Okay, this I gotta share—NPR reports on the contents of Sarah Palin’s self-justifying/aggrandizing “memoir”, Going Rogue.
It’s just, it’s just…what’s the word? Fulsome? Nauseating? Shallow?
I won’t help her financial condition by actually buying this sad thing; but I’ll probably read a library copy.
Of course the library loan lays an obligation on me to not rip the tome into bits, or chuck it in the garbage bin.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Honoring the fallen
It’s a sad irony that Major Nidal Hassan should go postal at the soldier readiness center at Fort Hood, Tex., and murder 13 and wound 29 more just a few days before Veterans Day.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines signed up for the risks involved in combat and combat support: separation from loved ones; sand and rocks (or tropical jungles); the constant adrenaline surge that comes from being on the alert 24/7; fake food; rudimentary sanitary facilities; exotic insects, arachnids and reptiles. And of course, snipers, suicide bombers and IEDs.
(That’s why they call it going into harm’s way, and these men and women, from all backgrounds, go in harm’s way because that’s their job.)
They did not sign up for one of their own strapping on two unregistered (non-military) handguns and opening fire on them (they were unarmed) on an Army post as they were preparing to deploy to hostile territory.
That President Obama had to go to the memorial service for the 13 less than two weeks after honoring 18 soldiers killed in Afghanistan at Dover AFB (a Commander-in-Chief duty that was declined by Obama's predecessor—the CiC who started these wars in 2003 and shortly thereafter declared "Mission Accomplished!") says to me that it’s all starting to look like hostile territory.
We’re hearing a lot of stuff about Hassan—that he’s had leanings toward radical Islamist fervor, that he showed signs of instability and activities that someone should have noticed and acted upon (well, apparently people did notice, but action was not taken), that he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan (which would have been the first in-country experience of his Army career), that he objected to Muslims going to areas where they might be obliged to kill other Muslims.
Well, those last two just set my teeth on edge.
When you take the king’s shilling you don’t have the right to choose your deployment; you go where they send you and do the job you’re trained to do. My war was Vietnam, and let me just say that a vast percentage of grunts over there—if offered a choice—would never have landed at Ton Su Nhut, much less spent 13 months in country. But there they were, picking leeches off their limbs, running LRRPs and taking mortar rounds from the VC over there and guff from people over here.
That, of course, was a draftee military and this is volunteer. But all the more reason to do your duty as laid out for you by the chain of command. You volunteered, for God’s sake, you had a pretty good notion that the job was dangerous when you took it.
It saddens me deeply that 13 soldiers who should at least have lived until deployment were mowed down in the madness of the readiness center last Thursday.
I have a friend, a bell ringer in the UK. Sunday her troupe rang muffled bells (some centuries old) for Remembrance Sunday. And today she’ll ring again for the Armistice Day commemoration. I hope her band will include the dead of Fort Hood in their thoughts.
Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines signed up for the risks involved in combat and combat support: separation from loved ones; sand and rocks (or tropical jungles); the constant adrenaline surge that comes from being on the alert 24/7; fake food; rudimentary sanitary facilities; exotic insects, arachnids and reptiles. And of course, snipers, suicide bombers and IEDs.
(That’s why they call it going into harm’s way, and these men and women, from all backgrounds, go in harm’s way because that’s their job.)
They did not sign up for one of their own strapping on two unregistered (non-military) handguns and opening fire on them (they were unarmed) on an Army post as they were preparing to deploy to hostile territory.
That President Obama had to go to the memorial service for the 13 less than two weeks after honoring 18 soldiers killed in Afghanistan at Dover AFB (a Commander-in-Chief duty that was declined by Obama's predecessor—the CiC who started these wars in 2003 and shortly thereafter declared "Mission Accomplished!") says to me that it’s all starting to look like hostile territory.
We’re hearing a lot of stuff about Hassan—that he’s had leanings toward radical Islamist fervor, that he showed signs of instability and activities that someone should have noticed and acted upon (well, apparently people did notice, but action was not taken), that he did not want to deploy to Afghanistan (which would have been the first in-country experience of his Army career), that he objected to Muslims going to areas where they might be obliged to kill other Muslims.
Well, those last two just set my teeth on edge.
When you take the king’s shilling you don’t have the right to choose your deployment; you go where they send you and do the job you’re trained to do. My war was Vietnam, and let me just say that a vast percentage of grunts over there—if offered a choice—would never have landed at Ton Su Nhut, much less spent 13 months in country. But there they were, picking leeches off their limbs, running LRRPs and taking mortar rounds from the VC over there and guff from people over here.
That, of course, was a draftee military and this is volunteer. But all the more reason to do your duty as laid out for you by the chain of command. You volunteered, for God’s sake, you had a pretty good notion that the job was dangerous when you took it.
It saddens me deeply that 13 soldiers who should at least have lived until deployment were mowed down in the madness of the readiness center last Thursday.
