. . . Hey, aren't Democrats meant to be uniting the nation following all these years of Bushitler divisiveness? Let's see how that's working out:
With Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Obama locked in a tight race before Tuesday's voting, the campaign has turned into a gigantic family feud, with prominent and everyday Democrats splitting with spouses, siblings, parents and children.
Why, it's an all-in wimp war! A gender-based racial/generational Obamic/Hillarian Democrisis! A mate-against-mate blue state hategate! Maybe Maureen Dowd can find some root causes here:
A more accurate snapshot of the frosty Clinton-Obama relationship came on a frosty December day ...
A day so frosty MoDo's thesaurus was frosted shut.
... in a scorching encounter that is now known simply as "te tarmac moment." On Dec. 13, the two senators were preparing to board their private planes parked next to each other at Reagan National Airport, to go back to Iowa for a debate.
Where, no doubt, the two jet-share refuseniks preached about global warming. Obama aims to "make the United States a leader in the global effort to combat climate change by leading a new international global warming partnership;" big words from someone who won't even split a ride with Senator Steroid Ankles. Back to MoDo:
Hillary sent word to Obama that she wanted to talk to him. Obama's aides figured that she wanted to make a pro forma apology for the comments of Billy Shaheen, the Clinton co-chairman in New Hampshire, who had told The Washington Post that Republicans would pounce on Obama's confessions of cocaine and marijuana use in his late teens. Shaheen would step down the next day, but Camp Obama did not think the slam was a mere slip of the tongue.
In front of her plane, Hillary apologized to her rival about Shaheen. Obama replied that he was concerned at the pattern of insinuations and attacks from her supporters and that a message needed to be sent from the top that sharp attacks were not, as Hillary had put it, "the fun part." He brought up another recent example: the Clinton volunteer in Iowa who had been asked to leave after forwarding sleazy e-mail falsely claiming that Obama was a Muslim.
Then, according to witnesses from the Obama camp, Hillary got very agitated and was "flapping her arms."
Well, she was on a runway. Who needs a stupid jet?
Posted by: Mike ||
02/04/2008 14:54 ||
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Why, it's an all-in wimp war! A gender-based racial/generational Obamic/Hillarian Democrisis!
Shawn Macomber, American Spectator Linkage added.
THERE IS A STORY JIMMY Carter tells in several of his books about a newly elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention paying him a visit in the Oval Office and telling the shocked -- shocked! -- Commander in Chief, "We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion."
"He may have said this because I was against a constitutional amendment to authorize mandatory prayer in public school and had been working on some things opposed by the 'religious right,' such as the Panama Canal treaties, a Department of Education, and the SALT II treaty with the Soviets," Carter theorizes in Living Faith, as if in the 1970s the "religious right" were single-issue voters fixated in the Panama Canal and maybe -- maybe -- disrupting arms treaties rather than, oh, I don't know...abortion.
Nevertheless, it isn't quite clear why, outside of the obvious political advantages gained by marrying delusions of grandeur to a sanctimonious religion-based piety, Carter would so object to the "secular humanist" label. . . . Carter places the miracles of government bureaucracy ahead of those of his own church, yet still wonders why the largest single contingent of Baptists in the country is skeptical of his New Covenant. "I treat theological arguments gingerly but am bolder when it comes to connecting my religious beliefs with life and current events in the world, even when the issues are controversial," Carter writes in Living Faith. In other words, the details of scripture are uninteresting until they offer a rationale for Carter's left-wing predilections or somehow justify the four years of tribulation known as his presidency.
APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, to Carter's mind, the biggest trade-off of the Crucifixion may have been gaining eternal salvation while losing a potentially great bureaucratic overlord. During a meditation on the temptation of Christ, Carter muses over the attractiveness of Satan's offer to allow Christ to rule the world if he rejected God:
What a wonderful and benevolent government Jesus could have set up. How exemplary justice would have been. Maybe there would have been Habitat projects all over Israel for anyone who needed a home. And the proud, the rich, and the powerful could not have dominated their fellow citizens. As a twentieth-century governor and president I would have had a perfect pattern to follow. I could have pointed to the Bible and told other government leaders, "This is what Jesus did 2000 years ago in government. Why don't we do the same?"
That Carter assumes, first, he would be a worthy successor to Christ in political office -- what, Jesus returns to implement...term limits? -- and, second, that the Messiah would spend his post-presidency years doing precisely as Carter did -- building Habitat for Humanity homes, apparently -- tells you everything you need to know about the Man from Plains' outlook on this world and the next.
This also shows alleged Sunday School teacher Jimmy's astonishing ignorance of Christian theology. There's a reason why Jesus turned down the offer of earthly power:
The quest to build the Kingdom on Earth, instead of storing up your treasures not in this world but the next, is a fool's errand. The history of the past couple centuries is littered with the carnage that results when mortals try to use the secular God-state to perfect human nature. In fact, there's a new book on the subject, just hit the streets; it's quite good.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/04/2008 11:44 ||
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Mods: the last bit(starting at "This also shows . . .") is my commentary; fogot to hilite it. Sorry to make extra work for you.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/04/2008 12:03 Comments ||
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#2
This also goes in Home Front: Politix as an Opinion piece. AoS.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/04/2008 12:24 Comments ||
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#3
I think, as does The Captain's Quarters, that Jimmy Carter was the worst President ever. In this instance, like Ed Morrisy, I think he is being unfairly attacked.
