DakotaRed

Joined

• started 81 topics
• posted 2,836 times   see topics posted on
• send a message

Posts by DakotaRed

• 
  12

  Our Leadless Feeler: Bush and Business School

  by Phantom Stranger in

  1. social
  2. current

  found object: bush's early discharge .

  they also serve who attend b-school.

  by timothy noah.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  I got an early out from my second tour in Vietnam. Guess that makes me unrespectful of the men and women serving today too, huh?
• 
  13

  For Stacy Smith - Government Spending still climbs

  by Phantom Stranger in

  1. social
  2. current

  confounding president bush's pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.

  the sudden rise in spending subject to congress's annual discretion stands in marked contrast to the 1990s, when such discretionary spending rose an average of 2.4 percent a year.

  not since 1980 and 1981 has federal spending risen at a similar clip.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.

  Then, what's all the outcry coming from Democrats about Republicans starving children and ending necessary programs? The way they have been crying for so long, you would think the government programs are non-existant.
• 
  33

  The Return of Rush Limbaugh

  by RubaDub in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  coming to a radio near you, the return of rush limbaugh.

  for those of us missing our daily fix (opps, better not use that word anymore) of rush limbaugh, it was announced on his show thursday that he will be sober enough to return to the air on monday the 17th of november.

  i'm buying my popcorn now and want to get a good seat.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  Why make excuses for someone who does NOT have the strength of his own convictions

  Why level accusations when none of us really knows anything? Isn't that what the police investigate?

  For someone who sounds like they too once had the problem, you seem mighty judgmental about others. To me, it seems like another case of self-medication that got out of hand. Whether or not he actually has kicked them remains to be seen. According to his brother, this is only completion of the first phase of his recovery. Was it constant condemnation of you that helped you stay clean for 20 years? I wouldn't think so.

  I'd be willing to bet his Monday return to the radio will be just about the largest radio audience in modern radio history. Many will tune in just to see what they can pick out for the next attack.

  Like him or hate him, he was responsible for the return of A.M. radio and the talk format becoming so popular. Even liberals who assail him can thank him for getting the ball rolling. For me, I will still listen more to Sean Hannity.
• 
  41

  Whoa--Jessica Lynch Slams Rescue 'Lies'

  by ashitaka in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12920562,00.html

  pardon me if this has already been posted.

  i looked back five pages and didn't see a thread for this.. ash.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  I guess you're right, Gretchen. Anything outside of the New York Times isn't worth reading and we all know how objective "Left Wing" propaganda is.
• 
  69

  Should The Age Of Consent Be Lowered To 13?

  by Englishman in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  at present the age of consent in the uk is 16. .

  in spain the age of consent is 13. .

  the argument i have heard put forward is that a legal age of consent has little effect on younger people.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  In the US, it seems the group most interested in lowering the age of consent, often quoting Europe's already lower ages, is NAMBLA. Kids will be kids and will start as they feel like, regardless of laws. But, society needs to protect them from older pervs who can easily sway younger ones with money and gifts.
• 
  41

  Whoa--Jessica Lynch Slams Rescue 'Lies'

  by ashitaka in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12920562,00.html

  pardon me if this has already been posted.

  i looked back five pages and didn't see a thread for this.. ash.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  Israel seems to integrate genders just fine.

  Do they?

  But for now, no matter how well they can shoot, none of these woman will actually see combat. Some will become exercise instructors, tank instructors or radio operators. Those jobs are very attractive to women: serving as an instructor for a male only unit is the closest a woman can get to a combat role today. But most women will be relegated to secretarial and support positions. Much of the work women do, admits the army spokesperson off the record, is unnecessary paper shuffling. Because Israel has compulsory service for all, the army finds work for all female soldiers even if it's a waste of time. This ensures that army service does not fall on a small percentage, but leaves many women frustrated.

  On the surface, Ben Yehuda has coped admirably with her past. She has written definitive dictionaries and history books, and has her own weekly show on Israel Radio. She was married, and has grandchildren. But she is, she says, deeply scarred by what she went through.

  "I don't recommend fighting to anyone. We need to solve the problem of equality at home: not in the battlefield. I suffered too much because of these experiences," she says.

  http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/3321/win10b.htm

  The army study mirrors the earlier findings of Israeli scholar Martin van Creveld, a specialist in international conflict and author of the book "Men, Women and War," who found that women lacked the physical strength needed for fighting at close quarters and that their relative weakness could, in some cases, put themselves and their comrades in unjustifiable danger.

