Right Wing Nut House

She arrived around dinner time, a white furrball of a kitten with a tiny little spot of black off center on the top of her head. She peered out anxiously from the bars of the cat carrier as my other two adult cats, Ebony and Aramas, circled the carrier warily, sniffing the unfamiliar odor and looking at me as if to say “WTF is this?” (Cats, of course, do not use such vulgarity. When speaking, I’m sure that they are earthy without being crude.)

The mewling kitten did not engender the maternal feelings in Ebony that I had hoped for nor did Aramas seem very accepting either. Both were hissing at the little creature who must have been wondering where its mother and litter mates had gone to. Finally, we opened the door to the carrier and Snowball stumbled out into her new home. The two adults took one final look at the tiny thing, and gave what in the cat world must be the ultimate insult; they contemptuously turned their backs on Snowball and wandered off to continue their 23 1/2 hour daily nap.

I’m sure they’ll get used to each other eventually. I’ve been kept by cats for nearly 35 years and have seen this drama play out several times. For the next few days , they will do their best to ignore each other - except when they think the other one isn’t watching. Then they will study their new housemate with an intensity bordering on fanaticism. I’ve seen cats watch a sleeping new arrival for hours, just looking at the interloper with a gaze that would freeze the blood of any lesser creature. What can they be thinking? Are their brains being rewired so that they accept the newbie with the same indifference that the adults treat each other? Perhaps they are making up their mind about whether to make a delectable little snack of the kitten and are thinking of how to prepare the repast. Shall I shred it first and then munch or perhaps have it al dente with a little catnip seasoning?

There will be the inevitable tussles at the food station. Our two adults have grown old and fat and in order to keep their weight down we now feed them twice a day rather than leave food out all day for them. So dinner time should get interesting. Aramas has already gulped down the Purina Kitten Chow we left out for Snowball, reveling in the milk flavored nuggets. In truth, he mostly enjoyed the novelty, I think. Until things settle down, we’re going to have to feed poor little Snowball on top of the kitchen counter, a bad move since when a little older, Snowball will have to be retrained not to get up there. The two adults have long since decided it’s entirely too much work and undignified to boot to be jumping on top of counters. Truth be told, they haven’t made any jump higher than the height of the litter box in years.

It’s amazing to watch as Sue falls under the spell of the new arrival. Like the Sirens of Sirenum kittens have a remarkable effect on humans. To watch a grown woman possessing uncommon common sense and will of iron melt like a stick of butter at a Fourth of July cookout whenever the creature whimpers piteously about this or that confirms my belief that cats are indeed bewitched. They first worm their way into your heart. Only later, after you’re their prisoner, do they begin your training. “Feed me this” or “Don’t feed me that.” “Clean the litterbox, clown!” “Move your feet I want to lie here.” And of course, “You may pet me now.” (Cats manage to control even this manifestation of affection as they direct your hand to exactly where they want to be stroked).

I, of course, am immune to all of this nonsense. Well…perhaps not immune. Maybe it’s just that my chains have been lengthened down through the years and I don’t notice my bondage quite as much. And I suppose I’m as enamored of our new kitten as Sue is. I’ve been wanting a little one for more than 10 years and seeing the tiny eyes, the cute little kitten mouth, and the indescribably delicate and forlorn look on the creature’s face causes my heartstrings to tug. But I’m trying to resist the magic spell being cast by what our ancestors in the middle ages referred to as “The Devil’s Familiar.”

I can tell you that at this point, resistance is futile.

I am Superhawk. I am a mighty hunter. I make war. I kill small things and grin. I kill curvy things and howl.

We are descendants of the mighty Knutehousens, the very first raiders in this land. Our swords are sharp. They can cleave a man from cheek to groin. Our bows are long. Our arrows run true.

We are invincible.

We are coming. Even now, we watch the same sunset. We hear the same wolf howl at Siddira, the moon goddess. We are coming for your women. We are coming for your children. We will breed with your women. We will eat your children.

We are a simple people. We do not need much. We believe the best things are to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

Let the word go forth. Let it be heard in all the towns and villages of the Coalition. Let all the blogstates be warned. Let the bells toll. Let your priests pray to your silly gods. Prepare your women. Prepare your children.

