ok all you self-righteous D's, we wanna hear the explanation for THIS one
i'm thoroughly disgusted today to be reminded of the decidedly UN-patriotic passage of the "patriot" act all those years ago. (always required to be put in quotes because of how anathema to patriotism such tyranny always is). however, i'm also thoroughly disgusted to hear the deafening silence from all the D's in the house about THEIR guy rubber-stamping the biggest FU to the Constitution in our lifetimes, and that even includes nixon's plumbers for those of us who go back that far.
all we heard for the better part of a decade from the lefties was how much of a draft-dodging criminal fascist geo dubya bush was, and how desperately we needed regime-change here at home. well, you know what? WE STILL DO. and, this time, it's on YOU. not only has your guy continued to shove the bureaucratic broomstick up our collective asses by extending the un-patriot act, but now he's got his minions arguing that us citizens "have no reasonable expectation" of personal privacy when we're on a cell phone.
"no reasonable expectation"???
i'll tell you what. when i read my Constitution (capital C because it's that important) i have EVERY reasonable expectation of privacy because my country is FOUNDED on the idea. but, apparently, some folks with major political party designations of both D and R think it's just fine to deprive me of that and whatever else they damn well please.
can't wait for the big long explanation on left in lowell. (cuz you know the righties are all red in the face spluttering on about how they're shocked, shocked i tell you, that a president might presume to do such a thing, and we don't have to wait for that).
party politics SUCK, and people who are affiliated with a major political party are, quite literally, guilty of racketeering for their part in this.
tim cahill for governor, and i don't care how unqualified or unsavory you (or me for that matter) might think him to be. he's the only guy in the race not stained with the shame of this, and that's good enough to win my vote this time and every time.
all we heard for the better part of a decade from the lefties was how much of a draft-dodging criminal fascist geo dubya bush was, and how desperately we needed regime-change here at home. well, you know what? WE STILL DO. and, this time, it's on YOU. not only has your guy continued to shove the bureaucratic broomstick up our collective asses by extending the un-patriot act, but now he's got his minions arguing that us citizens "have no reasonable expectation" of personal privacy when we're on a cell phone.
"no reasonable expectation"???
i'll tell you what. when i read my Constitution (capital C because it's that important) i have EVERY reasonable expectation of privacy because my country is FOUNDED on the idea. but, apparently, some folks with major political party designations of both D and R think it's just fine to deprive me of that and whatever else they damn well please.
can't wait for the big long explanation on left in lowell. (cuz you know the righties are all red in the face spluttering on about how they're shocked, shocked i tell you, that a president might presume to do such a thing, and we don't have to wait for that).
party politics SUCK, and people who are affiliated with a major political party are, quite literally, guilty of racketeering for their part in this.
tim cahill for governor, and i don't care how unqualified or unsavory you (or me for that matter) might think him to be. he's the only guy in the race not stained with the shame of this, and that's good enough to win my vote this time and every time.
posted by kad barma at 1:21 PM
9 Comments:
I am dubious about the "draft dogger" thing. Think about being strapped into a Duce, out over the Gulf of Mexico, at night. Single seat, single engine—you are all alone, except for your flight lead. And the two of you are "bumping heads", practicing night radar intercepts. Look at the radar, fly the airplane, tune the radar, fly the airplane, look at the radar, fly the airplane... If the engine quits it is going to be real quiet. If the generator fails it is going to be real dark inside as well as outside. All alone.
Let us have some respect for those in the National Guard. They got called up and served in France, during the 1961 Berlin Crisis (some 148,000 Guardsmen and Army Reservists, including 21,000 Air Guard troops). The Guard went to Viet-nam and units went to Korea over the PUEBLO and EC-121 events. Heck, even Greg Page serves in the National Guard.
Regards — Cliff
to be clear, if dubya had actually showed up to complete his commitment to the air national guard, i'm quite sure the lefties wouldn't have been so hard on him about it, but please understand the rant was exaggerated to as to characterize the rabid opposition to the guy, and not the relative merits of his relative "service", or the branch in which it was supposed to have taken place.
for the record, you can quote me on the draft dodger thing too, and if you can show me any evidence he actually completed his obligation, i'll take it all back, but, as we all know, no one can.
as for the air national guard, and the national guard in general, i'll also state for the record that i have nothing but respect and admiration, knowing as i do a number of officers in that branch of the service including one particular neighbor down the hall we both know. but, seriously, it's out of respect for that service that the outrage of someone's dodging ones obligation to it needs to come.
wouldn't you agree?
Well thanks for the Guard shoutouts. I'm grinning and bearing it as best I can, but the Guard has served me two heaping scoops of Rocky Road this year...and I'm not even overseas!
