He's a populist. It always amuses me when a right-wing shill poses as a great friend of the people. We've seen this before, haven't we? Someone on a balcony somewhere, perhaps?

Yeah, never mind those nattering nabobs of negativism. Shooter offers you employment at Wal*Mart and Enron, 401K retirement plans funded entirely by stock in your mismanaged company, no health care, hedge fund specialists who pull down three billion dollars for betting that you can't pay your mortgage -- which you can't, of course -- and gas north of four bucks a gallon. If that's not enough for you, how about the glory of an endless war against Islamofascism. Whoopie!

All he needs now is a good book-burning. Better yet, why not burn the snobs who write them? Those fucking liberal elitists don't like real people anyway.

Yeah, that oughta convince everyone who works for a living. After all, seventy or eighty years ago the New World Order worked out so much better than the New Deal.

John Stewart and THE DAILY SHOW's fake news, where a lot of people get their real news, is one major media outlet covering this story--extensively on April 22.

You hit the USAF problem on the nose. It's run by fighter jocks.

There's an old saying around pilot lounges that reveals how things work in the airforce and, to a lesser extent, the US Navy....

Fighter pilots make movies.

Bomber pilots make history.

It comes as no surprise that the biggest, baddest scandals involving the military have involved...you guessed it....fighter jocks.

We don't need more fighters. We don't need more bombers. We need more trash haulers like the C-130 which can be reconfigured for relief missions as well as combat.

What the fuck good is an F22 stealth fighter when you're fighting what amount to basically nomadic goat herders.

shooter 242 may have been deprived, and wasn't allowed to take a roller coaster ride in Arizona? Who knows?

Is there a sing-Arizona, like there is a 'Oklahoma' ...?... If shooter was a blown-away, war paraplegia... Perhaps,

he'd have a empathy?

He'd be a NJ trucker?

Singing Arizona, or 'Oklahoma'... a singer? Yowl! err.

Or a 242 would be a New Jersey politico for Rush L.?

EFF Call to action as legislation is pending to stop abuse.

http://www.eff.org/action/stop-state-secrets-privilege-abuse

This just in: "April 24, 2008 -- General David Petraeus rewarded after Iraq ‘surge’ success

General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq who implemented President Bush’s troop “surge” strategy, is to leave his post as part of a significant military shake-up in the region, it was announced yesterday.

General Petraeus will be nominated by Mr Bush to take charge of US Central Command in Florida, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Senate must first confirm him in his new position, and little opposition is expected.

If confirmed, General Petraeus will replace Admiral William Fallon at Centcom. The admiral resigned in March after a magazine reported that he was at odds with Mr Bush over the Administration’s Iran policy."

Scary, that -- 'a significant military shake-up in the region'?

And 'Admiral William Fallon at Centcom' 'resigned' 'at odds over 'Iran policy'?

From an earlier day:

"In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior."

See?? You get the job if you tell the Emperor that you love his new clothes . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/23/organized.crime.threats/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Is it just me, or did Mukasey just try to lay the groundwork for blaming high gas prices and the collapse of Bear Sterans and other financial service types on organized crime? Any bets on whether this will be used as yet another reason they will need unlimited wiretapping and telecon immunity?

Does anybody else immediately go "bullshit" whenever this crackpot opens his mouth nowadays?

That changes Brown's meaning, somewhat. If I read that correctly, he wouldn't be saying that journalism's role is merely technical evaluation, but that the technical eval would happen as the event was ongoing, and then the analysis would follow.

that doesn't make sense to me, given the context. the question was 'why not a war critic among the pundits?'. The war critic, by definition, is not one who is questioning the conduct of the war--but the war itself. and brown is saying that having a pundit of this type would be irrelevant. He does not say "oh, we were saving that for later". He's saying it's a red herring. period.

I prefer a reading that brown simply defers the "why" question permanently. As Bush himself says--it is not for anyone alive today to judge whether the war should have been fought--that is for "history" to decide. My reading of brown is that he falls right in with the president in this regard.

I'd add that even if brown was correct in his view of journalism, he has still not lived up to his own lowered goals. the mismanagement of the invasion and occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan, the waste in lives and national wealth has been astounding--the fraud, waste and abuse beyond conception. Pallets of cash simply lost in the desert, and so forth. Bin Laden allowed to escape, ad infinitum. There is enough mismanagement and incompetence to keep a thousand reporters writing around the clock. And yet, stories about the incompetent conduct of these "wars" have been relatively few.

For those who choose or prefer to think of March 2003 attack and invasion of Iraq as glorious American Militarism the myths and fogs of wishful thinking and storytell come easy.

Perhaps if the Americans had encountered some truly stiff and frequent major defeats and routs from Native Americans in 19th century we would have less Manifest Destiny tale and myth from that epoch today. Let us envision a Native American West.

One hundred years ago the British Royal Navy was fully engaged in a circle logic scheme of wanting to intimidate and contain any Imperial German attempts to render British seapower less powerful.

With the launch of the H.M.S.Dreadnought in 1906 the Royal Navy felt it had largely rendered the British/German naval arms race as a thing of the past with the Royal Navy winning it based on strategy of bigger,faster and more powerful.

Soon however that dubious line of logic fell into the depths of the illogic that followed.Turned out Germans could build big and fast warships too. Later with the introduction of what came to be known as battle cruisers the Royal Navy was in fullest glory of being very illogical and very wrong.

When Germany and Britain leaped into the what was to be a short and intense conflict they both felt the navys they had constructed would deliver the 'knock out blow' early on.

It never happened.

Instead what has became known as The Great War and what we now know as WW1 descended into a land war hellworld of trench digging and senseless and brutal death dealing frontal attacks.

The German Navy had lots of firepower. The Royal Navy had lots of firepower. When they finally did meet at what is now known as Jutland they did not deliver the vaunted knock out blow.

After the Armistice much of the German High Seas fleet ended up being scuttled after surrendering to the Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy battlecruisers proved to be quite impressive is size,speed and firepower but having woefully under armored hulls frightfully easy to blow up.

As for we Americans we surely are believers in our myths and legends of military prowess. We like our militarism. Seeing vintage WW2 prop fighters or bombers at airshows is quite the thrill for many Americans. Myself included.

However the American Militarism as we see and know it today is trading on that legacy of past achievements in ways that must be exposed as wrong and then ended.

Attacking,invading and occupying Iraq was not glorious,noble nor any kind of Americanism I can or could ever support.

The British exhausted themselves socially and fiscally building ever bigger and more 'Dreadnoughts'. Despite all that many,many British troops died in those miserable,wretched trenches of WW1. As did many,many Germans.

After all that in early 1920's both British and Americans were ready to restart new ship building programs for still bigger and more powerful battleships and battlecruisers.

The projected cost of it all finally brought some sanity to bear.

These days one can hope for a similar attack of sanity.

Attacking Iran is a good idea? Really?

Hope is very much needed these days.

Sane thinking is very much needed these days.

Myths and legends are being misused and abused today in America by some Americans to influence or sway other Americans.

Let us hope this misuse and abuse will not succeed.