Superhawk and his people are coming.

Look to the sun. When the sun turns red and the great god Glennant closes his eyes to sleep, we will be among you. There is nothing you can do. There is no magic you have that can defeat us. You are ours.

And so…it begins.

A United States Marine was sentenced today to 20 years hard labor for looking sideways at the Koran.

The offense occurred at the Guantanamo Detention Center where Muslim prisoners have filed numerous complaints against guards who they say routinely desecrate the Islamic holy book. Some of the desecrations include:

1. Wearing dirty white gloves while handling the Koran

2. Not being deferential enough towards the holy book. One inmate, Muhammed Ahkbar complained that Marine guards routinely failed to “bow low and scrape their heads against the floor” while in the presence of the Koran. “It is only right that the infidel dogs show homage to Allah in this manner.” Ahkbar said.

3. Guards not being ready for pop quizzes on the Koran by inmates.

4. Guards not washing their hands after urinating and then handling the Koran. This led to a rumor in the facility that a guard had actually peed on the holy book. But after a 6 month investigation costing taxpayers more than $1 million, no proof of the allegation could be found.

In addition to Koran desecration, inmates complain of torture and mistreatment. “My bed is lumpy.” said Saad Rafjani. “I prefer the Serta Extra Firm queen size but these defilers before Allah gave me the twin size.”

One inmate complained about the food. “The lamb is overcooked, the Khoubz tastes like the inside of my AK-47, and you can see right through the water!”

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita claims that the inmates are comfortable and well fed.

If the first rule of government spending is “Why have one when you can build two at twice the price?” then the first tenet of government rule making should be “Why make one rule when four will serve the same purpose?”

Friday, June 3 is the deadline for comments on proposed FEC rules affecting the internet. And while they’re aren’t any daggers aimed at the heart of bloggers, there certainly appears to be plenty of pins ready to prick us till we bleed.

The good news is most of the 10 million or so blogs in the Shadow Media will be totally exempt from the regs. If you mention how much you hate Bush in between stories of teaching toilet etiquitte to your tot, you are safe from the long arm of the bureaucrats. If however, your ambitions include using your blog as an advocacy platform, things get a touch more complicated.

Disclosure seems to be the goal of the Feds. If you’re taking ads from a candidate or being paid by a candidate to promote the campaign, you will have to declare that on your site. But where? The Online Coalition makes a good point in their response to the proposed rules:

Furthermore, we cannot understand how a disclaimer would work in practice. Must the site feature a disclaimer on every entry? Only ones related to the campaign that made the payment? Suppose the blogger is paid by the campaign but does not write about the campaign specifically, but instead debates important current events? Is there some kind of “express advocacy” rule? How would disclaimers work with sound or video files? While we strongly oppose a disclaimer requirement, if the Commission insists upon pursuing this idea, it must set forth clearly what is required to comply with the rule.

The way these rules are written, it’s abundantly clear that the FEC simply does not understand who or what a blogger is or what we do. Neither do they understand the technical aspect of blogs (I don’t either but I’m not attempting to curtail free speech by regulating it now, am I?)

Then there’s the FEC’s problems with the English language. Now, admittedly, English is one of the more difficult languages to master - just listen to Pamela Sue Anderson try to give a speech . But generally speaking, if you’re going to write the definition of a rule and then write the rule ignoring the definition you just made, you’re going to have more confusion than even Pamela Sue could imagine:

The exemption is crafted in such a way as to apply only to communications by any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine or other periodical publication. This awkward wording suggests that the FEC means to distinguish between newspapers and periodicals, whose Internet media activities are exempt, and some classifications of other persons and organizations, which are not. Yet, the explanation for the proposed rule states “the proposed regulation expressly rejects a policy that only a bona fide press entity with an off-line component is entitled to protection in their online news stories, commentaries and editorials.”

In short, the rulemakers can’t seem to make up their minds. Are bloggers journalists? Are blogs on-line publications or commercials for candidates?

There’s an easy way to fix this entire mess. There is a bill in Congress to exempt internet activities from FEC scrutiny. Entitled The Online Freedom of Speech Act,” the bill would exempt bloggers and other online publications from rulemaking by the FEC.

