#1
Hey, cut her some slack. Maybe by 'the world', she thought they meant the space-time continuum. The discussion over whether space is flat or curved is a point of current scientific controversy.
#2
All the folks commenting were wrong. Flat and round are 2d concepts. The world is a 3d shape.
From Wikipedia:
The Earth's shape is very close to an oblate spheroida rounded shape with a bulge around the equatoralthough the precise shape (the geoid) varies from this by up to 100 meters (327 ft).[22] The average diameter of the reference spheroid is about 12,742 km (7,913 mi). More approximately the distance is 40,000 km/π because the meter was originally defined as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris, France.[23]
The rotation of the Earth creates the equatorial bulge so that the equatorial diameter is 43 km (27 mi) larger than the pole to pole diameter.[24] The largest local deviations in the rocky surface of the Earth are Mount Everest (8,848 m [29,028 ft] above local sea level) and the Mariana Trench (10,911 m [35,798 ft] below local sea level). Hence compared to a perfect ellipsoid, the Earth has a tolerance of about one part in about 584, or 0.17%, which is less than the 0.22% tolerance allowed in billiard balls.[25] Because of the bulge, the feature farthest from the center of the Earth is actually Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador.[26]
#3
They pay this woman a great salary for her 'work' on the View. This is a clue into the liberal dogma. She doesn't need to be smart, she only needs to be different so she can be included.
Then we can all sleep soundly.
From Denny Wilson
Quotes
Ron sent me these quotes.
(1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." Sounds like take from the rich, give to the poor. Must be Robin Hood...GOC
(2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few, and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity." Workers arise. Must be Karl Marx...GOC
(3) "(We) can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people." Rule by the proletariat. Confiscation of wealth. Must be Marx...GOC
#7
I first read about a quote similar to #1 about a year ago when she used it in a speech in SF. How's this for plagarism?
"We're going to take some things away from you to give them to people who need them"__ Hillary Clinton
"From each according to his ability. To each according to his need." __ Karl Marx
Posted by: Leon Trotsky2008 ||
09/20/2007 14:48 Comments ||
Top||
#8
I'll truly be a-fearing if he includes her in his Saturday Boob watch. *ACK*
Gotta love Denny....even Dave D does :-)
Posted by: Frank G on the road ||
09/20/2007 15:32 Comments ||
Top||
#9
You get what you vote for or less. There is always someone out there trying to run for office that thinks they know better what we need than we do. Please spare me your vision Hilliary.
This goes along with a report on this situation the other day
If Blackwater and other private contractors are shut out of Iraq, Democrats in Congress and Iranian intelligence operatives may have stumbled on a way to end the Iraq Warless than a week after Gen. Petraeus testified that the U.S. is turning the corner.
According to exclusive information obtained by Pajamas Medias Washington editor Richard Miniter, the movement of key CIA station personnel in Baghdad has been all but shut down. Are we witnessing Irans counter-strike to the surge?
By Richard Miniter, PJM Washington Editor
Movements of key CIA station personnel in Baghdadalong with most State department diplomats and teams building police stations and schoolshave been frozen for the second day in a row, according to a State department source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Essentially, the CIA, State department and government contractors are stuck inside the International Zone, also known as the Green Zone, in Central Baghdad. Even travel inside that walled enclave is somewhat restricted.
Pajamas Media is the first to report that the CIA station is all but motionlessas meetings with informants and Iraqi government officials have been hastily cancelled.
What caused the shut down? Following a firefight between Iraqi insurgents and a Blackwater USA protection detail on Sunday (12:08 PM Baghdad time), Iraqi officials suspended the operating license of the North Carolina-based government contractor. While the Iraqi government is yet to hold a formal hearing on the matter, Blackwater and all it protects remain frozen.
By jamming up Blackwater, they shut down the movements of the embassy and the [CIA] station, a State department source told Pajamas Media. He is not cleared to talk to the press.
