I should've said this a few days ago, but it didn't seem that important at the time. But now that everyone is carrying on about how the conference between President Bush and the soldiers was "staged", I just wanted to say that I thought the weirdest thing was the link from the MSN homepage (now gone, of course): Bush tries to boost morale. I clicked on it out of sheer curiosity, because I thought that it was such a strange headline. It made me imagine President Bush dressed up in Will Ferrell's cheerleader suit, trying to get soldiers to cheer up and stick with the mission. I don't think the actual interview had anything to do with cheerleading, so it was bizarre that they said he was trying to boost morale.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:20 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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A sad day has come: my husband no longer wants to watch The Simpsons.

We hadn't seen any new episodes since spring 2003, so we were excited when they started showing them on AFN Korea. But after four weeks, my husband shut off the TV and said that he was through. A global warming joke every week is a bit too much.

I started getting skeptical when I heard Michael Moore was going to be a guest last year, but it honestly feels like every episode is peppered with Democratic Underground memes. The Simpsons used to be about timeless plots: starting a barbershop quartet, going off to summer camp, writing an Itchy & Scratchy episode. The last episode we watched was a glimpse ten years into the future, complete with global warming turning Alaska into a beach, a military draft for Gulf War Five, and the 51st state being Saudi Israelia (I still don't understand what they were getting at there.) And this garbage is from the same genius minds that made Futurama?

Bart and Lisa go on a field trip to Springfield Glacier...which is the size of an ice cube now. Hardy har har. Give me "I Love Lisa" over this crap any day.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:08 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 Just wait 'til you get back to the states and watch the new series (any new series). The libs in H'wood are really ramming their philosophy/wisdom down the throats of the unwashed masses.

Posted by: Pamela at October 15, 2005 05:14 PM (oKtxg)

2 the simpsons have been a left-leaning politically c'mon sarah look at lisa simpson vegeterian,educated,kind to the enviroment,etc... and it is as funny back when it came out as it is now.i guess it's how people's views can change more than show itself.and global warming IS real.

Posted by: tommy at October 15, 2005 05:53 PM (NMK3S)

3 Nobody is saying that Global warming ISN'T real tommy boy. Catastrophic predictions from the environmentalist crowd predict a few degrees over the next fifty years. Not beaches in Alaska eight years from now. Swiftian satire, perhaps? If that's what they intended, they missed. That's my real objection with the simpsons the last few years. It's not the politics. It's the fact that it's not funny anymore. Matt Groening, Al Jean, Mike Reiss and Conan O'brien made the show great when they had creative control over the show. They hit their peak around '97-'98. Yes, there was no secret about their political affiliation. Side show Bob Roberts in season six shows Dracula as a Republican, Homer's adventures into the NRA, etc. The difference was that it was funny back then. Funny and it generally avoided the overtly political and topical humor that made Murphy Brown only watchable to those on the creator's side of the political spectrum. The only instance I can think of this happenning during the Simpsons' golden era was Birchibald T. Barlow's obvious spoof of Rush Limbaugh. Political yes but it was FUNNY. But in the episode Sarah mentions there are three references to global warming. The Saudi Israelia crack? Principal Skinner is forced to steal computers for the school because, "this is Dick Cheyney's America."? Give me a break. This is the Simpson's of Ian Maxtone Graham. The Harvard educated hack who only got the job from his Conan connections at Saturday Night live. The real Simpson's died when Groening left to create Futurama in 1997. You can watch seasons four, five or six over and over and still laugh. Topical humor, particularly when it's crammed with way off the scale lefty snickering isn't funny now and it won't be funny when they try and sell the DVDs in a few years. The Simpsons of the last few seasons are the Terry Schiavo of television. We should put it out of it's misery a long time ago.

Posted by: Sarah's Husband at October 16, 2005 07:10 AM (qZ3DI)

4 i see your point captain.and it's valid to a large extent.all i was trying to say was the simpsons were always satrical politically.and usually on the side of the left like me.BTW it was good to see the elections went off fairly smoothly.american military veterans like myself want to see you guys complete the mission succesfully.we just don't like and far more importantly trust the commander-in-chief.

Posted by: tommy at October 16, 2005 11:30 AM (NMK3S)

5 Simpsons out, Family Guy in.

Posted by: Tanker at October 16, 2005 11:58 AM (btzDE)

6 Gore's daughter was the force behind Futurama. Just like there is only one brain in the Kennedy family,and Teddy is still misusing it, there may only be one brain for all the Gores.

