Author: TSO

Nah, just kidding, they are going batshit crazy again.

“Freedom Flotilla: Massacre at Sea”…. What a shame they couldn’t continue with the alliteration.

Oh, and the Irish vessel enroute to the Gaza? That would be named after Rachel Corrie, shown here passing on love, Constitutionalism and American Flag Burning to the youths of Palestine.

Rachel you may recall was run over by an Isreali bulldozer when she refused to get out from in front of it when the IDF was trying to plug up smuggling tunnels. Mind you the bulldozer driver has limited visibility, and it was not one of those NASCAR bulldozers you hear so much of, but rather the old school, 5mph ones.

I love the way everyone has beatified this chick who died protecting weapons smuggling tunnels. There used to be “Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfasts” which seems the most asinine way ever to honor someone run over by a bulldozer. Just imagine if they held a JFK grape smashing event.

EDIT Sporkmaster. Normally I would write my own post but this is too good not to add.

Seems that they took video of them on their way there.But the best quote is this one.

The MV Rachel Corrie has now left Cyprus and is still making for Gaza. She is due to arrive there tomorrow – Wednesday 2nd June it is carrying 15 purely humanitarian activists and none? are carrying arms let’s all wish her a safe voyage the world is watching, you Zionist bastards

TSO Added:
S6R sent me a video that he suspects is what the Rachel Corrie thing looked like:

Old Tanker added

Hey, on the Rachel Corrie, isn’t that Michael Berryman Paul Reickhof.
from “The Hills Have Eyes”? fixed for the ever present blogmaster

“The Non-Sense We Call Memorial Day”

War veteran and Zen teacher Harvey Daiho Hilbert Roshi writes:

On my mind is the non-sense we call Memorial Day, the slick shift in language calling every soldier and sailor a “hero,” and the deceitful and manipulative bended knees and lowered heads as we “recall” our lost ones for a moment or two between beers and sales.

Real heroes are the quiet makers of peace; those who say no in the face of the charge to insanity, and those who use their heart/mind to resolve a conflict.

gratuitous (1000+ posts) Tue Jun-01-10 11:00 PM
Response to Original message
9. Destroy the heretic!
This is the Chosen People of the Promised Land of the High Church of Redemptive Violence. We teach our young from the cradle that violence is the noblest, holiest method of resolving conflict. Violence will drive out and redeem violence. Questioning or refraining from war denigrates every hero who ever donned the uniform. For heroes they are. They must be. Without qualification or exception. As the poet said, “Look at all we’ve won with the saber and the gun”!

Arugula Latte (1000+ posts) Tue Jun-01-10 11:49 PM
Response to Reply #10
13. They shouldn’t sign up in the first place.
Edited on Tue Jun-01-10 11:50 PM by Arugula Latte
If nobody joined the military, they wouldn’t be able to wages these fucking bloody wars for corporate profit.

When was the last time the U.S. military truly “defended” this country? I don’t recall any imminent invasions in the past several decades.

Edited to say: Obviously this only applies since the draft has been abolished.

Arugula Latte (1000+ posts) Wed Jun-02-10 12:09 AM
Response to Reply #15
16. It’s ruining us.
The military budget is ludicrous. We’re turning into a third-rate nation (what are we, 44th on the list or something in child mortality? The horrible statistics go on and on …) because the military sucks up all the money that could be spent on making this country so much better than it is.

I was exaggerating, but I do think we should slash the military down to a small fraction of its current size. The money suck and the mass murder of brown people done in our names are absolutely abhorrent.

Must be my war like upbringing, but I would like to stab these idiots in the dick with an ice pick.

RIP Bobby Beasley and Craig Cherry. Sorry I missed a Memorial Day post.

OK, so the first sign of trouble was when I mapquested the distance from the airport to my hotel and it read 3 hours 17 minutes. What??? Then I realize that I am flying to Asheville, and I need to be in Asheboro. Good going.

So anyway, the drive is nice, and I have a Ford POS rental, radio, no XM, no GPS etc. Also, no directions. So, as my phone is dying I send out one last SOS to VTWoody, who text’d me the correct directions. Bullet dodged. Then I start driving.
a) Do you know how many stations there are in Western North Carolina you can get on the radio?
b) Do you know how long you can keep a station in tune?

The answer to A depends on what you consider a station, and B is not damn long. And it was then that my radio pulled in this monstrosity.

At that point I was left with 3 options. 1) Drive off the cliff. 2) Park the car, jump off the cliff. 3) Find a Cracker Barrel in the next 15 miles and get a book on CD, or revert to either 1 or 2.