There was a bit left out from Carter's quote. Here it is, " But the devil stipulated fatal provisos: an abandonment of God, and an acknowledgment of earthly things as dominant. ... Anyone who accepts kingship based on serving the devil rather than God will end up a tyrant, not a benevolent leader."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/04/2008 16:42 Comments ||
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#4
Good of you to post that correction and clarification, Deacon.
Now, if Jimmy would just acknowledge that the principle applies to Hugo Chavez and Yassir Arafat and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Amahdnejad and . . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
02/04/2008 18:00 Comments ||
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Election 2008: Since we first drew attention to Barack Obama's Afrocentric church a full 12 months ago, other media have weighed in. And additional disturbing information has come to light.
Related Topics: Election 2008
At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own.
In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.
It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.
The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of "competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them "captive" to white culture.
In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of black nationalism. And its dashiki-wearing preacher who married Obama and his wife and now acts as his personal spiritual adviser is militantly Afrocentric. "We are an African people," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright reminds his flock, "and remain true to our native land, the mother continent."
Wright once traveled to Libya with black supremacist Louis Farrakhan to meet with terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi. Last year at a Chicago gala, Wright honored his old pal Farrakhan, who's fond of calling whites "blue-eyed devils," for lifetime achievement.
It comes as little surprise then that Wright would think Israel a "racist" occupier of Palestinians, while describing the 9/11 attacks as a "wake-up call" to "white America" for ignoring the concerns of "people of color."
Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his presidential run.
The candidate already has heeded his church's "nonnegotiable commitment to Africa," spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis, for one. Obama has close family ties to Kenya, and even founded a school in his ancestral village the Senator Obama School.
#3
Obama's "pastor" is race-baiting nutbag, so yes it matters. And I've just about had it with the peoples equating McCain with Hitlary and Obama. I can understand the sentiment, however there's this little thing known as the GWoT. We don't have the luxury of conducting political theater. Make no doubt, the Dems WILL surrender. And while the donks are busying themselves raping our paychecks, we'll be losing every ally abroad. What nation would ever again sacrifice blood and treasure along side us only to be abandoned on political expediency? If you really want to go that route, then I suggest you write in Buchanon, cause that's where we'll be: a solitary, paranoid nation.
/rant off
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/04/2008 15:58 Comments ||
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Why Does Obama's Pastor Matter?
Sounds like it definitely matters. Note to self. File away for future reference under: Obama's pastor is a friggin nut case.
Look 'round the website this comes from. This guy's a little, well, "out there."
Posted by: Mike ||
02/04/2008 9:33 Comments ||
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#2
" Allegations of this nature have been made over the years, many by Vietnam veterans"
I've heard these rumors thru the years too. Of course, no one pressed it because there was no proof. What is documnted is McCain's temper, which has been with him since a young age. He seems to totally lose his grip. Not good if you have your finger on the trigger.
#5
I think the Clintons might want to play some of the interviews McCain did on 9/11 or 9/12 when he was venting and furious. I was glad he wasn't in charge when I saw that. Now it's a few years later and in the position of President he might be more mindful of his demeanor but still it was unsettling.
On the other hand the Iranians and others might have gotten the message so perhaps it would have been useful for the President to come off as unhinged from time to time.
I've heard others make this point. I'm pretty sure that Persian and Arab govts have ordered their loyalists here to give $ to Hil or Obama because they believe McC might actually start the launch sequence.
If I really wanna get paranoid about McCain (which I am, of course), all I have to do is watch the Manchurian Candidate. I prefer the original black and white version with Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra. The writing is much better.
Besides, McCain's public record since Vietnam is bad enough.
#8
Sorry boys but I'm incline to believe it. Take a look at other flyers and see how they have aged after 7 years in North Vietnam. But that's just an opinion.
You know what Kerry got? His family was given soul rights to some land sales in North Vietnam.
Remember how McCain fought public access to POW/MIA files? All the Pentagon debriefings of the prisoners who returned from Vietnam are now classified and closed to the public under a statute enacted in the 1990s with McCains backing. He says this is to protect the privacy of former POWs and gives it as his reason for not making public his own debriefing.
yes the original Manchurian Candidate was a great flick - one of my favorites
and it had the beautiful Janet Leigh and the even more beautiful Leslie Parrish in it (Parrish was possibly the only person on earth with the face, the figure and the voice to play Daisie May in the movie musical L'll Abner)
Angela Lansbury played the mother of Lawrence Harvey despite the fact she was, IIRC, older than he was (by a few months).
#10
The curious thing about Angela Lansbury is that years later when she played in Murder She Wrote she still didn't look any older. Might have to rent that movie and watch it again. Hmmmm. Tonight might be a good night for some enterprising TV stations or cable networks to show it.
#13
I'm very skeptical about this rpt & am loathe to believe it.
I'd say there's more concrete evidence when he was CO/XO at RAG 134 in Fla wrt him committing adultery (fairly openly) & dumping his wife for a trophy-broad 17 yrs his junior.
If not that then all you need is his voting record.
#14
FOXNEWS Bizn Pert last nite > ITS THE LEFT VERSUS THE LEFT FOR 2008, NOT GOP-Right versus DEMOLEFT, or CONSERVATIVE versus LIBERAL, *NEWMAX OP-ED COLUMNISTS > THERE IS NO TRUE CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE.
#16
I'd say there's more concrete evidence when he was CO/XO at RAG 134 in Fla wrt...
What? I have no idea what a RAG 134 is, and I suspect you don't either. McCain was the CO of an A-7E Training Squadron designated VA-174 at N.A.S. Cecil Field, Jacksonville, FL. I know, because I was there too, at the same time.