Posted by: Walter E. Wallis at October 16, 2005 05:21 PM (wDJE+)

7 Well, there's still South Park. Equal opportunity, and simply anti-idiot no matter what side the idiot is on. Kalroy

Posted by: Kalroy at October 16, 2005 07:22 PM (9RG5y)

8 American Dad is pretty funny too. It pokes fun at patriotism, etc., but it's so over-the-top that it's hilarious.

Posted by: FbL at October 16, 2005 08:35 PM (5I8b6)

9 The Simpsons were always left-leaning; look at Mr. Burns, for example, the prototypical robber-baron capitalist. My impression, though, is that the show's quality has declined over the last few years (although I only watch sporadically). Individual jokes may be just as good, but the stories don't have the same coherence. You don't get to the real plotline until you are 5 or 10 minutes in. The difference between Kennedy and Bush dynasties seems to be that the Kennedy brain gets passed down whereas Bush senior isn't giving theirs up until he no longer has a need for it himself.

Posted by: Pericles at October 17, 2005 08:19 AM (EpPuP)

10 OK, but left-leaning isn't the same thing as "look at me, I'm a leftie", which seems to be the case now. I mean, "Mr. Lisa Goes To Washington" was both patriotic and critical of government...whereas one recent episode had a Canadian say he'd love to go to the US and see the feeble-minded executed. What is that? That's just a dig at the US for the sake of having one. Or the end of the episode where Selma tries to adopt a Chinese baby and the music says that she'll go to the US and get fat and dumb. Remember the good old days when Homer used to shout USA! USA! when anything good happened to him? Those days are gone...

Posted by: Sarah at October 17, 2005 10:16 AM (VW35q)

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In a way, I'm a little sad that Charlie won't be able to father any puppies. He's so darn cute himself that I know his offspring would be adorable as well. But what's done is done now.

Poor fella.

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1 What a sad looking puppy. He is so sweet looking, give him a cuddle for me.

Posted by: Ruth at October 13, 2005 11:28 AM (sso1C)

2 You know what that look means, right? "You, you cut off my balls!" B

Posted by: Bryan Strawser at October 13, 2005 09:06 PM (n19Zl)

3 Now he's a Cardinal fan! [ducks]

Posted by: Jason at October 14, 2005 11:57 PM (Om0e7)

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Lately the husband and I have been discussing the possibility of another deployment. I keep assuring him that it really wasn't that bad for me and that I could easily handle another. But today when we woke up at 0415 and I drove him to his unit for a three-day field exercise, I got a little misty-eyed as I drove away. All of a sudden I got that Deployment Feeling again, and I remembered that although I could do another deployment, I really would prefer to have him around.

I was looking forward to today because Charlie is at the vet getting neutered. I thought that with him out of the house for the first time since we got him, I might be able to get some work done without his little golden paws all over everything. Just a few moments ago, I realized how much I love that silly little dog. I miss him already, and I just realized I'd rather have him around too, even if he would be barking at the vacuum cleaner and trying to drink the mop water.

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Last night I got to participate in The Miracle of Life: my friend's dog had puppies. My husband and I had never seen anything get born before, so we raced over to her house as soon as she called. One pup was on the way out, and three more were to come.

The whole thing was amazing, gross, beautiful, and eerie all at the same time. I got to see animals come to life! We all held our breath when one of them was stuck in his placenta for way too long, and we cheered when he finally broke through. We felt helpless when the pups couldn't find mom's tummy to nurse; it would've been so easy to just pick one up and position him! We laughed, we gagged, and we oohed and aahed.

It was remarkable.

Posted by: Sarah at 08:20 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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We watched the movie Crash last night. It was horrifying.

I went into this movie blind: the only thing I knew about it was that people thought it was good. I didn't realize that the entire thing was about race. And boy do I mean it was about race. Everything the characters say and do is racially motivated. Every scene is about race. The bottom line in this movie is that we're all racists.

Am I really too naive? I thought this movie was completely unrealistic. I'm sorry, but the DA's advisor is simply not going to mutter "f-ing black people" to a black detective. No way, no how. I'm not denying that we haven't all felt ourselves in these characters' shoes at one point or another, but the downright racist things they utter in every scene are over the top; people just don't talk openly like that. A white man might inwardly grumble about affirmative action, but he's not going to openly belittle the black woman working for the HMO.

