Media To Try, Try Again

It’s not Vietnam….it’s Somalia!

The frenzy recalled the October 1993 scene in Somalia, when locals dragged the bodies of Marines killed in fighting with warlords through the streets.

Perhaps they just need to change the pitch of their klaxon to get it through to the tone deaf American citizens that Americans. Are. Dying. in a war zone.

We know. But we’re resolute.

I hope.

(Link seen on Drudge Report, a little-known news aggregator. Click through, he can use the exposure.)

Update: No, on second though, tell us it’s just like Somalia. Which was a debacle because the United States cut and ran too early. That should stiffen our upper lips.

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A Sentiment I Share

At the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein calls this mantra aummed from the mouth of a London attorney the “quote of the day”:

You will never change the hearts and minds of terrorists by bombing them.

I disagree. I prefer Bernsteins rejoinder:

    That’s OK, I’ll settle for their death. I don’t think we changed the hearts and minds of too many Nazis during World War II, either.

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Cleaning Out The Link Box

Here are some things to which I have meant to bring to your attention, but haven’t:

  • Man tries to buy $7,000,000 in lottery tickets.
    This guy tries to buy seven million lottery tickets, which would give him a one in two chance of winning the $38,000,000 jackpot. Lottery officials decline. Not because it’s against the rules, but because it’s against the “spirit” of the lottery. That’s right, they arbitrarily change the rules on the fly to suit their own agenda. Keep that in mind if you ever win; take the cash. Just because the lottery promises to pay out that money over twenty or thirty years, does not mean they will. The minute the state legislature needs it to give poor children LeBron sneakers, your winnings are seized. (Link seen on Fark.)

  • There’s too much extraneous crap overlaid on television.
    Gail Pennington of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch agrees. Hey, Fox Sports Net, covering a quarter of the screen with an advertisement for Master and Commander while the Blues are breaking up ice does not endear me to you. I am not going to watch your “extreme” sports show or your fantasy football program. I want to watch the damn hockey game.

  • Regulation by punchline.
    Radley Balko joins the party late in recognizing that reductio ad absurdum helps those who sue or legistlate brainstorm for fresh outrages. Recognizing a slippery slope doesn’t mean you’re not sliding down it.

  • FBI can’t use your OnStar against you….yet.
    A court has ruled that the FBI cannot just take your vehicular remote assistance product off the hook and listen to what you’re saying in your car. Yet.

    Of course, you all know I would never buy a product where a radio signal can open your car doors or that the FBI could track your stolen vehicle. I don’t even have a cell phone where a signal could take it off hook, either. You think I am mad? Listen to how carefully I planned it out! (Link seen on Tech Dirt.)

  • Rigorous debate in comments is good.
    I don’t have comments because I don’t like trolls. So check this link out. It’s a story about how Australian Prime Minister shared an elevator with some footy fans. But the trolls are all on John Howard for his politics, and the owner of the blog responds appropriately.

There, now the bloggable notes are out of my inbox. I can now start answering some six month old e-mail.

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Lileks Fusks Salam Pax

There it is.

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

Man, do I understand the urge. Sometimes there’s nothing more you can say to some of the incoherence than to answer in strict terms that you assume your opponents can understand, and to let them know that there words are not only wrong, but also risable and subject to consequences.

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Thanks for the Sentiment, Pinhead

Perhaps I am being too harsh, but I get a little riled when a Hollywooder loves the Midwest, like when director of The Day After Nicholas Meyer says:

“I have an enormous soft spot for the Midwest and the hospitality, the generosity and the openness of a lot of the people who live there,” says Meyer, a graduate of the University of Iowa.

Smeg off. There, you feel more at home, pinhead?

Maybe I am just a tad sensitive whenever a coastal type talks about Midwesterners. Typically, though, they like to ruffle their fingers through our hair and tell us we’re good kids.

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You Can’t Hang A Picture on AWOL

I am surprised that that one Bears fan hasn’t written about this Fox news story:

The U.S. Army declared medic Spec. Simone Holcomb AWOL for refusing to return to her duties in Iraq because of a family emergency, threatening her with a dishonorable discharge or even a court martial.

Holcomb, whose husband is also in the military as a tank commander, had to rush home to care for their seven children. Her mother-in-law had been taking care of the family, but had to leave Colorado suddenly when her father-in-law fell ill with cancer.

But the Army wasn’t too sympathetic, slapping Holcomb with the AWOL label and later deactivating her and reassigning her to the Colorado National Guard (search). She is considering taking legal action to be reinstated as a full-time soldier.

Let’s see, she went absent without leave, and she’s upset for being disciplined for going AWOL? And now she’s going to sue to get back into the army? Goodness gracious, that’s improper.

I understand she had extenuating circumstances, but she broke the rules.

