One Percent

On this Veterans’ Day, I heard the statistic that 1% of this country’s population is either active or reserve military personnel. Of course, retired veterans make that figure higher, but there are over 3 million people who are ready to serve this country in battle. There are other ways people can work for this country, but the military is the only service that one voluntarily gives up the freedom of self-determination for their term.

We hear a lot about 1% vs. 99% these days. A supposedly monolithic group of people is using the labor of the general population to enrich themselves. What we also have is a group of 1% of the population tasked with the protection of this country. They serve not only the 99% not currently serving, but also their own ranks.

We can carve out 1% of the public in any way we choose. There are the 1% richest. There are the 1% most powerful. There are the 1% most intelligent. The 1% in the military is deserving of distinction. They sacrifice in a way many of us don’t have to. Many of them sacrifice their lives. They are the 1% who may not be better than us, but they are the best of us.

Another one bites the dust

Mike McQueary

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Hot Air:

Report: Mike McQueary in protective custody, won’t coach again

According to PennLive.com, one of the PSU coaches gathered several players in a room on campus and allowed McQueary to speak to the team via speaker phone.

McQueary reportedly told the team, “I wanted to let you guys know I’m not your coach anymore. I’m done.”

McQueary also told the team he’s not at the University, but in protective custody after receiving several threats … and “double fisting” booze.

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At the bottom of the lower-archy of scumbags are those who murder children. A few levels above that are those who physically and/or sexually abuse kids. Slightly less worse than those who harm children are those scumbags who enable the abusers. Slightly less scummy than enablers are those who allow the abuse.

Each of the latter three scumbag categories is present in the shameful and disgusting events that took place at Penn State.

Children cannot protect themselves. As adults we have a moral duty to intervene to protect all children. As Hillary Clinton said, “It takes a village.”

The adults at Penn State failed in this moral duty. A few firings and prosecutions are not sufficient. The university should announce it is forfeiting the rest of this season and terminating its football program. It should consider terminating its entire athletic department.

Some would say that is too extreme, that such a course of action would punish the student athletes.

Nothing less will purge the stain upon the school’s honor. After watching the students’ reaction to the firing of Joe Paterno it is obvious that they really need to learn that lesson.

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Occupy Oops!

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Apparently the Denver Occuzombies tried to disrupt a meeting of conservative bloggers called BlogCon 2011. The protesters were outnumbered by wingnuts who quickly swarmed them and shouted them down.

Ed Morrissey:

The clash erupted before I had a chance to get too close to the Occupiers themselves. They were briefly in sight, but got swallowed up by the BlogCon attendees. Frankly, the BlogCon response overwhelmed whatever the protesters tried to say — with chants of “Mike check!” and “We paid for your student loans!”, among others, the Occupiers got roundly shouted down. At one point, the entire BlogCon contingent in the lobby started chanting, “We want the dog!”, a reference to the elected leader of Occupy Denver — a pooch named Shelby.

I’m not sure what prompted the arrest. The police arrived, apparently at the request of the hotel, when the two sides began their loud clash. We have been informed that the hotel cannot keep the Occupiers out of the lobby, thanks to anti-discrimination law, but they can keep them out of our conference rooms — and hopefully the corridors of the hotel. Fortunately, access to the elevators depend on having a room key, so we’re probably safe enough. We’ll update the post as events transpire, but hopefully the Occupiers will satisfy themselves with protesting on the sidewalk, which is their right.

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Unable to find any old ladies they could push down the stairs, the protesters retreated.

Could this be a sign that another “Hard Hats vs. Hippies” counterprotest is coming?

By noon, more than 1,000 people had gathered and the vigil had escalated to a rally, and about 200 construction workers had had enough. They made signs reading things like “America, Love it or Leave it” and got right up against the police line that separated them from the students. They obeyed it for a few minutes, but the tension got to be too much and the construction workers started chasing the students through the street, beating some of them severely with fists, clubs and crowbars. The construction worker mob fought their way into City Hall and demanded that the flag be raised to full mast again – it had been lowered to half mast to honor the dead at Kent State. Fearful of further damage from the mob, the Deputy Mayor ordered the flag to be raised. The riot eventually fizzled out on its own. Six arrests were made and more than 70 people were injured.

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Ironically, those construction workers were building the World Trade Center just a couple blocks from what is now Zuccotti Park.

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Occupy Body Count

Police gather evidence at Occupy Salt Lake City

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Death at Pioneer Park results in closure of Occupy SLC camp

As a result of a man dying overnight at Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park, Police Chief Chris Burbank on Friday ordered Occupy Salt Lake protesters to vacate their camps at both the west-side park and downtown’s Gallivan Center.

The protesters have until Saturday at sundown to pack up and leave.

Burbank said he would try to work with the group to find other avenues to express their opposition to Wall Street policies and corporate greed, but in the wake of the death early Friday morning he could no longer allow camping out in subfreezing weather on public sites.