All we can be certain of is this: If the FEC goes ahead with their proposals for the internet, there’s little doubt that those who are targeted by the rules will find a way around them. This has been the pattern every single time that campaign finance laws have been changed.

Every. Single. Time.

What was said between Nixon and his Chief of Staff H.R. Halderman during the infamous 18 1/2 gap on a tape from June 20,1972? The question has tantalized historians and Watergate aficionados since the information was confirmed by Judge John Sirica on December 7, 1973. At that time, Sirica was grilling poor Rosemary Woods, Nixon’s personal secretary, about how she could have possibly accidentally erased such crucial evidence. Mrs. Woods explanation became part of Watergate lore.

Woods had been transcribing the June 20 tape when the phone rang. As she leaned over to answer it, her foot accidentally moved from the “play” function to the “reverse” function on the foot pedal controls for the tape recorder. At the same time, her hand must have accidentally pressed the “record” button on the machine.

Since experts later testified that there were between 5 and 9 separate erasures, Mr. Woods evidently got quite a few phone calls.

Of course, no one believed her. And it’s to Sirica’s credit I think, that he didn’t charge Mrs. Woods with obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, or any other serious crime. He must have realized that it wasn’t Woods who erased the tape in the first place.

If not Woods, who?

The answer to that question reveals the problem facing many Watergate buffs this morning. While Mark Felt was certainly in a position to reveal information to Wood/Stein about the FBI’s investigation, there’s very little doubt he could not have known about the tape gap. And yet, in a story dated almost a month before Mrs. Woods grilling by Judge Siraca, the intrepid Post reporters had the story of the tape gap and immediately recognized its significance.

Here’s Nixon biographer Jonathon Aiken:

This was the story in the Washington Post of November 8, 1973 saying that a crucial White House tape of June 20, 1972 featuring Nixon and his chief of staff, H R Halderman, had been “doctored” and that the problems on the tape were of a “suspicious nature”.

Deep Throat told Bob Woodward that this tape contained “deliberate erasures”. This was the sensational story of the 18-and-a-half minute gap on the tape. It remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of Watergate because it contains the probable identity of Deep Throat.

When Deep Throat leaked the information about “deliberate erasures” to Woodward at some time in the first week of November 1973 only six people in the White House, or for that matter in the world, knew about the problem of the gap in the tape. They were Richard Nixon; Rose Mary Woods (Nixon’s personal secretary); Alexander Haig (The White House chief of staff); Haig’s deputy, Major General John C Bennett and two trusted Nixon White House aides, Fred Buzhardt and Steve Bull.

I saw Haig on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country last night and the old guy gave some very strange answers. He kept insisting he had Felt pegged all along as Deep Throat. He just couldn’t get the revelation to his publisher in time to make the deadline for the publication of his second book(!) And the look on his face when others on the panel were talking bordered on triumphant.

I may be imagining this because my personal choice for one of the Deep Throats had always been Haig. As many authors that chronicled Nixon’s last days have pointed out, Haig pretty much orchestrated the entire endgame of Nixon’s resignation. One book even goes so far as to attempt to tie Haig to a coup d’etat by the military and other elements in the national security apparatus who wanted Nixon out. The book’s claims are as sensational as they are loony. But it gave an accurate portrait of Haig as someone with vast contacts in many areas of government - contacts that he could have used to disseminate a lot of information about Watergate.

Many historians have speculated that Deep Throat is a composite of at least 2 and possibly 3 different people. That’s because Wood/Steins information came from someone or a couple of someones who were privy to information from both the Department of Justice and the highest levels of the executive branch. If Deep Throat were one individual, someone with that type of access would stick out like a sore thumb. Since no one person would seem to fit the bill, I believe it likely that Alexander Haig could be another, equally important source, for Wood/Stien’s Watergate stories.

