More random thoughts:

Nancy Pelosi chides Hugo Chavez for shutting down RCTV, while speaks of implementing the “Fairness yeah, right! Doctrine” to force conservative (read opposition) voices off the airwaves.

John Edwards and Barak Obama want universal health care. Stick with me here: Won’t that make us live longer? Excuse me, but I think this flies in the face of the humanity caused “Global Warming” syndrome currently sweeping the nation. If we are making it worse, why do they want to make sure we stay around to pollute the atmosphere that the animals have to also breath from?

Speaking of that: How about those who decide not to have offspring, as they see just another “polluting unit” (“PU” for short) being created and….as we all know, it’s a bad thing….

So now the President hops on the “Global Warming” band wagon. Either he’s trying to upstage those who set up the Kyoto Treaty, or he’s maybe looking for cross-over Democratic votes? I’m confused.

John McCain says we need to let the illegal immigrants have their way, or they might riot in our streets, but we have to stand up tall against the Islamic terrorists. I’m even more confused now.

Not only do we have to do as John McCain implies, we need these workers here because we are lacking Americans to do the work. Yes, about 40M some, many of which would have been of age by now.

Europe had to let lots of low cost, immigrant labor in for the same reason (but they never knew years ago they were helping the environment by not having little Europeans) and look what’s happening now. It doesn’t take even a homegrown experiment to see what’s coming in a few decades.

We decide to help install an anti-missile DEFENSE in eastern Europe, Russia gets upset. I guess the possibility of no longer being able to nuke your neighbors to the west has got a burr under their saddle…

A sitting President can lie to a Grand Jury while under oath and just be dis-barred and a White House staffer can make statements while not under oath during an investigation that aren’t true and he goes to jail for 2.5 years.

Something I am not confused about is that I am “extra-curricular politics.”

Ah, we are living in interesting times.

The President says we need to help secure the Iraqi borders, so foreign fighters don’t come in….

The President, and the Congress (for the most part) says it’s too hard to secure our borders, so we should just accept those here…

Am I missing some thread of consistency here?

Either we take the easy way out in Iraq and commit no more resources to control the Iraqi borders, because, as the Democrats will say it’s not effective and too hard…or we put the effort in over there and OVER HERE!

Anyhow, I think there is a dynamic of both the Republican and Democratic parties being in a turf war over the prospect of new voters to fill their ranks. It’s like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts fighting it out to control the market. It’s all about power.

Forget the sports analogy, we need some people brave enough to throw themselves on the political hand grenades, or man the Ma-Duece in the face of about 100 people “eying you with bad intent” so that the rest of us survive, even if it means your political life ends. Yes, I prefer the military service model, thank you Mr. Arkin.

Which ever party looks the “most magnanimous” believes they will get the voters to enter and swell their base. We “extra curricular politics” (speaking as one of “those”) aren’t the issue in their mind, but we just may be come the very next election…

Fess up, someone. Who forgot to invite William Arkin of the Los Angeles Times?

That’s what it’s all about. Step forward and apologize…then everything will be alright. In the meantime, some commentary and opinion editorializing:

While bemoaning the job security competition milbloggers in his article “If Only War Reporting Were More Like Sports Reporting”, William Arkin makes a blatant falsehood a pivot point for his discussion:

[…]
I’ve been wanting to write about the 2nd Annual MilBlog conference (I wasn’t invited),…
[…]

I suspect he may not have been graced with a gold foil engraved, leather invitation, secured with a silk ribbon, but then again, I didn’t get one either.

On top of that, he’s way behind the power curve in trying to say something that makes me believe he all of a sudden had equated the conduct of baseball to the conduct of war. I blogged about it some time ago, on several occasions, and I still like my analysis much better.

Soldier’s Dad has already chimed in and was the first to reply to Mr. Arkin at the WAPO site.

I left my version, too..something to do with how the registration was open for almost 6 weeks and at the bargain price of $40. I further went on to say his mis-stating of facts was exactly what makes people distrust them and his article further hurt the “cause.”

I’ve often thought if we could cover the military like sports, with transparency and intimate knowledge and a play-by-play that was both affectionate and unsparingly critical, we’d have a healthier debate. Interest and knowledge on the part of the typical American in foreign affairs and national security would actually increase.

This would go over much better is most people in the US actually had military experience, but even more importantly, an education that thought them how to critically think about such issues. Then, yes, we could have that rewarding debate Mr. Arkin desires.

But alas, it is the military, and whether it is the death of Pat Tillman or a war plan, the impulse of the institution is strategic defense. Secrecy, of course, is always justified on OPSEC grounds.

I’m guessing Mr. Arkin has not spent anytime being the potential target of an enemy, be they German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Soviet, Vietnamese, or many nationalities of Islamic jihadis. If so, he would not make such a flippant remark.

Using absolute words can absolutely get you into trouble now, or later, or maybe for a long time, like the rest of your life, when you make sweeping statements. People hang onto absolutes, because they are rare….or should be, but we cry “all” or “nothing” way too much anymore, just to get the gaze shifted to whoever wants attention.

And side note: Yep…OPSEC is the thing we do because stuff is secret.

Anyhow, it’s ironic, isn’t it, that a writer/editorialist can’t move his body around the country in order to even be a fly on the wall, let alone possible meet some MilBloggers in person and sit and chat. Think about it: There we were, in one place, at an appointed time slot on two sequential days. Good thing we haven’t had any attacks in country since 9/11….but, a wide range of bloggers filled the room and that’s only an annual event right now. Perfect timing for anyone who wants to save a lot of funding to get a lot of interviews. I’m sure his Editor would have sprung for the airfare and hotel bill, just on the hopes of a lot of out of context remarks they could quote later on.

And then, he makes it “our” fault for not letting him come to a conference that was open to everyone who wanted to sign up, up to 200 people.

H/T: Milblogs via Mrs Greyhawk

I was rather amazed that even Tony Snow tapped danced around the arrest of the 6 Muslims today to say there hadn’t been any noticeable links to terrorist groups in the story that hit the wires today.

I find it ironic, to say the least, that within moments of any significant violence in schools, a virtual choir of media and talking heads all trot out the connection to “violent video games, like Dungeons and Dragons and Doom.”

I’d bet the shooters at Columbine and VT never met with John Carmack, but “we” are happy to link them together.