Right Wing Nut House

Getting caught up in a blog swarm on a particular topic can be hazardous. The very fact that so many are writing about the same thing can generate its own momentum, its own “narrative.” Each succeeding blogger who writes about the subject feels compelled to attach just a little more meaning, a little more importance to the story until the original subject has been blown so far out of proportion that it becomes lost amidst the cacophony of dramatic “revelations” and “gotchya” moments.

It is a phenomena of our media that continues to make us look like a bunch of idiots. Dissecting a topic until the short hairs are showing solves nothing, reveals nothing except our contempt for proportionality and the truth. Is it any wonder real reporters and editors are a little perplexed when they observe something like the outburst that accompanied Jill Carroll’s release from captivity or the huge to do over the Jeff Gannon episode?

Regarding Scott Beauchamp, everyone take a step back, inhale deeply (put the bong DOWN first), and let’s look at what the blogs hath wrought.

Blogs have exposed a military fabulist in Scott Beauchamp. His lies did not contribute to a lessening of war fervor among the American people. George Bush, the Pentagon, the left, and the Iraqi government have all seen to that little detail, thank you. Nor did Beauchamp’s fairy tales embolden al-Qaeda, the insurgents, the Iranian backed militias, or any of the other bloody minded, murderous thugs who are making Iraq a living hell for the people there. And while Beauchamp’s fibbing did not do the reputation of the military any good, Jesse Spielman and his 4 compatriots, the soldiers just convicted of raping and murdering a 14 year old Iraqi girl and her family, harmed that reputation on a scale that poor little Scotty Beauchamp and his stories of dog killing and teasing disfigured women could never approach in a million years.

This is the reality outside of Blogdom. Exposing Beauchamp was a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But holding TNR and their soon to be ex-editor Franklin Foer to account for their laziness, their bias, and their incompetence is enough. That and putting a poultice on the black eye Beauchamp deliberately gave the military is all the victory that blogs can claim in this matter.

Decloaking Beauchamp will not bring us closer to “victory” in Iraq - if such a thing existed outside of the fevered imaginations of an ever dwindling number of conservatives. It will not make up for Abu Ghraib - another story whose perceived importance far, far outweighed any relationship to the reality of what actually happened. It will not induce the American people to change their minds and embrace the war effort. Nor will it shut the left up which, while something devoutly to be desired, is alas an effort doomed to failure.

This medium, we have to keep reminding ourselves, is still fairly new. And as more and more people enter the blog universe - many looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - it is inevitable that they too, wish to get in on the fun of scalp hunting. One way to climb up the winding stairs to the top of the ziggurat is to outshout your competitors while attaching more importance to a story than it deserves. This will get you traffic, links, and the admiration of your fellow bloggers.

I understand the game. I’ve played it for three years, shamelessly piling on and then shooting off emails to big bloggers hoping they would find my insightful, pithy comments about the swarm du jour good enough to link. There’s nothing inherently dishonest in this method of self-promotion - unless what you write isn’t what you truly feel in which case you won’t last long anyway. But I truly believe now that blogs have to move beyond this phase. To what end, I have no idea. I couldn’t have foreseen where blogs are now 3 years ago when I started so my powers of prognostication when it comes to blogging and internet media are practically nil.

I only know a growing sense of unease elicited by the notion that by overhyping stories like the Beauchamp caper, the credibility of the medium suffers. For that reason alone, it may be time to put down the blood stained hatchets and begin to seriously examine just what we should be doing that will increase our influence rather than make us look like a bunch of one dimensional attack dogs.

Conservatives will make more of this than it is. Liberals will make less of it than it should be.

And me? It’s a big deal because the honor of the military has been saved from being dragged through the mud by this lying twerp. But in the large scheme of history and the short skein of political importance, it is neither relevant or vital.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

Franklin Foer is out the door - or at least being handed his hat. He lied. He said some of Beauchamp’s buddies had confirmed parts of the story. They didn’t. Or if they did, they obviously didn’t mind lying to TNR but thought better of it when it came to swearing an oath and telling the military the truth.