The confirmation by Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstien of Felt’s role as Deep Throat said nothing about there not being another source. Bradlee seemed to go out of his way to put an exclamation mark on the story when he said “The last secret of Watergate” had been revealed. And Woodward himself may be relieved that Felt had taken some of the attention away from other candidates. That’s because Woodward’s association with Haig may reveal more than just the General being a source for Watergate. In a subject I’ll cover in full later today, Woodward’s commanding officer while he was in the Navy was Admiral Thomas Moorer who was involved in one of the most bizarre incidents in the history of the executive branch, the so-called Moorer-Radford Affair. This incident is one of the least known and aspects of the entire Watergate matter. And Woodward, as an aide to Moorer, used to brief Alexander Haig on a regular basis.

This proves nothing, of course. But it’s interesting nonetheless. So until proven otherwise, I will continue to believe in multiple Deep Throats.

It ain’t over yet.

Watching what promises to be the last Star Wars movie turned into something of an emotional experience for me. When the first film in the series came out in 1977, I was in the business trying to make a living as an actor. Now actors are a notoriously jaded lot and it’s considered to be uncool to get too excited about anything, least of all someone else’s work. So, when I entered the theater to see this movie everyone was talking about (it was about a week after it premiered) I was fully prepared to be unimpressed.

Even though it was a Wednesday night, the theater was packed. The only place to sit was all the way down front in the first row. As my friends and I craned out necks upward, the first scene unfolded and took my breath away. The huge, Corillion Class Imperial Cruiser felt like it was directly over my head and the sound (70MM 6 Track later updated to Dolby) beat against my chest and made my entire body tingle.

The music score by John Williams was like something out of one of the epic films of the 1950’s. And the special visual effects, considered primitive by today’s standards, were imaginative and awe-inspiring. In short, I came out of that movie with a feeling that I had seen the future of film making.

Being out of the business so long, I can now take a more critical look at the movies and judge them from the only standpoint that should matter - as a storytelling experience.

Human beings have been telling stories to each other since the dawn of civilization. It’s been a way to impart universal truths in a memorable fashion. Simply talking about the grand themes of good versus evil or love and hate, life and death has never been enough. These themes resonate with people on a more personal level if the magic of storytelling is involved. From Homer, to Shakespeare, to George Lucas, there is a direct line of storytelling that illustrates themes that unite humanity no matter what culture you’re from.

This is not to compare Lucas to Shakespeare in talent. It is simply to point out that both men tell good stories about things that are important, things that matter.

Revenge of the Sith is a great movie. It’s not just good. It’s not just entertaining. Sith will go down in history as one of the finest examples of storytelling in the history of the American cinema.

And if it doesn’t, it should.

If that sounds a little gushy, please forgive me. After all, there is plenty in the movie to be critical about. Hayden Christiansen, brave lad, still cannot act his way out of a paper bag. Ditto Natalie Portman who at least is fine looking window dressing. And Ewan McGregor’s forced wisecrack’s and stilted banter with Anakin was distracting to say the least. I thought General Grievous was a little over the top and one dimensional to boot. And the general criticism of all Lucas movies - a too cute reliance on special effects - was on display for all to see.

All this being said, Lucas made a great film, perhaps in spite of himself. And the reason is that the primary focus of the film centered on Anakin Skywalker’s descent into darkness.

This aspect of the film could very easily have been mishandled. There is a very fine line between tragedy and melodrama. The difference is in the character’s awareness of his journey into despair. I once saw Arthur Miller’s classic American tragedy Death of a Salesman performed by a Polish Theater Company back when Poland was a communist country. Miller’s play is about the descent of Willy Loman into darkness, despair, and finally suicide and was very popular in communist countries because it ostensibly showed the evils of capitalism.

The production was laughably bad. Not because the actor’s weren’t good. It’s because the actor who played Willy Loman played up the melodramatic aspects of his character’s descent rather than the underlying subtext that gives the play its emotional power. Willy Loman goes to his death without a clue why his wife left him, his sons hate him, and why he’s a failure at his job. The sin of overarching pride dooms Loman, not the capitalist system. To play it otherwise is to invite laughter.

Similarly, Anakin’s seduction is possible only because of both his pride and fear. Anakin’s feelings of superiority are massaged expertly by Palpatine who inculcates a sense of destiny in his young charge that feeds his ego and confirms his own abilities - abilities that go unrecognized by Obi-Wan and the Jedi Council. Palpatine doesn’t cast a spell on young Skywalker. He uses the material at hand, aspects of Anakin’s personality already present to first intrigue, then confuse, and finally lure the young man to his side with the promise of freedom from fear.