I have a friend, a bell ringer in the UK. Sunday her troupe rang muffled bells (some centuries old) for Remembrance Sunday. And today she’ll ring again for the Armistice Day commemoration. I hope her band will include the dead of Fort Hood in their thoughts.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Cold war crackups
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Followed shortly afterward by the collapse of Communism in Europe (except for Yugoslavia and Albania, which both took time to rot from the inside, but made up for that by unleashing just about every form of civil warfare, up to and including genocide).
It’s interesting that news stories talk about the generational gap—Germans in their 20s and 30s are pretty blasé about the significance of the event. They have nothing to compare a united and prosperous Germany with.
Their elders—who lived in the German Democratic Republic—on the other hand are grateful for being out from under the Stasi and the Communist economy. They’re really appreciative of the prosperous Germany (whose prosperity is for once not built on armaments and plans for invading their neighbors).
Listening to NPR I flashed back to my mother; she died 11 years before the wall’s collapse. She had lived through the 20s and the aftermath of World War I as a child, and as a young adult she worked at Lockheed during World War II.
Me, I never knew anything but a divided Germany. So I thought it interesting when Mom said (more than once) that if we ever let the two Germanys unite, we’d just be faced with yet another war.
Mom, not what I would call inclined towards paranoia and certainly leaning more towards the logical, nonetheless had a primal, gut-emotional response to that possibility.
It’s been 20 years now, and the united Germany shows no signs of overrunning Poland or invading Belgium. They’re doing perfectly fine through carving out economic rather than geographic lebensraum. But that’s capitalism and de facto fine.
I wonder what Mom would say about that?
It’s interesting that news stories talk about the generational gap—Germans in their 20s and 30s are pretty blasé about the significance of the event. They have nothing to compare a united and prosperous Germany with.
Their elders—who lived in the German Democratic Republic—on the other hand are grateful for being out from under the Stasi and the Communist economy. They’re really appreciative of the prosperous Germany (whose prosperity is for once not built on armaments and plans for invading their neighbors).
Listening to NPR I flashed back to my mother; she died 11 years before the wall’s collapse. She had lived through the 20s and the aftermath of World War I as a child, and as a young adult she worked at Lockheed during World War II.
Me, I never knew anything but a divided Germany. So I thought it interesting when Mom said (more than once) that if we ever let the two Germanys unite, we’d just be faced with yet another war.
Mom, not what I would call inclined towards paranoia and certainly leaning more towards the logical, nonetheless had a primal, gut-emotional response to that possibility.
It’s been 20 years now, and the united Germany shows no signs of overrunning Poland or invading Belgium. They’re doing perfectly fine through carving out economic rather than geographic lebensraum. But that’s capitalism and de facto fine.
I wonder what Mom would say about that?
Monday, November 9, 2009
'Tis the season, apparently
’Kay, I don’t want to sound like Ms. Cranky-Person, but what is it with stores putting up their Christmas displays & decorations on the day after Halloween?
(& I’m not going to call them “holiday decorations” because I don’t see any Hanukkah- or Kwanzaa-themed stuff.)
Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? Used to be you had Halloween, with witches, ghosts & jack o’lanterns; then Thanksgiving, with turkeys, Pilgrims & harvest-home decorations.
THEN there was Christmas, red-&-green things, conifers, sparkly lights & snowflakes.
But yesterday when I went to Target to see if they had fountain pen cartridges (they didn’t even have fountain pens) I walked into a Christmas wonderland—red & silver ornament things hanging from the ceiling & a huge fake-Christmas tree section.
& this morning I went to the Tully’s coffee shop on Main Street in Bellevue, only to be slapped in the face with all-out Christmas: plastic greenery, strings of fairy lights & Christmas cups for your coffee.
IHOP has been advertising holiday hotcakes (maybe they’re waffles—I really don’t pay attention) for a couple of weeks—so before Halloween.
I shudder to think what Wal-Mart looks like.
Dunno if this is the inevitable onslaught of commercialism, or just retailers reacting to the second selling season in a recession. Whatever—it’s really an affront.
(& I’m not going to call them “holiday decorations” because I don’t see any Hanukkah- or Kwanzaa-themed stuff.)
Whatever happened to Thanksgiving? Used to be you had Halloween, with witches, ghosts & jack o’lanterns; then Thanksgiving, with turkeys, Pilgrims & harvest-home decorations.
THEN there was Christmas, red-&-green things, conifers, sparkly lights & snowflakes.
But yesterday when I went to Target to see if they had fountain pen cartridges (they didn’t even have fountain pens) I walked into a Christmas wonderland—red & silver ornament things hanging from the ceiling & a huge fake-Christmas tree section.
& this morning I went to the Tully’s coffee shop on Main Street in Bellevue, only to be slapped in the face with all-out Christmas: plastic greenery, strings of fairy lights & Christmas cups for your coffee.
IHOP has been advertising holiday hotcakes (maybe they’re waffles—I really don’t pay attention) for a couple of weeks—so before Halloween.
I shudder to think what Wal-Mart looks like.
Dunno if this is the inevitable onslaught of commercialism, or just retailers reacting to the second selling season in a recession. Whatever—it’s really an affront.