Day: January 12, 2011

GOP’s Tuscon Point Man

Since the horrible situation in Arizona, the shooting of all those people, the GOP has been on a relentless trip to vindicate all the hate speech that has been leveled at Obama and the Dems in the past couple of years….terms like armed and dangerous, use your 2nd amendment right, need to reload, and all the gun violence symbolism……they are trying desperately to shirk their responsibility for these illustrations that they used to win elections and inflame the base……

Now the GOP has as point man for all the criticism, Gov. Pawlenty of Minnesota, he has taken to the airways and given the same interview no less than 8 times…the same talking points with very little variations….here are some of his talking points….

“There’s a term for that in politics. They say, “Go out and give them the red meat.” And so, it’s…think of that imagery of dangling raw meat in front of, you know, the predator. But all of us, in the case of the politicians, I don’t think we want to get to a point where we’re deterring or chilling free speech or passion or enthusiasm or the kinds of things that fuel grassroots politics…

Basically, what he is saying, at least in my mind, all the rhetoric of anger and hate is just isolated occurrences…..but words of hate and anger DO have consequences…..as I keep saying….it is NOT the intent of the speaker but rather the perception of the listener…….

Maybe instead to spending all one’s time trying slough off the responsibility they should turn now to sanity and rationality…just like yelling “fire” in a crowded room is NOT free speech,  maybe it is time to look at the lunatic talk that goes on and ask that a toning down of hate would be prudent…..

Yes, we cannot blame anyone but the person that commits the violence…..but on the other hand, he got the idea from somewhere!

Military Must Be Ready For The Next War

College of Political Knowledge

International series

Any military must be ready for the next “great” war…..troops must be trained and in full readiness…..logistics….so on and on…..it must be ready for anything at anytime……The US military is failing in that area…..God knows where the next one will pop up or why…….

There has been a growing concern that the US forces would not be capable of large scale military action….why?  They have been spending all their time since about 2003 with counterinsurgency ops….they have lost the edge that it once had as a protector of the world….

From column by David Wood…….

The risk of being unready for major combat operations is partly a matter of choice: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed the military to focus its time, resources and energy on winning the counterinsurgency struggle in Afghanistan. That’s the kind of conflict the United States is likely to be entangled in for the foreseeable future, according to current Defense Department plans.

It is also true, senior officials acknowledge, that the armed forces lack the time to train for and equipment to fight a major conflict that might ignite from friction with Iran, say, or China, or deal with a completely unanticipated crisis that requires American forces to quickly intervene — like Korea, 1950.

“There’s a belief that the president of the United States can pick up the red phone and order forcible entry operations” like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, said Army Maj. Gen. Dan Bolger, who commands the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana. “But that takes practice, and we don’t get a lot of practice.”

Readiness is dropping like a lead balloon….maybe the war hawks should take that into consideration before they re-start the “Bomb…Bomb  Iran” song that made McCain famous in 2008….I realize that most do not care about the welfare of the troops (except when a needed political prop)  and to start an all out war now….would be insanity…..but then NO one ever said those idiots were sane…..