with little pay, for the most part journalists who really don't know which end is up about "Real Life" and will only report what little data they can find/fabricate to support what they themselves believe.  

and yet the true heroes of the service men and women go on - doing their job - and doing it well.  Many thanks to all.

stories are always negative.

Thanks Ciara from an x Marine and x sailor.

...wing Chicago Trib (and with a rich anti-union history of its own)?  NBC, owned by major defense contractor Westinghouse?  ABC, owned by union-busting Disney?  CBS, owned by mega-capitalist Sumner Redstone through Viacom?  Perhaps the Fox network?  Time-Warner-AOL?  The Washington Times, the Moonie newspaper?  The newspaper chains?  Gannett?  Newhouse?
Radical leftists RARELY own mass media (or banks, or insurance companies, or auto manufacturers, or other large corporations).  
And from what I've seen, apart from the obvious stories such as Abu Ghraib, most of the coverage of our troops has been quite positive.  Just my anecdotal observation, I haven't done a poll, you understand.    
       

-- Modified on 11/11/2005 12:28:43 PM

That includes you also!!!


Just my opinion...
B

we should send them unthinkingly willy-nilly into God-knows-what-sort of mess, and ESPECIALLY there shouldn't be any questions from anybody who's been there, done that, and retired the T-shirt.

Our military policies need to be determined by people who had other priorities  when it was their turn to serve.  Or those who really aren't sure where they were, probably because they didn't get the drill schedule.  Or lost it.  Or really don't know.  

Yeah, that's the way it should be.  We need to respect the people who are smart enough to keep their own asses out of war, and send others instead, people who willingly got their asses shot up despite their doubts.  What a bunch of suckers they were!!

Keep the politics out of the holidays, or draw return fire.

Though in my arms would be better still.  *cough*

OK, my bad, I'm really in need of some discipline.  

some private training, private!  Get down and give some . . . wink!

Hugs,
Ciara

I never had a chance to see something as sexy as you paratrooping down into a LZ, CiCi.  In my eyes, you would not only change the phrase "Death From Above" to "Joy From Above", but you would redefine the term "Hot LZ".

Let me know if you ever need a CQ in your barracks, and thanks for the thoughts about those who, like us, chose to serve.

That'd be one hell of a distraction, wouldn't it?

Hey, at least I wasn't left hanging on a church steeple like the poor guy in Normandy. Wink!

Hugs,
Ciara

One of the things really wrong with the Demo party right now, is that instead of offering logical and progressive thoughts about what to do, they only offer criticism of the opinions of others.  

This post is a great example.  As stated above, while I do not support the incursion into Iraq, I certainly believe that we should support our troops and their mission 100%.  Easily, the reason why we don't win wars anymore is our loss of the will to win.  

We are right now, through our immigration and border policy as well as our welfare policy, rapidly turning our country over to immigrants who have no desire to assimilate into our culture.  They do not learn English, many only extract from our society and for the most part have a very poor understanding of a representative democracy - and we are increasingly forbidden from teaching the origins and concepts of our current government.

But I digress, thank you for your clearly enunciated concern.

SS (and others, not nec. you) should keep the politics out of the holidays.  Failure to do that is assuming that anybody that disagrees is disloyal.  We have seen within our own lifetimes that the people who run the country are not nec. the most loyal, and those who are most insistent about their questions are often the ones who do the country more good.  Nixon and his VP were very good examples of what I'm thinking about, and the White House today is under investigation for having revealed the identity of an American spy.  As younger men, the President isn't sure where he was when he was supposed to be at reserve drills, and the VP had other priorities than military service.  These are not men who have room to impugn anybody's patriotism.

The role of leadership is not to get us willy-nilly into fights so they can claim our loyalty; the role of leadership is to know WTF they are doing; and in a democracy, they have the duty to share that with us, and get our approval.  We have the right to know that they know what they are doing, and I don't see us getting that information.  I realize that George's speech and thought problems bear on this, but if he can't handle it, he should resign for the good of the country; and if the RNC doesn't think he is handling it, they should insist on his resignation.

Your second error is assuming that anybody not for one party is automatically for the other.  I am in fact registered Republican.  I do not have a lot of respect for partisans, because I think attention to facts and issues is better for me and my neighbors.

Parties out of power don't have the initiative, or the information available to the party in power.   It's unrealistic to ask them to share their plans any more than the party in power - IOW, it doesn't look like the Republicans have a plan, either - like how the hell do they plan on getting out of this, and exactly what will we have accomplished?

Now the last presidential cycle, everything was going just fine, so the GOP didn't have a damn thing to complain about.  So, they created something - they sent Ken Starr out to find something, and he found a blowjob.  What do you want to bet that if we paid the same attention to Dubya, we'd find him drinking in the Oval Office?   Now personally, I'd rather a Prez get blown than drunk, because there are just not that many US Grants out there.  So don't talk about parties without ideas.  The Republican idea is "intelligent design" but damned if I see any evidence of that in Iraq.