I’ll have more on this tomorrow. But the way this thing is going to explode on the left and the right after daybreak, I had to get a few thoughts out there before the explosion.

Do atrocities in Iraq occur? Yes. What’s the point of lying about them? There are plenty of real idiots out there - people who are regularly picked up and charged with crimes by the military. We read about them all the time. They are doted on lovingly by the left as examples of what we are doing to our “children” by making them fight. They are thrown in conservatives faces whenever a fantastic fabulist like Scott Beauchamp steps forward and anyone dares to question his story.

Remember Jesse MacBeth? For a couple of days, the left celebrated the atrocities this guy was fibbing about. Then it turned out he was a liar and you could have heard a pin drop in the lefty sphere.

No one has ever said “Don’t investigate atrocities” on the right. All anyone should be asking - right or left - is that the press gets the story right - and right the first time. The slip shod reporting from Iraq (much of it due to the extreme danger of the place) is not being confronted by the press. There is no self-critiquing that I can see. There are no questions being asked like “Can we do a better job?” There is only a monumental effort to cover their asses when it hits the fan as it has in the Beauchamp caper. The disservice to history, to the American people, to the institution of the press is incalculable. But they will continue in this way because no one is telling them to do anything differently.

Tell the stories of atrocities committed by American soldiers. And while your at it, would it be too much to ask that you mention the life of an Iraqi one of those soldiers touched in a personal way? Personal acts of kindness - the small, simple decencies that mark the American serviceman and set him apart from so many others in history - may not be sexy in a news sense. But more than Hadithia, more than Abu Ghraib, more than the tragic, stupid, deadly confrontations between Iraqis and Americans that fill out and color the daily coverage of the war, there is the smile, the reassuring pat on the shoulder, the respect and deference shown by our boys that in small, important ways, are as effective as a bullet in creating a new Iraq.

I’m not sure what kind of Iraq these soldiers are going to be allowed to help build. It does not appear to me that their sacrifices and service will be fully validated. The Iraqi government and the sheer madness of bloodlust and hate in Iraq will see to that. But they are trying their best in impossible circumstances. And the story is not - repeat not - being told.

I don’t know what can be done differently to prevent a Scott Beauchamps from smearing the military and getting away with it for so long. Confirming news in a war zone is always difficult and in Iraq, damn near impossible. But it seems to me any fair minded person would come to the conclusion that TNR did not do enough to get it right from the start. Whether it was bias or, as many speculate, a predisposition to believe the worst of soldiers they will have to answer themselves.

For now, they are in journalistic hell. And there they will stay until they can convince us they deserve to be let out.

I will be on the O’Reilly Factor tonight to talk about YearlyKos.

Michelle Malkin will be guest hosting and I’ll be on with NPR’s Juan Williams to mix it up over the radicalism or not of the attendees.

Since I live 55 miles away, they’re sending a limo to pick me up. I’ll think about all of you as I’m sipping champagne and eating banned foie gras in the backseat.

UPDATE: LIVEBLOGGING MY TAPED APPEARANCE ON THE FACTOR

Off camera - saying hello to Michelle. She’s nice.

7:01 - There I am. SHEESH! Lose some weight, dog.

7:03 - Contradicting the host - surefire way to get yourself invited back - especially after she set up the piece with a slice of Hillary. “It’s Kucinich, not Hillary.”

Dope.

7:05 - Blah, blah, blah - oh yeah keep smiling dummy.

7:06 - (Breathe…in…out…in…out…)

7:07 - HATEMONGERING LEFTY LIBTARD PHILISTINES!

7:08 - “By the way, Juan. Please pass the Grey Poupon…”

7:09 - And we’re out. Take that thing out of my ear - not you, the nice looking woman who unbuttoned my shirt to mike me up.

Hubba, Hubba.

Thanks to Michelle for inviting me. Next time, I’ll try “English as a second language” so that everyone understands me.

UPDATE: 8/7

Here’s the transcript from last night’s show.

And Allah, as always, has the video.

