Obama’s Dangerous Message to Our Children

School begins for our nation’s children. What’s the biggest danger they confront: drugs, gangs, flu, cooties, dropping out, crumbling classrooms, bullies, big classes, bad teaching, dorky-looking gym suits?

No.

It is a live video visit from the so-called “President of the United States,” THE OBAMA, apparently some kind of space alien carrying a brain-eating contagion that feeds on the minds of our young.

Federal Education Inculcator Arne Duncan admits that The Obama entity will speak directly to innocent kids on September 8th and “challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

Real Americans know what that means:

Final Debate Parties Are Brewing

[UPDATE: See Fear, Ignorance, and Plumbing on the Campaign Trail]

Senators McCain and Obama meet at Hofstra University this Wednesday evening for their third and final presidential debate. CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer will moderate. The debate will concentrate on three major areas of domestic policy: the economy, the economy, and the economy. America expects a spirited exchange.

The most spirited audiences will be in taverns across America, especially in the Washington, DC area. The Washingtonian After Hours blog has published a bipartisan list of bar debate-watching parties, and we expect the Washington Post to compile their list soon.

Many bars are featuring debate-watching specials. The event is being held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, on New York’s Long Island, so if things get dull, order a Long Island Iced Tea.

Third Presidential Debate. Wednesday, October 15, 2008. 9PM Eastern. Moderator: Bob Schieffer. Broadcast on all known media channels except where other playoff games are necessary).

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

GOP Rebels Bushwack Bailout

Breaking ranks with the Administration and their party’s leadership, Free Market Fundamentalist rebels within the GOP defeated economic bailout legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, getting folksy metaphors recorded on C-SPAN and driving the stockmarket into a 700 hundred point dive, largest one-day drop in history. $1.2 trillion in market value dissappeared immediately because these GOP ideologues threw a snit fit. That’ll help those widows and orphans who still have anything left in their investment accounts! Yayhoo! A big ol’ Rebel Yell on ya.

The vote failed 228-205. Anybody know how many of those grandstanding “Nay” voters are up for re-election next month? Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . . .

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

 

Cheney’s Quagmire and the USMC

 In 1994, ex-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney spoke with C-SPAN’s Bruce Collins about why U.S. forces did not go on to Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War: “How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”

Innocently retrieved from the C-Span archives last month, this snip of video has Desert-Stormed the Web, with over a million views on YouTube and counting. Mary Ann Akers gives the best account of this video resurrection, but there is more to this episode than the current Vice President’s embarrassment by his past video posturing.

It may not be the C-Span archives, but I was poking around a favorite information source, the free book bin outside Capitol Hill Books  (the used book store across from Eastern Market) and found a volume of readings from the 1993 U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College for the course Operations Other Than War (OOTW). It is an amazing compendium, and includes a message from Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin L. Powell, excerpts from the Small Wars Manual, and articles by Michael Schoelwer (“The Failure of the U.S. Intelligence Community in Low-Intensity Conflict: The Pattern of Warfare in the Modern World”), Colin Gray (“Combatting Terrorism”), Camille Rougeron (“The Historical Dimension of Guerilla Warfare”), and Dennis M. Drew (“Insurgency and Counterinsurgency: American Military Dilemmas and Doctrinal Proposals”). There are also documents and articles on Peacekeeping Operations.

The volume brings home the absolute appropriateness of the first Gulf War decision from a purely military perspective, without even examining legal and diplomatic considerations. I cannot imagine the agony of Marine officers who took this course and then had to execute George W. Bush’s instructions and order those under their command into combat in Iraq. Those officers certainly knew those Marines were headed straight into Chaney’s bloody “quagmire.”

In an interview on February 23, 2007, ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Chaney: “Back in 1991, you talked about how military action in Iraq would be the classic definition of a quagmire. Have you been disturbed to see how right you were?”

Chaney responded: “Well, I stand by what I said in ’91. But look what’s happened since then — we had 9/11. . . . You wish there was never a casualty, Jonathan. Always regret when you have casualties, but we are at war.”