With Sith, there was the real potential for disaster. If not handled just right, Anakin’s journey to the dark side could have been comical or worse, painful to watch. Instead, Lucas navigated the dangerous shoals and brought both Anakin and the audience safely through. And I consider this aspect of the movie to be a singular achievement in the history of American cinema.

Lucas couldn’t have pulled it off without the assistance of veteran character actor Ian McDiarmid whose Palpatine was played with a pitch perfect sense of seductive evil. It would have been easy to draw Palpatine with stick figure simplicity. But the depth of the Sith Lord’s evil resonated perfectly with themes familiar to theatergoers. The snake in the garden who offers Anakin a bite of the apple, the easy lie, the blurring of the line between good and evil so that evil actually appears good all work to undermine Anakin’s fragile sense of self, tied up both in his identity as a Jedi and his fear that he will lose everyone he loves.

And let’s not forget Padme’s role in all of this. An idealistic Senator who, too late, recognizes her husband’s transformation despite the signs being there since Attack of the Clones, Padme’s selfishness and single minded belief in the purity of Anakin’s motives blinds her to both Palpatine’s manipulation of her lover and his eventual crossing over to the dark side. Padme goes to her death a tragic character who never understood why the purity and absoluteness of her love couldn’t save Anakin. Love may conquer all - except when love is hoarded, not shared. Padme’s belief that by finally taking Anakin away to a place where he would be safe from harm shows how shortsighted she was. Anakin would never be able to protect himself from his own fear.

One note on the physical manifestation of the evil infecting both Anakin and Palpatine. The disfigurement of both was a master stroke by Lucas, hearkening back to the morality plays if the middle ages (and more recently Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray) that showed the fall of Adam in a series of vignette’s where Adam gets progressively older and uglier, a result of his listening to the serpent in the garden and a consequence of his pride and disobedience of God. Chaucer also dealt with the ugliness of evil as his devil characters almost always had some kind of physical deformity that made them particularly repulsive. It’s no accident that the more revealed Palpatine’s alter ego Darth Siddius became, the less we saw of the harmless, white haired Chancellor and more the ugly Sith Lord. It’s one of the advantages of cinema over other art forms in that it shows image as substance.

So Anakin’s journey - a journey everyone in the audience knows the destination - couldn’t have been handled better. It wasn’t so much the acting that carried it off as it was the utilization by Lucas of universal themes that storytellers have been thrilling audiences with for at least 3000 years. And with some deft writing and some good turns by Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, the story of Darth Vader, one of the great villains in American cinema, comes full circle.

I know that many will disagree with my interpretation. Or perhaps fault me for not pointing out the superficial political statements that Lucas evidently tried to incorporate into the movie. Either way, I understand where you’re coming from, after having read so many negative reviews from conservatives on the web and elsewhere. Be that as it may, there are things more important than politics. Lucas has made an American masterpiece, a modern American morality play that will live as long as the themes he so masterfully illuminated mean something to all of us.

Bird Dog at the excellent blog Maggies Farm is looking for some help from bloggers:

A Call for Information from the Blog-World

We would like to collect information on the political activities and political agendas of innocent-appearing non-profit organizations.

Evidently some of those non-profits have hidden or semi-hidden agendas. Read the post and give the folks at that eclectic and well written blog some help!

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION: Will Rafuse. Visit Will at willrafuse.com.

Humorist Dave Barry has written a column in which he says, by implication, that dogs are better than cats. (HT: John at Right Wing News)

Mr. Barry is in error. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT CATS ARE SMARTER, MORE LOVELY, MORE DISCERNING, AND ULTIMATELY, MORE INTERESTING THAN DOGS.

There. I’ve said it. I’ve just angered the 52 million Americans who keep dogs as companions. Ask me if I care! It’s not my fault that 52 million of my fellow countrymen have been programmed by years of media bias to buy into the propaganda that dogs are “Man’s Best Friend.”