And if she does try some nutbar legal maneuver, heaven forfend if some civilian court gets its dominion over the military. Forget liquor and guns. I will have to change my investment strategy to burkas and guns to prepare for the eventual destruction of our way of life.

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When Is Not Breaking The Law Illegal?

When the man wants to charge you with something! Yes, it’s more money laundering madness, this time with Rush Limbaugh in the sights of prosecutors.

You see, financial institutions have to report if you make transactions of $10,000 or more because you’re automatically suspected of dealing drugs if you have that kind of money. So Rush took out money in $9,900 amounts–and now he might be on the hook for money laundering.

Avoiding the law is breaking the law! You only oppose the inconsistency if you have something to hide, Citizen. Your papers, please?

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A Little Pat of Butter and Some Cherry Syrup On Top

So Suffolk County, New York, finally got their woman. According to this New York Post story, the alleged madam ran a chain of massage parlors, and now they’re throwing the encyclepedias at her. In addition to two counts of promoting prostitution, she got:

Clifford said Kim, who had herself been busted twice for prostitution, was charged with money laundering because she would invest her ill-gotten gains back into her massage parlors.

What, nothing else? Didn’t she stub out a cigarette on the sidewalk and get some hazardous waste or attempted arson charge?

Quick, someone call a legislator who needs to get tough on crime! We need someone brave enough to realize that if spending illicit proceeds on illegal activity is good to tack onto other charges, our prosecutors need more pancakes to stack on top, such as the following”

  • Getting money through illegal activity.
  • Spending money made through illegal activity.
  • Laying waste your powers with illegal activity.
  • Having stuff bought with money made illegally.
  • Using stuff bought with money made illegally.
  • Eating food bought with money made illegally.
  • Having money that was once earned illegally.

Because remember, the prosecution engineers DAs will only use these creative railroading charging techniques to hound the bad people.

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Not Anymore

If this story was true about the United States putting its troops under international command in Iraq (which I really want to doubt entirely), I hope it became untrue when the EU apparatchiks started flapping their gums:

The United States accepts that to avoid humiliating failure in Iraq it needs to bring its forces quickly under international control and speed the handover of power, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, has said.

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Compare/Contrast Paper Assignment

Class, compare and contrast the following essays/columns:

  • Kim du Toit’s The Pussification Of The Western Male, which details how the modern American male is shackled and coddled by the State and society into a “civilized” passive consumer.
  • Val MacQueen’s Tech Central Station column A New Stockholm Syndrome, which explores how Swedish society has become so passive that citizens stand idly by while a leading political figure is stabbed to death in a mall.

As long as the number of points of contrast outnumber the comparisons, we’re okay. But I suspect the gap is shrinking.

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Memo to Kerry Campaign: Fire Riverfront Media/GMMB & SDD

Andrew Sullivan links to a gushing review of a John Kerry ad that attempts to turn George W. Bush’s carrier landing into a slam against the president. Here’s how the blank Slaters describe the ad and infer its meaning:

The second shot is Bush, in the infamous shot after he landed on the deck of the carrier, dressed in an olive-drab flight suit (military garb and straps were in last season) with a helmet tucked under his arm. The ad suggests that this was a phony costume to go with the false label on the big ship. Bush had no right to wear military garb, because he never served in the real military, only in the Texas Air National Guard, which kept him far from Vietnam. This juxtaposition is a page out of the Bush family’s own political playbook: It’s Michael Dukakis playing soldier in a tank.

The National Guard is not the real military?

A damn fine sentiment to express when National Guardsmen are dying the same as “real” military men in Iraq.

I blame the yahoos at Slate (Jacob Weisberg wrote the particular assertion) first, but damn Senator Kerry, too, and anyone, active military or not, for casting aspertions on anyone who served.

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Tapple the Bongo Slowly

Ravenwood has a post which features an incredulous exchange between Paula “Zipppppppp” Zahn and Tucker Carlson wherein they discuss why people under thirty don’t think the Iraq invasion and occupation are a bad thing. Carlson zooms in with this insight:

It does surprise me. I mean, I think the theme throughout all of these numbers is hopefulness. People under 30 just are much more optimistic about America’s future. They feel more secure in the job market with the economy. They think things are getting better. They think Iraq is going better than people over 30 do.

How can that be? Don’t they realize it’s Vietnam!

Pardon me while I shake the doughnuts off of my cluebat.

Note to big thoughtless media players out there: Vietnam is not an apt or immediate metaphor for anyone under forty. I was born in 1972, and I was 3 when Saigon fell. I don’t remember any of it. Someone who’s forty today will have some preteen memories of it, but thirty year olds were born in 1973 and don’t remember the Miracle on Ice, either.

