Everything or Nothing

So there's a bit of controversy about a pledge of allegiance down in Texas.

I thought the instructor's statement about the Mexican pledge activity being "a cultural thing" is interesting. To a degree, she's right. It is cultural. And much more. It's a pledge,or in other words, a statement of fidelity, oath, or promise.

Which means for this individual teacher that either these words mean absolutely nothing, or if they do have meaning, she is directing students to pledge allegiance to a foreign nation. I think it's more likely it doesn't mean anything to her. Reciting an oath to the symbol of a sovereign nation is simply an exercise. Because they're just words, and words don't mean anything unless you believe what you're saying, right?

Unfortunately, I suspect there's a lot of people in the US that believe that. Personally, I won't recite an oath to another nation. It's not an exercise to me. Words have meaning, and consequences.

That's one young lady who has my respect.

Captain Libya, Defender of the Sands

Of course, this picture had the following immediately above it as the headline:

"US pays European groups $1 million to hunt for anti-aircraft missiles in Libya "

Good to see there's still some editors with senses of humor out there.

Mr. Marketing

OK, everyone's sick of Tiger Woods stuff. I stayed away from it, mainly because a marital tussle between a hyper-rich "athlete" and his trophy wife means nothing to me. Now, I've just seen on the news AT&T dropped his sponsorship. Being the caring, compassionate individual I am, I've thought of a few potential replacements to help Tiger out.

K-Y Jelly: "Even Tiger Woods isn't so slippery he can't use a little help now and then."

Trojan Condoms: "Field tested by Tiger Woods, again and again and again....."

Las Vegas Tourism Commission: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. As long as you manage your cell phone contacts, that is."

Enterprise Car Rental: "Pick Enterprise. We’ll pick you up. If your wife has put the golf club down."


Now, who else can use my expert marketing skills?

Newsweek: Dropping Acid or Just Brainwashed?

Obama, The Unifier

"Like Reagan, the 44th president has the potential to be a truly transformational figure."

Good Lord. Is this man serious, or is he just looking for a reach around from someone higher up?

Reagan was the president when I was in high school. As I recall, his philosophy was that government should be reduced, foreign enemies treated as such, being an American was something to be proud of, personal arms wouldn't drive individuals into homicidal psychoses through proximity, look to your own efforts for financial gain, and traditional values are worthy of being honored.

Now, if past personal history guides us, we may look forward to exponential governmental expansion and spending, requesting to address nations who fund terrorism directed at us, Americans are parochial bullies holding the rest of the world down, arms are only desired by mentally-ill malcontents, it's better for everybody if the people who actually work "give" some of the money to the perpetually unfortunate, and the Constitution needs some serious work because it's not reflective of a "more perfect state".

As far as unity goes, it's nice in theory. So's communism, but I've no desire to live under it here in reality. I see a whole of "-ists" coming into common use soon for those who don't go along to get along, such as obstructionist, fascist, capitalist, and of course, racist.

This is going to be a long four years of Change and Hope we'll all be blessed with.

Media Gods

The regional version of CNN is covering the current Hamas/Israel war non-stop, which is to be expected. Unfortunately, this means I have Ms. Amanpour's mug popping up on the TV at five minute intervals droning on about the horrendous humanitarian crisis inflicted upon Gaza by the barbaric Israelis, followed by the standard noting that the Israeli's won't allow any journalists in Gaza with the implied suggestion that obviously they're trying to hide a massive genocide. Although they don't seem to have any shortage of footage being shot by their local stringers who probably live there full time.

There was something new this morning though. Now Ms. Amanpour is being interviewed by her own network about the war. When you reach the point of journalists being interviewed by other journalists as regional experts giving their opinions, I'm pretty sure you've gone past self-absorbed navel gazing into full-blown delusional narcissism. Then again, perhaps it's just the last month of CNN commercials of an introspective Amanpour gazing off into the distance as the wind stirs her hair while she does her own voice over telling us all how she makes the news understandable for the rest of us has made me sick of her. Because we're stupid, and she isn't.



