Recon’s Black Ops

What a nincompoop…

But if I did, I would tell GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to stick his candidacy right up his ass. Any conservative–knowing his track record at Columbia/HCA–who votes for him, is voting for a disaster. This latest report does not surprise me in the slightest.

This is not the first time that I have intoned about Scott. In fact, I warned folks about this slimebag during the debate over “health care reform”. Representing “Conservatives for Health Care Reform”, he appeared on many television ads lambasting Obamacare.

What voters need to understand is that Rick Scott–like Obama himself–is also your enemy. This is because Big Insurance–where Scott made his money–is in bed with Big Government–which is where Scott also received a lot of his revenues.

By opposing Obamacare, Scott–a lightning rod for Big Insurance–stoked the backlash against Big Insurance that ensured the passage of Obamacare. I pointed out how this scenario works here.

Sadly, Attorney General Bill McCollum–Scott’s primary opponent–is not exactly pristine white either.

If Andrew Breitbart deliberately misrepresented Shirley Sherrod when he posted a partial video, then he ought to face personal liabilities to the extent that he has caused her harm. And I don’t say that just because his actions resulted in egg on my face.

That video snookered a few of us–like myself–and cost Sherrod her job (even though I believe she was offered her position back and received an apology from Obama).

OTOH, Michael Moore has made quite a killing from misrepresenting conservatives by showing partial videos out of context. Most politicians in America–liberal and conservative alike–have done a little of that in election seasons. I’m not saying that makes it right, but I can see Breitbart’s defense team using that line of defense.

But this time around, it resulted in someone getting an unfair smear, and cost her her job. And if Breitbart did that intentionally, then he should pay.

Again, this is not particularly shocking.

As a libertarian, I oppose all such aid programs for farmers, irrespective of skin color. Still, the racism by government–by a bureaucrat pandering to the NAACP–is a case of pot meets kettle, as the NAACP has made a great effort of late to cast Tea Partiers as racists.

HT to Vox Day for this piece by Angelo M. Codevilla of The American Spectator.

Al Qaeda is racist. Obama said so. It must be true.

The Constitution (Article 4, Section 4) affords every state the right–guaranteed by the United States–to a republican form of government, and a protection from invasion and domestic violence.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Sadly, while the border states have been overrun by invaders from Mexico, the federal government has failed to fulfill her Constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion.

In response to this, Arizona has enacted its own law, which empowers their law enforcement officials to protect their state from invasion.

The Obama Administration has decided that Arizona has no right to defend itself from invaders, even though the federal government is unwilling to do this. (Sounds like Chicago gun control, applied to illegal immigration.)

If I’m Jan Brewer, it’s time to get together with other like-minded governors, and start discussing secession in the event that the federal lawsuit succeeds.

Michael Steele is the only hope the Democrats have of keeping control of Congress. Good thing for them, because Steele is working quite hard to deliver for them.

If the GOP establishment had a brain, they would get him out of there and get Sarah Palin in. She has her issues, but that would give them immediate and badly-needed fundraising capacity. She would also be good for the base voters.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is no dummy. In fact, he is arguably the best of the best. A West Point alum, a Harvard alum, a Ranger, a career Special Operator who commanded the 75th Ranger Regiment and who headed the Joint Special Operations Command, McChrystal is not a reckless man. In fact, if anything, he is a very calculated decisionmaker. When Obama picked him to head up our operations in Afghanistan, that was one of his better moves. If McChrystal can’t get it done, then we’re in serious trouble.

When he had his initial run-in with Obama over the troop request, that was understandable. It showed chutzpah on his part: the Special Ops scholar convincing the inexperienced President that he needed more troops. Both sides came out smelling good: McChrystal got most of the troops he asked for, and Obama embraced a strategy that appears to have shown some results.

What I’m getting at:

(1) McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview was no accident. Something has happened that has caused him to lose total faith in the Commander-in-Chief. Whether that something is foreign or domestic in nature I don’t know, but he is no longer a supporter of the President for whom he voted.

(2) There is more to this than Afghanistan. McChrystal is having some successes in Aghanistan. The situation is better now than it was when he arrived, so for him to bail on that now would not make rational sense. That is, unless there is something even more serious going on.

(3) McChrystal is trying to get fired. And Obama must fire him. That is protocol. If Obama doesn’t fire him, then Obama is worse than useless. If Obama does fire him, it would hurt, but at least he would be showing the world that he is willing to make hard decisions, even when they involve otherwise respected leaders in the military.

This is the worst military-executive clash since MacArthur v. Truman. On one level, Mac lost that one–Truman pulled rank and that was it for MacArthur–but on another level that clash helped define MacArthur’s legacy favorably.

Will that be the case with McChrystal? I dunno. He has risked utterly destroying his legacy as a military leader. His actions risk putting our war efforts in serious danger.

Like I said, McChrystal is a very smart man, and does not make decisions like that on a whim. There is a very compelling reason why he is doing this, and we may not know the full reason for years.

But I suspect that there is more to this than Afghanistan.

You can always count on the GOP to get it wrong when critical matters are at stake. Here is a perfect example.

Maj. Stephen Godin, USMC (Ret) flew F-4s for the Marine Corps, served honorably, and has retired with his Commission. As a retiree, he receives appropriate benefits, including health care. In his retirement, he has taught Naval Science–Junior ROTC–at the high school level for over 15 years. He has never joined a teacher union, and–by all accounts–is a highly-regarded teacher.

This, however, has caused a problem.

(1) State law requires that public employees–as a condition of employment–either join a union or pay an “agency fee” to the union to cover the “collective bargaining” costs (i.e., to keep the political money flowing into the unions, who–in turn–fellate the political class).

(2) Maj. Godin’s school district recently informed him that, unless he either joins the union or pays extortion money to their racket, he will be fired.

The election-year response has been predictable: lawmakers decided to pass a law that exempts ROTC instructors from the union rule.

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m on Maj. Godin’s side: this is a clear case of union extortionism.

The proper response to this, however, should be to kill the extortion racket altogether by allowing all public employees to opt out of the union, and negotiate freely with their employers.

If the union thugs–who would love to get their meathooks in Kentucky state government–ever knock on my door, they’d better be fast, as the law of conservation of energy and the law of conservation of momentum are both very far from repeal. They will only get one warning.