Author: Mark Noonan

These Are the Geniuses We’re Up Against

Mark Noonan82 Comments

From Navy Times:

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.

But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.

While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.

These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.

“The ships are definitely Russian,” said noted naval author Norman Polmar after reviewing hi-resolution photos from the event. “There’s no question of that in my mind.”

Naval experts concluded the background was a photo composite of Russian ships that were overflown by what appear to be U.S. trainer jets. It remains unclear how or why the Democratic Party used what’s believed to be images of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at their convention…

I don’t blame the admiral – he probably didn’t know what was being flashed behind him.  But what is it with our Democrats?  Don’t they have anyone with enough military experience to differentiate between US and foreign warships?  Go look up pictures of, say, as USN cruiser and compare it to a Russian – they are remarkably different in appearance.  Though I guess the fact that both are painted gray and have all sorts of weapony looking fighting thingies on them can cause some confusion…

11 Years Later, We’ve Learned to Cringe Before the Islamists

Mark Noonan39 Comments

As I said earlier, I had written a post to commemorate the 9/11 attacks but I got so bitter about how low we’ve fallen that I deleted it – the day is not fit for such things.  Until now.  Here’s the story from al Jazeera:

Thousands of Egyptian demonstrators have torn down the Stars and Stripes at the US embassy in Cairo and replaced it with an Islamic flag on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001,  attacks in the US.

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement or football fans, gathered on Tuesday at the embassy in protest over an amateur film deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad which was produced by expatriate members of Egypt’s Christian minority resident in the US…

So, because a film was made by someone in the United States a mob of Islamists seized our embassy in Cairo – but that’s not all; a similar mob in Libya sacked our consulate and, it seems, killed one American official while doing it.  That, of course, is enough to outrage an American patriot – but it gets worse.  Here’s the official, US response to the taking of our Cairo embassy:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

That is the whole thing.  Nothing about condemning the Islamists.  Oh, no.  We’re far too chickenshit to do that.  Our government under Obama knows precisely what it has to do – crawl on its knees to its Muslim masters!  We’re apologizing to these dirty-necked barbarians because they got mad over a film made in the one-time land of the free and home of the brave.  11 years after beasts massacred 3,000 of us we’ve learned our lesson.

I am just disgusted.  And, liberals, I entirely blame you.  Oh, don’t you try to weasel out of this – don’t you even dare.  It is your man Obama running the show.  He’s the one who apologized for all that we did from 2001 to 2009.  He was the one who was going to get these savages to love us by showing understanding and kindness.  And you cheered him on.  You liberals said we were wrong to fight them; wrong to rendition them; wrong to waterboard them.  We’re doing it your way, now – and look what it gets us.  You think the cringing, spineless apology from our embassy will stop them now?  Bloody fools – weakness to barbarians just encourages the barbarians to attack.

Oh, for just an hour of the spirit of Godfrey of Bouillon!  Someone who will do what needs to be done – drive a sword through these people as far as it will go until they learn that you don’t attack us, ever.

UPDATE:  Hopefully on January 20th we’ll be able to stop cringing.  Romney’s statement:

I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.

Team Obama is now busily trying to walk back the craven statement from the embassy but its too late for that.  Everything Obama has done since 2009 is encapsulated in that statement – its his embassy under his direction and they clearly did what they thought was in line with Obama Administration policy.

UPDATE II:  Fury is growing over this disgraceful act by our government – especially as the linked article shows that its even worse than we thought, what with embassy officials apparently “tweeting” craven statements to Islamists over this incident.

UPDATE III:  Sarah Palin’s statement:

…It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies. If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

Don’t Buy the Lies

Mark Noonan80 Comments

Just in case any of you out there are getting skittish – a few words to the wise.  First off,  here’s a headline from September, 1980:

“Campaign Kickoff; Has Reagan Dropped the Ball?” – U.S. News and World Report, 9/9/1980

In what shapes up as a tight contest for the White House, even associates of Ronald Reagan conceded that the Republican nominee got off to a sputtering start in his attempt to replace President Jimmy Carter…

Reagan, of course, went on to win by 10.