H/T to Jessie Rauch for the interesting artwork. There's a number of these pieces at the website that are interesting interpretations of the larger-than-life news personalities portrayed as Greek gods. Apparently Ms. Rauch has both an acerbic sense of humor and some highly developed media skills.

Payback's A Bitch

This morning there were some healthy booms off to the north, just forceful enough to rattle the windows a little bit. Continuing my tradition of sleeping through explosions and gunfire, I completely missed the big one at 0430 hours, only to find out it woke half the company up. I did get to hear the one at 0630 while checking out the news on Gaza, in which the European branch of CNN is working overtime to present Israel as blood-thirsty genocidal maniacs held back from the final solution of ridding Gaza of Arabs due to the UN's tireless efforts. Favorite news anchors questions this morning: "Don't you think this response is disproportionate?" and "Certainly there must be a compromise you can reach with Hamas" directed to the Israeli spokeswoman. The answers "No" and "You can't compromise with terrorists" didn't seem to make the talking head very happy.

Here's my suggestion for a "proportionate" response: every time some asshat doing a verbal allahu akhbar loop launches a rocket towards the biggest cluster of Israelis at hand, the Israeli army gives a 2 hour warning, and drops the biggest building near where it was launched. Eventually that's going to be huts made of goat shit and rock, but that's not much of step downward at this point.

It'll never be over until one religion or the other is utterly in charge, and only one of them is dedicated to eradicating the majority of the other, so have at it. If you're going to sling dog shit into your neighbor's yard on a daily basis, don't bitch when you wake up to a dump truck load of pig's guts being dropped in yours some time down the road.

Way To Go, Joe...

You can count him to be....consistent, from one year to the next.

H/T Ace of Spades

Didn't See The Debate...

as it was on at 0300 here, but looking over the news, I see multiple MSM sources saying Palin wasn't a complete failure. And my friend across the hallway (he is actually my friend; I just received a an autographed Lemmy Kilmeister photo from him. Dude has more bands sending him stuff....) isn't gloating about Palin being stomped into political mud, like he was anticipating yesterday. Both of these things indicate to me that she probably handled herself well, but didn't utterly route Biden. Which isn't bad, given the years of practice he's had sucking up to the camera.

But now, it's back to online school, and today's class topic:

Corporate Culture: Should We Pretend We Understand It, Or Just Say WTF?

Retch...

I see Fox News is advertising that Geraldo will be doing an in-depth investigation of exorcisms in America. Really, I think it's demeaning they stick him with this kind of crap. He should be working the premiere stories, like alien bovine anal probes.

“If a black talk show host said it, there wouldn’t have been any controversy whatever.”

Racial remarks: Double standard?

Well hell no, I would've never guessed there's some kind of double standard unless the media had posed the question. Lord knows, I've never seen anyone who's not white use the term "nappy" ( except for it's use in the movie "Barbershop", where it's in the name of Ice Cube's main competitor, and mentioned frequently, by several non-Caucasian folks, without consequence, 'cause that's OK, since it's satire, blah blah blah..... ). An when it comes to the word "ho".....seriously, the impression I have from the media, especially in entertainment, "ho" is damn near a term of endearment, instead of an insult that should at least earn the issuer a five-fingered imprint on his/her face. I called an ex-girlfriend a dumbshit in a bar once, and got my head snapped around so fast I never saw it coming. If some guy, any color, called The Wife a "ho", he'd be a lot better off if I got to him first.

Yeah, Imus (who I managed to watch on MSNBC once for five minutes before turning it off, since I didn't see the point of watching what appeared to be a ninety year old woman in a cowboy hat mumble into a microphone with two sycophants nodding along with all the mumbling) did something stupid, rude, and offensive. I don't care if he gets fired. I do care about the fact that it's OK to be black and say crap like this, but nobody other than Bill Cosby thinks twice about it. If you think it's alright to denigrate your own ethnic group publicly, for entertainment, in music, movies, and personal actions, I could not care less if you're offended when someone outside your ethnic group does it. If you don't exhibit respect for yourself, you're sure as hell not going to get it from me, especially when it's a common behavior. Tough shit. Go cry to someone else.

