Lots of people agree that Obama is low on substance. But no one can phrase it like Lileks:

On the radio today Medved and Hewitt both asked Obama supporters to call and say why they were supporting their man. Specifics, please. The replies were rather indistinct. He would end the division and bring us together by encouraging us all to talk about common problems, after which we would compromise. He will give us hope by giving us hope: for many, the appeal has the magical perfect logic of a tautology. It's a nice dream. But compromise is impossible when you have a fundamental differences about the proper way to solve a problem. I believe we can achieve a fair society by taking away your house and giving it to someone else. I disagree. It is my house. Then let us agree to give away half of your house. Compromise! But that is not a compromise. You have taken half my house. We have compromised on your behalf with those who would have taken it all. Let us not return to the politics of division. There are strangers living in my spare bedroom. Then we have truly come together. Look, this isnÂ’t a matter on which we can compromise, because we have conflicting premises. YouÂ’re pretending matter and anti-matter have the same relationship as Coke and Pepsi. They donÂ’t.

He goes on with more awesomeness. My pal Amritas once said that Lileks is the Mark Twain of our time. I love that. I just love how Lileks writes.

(You did say that, right, Amritas? Did I mix you up with Bunker?)

Posted by: Sarah at 08:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 Sorry, I can't remmeber if I wrote that or not. It sounds familiar, but I might have read it on Bunker's site. Unfortunately, his site has been ... taken over: http://www.bunkermulligan.net/ It still lives on at archive dot org, though. I am sure of one thing, though: it's an honor to have my name and Bunker's on the same line!

Posted by: Amritas at February 20, 2008 11:48 AM (+nV09)

2 I like him for his policy. I rarely listen to what candidates say, it's all going to be smarmy feel good crap anyway. I went to their websites and read about their stances on major issues. His plans seem thorough and deep. Unfortunately, the majority of the American voting public seems to like the feel-good taglines rather than caring about substance. One of his positions is that we must confront the growing threat in Pakistan, which is where the Al Qaeda training camps are and is one of the main reasons we have not yet succeeded in Afghanistan. He also plans to expand the military (including the National Guard) in an effort to meet the growing demands of keeping the region and our nation safe. He has a list of things to do for veterans to make sure they are taken care of during transition and thereafter. For more about Pakistan, you can look here: http://www.barackobama.com/2007/08/01/remarks_of_senator_obama_the_w_1.php. It'll auto-play a speech, so you might want to stop it so you can read what he's saying. The Pakistan info is about halfway down. If you want to see how he stands on other subjects, you can go to www.barackobama.com and click on issues. That will pull up a list of major issues from which you can choose. Once you click on an issue, if you don't see enough substance in the summary, scroll down and click on "read the plan" for an adobe file of more information. You might disagree with where he stands on a lot of issues (and knowing you I'm sure you will ), but I think it's unfair hype to say he's short on substance. And just as he's not responsible for a random idiot displaying a Che Guevara flag, he's not responsible for the ignorance of some of his supporters, either. From reading all of his positions and plans, I don't get the feeling that "compromise" is a major part of his policy plan. Moreso than the right wing, but not as much as it's made out to be here.

Posted by: Sis B at February 20, 2008 01:29 PM (qPf1j)

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I was reading about Obamamania today and came across this tangential comment by "a thirty-something, African-American female":

And finally, after Iowa something changed. I am what you might now call an Obamamaniac and am 'emotionally involved' as you say. But it's not because I think he is some Messiah. I haven't fallen in love with him. His campaign has made me fall in love with this country. His campaign has made me rethink assumptions I had made about huge swaths of this country. My only thought of North Dakota was a place not to go because of the color of my skin. Now, after Iowa, I realize my own small-mindedness and my own cynicism. Sure, some people out there will not want me around but I'll wait until they make that clear to me.

And that is just really, really cool.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The husband and I watched Casablanca tonight. He had never seen it and I hadn't seen it since high school. And the movie meant a whole lot more to me now than it did back then.

My husband remarked how absurd it would seem to modern viewers to have a woman leave the man she loves to stand for a cause. Nowadays, you'd never break up true love at the end of a movie, especially not for war aims. Rick makes Ilsa go because "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Few people talk like that these days. Fewer still think like that.

But Casablanca came out in 1942, long before the outcome of the war was certain. It was a beautiful story of sacrifice in difficult times. Rick and Ilsa gave up love for the greater good.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 I have never seen this movie before and my brother keeps getting on me about it. It is next on my Netflix right now.

Posted by: Kasey at February 07, 2008 05:36 PM (tttDj)

2 I bought that movie a while back, but I haven't seen it yet. Now I gotta dig it out and give it a try.

Posted by: Erin at February 07, 2008 07:15 PM (y67l2)

3 My wife and I also watched it this weekend. She had never seen the whole thing, just bits and pieces. I could not find it at the rental store or the library so I bought it. I love the Inspector Reynaud character. It remains an excellent movie, 65 years later. I think it was a total surprise to those involved that it 'worked' as well as it did - it was not significantly different than dozens of standard studio productions of the time, and in addition it was affected by war effort comings and goings of writers and other personnel during production. The script evolved through several writer changes and writing barely kept up with filming. I think it was just one of those 'magic' accidental combinations of story, cast, direction, script and historical timing. Many would hold me blasphemous, but to me the most analagous 'modern' movie is the original Star Wars - science fiction instead of historical fiction, but romance, heroism, an array of interesting characters, and some memorable lines, which all really 'worked'.