Many thanks to Pajamas Media for sending me as a representative of the press to cover YearlyKos. Not only was my sojourn among the netroots instructive, but the trip supplied enough blog fodder to keep me writing for a week - if I so choose.

Don’t worry. I have no intention of being that boring. However, allow me to share some of my pithy observations and razor sharp insights into what was going on both above and below the surface.

The number one thing I learned was that liberals are people too. This may not seem an earth shattering observation. After all, we’ve suspected for years that lefties shared many of our genes and that they may, at some point in their evolution, have even used stone tools and decorated their bodies with various kinds of artwork.

I can assure you that they are at least as similar to us as chimpanzees - except chimps are cuter and don’t constantly interrupt you when you’re speaking and trying to make a point. However, all that aside, liberals are pretty normal. They have a different sense of humor of course. And they may not laugh as much as conservatives although I wonder who will be doing the chuckling on election day 2008?

They have their radicals. So do conservatives. Both manifestations of extremism are humorless, boring, and smelly. Radicals are so intent to push their ideas on the rest of us that they’ve forgotten their way to the bathtub. And where conservative radicals tend to be younger (age being a leavening factor among conservatives) lefty radicals tend to be older. Also, liberal extremists may have a few years on their conservative counterparts but they try to look young and act young anyway. Lots of near seniors were present with body piercings and tattoos. And I swear some of them were wearing “earth shoes” and Jesus sandals.

Political red meat tossed to the attendees by speakers, panelists, discussion leaders, and presidential candidates was pretty harsh stuff. If I didn’t know any better, I would say that our republic has less than a year and a half to live - unless we elect all Democrats and throw many if not all Republicans in jail. Or behead them, or something. John Edwards, by the way, must be prevented at all costs from becoming President. First of all, the obvious reason that America governed by this metrosexual priss would be an invitation to every terrorist, thug nation, and rogue beauty consultant to descend upon this country en masse and make our lives a living hell. Not only terrorist attacks as a regular occurrence but just think of the damage to our masculinity.

John Edwards will be tougher on rich people than he will be on al-Qaeda. That might make us all feel better, seeing people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet reduced to paupery and forced to sell old copies of Windows ME and junk bonds in the street. Will it make us safer? I report. You decide.

I actually wouldn’t mind seeing Dennis Kucinich as President. We’ve never had a gnome as chief executive before and at the very least, it would be a novel experiment in discovering if psychoses are contagious.

Mike Gravel might make things interesting for a few years. His ideas of what constitutes global warming would be slightly skewed as a result of spending all that time in Alaska. Minneapolis would seem a veritable tropical retreat while Chicago might seem equatorial in climate.

Would someone please wake Chris Dodd up and tell him he can go home now?

As for the rest of them - Richardson, Obama, and Hillary - any of them would probably be alright. At least until Republicans regain their equilibrium. Then again, they only allow a President to serve two terms, right? Might want to make plans for that GOP Victory Dance in 2028 or so given our past experience on the back benches of government.

One observation I would never have dared put in a piece for PJ Media or anywhere else I write is that for a movement and party that prides itself on inclusion, the gathering appeared very white. There were definitely more people of color than there would be at a conservative or Republican event. But as I scanned the faces of attendees to the Presidential Leadership Forum where almost all YKos was gathered, my rough estimate was 75% white - perhaps larger.

I read nothing untoward into this figure. The conference had no control over the color of those signing up (unlike the Democratic convention that mandates racial diversity in precise amounts to the decimal point). And it can hardly be called hypocritical when attendance was voluntary. I’m also sure they didn’t turn anyone away because of race.

And yet, there it is. Does that say something about the netroots? About America? Or is it inconsequential?

The fact that is that if it had been a GOP event and that high percentage of whites were in attendance, we’d never hear the end of it. So perhaps the netroots will grant conservatives a little leeway in their criticism next time, right?

Right.

Lastly, I will sound this warning to the GOP and conservatives a lot between now and next summer. Ignore or make sport of the netroots at your own peril. Underestimate them and you will get the holy living crap kicked out of you in 2008. These people are organizing far beyond blogs and blog readers. And that organization extends almost down to the precinct level as I’m sure next year’s Netroots Convention will show (they’ve decided to rename the shindig in order to move it away from one guy’s blog).