#17
I do know that back in 04 I talekd to some vets who condemned Kerry AND McCain for gbasically trying to shine them on in the 90's when they tried to bring accoutnability up and it was "inconveneinet" for McCain and the rapproachment talks. Basically McCain blew up at them and cussed them out callign them all kinds of vile things for getting in the way of McCain.
John McCain is an asshole. The GOP is cutting its own throat.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba What to do about Gitmo? Nearly 300 detainees of the war on terrorism are kept here. Presidential candidates Sen. John McCain and Mike Huckabee, as well as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, are on record as saying they would close the facility. With leading opinion, both Republican and Democratic, calling for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, you have to wonder why it is kept open.
None of those who has called for Gitmos closure has made clear two things: How would closing Gitmo advance the war effort? And what would they do with the detainees kept there?
Concerning the detainees, there are only two options: release them outright, or detain them somewhere else.
To release the detainees outright, including those like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, would be a crime. To close the Gitmo facility only to incarcerate the detainees somewhere else seems like a sleight-of-hand trick, a bait and switch. So those who call for the closure of Gitmo without saying why, and without saying what should be done with the detainees, have some explaining to do.
The most common why offered for Gitmos closure are variations of the moral high ground argument. There is a school of thought that says that the Gitmo facility represents a black eye to the United States and what it stands for, because of the allegations of prisoner abuse and the evasion of the rule of law. Conclusion: Gitmo must be closed.
Never mind that all of the allegations of prisoner abuse have been proved false. Never mind the fact that Congress has passed the necessary statutes that now provide clarity in what was almost uncharted legal territory. The moral high ground argument is simply another way of saying that Gitmo should be closed without saying what will be done about the detainees. The argument simply fails to address how changing the location of detention advances the war effort. This is preaching to the choir here but is a great article, worth the read
#7
I say, enforce the Geneva Convention! Give them a quick summary trial. All those captured: carrying weapons, not wearing a uniform, not under control of a command structure - shoot them. That is what the Geneva Convention says about illegal combatants.
Other than that, let them loose. They can swim home, or they can cross the minefields into Cuba. I'm sure Castro would love to have them.
A year after the American troop surge in Iraq began, its success is clear, even to Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Rep. John Murtha. As Wesley Morgan details in the current issue of National Review, violence is way down, American troop levels are decreasing, tribal leaders are casting their lot with America, and a tattered al-Qaeda is on the run. Yet most leading Democrats sound like they havent heard the news.
On the anniversary of the surge, Harry Reid wrote that as President Bush continues to cling stubbornly to his flawed strategy, Al Qaeda only grows stronger. After Bushs State of the Union Address last week, Hillary Clinton said, President Bush is not satisfied with failure after failure in Iraq; he wants to bind the next president to his failed strategy . . ., while Barack Obamas assessment was: Tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know thats just not true. During Thursday nights debate at the Kodak theater, conservative radio host Michael Graham asked in frustration, Do these two U.S. senators have any idea whats actually happening in Iraq?
Are they simply clueless? Maybe, though you have to suspect that they do actually know the surge is working. Unpatriotic? Call it what you will; theres nothing like amplifying every failure and minimizing every success to show the troops in the field which side youre rooting for. But as the French say, Its worse than a crime; its a blunder. Insisting that America is losing in Iraq is not only wrong factually and morally; its poor strategy.
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#1
The gang on FOXNEWS + even CNN-MSNBC are overwhelmingly iff imperfectly in the belief that AMERICA IS NOT IN RECESSION = IS FAR FROM A RECESSION, and that even the US DEMOLEFT RECOGNIZES THAT AMERICA IS WINNING IN THE ME + GLOBALLY ENTRENCHING.
2008 POTUS elex > the only real issues are US-CENTRIC QUALITY OF LIFE AND HOW GOVT CAN IMPROVE UPON IT, and PC SELLING ME + GLOBAL EMPIRE, i.e. US -LED NATION/REGION-BUILDING + CONSTRUX, TO AMER VOTERS vv AMERICA.
As argued or inferred long ago, RADICAL ISLAM > US LOCAL-GLOBAL ENTRENCHMENT > means that in the LONG TERM, ITS GONNA GET HARDER AND HARDER FOR RADICAL ISLAM-TERROR TO "JUSTIFY" NOT RESORTING TO AMERICA HIROSHIMA = NEW 9-11's/ATTACKS INSIDE AMERICA, including but not limited to the WAGING OF ANTI-US PYWAR-INFOWAR-PERCEPTIONS WARFARE AGZ THE US-WEST vv MSM + INTERNET, ETC.
Iff one believes that Radical Islam intended to drag or induce the USA into a new Vietnam-style conflict, the END OF THE COLD WAR/USSR + UNIPOLAR US ENTRENCHMENT had effec precluded that option such that AMER HIROSHIMA SCHEMES ARE VIABLE. The PRO-GLOBAL ANARCHY/MUTUAL DESTRUCTION RADICAL MULLAHS recognize that TIME-POL FACTORS WORKS AS MUCH AGZ THE ISLAMIST AGENDA AS IT DOES AGZ THE US-WEST. Radical Islamism is cease its its war only when it is per se destroyed, and will not cease its pursuit of NUCLEAR TECH/WEAPONS both for EMPOWERMENT OF PAN-ISLAMIST STATE-ISM + FOR DESTABILIZING ANTI US-WESTERN TERROR.
#2
FOXNEWS Pert > ITS THE LEFT VERSUS THE LEFT FOR 2008 ELEX.
