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1962 - SCV residents vote to connect to State Water Project, creating Castaic Lake Water Agency (now part of SCV Water) [story]
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The Real Side | Commentary by Joe Messina
| Thursday, Apr 7, 2016

joemessinamugIt’s always been pretty obvious, for the most part: The Democrats have never been really fond of the military. If they had any feeling for them at all, I would say, based on the actions of many Dems who have taken up temporary residence in the White House, they loathe them.

Whenever a Democrat gets in, he (hasn’t been a “she” yet) loves to whip out the red pen and get right to cutting the military budget and, in turn, taking a huge swipe at morale. They view enlisted as little more than “GI Joe” kids with low IQs and no place else to go.

Don’t believe me? How about we revisit some “terms of endearment” toward our military from our Democratic leaders?

Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha has called our Marines, “cold blooded killers.”

Democratic Sen. John Kerry accused our soldiers of “terrorizing women and children” in Iraq.

Democrat Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, compared our military police at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis and Soviet gulag guards.

Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy once said, “Saddam’s torture chambers reopened under new management, U.S. management.”

In 2008, the Democratic Chairwoman of the Virginia State Board of Election (appointed by the then-Democratic National Committee Chair Sen. Tim Kaine) argued that sending absentee ballots overseas to the military one day before the elections was perfectly legal. Really? What was the motivation? Why wouldn’t we give these guys every chance to vote?

A federal court stepped in and ruled that Virginia violated federal law but conceded that without the original ballots, there was no way to prove if the voting would have made a difference. So the moral to the Democrat voter story is to protect the votes of the dead, the illegals, and the non-existent, but to hell with the military. We wouldn’t want to go out of our way to accommodate them in any way.

Why, you ask? Because the majority of the military tends to vote Republican or conservative.

It’s so very interesting that when Republicans fight to make sure every American citizen’s vote is protected, real citizens, by supporting voter ID laws, Democrats say Republicans are trying to suppress the vote.

In reality, the areas that have enacted voter ID laws show the voting numbers don’t go down; they go up. In Georgia, voting among blacks and Hispanics dramatically8 increased from 2006 to 2012, outpacing the state’s growth rate. How can that be? They have voter ID laws.

Yet, Democrats actually sued to remove an exception giving the military voters an equal chance to be counted. When called out, their response was, “We are only acting in the interest of fairness.” That can only work on the planet Uranus – you know, the one that spins backward and off a normal axis.

Even President Obama’s warped sense of reality shined through when he said he supported gay marriage because of the soldiers “fighting on my behalf.” He just doesn’t support their right to vote. Gotta stop and think.

President Jimmy Carter decided, as did Obama, that America should seek peace through weakness. He cut military spending and overlooked many issues in the Middle East. He felt it was our strength that was causing tensions with Russia to the point of ordering his administration to dismantle 200 to 250 nuclear weapons on naval vessels in Europe and the Middle East. That worked out well.

He proposed cuts to operations and maintenance, reduced training and alert status, equipment and more. This made our B-52 aircraft assigned to the Strategic Air Command at the lowest level it had been since before the war. There was only one-third of the equipment needed to keep us safe. Why? Because he felt this would show the world we weren’t bullies. Is this built into their DNA?

After President Reagan had left the most peace-keeping, combat-ready force on the planet, we had peace in the Middle East, had dismantled the Soviet empire, gained the respect of our allies, and had a healthy fear from our enemies. In steps President Bill Clinton. He immediately went to work cutting the military and increasing the number of interns working at the White House. Bill cut the military by almost 30 percent. He let 500,000 military people go and allowed 80 ships to be mothballed without replacement. He cut the military budget by $12 billion the first year and pushed to cut it by $88 billion by the end of his first term.

Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the Clinton administration’s approach to our U.S. military was “fundamentally flawed” and the proposal was “out of balance.” (Sound familiar?) There was a new plan to provide $400 million in expanded efforts to reduce the threat weapons of mass destruction “lost” or “misplaced” by the former Soviet Union. Along with this proposal was a new $40 million dollar allocation to fund “counterproliferation measures” aimed at stopping the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons by such countries as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. They were denied. How did that work out?

Obama is following all of these same flawed ideas and adding some of his own. In watching a weekend special hosted by Brett Baier, three of President Obama’s previous defense secretaries basically said the same thing: The president is wrong and dangerous on foreign policy. He is more interested in having a politically correct, totally socially acceptable military than one that is fighting-ready and feared.