They are determined, well funded, optimistic, committed, and excited. The GOP is uncertain, underfunded, hopeful but pessimistic, dispirited, and seemingly leaderless, rudderless, and without an agenda.

Who do you think is in better shape going into next year’s contest?

UPDATE

I’m not the only one who noticed how white the gathering was:

For all the talk about the increasing influence of this growing group — “We are a community . . . a movement . . . an institution,” Cooper said in a speech Saturday night — what gets scant attention is its demography. While the Huffington Post and Fire Dog Lake, both founded by women, are two of the most widely read blogs, the rock stars are mostly men, and many women bloggers complain of sexism and harassment in the blogosphere.

Walking around McCormick Place during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues.

All snark aside, this says more about America than it does about progressives, conservatives, or either party.

In order to come to YKos and participate, you have to be able to:

1. Afford air fare from wherever you are coming.

2. Afford to stay in a hotel like the Hyatt for two nights (won’t find anything cheaper in the city - not with the special group rate Ykos got).

3. Afford to be able to take off 2 or 3 days from work.

4. Afford to feed yourself at Chicago prices (largest restaurant tax in US)

Minorities who may have wanted to attend might not have been able to afford the trip as easily as their white counterparts.

It’s that simple.

My interview with Sergeant David Aguina, the young man who walked into the lion’s den at YearlyKos and pulled John Soltz’s tail by arguing that the surge is working, is up at Pajamas Media. There is also an audio file with much more from the earnest kid who is surprisingly soft spoken and who brought his mother along for support.

Sergeant Aguina is not a bombthrower or rabble rouser. Some on the left have called him crazy or unbalanced for using the forum to argue for the surge and I am not sure that it was the best place to make that argument. But it is delicious irony that he used the same tactics the left uses to make a point he wanted to make in a hostile setting - “speaking truth to power” so to speak.

He impressed me as a sincere, well mannered, well brought up “kid” (he’s 25 years old). His passion boiled just beneath the surface of that quiet exterior. Believe me, when he started to talk about how those Iraqis shared their lunch with him the day he was pulling guard duty and couldn’t get his own command to send him some food, he got very emotional. His hands trembled slightly when holding the candy wrapper from that day and I got the impression that he would give the Iraqis the shirt off his back if they asked.

Overall, he was very believable. I must point out that while I was able to discover he was in the army (and is currently in the reserves) I have been unable to confirm as yet whether or not he was in Iraq. I have no reason to doubt it except that as we all know, there are many fabulists out there on the right and left and I would not be the first person taken in by one if this nice, sincere young guy turns out to be something less than truthful. (See Update III below where Aguina has confirmed his service in Iraq.)

The reaction among the netroots - outside of the loutish behavior by John Soltz - was interesting. He says they listened politely to him, argued respectfully, and they all ended up agreeing to disagree. Evidently there were a couple of people who dismissed him out of hand but they were the exception.

My own personal experience can confirm the Sergeant’s impressions. Even when people found out who I was, we found common ground talking about writing or blogging. And when we talked about politics, we took turns making our points and tried not to flame the other. It made me wish for just a little more civility and understanding in the blogosphere. My uneven performance in that regard notwithstanding, perhaps my experience at YearlyKos will temper some of the more outrageous insults I toss without thinking at the left.

David Aguina will probably continue his mission to bring his views on the success of the surge to the attention of as many people as possible regardless of their political affiliation or ideological inclinations. We can admire him for that.

Is he right? Time, as it always does, will tell us.

UPDATE

This isn’t the first time Sergeant Aguina has stood up for what he believes at a gathering of anti-war activists:

David Aguina, a soldier who has completed a tour of duty in Iraq, appeared at Chandler Park in military dress to support the war, and politely told anyone who would listen of the four peace activists captured in Iraq in November 2005.

His mother Iris Hernandez told me that David made a presentation for one of his classes on the situation in Iraq that had many of the students in tears and the professor praising him for his organized, impassioned plea.