Burbank said it appears the victim died sometime around 2 a.m., likely from a combination of carbon monoxide poisoning and a drug overdose. Along with a propane heater, police had reportedly been seen retrieving what appeared to be drug paraphernalia from the victim’s tent as they gathered evidence at the scene late Friday morning.

Burbank, flanked by representatives of several social service agencies and homeless advocates, arrived just after noon and asked campers and reporters to gather round. He said the existence of the protest camps had become a public safety issue. He wondered if the dead man would still be alive, had he not been camping.

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Exposure, drug overdose, suicide and murder. The body count keeps rising and the evidence continues to mount that these are not a bunch of noble patriots trying to survive the winter at Valley Forge.

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Sarah says

Fire Eric Holder

It’s tempting to get distracted with the horse race aspect of electoral politics during a primary season. But as pundits talk about “who’s up and who’s down” in the 24 hour news cycle, we must keep our eye on the ball with the Obama administration. They rely on distraction to skirt responsibility, but we’re going to hold them accountable for their corruption and incompetence.

When the stories about Operation Fast and Furious first broke, it sounded too crazy even for this administration.

Why would any government official with an ounce of common sense think it’s a good idea to facilitate the smuggling of thousands of guns into the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels? That’s what Operation Fast and Furious did.

You might think Eric Holder’s Department of Justice was setting up a sting operation in which our federal agents would swoop down and arrest the bad guys the minute the guns traded hands. But that’s not what happened. Eric Holder’s DOJ had American gun dealers sell weapons to “straw purchasers” tied to drug cartels without actually following the movement of the guns as they were then sold to Mexican drug lords. They apparently thought this so-called “gun-walking” operation would help them chart the path of gun smuggling, but they didn’t have a plan to actually control the weapons’ movements as the guns were allowed to “walk” into Mexico. All Holder’s DOJ did was arm violent criminals. What manner of fools do we have working in this administration? What’s next? Supplying nuclear weapons components to the Iranians so we can track their activities?

Fast and Furious isn’t just your typical government incompetence. This is a deadly tragedy. U.S. border agent Brian Terry was gunned down with weapons connected to Holder’s debacle. At least 200 Mexican citizens were also killed by criminals using Fast and Furious weapons. We can only imagine how many more people will be murdered by criminals our government armed.

When an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives blew the whistle on this operation, the DOJ leaked sensitive information about him to the press. This week, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, who was ousted in the wake of the scandal, admitted to being the leaker.

And where is President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this? When did he first know about the operation? In his testimony to the House Oversight Committee on May 3, 2011, Holder stated, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” But the DOJ’s own documents prove that Holder had been receiving briefings on Fast and Furious for nearly a year before that date. In other words, our government’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder, lied to the American public. He finally admitted this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “In my testimony before the House committee [on May 3], I did say a few weeks. I probably could have said a couple of months. What I said about a few weeks was inaccurate based on what happened.”

When the nation’s highest law enforcement official lies to the American people, he must go.

And if he claims that he didn’t lie, then how else do we explain this situation? He’s either lying or he’s so grossly incompetent and lazy that he didn’t read important life and death briefings from his deputy attorney general and didn’t know about this deadly operation run by people under him. So, which is it? Incompetent, lazy, or lying? No matter which explanation fits, he needs to go.

Holder conceded this week, “I have ultimate responsibility for what happens in the department.” He can prove it by resigning. And if he refuses to resign, then President Obama – with whom the bucks ultimately stop – can prove that he respects honesty, transparency, and accountability in his administration by firing Holder.

I stand with the members of Congress who are calling for Holder’s resignation. I stand with the family members of Brian Terry who are demanding transparency and accountability. Mr. President, where do you stand?

- Sarah Palin

P.S. It can be argued that some elements of this scandal give the appearance of perhaps being intended to be used to infringe on our Second Amendment rights. I invite our President to correct concerned Americans if they’re wrong on this.

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It’s the cover-up.

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Happy Veteran’s Day

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They called it “The War to End All Wars.” It wasn’t:

Armistice Day (also known as Remembrance Day) is on November 11 and commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918. While this official date to mark the end of the war reflects the cease fire on the Western Front, hostilities continued in other regions, especially across the former Russian Empire and in parts of the old Ottoman Empire.

The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations, to commemorate those members of the armed forces who were killed during war. An exception is Italy, where the end of the war is commemorated on November 4, the day of the Armistice of Villa Giusti. After World War II, the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day in the United States and to Remembrance Day in countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Armistice Day remains an official holiday in France. It is also an official holiday in Belgium, known also as the Day of Peace in the Flanders Fields.

In many parts of the world people take a two-minute moment of silence at 11:00 a.m. as a sign of respect for the roughly 20 million people who died in the war, as suggested by Edward George Honey in a letter to a British newspaper, although Wellesley Tudor Pole established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917

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It’s cool and edgy in some circles to sneer at patriotism.

Not around here.

If you love freedom, thank a vet.

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