The majority of his policies for the military have nothing to do with strengthening them, making them battle-ready, or getting them better equipment. No. It’s about making sure the LGBTQ community feels comfortable joining. It’s about making sure no one is offended by what’s perceived to be racist or nasty language. It’s about making sure no one ever has to see any religious symbols (of the Christian type). But if you’re a Sikh, then the head garb is OK. Or a Muslim, where special arrangements will be made for prayer daily. And there will be no pork in some of the major mess halls. But I’ll bet there is meat on Friday in those same mess halls. No problem insulting our Catholic friends.

Instead of money for more training or equipment, we allocated money for our men at a ROTC event to walk around in high heels for the afternoon to see what it’s like to be berated. This clown of a president has made the military a circus. This is according to his last three defense secretaries, not Joe Messina. No doubt we will soon find these guys in trouble with the IRS, military police, or worse, dead.

The show was telling. If you took Obama’s name off of it, you would call the person a warped hater of America. But since his name is on it, many will quietly go away and say nothing.

I will say, if these secretaries of defense are telling us the truth, this president will eventually be known as the president who tried to bring down America.

What sane person keeps shrinking his military with the world increasingly in turmoil? What sane person keeps cutting money from the military budget and increasing money to services for illegals and refugees? What sane person stops border patrol agents from doing their job, leaving our borders basically open and unchecked?

Draw your own conclusion. No sane person would do that.

 

 

Joe Messina is host of The Real Side (TheRealSide.com), a nationally syndicated talk show that runs on AM-1220 KHTS radio and SCVTV [here]. He is also an elected member of the Hart School Board. His commentary publishes Mondays.

 

 

Comment On This Story
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11 Comments

  1. Joe is an uneducated, judgmental, small minded Willian S Hart School Board member. Insinuating that most democrats are anti military is an idiotic statement. I guess it would be like saying all republicans are racist. As a board member he should choose his words wisely. But past posts of Joe Messina have shown he has little self control. Joe Messina is a poor example to our children and this community we have to share with him.

  2. OMG! No sane person… he’s one to talk and I’ve only seen this post. SMH. There’s nothing wrong with seeking peace. We are going to destroy ourselves if we don’t. Has he been living under a rock or something?

  3. Emily Ball says:

    Most of the vets I know are Democrats.

    • Gsmc R.F. Basina says:

      Emily,
      As a 20+ year US Navy Chief retiree, every military member that I served with and know were staunch conservatives/republicans.
      the dem party (aka the socialist party) in no way, shape or form holds true with the oath of enlistment. How can someone “support and defend” the constitution while actively trying to destroy it?

  4. George Palmer says:

    As a former SCV resident, now living in the deep blue socialist shadow of Western NYState politics, I am heartened to see that the SCV has not fallen under the regressive and pervasive left armpit of California politics.

  5. Cami Moore Cami Moore says:

    Get this turd out of here

  6. jim kehr says:

    Messina’s thoughts about Democrats & the military are ridiculous. Of course someone who thinks Republican support for every military incursion or expenditure is patriotic rather than upper class welfare for the corporations and their investors is living in fantasyland.

  7. “It’s so very interesting that when Republicans fight to make sure every American citizen’s vote is protected, real citizens, by supporting voter ID laws, Democrats say Republicans are trying to suppress the vote.”

    Joe may as well say what he’s really thinking: that only white people are “real citizens.” -_-

  8. mellie says:

    If democrats didn’t hate our military and innocent babies, too, they wouldn’t be democrats…I mean dummocrats.

  9. Gsmc R.F. Basina says:

    what part of “op/ed” do people have a problem with?
    the article is this mans OPINION.
    if you have a dissenting opinion, then you write an OP/ED piece and get it posted.

    question: is anything he wrote not factual?
    if so, which?
    I was there when BRAC happened, so that is fact.
    I remember getting my voters info WEEKS (even Months) after the election because I was out to sea, so that is fact.
    I retired because the USN was turning into the girl scouts. more interested in PR projects, than projecting military strength around the world.
    People need to do a little reading about the War of 1812 aka The Second War for Independence.
    You know, the part where the gov cut the military to the bone and then we got attacked.
    You can not disenfranchise, make huge cuts to the military, and then ask them to do lay down their lives in the name of freedom.
    Well I guess you can, but don’t be surprised when the barbarians at the gate come in.

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