My mom died 20 years ago in a car accident, so I went to an 8am Breast Cancer Walk in downtown Chicago. Due to the 20-30mph winds and heavy rain, that skirt wouldn’t have helped much. There were at least ten thousand people braving the 52 degree temps who were walking for moms and others who have died of cancer. I was walking with my daughter-in-law who’s mom was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and is just finishing her chemo and will follow it with radiation.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to take the ten thousand dollars we spend every minute on the Iraq War and apply just a little of our totally wasted trillions and instead could have applied it to medical research and humanitarian causes along with all the other critical needs to improve suffering people’s lives? Moms everywhere are proud of how you keep all of us continually aware of the true cost of war.

[Jebbie]: Is there some reason you wish to change the subject, Shooter?

[our resident perfeshunal eedjit, Sh**ter]: Sure, I'd say the Generals being Generals issue is pretty much dead, ...

"... because, despite the fact that this was the subject of Glenn's post, I'd really, really like it to go away...."

... and discussing libertarianism is akin to arguing how many angels dance on the head of a pin....

You should note that Glenn has requested that such not be done.

... On the other hand the Lebanon situation is a good excercise [sic] of what can happen when we don't interfere in national politics.

Sh**ter: If you want to talk about Lebanon (and not the Pentagon propaganda scandal), you should start your own effin' blog and post to your heart's desire there. Coming here and trying to dismiss the topic that the host has chosen and substitute your own is just plain rude. But then, you are rude. You want a second opinion? Stoopid too. Third opinion? Obtuse. Fourth opinion? Shameless. Then again, you're a Republican ... but I repeat myself....

Cheers,

And this, N=1, if you want to read the latest academic scholarship I'm familiar with on the subject.

Jefferson and the Press

Crucible of Liberty

Jerry W. Knudson

Neither fair nor balanced, journalistic warfare during America's first transfer of power

http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/2006/3607.html

You should note that Glenn has requested that such [discussing libertarianism] not be done.

I think he wanted the silly tit for tat and namecalling to stop. Adult discussion of any subject is usually not something he discourages. Nor does he mind tangential discussions, but I wouldn't be the first person to not understand what he says...

And I don't mean you, Arne...

;-)

cheers!

Good to see you back commenting and working your excellent blog. I assume you saw this Bill Moyers report on Friday that showed how the California Nurses Association says if Cheney didn't have government health insurance and had average American coverage, he'd be dead. Damn government insurance! The report showed the power nurses can have when they band together and stop letting the administrators and money have all the say in our sorry capitalistic medical system.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05092008/watch.html

... On the other hand the Lebanon situation is a good excercise [sic] of what can happen when we don't interfere in national politics.

That's a good one. You truly think we're not interfering in Lebanon? Ha ha ha. There's this bridge not too far from where you live, Shooter. It's real cheap.....

But, Shooter, you did interest me strangely when you said you would vote for Obama instead of mcCain. Truly? Why?

I never met my mother-in law. The mother of my three children was 12-years old when her mom died of ovarian cancer. Her father died two months before her mothers death. My grandmother on the James side, died in a car accident going to West Point in New York State. The family was traveling to gather personal possessions @ West Point. I can't remember my Uncle Bernard James. I do have the family archive memories. Officer Uncle Bernard died in a airplane accident at Andrews Air Field in 1948. I was there, but can't remember the sad tragedy. I was one month old. My father was holding me when the airplane accident happened, on a rainy Thanksgiving Day.

It's a rainy Mothers Day.

Thanks for that.

I have the same problem with veteran's groups that you do, and to some extent any ad hoc gathering of more than three or so vets. It's great for a short time, and then it takes an ugly turn.

Either things turn Paleolithic, or (less often) you wander into a group that are either born-again Marxist revolutionaries or have decided they are victims and want you there to validate their victimhood. Sometimes you run into people who never made anything else work in their life, or people who want to have a dick-measuring contest with you, or people who are obviously and blatantly lying about their service (I spent most of my career in SOF, and I get this alot from guys who must think I have forgotten all the details about how my world worked and that they can just thump their chest and lie their way into the family).

Either way, it kind of negates any value I would find in spending time with fellow veterans. Which is too bad. I could use the company, sometimes.

Where I live now, there are a lot of retirees who have absorbed without much question the clash of civilizations arguments about Arabs and Muslims. My wife and I do a lot of fundraising for schools and other projects we worked on in Afghanistan, and at one of these events one of these guys will always come up to me with some BS about how things are in 'those people's wacko religion'. Sometimes I can set them straight about those aspects; other times they will insist that their son or nephew Specialist Dipshit is in EyeRack and knows all about their culture and he insists that it's true, or pull out their Pat Robertson pamphlets littered with context-free quotes from obscure hadith purportedly proving that Allah is really Baal the Moon God, blah blah blah. I do not often feel like I am talking with other veterans then, just kooks I happened to share a train with sometime, years ago.

Often in this crowd, when we get into military values and ethics (we will on this story, if it ever gets any play), there's just no hope. They get it or they don't. If they don't, they understand at some level that I'm calling them out for being unethical, immoral, disloyal to the institution, and so forth, and things go predictably downhill from there ... (on the plus side, they always write good checks for the projects, and their wives are almost invariably open minded and good listeners. Funny).

And yet every so often, you run into another sane veteran who was always clear on what s/he swore an oath on, went to the wall for it more than once, and never forgot ... and that just about makes the other bullshit worthwhile.

I keep thinking that if the growing (as your AP link demonstrates) current crop had an outlet, they would a) help themselves, b) have a way to connect that they probably don't now, and c) help the country. I haven't figured out how to do that, other than with the existing orgs, about which I have some reservations.

Sorry to ramble, thanks for reading and sharing.

qs