Blackwater provides Personnel Security Detailsor PSDsfor most CIA, State department, and U.S. Agency of International Development officers. In addition, Blackwaters special-forces veterans guard many of the Provincial Reconstruction Teamsor PRTsthat build schools, clinics, police and fire stations and other structures that house essential Iraqi government services. Work on these vital hearts and minds projects has all but stopped across Iraq.
The State department has long insisted on using Blackwater and other private security firms so that its convoys and legations would not be controlled by the Defense department.
There are now more private contractors working in Iraq than U.S. soldiers serving there. Many are not U.S. citizens. Triple Canopy, another private firm, usually hires Peruvians to man the checkpoints inside the International Zone and Ugandans to guard distant airbases. The Peruvians, known as incas among Americans there, usually do not speak English or Arabica persistent source of complaint by Iraqi politicians who speak one or both languages.
At least eight Iraqis are reported dead after the Sunday shoot out and some press reports refer to the local casualties as civilians.
Initial press accounts were inaccurate, said Blackwater USA spokeswoman Anne Tyrell. The civilians reportedly fired upon by Blackwater professionals were in fact armed enemies and Blackwater personnel returned defensive fire. Blackwater regrets any loss of life but this convoy was violently attacked by armed insurgents, not civilians, and our people did their job to defend human life.
Blackwater professionals heroically defended American lives in a war zone on Sunday and Blackwater will cooperate with any inquiry into this matter.
Its well known in Iraq that dead insurgents become civilians as soon as their comrades carry away their AK-47s and spare magazines. Captured al Qaeda manuals detail how militants should use deaths as a propaganda tool.
TIME magazine received a partial copy of the official incident report.
According to the incident report, the skirmish occurred at 12:08 p.m. on Sunday when, the motorcade was engaged with small arms fire from several locations as it moved through a neighborhood of west Baghdad. The team returned fire to several identified targets before leaving the area. One vehicle engine was hit and disabled by bullets and had to be towed away. A separate convoy arriving to help was blocked/surrounded by several Iraqi police and Iraqi national guard vehicles and armed personnel, the report says. Then an American helicopter hovered over the traffic circle, as the U.S. convoy departed without casualties. Some reports have said the helicopter also opened fire on Iraqis, but a Blackwater official told TIME that no shots were fired from the air.
By apparently lifting Blackwaters license, the democratically elected Iraq government may stall the forward progress created by the Gen. Petraeus surge and change in counterinsurgency tactics.
Indeed, some contend that the actions of Iraqs Ministry of Interior, which supervises police and some intelligence functions, may be influenced by insurgents or even by Iran.
The staffing and internal rules of the Interior ministry were set up by Biyat Jabr, an affable and charming Shia Muslim who once worked for Saddam Hussein. (He was never a member of the Baath party and thus survived de-Baathification with ease.)
Jabr is widely believed to be in the pay of Iranian intelligence services, although U.S. officials caution that there is no firm evidence of this charge. Jabr left the ministry in August 2006 and is now Finance Minister, but before he exited he salted the ranks with people loyal to Iran and hostile to the U.S. Innocents dying [in the Sunday gun battle with Blackwater] is just a pretext, the same State department source said.
Enemies of the U.S. inside the Interior ministry have been looking to shut down Blackwater for some time.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has adopted the same hard line against the American company. This company should be punished. We are not going to allow it to kill Iraqis in cold blood. We have frozen all its activities and a joint panel has been formed to investigate the incident, the prime minister told wire-service reporters.
For their own interests, the Americans should hire a new company to protect their people so they can move freely.
Both the State department and the Congress have signaled that investigations in to Blackwater will begin soon.
The State department hopes to shift blame onto Blackwaters low-level trigger pullers, says the State department source, while Rep. Henry Waxmans committee is expected to target senior executives at Blackwater and top Bush Administration officials. A perfect storm is set to roil Blackwater.
