A (formerly) Far East located, politically focused, Blog with attention also paid to the finer things in life: Women, Beer, Women, Travel, Women, Adventure, Golf, and did I mention women?
As to why we live in a world where Sarah Palin is viewed as anything but useless:
This is from a Pew Center poll that shows again-what I have been saying for months. 50% of the electorate can’t be bothered to vote and of the remaining 50% only about 20% of us have any reasonable command of the facts.
And we wonder why we get the government we do.
It does explain why people robo-vote Sarah Palin’s daughter onto Dancing with the Stars and why Glenn Beck even has a job.
One thing you get to do over the course of a career in the Navy is travel. A lot of times by ship-and if you are lucky, a lot of times by both military and civilian air travel. One of the things that has amazed me over the recent years is the number of people I see traveling in uniform.
For a guy who came of age when I did-and entered the service when I did, it requires something of a mental adjustment. When I left the US for the first time at the age of 21 flying to Madrid for further transfer down to Rota, it was beat into your head NOT to travel in uniform. For two reasons: 1) because in the US memories of Vietnam were still fresh and people did not say “thank you for your service” as we do now and 2) it was like painting a big bullseye on yourself over seas-a way of saying “shoot me!”.
So whenever I pass through DFW or Denver or even Richmond, it is pretty interesting to see the number of Army people and Air Force people in uniform. ( You don’t see so many Navy people and even in the case of the Air Force-its not nearly as numerous as the Army).
I suppose its a good thing-it allows people to identify our service people and give them the good treatment they deserve-but old habits are hard to shake loose of.
For example in my day-if you were in uniform you were not supposed to accept an upgrade to First Class for reasons I never really understood. And if you did end up in First Class in uniform-God forbid you had anything to drink on the flight. Happily that seems not to be the case today.
I always did my best not to travel in uniform-my goal was always to blend in to a crowd, not to stand out. To that end-I was not averse to going to the gym before leaving the base to change out of my uniform if I was traveling home the same evening as a meeting. Along the same lines-I used to hate it during the early 80′s when under the “Pride and Professionalism” directives we had to wear the uniform ashore the first day in port. I always thought that was silly and counterproductive. After all what do a lot of folks do the first day in port? Never made any sense. Again I just wanted to blend in and not draw attention to myself.
But it seems like that feeling has changed a lot. I kind of feel for the Army guys because their uniforms don’t look comfortable and I would prefer to be comfortable when traveling.
By the way, it is the official position of Goldblog that everyday is opt-out day. There’s no need to wait until November 24th. But come November 24th, here’s an idea you might try to make the day extra-special. It’s a one-word idea: Kilts. Think about it — if you’re a male, and you want to bollix-up the nonsensical airport security-industrial complex, one way to do so would be to wear a kilt. If nothing else, this will cause TSA employees to throw up their hands in disgust. If you want to go the extra extra mile, I suggest commando-style kilt-wearing. While it is probably illegal to fly without pants, I can’t imagine that it’s illegal to fly without underpants. If you are Scottish, or part Scottish, or know someone who is Scottish, or eat Scottish salmon, or enjoy Scotch, or have a vestigial affection for “Braveheart” despite Mel Gibson, you can plausibly claim some sort of multicultural diversity privilege — the term “True Scotsman” refers to soldiers who honor their tradition and heritage by wearing kilts without drawers underneath. (This photo illustrates the possible consequences of the “True Scotsman” kilt-wearing very well.)
Going commando through the TSA line eh? That’s a visual I didn’t need. Then again the idea of having my crotch felt up by anyone other than one of these, ( ATTN: Very NSFW!) is not so delectable either.
This is a week late-but still on the mark when it comes to the Steelers.
Steelers vs Patriots tonight. Talk amongst yourselves. Maybe make fun of Curtis?
UPDATE:That game was just painful to watch. The o-line and d-line were decimated, and no pass rush whatsoever. The Patriots just took the Steelers and munched them up like chew toy. The score was closer than than the game really was……..
I like to think of conservatism and libertarianism as informed philosophies. Republicanism wants to be seen as anything but, so fuck them. Perhaps that makes me an elitist. I like to think it does.