Just as I admire lefty activists who are passionate about their cause while respecting the views of others, so too I admire Sergeant Aguina. I don’t agree with him on much of anything. But you can’t help but hold someone like him in high regard.

HT: Hesiod

UPDATE II: BLACK HELICOPTERS CIRCLING

Also courtesy of my friend Hesiod, the theory that Michelle Malkin sicced Sergeant Aguina on the netroots:

I was just informed that the guy in uniform this morning…..the one who posed a question to the panel about Progressives and the Military….. was a plant from the Right Wing….one Michelle Malkin to be specific, who has a blog called hot airbags or something self-referential like that.

More on this later. If this is true, it represents the most egregious, ugly, shameful and anti-American tactic I’ve ever witnessed in my own experience of studying and trying to improve US civil-military relations.
I’m not going to link to her blog, which I just checked out…and indeed, she’s accusing the conference of stifling dissent. QED Malkin, you are an idiot.

Before someone puts two and two together and comes up with something different than 4, here’s full disclosure:

1. It is true, I work for Michelle Malkin moderating comments and performing other duties.

2. It is true I wrote the piece on PJ Media about my interview with Sergeant Aguina.

3. It is not true that Sergeant Aguina has anything to do with me, Michelle Malkin, or anyone else I am aware of. If I knew of a connection with the army, with any conservative or military group, I would have reported it. In fact, when I saw the woman who was walking around with him, I was sure she was some media handler from a conservative group or perhaps a veterans organization.

It was his mother. And she was there armed with one of those dictation tape recorders taping every word that Andrew, I, and her son was saying - obviously concerned that her son would be misquoted.

PJ Media videographer Andrew Marcus and I were in the giant Foyer where hundreds of other YearlyKos attendees were milling about when Andrew saw Aguina walking toward the fountain. Andrew knew who he was because he had briefly interviewed him the day before right after his tete a tete with Soltz.

And that’s the story. No conspiracy. No plot to disrupt YearlyKos (Why would we want to do that? We want to be invited back!) No black helicpoters circling McCormick Center.

Aren’t you disappointed?

UPDATE III: AGUINA’S SERVICE CONFIRMED

I just got off the phone with David Aguina. He is sending PJ Media his overseas deployment record and reservists contract. So much for the qualifiers about him being in Iraq.

My second article for PJ Media about my excellent adventure at YearlyKos is up. It’s about the eerie feeling of deja vu I’m getting walking around McCormick Place.

It reminds me of 1980:

Anyone who lived through those times and experienced the feeling that ideology and politics had merged so that the ends and means were exactly the same would recognize what is happening at YearlyKos. Top to bottom, inside and out, this movement is nothing less than revolution. The ideas driving it are standard liberal fare; anti-war, health insurance, environmental protection, education, and jobs top the agenda. But the way the issues are being framed by participants in the dozens of panel discussions, workshops, and forums is where the action is. The nuts and bolts savvy of the political activists fuses with the wonks and wise men of the left’s intellectual brain-trust to turn out a brand new way to showcase these ideas to the public.

Some will see my analysis as perhaps reading too much into what is going on there; a bunch of lefties having a conversation with themselves that in the end, won’t amount to a hill of beans.

If you believe that, you ignore the underlying trends in polling and an evolving consensus among Democrats about how they will package their core issues in 2008.

As for those trends, I attended a fascinating panel discussion on the 2008 Election that featured a series of (to my eyes) shocking graphs. These graphs were not “snapshots” of public opinion but rather trends in opinion going back 2 years or more. They revealed in full color the uphill battle faced by the GOP in 2008. On every issue, every perception of the candidates, Democratic trend lines were going up while Republicans were static or trending down.

Trends are not easily reversed. And if what I believe about what is going on at YearlyKos is true, something earth shaking could very well occur on election day in 2008.

NOTE: In my article yesterday, I quoted Markos Zuniga as using the word “cleanse” to describe the plans of the netroots to remake the Democratic party. The phrase Zuniga actually used was “cleaning the Democratic Party out.”

I apologzie for the error and any aspersions cast on Mr. Zuniga.