Originally, this war was to neutralize WMDs.  So there's none there.  If that's the goal, why are we still there?  Because now it's a mess that we need to clean up.  Any 3rd grader could have seen that coming, but somehow this administration didn't.

Let's assume for a minute that we had found WMDs - then we police them up, and get out.  Why are we still there?  Because, once again, this war was not about WMDs.  It's about hoping to stave off terrorism, but guess what?  Osama is still at large, and most of the AQ boys are being policed up elsewhere.  The terrs we've found in Iraq, by & large & AFAIK, weren't terrs before we got there.

Now, there were lots of reasons pro & con to go in or stay out, and there still are.  What is not at all clear is that the people running the show are listening to or understand what's going on, or are even competent.   Our duty to our soldiers is to make sure they are not taking needless risks, and this administration isn't answering those questions.  Instead, it's doing everything it can to sandbag, and insist that we should mindlessly do as we're told.   But that dog won't hunt.

OK, now let me ask you a question:  do you believe in and support the US constitution?  Because if you do, you will not be impugning the loyalty of people who exercise the rights it guarantees, because you will understand that we have a participatory government, and asking if a specific  campaign is a needless risk of soldiers' blood is in fact far more patriotic than people who don't want to think about it.

"Loss of our will to win".  That's fucking lovely.  The Japanese had one hell of a will to win - they would die en masse - but you know, we had the atomic bomb, because we were smart enough not to reject people with big noses like Einstein and Fermi.  IOW, PR labels mean nothing; work and good judgment mean everything.  Stop talking about your will to win and translate it into action, by using your brains to decide what will work best.

With respect to which end is up... my political views are not held by either party.  Let's just, since you brought it up, talk about intelligent design.  Why is that such a hot topic for both parties?  Simple answer, because both parties are supporting beliefs that require faith.  To some extent it requires just as much faith to accept evolution and how the earth, solar system, galaxy and universe came into being following the "Big Bang" or the expansionalist theory as it does to accept Genesis.  Oh, and ever notice how a bunch of guys in the desert with no modern scientific methods or tools, came to the conclusion that whales were created AFTER land critters?  This sounds amazingly like evolutionary theories?  That did not just happen.

Or abortion?  Incredible as it is, if my child has a fever and headache at school, and goes to the school nurse, she cannot administer a simple tylenol or advil, but that same kid, can go get an abortion without my knowledge....  Please tell me that makes sense.

and now, the war.  Both administrations had intelligence that indicated the presence of WMD.  One decided to act, one decided to wait....  I fault GW for one thing - not talking to the person in the past 5 administrations who knew the most about Iraq, his dad.  What a relationship they must have.  No wonder G Senior doesn't mind hanging with BC!  

Talk to any veteran of any war, in any country and they will tell you the same, if they come home to a divided public - it undermines their willingness and therefore their ability to perform.  Call it what you will, but confidence is necessary to acomplish goals.

So, the time for debate on all of this was BEFORE we went in, not during engagement.  Once engaged, debate over.  And, personally, I agree, we went in, without an exit plan - and that has still not been articulated to the Am. Public.

But my comments still stand, the Demos - where are their ideas? Where are their positive contributions?  Where is their focus?  Want to win elections?  lead  it is that simple.

As for outing a spy?  this woman was not an active agent and it was common knowledge that she worked for the CIA.  ok, so ya got em.  

With respect to BC gettin a hummer in the WH, I would respect him more, had he admitted it and said - hey ya got me, so fire me.  The mess he created, and the eye off the ball during the fiasco maybe caused 9-11 as much as anything else.  just don't know

who the hell were YOUR parents and grandparents?   Most likely not Mayflower pax.   So now you're here, and you've got yours, the rest of them can go to hell.

Well, that's perfectly reasonable, if you're completely clueless about the fact that it's the initiative and guts of your ancestors and other immigrants that put you (and me) where we are today, and perhaps if you could equal that initiative and guts, and the willingness to sell oranges on freeway onramps if necessary, instead of bitching about foreigners, then maybe we'd be better off, eh?  Do you really understand the concepts of our current govt?

You are in good company in saying the Mexicans don't learn English, and won't assimilate.  Ben Franklin said the same thing about the Germans, and Walt Whitman said the same thing about the Irish.   Why look at that wetback Tancredo, the Republican congressman from Colorado - he doesn't speak English, he'll never assimilate.  And our AG Gonzales - another welfare case.  What's worse, even the Bushes are miscegenating with them.  All these guys know about democracy is picking lettuce.   Send 'em all back - you can buy your chicken from anybody except Tyson, and the city can hire union labor - except even the unions are race traitors!!  The real problem with Messicans is that the girls get too thick too early, but OTOH, they are usually pretty nice, and not at all bitchy or worried about 'personal growth'.

