Chickenhawk Hall of Shame

The Christian Left

King of the Chickenhawks

Many of the usual suspects who pissed their pants at the thought of service and possible personal danger, but this one is a rare moment of truth from one of their great statesmen about what they really think:

Henry Kissinger: Kissinger's take on our brave men and women in uniform? "Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." -- Henry Kissinger, as quoted in "The Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in chapter 14. Page 194 in the paperback version (1995). Kissinger has never denied saying it.

There ya go.

Old soldiers recall

A Memorial Day "must read".

WWII vets gather at a Denny's to share stories about their service. They call themselves the Third Thursday Lunch Bunch, and the decades haven't dimmed their memories.

In early February 1945, Tharratt said, the guards at Stalag Luft IV informed him and other inmates that they were leaving for a three-day march. The destination was not revealed. Tharratt had an overcoat and a blanket, and wrapped his belongings in a towel.

They marched on country roads for 600 miles, he said, sleeping in fields, labor camps and warehouses with their boots drying under their armpits. Days passed without any food. Tharratt wanted to give up at times, but his buddies kept him moving. Many men got sick and could no longer march. They disappeared. Tharratt does not know what became of them.

He walked for 86 days until American GIs approached and liberated the prisoners, the war nearly over.

Tharratt returned to his family in Reseda, graduated from UC Davis, married and worked in the cement industry. He now lives in a retirement community in Walnut Creek.

Nightmares have plagued him since the war, he said, and even now he "tears up the bed" once in a while.

The Distinguished Flying Cross was an immense honor, but the lunch bunch it spawned has become a lifeline.

"We were asked to do a job," Tharratt said. "And I think we did it."

I think you did.

Memorial Day Thoughts on National Defense

Robert Reich

We can best honor those who have given their lives for this nation in combat by making sure our military might is proportional to what America needs.
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At the very least, hundreds of billions could be saved without jeopardizing the nation's security by ending weapons systems designed for an age of conventional warfare. We should shrink the F-35 fleet of stealth fighters. Cut the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. And take a cleaver to the Navy and Air Force budgets. (Most of the action is with the Army, Marines and Special Forces.)

At a time when Medicare, Medicaid, and non-defense discretionary spending (including most programs for the poor, as well as infrastructure and basic R&D) are in serious jeopardy, Obama and the Democrats should be calling for even more defense cuts.

A reasonable and rational defense budget would be a fitting memorial to those who have given their lives so we may remain free.

Let's quit sending our people to die for the defense of the Military Industrial Complex bottom line. If that's a priority, and it is, let's send the neocons, 99% of whom have never served and are cowards to a man except when it comes to sending other folks' kids to die for their wet dreams of conquest. Their weeping and wailing and rending of garments as they try to get out of service would be vastly entertaining.

"It Takes One To Know One" Headline of the Day

George Will Calls Donald Trump a ‘Bloviating Ignoramus’

The pot calling the kettle white?

"We were soldiers once, and young"

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Future of European Union in Peril
Border guards brushing up on, “May I see your passport, please?” in six languages.

Pollsters More Likely to Reach Republicans on Land Lines, Democrats on Cellphones
Independents on foot, after a lengthy chase.

Facebook IPO Flops
Investors feel price too high for company that makes nothing, does nothing, earns nothing.

Good point!

Missouri Installs Security Camera Trained on Rush Limbaugh Bust in State Capitol
To prevent Limbaugh from stealing it.

Yeah, right. I bet it doesn't last six months, camera or no.

Tsunami Debris Is Arriving

LATimes

Fishing floats, soccer balls, fuel tanks and crewless fishing vessels set adrift by the tsunami and pushed thousands of miles across the ocean by currents and winds are already arriving on American shores.
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So as scientists track the debris, the government prepares for its arrival and expeditions sail to the middle of the ocean to meet it, Larson will patrol his adopted beach with a five-gallon bucket and a grab stick, the tsunami on his mind.

"I'll be looking for any signs of foreign material," the volunteer with beach cleanup group Save Our Shores said, "and reporting it to anyone who cares."

A corroded Harley-Davidson motorcycle packed in a container washed up on a Canadian island. The owner, located through the bike's license plate number, had lost three family members in the tsunami, Japanese media reported. [...]

Reminds me of a line from a bluegrass tune - "Let me be your salty Hog...". Heh.

Ebbesmeyer, who compiles reports from West Coast beachcombers on his blog, has tallied at least 500 foam and plastic floats and fuel cans that have shown up from Japan since October. He said that's roughly 167 times the normal rate.

"They all started arriving at once from Kodiak, Alaska, to Northern California, and that's very indicative of a disaster," he said.

Ebbesmeyer expects the amount of debris to increase dramatically this fall with the arrival of floating refrigerators, car wheels, bath toys and shoes — items with a remarkable ability to float long distances.

With that possibility in mind, the state of Washington has distributed fliers with instructions on how to handle everything from canisters of insecticide to personal possessions.

Much more. Interesting. It's a slow day.

Update:

CNN

Iowa Exits Golden Gate

A beautiful picture. Article at LATimes.

On May 26, 2012, the 79-year-old battleship Iowa is towed just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the ocean on its final voyage to Southern California and its permanent home as a floating museum on the San Pedro waterfront. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / May 26, 2012)

Update:

Two pretty good videos.

Somehow it seems kind of sad that this once great battleship leaves on her final voyage alone. It was less than a week ago that she was to leave as part of a parade of ships under the Golden Gate Bridge, but because of a little rough weather that she would have in her prime handled with ease had to have her good-bye party docked at her temporary home in the Port of Richmond. See: "Iowa to sail for new home" Vivian Ho, San Francisco Chronicle (Close enough - G). You can track the IOWA on her way to LA at www.pacificbattleship.com.