After the first of next year the campaign for the White House will begin in earnest it would seem. Politico,taking a break from its job as mouthpiece for the GOP, points out that all the likely candidates will have one thing in common:
Of the 16 top GOP presidential prospects for 2012, only Rep. Ron Paul and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have ever served in the Armed Forces. Since President Barack Obama also never served in the military, the odds are that in two years, Americans are likely to cast their votes in the first presidential race in nearly 70 years where neither major party nominee has ever worn the nation’s uniform.
That’s OK you tell yourself-”the veterans from the war in Iraq will soon fill that gap.”
Don’t be so sure:
While there are signs that veterans of recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have started entering public life in greater numbers, it’s unlikely to significantly move the dial because a hallmark of these wars are repeated tours from the same small group of people. Rep.-elect Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), for example, served a combined five tours with the Air Force, three in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.
Why did so many of these folks not serve? Because they could. The issue is not so much that they did not serve, rather it will be like that of Dick Cheney and others: they will be more than willing to employ military force at the drop of a hat-without understanding the sacrifices involved.
And that’s kind of the real point, isn’t it?
“You’ve asked a very small part of America to take most of the risks for America,” said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has advised the Obama administration on its policy in Afghanistan. “I don’t think the 2012 Republican slate is as much an issue as the level of sacrifice that’s being asked a very small proportion of America to make.”
Bring up the idea of national service for all able bodied men-and watch the whining begin. A lot of which, will come from inside the services themselves which always amazes me.
Think about that-and the ensuing civil-military gap. Don’t see any Tea Party anger about that-now do you? Of course not, because most of them never served. Most “progressives” didn’t either. It is a bipartisan disease.
If I were king of the US-that would be one of the first things I would attack.
I wrote about Sherri Williams v. Alabama in 2005 (“Do You Have an Rx for That Vibrator?“), describing the battle Sherri fought to keep her Pleasures stores open after Alabama banned sex toy retail “for immoral purposes” from the state. I wrote about the case again in 2007 when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Sherri’s appeal (“Chaste Home, Alabama, Where You Can’t Buy a Dildo“).
Now Sherri is in the news again: she has opened a Pleasures store with a drive-thru window, right there in Huntsville, Alabama. I’m impressed by her ingenuity and persistence.
Williams said Alabama is the last state in the U.S. to have a sex toy ban. The anti-obscenity law had been sponsored by state Sen. Tom Butler in 1998, but Alabama officials said the sex toy ban was not intentional but the result of borrowing language from other states with similar laws.
But Alabama law also makes an exception to the ban on the sale of items designed for the “stimulation of human genital organs” if the sale was for “a bona fide medical, scientific, educational, legislative, judicial or law enforcement purpose.”
Williams said customers cannot purchase a sex toy unless they fill out a medical questionnaire describing the health-related reasons for their purchase.
We humbly apologize for what the stupidity of the average American, the greed of the companies that have bought our networks, and the relentless pace of technology ( especially with respect to video editing) has done to your once noble profession.-Skippy-san.
There are two pieces of reporting on journalism that you should take the time to read and listen to this weekend. The first is this article by Ted Koppel on how the stupidity of the consumer of news, coupled with the unrestrained greed of the network owners combined to kill “real news”.
We live now in a cable news universe that celebrates the opinions of Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly – individuals who hold up the twin pillars of political partisanship and who are encouraged to do so by their parent organizations because their brand of analysis and commentary is highly profitable.
The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.
And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.
It’s a fascinating and depressing recounting of the truth. How our news networks, pushed by the increasing competition from “news outlets” that are hardly worthy of the name. ( Insert Drudge, just about all blogs, talk radio, and host of other examples of mediocrity here. Especially on the conservative side of the aisle). In particular I found his point about the value of having lived overseas to be very true. To form an honest opinion of America and not be swept up by the myth of “American exceptionalism”-one has to step away from America for a while.
I recall a Washington meeting many years later at which Michael Eisner, then the chief executive of Disney, ABC’s parent company, took questions from a group of ABC News correspondents and compared our status in the corporate structure to that of the Disney artists who create the company’s world-famous cartoons. (He clearly and sincerely intended the analogy to flatter us.) Even they, Eisner pointed out, were expected to make budget cuts; we would have to do the same.