FREREPUBLIC POSTER > IPO, believes the Insurgents and Terrorists are getting ready to launch a TET OFFENSIVE in IRAQ [ANTI/COUNTER-SURGE]before shifting to other Regions. OTHER FREEP/FREEREPUB > Poster hopes that Radical Islam has given up on any plans for AMERICAN HIROSHIMA(S), and will limit ops to Iraq-ME.
The dramatic decline in US casualties in Iraq has been one the great untold story of recent months. With thirty-nine lost in January, twenty-three in December, thirty-seven in November and thirty-eight in November, a young American male would have been safer in Iraq than in some of America's inner cities.
Given the circumstances this is not what one would expect. For one thing, the number of casualties a foreign force takes usually grows as conflicts of this nature drag on. Secondly, a number of factors would appear to make Iraq the ideal place for the kind of partisan-style operation the insurgents are trying to carry out.
To begin with, the conflict's long duration has given the enemy the time to structure and organize themselves. Since America incites deep hostility in the jihadist psyche, there has been no shortage of recruits eager to fight the Great Satan. The eagerness of many to die and claim their virgins makes them an especially dangerous and deadly foe. The insurgency has also been well backed by the jihad's financiers who consider Iraq the central battlefield in their cause. Finally, the insurgency has been receiving steady state support from Iran and Syria in the form of weapons, materiel and advisors.
When an insurgency that is so favored ends up as ineffective as the one in Iraq today, there can only be one reason for it: a lack of support from the local population.
This is because native populations are to this type of fighters what water is to fish. Since they move and live among them, the insurgents depend on locals for cover, sustenance and other necessities. But the Iraqis apparently do not provide them with the support they need and demand. In fact, the opposite is the case. Everyday our soldiers receive tips which help them to bust enemy safe houses, find weapons caches, and foil plots.
This may come as a shock to some, but our low casualty rate clearly shows that the Iraqi people have taken the side of America and that on a mass scale.
The perception that the Iraqis detest our soldiers as oppressive occupiers has been falsely created by American liberals and their collaborators in the Democrat Party and the mainstream media. It was them who fabricated the notion that our military is a cesspool of wanton torturers, lust-filled rapists and unscrupulous thugs preying on the people of Iraq. Because American liberals loathe our military, they want to make every one else loathe it as well. Eager to drum up hatred, they have been spreading their slander either by direct accusation or by insinuation.
Liberals have shown their true nature by choosing the side of evil in the great struggle of our time. So complete is their betrayal that they obsessively shield some of the world's most bloodthirsty fanatics from temporary discomfort that would yield information that could save thousands of innocent lives. Even though they try to deny it, their actions clearly show that liberals have thrown their lot with some of the most brutal, cruel and depraved miscreants in recent memory. In their eagerness to hand them victory they have already declared this war lost even as their country dominates the battlefield. The terrorists for their part show their appreciation when they celebrate Democrats' electoral successes, for even ideological differences and geographic distance cannot obscure the fact that American liberals are the best friends they have.
So intimate is this shameful pact that the other side - Bin Laden, al-Zahawiri, al-Jazeera and their likes - routinely base their tirades against America on liberals' talking points. And while liberals give plenty of encouragement to foreign reprobates, they have little good to say about the best and bravest among us. Even as they disingenuously proclaim their support for our troops, they eagerly seize on every minor infraction to besmirch their reputation.
But like in much else liberals are wrong. Rather than being an accurate assessment of reality, their smears are a reflection of their own depravity which prevents them from seeing things as they really are. If they did, they would realize that there has never been a military which has treated both civilians and combat enemy more humanely or with more dignity. No one is in a better position to make this judgment than the Iraqi people who have had the opportunity to observe and interact with our armed forces first hand. The low casualty figures coming out of Iraq tell their side of the story loud and clear.
#1
It is time to note the very important lessons learned from the Iraq war and occupation:
1) Using the nation, and areas and cities within, as a "roach motel" to attract foreign insurgents. This reduced conflicts in perhaps 10 countries to just one, with their insurgents fighting our troops in a place of our choosing, instead of attacking our civilians in the West, in our nations.
2) Every part of Iraq we rebuilt from scratch works a hundred times better than the parts we tried to salvage from the old regime. It was a terrible error to allow Iraq to keep its French-based legal system, instead of the far superior Common law based one, and to allow it to create its own constitution, instead of imposing one on them, in the manner of MacArthur in Japan.
3) It is yet unknown if the idealized economic system imposed by J. Paul Bremer will have the dramatic effect of making Iraq into a first world nation. This will take 10-20 more years to find out. But if so, Iraq will become so economically powerful that it will dominate much of the far side of the planet.
4) Hearts and minds was critical to the occupation. This was accomplished by numerous low-level military personnel under the guidance of a master counter-insurgency General. Unfortunately, we tried to use a "stabilization" General before Iraq was ready, which delayed victory for a year. Unlucky him.
5) By having the military directly disperse funds at a low level for reconstruction projects, efficiency was improved by a factor or two. This, despite bitter protests by Washington bureaucrats about these monies not being carefully accounted for, and passing through their control and discretion. Screw them. The military used these funds with the precision and timeliness of an epee.
6) We severely underestimated the number and type of prisons needed in Iraq, as well as the need for swift justice by the Iraqi equivalent of military tribunals, instead of traditional courts.