Thanks to roblewis56.

Thanks to Jim Brown.

Conversations ...

How it goes in Chez Fixer:

The Mrs. and I are sitting in my office. She's doing something on the computer, I'm in the easy chair, playing with the dogs and watching TV. A commercial for Compound W "wart-freezer-offer" comes on.

Me: "Does that shit really work?"

Mrs. F: "It would seem so."

Me: "I wonder what would happen if I put it on my dick?"

Mrs. F: "Only you ..."

Heh ...

Just a reminder ...

"Big Willie" Robinson, 1942 - 2012

This gent was famous in L.A. He was a big man in more ways than one. I met him once an awfully long time ago.

LATimes

"Big Willie" Robinson was a 6-foot-6, 300-pound former Los Angeles street racer, a gentle giant who promoted organized drag racing as a way to unite people of all races and classes and ease racial tensions.

"When you get around cars, man, there ain't no colors, just engines," he told The Times in 1981.

Willie Andrew Robinson III, 69, the founding president of the National and International Brotherhood of Street Racers that ran a drag strip on Terminal Island for many years, died Saturday of an infection that led to heart failure at Sharon Care Center in Los Angeles, said Bill Chaffin, a close friend.
...

"Every time that track was open, crime went down," Chaffin said. "Pretty much all the cops knew [that] when Willie's track is open, it definitely makes a difference." And, he said, "virtually all the street racing stopped because now they had a place to go."

Here's a video from the Street Racers' website linked to above:


Willie took his checkered flag. Burn rubber through them Pearly Gates, bud!

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Written by Patty Griffin. Harmony vocals by Emmylou Harris.

Little Fire ~ Patty Griffin with Emmylou Harris Live 2010

Thanks to pennstatefan1

Puffin' it up ...

With Barry:

A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama

Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story dealing with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot.

...

Heh ... Now legalize it, Hawaii boy.

Funny looking goose...

Congress Should Ban Armed Drones Before Cops in Texas Deploy One

I wanta see what happens the first time some waterfowl hunter bags one with his 12-bore.

"I blew my goose call and this showed up. Got any good recipes?"

Heh.

Egos and Immortality

A good read from Paul Krugman:

Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be. Remember when Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group compared a proposal to limit his tax breaks to Hitler’s invasion of Poland? Remember when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase characterized any discussion of income inequality as an attack on the very notion of success?

But here’s the thing: If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.

Fat fuckin' chance.

So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.

Those are, however, questions that the wheeler-dealers don’t want asked — and not, I think, just because they want to defend their tax breaks and other privileges. It’s also an ego thing. Vast wealth isn’t enough; they want deference, too, and they’re doing their best to buy it. It has been amazing to read about erstwhile Democrats on Wall Street going all in for Mitt Romney, not because they believe that he has good policy ideas, but because they’re taking President Obama’s very mild criticism of financial excesses as a personal insult.

And it has been especially sad to see some Democratic politicians with ties to Wall Street, like Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, dutifully rise to the defense of their friends’ surprisingly fragile egos.
...

And in the midst of this national nightmare, all too many members of the economic elite seem mainly concerned with the way the president apparently hurt their feelings. That isn’t funny. It’s shameful.

They fucked over the whole country and then the whiny pussy bastards throw a hissy fit when they get called on it even a little bit instead of getting the ticker tape parade and the admiration of the nation they think they're entitled to. Yeesh. The Vampire Capitalists better realize they've got their "deference" by not being in jail. For now.

How to call "bullshit!" without saying "bullshit"

Obama: Romney's 'prairie fire of debt' a 'cow pie of distortion'

Well played, sir!

Who says ...

Republicans can't do comedy?

Billionaire mogul Donald Trump says he has found the "best choice of all" to be presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate: Donald Trump.

...

Quote of the Day

Meteor Blades:

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There are a few terrific diggers and verifiers and debunkers on the cable news shows. Chris Matthews ain't one of them.

Post-Racial Farce

Daddy Frank seamlessly blends his dual expertise as drama critic and political commentator. Good read. Links at site.

There has been change on the American playing field of race since Inauguration Day 2009—not so much for the better or the worse, but a shift into a kind of twilight zone where the nation’s racial conversation has moved from its usual gears of intractability, obfuscation, angry debate, and platitudinous sentimentality to the truly unhinged. It’s as if everyone can now say, well, that’s that, we’ve elected our first African-American president, we can pat ourselves on the back for doing so, and, with that noble and historic accomplishment in the bank, we will sign on to sideshows ranging from a Herman Cain stunt presidential run to a malicious jihad mounted by a right-wing hit man in Los Angeles, Andrew Breitbart, to destroy Sherrod, an obscure federal worker in Georgia. You’d think Obama’s victory gave the entire country permission to act out like the racial brawlers of Clybourne Park.

It has certainly encouraged the GOP to unleash its id and wax with unapologetic nostalgia about the good ole days of the Jim Crow South. Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia issued a proclamation declaring Confederate History Month with no mention of slavery. Rand Paul, when running successfully for senator of Kentucky, disparaged the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Haley Barbour, the former GOP chairman and Mississippi governor and almost presidential candidate, reminisced about how things were not “that bad” back when the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils were in charge of Yazoo City during his halcyon youth. Toss in such other uninhibited party leaders as Newt Gingrich, branding Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history,” and Karl Rove, who labeled the public-spirited rapper Common “a thug” when Obama invited him to a poetry evening at the White House, and you see why some white voters in Steubenville, Ohio, were happy to confide to a Times reporter this month that they wouldn’t be casting ballots for a black man.

Go.

The Armor Of Ignorance

A device to stick your head up your ass to willfully avoid facts, possibly even the truth, is a highly popular available option.

Thanks once again to YubaNet.