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s about my excellent adventures wandering around the YearlyKos convention.

I’ll have more to say about this next week. Until then, here’s a sample from my column today:

The third annual YearlyKos Convention got underway today at McCormick Place in Chicago with 1500 delegates from around the country attending workshops and listening to political experts while getting primed for political battle in 2008.

And as Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, AKA “Kos,” made crystal clear at a press conference this afternoon, the battle will not only be against Republicans, but also against Democrats who need to be “cleansed” from the party. Kos didn’t name any names, saying we will find out “soon enough” which Democrats would be targeted for defeat in the primaries. But his message was clear; on issues near and dear to the hearts of the progressive on line community, Democrats will adapt or they will face the wrath of this new force in politics.

In effect, Kos has promised to remake the Democratic Party in the image of the netroots. And while many observers think that this would pull the Democratic Party too far to the left, Markos disagrees.

“There is no Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic party anymore. We are the center,” he said.

I may not get much on the site today or tomorrow due to my attendance at the netroots convention.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council vote and the winner in the Council category is yours truly for my post “Little Noted But Long Remembered.” Finishing in a tie for second was “Russia Vs. The US: No Contest” by Cheat Seeking Missiles and “Boy, Was Thomas Right” by The Colossus of Rhodey.

Finishing first in the non council category was “ON THE FRONTLINE / Cpl. JOHN MATTHEW BISHOP: In the Shadows of Fallen Comrades” from The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

My brother Jim, an accomplished folk musician and life long teacher, has emailed me with the sad news that Tommy Makem, the great Irish folk singer, has died of cancer at the age of 74.

The death of Makem is significant for a number of reasons. His passing leaves only Liam Clancy left alive of the original “Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem” folk group who took America by storm in the early ’60’s. At its height, the folk revival in America produced an astonishing outpouring of musical talent whose imprint on American culture, mores, and politics we feel to this day. The left wing activism of artists such as Pete Seeger, Mary Travers, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, and a young Bob Dylan roiled the streets and changed the face of America forever. And they did it through music.

Some changes, we might indeed look at in askance; other changes relating to civil rights were necessary and vital to bringing justice to those previously denied it. The great fomenting of ideas and a new way of looking at the world began with this hearkening back to our roots as a revolutionary society that the folk revival brought to the surface. It is hard to imagine the America of today without the influence of those folk artists and the songs they taught us all.

Tommy Makem and the Clancy brothers were a little different. Their traditional Irish ditties, patriotic songs, and wonderful stories set to music revealed both the Irish experience in America and, more importantly, what those immigrants were fleeing when they came here. For me, their music inspired a far more personal journey than the great issues being illuminated by the Pete Seegers or Peter, Paul, and Mary’s of the folk music scene. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem’s music opened the door to discovering my family’s Irish heritage and helped us all take enormous pride in who we were and where we came from.

A purely unscientific sociological observation follows. Recent immigrants wear their heritage on their sleeve, proud of their mother country, still feeling the tug on the heart from across the ocean.

Second generation immigrants are much more determined to be “American.” And while not always rejecting that heritage, it becomes a lot less important to them over time. This was especially true of Irish immigrants who saw what happened to their fathers whose Irish brogue would prevent them from getting good jobs or even working at all.

Third generation immigrants - fully assimilated and more likely to marry outside of their ethnic group - will actually seek out and attempt to rediscover their heritage, hungry to explore the past in ways that their fathers or mothers never did.

For the Moran family, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem opened up an entirely new world, a means of discovering our past. Their music was not at all like the melodramatic “American” Irish music we were all familiar with. Their songs were of the real Ireland - a place of pain and suffering, of oppression, and a kind of fatalism that seems to me unique to the Irish people. In fact, the group’s first album - Irish Songs of the Rebellion - released in 1956, celebrated that fatalism in songs that told the story of several futile Irish uprisings against British rule. One of those songs, Roddy McCorely, is a staple of family reunions and is guaranteed to bring emotions about our heritage close to the surface:

O see the fleet-foot host of men, who march with faces drawn,
From farmstead and from fishers’ cot, along the banks of Ban;
They come with vengeance in their eyes. Too late! Too late are they,
For young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

Up the narrow street he stepped, so smiling, proud and young.
About the hemp-rope on his neck, the golden ringlets clung;
There’s ne’er a tear in his blue eyes, fearless and brave are they,
As young Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today.