  Van Creveld concluded sending women into frontline combat units would reduce efficiency, increase costs and could prove "criminal." His opinion largely swayed British officials in their 2001 decision not to lift the ban on women in combat.

  Van Creveld, who has studied the historical experiences of women in the military dating back to the Roman era, works to "explode the myth" about Israeli women in combat serving as ably as men. During the 1948 independence war, for example, women only served a brief couple of weeks on the frontlines before a group was ambushed and the desecration of their bodies prompted officials to sideline women warriors.

  http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35170
• 
  1

  Pacifist Europeans have short memories

  by DakotaRed in

  1. social
  2. current

  nice article from todays uk telegraphpacifist europeans have short memories.

  by mark steyn.

  (filed: 11/11/2003) .

  1. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  Nice article from todays UK Telegraph

  Pacifist Europeans have short memories
  By Mark Steyn(Filed: 11/11/2003)

  Today is Veterans' Day in the United States, and Remembrance Day in much of the Commonwealth. In Britain, it's now marked on the preceding Sunday, though with the traditional solemn Royal observances ("Is Charles bisexual?" ? the News Of The World).

  I bought my poppy in Montreal. "Do you know what this means?" asked the aged member of the Royal Canadian Legion as he pinned a poppy on my little girl's coat. "Oh, yes," she replied.

  "A lot of fellows your father's age have no idea," he said, grumpily.

  I'd be grumpy, too, if I were him. The Montreal branch of Ikea had just banned the Legion's poppies from its counters, which as cultural clashes go seems weirdly profound. To traditionalists, the virtues of the state are embodied in its stiff, dignified veterans.

  Whereas to the hyper-rationalists at The Guardian et al the ideal state is like an Ikea coffee table: blandly functional and easy to assemble with the right Scandinavian components. In such a present-tense culture, "remembrance" is a problematic concept. A young soldier answers the call to fight for King and country, and ends his days in a society that disputes the necessity of soldiering, the Crown and even the nation.

  After September 11, I wondered rhetorically (in The Spectator) what are we prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren't prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia - a Europe it would not be necessary to die for. Or as Robert Kagan's recent thesis puts it: these days Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.

  Can't see it working myself. A couple of months back, I found myself in the company of a recently retired Continental prime minister and mentioned what a chap in the Pentagon had said to me about how the Europeans really needed to invest in new technology or they'd no longer be able to share the same battlefield with the Americans.

  I thought I was making a boring, technocratic, Nato-expenditure sort of point, but he took it morally and visibly recoiled. "But why would we want to have such horrible weapons?" he said, aghast. "In Europe today, it is just inconceivable to possess such things."

  You can't help noticing that it's the low-tech weapons that are really horrible. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and the Congo, millions get hacked to death by machetes. Even on the very borders of EUtopia, hundreds of thousands died in the Balkans in mostly non-state-of-the-art ways until the Americans intervened.

  According to the latest estimates, the mass graves in Iraq contain the remains of at least 300,000 people, but we're still arguing about whether the war was "justified". The pacifism - or, more accurately, passivism - of Europe does not seem especially moral.

  But even the British, according to Max Hastings in The Spectator, are "furious" with America. "British soldiers and diplomats anticipated almost every misfortune that has occurred," Sir Max assures us, and proceeds to recite a long list of things the shrewd Brits told their cocky Yank cousins: the Americans don't have enough troops on the ground, and they're the wrong kind of troops anyway, ill-suited to peacekeeping, lacking the cultural sensitivity of the wise old British, etc.

  If "British soldiers and diplomats" really said all this to the Americans, the answer would seem to be obvious - You don't think there are enough troops? Send some more yourself. You think Americans are lousy at peacekeeping? Fine, we'll do the dirty work, you guys can do all the community-liaison foot patrols.

  Usually on Veterans' Day in the US, serving troops at local bases fan out to small towns in the area and participate in their parades. Not this year. There's nobody around. By contrast, between April and August the strength of the British contingent in Iraq was reduced by 75 per cent.

  The UK is one of the few credible military powers left in the developed world, yet it can't sustain a proportionate share of the burden of even a small war. And, in all his indestructible condescension, it never occurs to Sir Max to wonder how it must sound to American ears to be told you're doing it all wrong by folks who can barely do it at all.

  As to whether the Prince of Wales is bisexual, I've no idea. But I do know that, between the Guardian hyper-rationalists at home and the European Constitutionalists in Brussels, whatever supplants the House of Windsor is likely to push Britain further toward the curiously enervated condition of the modern Continental social democracy.