More wetback bums:  http://www.homeofheroes.com/e-books/mohE_hispanic/

You know what, pal?  I don't give a damn about the color of a man's passport, I want to know who I can rely on when the going gets tough; and that is who gets my loyalty; and messicans have no monopoly on laziness or corruption.   One thing wetbacks aren't very often is arrogant.

I'm afraid to hear your answer, because it can't be good, either way.

in Spanish?  Why is it considered problematic to require employees know English for a job meeting the public?  These do not speak to assimilation.

And yes, I actually do understand the concepts of our current government.  But if we do not define our country, soon we will not have a country and then we won't have to worry about it.  And as far as historical references go, I guess that you would have to say, there are mistakes that all of our ancestors have made at one point in time or another.  

What would I prefer, the requirment that English is the language of the US (it is actually a requirement for naturalization, my ex wife was just naturalized - so I may know a thing or two about that and the process).  That workers crossing the border (any border) be documented (this is a very simple process and other countries require it).  If you wish an example, actors from the US working in Canada have to be documented.  And that has caused a lot of misunderstanding between Canada and the US.  (What no Mexican reference?)  

With respect to my ancestors, and being clueless?  I actually do know a lot about my ancestors, where they came from and their history.  What I resent, is the fact that our social system is almost at the breaking point and with the insistance of some of us to support illegal immigrants with our welfare system, it is hastening the failure of our society.

We do not teach self reliance, we do teach our children to blame someone - sue someone.  don't get an education - leave it to the government.

Clue?  All I had to do was to watch the Hurricanes in the Gulf.  I grew up in the Gulf - specifically in NO.  So, know what?  Hurricane come - I leave.  I mean, how smart do you have to be in a town where they do not bury the dead, rather entomb them above ground because the city is below sea level (and has been, guess what, since before GW was in office) to know that if a hurricane comes, it will be serious?

Self reliance, working knowledge of how to survive - and some respect for the rights of others.  We don't teach that anymore...
 
Oh, and your heros Tyson et al?  While we blast the Bushes - and the Oil cos.  we don't mention that BC was letting the Tyson's ignore certain laws and regulations!  But hey, different guys - and we can't speak to that.

Corruption? who to rely on?  Certainly none of the current crop of politicians (demo or republ).  None of them have loyalty and I suspect that none of them are really very reliable.  singleminded - yes, get in office and hod power - singleminded.

Blue white Red in vertical strips....   make me see red (and not vino)  A country that is without shame.

we have citizens who speak Hmong, Vietnamese, Polish, Tagalog and Spanish, but not English.  They were BORN here, so their claim to citizenship is the same as yours; and where you live determines what languages you see on the ballot.  And the reason we do this is because (a) telling people what's going on is an element of due process, and (b) printing ballots in different languages can be done from any printer these days, and (c) some of us don't see any particular language requirement in the constitution.

Your vision of America is English only.  My guess is that if somebody actually spoke the English that the original settlers did to you, you wouldn't understand it.  Our real problem is that English is so flexible that it assimilates words and even syntax - maybe we should be more like the French, and require approval for use of words and names, so we can preserve our "culture" - ??  Don't want to hear any more words like 'buku' or 'burrito' - unAMERICAN!!!

Our culture - as I see it - is about making fair play work, and it's not about superficial shit like names, and even languages.

Yeah, the Canucks and us pee back and forth about our paperwork.  But Canucks aren't dirty filthy field workers with a heathen language and religion.   You know what I'm talking about.  These messicans who live on the street for 10, 20 years without papers don't have any self-reliance, they're corrupting our culture.

You have a bunch of complaints, and I can buy into parts of some of them.  What I can't buy is just bitching instead of finding out what the problem is, and working on it.  Documentation is NOT a simple process, and that's the way we want it - proving citizenship or work permission for Canucks or any number of other groups isn't what your ex went thru.

Etc etc yadda yadda.  If nobody lived in New Orleans, then who would take care of the oil rigs?  Are these guys dumber than you or braver?   Why has the Army Corps of Engrs spent bajillions of $$$ over decades keeping the city dry, when Ike should have just shut the city down?   When the GOP gets elected and takes our money to run FEMA, they become obligated to spend the money reasonably.    They want to shut the city down, they need to serve eviction notices and give us our money back.

EU passports these days, but that would be another indication of your expertise - as in, anybody more than 100 miles from the problem is an expert....

and that is complete bullshit.  I am talking about the worth of individuals, not the foreign policy of nations; and I've known - yes, in the Biblical sense - more than 1 Frogette that would change your mind completely....we won't mention Lafayette, or Descartes, or Pascal, etc etc.

What amazes me is the simple fucks who take this "Freedom Fries" shit seriously, and then wonder why people think they're such simple fucks....