange of ideas, though they give lip-service to supporting it; they admire and seek to emulate the unified front of the Democrats, because they mistakenly believe that it is that unified front that secures Democrats electoral victories, when instead it is their own very determined decision to try to manage messages instead of fighting for principles that turns voters off.
And even now, many of them are trying desperately to cling to power, to maintain the status quo, because it is within the current broken system — the one that benefits politicians while screwing over their constituencies — that they thrive. And they’ll be goddamned if any presumptuous set of “citizen legislators” — that is, those who aren’t looking to make a career out of living inside the DC bubble and adapting to its tony ways — is going to come along and upset their well-stocked, perpetually refilled apple cart.
They are concerned only with themselves and their own perks and powers. And just because they wear an R behind their name, or sport a flag lapel pin and mouth conservative pieties from time to time, doesn’t mean they are at all on the side of the people, of the Constitution, of individual liberty and autonomy. In fact, the vast majority of them reject such antiquated principles and instead seek to have a more efficient Leviathan running the lives of the masses. And that’s deplorable.

I cannot say that I disagree with any of the above. I believe the Republican Party has two choices here; reform and change, or die. Hopefully, they will choose wisely.

Others: Conservatives4Palin, Rush Limbaugh and The Camp Of The Saints

Unreal: Sen. Graham claims Benghazi survivors ‘told to be quiet’ by administration

It’s stuff like this here, that makes my blood boil about this Presidential Administration.

The Video:

The Story:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been “told to be quiet” and feel they can’t come forward to tell their stories — as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.
The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that “the bottom line is they feel that they can’t come forth, they’ve been told to be quiet.”
The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on the surviving victims.
“I’m sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.
But Graham said he thinks the administration is “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold.
“The best evidence of what happened in Benghazi is not a bunch of politicians in Washington trying to cover their political ass,” Graham said. “This is the people who lived through the debacle, and I’m going to do all I can to get them before the Congress and American people.
via Sen. Graham claims Benghazi survivors ‘told to be quiet’ by administration | Fox News.

I mean, this is not proof that Democrats cannot be trusted to run the Government, without royally screwing it up; I really do not know what is. I mean, with the Clinton’s it was the Waco Massacre and now this. To be fair, George H. W. Bush did not do very well at Ruby Ridge either; but Christ almighty, at least they were open about their screw ups.

The fact that this administration will not admit to any sort of cover up, and is pressuring the survivors to keep quiet, tells me that this Administration is in full on Nixon mode. They will do anything, include threaten people to keep their legacy. Which is why I refused to vote for this man at all. It is because he is a black racist; I believe that President Obama believes that the white people who were killed in Libya had it coming, because of what happened 300 years ago in this Country. I will believe that till the day that I die and nobody at all will ever be able to tell me any different. President Obama found those people to be expendable, and was willing to let them die.

Others: Weasel Zippers – Via Memeorandum

Now we know why Jack Schaap is in jail!

This guy was a sick freak! Sick

I saw the story on Raw Story, and I followed the link. What I read and saw sickened me.

The Story via Chicago Sun Times:

Former First Baptist Church of Hammond pastor Jack Schaap’s affair with a 17-year-old girl last summer not only wasn’t wrong but was desired by Jesus Christ.
That’s what he claimed in one of several letters he wrote to the victim during his crime, couching the sexual relationship as part of her personal salvation and something Jesus Christ wanted.
“In our ‘fantasy talk,’ you have affectionately spoken of being ‘my wife,’ ” Schaap wrote in one letter. “That is exactly what Christ desires for us. He wants to marry us + become eternal lovers!”
Federal prosecutors included the letters in the government’s sentencing memorandum for Schaap, which was filed Wednesday evening in U.S. District Court in Hammond.
Schaap has pleaded guilty to causing the girl to be transported to Illinois and Michigan last year for a sexual relationship. Schaap resigned from the megachurch, one of the largest in the country, last summer after church members discovered his relationship with the girl and reported it to local law enforcement.

I present to you a video, with no commentary:

Think he is a bit sick?

Now, before anyone gives me any grief over posting this; I am a Baptist, I am a King James Believing Baptist and Yes, I am quite the fundamentalist. This man was very sick and I believe many in the IFB Movement knew it and were worried about it. However, the Lord was faithful and this man is headed to prison, where he belongs.

My prayers are with that Church, with the girls family and with the Schaap and Hyles families, as they have been through a good deal. Also, let me say this: This June 7, I will have been a Born-Again Christian for 31 years; in other words, I have been around a while. During that time, I have seen a lot of things in my day. I have seen and I happen to know that within the Independent, Fundamentalist Baptist circles, there is a cultish subculture that exists. There is also a King James Bible cultist element as well. It is one thing to say that you believe that the King James Bible is the preserved Word of God for the English speaking people; but it is another entirely to say that the King James Bible is the inspired Word of God. To say that the King James Bible is inspired, in of itself, is a horrible fallacy.

When the word inspiration is used, it usually refers to the original texts that the King James Bible is based upon. There are some within the King James Only movement that believe that the King James Bible corrects those texts. This is an extremist position, and one that I happen to disagree with. Usually, Independent Fundamental Baptist Churches that hold to this extremist position on the King James Bible are usually ones who have this sort of cult of personality situation in it.

I should also point out, that the IFB Churches are not the only ones that have a “cult of personality” problem in them. I have seen and I have attended a few other types of Churches, namely Pentecostal Churches; that have this same sort of problem in them.

In conclusion, let me say the following: many people in the IFB world saw this coming to this Church. I have seen postings on forums; as early as 2007, that began pointing out that FBC Hammond’s pastor was having issues. So, this, to me, was no big shock at all.