A Public Disservice

I recently read a post by Micheal Yon about his being evicted from his quarters in Iraq in his post here.

I sometimes think we have some high-ranking officers that don't don't give a damn about if we win this war; what's important is that they have absolute control over their particular fiefdoms, Lord and Master of all they survey. I was often told in the Guard that shit rolls downhill. After reading about the good Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks, it's apparent that individual turds sometimes float to the top.

I'm doubtful that it will help, but I wrote and emailed this after reading Mr. Yon's dispatch:

Dear Senator xxxxxxxxxx:

I'm writing to you as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2003-2004. I served with the 109th Medical Battalion near Mosul and at LSA Anaconda near Baghdad during that time. Those experiences brought home to me how different the reporting on the war can be from what is being experienced by the troops on the ground.

One of the best sources of information on our military units in Iraq, Michael Yon, is being denied access to facilities needed to deliver stories on the daily events occurring there. Mr Yon has covered various regions and units in Iraq, funded only with his own resources and donations from the readers of his website. The resulting reports have given our citizens a look at the military operations and living conditions at the soldiers level, rather than canned reports from journalists who rarely leave the security of their Green Zone accomadations. His reporting has been widely compared to famed World War II journalist Ernie Pyle for his willingness to place himself at risk to report the stories of our service members in the field.

Unfortunately, Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks, who used to be the Chief of Public Affairs, has decided that Mr. Yon's reporting is not acceptable to him. Thus, he has evicted him from the small trailer used as a secure area to store the cameras, computers, and other personally purchased equipment. Internet access, essential to independly posting reports, is no longer allotted to him. He now scrapes by on the generosity of individuals willing to give him a few moments of access at random times to post his stories. This goes beyond being a disservice to one independent journalist. It denies our citizens a high quality source of information on current events, necessary to an informed opinion on one of the most important activities our nation is engaged in. As an example of this, please read one of his posts here:
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/tabula-rasa.htm

which demonstrates the value of his reporting.

I urge you to look into this. Mr. Yon provides a voice for our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen. He gives our citizens a set of eyes and ears on the ground so that we may know what our familiy members and friends are experiencing without being filtered through a military or civilian Public Relations agenda. He's worth far more than what he's asking: a small room with internet access.


Sincerely Yours,


X

I hope something reverses this situation. He's one of the few honest dealers of information we have.

Journalism and Society

Blatantly copied from

Small Dead Animals


Journalism blithely builds bridges for others to use to transport troops into the heartland. It has lost the skill to differentiate behavior that is antithetical to any society. As a surrogate for readers, it chases what it claims to be objectivity so hard it can no longer identify and label misbehavior. It does so because journalism -- and the programs that teach journalists -- can't see what they can't see. When they can't see what they are missing no traction exists to convince them what must be done to recover their purpose.
[...]

Journalism does not see a society at risk. Thucydides, wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian War" 2,400 years ago about the war between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides warning to readers is that just as Athens' weaknesses became its strengths and her strengths became her weaknesses, so do those lessons apply for all nations even today. The great strengths of America have been the roots of her foundation, her liberty, her wealth and her isolation, her unfettered press, her education, and her political processes. These strengths are the weapons turned back against us so long as we fail to recognize our strengths can be double-edged.

Two hundred years of stability have left America believing the freedom citizens enjoy is more permanent than it is. Her liberty is presumed to exist by nature rather then the product of constant vigilance. Her wealth and her isolation have let citizens become complacent. Her education has turned into schooling of easily-tested clichés that supplant honing skills to think. Her unfettered press allows propaganda to be injected unchallenged into every corner of the country into minds unprepared to defend themselves against it. Her political processes have become adversarial, tuned more towards winning power than serving principle. She is, as Athens was, at war with herself as much as with any external enemy, yet does not anticipate the consequences.


We've been starting to pay for this attitude, and I think there's worse to come.