I mentioned several names to Eisner and asked if he recognized any. He did not. They were, I said, ABC correspondents and cameramen who had been killed or wounded while on assignment. While appreciating the enormous talent of the corporation’s cartoonists, I pointed out that working on a television crew, covering wars, revolutions and natural disasters, was different. The suggestion was not well received.
The parent companies of all three networks would ultimately find a common way of dealing with the risk and expense inherent in operating news bureaus around the world: They would eliminate them. Peter Jennings and I, who joined ABC News within a year of each other in the early 1960s, were profoundly influenced by our years as foreign correspondents. When we became the anchors and managing editors of our respective programs, we tried to make sure foreign news remained a major ingredient. It was a struggle.
Sadly Ted Koppel represents the tail end of a dying breed. Those of us who saw them in our youth, and grew up with Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Walter Kronkite and others, are now in no position to convey the experience to our attention deficit affected, more youthful, fellow citizens. I remain comforted by the idea that Murrow-who I was not old enough to experience-would have been just as disgusted by Twitter as I am.
Here is the other take on the news by Jon Stewart. Its long at 9+ minutes, but it is worth your time:
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey?
Today is Armistice Day, known as Veterans Day in the United States-but in the Commonwealth it is the day set aside to remember the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and civilians in times of war, specifically since the First World War. This day, or alternative dates, are also recognised as special days for war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth countries.
Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the official end of World War I on that date in 1918, as the major hostilities of World War I were formally ended “at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice. (Note that “at the 11th hour”, refers to the passing of the 11th hour, or 11:00 am.)
The reason I make the distinction is that for the nations of Europe-the First World War represents the literal slaughter of a generation-and the lost opportunities that came with that sacrifice. 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded-worldwide. ( US casualties are included in that number). It is important to put some context on that number-in 1900 the population of the world was only 1.6 billion-so it represents a HUGE dent in the world population.
So while it is important to honor and thank the veterans of the United States ( of which I am a member of that number)-I think it is equally important to remember the real tragedy that was the wars of twentieth century-and World Wars I and II in particular.
If you ever want to see something particularly jarring-go to Australia some time and see their war memorial. It is in Canberra and it is a humbling experience. Australia’s war casualties in the First World War represented 13.1% of their adult male population at the time. 13%! Put in contemporary terms it would be the equivelant to the loss of 19,500,000 men from our population of about 150,000,000 men. 1 in every eight or nine men on a city block dead or injured.
THAT’s the magnitude of the First World War-and I think we Americans tend to forget that sometimes. It was a tragedy for the United States and a huge tragedy for the world in general. The conflicts we fight today are direct descendants of the pre-conditions that were set by the first World War.
Women are more and more a part of today’s work force. I know that, I (reluctantly) accept it, and remain aware of it. But that being the case-why can’t we then adapt some of our business sayings to reflect that? And where did women get the idea that buzz words and phrases that were used in a male only environment, make sense in a mixed gender one?
I don’t get it.
This came to mind yesterday when I was in a meeting. A lady-who works a different project, was giving her report of a meeting she attended last week in Washington DC. She is a nice woman, rather attractive in a MILF sort of way. So it struck me as more than a little odd-when she used the phrase, “This meeting was full ‘open kimono’”.
Uh, excuse me?
You do know what the purpose of pulling a kimono open is don’t you? It’s about getting a glimpse at this (NSFW!)-not her profit and loss spread sheets.
In an all male environment it kind of made sense-as a subtle kind of way to touch on ribald humor, which livened up already dull topics. When used by a woman-or by a man in front of a woman, it seems oddly out of place.
Or maybe it is just that I am fixating on opening her MILFY kimono, at the end of the day, while she is peeling an onion, with synergy, offline.
Middle of the road kind of guy. Love living in Asia and will be back there as soon as I can. I lived 8 and a half grand and glorious years in Asia traveling from one end to the other and generally having a really good time. Despite my best efforts to stay, I was "Quantum Leaped" to a 3 and 1/2 year exile in the USA to pay for my sins - suffering through the lunacy that is life in the American South. I am now back overseas, living the expat life again, working my way around the world- taking the long way home to Asia via the path of living in Germany. Like Dr. Samuel Beckett, I am hoping my next leap will be the leap that brings me home to Asia. Always on the lookout for my next ex-wife.