McCorley was a hero of the rebellion of 1798…as opposed to the Easter Rebellion or any of the dozen or so other uprisings against the British that were put to song at one time or another by the Irish. The image of the young McCorely going to his death so stoically is one of the most powerful of my childhood. It’s an example of a song with a mournful subject that has the effect of uplifting the listener emotionally.

The Irish songbook is full of music like that and Tommy Makem helped bring it alive for all of us. Makem became acquainted with the Clancy’s in Ireland back in the ’50’s. Moving on to Canada and then New York city, the boys were originally interested in becoming actors (Tom Clancy eventually went on to appear in dozens of TV shows and movies). They began to sing in small pubs and taverns to help make ends meet. Eventually, inspired by the Kingston Trio, the boys decided to try making a living as musicians. They immersed themselves in the folk revival in New York city, meeting legends like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan. Dylan liked the song “Patriot Games” so much he wrote additional lyrics and released it as “With God on Our Side.”

An appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961 made their careers. Since that time, the group released dozens of albums, had breakups, reunions, different family members taking part, and finally the death of Paddy and Tom Clancy and now Tommy Makem bringing what is surely an era of folk music to an end.

Beyond the impact the group had on the world at large, their affect on my family cannot be measured. We glory in singing many of the group’s songs (accompanied by my brother Jim and his trusty Martin guitar). The drinking songs, the Irish patriot songs, and the songs of protest, including this strange and wonderful tune about British oppression that fairly drips with satire:

When we were savage, fierce and wild
She came like a mother to her child.
She gently raised us from the slime
Kept our hands from hellish crime,
And sent us to Heaven in her own good time.

Now Irishmen, forget the past!
And think of the time that’s coming fast.
When we shall all be civilized,
Neat and clean and well-advised.
And won’t Mother England be surprised?

“Whack Fol A Diddle” perfectly expresses the mixture of hate and contempt the Irish feel toward the British to this day. There is something so defiant in those lyrics that brings out the pride I feel in being of Irish heritage.

Tommy Makem is gone. I wonder if they’ll put the lyrics to this last verse of “Jug of Punch” on his gravestone?

And when I’m dead and in my grave
No costly tombstone will I have,
Just lay me down in my native peat
With a jug of punch at my head and feet.

What do you believe would happen if American forces invaded Pakistan to go after the Taliban without the permission of the Musharraf government?

Most analysts expect the Pakistani people would pour into the streets in protest, destablizing that already fragile country to the point that it would be possible for a much more conservative, Taliban friendly government to emerge from the chaos. Pakistan is already the most anti-American country in the world following our invasion of Afghanistan. It would be stupid to invade and threaten Musharraf’s hold on power.

Pakistan has 60 nuclear weapons. Need anything else be said about a government with that kind of destructive power in their hands with ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban?

Evidently, this doesn’t concern Senator Barak Obama:

In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism scheduled for this morning, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will call not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

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“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,” Obama will say, according to speech excerpts provided to ABC News by his campaign, “but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Blogger Sister Toldjah asks the obvious question: “Would this be before or after those unconditional meetings he would have with the world’s most despotic ‘leaders’?”

In fact, that remark about meeting with the thugs of the world without any preliminaries has evidently cost Obama dearly. The most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll has Hillary Clinton widening her lead over the Illinois Senator to 43% - 22%. That’s up a whopping 14% since June and shows that Obama’s foreign policy gaffes are not giving Democrats or the American people much confidence in his abilities.

If Obama thought sounding a touger note in his foreign policy speeches would help, he might have least chosen a target to invade who was already an enemy of the United States. By showing a willingness to take the chance of handing al-Qaeda a nuclear weapon on a silver platter, Obama proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is not ready to be President now nor possibly ever.