I was disappointed with this movie because I had high hopes, and we don't rent movies that often. But I just can't enjoy a program where I hate all the characters, and the only guy I could stand in this movie was the locksmith.

I've never been to LA -- maybe LA is from Mars and the Midwest is from Venus -- but this can't be real life. People just don't think about race every waking second.

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I was too young to watch Dallas, but thanks to the magic of DVDs, I've been enjoying that bit of TV history. I mentioned to my husband that it's interesting how simple the plotlines are. To a generation raised on M. Night Shyamalan and CSI, the thought that you could base an hour of TV around "Jock has a heart attack" seems amazing. Dallas is not boring by any means, but it's sure not fast-paced TV like we're used to.

My husband told me about the pending movie plans for Dallas. I had no idea this was in the works, but now that I know the characters, I certainly can't see Brad Pitt as Ray Krebbs! My friend and I were talking the other day about how the idea of beauty shifts over time. We remarked that Charlene Tilton would never have been cast as Lucy today, because by today's standards she's fat. Even though she's not fat at all; she's voluptuous and womanly. I was grossed out to find that they're thinking of casting Lindsey Lohan as Lucy for the movie. Maybe Lohan circa 2004, but not now. There's just no way I'd choose this

when Lucy's supposed to look like this

Give me a curvy, thicky-thick Lucy any day. And a JR who looks like Travolta.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:35 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Raven1 got some great advice from his chaplain before returning from Iraq. One paragraph won't do it justice; you have to read the whole thing.

When my husband was home on R&R, he had a bit much to drink and accidentally told me a story he hadn't intended to repeat. He was genuinely surprised that the story didn't freak me out, and it opened the door to telling me a bit more. When he got home at the end of the year, he told me some of the worst things that happened in his time in Iraq. I'm glad that he thinks I'm strong enough to hear them.

I think stories after the fact aren't nearly as frightening as what we wives imagined on our own while they were gone. His reality was no match for my creativity! We who stand and wait read blog posts and news reports about everyone's most exciting days in Iraq, so it's easy to forget that not every day is a battle.

My husband is quiet with his stories though. He and Red6 have talked, but for the most part, his year is his own. He doesn't want to try to explain his experience to anyone, for the only ones who can truly understand it are his platoon sergeant and the other three men in his tank. Sometimes I feel sad that he doesn't get to see any of those guys anymore; it would be nice for him to spend time with people who didn't need to hear the stories because they were there with him.

Posted by: Sarah at 05:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Doc Foglesong is retiring?! Man, that's gonna cut the number of TV commercials in half around here!

(This joke is dedicated to The Girl)

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1 Oh, no!! How am I going to entertain CaliValleyGirl without him?!?!

Posted by: The Girl at October 07, 2005 04:09 PM (L/ou0)

2 You might have to explain this one to all the people that have never seen AFN TV.

Posted by: Raven1 at October 07, 2005 10:57 PM (N1rEE)

3 The USAF commander makes TONS of attaboy commercials, constantly flitting around Europe and recording himself giving motivational blurbs on runways. I'd wager that we get one Doc Foglesong message per commercial break.

Posted by: Sarah at October 08, 2005 04:01 AM (ncie4)

4 Trying living on base where the man works! Oye that was a pain in the rear. He carried a two way radio and called in violators of base regs like not ensuring your dog was more than 50 feet from housing before pooping. Yes I know some folks don't pick it up but you shouldn't live in fear of the two way radio! His other favourtive was the "wing runs." He would tie up 3/4 of the base making all these folks in the wing run with him. No body could get in or off base for over an hour due to security and safety issues. He liked to do this once a blooming month!!!! HH6

Posted by: Household6 at October 11, 2005 06:18 AM (T+Tkq)

5 When I was deployed to an air base in Kuwait the last 2 Christmases, my reactions to his commercials ranged from gentle amusement to laughter to anger to wondering why his wife looks 90 years old. He certainly inspired me to make a Christmas wreath for my C-130. (See Christmas spot 2004). Now that's inspirational leadership!

Posted by: Keith at October 16, 2005 11:16 AM (i71p0)

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For God's sake, with a system like this, if the country came under enemy attack, the only people who'd know it would be bloggers!