If Blackwater and other private contractors are shut out of Iraq, Democrats in Congress and Iranian intelligence operatives may have stumbled on a way to end the Iraq Warless than a week after Gen. Petraeus testified that the U.S. is turning the corner.
#2
- This may be a blessing in disguise. The reason the State Dept. was employing Blackwater was so that it wouldn't be dependent on the DOD. This smacks of turf warfare. I suspect the DOD is perfectly capable of replacing Blackwater in this role, the personnel commitment doesn't seem all that great.
- I also suspect that a better integration of State/CIA/DOD is probably a good thing, particularly if the DOD gets a bigger say.
#3
Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw your own mother!
I'll have to find a way to use that one in a letter to opposing counsel.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/20/2007 12:00 Comments ||
Top||
#4
The Cossacks have a way with words. My younger brother started his army career as a Russian linguist. The last six weeks of his language training at Monterey were devoted to Russian profanity. He said that Russian had some of the most colorful language imaginable. One of his favorite expressions, a description of a pompous officer (and applicable to most turbans): "He farts wider than his asshole."
#7
LOL. :) Great reply to the muzzies. If only I could picture this reply being sent by a Western leader in modern times to Assad or Ahmadinejad or some other drek. Damn political correctness and damn it again.
#1
If it continues on this course, France will no longer be viewed as an opponent of the U.S. and will become anathema to the Islamic world, just like Britain.
By Amir Taheri
Ever since it was driven out of southern Lebanon in last year's mini-war, the Hezbollah has pursued a strategy aimed at replacing the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora with one in accord with the regional ambitions of Syria and Iran.
The strategy started with the withdrawal of Hezbollah ministers from Siniora's coalition Cabinet in the hope that this would force the prime minister either to adopt policies that Iran and Syria wanted or face the collapse of his government.
When that did not work, Hezbollah allied itself with a faction of Maronite Christians led by ex-General Michel Aoun to form a pincer with which to crack the Siniora government.
When the addition of Aoun to the anti-government plot failed to produce the desired result, Hezbollah went for direct action. It deployed tens of thousands of professional protesters in the streets of Beirut to besiege government offices and paralyse the administration.
Almost a year later, however, that tactic, too, has failed. Then came a direct bid to provoke a civil war by unleashing the so-called Fatah Al Islam (Victory of Islam), a radical armed group linked to Al Qaida, near the Sunni heartland of Tripoli.
However, the revived Lebanese army remained loyal and proved that it was willing and able to defend the democratically elected government.
All those events weakened the Lebanese economy by keeping the tourists and foreign investors away. However, the economic collapse desired by Hezbollah and Aoun did not materialise.
Throughout this year a long tug of war, Hezbollah and Aoun had one key card to play: President Emile Lahoud. Owing the extension of his presidency to Syria, Lahoud has done all in his power to help Tehran and Damascus win in Lebanon.
Nevertheless, Lahoud's efforts to derail the government have also failed. Lahoud's term of office, including the three-year bit added to it under Syrian pressure, ends in November.
Under the Constitution, the process of choosing a new president starts on September 23 and should be completed within two months. Under an unwritten convention, the president must belong to the Maronite community but cannot be elected without the support of a majority of the members of the parliament.
Two points are already clear.
First, Aoun, who abandoned his life-long opposition to Syrian domination in the hope of getting the presidency, is unlikely to achieve his goal. His Iranian and Syrian allies have already decided to betray him by offering a compromise on what they term "a consensual candidate".
The second point is the fact that the national coalition that backs the Siniora government has the majority required to choose the next president with or without the Hezbollah-Aoun axis.
However, the simple majority rule becomes operational after the parliament has failed to agree on a candidate of consensus. This is why Tehran and Damascus have started manoeuvres aimed at imposing a consensus candidate, that is to say someone not committed to the democratic coalition's political agenda.