So, here’s to you Mrs Cashier # 1228570 from Store # 269, you are a real American Hero, and don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

BTW: Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone. I will be spending tomorrow at a picnic with Vietnam Special Forces guys, and their friends the Montagnards that they brought over here to save them from persecution and almost certain death. And on Monday, I will be going to a Memorial Day event at the JFKSWC on Bragg, hopefully with a buddy of mine who served in my platoon in Afghanistan. I hope y’all get to spend it with your brothers and sisters in arms as well.

Lorne Greene “Music” delende est.

Via the Hot Air Headline thing, I give you IVAW author Chris Hedges:

Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. They know what to do when Goldman Sachs and international bankers collude with their power elite to falsify economic data and then make billions betting that the Greek economy will collapse. They know what to do when they are told their pensions, benefits and jobs have to be cut to pay corporate banks, which screwed them in the first place. Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare—the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.

What is a few deaths in the name of demagoging corporations?

This won’t be as much fun as my sticks and stones game, so feel free to skip it. But I wanted to do a serious post pointing our how Hooper’s arguments are fatally flawed, and how his ad hominem attacks on Matt are so intellectually vacant. I sincerely believe that he has engaged in the most base line of attack of all time, I also believe that logically it is completely unsupportable.

Now, bear in mind that his original posting was to attack a piece of Crush’s. Now, had it ended there, that would be fine. But what he does is goes from point A to point B and on down the line. Crush writes something up discussing how there is too much Gov’t, wack job believes we have too much Gov’t, wack job kills cop, ergo Crush killed the cops. Now, that argument is so ridiculous and nebulous that it really doesn’t even deserve attention, which is what Jimbo argued when he finally checked in with me.

But, what Craig does is possibly even worse. Now remember, Crush has his own blog, so he can try this case in the court of public opinion by merely responding to this asshole. But Craig has to do something in between parts A and B. You see, Crush writes at Blackfive, and Matt is the *owner* of Blackfive, ergo, Matt shot the Cop. But then, we go a few steps more, and asserts that Matt has unjustly enriched himself by “wrapping himself in the flag” and using wounded warriors (presumably) to do so.

Now, what does Matt’s enrichment (alleged, not true) have to do with the Cops being shot? Well, all we have is the line of reasoning.

That line of reasoning is completely unflattering to anyone who claims to have a doctorate. Seriously, it’s like a 3rd grader with a crayon who’s making up a story as he goes along. It is shameful, and THAT is what we should be guarding against in the milblog community, not perceived threats that aren’t truly there.

OK, so then, in the comment section, he goes on to change his argument slightly to include anything said by a commenter is by definition the fault of the blogger him or herself. The gotcha game on blogs is as old as the genre, and it is still the weakest argument construction available.

This segues nicely with a recent 9th crcuit decision that deserves quoting here.

Indeed, precisely because Kehowski’s ideas fall outside the mainstream, his words sparked intense debate: Colleagues emailed responses, and Kehowski replied; some voiced opinions in the editorial pages of the local paper; the administration issued a press release; and, in the best tradition of higher learning, students protested. The Constitution embraces such a heated exchange of views, even (perhaps especially) when they concern sensitive topics like race, where the risk of conflict and insult is high. See R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 391 (1992). Without the right to stand against society’s most strongly-held convictions, the marketplace of ideas would decline into a boutique of the banal, as the urge to censor is greatest where debate is most disquieting and orthodoxy most entrenched. See, e.g., Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 667 (1925); id. at 673 (Holmes, J., dissenting). The right to provoke, offend and shock lies at the core of the First Amendment.

Now, I know this isn’t a First Amendment case, since no one in Congress is trying to stop us from saying anything. Nonetheless, if the First Amendment is predicated on such things, especially when shocking or offensive, and that this type of speech actually spurs discussion, why would Milblogs be any less of an appropriate area to hash them out in?

I don’t believe I have ever advocated violence against anyone, although I suppose it is possible in some pissed off post about Matthis. But I sure as shit am not taking the responsibility for a comment someone left. The whole idea of speech is to discuss things, dipshit here wants to take a whole portion of that speech off the table, because in his holier than though world he has assumed the mantle of arbiter of good taste and civilized discussion.

