the art of writing is discovering what you believe
“Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”
From [Malcolm X]
I am on record that being born here shouldn’t grant automatic citizenship. Some would call it a kind of polling test, but unlike the racist ones used to disenfranchise minorities, this would simply ensure that people who vote have some understanding of what they’re doing.
A series of articles directed at debunking the Sage of Fresno‘s historical fictions? Yes, please.
Hanson’s dismissals of those who would correct the record he distorted are based upon two biases: “Campus liberals” would engage in culture wars, and “non-military historians” don’t know about military history and are thus unqualified to speak on the topic at hand. Well, Victor, I am afraid that I’m not going to be so easy to dismiss. Although I teach at Georgetown now, I used to teach at West Point, and the topic I taught is the same that I have studied for 18 years, military history. It is one thing for you to brush off an inhabitant of, say, the history departments at Yale or the University of Wisconsin as knowing nothing of the military or military history. It is quite another to attempt the same with an Army Airborne Ranger who also happens to be an academic historian and who thinks that your personal signal work is a pile of poorly constructed, deliberately misleading, intellectually dishonest feces. [From Media Matters – Altercation: Bateman on Hanson: An Altercation Altercation]
via The Daily Whim:
Col. David Hunt: America Could Have Killed Usama bin Laden, But Didn’t — “We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite … We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby … We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist […] The United States of America’s political and military leadership has, on at least three separate occasions, chosen not capture or kill bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri.”
[From America Could Have Killed Usama bin Laden, But Didn’t]
And this is from Faux News?
Seriously, with him dead, the war is over. Justice is done, and there is no further reason to keep troops in the oil patch. By contrast, there was no reason to keep Hussein around — and probably a lot of reasons to silence him — so he took the long drop.
If Osama bin Forgotten is still on the loose on 1/20/09, I wonder how long it will take for Commander Codpiece’s successor to track him down? I’m guessing something under 7 years.
Sign on to this letter and tell Harry Reid: No Immunity for Lawbreaking Companies! [From action.openleft.com | Signup]
My comments:
I can’t believe we need to make this any more clear. There is no reason to allow the telecom industry to evade accountability. They are publicly-owned and their business models are based on the use of licenses granted by the people of the United States. They need to be reminded of this, and I expect you as public officials, who act on behalf of the same people who own these companies and grant those licenses, to do just that.
Surely there are enough Senators brave enough to stand with Senator Dodd and against a president who can’t even muster the support of 1 in 4 of his constituents. I would be embarrassed if I couldn’t play that hand.
Go sign it.
And for some reason the Amazon ASIN or product ID for Leopard (B000FK88JK) was impossible to find though ecto or Amazon’s own linkbuilding tools.
“There’s no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada. Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time.”
[From Hugh Macleod]
urban wildlife at its primal best. taken out of a window at my house. she was sitting on the fence, digesting a chickadee or small mammal, I expect.