Coming out of the convention what Obama wants – and thus the MSM will do – is play up every negative aspect for the GOP and every positive aspect for Obama (even if they have to make up things to fit both narratives).  Remember, 90% of the MSM is in the tank for Obama – always has been, always will be.  They will not tell the truth.  Now, readers here know that I’ve been confident of a Romney victory:  I remain confident.  Can Obama win?  Sure he can.  Lots of things can happen in an election – maybe the American people in a majority will want to continue Obama’s destructive rule.  So be it.

But I don’t think it will happen – if it does happen it just means that we’ve allowed socialism to go too far and it will have to get massively worse before a majority are fully awake to the necessary revolution.  Fortunately – if I may use that word – the re-election of Obama will make things rapidly get massively worse so we’ll have a good shot of winning in 2016 if not in 2012.  But I don’t believe a majority of my fellow Americans are that far gone – at least 40% of them are (and thus that is the ultimate floor for the Obama vote – when he shouldn’t get more than 10%, representing the people who really profit of our corrupt system) – but not a majority.  November 6th will either prove or disprove my view – but my view of where the majority is doesn’t depend on polls (hasn’t at all this election cycle) because the polls are simply over-sampling Democrats.  My view is based upon cold, hard, facts on the ground – and all of those (such as, for instance, Romney’s 22 campaign offices in Michigan – a State Obama won by more than 16 percentage points) show, at a minimum, that Romney is even with Obama, and I think he’s actually ahead.

UPDATE:  Hot Air reports on a new poll showing Obama up by 7 over Romney in New Jersey.  Yes, New Jersey.  The State Obama won by 15 points in 2008.

Does it stand to reason that Obama can lose that much support in heavily blue New Jersey and yet not lose it in purple Ohio and Florida?  I’m telling ya – any State that Obama won by less than 5 is gone, any State won by less than 10 is “tossup”.

What is Wrong With America? We Don’t Like “Dirty” Jobs

Mark Noonan192 Comments

This could be Part 1 of a 10,000 part series, but one of the problems I’m always yammering on about it is our failure to understand that prosperity only comes when you make, mine or grow things.  Keep in mind that I consider my own work pretty much useless as compared to what any plumber, auto mechanic, doctor or drywall installer does in the course of the day.  There is some point in what I do, but I don’t kid myself in to thinking that the world would be worse off, fundamentally, if my entire job title was scrubbed from the books.  The trouble we have is that people who are government bureaucrats, college gender studies professors, lawyers, think tank employees, etc believing they are doing something as important (or even more important) than those people who grow our food and make our clothes.

As we look for ways to fix our nation, one of the most important tasks will be to re-invigorate the concept that work – real work – is honorable.  That the man or woman getting dirty day by day to ensure we have the necessities is doing something 2nd in importantce only to raising children (the fact that we don’t consider raising children to be that important – as we can see in the liberal attitudes towards stay-at-home-mom Mrs. Romney – is an article for another day).  As it turns out, Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame from television has written a letter to Romney on this very subject.  To quote:

…I shared my theory that most of these “problems” were in fact symptoms of something more fundamental – a change in the way Americans viewed hard work and skilled labor. That’s the essence of what I’ve heard from the hundreds of men and women I’ve worked with on Dirty Jobs.Pig farmers, electricians, plumbers, bridge painters, jam makers, blacksmiths, brewers, coal miners, carpenters, crab fisherman, oil drillers…they all tell me the same thing over and over, again and again – our country has become emotionally disconnected from an essential part of our workforce.  We are no longer impressed with cheap electricity, paved roads, and indoor plumbing. We take our infrastructure for granted, and the people who build it.