7) The use of civilian police criminal information and data mining software was brilliant. Early on, we should have ASAP conducted a biometric census of every Iraqi, to include fingerprints, DNA, and photo, as well as issued each one a biometric identification card. Such cards would be encrypted to conceal the identity from a casual glance, to protect them from their own enemies.
8) There is no practical limit to the use of surveillance during a military occupation. Optimally, we should have had 24 hour high altitude surveillance of every area of interest in the country, early on. The expense would have saved thousands of lives.
#2
Still, we should all be ready for the Al Queda version of the tet offensive as they try to show they aren't done and bring Iraq to the headlines again in time to shoot down the Republicans.
That is if they can get enough suicide bombers, car bombs, to make it work.
#3
MEHSUD > has reportedly claimed that Islam = Islamism will de facto destroy the USA + Britain but wiithout using NUCLEAR WEAPONS. BY EXTENS MEHSUD IS IMPLYNG THE PER SE DESTRUCTION OF THE ANGLO-SPHERE WHICH INCLUDES ALL OF WESTERN EUROPE/EURO + WESTERN DEMOCRACIES, ultimately includng even POST-COLD WAR/USSR, HISTORICALLY + SELF-PROCLAIMED EURO-CENTRIC RUSSIA.
9) Instilling a sense of confidence that we are going to be there in time, every time, for as long as it is necessary to get Iraq on its own feet. They can't worry about whether or not we are going to be there next year, and they have to know that if they stick their necks out and give us a call to clean up another pile of dog$hit that we will be there quickly and clean things up so thoroughly in a manner that protects their identity that they won't have to worry about having to face retribution from the bad guys. I personally think this is a huge factor in gaining the confidence and help of a population that has a desire to help but has to play by very "practical" and summary rules.
As the troop build-up in Iraq produces positive results, many media outlets have seized upon a new anti-war narrative. It's right out of the Vietnam War-era: wacko and self-destructive vets running amok on the home front.
"Soldier Suicides at Record Levels," trumpeted a 1,500-word front-page piece in the Washington Post this week. And for three recent Sundays, the New York Times has dished up a front-page series of more than 10,000-words called "War Torn." It's about veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have returned home -- only to kill again.
According to the Times' series:
"Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Taken together they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."
The story is flawed, however. Commenting on "War Torn" in his column last Sunday, public editor Clark Hoyt wrote that the series "tangled itself in numbers right from the start." It was "analytically shaky" and relied upon "questionable statistics." His analysis followed howls from conservative bloggers, who were all over "War Torn" long before Hoyt's piece came out.
But give the Times credit for creating the position of public editor, a decision designed to restore its credibility after the Jayson Blair scandal and other problems.
Who is responsible for such agenda-driven reporting at the Times and other media outlets? Mostly senior reporters and editors who are in their 50s and 60s, folks who came of age during the 1960s.
Not surprisingly, the Washington Post's story about "record suicide levels" also had problems, as was pointed out by Gateway Pundit and Media Lies. Among other things, they noted that suicides among soldiers were in fact higher during the Clinton era, according to official statistics. It's yet another example of how statistics and facts can be tweaked to push whatever agenda or outcome a person desires.
Early in the Iraq war, many media outlets and liberal pundits contended that America would suffer a Vietnam-style debacle. It never happened. So now the vet-as-wacko narrative is being pushed.
"Why isn't the Press on a Suicide Watch?": That was the headline of a column published by Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, last August. "For whatever reason, I have always found soldiers who take their own lives especially tragic, though some might argue the opposite," he wrote.
Regarded as the "Bible" of the newspaper industry, the magazine is found on the desks of top editors across America.
In another piece last year, Mitchell raised some dark suspicions about one possible cause of the suicides in an article headlined: "Is Depleted Uranium the Suspect Behind Military Suicides?" Used in military shells, depleted uranium could be poisoning soldiers and "cannot be ruled out as a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder," he wrote.
And in a comment that revealed much about his 1960's worldview -- and those of his readers -- Mitchell wrote that the use of depleted uranium was "one of the greatest war crimes and criminal acts against humanity that has been unfolding since the Gulf War from the Balkans to the Middle East and Afghanistan."
There can be no doubt about where Mitchell stands, but that's not the case with agenda-driven reporters and editors at places like the Washington Post and New York Times. Their biases are often a bit more subtle, and insidious. This was especially the case in the pre-blogosphere days.
During the Vietnam War, such agenda-driven reporting had tragic consequences.
Vietnam-era libels
If bloggers had been around during the Vietnam War-era, America's history and culture might look a lot different today (not to mention Vietnam's).
The media's anti-war and vet-as-wacko narrative encouraged Congress to cut off funds from a war we could have won. And those twin-narratives shaped the nation's popular culture, spawning anti-war novels and films that tarnished former soldiers and lowered America's prestige abroad. One of the most iconic of those novels was First Blood, which Canada-born David Morrell, a former professor in the University of Iowa's English department, started writing in 1968 and published four years later. The novel's "Rambo" character is not exactly like the character in the movies played by Sylvester Stallone. He's a ticking time bomb.
A former Special Forces soldier who won the Medal of Honor, Rambo is pushed over the edge and goes on a rampage, killing dozens of people and nearly destroying a small town. One blurb promoting the novel warned, "When Johnny comes marching home this time, watch out!