My mom went to Oklahoma University, so she noticed when the crawl at the bottom of the TV said that someone had blown himself up there. But she searched and searched for additional information: nothing else that night on the TV nor in the local paper in the morning. She told me about it, and I found some info on blogs. But why did we have to turn to blogs for reporting of such an event?

Eric of Classical Values has a post with lots of details about what the media is and is not reporting. Funny how a Muslim convert who tries to enter a sports arena and blow himself up isn't news...

Posted by: Sarah at 03:45 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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1 No, CNN is not a blog. And CNN did not mention anything about the guy's connections to radical Muslims. I'm pretty sure that was the point of Sarah's post, but thanks for giving us the link to MSM's watered down generic non-news.

Posted by: Oda Mae at October 07, 2005 08:00 AM (FmIVz)

2 Through Googling I saw some blogs which said he had been linked to an Islamic center. Looked like unconfirmed rumor at this point; I saw no hard evidence on the two or three sites I read, anyway. Maybe it will turn out to be true; I can't say it won't. Should the media report it before it is confirmed, though? If they did, and then it turned out to be false, then bloggers would be blasting them for that.

Posted by: Pericles at October 07, 2005 10:20 PM (EpPuP)

3 But journalists apparently got tons of things wrong about New Orleans, which they reported without confirmation. They ran with Flushing the Koran too. It just seems a bit selective to me.

Posted by: Sarah at October 08, 2005 05:30 AM (ncie4)

4 Fair enough. Although I think that the errors in the New Olreans reporting were actually errors in a conservative direction rather than a liberal one. The original reports depicted New Orleans's poor welfare recipients as vicious animals, more or less. I saw several conservative commentators jump on this point in various ways, for example to criticize welfare. You posted a link to the "Two Tribes" essay that was in this vein, and another was all over the Internet. I think that the media has a huge bias toward sensationalism, more than they have any political bias. It comes from the fct that most of the media is now in the nads of a few profit-hungry corporations, and the ethos of serving the public is breaking down. Also, I think that it is sometimes easy to pick on small mistakes in the details of reports to ignore the substance. Okay, so the Koran wasn't flushed... intstead, it got urine sprayed on it. Would that story coming out have been any better? The fact that CBS ran with faked National Guard memos about Bush was a big win for Republicans, because it distracted people from the other evidence. I remember a great quote from the secretary of the Texas ANG unit. She said she knew the memos were fake, because she would have been the one to type them and didn't and because the commander ould never have put such things on paper. But she went on to add that the memos did capture exactly the sentiments that the commander freely expressed verbally about Bush around the office.

Posted by: Pericles at October 08, 2005 09:27 AM (EpPuP)

5 Bombs at Georgia Tech and UCLA too. Once is a fluke. Twice a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at October 11, 2005 01:26 AM (kRxBU)

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I didn't get to attend the Land Combat Expo here in Germany, but a part of me was apparently there...

I still can't believe that they chose to showcase my blog along with more notable milblogs. What an honor.

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When Red6 got home from Iraq, the furthest thing from his mind was his blog. He had been home a few days before I gently suggested to him that he put up a post saying that he was home safe. I knew, given my own nature, that many people were worried about him and just wanted reassurance that he was safe and sound. He thought it was funny that people might get that attached to him, but he put up a short post anyway (about how he couldn't wait to hang out with Bogg -- I'm chopped liver, apparently!)

I was reminded of that today when we finally heard from Jack Army, evacuated because of Hurricane Rita. I'm sure he was busy and blogging was far from his priorities, but for those of us who waited 11 days to hear from him, his safety was definitely a priority. His life may have kept moving, but his silent blog kept us at a standstill.

Glad to see you're safe, Jack.

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Longtime readers know I think that our popular entertainment is a result of our collective value system; it's the reason I blog so often about Rocky. The American Geek found an interesting article about this very phenomenon: How Hollywood needs to stop worrying and love the flag. It's a very interesting take on why Hollywood is in a slump.

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I started a blog in the first place because I was tired of emailing link after link to my mother. I needed a place where I could compile all of the articles I wanted her to read. Over time, I realized that I'm not that original and that better thinking and analysis was being done elsewhere. I gradually stopped posting things that I knew all the other blogs were already talking about.