Fine, run your blog the way you want, but stop impugning the names of those better than you. And make no mistake asshole, Matt is a better man than you will ever be who has done more for troops than you ever could. I’ve been with Matt as he took guys out from Walter Reed, when he took vets to see the Nationals, when he just sat there and listened or picked up the tab. So, excuse me for telling you to shut the F* up. Matt is too much of a gentleman to take serious umbrage, luckily I am not so burdened.

I don’t know who “David Axe” is either, but he’s a big enough Moran that he deserves an honorary PHD from Harvard.

The tagline of his blog is “We go to war so you don’t have to” which ought to shock the shit out of the Palmetto State because Axe is in Columbia. He wrote a book about ROTC, a institution I am familiar with having taken ROTC in his home state. The reviews of said book were….not good.

Axe seems to have cherry-picked the cadets that he interviewed to back up his obvious anti-war and anti-Army bias. He for the most part bases his book the few cadets who failed, had doubts about the program, felt persecuted, were sub-standard, and or were not respected by the majority of the cadet battalion. I would not argue with wanting to present that side of the story if he had based his book on the majority of cadets. The majority of young men and women were there to learn how to be leaders so that they could simply go and serve their country.

and

As a current ROTC Professor of Military Science, I was very excited to learn that a book had been written about Army ROTC. I ordered a couple of copies and I and the staff read on, hoping to incorporate the book into our Freshman course. I will say that the book is at least written at the high school / college freshman level, so it has that going for it (and that it can be read in a couple of hours). Unfortunately, Axe does a woeful job in accurately portraying a “Year in the Life” of an ROTC program, and too often intersperses expletive-laden descriptors as color commentary, and throws in the occasional Political-Military opinion into the mix, disrupting the flow of the narrative and turning off many readers in mid-stream.

and

It was a very quick read, without any weighty intellectualism to slow me down as I tore through this nasty little book. Axe– a writer for the Village Voice, no less– finds a way to work his anti-war sentiment into every crevice of this book while simultaneously failing to accurately capture the spirit and motivation of the young men and women who are preparing to lead the next generation of American Soldiers.

Anyway, in his awesomely titled Calling Out the Blackfive Blog’s Extremist Rhetoric, Axe begins with:

Two years ago in D.C., I had drinks with two founding members of Blackfive, a popular conservative military blog. Jim Hanson, who goes by the handle “Uncle Jimbo” at the blog , pitched me his idea for a private, Internet-based intelligence organization that would use young freelance writers as field agents. With their journalism credentials as cover, the writers would gather data for use by U.S. government agencies.

It was, I said, the worst idea I’d heard in a long time.

I have no idea what was said at this meeting, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that everything Axe says here is true. Um, yeah, dude…. YOU WERE OUT DRINKING WITH JIMBO. If I had a $1 for every bad idea of Jimbos discussed in a bar, I would be on my yacht in Fijian waters enjoying a Mojito with the Olsen twins. Jimbo has more hair-brained schemes before 9am than most octogenarians have had in a life time. He’s Jimbo. The beauty is sticking around until he has a good one, and then pondering whether he isn’t (in fact) the long sought after Missing Link of Darwin.

When I mentioned the incident a second time, I got text messages from one of Hanson’s friends, warning me that Blackfive might be planning some kind of punitive action against me — what, they didn’t say. My response: “Bring it on.” After lots of near misses courtesy of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabab and the Chadian army, I’m really itching for a stand-up fight.

Yeah man, I also heard they put out a hit on you. They probably posted and facebook’d it. They said they wanted to give you a purple nurple, and that Jimbo was then going to shave the WLF logo into your back hair.

I love the Bushesque “Bring it on.” I mean seriously, this is some brave shit. How many times do you need to go to liveleak and see a video of Jimbo beheading someone before you take it seriously? Oh wait, I’ve been with Jimbo to ANSWER rallies and seen him try to pick up chicks. The dude is the international man of love. My worst fear with Jimbo is I might get a man hug. And if they were going to “come after you” why would they discuss it with Deep Throat?

What a minute….Did this ri-tard just compare Blackfive to “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabab and the Chadian army.” Holy shit man, as a steward of civic discourse, I think you owe it to tune it down about 50 notches. How many Blackfive authors need to be assassinated by people hopped up on your heated rhetoric before you become a faithful steward of truth, justice, mercy and neighborliness?

All this is to say, Blackfive is not just a tacky blog, it’s actually dangerous — the kind of forum that encourages violence and hatred. Don’t believe me? In a recent post discussing the U.S. national debt, Blackfive blogger “Crush” all but advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.