Don't believe it? Consider the opening paragraphs of Morrell's novel:
"His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky. He had a long heavy beard, and his hair was hanging down over his ears to his neck, and he had his hand out trying to thump a ride from a car that was stopped at the pump. To see him there, leaning on one hip, a Coke bottle in his hand and a rolled-up sleeping bag near his boots on the tar pavement, you could never have guessed that on Tuesday, a day later, most of the police in Basalt County would be hunting him down. Certainly, you could not have guessed that by Thursday he would be running from the Kentucky National Guard and the police of six counties and a good many private citizens who liked to shoot. But then from just seeing him there ragged and dusty by the pump of the gas station, you could never have figured the kind of kid Rambo was, or what was about to make it all begin."
The reality of Vietnam vets was a lot different. According to an article published in the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2005,
"Statistics indicate that compared with peers who did not serve Vietnam, veterans are: more likely to have attended college; more likely to be married; (and) less likely to be unemployed."
Referring to that story at the Democracy Project blog, Vietnam veteran Bruce Kessler wrote that none of this mattered for the mainstream media, which
"persisted with its theme that Vietnam veterans were terribly psychologically scarred by service in -- what they persist in seeing as -- an unjust war."
But don't bother telling that to the 60's era reporters and editors who propagated that myth, who still cling to it, and who feel a sense of moral superiority for having never served in the military. It's no wonder that that Iraq-is-Vietnam narrative persists -- whether the subject is wacko vets or claims that the war in Iraq is a crime -- or lost cause.
To date, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to inspire anything like the successful anti-war movies and books of the Vietnam era, and it's unlikely that David Morrell or anybody else will get rich off the deranged-vet and anti-war narrative today. The checks and balances provided by countless new voices in the blogosphere will see to that.
David Paulin, an Austin, TX-based journalist, is an occasional contributor to The American Thinker. He blogs at The Big Carnival.
#1
More evidence that the Boomer generation (people in their 50's and 60's) are probably the WORST generation this nation has seen, other than the minority who served.
#2
It's articles like this that really ensure that the hole the profession of journalism has to try and climb out of eventually will reach all the way to hell.
I'm already to the point of assuming "journalists" are leftist, anti-American, anti-human and traitors until proven innocent. Apparently this attitude isn't good enough for them and they seem to desire to be regarded in worse light, if that's possible.
Maybe the time has come that the public demands licensing of journalists from some sort of agency. After all, if it's good enough for accountants and lawyers, it's good enough for journalists.
Can you imagine the screaming if they actually had to abide by standards that demand a certain amount of truth in an article?
#1
They point out the obvious, but miss the obvious.
That is, if an employer hires an illegal, it means that they don't have to hire a low skill American, and that is obvious. But is it unfair?
From the employers point of view, they want to hire a better employee, and they don't care where that better employee comes from. Should just being a citizen entitle someone to a job, even if they are ignorant, lazy, indifferent, or have many other flaws?
Years ago, the federal government decided to subsidize the hiring of the moderately retarded by grocery stores, to use for jobs like baggers. But after a short time, grocery stores discovered that they *liked* hiring the moderately retarded.
Not because of the subsidy, though it was nice, but because the moderately retarded were good workers. They showed up on time, every day. They did the work they were supposed to do. Once they understood the instructions, they carried them out as requested. And they generally didn't whine, complain, argue, or play politics.
And this directly relates to American employment of ethnic groups as well. It has been noted that employers prefer to hire Mexicans, legal or not, instead of African-Americans. And they are very honest about why: the Mexicans are better workers.
Sure, there are lots of hard working African-Americans out there, but they are damned by the large number of worthless African-Americans out there. And interestingly, while there is some degree of loyalty among African-Americans, there is none among Mexicans. A bad Mexican employee will be singled out by other Mexicans, and they will try to have him purged.
Importantly, this usually only applies at the low end of the employment scale. The difference between Mexicans and African-Americans disappears in employment for better, more skilled labor. But at that level, *all* race loyalty has vanished, and African-Americans are freed up from the baggage of their worthless members.
#3
It's just not 'uneducated low skilled' American employers want. H1B visa grew from 10,000 yearly in the 80s to hundreds of thousands today. They're a leverage over the head of employees not to complain to get their visa yanked. They get skills without the hassles. I recall reading the 'want' ads in Computerworld in the 90s. A page long column of technical dream requirements that no one had. All done so the company could validate it tried to get an American hire but couldn't find them. Bull. There is no follow up mechanism to check if the visa employee had those full skills. American corporations are loathe to spend the time and money to train their own. They hate to put people under contract obligating employment for resources invested because they have to treat them as an asset to corporation rather than liability. Their argument is that the employee will leave for a better paying job which they can do if there is no such contractual obligation, but that only emphasizes the underlying point - its not about skill or ability but about cost and control.
American business would bring back slavery if they could get away with it. As it is they've imported a new 'helot' class which then drains the good people of the society of their earnings by having it taxed as much the Donks can get away with to provide the support systems for those helots. In the end the cost of those products and services created by those helots is shifted from direct to indirect with additional governmental overhead.
#4
I am with Procopius2k. Some Democrat interests want massive illegal immigration partly for sentimental ideological reasons (let's be nice to poor people from elsewhere) and as a voting bloc either indirectly through the children of illegals or directly in those states which do not require voters to prove they are citizens. Some Republican interests want massive illegal immigration for the reasons Procopius2k outlines - illegal immigrants are effectively slaves, a helot class, who have little to no recourse in law against unsafe working conditions, pay which does not meet the minimum wage (where applicable), health benefits, pension, vacation, etc. In short, a class of people who are not subject to every advance by unions or legislation since the nineteenth century.