Lahoud has suggested that the army chief of staff General Michel Suleiman be chosen interim president for three years. Such a move would keep Lebanon in a state of uncertainty well into the year 2010, the date that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fixed as one marking the "total defeat" of the United States' strategy to bring democracy to the Middle East.
There is, however, no chance that Lahoud's idea would fly if only because it violates the constitution.
This is why Lahoud has flown a second kite by suggesting that he should stay in place until after a new general election chooses a new parliament.
Lebanon's anti-democratic forces have other tricks up their sleeve. One is the idea that the parliament should name its oldest member as president. Another is to choose a technocrat, someone like the Central Bank governor Riad Salamah.
Sadly, some in the State Department in Washington appear to be tempted by such ideas and have even tried to persuade the Europeans, especially the resurgent French, to consider a compromise.
There is, however, no logical, constitutional or political reason to allow the Hezbollah-Aoun axis and its allies in Tehran and Damascus to escape the consequences of their defeat. They must not be allowed even a half-victory.
Planned putsch
To dress its planned putsch in some legal garb, the anti-democratic axis claims that no president could be elected outside the parliament building and that a simple majority would not be sufficient.
Both claims are false. Three previous presidents, Suleiman Frangieh, Bashir Gemayel and Rene Mouaouad were elected outside the parliament building. And Frangieh won the presidency with a simple majority of the parliamentarians present.
Under the constitution, the present parliament has the duty of choosing a new president thus ensuring the continuity of the state before a new general election is called.
The democratic majority should agree on a list of two or three candidates for the presidency and submit it to the parliament. Whoever secures a simple majority should be declared president.
The Western democracies and the Arab states interested in an independent Lebanon should support whoever wins. Any attempt at helping the putschist minority escape the consequences of its miscalculations would be a betrayal of Lebanon's democratic aspirations.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[7 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
#1
REALCLEARPOLITICS > RECKONING WITH SYRIA article. Congresswoman says she is introducing legislation calling for US suppor for the "liberation" of Syria's peoples from Terror and anti-democracy???
Anti Syrian MP Antoine Ghanem was murdered on Wednesday, just days away from the parliamentary elections to appoint Lebanon's next president. 5 others were killed, and over 50 wounded. A powerful blast that ripped through Ghanem's car in the east Beirut Sin el-Fil suburb, in what appears to be a bloody scheme to strip the Anti Syrian March 14 coalition of its parliamentary majority just six days before a scheduled session to elect a new president.
Antoine Ghanem was the eighth member of the anti-Syrian majority to be assassinated since the 2005 murder of former billionaire premier Rafiq Hariri. World powers condemned the attack as a blatant bid to destabilize Lebanon ahead of Tuesday's parliamentary session to choose a successor to pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, saying it exacerbated a months-long political crisis.
A 40-kilogram strong car bomb explosion shattered Ghanem's black Chevrolet Sedan as it drove in the plush suburb, killing him and eight other people, including his driver and an unidentified person who was sitting next to the slain MP on the back seat of the vehicle. Two of the deputy's bodyguards were among the dead, according to Ghanem's daughter, Mounia.
Tongues of flame shot up from the wreckage of Ghanem's car and at least eight other vehicles as fire fighters combated the blaze and ambulances evacuated at least 47 wounded people to nearby hospitals. The powerful explosion, which echoed across the Lebanese capital, shattered glass windows in Sin el-Fil and the plush suburb of Horsh Tabet.
People wailed and screamed at hospitals where some of the injured were transported and pleaded with staff for information about the fate of loved ones. "Tony is gone, Tony is gone. My tall blond son is gone," wailed a woman, as she pulled her hair and raised her hands to the sky outside the Lebanese Canadian Hospital. She said her son, Tony Daou, 23, was a bodyguard of Ghanem.
The crime was committed three months after a similar car bomb explosion on June 14 which claimed the life of MP Walid Eido. Ghanem, 64, returned to Beirut from safe haven in Abu Dhabi two days ago.
