Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

September 21, 2004

Apologies

Filed under: Bunker's Favorites,Society-Culture — Bunker @ 6:46 am

I’m being overcome by the Dark Side. The last couple of days have been evil, and it is trying to envelop me. It goes beyond Dan Rather, but he is the catalyst.

We have many people in this country, folks like MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and the DNC heirarchy, who celebrate in their hearts every death in Iraq. They bemoan the deaths of American soldiers with pity, and the deaths of Iraqis and others with false angst. Because these haters despise Dubya, any death is part of their tally toward his defeat, another stone on the scale. I resent that. Life is precious. Apologizers might say these folks really don’t want people to die, and they are trying to prevent death. Bull. They weren’t crying about all the deaths in Iraq prior to our invasion. They aren’t crying about all the deaths in Sudan.

I’ve had to reassess my view of the Democratic Party and its supporters. Death and misery seem to be at their core. It is as if they feel they can succeed in gaining power only if people in the world are dying or near death. They claim to be passionate about helping folks, sharing their altruistic nature in campaigns. In reality, they do nothing to help once they have power. Charity begins at home, yet how many of them actually contribute anything more than words to helping others? Talk is cheap.

Aligning themselves with despots of the world, Democrats/Socialists seem to thrive on the misery those dictators create. The deaths of thousands in North Korea, Iraq, and Sudan do nothing but make them wring their hands. Deaths of thousands on 9/11 here did nothing but make them even more adamant that we were to blame. People like Kofi Annan and Jacques Chirac making millions from a mass murderer is fine, as long as they like us and don’t talk bad about us.

That carries over to domestic issues. Giving needy people a pittance, subsistence, will make them grateful enough to vote the right way, but it will do nothing to get them out of their personal rut. Misery is good for the DNC. And death. I saw a sonogram of our next grandchild last week. That baby is moving, has a strong heart, ten fingers and ten toes, and moves its mouth. It is alive. All I could think of when watching the video was, “How can someone say that’s not a human being? How can someone believe it is okay to kill that baby?” Death is okay if it serves their purpose. Death is good.

I dislike the political process, and am ready for it to be over this year. But it has been going strong since 2000. For the last year in particular, Democrats have offered nothing positive. Throughout their primaries, they seldom even talked to and about one another. The topic was always Bush. When the Swift Boat Vets came out against Kerry’s candidacy, the major media ignored them. Until they couldn’t any longer. Now they are again ignoring them by spending all their time on imaginary wrongs committed by or for benefit of George W. Bush. Yes, they are imaginary. I’ve found absolutely none of them to be true. And I have tried. Perpetuation of lies. Yet none can respond to the charges by the Swift Boat Vets. All they can do is try and find dirt on individuals in the group, attempting to destroy their credibility. How about Rather’s credibility? Where is the outcry?

Death and misery. Is that not evil? Are we not now in a fight between the Force and the Dark Side? In my view, the Dark Side in this country want politics to govern our society and culture. That is the opposite of what our Constitution was written to accomplish. I need to resist the Dark Side. I don’t thrive in that the way some seem to.

September 20, 2004

Go Away

Filed under: Media — Bunker @ 8:12 pm

Lowell Ponte asks, “Who Is Dan Rather?”

I say he is someone I’ve never paid any attention to. When Cronkite left CBS, I quit watching. I had no use for Rather. Now I wish he would simply go away.

I’ve already spent time on him here, here, and here. He has no integrity.

What makes me really mad, though, is his continued insistence that anything he says is true, whether he has any facts at hand or not. The “indisputable facts” that Dubya had someone get him in the TANG ahead of 150 others on a waiting list disappeared in about fifteen minutes of searching the internet. His fake documents carry no weight whatsoever, even though he claims the essence of their tale is true. If I could find some simple refutation so quickly, why is he so determined someone prove him wrong instead of him proving his own case?

And why are the Democrats so eager to take his side, knowing he peddles lies?

I don’t hate anyone. I never have. It is an emotion far more powerful than the word has come to mean through overuse. I am on the verge of hating Dan Rather, if that is possible without knowing someone personally. That scares me.

Free Speech

Filed under: Society-Culture — Bunker @ 5:40 pm

Frank has a very good post entitled What does a “blogger” look like? He also adds a Norman Rockwell painting. Just the right touch.

This painting is what a “blogger” looks like. We are just people, average joes( and josephines), having our say on the affairs of the world without fear from neighbors or our government. The only difference between ourselves and the man in the painting is that the method for speaking our minds has moved from the cold wooden walls of the Elks Lodge to the cold wiring of the internet.