Today, we can see the consequences of this disconnect in any number of areas, but none is more obvious than the growing skills gap. Even as unemployment remains sky high, a whole category of vital occupations has fallen out of favor, and companies struggle to find workers with the necessary skills. The causes seem clear. We have embraced a ridiculously narrow view of education. Any kind of training or study that does not come with a four-year degree is now deemed “alternative.” Many viable careers once aspired to are now seen as “vocational consolation prizes,” and many of the jobs this current administration has tried to “create” over the last four years are the same jobs that parents and teachers actively discourage kids from pursuing. (I always thought there something ill-fated about the promise of three million “shovel ready jobs” made to a society that no longer encourages people to pick up a shovel.)…

Precisely – now, what does Mr. Rowe want?  He continues…

…Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too.  We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year…

Rowe goes on to note that he wrote Obama the same sort of letter four years ago and never heard back…but it appears that Romney has now read the letter.  Romney is unlikely as a man to lead us on a revolution – but curiously enough he is more likely than Obama (for all the “fundamental transformation of America” that Obama is on about, all he’s really doing is consolidating something that Chesterton predicted more than 100 years ago – that the Ruling Class would call itself “socialist”, put us all in property-less economic straightjackets and, straight faced, tell us they care about the little guy).  I hope that Romney really ponders the letter and starts to talk about he issues raised.  Cutting taxes and spending; very important.  Reforming our regulatory system; vital.  But unless we become an America of working people doing the dirty job of building civilization brick by brick and girder by girder, then we’re ultimately doomed.

Prayer Works

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From Fox News:

Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was originally sentenced to death in his native country for his Christian faith, was acquitted of apostasy charges and released from custody.

Nadarkhani, 32, was imprisoned for three years and waiting execution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. His charges were lowered to evangelizing to Muslims, which carried a three-year sentence. He was released with time served, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, a Washington-based watchdog group that had been campaigning for the pastor’s release.

“Today our sources in Iran reported that Pastor Youcef was acquitted of apostasy and released from prison. After languishing in prison for almost three years, he has been reunited with his family,” Jordan Sekulow, executive director of ACLJ said in a statement to FoxNews.com…

Iran executed 600 people in 2011 and had 143 children on death row – under Sharia law, girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 are considered fully liable for their actions.  Iran is also a place where you can be stoned to death.  To nutshell it, “draconian” doesn’t begin to describe Iran’s judicial system.  And here was a man who renounced the Muslim heresy and was sentenced to death for it…and who suddenly gets his “crime” changed from apostasy to evangelizing and is hit with “time served”.  I don’t believe in mercy existing in Iran’s judicial system – something entirely outside of the barbarian brains running that show caused this to happen.

Anyone can say what they want, but I believe the prayers of millions were heard.

Democrat Platform: $675 Billion in New Spending

Mark Noonan23 Comments

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press:

…The actual substance of the Democratic the platform calls for billions in new taxes, pushes for the further expansion of government and encourages federal spending to increase substantially.

In fact, the Democratic platform recommends launching a number of new federal schemes and increasing the funding for many existing programs. Among the 21 new spending proposals included in the Democratic Party platform are:

• $453 billion over ten years to fund an expansive stimulus-like job creation scheme;

• $18.4 billion over ten years to get the transportation sector to buy into alternative fuels:

• $6.5 billion over five years for global food security and agriculture research;

• $5 billion in one-time funding for clean energy handouts;

• $5 billion in one-time funding to force the government into the broadband Internet business;

• $980 million over ten years for government-funded abortions (if taxpayers’ pay for 10 percent of abortions); and

• $45 million over five years to support American Indian and Alaska Native languages.

In total, the Democratic Party platform recommends $674.8 billion in additional federal spending over the next decade…

We’re already bankrupt – $16 trillion in official federal debt and probably a hundred trillion in un-funded mandates…and here come the Democrats with plans to just spend some more money we don’t have.  These people are not in any way, shape or form connected with reality.  They appear to believe that the gravy train can just keep on rolling along forever.  Well, Democrats, it doesn’t work like that – you who are ensconced in your over-paid, over-benefitted government job might think that there’s an endless bucket of money, but there isn’t.  If you some how manage to sucker the American people in to keeping you in power and you go on with your plans then you’ll find a day – and only a few years from now – when the government checks just stop coming because there’s no money left.
I don’t back Mitt Romney for the reasons you back Obama – you back Obama because government has become your religion and Obama is your high priest.  I back Romney because he’s rational…he knows that we’re broke and unless we fundamentally change course, we’re doomed.  The life or death of the United States hangs in the balance and you Democrats – in perfect keeping with your ultimate worldview – are voting for death.  I vote for life, on all levels – Obama Must Go!