This debate has been raging for nearly 5,000 years. Ever since the African Wild Cat discovered that simply by looking cute and capturing a few mice, (making sure to drop the dead carcass at the feet of whichever human could be trained to feed it for doing such simple, boring work) cats have carried out the most massive hoodwinking in the natural history of the planet…and are laughing all the way to the litter box.

Defenders of dogs point out that canines do much better in laboratory studies comparing the innate intelligence of the two creatures. I, like all cat aficionados, laugh uproariously at the gullibility of both dog lovers and scientists who’d be stupid enough to try and administer ANY test to a cat. For you see, cats, like very smart children attending your average American public school, get extremely bored and frustrated if they’re not continuously challenged to expand their minds and broaden their horizons. Any test given to both dogs and cats by definition must necessarily be so insipidly moronic that dogs will inevitably do better due to the sheer and utter boredom inflicted on the cat.

In his column, Mr. Barry makes a virtue out of a dog’s single minded quest to please humans. He writes of a dog’s “special toy”"

“Finally I yank the Special Toy free and hold it triumphantly aloft. The dog watches it with laser-beam concentration, his entire body vibrating with excitement, waiting for me to throw it … waiting … waiting … until finally I cock my arm, and, with a quick motion I … fake a throw. I’m still holding the Special Toy. But WHOOOSH the dog has launched himself across the room, an unguided pursuit missile, reaching a velocity of 75 miles per hour before WHAM he slams headfirst into the wall at the far end of the room.”

I tried this trick once on my cat Ebony. For a while, she found it amusing to chase a plastic ball across the floor that was filled to the brim with catnip. Having already gotten high by gorging herself on the uncontrolled substance, she would temporarily take leave of her senses and imitate a dog by “retrieving” the ball by batting it back to me with her paw. She unerringly would bat the ball so that it came to rest directly at my feet EVERY TIME. Try having a dog even attempt something like that. Come to think of it, she was more accurate than some professional baseball players I’ve seen who play for the Cubs.

At any rate, after several successful retrievals I tried pulling the old fakearoo on her. She started off like a shot and then stopped dead in her tracks. She gave me the most scornful look of contempt she could muster, turned her back on me, and wandered off with her tail held high and swishing back and forth angrily.

She ignored me for two whole days.

I once read that “Dogs are from Mars and Cats are from Venus.” Whoever wrote that obviously has never been kept by cats. Cats aren’t from Venus…they’re extra-galactic. They’ve descended from somewhere near the outer fringes of the known universe where basic laws of physics don’t apply and intelligent life has taken on an ineffable quality unknown to man and beast alike. They are otherworldly.

Watching cats closely can be deceiving. When you see them staring off into space, you might think that they’re not thinking about anything, that they’re simply existing or perhaps waiting for their next meal. Nothing could be further from the truth. When cats stare off into space, they’re communing with their equals, the Gods.

Ordinary human chatter bores them to death. They see no reason to come when they’re called, sit, lie down, beg, or perform any of the stupid pet tricks that dogs have become famous for. Not only don’t they see any good reason to obey, but they realize that it would too revealing of their true nature if they began to behave the way that other animals do. Such a revelation would allow humans to take them for granted…something that would be utterly disastrous for a cats relationship to its slave. For if humans were to place the cat on the same plane as a dog, the beast wouldn’t be able to manipulate its charge into doing exactly what it wants when it wants it done.

T.S. Elliot’s collection of 14 poems “The Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” (from which the Broadway musical “Cats” was derived) contains one particular poem that perfectly describes a cat’s uniqueness. Entitled, “The Naming of Cats,” the poem reflects on why cats are so special:

But I tell you a cat needs a name that’s particular
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Elliot, an extremely perceptive judge of catdom, points out that, in addition to the name we give our beloveds, the cat also has another name:

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over
And that is the name that you never will guess
The name that no human research can discover
But the cat himself knows and will never confess

When you notice a cat in profound meditation
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name
His ineffable, effable, effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name

We don’t wonder if a dog has a name that it gives itself. The very concept of a dog doing anything without human approval is foreign to its nature. Not so, the cat. I wouldn’t be surprised if cats have names for US! I’m sure they would be impossible to pronounce and would be extremely unflattering. After all, cats know full well that they’re the center of our universe.