The crime was committed three months after a similar car bomb explosion on June 14 which claimed the life of MP Walid Eido. Ghanem, 64, returned to Beirut from safe haven in Abu Dhabi two days ago. Fellow Christian MP Antoine Andraos said Ghanem had called him "earlier in the afternoon to ask me where he could get a bullet-proof car."
"He felt threatened, just like all the other members of the majority are threatened by the regime of (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad," he said in tears.
MP Saad Hariri blamed the assassination on the "cowardly regime" of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Druze leader Walid Jublatt also said Assad's regime is behind Ghanem's assassination, pledging that "we will not succumb to Bashar Assad's threat." A Friend of the victim, speaking on condition of anonymity, quoted Ghanem as telling him Tuesday evening: "I face the threat of assassination. They want to kill me to open the door for by-elections to choose a new MP from (Michel Aoun's) Free Patriotic Movement."
Ghanem had represented the Baabda-Aley constituency in parliament since the year 2000. Ghanem's constituency houses Hizbullah's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the party that is opposed to the March 14 alliance carries a sizeable influence. Hizbullah, also backed by Iran, is allied with Aoun's FPM in the attempt to topple Prime Minister Fouad Saniora's government and prevent the election of a new president who is not controlled by the Damascus regime of President Bashar Assad.
In addition to Ghanem and Eido, MP and Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a prominent member of the Phalange Party and the March 14 alliance, was gunned down by unidentified assailants on Nov. 21. By-elections held on Aug. 5 in Gemayel's Metn constituency were won by FPM candidate Camille Khoury, thus stripping the March 14 alliance of a vote in the presidential elections to choose a successor to Syrian-Backed President Emile Lahoud.
Pro Syrian Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri had summoned Parliament to elect a head of state on Sept. 25. Lahoud's extended term expires on Nov. 24.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
Yet another act of war. Yet again the free world sits on its hands.
By Karen Hughes
The recent video reappearance of Osama bin Laden is a stark reminder that murderous extremists continue to threaten innocent people worldwide. His emergence - after three years of hiding - also provides an opportunity to reevaluate bin Laden's standing in majority-Muslim countries. Several reputable polls show that bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network have suffered a dramatic decline in approval among Muslims since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Polling in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, reveal that more than 90 percent of those populations have unfavorable views of AI-Qaeda and of bin Laden himself. This astonishingly high rate of disfavor no doubt reflects the horrible violence that these two populations have suffered at the hands of bin-Laden and his network of killers. Just two years ago in Turkey, polls showed that 90 percent of citizens there believe that the Al-Qaeda bombings in London, Istanbul, Madrid and Egypt were unjust; 86 percent thought that there was no excuse for condoning the September 11 attacks; and 75 percent said bin Laden does not represent Muslims.
Another study shows that since 2002 support for terrorist tactics has fallen - often dramatically - in seven of eight predominantly Muslim countries that were polled as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project (www.pewglobal.org). Five years ago in Lebanon, 74 percent of the population agreed that suicide bombing could sometimes be justified. Today, only 34 percent hold that view - still too high, but a stark reversal nonetheless. Similar declines in support have also occurred in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indo nesia and Jordan.
Equally significant, Muslims the world over are openly rejecting bin Laden's attempts to pervert their faith. WorldPublicOpinion.org (www.worldpublicopinion.org) found in April that large majorities in Egypt (88 percent), Indonesia (65 percent) and Morocco (66 percent) agree that groups such as Al-Qaeda violate the principles of Islam. These shifts in attitude are beginning to show up in actions. Sunni leaders in Iraq's Anbar Province are working with coalition forces against Al-Qaeda because they say the terrorists bring only chaos, "Killing people, stealing. . . , everything, you name it," as one local leader commented.
