Slashdot Mirror

When train wrecks like Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen are the role models of today, what would you expect?
When sports figures make more than teachers. When dealing drugs earns you more than McDonalds.
When joining the military will get you killed. severely fucked up or hated by half the world. May all that is, help you if your own people hate you (like they did during the Viet Nam war).
When career criminal politicians tell you to change the system from within, while they make millions screwing the voters. When businesses consider people nothing more than expendable containers.
When the death statistics for marijuana come from law enforcement shootings while Big Pharma pushes their drugs that come with warnings that your asshole might fall out, your brain will rot or that there may be a slight case of death at cost prohibitive prices.
When greed over-rules common (most uncommon thing on the planet) sense.
I could rant all day, but who would care.
I consider thisto be what role models should be.
I leave this final message to all the status quo keepers.

And back then, Republicans were "liberal." At least by modern definitions of the word. So I don't really find it ironic. Parties change sides all the time. Now if Reid were an actual politician from those days then, yes, it would be ironic.

Also ironic because Reid is still a racist, as is clear if you do a little bit of research .

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, which is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."

Then there are the sheep that not only refuse to accept a certain inevitability of violence but go so far as to blame the existence of the wolf upon the sheepdog. In their minds and in their desperation to extend a sort of courtesy to the wolves, they believe that the wolves were actually sheep just like them BUT, were somehow forced to become wolves because of the sheepdog.

Anyway, enough obsolete 20th century American agricultural metaphors. I'm sure if someone rewrote this to say player-killers and roleplayers, it would be on the front page of boingboing (and slashdot) tomorrow morning.

Perhaps Obama hiring a political director whos is under investigation for hiring felons to Get Out The Vote? During which time those felons were charged with collecting private data, including SoSec numbers of voters.

http://politickeroh.com/republicans-take-new-obama-political-director-task-04-efforts-ohio

Or perhaps Barack's funny deal with Tony Rezko to buy property that Barack could not buy on his own?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/124171,CST-NWS-obama05.article
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/04/opinion/main3994002.shtml

Or perhaps Obama calling off his visit to troops based on the fact that he couldn't use them as a political backdrop?
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/07/obama-landstuhl.html

More of the whole story with Bill Ayers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers_election_controversy

I am sure there are several things that I have missed. From what I understand Barack was a typical Chicago politician, which means more than a little soiled.

I would have never voted for Obama anyway, so it's not a big loss, but the things I think he's got going against him:

1. Politically expedient religious ties. He makes political hay in Chicago by attending the right churches, even though those same churches supposedly conflict with his personal goals. (Racial harmony, equality regardless of sexual orientation. The church Obama attended has published a great deal of anti-gay material)

2. Questionable dealings with questionable people: Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, et al

3. Blatant two-facedness. Please refer to many of his statements over the last few weeks.

4. Hubris. The observations are many, from the "guns and religion" comment to the logical matriculation to avoid saying that a troop surge and change in tactics have created an atmosphere of success when reviewed by generals and local political and religious leaders.

5. Everybody loves me! I am not concerned with Europeans regard for our leader. I am more concerned with taxation, gov't subsidies, and energy policy.

So there will finally be propagando to counter the countless other bloggers who spew out nonsense about the war.

Bloggers spewing nonsense about the war should be nicely countered by the insight coming out of Blackfive and other milblogs. But PysOps is a part of the military, and so for the government to use what it recognizes as military techniques against the American people is a very different thing that having private citizens with strongly biased opinions.

I don't fly a huge amount--in 2006-2007 so far I've flown maybe 5-6 roudtrips. I have absolutely no doubt that there are some TSA people who are jerks. But in all my flying I don't think I've ever run into a one of them who wanted to "fuck up my day" or that I would "describe as a petty tyrant"

I haven't personally run across them, but in addition to the other stories people have already brought up, you might want to take a look at this.

=We "liberated" them from Saddam, who we had previously financed and armed=

WRONG! Iraq had Soviet weapons, so the US obviously didn't arm him.

=are dying, some by Sunni bombs=

WRONG! The average secular Sunni is NOT a suicide bomber. Face the truth those are AL QAEDA bombs, the same people that attacked the US on 9/11

= please link to this good news we're missing.=

You can start here,
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/05/major_jim_gr ant.html

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/05/the_diyala_ salvation.php

You forgot that North Korea also has the "World's Best Golfer". Stand aside Tiger; Kim Jong is here. Palmer? You suck next to Kim Jong. Yellow jacket? We don't need no yellow jacket. We've got red nuclear missiles, or at least missile shells with nuclear logos painted on them.