The thing is, I have two types of readers. I suspect the majority are blog-heads, those who read several other blogs in addition to mine and know exactly what I'm talking about when I say Turkeygate, superscript th, and "screw 'em". But I'm slowly realizing that I have a growing faction of readers who only read my blog, usually because they know me personally (my neighbor loves to recruit readers for me!) And those readers don't read LGF or RWN and thus miss out on some big stories because I figure no one wants to read another comment about how ridiculous it is that some Kos writer said that we need "streets running awash in rivers of blood" of right-wingers. But if this is the only blog you read, as it is for some of my friends, then I suppose it's my duty again, as it was with my mother, to expose you to a sampler plate from the blogosphere. Thus begins a rejuvenation here, a renewed reason to blog.

So, to start it all off, here's the latest Mark Steyn article. Did you hear that they're banning pigs in the UK (I heard it first via Hud)? The PC-meter just went to eleven. Since pigs are offensive to Muslims, you can't display any pigs in your cubicle at Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, not even Piglet. And Burger King bent over backwards because someone complained that their new ice cream logo looked like the word jihad. I wish I were making these things up. Mark Steyn tackles the hypocrisy nicely in his article, saying:

Likewise, Piglet is deeply offensive and so's your chocolate ice-cream, but if a West End play opens with a gay Jesus, Christians just need to stop being so doctrinaire and uptight.

Some may say that the pig thing is only one officeplace in the UK, that we're blowing this all out of proportion. But this general pandering to Muslims has got to stop. When the villian in movies is the flight attendant instead of the Muslim passengers, when the memorial for Flight 93 is made to look like a red crescent, and when you can't have a Piglet kleenex box without someone crapping a brick, we're headed for serious trouble.

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Reggie Sanders + grand slam = very happy husband

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My neighbor called because her hot water wasn't working. Mine seems to be just fine, but who knows how these screwy buildings work. I've lived here two and a half years and I still don't understand how to work the heater.

Anyway, as I was getting into the shower this morning, I remembered the strangest shower I've ever taken.

When we lived in France, my friend had a bizarre bathroom setup. Imagine a cross between a stand-up shower and a bathtub, and not in a good way. Her bathing apparatus was the dimensions of a stand-up shower but with the porcelain sides of a tub, reaching about three feet off the floor. So if you're standing in the tub/shower, the side of the tub reaches mid-thigh. And then there's nothing -- no curtain or door -- but there's a nozzle for a shower. There's a seat in the thing, kind of like a jacuzzi-style shelf. Oh, and in the middle, at about belly button height, there's a series of strings for drying laundry. Seriously. I wish I had a picture.

So one day I decide that my curiousity is too great, and I ask my pal to use her shower. I just have to see this for myself. And I proceed to take the most miserable shower of my life.

In my own apartment, the shower had exactly three and a half minutes of hot water, so I was not unaccustomed to misery. But the moment I turned on the water in my friend's shower, ice water sprayed all over me...and all over most of the bathroom too, since there's no curtain to control it. But since I'm an idiot, I didn't just shut it off and get out, oh no. I took the whole danged shower.

When I got back to my friend's room -- did I mention that she shared this monstrosity at the end of the hall with two strangers? -- I asked her if her water was always that cold. She said that it was never pleasant, and I could tell that she thought I was being overly critical. That afternoon she learned that the hot water had been shut off in the whole building, and I had indeed taken a shower that was worse than usual.

As if things could get any worse than that hybrid shower-tub.

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Charlie turned six months old today. He celebrated by losing two more canine teeth. Only one more to go and then I'm free from puppy bites.

It's not fair that I expect him to be perfect already. I get so frustrated when he grabs the end of the toilet paper and runs under the bed with it, or when he eats a hole through the carpet, or when he barks at 0600 because he wants to play. It's easy to forget that he's made lots of progress: he can ring a bell to let us know when he wants to go outside, and he gets in his crate at night all by himself.

And he's always good for a laugh. The other day we were chasing each other around the house and he tried to jump out a window. A closed window.

He's a keeper...

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My husband got a real laugh out of this interview with R. Lee Ermey, G. Gordon Liddy, Evel Knievel, Merle Haggard, and Jack La Lanne. (But don't read it unless you can appreciate a man's man.)

MORE TO GROK:

Speaking of Liddy, CavX got interviewed by G. Gordon Liddy! Wow!

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Sometimes I just get so frustrated that I don't know why I bother caring.

I was interested in reading this blog entry dubunking the recruiting slump, but as I dove deeper into the comments section, I found we're still arguing over whether Iraq had any ties to al Qaeda. My comments section recently went through a fight over whether Iraq had any WMDs. Everywhere I look, we're still arguing over the same fundamental differences in common ground that we've been arguing over for three years.