Osama bin Laden's recent tape was a reminder that he and his network offer only destruction and death. Their attacks on mosques, shrines and even wedding celebrations confirm that they care nothing about innocent Muslims. As one woman in Algeria put it, "They are criminals who want to sabotage the country." That is a message bin Laden will not convey on tape, but one that his actions make clear. Six years after September 11, good and decent people of many faiths and cultures are increasingly rejecting his brutal methods.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/20/2007 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
I don't like Karen Hughes, her policies or her actions. I find this op-ed piece to be particularly useless.
#3
Bush brought in Hughes to deal with (and shut the f' up) the prattling Left and RINOs, whose demands for a "hearts and minds" campaign in the Middle East had become so annoying and cloying that someone - Hughes - was assigned to make empty gestures to get that crap off the table and those people to quiet down. And that's exactly what she's doing - making empty, meaningless gestures to keep the "can't we all just be friends" crowd quiet while Bush sees if he can get something going on the ground in Iraq to turn the situation around. Remember when the whole country was up in arms about how we keep dropping bombs and not "listening" and not doing "outreach" and not forming "cultural bridges"? Where'd all that pointless drivel go? That is Hughes' job - to make all that crap go down to a simmer by making empty gestures, so Bush can concentrate on the war. At least that's what I think, but I've overestimated how much strategy is going on over at Bush headquarters in the past. Maybe it's not that strategic; maybe it's the same nepotism that got Harriet Myers nominated for the Supreme Court. But if it's a strategy, as opposed to nepotism, it's not that bad a strategy. The press eats that sh*t up.
Says a poster at Atlas Shrugged, which I found whilst trying to see why Sea is so annoyed with Karen Hughes.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/20/2007 11:23 Comments ||
Top||
Lotp to the white courtesy phone, please (er, if I remember correctly). This was an opinion piece in the Columbia Spectator, of Columbia University, but I'm sending you to the copy at the IvyGate blog, because somehow the article has become unavailable on the Spectator's site. Heavily edited for length and maximum buffoonery.
I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, Wow, you must be smart.
When my brother was getting ready to go to the Naval Academy, everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was...one uncle who works on Wall Street said..."You will be set for life."...So in June, my family dropped him off in Annapolis.
Soon that pride turned to anger and fear: after my mom dropped him off at Annapolis, she came home with an acute sense of grief. The only thing she could talk about was how to get him out...she was scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy.
She begged me to call a naval lieutenant Monday morning to start the out-processing forms for my brother.
When I looked at the course catalogue, which boasted seminars about leadership and selflessness, they were in fact seminars about weaponry and leading troops into combat. The reality of sending my brother to the Naval Academy began to set in: this was not a school; this was the military. OK, this is as much as I can stand. Short version -- rilly rilly smart Columbia student has a brother at Annapolis, which she realizes -- too late! -- is not an elite college after all, but part of the U.S. military!They must get him out! Complicating matters is all this pesky "oath" business, plus the fact that her brother doesn't want to leave. We are promised a four-part series.
#4
The service academies are indeed military units.
They are also elite schools. West Point is in the top 5 nationally for most engineering fields (among schools that don't have graduate degree programs, i.e. not counting big research universities). Academy grads get into graduate schools like MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, Princeton .... including into their business schools. I know several West Point grads who did their grad work at Columbia, in fact.
And cadets meet those standards while also maintaining physical fitness plus learning how to lead. Contrary to this airhead's assumptions, there's a good deal of organizational and personal psychology and social science behind the leadership courses at the Academies. One reason so many businesses are quick to hire Academy grads when they come available.
Good luck to this young woman on that Columbia reputation thing. If that doesn't get her the oooohs she wants I hear expensive purses are still hot in Manhattan - she could invest the tuition in them. Wouldn't be any more of a waste than where she's spending it. If she's on scholarship, tho, she'll probably need to flash her shaved private parts or write a sex blog or something ....
After that, it's all how good you are, not the school's rep.
