I call Bullshit

30 troops
22 Navy Seals
gone.

Senior U.S. military officials said the loss of the SEALs would have little impact on the U.S. military’s ability to conduct strikes on senior and mid-level Taliban officials, which they said have become increasingly effective and lethal over the past year.

[bold is mine]

Bullshit. This is a huge loss. Not only for the families but for our troops and all of the rest of us.
Rest in Peace you who died. Your loss is a huge impact on all of us even though you probably understand full well that “Senior Military Officials” can never admit that.

Why is this so hard to understand?

From Ed Morrissey

We’re not seeing growth because of the hostile environment for investors, and a lack of consumer demand related to high unemployment. We could solve those tomorrow by reducing regulation (especially the arbitrary ObamaCare legislation that makes risk calculation nearly impossible), unfettering American energy exploration and extraction to create jobs and lower energy costs, and reform the tax system to put all investors on an even playing field and reduce the corporatism that drags down small-business creation and innovation. We don’t need social engineers tinkering with the economic system to achieve their notion of “fairness” — we need actual economic growth, which the social engineers have proven completely incompetent at delivering.

The Inane

It is insanity to think that one side or the other will always be in power, yet that is exactly what the left believes.

Today the NYTimes is suggesting getting rid of the debt ceiling all together because, it’s dangerous when used as a political weapon and sheesh, we’re always going to pay our bills.

Fantasy island game: The right is in power with 2 branches of government up their sleeves, cripes, maybe even George W has been reelected. What they want more than anything is to put more and more and more money into the armed serves, the CIA, 2 or 3 new wars and oil companies. Sadly they’ve reached the debt limit again.
Thank goodness the left removed any reserve on that!

Nope, the left just doesn’t have the imagination or the foresight or the intelligence to think that maybe, just maybe they might want to legislate for the long term and not for the now. It’s insane.

QOTD

In a column about Medicare Part D’s drug plan having lower prices this year to seniors:

The Part D drug benefit, created under the George W. Bush administration, allows seniors and others on Medicare to sign up for a privately administered, government-subsidized health plan to get their prescriptions.

Popular with beneficiaries, the program has also proven far less costly than budget analysts originally expected, in part because of competition among private plans and the growing use of less expensive generic drugs.

I know, I know…..yet another entitlement that needs to paid for, somehow. Just wondering how many other government programs have become more affordable the longer they’re around…hmmmm?

Why then words?

Why do we use words? To convey meaning to our thoughts so they can be shared.

Why dilute words? To potentially make extreme the little things, which will then in turn, make extreme things little.

Are tea partiers “terrorists”, “jihadists”, “hostage takers”? No they are not. They are a group of people that stood as firmly as they could on the shifting soil that is government decisions and bipartisan agreements.

They didn’t even hold up as a block to go ahead an let us default knowing that the cuts agreed to were somewhat not huge. How on earth does that make them terrorists?

I went to Protein Wisdom who is fantastic with vocabulary questions and found this story about farm equipment.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a component of the Department of Transportation, has proposed implementing new standards that require farmers and all those who work on a farm to obtain a license to operate farming machinery. To do this, the agency will be reclassifying all farm vehicles and equipment as Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs).

By “calling” farm equipment CMVs farmers will now have to deal with further regulation. Not big farms, mind you….they don’t use family members to drive tractors, nor do they have trouble buying licenses for everyone, no this will only hit the small family farms that everyone seems to “want to save”.
See, it’s the vocabulary.

I’m curious what we will now call someone who blows up civilians in order to cause terror and maybe get their way? If tea partiers who, you know, vote like their job requires are terrorists, then “someone who blows up civilians in order to cause terror and maybe get their way” MUST be something else.

Another example from today’s news… if milk producers who sell raw milk to people who want raw milk are “criminals”, what exactly do we call a person who steals other people’s money who do not want their money stolen?

Wait – it’s another QOTD

[apparently I never hit "publish" on this...thanks to a phone call about having marked a post as the 3rd qotd when I only had 2...you now get the 2nd]

By Thomas Sowell in a column concerning poverty.

People who say they want a government program because “I don’t want to be a burden to my children” apparently think it is all right to be a burden to other people’s children.

3!! Third QOTD

In a column by John Podhoretz that is just a little mean. True, but mean. [bold is mine]

News reports in the middle of July suggested that Republican negotiators had agreed in principle to new revenues up to $800 billion in the so-called “grand bargain” Obama had sought.

That would have been a huge accomplishment for Obama, because he would have split the Republican coalition and brought about a political civil war in the rival political party.

But the president increased his revenue demand by $400 billion. In other words, and surely inadvertently, he tanked his own “grand bargain.”

This was a negotiating strategy he apparently picked up from Daffy Duck, who once ended a rapid-fire exchange at gunpoint with Bugs Bunny by turning the rifle on himself and pulling the trigger.

QOTD

This one is bound to make the big rounds as Glenn has it from Ed Driscoll. [bold is mine]:

“Incidentally, nice bit of Orwellian doublethink to call the grass-roots, libertarian-oriented Tea Party ‘Totalitarian.’ This has to be the first ‘Totalitarian’ movement in the history of mankind that, if it gets everything it wants…will leave you the hell alone.

Hoss!

(ok – I’m using another’s term for this, sue me)

ht The Weekly Standard via JG.