H&I Fires* 23 AUG 2008

Open post for those with something to share, updated through the day. New, complete posts come in below this one. Note: If trackbacking, please acknowledge this post in your post. That's only polite.

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So, audacity and change is embodied in Senator Joe Biden, 35 years a Senator from a heavily urbanized east coast state worth 3 already solid electoral votes.  Heh. 

I wonder how much of the PUMA vote Senator McCain could swing with... Sarah Palin?   At least then there'd be a ticket that doesn't hail completely from the Senate and from DC, and who's actually had to run something large and inefficient, like a state government.  I know, Senator McCain commanded a squadron - lets not fool ourselves about how that prepares him to run the administrative arm of the government.

But I bet it's Romney, just to drive the evangelicals and anti-Mormons crazy.

But - as I've demonstrated year after year - I may be a bellwether for a middlin' section of the electorate, I ain't got no political savvy.

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Heh.

Michael Moore Dares to Ask: What's So Heroic About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians?

Liliana Segura asks that question.  Nicely provocative title, that.   Mind you, you need to click this link and read the whole thing - it's a touch more nuanced than the headline suggests.  Well, *need* is a strong term - but you should click the links and form your own judgements, rather than just take my word for things.

Mind you, it's a gem from a very clear weltanschauung -

Lest we forget, the Vietnam War represented a mass slaughter by the United States government on a scale that sought to rival our genocide of the Native Americans. The U.S. Armed Forces killed more than two million civilians in Vietnam (and perhaps another million in Laos and Cambodia). The Vietnamese had done nothing to us. They had not bombed or invaded or even sought to murder a single American. President Johnson and the Pentagon lied to Congress in order to get a vote passed to put the war in full gear. Only two senators had the guts to vote "no."

But the parallel between Iraq and Vietnam is not the only point Moore is making. He makes it personal. [This sentence is from the alternet blog author]

John McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which lasted for almost 44 months, U.S. forces flew 307,000 attack sorties, dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single month -- for 44 months.
 

For Ms. Segura, the truth is in the lede: Like Iraq, Vietnam was not a noble cause. It's time we stopped letting politicians and the press perpetuate the McCain War Hero myth.

Because, as we all know, Iraq = Vietnam.  Where we finally did something the Left is usually implying we should be doing - overthrowing dictatorial puppets we'd been supporting.  There's no pleasing some people. 

Heh. 

Something on the subject I *wish* I'd said:

So, by the moveon.org logic, Bush, who supposedly went AWOL, and thereby refused to bomb innocent civilians in that illegal war, is more patriotic than John Kerry, who by his own admission gunned down old Vietnamese farmers from his Swift Boat (and felt badly about it later.

But I didn't.  H/t, the Blogfather.  -the Armorer

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I've long been a fan of *the Sun* as the culprit in much of our climate woes.  So is Donald Sensing.  And dangit, there's just more inconvenient data abounding about pollution, too. H/t, BCR.  That last, btw, shouldn't be construed as me saying we should backtrack on our pollutant reducing efforts.  It's just to show... well, golly, they're working, eh?  And that the whole system is one heckuva lot more complex than we truly understand.  -the Armorer

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Scott Beauchamp lives!  And is working that whole rehabilitation thing.  Yer gonna learn to hate Google, Scott.  -the Armorer

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Then there's my favorite Christian Luo-American from Chicago...   that would be the proud American not-a-citizen of the world, retired Zoomie Baldilocks.   That would be Baldilocks, the Luo-American whose working to keep promises other Luo-Americans don't... -the Armorer

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I just caught that the Biden for VP text message went out at  4:30 AM, playing on Hillary's 3 AM commercial?  You know what that means?  Guess who's taking the call that the Russians are driving into Poland at 3 AM?  Joe Biden.  Obama will be on vacation body surfing.  Where reporters will be ogling and oohing his manly bare chest as the world goes to hell in a hand basket.  - Kat

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On the subject of Biden as VP candidate, this is about the funniest thing I've read.  And Goldstein's quote nails it. - FbL

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More fun with Biden. Geez, he's a goldmine of feel-good friendliness, relating to all those people "in working-class white places like Ohio, PA and W. VA" (see comments to this post if you don't know what that quote's about). - FbL

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