What a sad little pony she is.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/20/2007 5:49 Comments ||
Top||
#6
I am very proud of my attendance and academic record at the Academy. It was only after repeated deployments to the sexual Disney Land of Submic Bay (Olongapo), many cases of San Miguel beer, and crossing shi* river a couple of thousand times did I begin to notice a degree of mental degeneration and frequent lusting in my heart after wimin. Beer and LBFM's have left me a wasted man, a mindless, quivering democrat.
Posted by: Jimmy Carter ||
09/20/2007 6:03 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Oh well .. every school has its failures.
By the way, the tactical officers at West Point (senior captains, mostly majors) take a master's degree in organizational behavior, psychology etc. before instructing in leadership and overseeing the corps of cadets.
Want to guess which well known university in NYC gives the degree?
#10
I look forward to seeing Miss Barnard and her Mom dressed in pink, waving signs, and singing "We Shall Overcome" outside the Academy gates of a Friday evening...
#11
This is really strange. I've known several people who have attended (or currently attend) our military academies. All of them understood exactly what they were getting into and worked extraordinarily hard for the opportunity.
I don't know what percentage of applicants are accepted, but its got to be pretty low. None of the academies need to con people into attending.
This is either a clueless twit with a high IQ or someone trying to fit into the in crowd at Columbia by claiming her poor brother was victimized by the military.
#12
Soon that pride turned to anger and fear: after my mom dropped him off at Annapolis, she came home with an acute sense of grief. The only thing she could talk about was how to get him out. In addition to missing his presence at home, she was scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy.
Geez, maybe he went there to get away from his suffocating mom and high society douchebag sister?
#14
The service academies have their advantages and their disadvantages. Annapolis and the Air Force Academy do far better than West Point, because they still control much of the "top tier market" of officers in their branches.
West Point, on the other hand, has been relegated to a minority status in the Army, and its graduates have to prove themselves as acceptable leaders before the dominant ROTC officers will look at them with anything other than suspicion and mistrust, for either being martinets or slackers. Many West Pointers do not openly brag of the fact, except in the West Point heavy Engineer branch.
And the Army is rife with horror stories about failed West Pointers. One I knew was driven out as a Captain because of his uncanny tactlessness and arrogance. He had a positive gift for insulting people of importance and respect, including war heroes.
#16
This was in the 1980s. The Captain in question had been assigned to an ROTC at a university. In short order he had managed to piss off most of the other officers, the senior NCOs, the ex-OSS Dean of the college of Liberal Arts, the US Civil War expert Assistant Dean, several prominent Conservative faculty who were providing guest lectures to the Military Science Department, a highly decorated retired LTC Vietnam War Green Beret hero, a highly decorated Airborne Major Vietnam War hero, and even a very old retired Lt General who had been on MacArthur's staff, who was the Dean of the Athletic Department.
In other words, a truly gifted individual young Captain.
His OER was described as being heavily crumpled, and impressed with boot prints and brown streaks. He left the Army shortly thereafter.
Otherwise, an enlisted friend told me he had been chastised by a LTC for offering to save the life of a West Point officer who through his own incompetence has set his own GP medium tent on fire with himself stuck in it, by playing around with a gasoline furnace. He saved his life, anyway.
#17
Might want to take a look at what's happened at the Point and to the corps in the 20+ years since then.
There are jerks and ring knockers that graduate from time to time. Known a few. But it's a pretty different place now than in the late 70s when your captain would have graduated.
Today's cadets are running IED detection/avoidance drills in their sophomore year. Juniors are spending their summers in some cases doing air assault school. And there's a small but influential number of cadets coming to the academy now after combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Anti Syrian MP Antoine Ghanem was murdered on Wednesday, just days away from the parliamentary elections to appoint Lebanon's next president. 5 others were killed, and over 50 wounded. A powerful blast that ripped through Ghanem's car in the east Beirut Sin el-Fil suburb, in what appears to be a bloody scheme to strip the Anti Syrian March 14 coalition of its parliamentary majority just six days before a scheduled session to elect a new president.
