Archive for December 23, 2023

Blocking military nominations is bipartisan

Posted: December 23, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncategorized
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Senator Tuberville is 100% correct to be concerned that the DoD is spending taxpayer money, in violation of the law, to allow women birthing people to travel across state lines to pursue an abortion.

Sadly, he recently caved from RINO pressure on this point. If you don’t know history you’d think it was only the eeeevil Republicans that stopped nominations. And you’d be wrong.

What about Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth, blocking over 1,000 promotions in 2020? Why is that conveniently left out of every article?

Or the curious case of Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill blocking General Susan Helms, an Obama nominee, from her fourth star? General Helms was a female astronaut and selected to be the vice commander of Air Force Space Command. Senator McCaskill didn’t like that General Helms overturned a sexual assault charge on an appeal, so she simply blocked the general until she retired.

Now, personally I think Susan Helms made the right call and overturned a case that was lacking evidence. But Senator McCaskill was on a “believe all women claiming sexual assault” intifada, so that was never going to fly. Susan Helms was more than qualified to lead Space Command, but politics got in the way. That is Senator McCaskill’s right to do so. My issue is that if I search for “senator blocked nomination,” every link on Google is about Tuberville. Even adding “Democrat” and “2013” to my search doesn’t bring up McCaskill’s blocked nomination. I just happen to remember it at the time, and was able to dig it back up.

I don’t want to hear anymore about Senator’s “playing politics” with military nominations until I see references to Claire McCaskill and Tammy Duckworth at the end of those articles.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

The Single Most Important Bit of the Douglas Murray Cenk Uygur Bit

Posted: December 23, 2023 by datechguy in Israel vs Hamas, middle east
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There are plenty of stories in conservative media celebrating Douglas Murray taking apart Cenk Uygur in their discussion on the Israel/Hamas war (and full credit to Uygur for having the guts to have the discussion). That Murray could do this was no surprise as he does tend to do shoe leather reporting and such work regardless of the quality of sources always superior from pontificating from afar.

But the real news here wasn’t that debate or even that it took place, the news was an assertion Murray made during the exchange that I think is the single most important fact concerning the Palestinians in the west bank of the Jordan. To wit:

If there was an election tomorrow in the West Bank, Hamas would win. 

emphasis mine

Run that through your head for a second.

Hamas has committed one of the worst and most barbaric attacks on civilians that we have seen in decades including the mass rape of women, the desecrations of corpus and the kidnap, murder and even baking of babies. The video of the livestreams of these events have left people who have seen this video, even seasoned reporters and those experienced in dealing with trauma visibly shaken.

Furthermore the actions of Hamas has led to the Jewish state invading Gaza and putting the residents in such a state due to it being a war zone that they have an issue with basic supplies, their economy such as it is, is crushed and their future prospects for anything resembling a normal life are shaky at best and non-existent at worst.

Yet despite these facts Murray, an experienced reporter who has direct experience of the area asserts that Palestinians in the west bank would, not a year ago, not before Oct 7th, not before seeing the end result that it has led to for Palestinians in Gaza, TODAY despite everything choose to vote for Hamas to lead them.

In fairness the kleptocracy of the Palestinian Authority does deserve some credit here but even so the idea that they would vote Hamas seems insane. But if we are to believe Murray consider:

  • The murder of the Jews doesn’t bother them
  • The kidnapping, atrocities against woman and babies doesn’t bother them
  • The risk of their own areas being flattened in response to a potential Hamas attack bothers them

All that matters to them is that Hamas is willing to attack and kill Jews. That willingness to do so overrides all other considerations.

You can’t make peace with such people, the only thing you can do short of destroying them, expelling them or ruling them with an iron fist, is contain them which seems to be the goal of Israel. It involves risk and will cost lives but is the only way to avoid the other unacceptable choices.

The sooner the world learns that the better.

Update: Been gone all day to the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette which in addition to being an awesome Catholic shrine with mass, confession and a large collection of Christmas Creches from all over the world has a rather more famous Christmas light display so I didn’t have any idea that I’d been Instalanched till my son mentioned it in passing as we were getting ready to leave for home. Thanks Ed and welcome all, take a look around. Be aware that our first fundraiser in a couple of years will be kicking off after Christmas. The goal is $3k overall with 5 new subs at $20 a month. If you want to get us started toward that goal it would be much appreciated.