Posted by: Glenmore at February 07, 2008 07:22 PM (RnFyI)

4 One of my alltime favorite movies. Inspector Reynaud was also my favorite character. When I worked at the jail, everyone became quite familiar with the phrase, "Round up the usual suspects!"

Posted by: R1 at February 08, 2008 06:04 AM (y1Xat)

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I'm officially too old for my new cell phone.

I went to set the ringtones, and absolutely none of them are appropriate for my age group. This one's techno. This one's gangsta. Eww, this one sounds like s-e-x. The "oriental" one, that's just racist. I have it set on just plain ringing like a phone because I cannot imagine using any of the provided files.

I am a fogey...

Posted by: Sarah at 12:45 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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The Flag has to come first
if freedom is to survive.
--Col Steven Arrington--

Every once in a while, something on the internet takes my breath away.

Over Our Dead Bodies

This is something I don't like to talk about because it makes me seem cold and cruel. I also think it makes me somewhat out-of-the-ordinary. And some will think I'm plain psycho for even thinking such things. But I believe in the premise of this article, that man is dispensible for the greater cause.

My husband is one of those dispensible men.

I have tried to come to terms with exactly how that makes me feel. And Lord knows I don't ever want to have to put my convictions to the test. But should I have to, I will come back and read that article again and find solace, and I will try very hard to remember in my grief what I knew to be true before grief struck.

I have thought about this a lot over the past years, as you must when your husband's job is war. But I've thought about it in other scenarios too. There was an episode of 24 where terrorists hold a wife and kid hostage and send dad out to provide a detonator to the man holding a nuke. Dad would do anything to save his family, even enable a nuclear weapon.

No way.

I put myself in those shoes, and I just couldn't do it. There's no way I could kill 20,000 to save my 2. I'm not going to go Keyser Soze on my family, but there's no way I will cooperate in arming a nuclear device just to save my husband.

He and I have also talked about this in regards to Jill Carroll and the Brit hostages. I will not beg and grovel, I will not trade his life for the lives of others, and I will remember in my heart the brave Fabrizio Quattrocchi as I do the hardest thing that could ever be asked of a person.

My husband is dispensible.

I do not say that lightly. Not at all. The moment I typed the words, I felt the beginning of tears.

But my personal happiness is not more important than my country. I will do my best to remember this, even when I often think that the Middle East is not worthy of my husband. I will remember that surely there were wives who thought that their husbands' lives were not worth taxation without representation, the end of slavery in far away states, or fear of the domino effect. Yet they sacrificed their husbands, and I would do the same.

That is our profession. Harooh.

I think the movie 300 took people by surprise. The Spartans were not a perfect society, not by a long shot, but they lived by the credo that men are dispensible for Sparta. And the movie resonated with people because they still want to believe that such men are out there. They want to believe that 300 would step up and defend our country too, risking all.

But I think they're afraid that those 300 don't exist. Most of the moviegoers don't number among them.

Some have asked me how I'd feel to get pregnant before my husband deploys. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. I want to raise a child with my husband or not at all. But I asked him while I was pregnant if it made him feel better or worse that he would leave a child behind should something happen to him. He said he did find comfort in thinking like the Spartans, that only men with progeny should be sent to battle. Thus I pray we get pregnant before he leaves again soon, so he has the peace of knowing that his legacy lives on.

And as hard as it is for me to think of my husband as dispensible, it will be all the harder to think of that child as dispensible too.

But the flag comes first.

(Thanks to Kim du Toit for the article and for writing "Not all of us are at the mall. We are with you as surely is if weÂ’re going out on patrol with you, or standing next to you in the chow line back at camp.")

********

I sat on this one for a while, mulling it over. And in the meantime, I came across an article that Baldilocks' father wrote.

If you are so convinced that an ideal is vital for your society, then shouldnÂ’t you make it your duty to live long enough to help your society to realise it? Once you are dead, of what use are you?
...
But, clearly, a soldier is much more important than a tool. That is why the law on self-preservation is even more significant to humans. Sure, a good soldier fights bravely in battle. But his bravery must include every stratagem that helps him to return to base unharmed.

Only then can he be available for another battle. Hence the saying: Live for your country: never deliberately die for it.

Trust me when I say that we also know this to be true. No one was more diligent about not dying needlessly than my husband was the last time he was in Iraq. (That's why he put two soldiers in jail when they failed to ensure the safety of the other men.)

My husband is the last man to promote swashbuckling or chest-thumping. But some must go to fight the Dragons, and those men must be ready to be dispensible.

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The husband did our taxes this weekend and somehow, against all odds of us trying to contribute the bare minimum, we are still getting a refund. The husband just said, "Sweet, the government is hooking us up!" And I feigned horror and said, "Do not ever say anything of the sort again. They are not 'hooking us up'; they are merely only keeping $7000 of our money instead of $9000."

If everyone looked at taxes that way, maybe we could get some reform.

And as I was digging around for receipts on charitable contributions and my husband was trying to figure out how much state sales tax we could deduct, we kept muttering how nice the Fair Tax would be.

Posted by: Sarah at 06:09 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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