Time for Thorns

Our Lady of Perpetual Dissatisfaction,  not content with helping design lunches so awful that school districts routinely throw away 75% of them,  and no doubt infuriated by a recent study showing that students in schools with tasty treats in the vending machines were no more overweight than those in schools with the healthy snacks,  has now claimed that overweight military personnel are a national security concern.

Of course,  if you want to fatten up cattle for market,  you stick them in a feedlot and adhere to the government’s food pyramid for humans.   I eat a lot of veggies and salads because I make them taste good,  but I also eat a lot of meat in all its varied and wondrous forms for the same reason.  I’m not a gym rat,  but I do a lot of gardening and I don’t shy away from digging holes,  cutting down small trees, and moving 100 lb pots around.   I also do a series of isometric exercises,  which is the antique name for Pilates.   The no pain, no gain theory is absurd.   There are runners in my family, and I enjoyed it as a child,  but puberty altered my shape and made running uncomfortable,  along with jumping horses over 5 foot fences.  On the other hand,  I can walk the legs off a mule.   The staff at the grocery store I generally make my monthly foray to laughs when they see me coming because I can fill up a cart and be gone before people looking for just a few items get to checkout.  We would all be better served if we taught poor and uneducated people how to cook.  It’s not that hard.   Some of the world’s poorer cultures have delicious food.

Promoting  homosexuality in the military  is already having one of the consequences I expected.

Here we have another example  of the absolute hostility of His Oneness towards any group which doesn’t promote abortion,  no matter how well it provides other services.

And now the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is  shutting its  doors because it hasn’t been funded again.   At least the military  has rescinded its  policy of banning Bibles at Walter Reed,  just a day after Rep. Peter King blasted it.

Or so Defense Secretary Leon Panetta  called Tuesday,  as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell officially ended.  Of course,  the military report  was designed to reach the conclusion His Oneness wanted,  not to accurately report anything.

Now we have a  new magazine  devoted to gays and lesbians in the military.   Next,  we can expect a spate of lawsuits by gays and lesbians asserting that the only reason they were passed over for promotion,  or not given a plum assignment,  was their sexual preferences.  The British Army has already suffered this,  and it has happened in the American civilian workplace,  so don’t tell yourself I’m wrong.

There are a number of gays in the military.  Most of them do not blab about their personal sexuality,  which is a good model for all of us to follow.   The ones who got kicked out because of DADT did nothing more than prove that their sexual preference was, if not the most important thing in their lives, more important than their contract with the country.   And yes, it will affect combat readiness.

is all  well and good,  and I’m happy our troops are getting it,  but I’d be a hell of a lot happier if command altered the current,  idiotic rules of engagement so the good guys get to kill the bad guys first.

The predictable  outlets are having their own  scare-fest over the dangers of nuclear power,  complete with I-told-you-so lookbacks.   There are some  voices of sanity from across the  pond.

Jonah Goldberg’s radiation guy tells us  to calm down.   Iain Murray wants to  know where Steven Chu,  the president’s energy guy,  is.   His Oneness has promoted Chu as a nuke power guy,  because killing oil requires energy from nuclear energy.

A modicum of common sense on risk assessment versus benefits would go a long way.   Michael Auslin tells us some of what the USA is  doing to help —  you aren’t surprised that it’s mostly our military,  are you?

When you have two air force  pilots bail out of their fighter bomber after being dispatched from Tripoli with “scorched earth” orders to attack oilfields in areas seized by the opposition,   and one of them is from your own tribe,  you’re about to be toast.

Forget about the pilots who simply flew to another country and claimed asylum.    The dictator is  reportedly now arming civilians in Tripoli.   I suspect that’s true,  since he has called off more air raids   — not be cause he wants to parlay,  but because he can’t trust the military he weakened.   He is using imported African mercenaries as his street muscle.

But perhaps the most  ominous portent is that his voluptuous nurse is going home.

And if you don’t think so,  imagine what yet another round of activist progressive judges will do to us.  One district judge has just ruled  “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”   is unconstitutional and ordered it stopped throughout the U.S. military.

His Oneness decided Tuesday  to appeal the ruling,  but don’t assume it will be more than half-hearted,  for reasons Ed Whelan laid out a month ago,  and  more recently.

If you want to know why a California federal judge ruled the military’s  “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was unconstitutional,  Ed Whelan explains it,  here.    Some wonder if the judge confused the Clinton Executive Order  with the actual law.

Note to DoJ:  To claim to actually be defending a law you’re required to defend,  you must first present an actual defense.  A mere recitation of the legislative history just makes it obvious that you’re  deliberately sabotaging the law,  and that political considerations are more important to His Oneness than the law.

This is the  text released by the White House.    Sen. James Inhofe termed it “awkward”,  Gleaves Whitney said it  was forgettable ,  and you can watch  this video for Sen.  John McCain’s views.    Liberal media icons  drooled all  over themselves praising their messiah.

I found little admirable in the speech.   Yes,  His Oneness praised the troops,  but he still knows nothing about the military or war.   How stupid is it to praise the troops in one sentence,  then turn around and say that now he has gotten us out of Iraq we can go on offense in Afghanistan?   I’m sure my Army friends will be startled to hear they’ve been playing defense all this time.

Yes,  Obama did say that George W. Bush loves the troops and his country.   The troops never doubted that,  even those who didn’t vote for him,  but Obama is such a petty little weenie that he couldn’t resist repeating his mantra that our standing abroad was damaged and inferring that he has improved it.

Peter Brookes found it  a flop as a national security speech;  Jamie Fly only  slightly better.   Victor Davis Hanson thought it flat and bizarre,  and Joseph Skelly had a number of  problems with it.

And I’m on Jonah  Goldberg’s page when it comes to Obama’s clumsy pivot to his agenda,  which we should honor the troops by supporting.  That is the only section which seemed to inspire him  –  he voted  “present” on the rest of it.    The CBO  has reported that the Iraq war over 8 years has cost  less than Obama’s stimulus,  yet His Oneness wants to repeat what has already failed.

Against this backdrop put the fact that a Gallup poll shows more Iraqis approve of  U.S. leadership under Bush than His Oneness.   Heckuva job, Obama.