The straw that broke my back this morning was one quote from Kersten's article:

"The more play the press gives Cindy Sheehan," [Lt. Col. James] MacVarish concludes, "the better the terrorists' chances are of ultimately succeeding here."

We've heard this before, with CPT Powell being the most famous to point out the difference between the Iraq soldiers see and the Iraq the media sees. But this is nothing new; we've been having these fights with the press since the Tet Offensive. It's extremely infuriating to know that we learned nothing from the last time around. Negative press can lose wars, even if the military is winning. The thing is, I've heard this statement made in just about every letter to the editor and article written by people in the military, yet the media keeps ramming bad news down our throats. They completely ignore the men they're interviewing and continue doing whatever they want.

I'm just tired of seeing the same things played out on the internet over and over. Tired of every discussion turing into WMDs and Bush lied. Tired of reading scores of ignored soldier complaints that the media is being too pessimistic. Tired of nothing changing.

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1 ...and gosh, and one of the guys spewing the same old talking points has appeared in other comments sections as well... spewing the same things. Surprise, surprise. Sarah: I suspect it's part of what counts as a strategy for them. Keep spewing the same points over and over, ignore any refutations, and when people just get tired of the whole thing and don't bother meeting any or all of the same darned points they keep spewing THEN they claim victory. It's a tactic older than Usenet. Though when DejaNews came out, that tactic became a bit less useful since one could simply run a search and gosh, find all the refutations the poster claimed never happened actually were made months or years before when the poster tried it the first few times. Then post the results and watch the person making the claims that no one had refuted them sputter and try to pretend they didn't exist.

Posted by: Patrick Chester at October 01, 2005 06:41 AM (74cXW)

2 Sarah... I understand your frustration with the way the media seemingly refuses to look at issues through any other lens than the one they choose. If you spend more than 5 minutes at some of the larger milblogger sites, you know as well as I do, that there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines doing things that would make Mother Theresa smile from ear to ear. On the flip side, there are a handful of bad apples that would make her reach for the metal-edged ruler and wield it like a Jedi Knight as well. Unfortunately, the bad apples get all the ink and air time. Keep the faith...and keep up the fire. While we might not be as highly trafficked blogs as the "big guys" we are definitely making a difference. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. You, me, and all the other like-minded bloggers are doing something! MajorDad1984

Posted by: MajorDad1984 at October 01, 2005 09:34 AM (tdEnf)

3 The soldiers' perspective is certainly part of the story. At the same time, though, I don't think that line soldiers are necessarily the best observers of how the war as a whole is going. The qualities that make for a good soldier woould probably get in the way of objective assessments. It is like asking the players on a football team what their chances of winning the game are. They could be down 28-0 at halftime, but many will probably still be optimistic about their ability to come back. They're competitors, and they've got to convince themselves that they have the potential to come back. If you couldn't get yourself psyched up this way, you wouldn't be a good football player. I always want my Steelers to think they are still in the game, no matter how bad it looks for them. Still, if I'm on the outside trying to decide who is going to win, then I'm not going to take a player's opinion as the final word on the subject. I'm not saying that we are beind 28-0 in Iraq; I am just saying that there is such a thing as being too close to and involved in a situation to be able to see it as it really is. Also, I think that there is an attitude that military/ex-military people tend to take about dissent during wartime that is understandable but dangerous. When you're in the military, there is little or no role for dissent from the leadership. If you are at the lower levels, maybe it is never appropriate. Maybe higher level offices get to dissent to a point, during planning, but when they are given a legal order they are supposed to obey it. It has to be that way, and it is admirable that people in the military are able to abide by this requirement. A military unit couldn't function if people were arguing and criticizing the leadership; they tried it in the Spanish Civil War and got crushed by the fascists. Even during wartime, though, the U.S. is not a military unit. We are a democracy, and dissent and criticism are always permitted. My impression is that people who have had the importance of getting everyone on the same page and doing what they're told instilled into them sometimes find democracy a little hard to cope with. They expect the country to function as a team united behind its leadership. That isn't democracy, though. We have to choose the leadership, and in order to make informed decisions we have to be able to criticize their performance.