As to the question of draft dodging, though -- what about the 300-person waitlist that Bush inexplicably leapfrogged to get the Air Guard slot in the first place? I've never seen anyone even try to put forth a valid explanation for that one...I'm not a Bush apologist or Bush hater...voted for him once and against him once...but to me that seems like a pretty clear cut case of affirmative action for someone with the right set of parents..
I have no idea how Pres Bush jumped the queue, but in my mind the Guard has always been a political animal to some degree. I understand the "didn't complete" his commitment—but that doesn't mean he didn't do a bunch of his commitment. I do think the slot should have gone to someone else, in retrospect, but I also suspect that Lt Bush was at greater risk than Private Gore, who was a public affairs type in Viet-nam, working for The Castle Courier. That said, the fact that Al Gore volunteered and went says that he understood his duty under the US Constitution and as a loyal son of Tennessee. Good on him.
Which is to say there are no "right answers". In my field F-105 pilots thought of F-4 pilots as slackers. F-4 pilots flying "out of country" missions thought of those flying in South Viet-nam as slackers. Everyone thought that A-1E SANDY and HH-53 JOLLY GREEN GIANT crews as a special breed apart. And as an RF-4 pilot friend of mine (Reconnaissance version—alone, unarmed and unafraid) claims, he was a conscientious objector with an interest in aviation. And all of us were happy to not be totting a rifle in some rice paddy.
Regards — Cliff
i've always chafed at the "more patriotic than you", or "or more militarily bad-ass than you" arguments. pulling al gore out of a hat to distract a discussion from someone or somewhere else is, to me, completely irrelevant and makes about as much sense as starting the next sentence with "the monkeys have no tails in zamboanga".
i was very young during vietnam, but growing up in a family of wwII and korean conflict servicemen i was never confused about the kind of patriotic devotion it took to volunteer to go somewhere extremely unpopular not to mention mortally dangerous while others were jumping the border to canada and playing political games with their assignments and/or deferments. (john fogerty didn't make "i ain't no senator's son" up out of thin air). i can remember the day my eldest brother's draft lottery number came up as 366, and what it meant in our family that that might be the case. no one misunderstood what that meant, and nobody considered anyone less of a patriotic american not to insist on going to vietnam anyway, in any capacity at all.
i think i was maybe 1 out of a handful of guys in my high school class that filled out his selective service form at the post office a full three years after the fall of saigon, and even then it was a very emotional issue. far be it from me, or, i should hope, anybody else, to split hairs about the merit or quality of anyone else's decision to go.
they were there, when so many others weren't. and if you can walk along that wall in washington DC and not be moved to tears by the over 50,000 names carved there, then i don't know what else can be said about anyone who chose to stand with them.
(which is a good time to point out that it taking until '86 to authorize a korean veterans memorial, and '04 to build one for world war I, are two of the greater outrages of our time).
Gonna change gears here for a second just to pass something on I just learned: There is an Indy running for State Auditor this year...and he lives in the Acre. http://kamaljain.com/
Again. Last time was in 2002.
The "Independent" slate is growing.
Regards — Cliff
Wooops...Jain is NOT an Independent. I had misread something in his campaign literature and posted that a bit too hastily. For the record -- my prior comment is wrong, and he's running on the GOP ticket.
Next point -- back to the military thing. I'm definitely with Kad on this one, and here's why: ANYONE who joins ANY branch of service -- regardless of rank, MOS, designator, theater, etc. is signing away his or her freedom to control his or her own life . I don't care whether you're an Infantryman, Airborne Ranger, or Mess Crank on a Destroyer. By joining, you're throwing yourself out there somewhat to the Gods of Fate in a way that a civilian is never forced to.
The way things twist and turn, and the way your personal "plans" get thrown into upheaval can wreak a huge toll on your professional plans, your finances, and your family life. The ripple effect can be even worse -- just look at an employer's reaction to someone saying they're in the Guard...a great interview can go sour, fast.
Even someone serving as a journalist for Stars and Stripes could still get mortared. Even a JAG in a headquarters unit could still get hit with an IED on a convoy. And that's without the issue of separation and uncertainty that anyone would go through with spouse, kids, etc.
Of course, it's a volunteer service with voluntary contract renewals and "re-ups" so there ought to be some limit to how much sympathy you'd have towards someone complaining about it. But there's some level of credit that ought to cut across the whole spectrum of service (and of course into the many fine non-military ways that *service* can be defined, too)..
Amen, and don't forget to point out that even many of the re-ups recently have not been voluntary. ("Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in"...)
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