Yeah, any day now we should be seeing miscreants wearing “Don’t be a DouChe” shirts marauding through the streets of our Capitol screaming “Viva la Blackfive!” and “Blackfive Ackbar” as they march with their pitchforks.

I think the only way to derail this crazy train is with a good defense. Make sure every street in DC has at least one Irish Pub advertising Guinness. Then brave sir Robin David Axe can call a J-Dam in on them.

Seriously, what’s in the water lately?

BWAHAHAHA: I just got an email from a birdie who was once with Axe on a boat, when he kept introducing himself thusly: “I am David Axe, foreign correspondent.”

David was late, pompous and condescending. Favorite Axe memory? After disdaining Dramamine/Bonine because he was a world traveller/foreign correspondent, Axe was dying and puking in the male blogger stateroom (they couldn’t handle troop berthing like me) right next to the wardroom. He was moaning about the smell of bacon cooking. Mmmmmdelicious bacon. I had extra while I smiled and listened to the pain.

I am TSO, internet provacateur, and I endorse this message.

I don’t know whether to laugh, or blast this asshat. But since he is essentially attacking one of my best friends, a man who will be in my wedding, I wanted to say something.

Let’s start with this….I don’t know who Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard is, I don’t care who Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard is. No one has ever pointed me to his blog. I don’t know what kind of traffic he has, I only know he apparently writes about the Navy from the rather creepy picture he has of himself on an aircraft carrier. (He likes “creepy” so I am going to use it in a creepy fashion to address the infinitely creepy Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard.)

Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard begins this anal fissure of a post with an indictment of military blogs who apparently enticed an insane dude to shoot at police in Arkansas.

This weekend, as the nation mourns the loss of two dedicated law enforcement officers–shot at the hands of anti-government extremists (one suspect served in the  Army Reserves), I want to take a minute to address certain milblogs and anti-government rhetoric.

We milbloggers have a responsibility to be good stewards of civic behavior.  Anti-government rhetoric, “wink-wink” anti-government incitement and calls for violence must not find a place in America’s milblog community.

We milbloggers have a responsibility to be good stewards of civic behavior? What exactly do you mean by that Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard? How in the Holy name of Spongebob did we get assigned the role of being stewards of civic behavior? And where can I go to get my job description changed? See, without a PHD (from Harvard!) I am unable to divine without the help of my betters wherein I signed up to be the sole shepherd for the body politic of people in the civic square. In point of fact, I must have skipped that class, and someone forgot to share the notes.

Not content to merely lay the shooting at the feet of milbloggers (in our assumed role as good stewards of civic behavior), Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard then goes after my friend Matt. First with the hallmark vituperative, erudite, creepy (Yes! Worked it in again) and profligate panache which is formed in the crucible of Harvard PHD’s, Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard, assails a post by Crush from Blackfive. You can go read it for yourself, but in a manner only capable from an esteemed PHD from Harvard, Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard, provides an exhaustive synopsis worthy of Cliff (either of Cliff’s notes or the Klaven variety): “Creepy, huh? Not only is the post factually wrong, it’s a thinly-veiled call for violence.”

It’s times like this where I wish I had a trademark on the word “Creepy” but alas, my father bequeathed to me only one for the question mark.

Now, mind you that I read Crush’s post, couldn’t figure out what in the hell he was talking about, and immediately hit the back button. But, that is because I am merely a JD, George Mason University, it takes a Harvard PHD, someone of inestimable value and worth like Craig Hooper (the totally non-creepy PHD from Harvard) to turn it into a Ludlum novel worthy of such luminaries (but alas, not PHD’s from Harvard) as the SPLC, Robert Ludlum himself, Gordon Duff, Gordon Lightfoot, Gordon Gecko, the gecko from Geico, the Caveman from Geico, that caveman in the Pauly Shore movie and everyone who ever visited the shores of Tripoli, be they Marines or no.

But, enough of such intellectual minutea, back to our fisking of our friend Matt:

Being concerned, I wrote the publisher/founder of the site, Matt Burden, and expressed my feelings about the post. What I got back was not something I’d have expected from a patriotic American. Matt, for those who don’t know, is a former vet. He ran for elected office. He visited the White House. He serves on the Warrior Legacy Foundation. He is a trustee of Soldiers’ Angels and is a member of Team Rubicon’s Board. Matt even claims he “is currently consulting with the Obama administration on behalf of military and veterans affairs.”

In short, Matt is a guy who makes a good living by dressing up in the U.S. Flag.