  The EU has done a grand job of trumpeting its weakness as strength, but the fact remains that there's something hollow at the heart of European identity. You can't be a great power without great power: Slobodan Milosevic called the EU's bluff on that a decade ago.

  When you say as much to Euro-grandees, they say, ah, but you wouldn't understand, here on the Continent we have seen the horrors of war close up, the slaughter of the Somme casts long shadows. I'll say. In the New Statesman last week, Philip Kerr managed to yoke All Quiet On The Western Front with Joan Baez and John Lennon, and unintentionally underlined just how obsolescent the Sixties folk-protest canon is. Where Have All The Flowers Gone? would have made a great song for the First World War, but not for Afghanistan or Iraq or anything we're likely to fight in the future.

  In our time, mass slaughter occurs only in places where the West refuses to act - in the Sudan or North Korea - or acts only under the contemptible and corrupting rules of UN "peacekeeping", as at Srebrenica. In Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, technological advantage changes the moral calculus: it makes war the least worst option, the moral choice. At the 11th hour of the 11th day, we should remember those who died in the Great War, but recognise that it could never be "the war to end all wars" and never should.

  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/11/11/do1102.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/11/11/ixportal.html
• 
  41

  Whoa--Jessica Lynch Slams Rescue 'Lies'

  by ashitaka in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12920562,00.html

  pardon me if this has already been posted.

  i looked back five pages and didn't see a thread for this.. ash.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  But I believe that women can have a place without the whole thing falling apart.

  Some women can, Gretchen. But, on average, females do not have the strength of males. When training standards are lowered to accomodate those women, everyone suffered, exactly as happened.

  Combat requires very difficult and stingent training and even some men cannot handle it. The majority of men cannot finish Navy SEAL training. With the job they have to perform, would it be wise to lower their training standard to accomodate anyone? I think not. Wanting to do something and being able to do it are very different matters.

  There is no such thing as a level playing field in combat. It's fight to win or die. Those with the harder training survive, those without it, die.

  The military is not the place for social experimentation. If you had read the article I recommended, you would see what happened and why and how the Marines also were ambushed the same way and were able to fight off their attackers.

  As for the hype surrounding it, the same article also mentions that early reports of what happened were given to embedded reporters along with the admonition they were "UNSUBSTANTIATED!" But, the media ran with it anyway and now, the Pentagon catches hell for it. Why isn't she lambasting the media for their part? Why only Bush and the Army? Yes, she is being used, but the one million dollars for the book seems to have eased her conscience a bit.

  No one can explain what Jessica did to receive the Bronz Star. She accepted it when she could have declined it. What I find most unconscionable was her snubbing the Iraqi Lawyer who was responsible for notifying the US Military of her whereabouts when he came to Palestine to meet her. Maybe she will clear some of it up during her Barbara Walters interview this week.

  Regardless, she has a tough time ahead and alienating those around her will only complicate matters for her. Maybe she originally thought the Army was a country club to get a free college education like others have. If so, she was wrong.
• 
  41

  Whoa--Jessica Lynch Slams Rescue 'Lies'

  by ashitaka in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12920562,00.html

  pardon me if this has already been posted.

  i looked back five pages and didn't see a thread for this.. ash.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  One thing that has been overlooked in all of this is that the people were captured despite apparently killing a lot of the Iraqi force.

  Did the fact of 11 or so that died escape you? Pfc Lori Pestewa died after capture. Even Lynch was due to have her leg amputated that night the US warmongers violated Iraqi law and kidnapped her from their loving arms. Seems I also remember a video prior to any rescue kidnapping of the POWs detainees with some bodies laying in the background with bullet holes in their heads. Maybe that one didn't make it to the BBC?
• 
  41

  Whoa--Jessica Lynch Slams Rescue 'Lies'

  by ashitaka in

  1. social
  2. current

  http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-12920562,00.html

  pardon me if this has already been posted.

  i looked back five pages and didn't see a thread for this.. ash.

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
• 

  DakotaRed

  I noticed tonight they broadcast the made for TV movie about her rescue. After Jessica exposing the story as a fraud, I wonder how many people actually watched it?

  I believe she said it was hyped and she was used, not it was fraudalent. I watched part of it and frankly, didn't see anything depicting her as a heroine. What all was dramatized and what is closer to truth, we may never know. That she was a POW and was rescued, obviously is fact.