You might as well compare the Iraq invasion to the Crimean War. Your average thirty year old has the same immediate access to each. In a book. So just hitch your trousers a little higher, show us some more of those sexxxy black socks under your sandals, and go back to your regular poor Boomer behavior of worrying that you’ll have a single, non-Federally funded financial responsibility between the end of your career and the end of your retirement.

Thank you. That is all.

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Artist Capitalist Talons Come Out

Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, a new theatre venue opening up is causing problems.

Because those same proponents who want the citygoers to “support the arts” by giving graciously to their particular theatre are suddenly threatened by the competition that a new theatre will bring.

Hey, I got an idea. How about tickets that cost ten to thirty dollars, huh? Make a play a comparable value to a movie (not to mention far cheaper than a sporting event, and certainly a better value than a Brewer’s game). How about you just put out a better product more cheaply than the other guy and then win, huh?

I guess lowering prices would (sniff!) let the proles in, but don’t forget those very same common men stood at the base of the Globe stage and saw Shakespeare in the original Middle English and they got the jokes without the footnotes, werd.

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Why Return the Money in the Wallet?

Headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Criticism of Inner Belt project angers Olivette! Anything but that!

What’s the beef?

Les Sterman, the executive director of the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council and professional funding teat-sucker, said that the federal government really doesn’t need to spend $24 million dollars on an interchange where I-170 meets Olive because it doesn’t have as much traffic as previously predicted. This, of course, upset the professional funding teat-suckers in Olivette, where the $24 million dollar interchange would have been added.

“Show me a community that doesn’t want $24 million in federal funding and I will show you Olivette, because that is the only one,” said [Larry] Gerstein [director of the Olivette Community Connection].

While Gerstein acknowledges Sterman has no financial stake in whether the interchange is built, he insists Sterman should not be using his position to evaluate the merits of the interchange, which is a topic of local debate.

Because, obviously, the taxpayers in Mississippi and Wyoming should alleviate non-existent (sorry, light) traffic congestion in a relatively affluent suburb of St. Louis.

Show me a community that would let the pork return to its source and I’ll show you Olivette, who is not one.

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Paranoia Shidoshi Say: Wreck Your Own Credit

Finally, the credit reporting agencies are putting your credit information directly into the hands of third world workers unbound by United States laws. That’s efficiency in identity theft.

Your paranoia shidoshi recommends you open as many credit cards as you can in the next three weeks, max them out, buy a new Porsche, get a mortgage, and have a ball. Remember Brewster’s Millions. Whatever you can consume, creditors cannot seize. So buy a couple cases of good wine, some exceptional chocolate, charter a jet, and fly a couple dozen friends to the Bunny Ranch. But don’t pay the bills!

You see, once you’ve reached a point that no one will give you change much less a credit card, no one will give someone who steals your identity a credit card, either!

Sometimes, the easy answers elude us, but that’s why I am the shidoshi, and you are the student.

There is liberation in the limitation of paying cash.

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Paranormal Columnists Read Reagan’s Mind

Although this column by Leonard “The” Pitts, Jr., deserves a full fusking, I’ll only fusk the chewy bits:

Now, this is “Must-See TV.”

I mean, I had no intention of watching CBS’ Ronald Reagan miniseries. But given the furor raised by the Republican party and assorted conservative pundits over what they perceive as a hatchet job on the former president, I don’t see how I can afford to miss it.

This week, CBS gave in to the pressure and announced that it had pulled The Reagans from its November schedule. The movie has instead been shipped off to the Showtime cable network, which is expected to run it next year.

The Republican faithful are counting that as only a partial victory. They’re pleased the show won’t be run on a major broadcast network. They’d prefer it not be run at all.

Mind you, they haven’t actually seen the movie. Their antipathy is based on a number of other factors, including the fact that Reagan is portrayed by James Brolin, husband of the über-liberal herself, Barbra Streisand. Then there are the script excerpts published by The New York Times, particularly one that portrays Reagan as lacking in compassion for gay people dying from a then-new disease called AIDS.

Yet as everyone knows, the Reagan administration stood silent on the sidelines in the early years of that plague. Reagan may never have said the words the script reportedly puts into his mouth — ”They that live in sin shall die in sin” — but the sentiment was certainly there. That’s an unalterable element of his legacy.

Oh, for crying out loud, Lenny, enough with the deduction of the interiors of men, huh? I understand that to a certain segment of the population, it’s the heart and not the actual words or deeds of men that matter. I even suspect that when Leonard Pitts, Jr., Googles himself and this site comes up, Lenny would reject any argument that intuition is a good source of premises for argument. Because it probably feels right to him. You like it, Lenny? I just know what you’re thinking!

    Which is ultimately what this argument is about, the battle for Reagan’s legacy.

Legacy, truth, they’re all a part of the great pastiche of grey that comprises relativism in all its beatuiful monochrome.

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