Senator McCain strikes me to be someone influenced by sentiment and possibly by the Rovian strategy adopted by President Bush intended to pry the Latino vote - largely social conservatives - away from the Democrats in big southern and western states. But there is a clear opportunity to instead make a bid for Reagan Democrats sickened by the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their party and angered that blue collar Americans have had their livelihoods and their way of life cut off at the knees by this bullsh*t. That would be a fine line for McCain to walk given his being a squish on amnesty and for Romney - also pro-McCain on this subject until he decided to betray his friend - and who has a hard time keeping the Mexicans from doing his landscaping.
#5
Anonymoose, the problem with your calculations is you forget about Welfare. As a society we pay for those uneducated low skilled American employees who get bypassed for a job. In effect we are hit twice because it's unlikely the illegal is paying a payroll tax or any kind of taxes beyond sales tax.
#6
Elements of all the above comments are true (possibly not the Alamo story).
The Dems want illegals for almost exclusively nefarious reasons. I dismiss their positions out of hand.
The most compelling reason to limit immigration in fact has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with limiting forces from other cultures from overwhelming the one we have. This tension has always existed from the early days of the republic. Right now, the nation needs to turn off the spigot, and spend some time and energy assimilating what we have. Also, the immigants need to spend some of their time and effort becoming fully American.
But in terms of economics.............
Certainly there is a real problem getting huge swaths of native-born Americans to work and work hard. Generous welfare (whether it is traditional or SSI "crazy money") is largely responsible for this - get rid of welfare, give people a choice between working or starving, and just watch them go back to work. This would be a good solution to the illegal problem.
OTOH, the issue becomes somewhat murkier when dealing with people with a little bit of education or training.
While there are employers who are ruthless, and they should be dealt with severely with enforcement, fines, and jail time, comments like "blue collar Americans have had their livelihoods and their way of life cut off at the knees " and "not subject to every advance by unions or legislation since the nineteenth century" and "American business would bring back slavery if it could" are way over the top and frankly, provably wrong. Not only is there no conspiracy to turn the middle class into slaves, the middle class has had a great deal to do with its own demise. It has been obvious for a long time now that even if business owners were completely ethical and decent, changes in the world's labor markets will require a ratcheting down of income (and income security) expectations for workers at all income levels. Yet most workers - factory employees, union guys, farm workers, even engineers - are stubbornly, even wildly, resisting seeing the log in their eye. The world's economic situation is changing, and it isn't ever going to be 1954 again, but a great many workers seem to prefer to tell themselves otherwise.
The fact of the matter is that when viewed in any meaningful historical perspective, so-called "middle class" lifestyle from about 1948 until recently is really more like wealthy lifestyle than anything middle class. As I've pointed out on the 'burg before, it was the lack of an industrial base combined with lack of an educated, trained populace anywhere else on the planet that allowed lower, middle, and even upper middle class people to demand compensation at the level that existed in the 1950's through recent times - a situation which never existed in history prior to that time and probably never will exist ever again. As soon as the rest of the world was able to produce factories and train workers and engineers the American worker had to compete, and the laws of supply and demand will not be denied. The free market is flawed, but to pass laws specifically to protect income streams at the expense of the consumer is more flawed. And the idolatrous pursuit of income stream security to the level at which it exists today has warped our society very badly.
I would venture to guess that with a few exceptions, everyone posting here has spent most or all of their work life during the extended postwar boom (1950-2000), which is now drawing to a close. We grew and lived at a time when there were certain expectations for income levels and security which we have been socialized (brainwashed?) to call middle class. By historical standards, they are not - they are elevated way above that, and to believe otherwise is to be engaged in deep self-dishonesty and ignorance of fact. Some of us have figured that out, and are preparing for a very different world going forward. Some are pissing and moaning that the government has to subsidize whatever it is that they do so that the myth can be perpetuated. In the end it cannot - better to wake up now.
P2K and Excalibur, I often read your posts and admire what you have to say. But on this issue I think you miss the point. I suspect that there would be far less perceived need to import helots, to use your word, if there were no welfare, and if ordinary Americans stopped thinking that being above ground, breathing, having some education, and showing up at a job 40 hours a week entitles one to a very comfy lifestyle. If there were even a little inkling that workers would bend on income stream, much of the demand for illegal labor would vanish.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/04/2008 11:21 Comments ||
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#7
It's not just living breathing 40 hours issue. Look here.. They got caught violating existing labor laws with American workers. This major company got caught play loose and fast with definitions of hourly and exempt workers. It wasn't a 40 hour week for them. Those guys/gals weren't lazy expecting a free ride. They work their butts off in major overtime doing technical work. Meanwhile, the corp is posting big profits. Now they hide it by 'outsourcing' work to smaller businesses who'll do the same thing but not be subject to the scrutiny they're now under.
#9
No, P2K, it's not always a living breathing forty hours issue. Certainly the example you gave cries out for severe penalties, no argument from me. After all, they violated the law, and should be prosecuted to the full extent.
However, this is only one incident. I could, with little effort, come up with specific counterexamples. And it doesn't address the whole picture. We can disagree about how badly the sense of entitlement I mentioned in my above post is a factor or not in the economic underpinnings of the immigration issue. Obviously you think it isn't that much of a factor, but in my own experience (which includes owning and running a business) the entitlement thing is endemic.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/04/2008 16:52 Comments ||
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#10
Businesses will hire the best workers for the lowest wage from the pool of of workers available to them and consistent with the legal restraints placed on them. Amongst other things, public companies have a legal obligation to do this.
This won't change. It's capitalism 101.
What can be changed is the pool of available workers (by various means including restricting welfare) and the legal constraints.