Perhaps that’s why we love them so.

In honor of Armed Forces Day, I thought it would be appropriate to hear from someone who is directly affected - in a true-to-life-and-death way - by the anti-military bias so prevalent in the MSM.

Dadmanly bills his blog as “Just one man’s point of view, from the heart of Mesopotamia.” The uncommon common man just happens to be one of the more eloquent and passionate members of our military I’ve read to date.

Following the Newsweek imbroglio, Dadmanly had some thoughts that go straight to the heart and soul of the issue of consequences. Consequences for the troops. Consequences for the American people. Consequences for our image abroad:

You are creating greater risk for me personally. You are creating incredible hostility in Muslim countries due to incessant negative reporting out of context and ignoring orders of magnitude of good news in doing so. Yet, in your jaded imaginations, you believe every misconception you spin is ever more confirmation of what you always knew about the U.S. Military. These unrelenting Vietnam analogies are like press versions of drug addled flashbacks.

You create added danger for my soldiers. You feed into enemy (yes, enemy) propaganda efforts in yielding unlimited access to pre-staged voices with calculated intent. You are entirely ignorant of the countries you claim to cover, and you know as little about the U.S. Military, its culture, climate, training, procedures, and ways of operation. You diminish and demean our service.

You cause greater concern, fear and worry for our friends and family. You expand pinpoints of data into grossly distorted exaggerations of fact, and paint broad brush strokes of violence without any context or comparison to relative levels elsewhere. You have no sense of proportion or equivalence. You have no regard for collateral damage, and yet see imagined carnage with every surgical strike, precision bomb, or targeted raid. You can speak of cities destroyed with the destruction of a single building.

Lack of “context” is something that seems to me to be the biggest sin of the MSM. In fact, this is why the charge of bias rings so true. Dadmanly points out that every major accusation of abuse came not from the press, but from the military itself.

We are proud of our Military, our Country, and how, for over 200 years, the U.S. has tried to improve both ourselves and the world around us, usually for little thanks and much scorn and insult. We police ourselves. Every scandal you report, from My Lai to Iran Contra to Abu Ghraib, has been first reported to authorities by military personnel. And that has resulted in prosecutions and punishment. And what do you stress in your reporting? The sins, crimes, and misdemeanors and rarely if ever remark on the ability and willingness for us to identify and correct malfeasance in our ranks.

Never, never claim to support the soldiers, you don’t, you never will in any meaningful way until you can see your prejudices for what they are, work to eliminate them, and for once try to view the world with an open and not a closed mind. You need to rethink how you consider the idea of a just war after 9/11. You need to acknowledge that you don’t know the modern U.S. Military or the men and women who serve.

As an example, yesterday’s New York Times carried a 5000 word screed on the deaths of two Afghans at Bagram Air Force base back in 2002. It isn’t until the 20th paragraph that we find out that after completing its investigation, the army feels that charges should be brought against 27 individuals:

Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar’s death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army’s criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were “remarkably similar” to those used at Bagram.

Last October, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.

So the New York Times is pissed that the army 1) took so long and 2) didn’t keep the press updated throughout the investigation. By burying information that, if placed upfront, would have put the entire incident in a different context, the Times writers proved themselves to be either lousy journalists or horribly biased.

Which do you believe it is?

Go read the whole rant by this dedicated soldier. On Armed Forces Day, it’s the least you can do.

There will be light posting this weekend for a variety of reasons:

1. Cubs-White Sox. Need I say more?
2. I’m working on two different articles for publication.
3. Yardwork beckons…and beckons. I may blow it off for another weekend - but risk sleeping alone.
4. Got the first three discs of Sci-Fi Channel’s mini-series “Taken.” Sue and I missed it when it was on last year so we plan on watching it tonight and tomorrow.

I’ll have something up this afternoon around 4:00 pm with the same tomorrow.

For all of you who may have discovered this site in the last few days, may I suggest browsing the archives? I’m particularly proud of the “History” archives. And for some good laughs at the left’s expense there’s Marvin Moonbat, my fictional next door neighbor and the general “Moonbat” category.

Thanks for stopping by…Y’all come back.