Posted by: Pericles at October 01, 2005 10:13 AM (EpPuP)

4 Hmm. I'm pretty sure I'm a member of ex-military democracy and I'm pretty sure that I'm behind the war in Iraq and our president because I think it's the right thing - in SPITE of the media telliing me over and over that I'm wrong. And military leaders do listen to dissent, contrary to what Pericles would like to believe. But reasoned, rational dissent used to discuss various outcomes so that a good decision can be made - we don't listen to people without solutions, just more ways of describing problems. That's not dissent, that's just the jabbering of parrots, to paraphrase that great statesman, Winston Churchill. The problem with the media is that they do not present a balanced picture of the situation. To use Pericles' football analogy, at halftime the score could be Iraqi Insurgents 3 - American Soldiers 43 and the headline would be "American Soldiers Slip Up - Iraqis Score" and that would be IT, except for interviews with anyone around who agrees with the negative assessment. Soldiers on the ground might not be able to see the big picture, but they can certainly see it better than persons at home being spoonfed every negative aspect the press can dig up. The point is whether reporters are deliberately trying to help the anti-war movement by over-emphasizing certain stories - *cough, Sheehan, cough* - and ignoring any story that would cause stateside citizens to have pride in the military and the achievements in Iraq that have helped the population and begun to build bridges with the new government. In reality, the large part of the population of the U.S.that supports our efforts in Iraq has no voice. In today's age, dissent and criticism of the President, the war or anything related are golden cows, to be coddled and presented with dinner on the nightly news (if you still watch it.) And no DISSENT from any other citizen will be allowed in there to crowd the,uh, DISSENT from our Cindy or others like her.

Posted by: Oda Mae at October 01, 2005 02:10 PM (iA6ia)

5 Sorry, Pericles, I just re-read my post and I don't mean to take you on personally, just the generalizations. (And, of course, add generalizations of my own, as one does!) I guess we're not going to change each other's opinions, but it's fun to try, isn't it?

Posted by: Oda Mae at October 01, 2005 02:38 PM (iA6ia)

6 Oda Mae---No worries. We disagree, but your post didn't close to any lines of civilized discussion, let alone cross any.

Posted by: Pericles at October 01, 2005 03:39 PM (EpPuP)

7 I've been thinking a lot about the press over the last few months. But there are a few things new out. More conservatives are on the air with Rush and Fox News. And don't forget blogs. Newspaper articles now quote them and some are a source for articles because they are so well researched. Our kids are also becoming increasingly conservative. Our press is now selling sensationalism and emotion, not news. To believe our own press we are going to hell in a hand basket, we are a country of greedy, racist wimps, etc. We have problems, and we need to keep working on them, but we are at the top of the world heap in many respects. My real problem with the press is only whiners get on TV (Hurricane Katrina). Where are the heroes, the people responsible for themselves that will rebuild without help from the government? Whiners, not heroes. Hopelessness, not hope. On the brighter side, many see us like our press reports us, not as we are. Al Queda seriously underestimated us, as do many others; including ourselves. DonÂ’t forget the silent majority. Those productive folks in the middle that work day after day, deal with what life throws at them and continue to build this country. Our wimp ratio is much lower than reported.

Posted by: Xopherman at October 02, 2005 10:18 AM (0FvF9)

8 I don't watch that much TV news, but I just turned on CNN and there was a report the troops in Iraq. They showed a Marine being presented with a silver star, talked some about what he did to earn it, talked a little about an attack in which he was wounded. He did a lot of the talking, and at the end he said quite a bit about how the troops there believe the mission is sound, are glad to be doing it, etc. Nothing the reporter did could be considered as expressing scepticism. It was exactly the kind of report that some people here seem to insist doesn't exist, and it was on the---what do right-wingers call it?---the "Comminust News Network." Makes me wonder if press negativity about the war is somewhat exaggerated. I don't doubt that the people who talk about it really believe it, but maybe their perception is a little off.

Posted by: Pericles at October 02, 2005 08:02 PM (EpPuP)

9 On the recruiting slump, by the way, this comes close to lying with numbers. It may look like goals aren't being missed by much, but the thing is that they are reducing the goals. Just in February alone, new enlistments were over 1,900 below the goal. In May, the Army fell over 1,600 below its goal. PLUS, in May the Army actually dropped its goal to 6,070 from 8,050. It missed its original goal for that month alone by about 3,000.

Posted by: Pericles at October 04, 2005 07:55 AM (EpPuP)

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