Anyway, there are several dispatches about snipers, UAVs, counter battery radar, ....

How do you "hack" the terrorist mind? The 1-24th infantry regiment created 'social engineering' traps (honeypots?) for terrorists and terrorist snipers. For example a fake IED explosion with fake US casualties and a scrap US Army vehicle created a lure for both the terrorists and the media stringers ...

The Deuce Four soldiers left quickly with the "casualties," "abandoning" the burning truck in the traffic circle. The enemy took the bait. Terrorists came out and started with the AK-rifle-monkey-pump, shooting into the truck, their own video crews capturing the moment of glory. That's when the American snipers opened fire and killed everybody with a weapon. Until now, only insiders knew about the AK-monkey-pumpers smack-down.

Mike Yon's "Ground Truth" dispatches

MilBloggers

Belmont Club's - a 30,000-foot view of what is going on

Armor Geddon - a John's Hopkins neuroscience grad (?) who gave it all up to drive tanks and blow stuff up - cool video also

Blackfive - a freak who enjoys jumping out of planes

countless others; although Hugh Hewitt gives a decent review of such here

The more modern the army, the more the private needs to think. We discovered in Iraq that a sergeant in our army has as much authority and decision-making responsibility as a colonel in the region, and a private as much as an officer.

Don't confuse discipline - respecting the authority of the chain of command and military custom - with lack of initiative. The modern military prizes initiative: complete the objective you're assigned without complaint, but think of the best way to do so based on your training and experience. To quote a marine sergeant writing a summary of action in Fallujah:

All Marines must exercise initiative during combat. Squad leaders must design training techniques in order to stress initiative. Marines must be able to look around, assess what his squad or partner is doing, feed off it, and act in order to support them. Initiative based training is paramount.

And also:

Being a good combat leader sometimes means stepping back and allowing the Marines to do their jobs. Platoon commanders must allow squad leaders to lead their squads, squad leaders must allow element leaders to lead their elements, and element leaders must allow their Marines to take initiative.

You mean, news repeating. Blogs are nothing more than a billion websites updating their content with links to other sites and other news stories, with occasional commentary on them. They're as much a "distributed form of newsgathering" as the local news stand. They don't generate *anything*. They just spew the same old thing over and over and re-distribute already distributed content. Bleh. Lame.

Bloggers like Salam Pax (an Iraq living in Baghdad during the war) weren't doing original reporting? You mean the hundreds of bloggers who were in the field for the recent US elections weren't doing original reporting? You mean the many current and former US soldiers who were or are in Iraq aren't doing original reporting?

There are plenty of blogs worldwide who do original reporting, nor are they any particular secret.

2. I'll give you the Humvees, but there is certainly discretionary funds for body armor. See 1 and 9.
3. The people that are IN Iraq are the ones most stridently saying they are 'understaffed'. Wouldn't they know by now?
4,5.I read it. I think it is a well written account of one guy's experience, but kind of reinforces the whole 'why are we there' issue.
6. I can't speak to the 'every ship' statement, as I have never before seen a such a banner on a ship, nor heard of the practice . Not that I've looked at hundreds of ship pictues or anything. Considering what a major photo-op that whole thing was, I'm going to say that it was planned just like every other thing that happened that day.
7. I can't dispute the casual relations, nor find a compelling source to confirm this. I guess I'm still waiting for us to go after the Saudis, as the actual people who bit it in the WTC attack were Saudi. Osama is Saudi. Where's Encyclopedia Brown when you need him? Perhaps he can find out what happened to the investigation into the people who yanked out tons of $$$ out of the stock market in the days before 9/11?
8. I read it, and two other articles and it seems that it is still up in the air.
9. I don't get it either. They got the $$$, why not spend it? What are they waiting for? Iran?
10. Well, there's this, which came out today...I obviously have no access to the Sat images, so am unable to check for myself.

Yes, it goes on and on. And on

1, 2, 3. They're terrorists. That's what they do, I guess.

Frankly, I know that terrorists et al are not caused by the policies of GW. However, It would be pretty hard to argue that he hasn't exacerbated conditions that were preexisting, and perhaps caused in no small measure by his father.
I hope you appreciate the fact I've actually responded to your post, even though you may argue that I didn't answer your concerns. You did manage to suck the life out of me, though, so this round goes to you, sir. Excellent work!

You do not need to be aware of any information sources not sanctioned by Big Media