I had been thinking of the internet as a library, with bloggers acting as librarians. A librarian can direct a researcher to all kinds of information they never knew existed, and bloggers often perform the same function. Yet Frank’s analogy is probably far more apt.

Shock

Filed under: Media — Bunker @ 4:32 pm

Wallace has posted a famous photograph, taken by Eddie Adams in 1968 of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan as he killed a captured Viet Cong. Adams has just passed away, and Wallace offers his sense of loss.

Those of you who weren’t yet born, or who didn’t watch the news in 1968 probably don’t grasp the impact of that photograph. When I taught a lesson on Vietnam, I used some videotape of a humorous piece from the movie Full Metal Jacket to set it all up. As the cadets were laughing, the clip transitioned quickly to movie film taken at the same instant as Adams’ photo. The general quickly raised his pistol and shot, which is what Adams captured, then lowered his pistol and went about his business. The room went silent. And that was precisely the effect I wanted.

The cadets knew the story well, that this VC had just killed a family the general knew well. But that was irrelevant. The sense of shock was what Americans felt in 1968, buttressed with reports from the field by such journalistic icons as Dan Rather.

Some things never change, do they?

Selective

Filed under: Media — Bunker @ 4:15 pm

James Taranto points out just a single piece of selective journalism by Dan Rather last month published here.

In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn’t do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns. What’s far more import is this: Do they have an exit strategy for Iraq? If so, what is it? How will they address the national deficit? And what are the chances their plans will work?

I have problems with that, but more in the last four lines than the first. Why is it that media types and opposition politicians are always asking for “the plan”? Countries the world over employ thousands of people who spend their waking hours trying to discern “the plan.” They are called Spies.

Why would any leader in any country explain his “plan” during wartime?

Leapfrog?

Filed under: Military — Bunker @ 12:36 pm

I have seen many claims, and talked to people who believe, that Dubya was allowed to join the Texas Air National Guard ahead of 150 others on a waiting list. So, I decided to do a little research. I came up empty on the internet. Every citation of this, such as one from CBS News (quite a reliable source, I’d say) says something similar:

Questions about the president’s National Guard service have lingered for years. Some critics question how Mr. Bush got into the Guard when there were waiting lists of young men hoping to join it to escape the draft and possible service in Vietnam.

Another post at DU:

It has been reported that Bush jumped to the top of a list of over 500 applicants for the position…

And yet another:

Although he only scored in the 25th percentile on his pilot aptitude test Bush was somehow able to skip this entire waiting list and get an immediate appointment to the Texas Air National Guard.

But I have yet to see anything anywhere which corroborates these claims.

Has anyone seen anything at all that shows this to be true, or are we all listening to something which has been repeated often enough to sound believable? Can someone, somewhere, provide a copy of said list, or even some reliable information that such a list actually existed?

Dan Rather would know, wouldn’t he?

***UPDATE***
I found this which may answer the question. Also, the Washington Post has more integrity than Dan Rather, even if they word things a little oddly:

Retired Col. Rufus G. Martin, then personnel officer in charge of the 147th Fighter Group, said the unit was short of its authorized strength, but still had a long waiting list, because of the difficulty getting slots in basic training for recruits at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Martin said four openings for pilots were available in the 147th in 1968, and that Bush got the last one.

So, it seems Dubya didn’t jump past all those other folks waiting for a slot after all.

Credibility

Filed under: International — Bunker @ 10:11 am

John Kerry is beating his gums in front of an audience right now, and I saw a banner roll across the TV screen that quotes him as saying, “Our credibility in the world is plummeting.”

Interesting.

For years, governments around the world have been uneasy in making commitments with the US because we have a tendency to change direction with new Administrations. In other words, our credibility is often suspect. For two years now, people who opposed our invasion of Iraq, for whatever reason, have tried to paint Dubya as a liar and cheat, and the lowest form of humanity. That has happened both here and abroad. I would say that any loss of credibility is due to their constant harping rather than any fact.

Yet every leader in every nation of the world now actually views US policy as much more credible than before 9/11. Credibility comes from doing what you say you will do. People may not like what Dubya has done, but you can’t make an honest assessment and say he isn’t following his stated policy in regards to foreign policy.

We as a nation, not just George W. Bush, have decided we need to eliminate the supporters of Islamicists or make them crawl back into a hole. They know this. Our credibility will be diminished only if we take a more nuanced approach, and return to the 9/10 mentality of legal action, and warrants for the arrest of people like bin Laden.

Credibility means commitment. How committed are we?

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