Were I a less noble man, one who didn’t have the great honor of having read this intellectual bit of diamond in the roughage that is the intertubes, I might invite Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard to ponder best how one might fornicate with onesself. But alas, when addressing one such as he, a hallowed, venerable and (dare I say it?) almost Demigod among us flotsam of the milblog community, one must intellectually genuflect at the altar of Harvard PHDs. So, instead I will confine my comments to an unsuitable defense (for not all of us are equipped intellectually to be PHDs from Harvard) for my man Matt. (Woe that my synapsis fire at such a retarded rate as the hallowed PHDs of harvard.)

“Makes a good living” implies that Matt is somehow enriching himself at a rate that puts his lifestyle somewhere beyond the dreams of avarice (what movie?) and into the affluent ranks of such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jk Rowling, and the aforementioned salamander of unknown (New Zealand?) origin who shills for the insurance company. Matt ran for office, and got beat like a drum at the Mummers Parade (for a job that pays jack shit a meager pittance); and WLF, SA and TR are small non-profits. I don’t know if Matt gets any money for any of them, but what I do know is if he does, that recompense wouldn’t come remotely close to bringing him up to even on what he pays to do his philanthropic work. But, I’m guessing that Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard, has no clue what he makes either. Here’s an idea which I’m sure, as a PHD from Harvard, Craig Hooper already has done but not shared, how about showing us the tax returns for those organizations and tell us what he gets paid.

Let us strive to be precise Craig Hooper, PHD Harvard: are we not the stewards of the civic behavior, and would this not fall under that? I would not stand for any cretin, Croation, crouton, catamite, Callipygian or other falsely accusing Craig Hooper (who I believe has his PHD from Harvard) of not having done his due diligence on behest of the body politic which he himself has donned the mantal of stewardship.

The assertion that Matt has become wealthy by dressing himself in the US Flag is noxious, perhaps noscible, a nidifice of nequient nerterology, certainly novaturient, but alas, also nepheliad. (That former section brought to you by dead words of the English language.) So, in the interests of protecting the hallowed name of Craig Hooper, indeed, in protecting the hallowed name of Harvard PHDs everywhere, I call on you, Craig Hooper (who, as memory serves has a PHD from Harvard) to precisely lay out your argument in a fashion which us mortals, creepy beings of our lower existence, the sheep to your shepherding, the vegetarian stew to your stewardship might more easily understand.

Failing that, how about putting up or shutting up?

TSO
Public School Degenerate.

Some other kernals of corn from the shit soup that is this post of our esteemed PHD from Harvard should have been included, but I lack the wit to properly defend, since alas, I am merely the spawn of public schools and the infantry:

* Please join me in calling out those milbloggers who traffic in anti-American rhetoric
* And now, two law enforcement officers are dead. Egged on by the violent anti-government rhetoric sites like Blackfive spew every single day. Blackfive’s anti-government rhetoric speaks for itself.
* I’m worried that guys who find community and strength in Blackfive.net’s stock-and-trade of anti-government rhetoric will act upon what they read…
* If we–the responsible people–don’t do anything now, how will we feel when a vet in government service (or one of us, even) is killed by a vet who consumed too much of the stuff blackfive.net produces? Intervene. Join me.

As far as I am concerned, Craig Hooper, PHD from Harvard should go eat a heaping bag of steamed dicks take a Xanax.

Blackfive sends this along with the note that we went to the wrong college. Yeah, no joke.

MAY 24–For the second time in recent weeks, a chapter of the Pi Beta Phi sorority is being accused of drunkenly trashing a facility during a formal dance. At a March 6 party sponsored by the group’s Ohio University chapter, attendees engaged in sex acts, used plates as “missiles” during food fights, vomited on carpets, defecated in urinals, and tried to tear off the clothes of a female bartender, according to a letter written by the director of the West Virginia art center where the formal was held. In her April 6 letter to the sorority, a copy of which you’ll find below, Abby Hayhurst, head of the Parkersburg Art Center, reported that catering staff witnessed “a couple engaging in sexual congress, while surrounded by a cheering throng,” and that a bathroom sink was broken as a result of “one of your members and her date attempting to have sexual relations on it, an act which was witnessed by the event’s caterer, who walked in on them.” The art center, which reported the damage to the Parkersburg Police Department, is seeking about $47,000 from the sorority, which contends that the art center has exaggerated its damages.

My PSG went to Ohio University, but the craziest thing I ever remember him doing was watching the Blue Collar Comedy Tour back to back to back once when we were on QRF. (Hi SFC Hall!)