Yes, employers hiring illegals should be thrown in jail. Other countries are waking up this fact, such as the UK
#11
A majority of illegal Mexicans coming to the US have a good work ethic. we're told they do the work that Americans won't do. In truth, they do the work poor whites and poor blacks won't do because poor whites and poor blacks would prefer to collect welfare and not work. Somebody needed to say it. Think not? Just go down to the local municipal or county courthouse. Ask the people in the dock for a show of hands: who here has a full time job and if not how many of you subsist on welfare. Oh, and those not on the welfare list...how many depend on someone who does. Oh...and those not on welfare or not depending on somebody who is on welfare...how many of you subsist on making a living at crime?
#12
Big bizz repubs want the cheap non-union labor.
Dems want the potential voting block based off the handouts from the public largesse.
My solution: 1. Build the wall.
2. Deport illegals. 3. Closed down corp's that hire illegals. 4. Restrict immigration to those w/a skill we need &/or an adv degree /or/ abled bodied illegals willing to serve in the US Mil for at least 5 yrs. 5. No more extended family of illegals getting in and then capping in on soc security. Enough is enough.
#13
One last thing - mow your own f*cking lawns you fat (60% of americans are fat) lazy pigs. My taxes shouldn't be subsidizing a cheap land scaping crew.
#14
Years ago, the federal government decided to subsidize the hiring of the moderately retarded by grocery stores, to use for jobs like baggers.
Do tell, when was that?
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
02/04/2008 18:11 Comments ||
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#15
One last thing - mow your own f*cking lawns you fat (60% of americans are fat) lazy pigs. My taxes shouldn't be subsidizing a cheap land scaping crew.
From a protected bullet proof cocoon I'd love to enforce a statute with a Hickory Stick that forced the Lard Asses to mow their own lawns!
OR made them hire a local kid, like was done all over the USA before the Nation was hollowed out by Big Biz!
#16
Word RD....and whatever happened to the paperboy? hmmmmmm
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/04/2008 21:31 Comments ||
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#17
...poor whites and poor blacks would prefer to collect welfare and not work.
A white person getting Welfare! What Planet do you live on? I went through a short period of dire need, almost became homeless (Thank God for family) and every effort I made at obtaining help, was met with a slammed door.
You need to get a taste of the real world. Whites are the new Blacks.
#18
Do tell, when was that?
Posted by Thomas Woof 2008-02-04 18:11|| Front Page|| ||Comments Top
In the 70's. I remember it well, we had several at the store I bagged groceries at. They were not much good at bagging (depending on degree of retardation) but they were like machines when it came to stocking.
In comments made at the National Defense University on 1 December 2005, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace explained to his audience the importance of understand[ing] the nature of the enemy if we hope to defeat jihadi extremists. Comparing our situation today, with that faced by an earlier generation who had to deal with the reality of the Nazi threat, General Pace suggested a simple solution to complying with his injunction: read what our enemies have said. Remember Hitler: He said in writing exactly what his plan was that we collectively ignored to our great detriment. Just as we ignored Hitler's articulation of his strategic doctrine in Mein Kampf, so too are we on the verge of suffering a similar fate today, if we fail to seriously assess the extremist threat based on jihadi strategic doctrine.
PROLOGUE
North design to conquer the South, we must begin at Kentucky and reconquer the country from there as we did from the Indians. It was this conviction then as plainly as now that made men think I was insane. A good many followers now want to make me a prophet. I rather think you now agree with me that this is no common war. You must now see that I was right in not seeking prominence at the outstart. I knew and know yet that the northern people have to unlearn all their experience of the past thirty years and be born again before they will see the truth. Though our armies pass across and through the land, the war closes in behind and leaves the same enemy behind. ¡ I don¡¯t see the end or the beginning of the end, but suppose we must prevail and persist or perish. ¡ We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country, still they are mortal and should exhaust. General Tecumseh Sherman, 1862
Upon having his command restored
The Civil War: A Narrative Fort Sumter to Perryville
Following the Chapter "War Means Fighting" pp 800, 801.
It seems that the only way we can free ourselves from these preconceptions is this: that just once in our lives, we should make a concerted effort to doubt every previous belief in which we find so much as the slightest hint of uncertainty. It will even be useful to regard the beliefs we are going to put into doubt as false, so that we can discover all the more clearly what is most certain and readily knowable. However, this process of doubt should be restricted to our considering what is true. For as far as the conduct of life is concerned, the moment for action would usually have passed long before we could resolve our doubts. We are often forced to opt for what is only probably right, and sometimes we even have to choose between two equally probable alternatives. So now let us embark on our enquiry into what is true (but only what is true). To begin with, it can be doubted whether any sensible or imaginable things exist. The first reason is that we sometimes notice that our senses deceive us, and it is wise never to put too much trust in what has let us down, even if on only one occasion. The second reason is that in our dreams we regularly seem to sense or imagine many things which are completely non-existent, and there are no obvious signs which would enable someone having such doubts to distinguish between sleeping and waking with any certainty. Rene Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, Part I: "The Principles of Human Knowledge", 1637.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
02/04/2008 04:44 ||
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Link ||
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Top|| File under: Global Jihad
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A year after the American troop surge in Iraq began, its success is clear, even to Newsweek, the Washington Post, and Rep. John Murtha. As Wesley Morgan details in the current issue of National Review, violence is way down, American troop levels are decreasing, tribal leaders are casting their lot with America, and a tattered al-Qaeda is on the run. Yet most leading Democrats sound like they havent heard the news.
