Music of the Day: Sadao Watanabe, Sweet Deal

Two news stories on the internet caught my eye this week, one sublime, the other ridiculous.

First, the sublime story--the presentation of the Congressional Medal of Honor to the parents of Navy Lt. Michael Murphy for his actions in a firefight with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan; Murphy and two other SEAL team members were killed in this particular fight in 2005. As per usual, no mention in the main-stream media was made of the CMH presentation, unless I just missed it, which is always possible. But given the near total lack of media coverage of anything heroic accomplished by American troops in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else, this isn't all that surprising--see my earlier posting here entitlted "Fame, Thy Name is. . .Anna Nicole Smith," which concerns itself with the dearth of media coverage for two other CMH winners, both in Iraq, Jason Dunham and Paul Smith. Murphy joins these two valiant men in utter anonymity while having earned this nation's highest military honor. The AP news story about Murphy and the presentation appeared on Breitbart.com on Monday, October 22, 2007.

Second, the ridiculous story--this concerns the Democratic Congressman, and erstwhile Democratic Presidential nominee, from Ohio's Tenth Congressional District (and the planet Whackazoid) Dennis Kucinich (see my previous postings here on the Democratic extraterrestrial entitled "I Tried, I Really Tried," and "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"). It has been my opinion for some time that the Hon. D. Kucinich (Dem.) was from the planet Whackazoid, which is in a distant, lightless, clueless, humorless galaxy far from earth, but I was just guessing; actually, I was just making that stuff up--who knew that my suspicions would, more or less, be confirmed?!?! Today's story is about a new book by that scion of modern American literature, Shirley MacLaine, and her revelation that the Hon. D. Kucinich (Dem.) had a close encounter with a UFO at MacLaine's house in Graham, Washington. This book, to be released next month, will apparently reveal to the nine or ten people who will read it that the Hon. D. Kucinich (Dem.) encountered the UFO on the deck of MacLaine's house and that he saw "a gigantic triangular craft" which was "observing him" [Kucinich]. The piece goes on to quote MacLaine's book thusly, "It [the UFO] hovered, soundless, for ten minutes or so, and sped away with a speed that he [Hon. D. Kucinich, Dem.] couldn't comprehend. HE SAID HE FELT A CONNECTION IN HIS HEART AND HEARD DIRECTIONS IN HIS MIND" (emphasis added).

And there you have it, the thing that more completely explains the Hon. D. Kucinich (Dem.); he received "directions in his mind" from the UFO, which sped away, I'm guesing back to the lightless, clueless, humorless planet Whackazoid in the distant galaxy from which he emerged, to subsequently be re-elected time and again by his apparently other-worldly constituents in Cleveland, Ohio, home of the plucky but unfortunate Indians baseball team.

It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Shirley MacLaine, who "communicates" with trees, the Hon. D. Kucinich (Dem.), and the UFO giving him directions--this triumvirate of nut jobs make Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, and Mr. Edwards the Hair Model, look positively sane and normal. Can't wait for the election. . . .

AJ

Music of the Day: Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, Beyond the Missouri Sky

Something woke me up in the middle of the night; I wasn't able to determine what, exactly, it was other than a general angst, a foreboding, an apprehension of some kind, a weird sense that things were not exactly right, that the world had somehow come off its axis, and that we were spinning out of control, off into the void, unattached to reality, no longer subject to the laws of physics, headed straight out into nothingness, darkness, the everlasting cold, the deepest of the deep, where no light penetrates, where no sound is made or heard, where no human design matters, where all of our history ends and is shattered and its elements absorbed by the great, vast impersonal universal emptiness.

I should have gotten out of bed to record my thoughts at the time, but I didn't; I hunkered down in the warm, safe, soft confines of our bed, listening to MLB breathe in and out in her calm, deep sleep, with Max the Wonder Dog snoring up a storm on the floor next to the bed. Whatever it was that jolted me awake left me almost immediately--I fell back asleep until the alarm went off at 6:00am, and by then my late-night thoughts were gone, expunged by sweet dreams and comfort and fatigue and relaxation and contentment and security and safety. I cannot recall the remnants of my thoughts, nothing makes sense of them now, everything from that night is jumbled and disconnected and amorphous and shadowy and chimerical. Maybe something of the night's thoughts will return to me at some other time--maybe not.

This is easily the most bizarre of my blog posts, because it has no point, no rectitude, no neat conclusion. That's all there is. . . .

Does this ever happen to you?

AJ

Music of the Day: Spyrogyra, Rites of Summer

Normally, I'm a fairly quiet guy--you know, reserved, soft-spoken, calm, unflappable, etc. Conservative. Peaceful. Joyful. Pleasant. Not given to personal attacks.

Not today, not after this morning's news broadcast, no sir, not anymore, damnit, it's time to let out my inner attack dog. I have tried here in my blog to keep my senses about me, but today's reports about yesterday's comments by Jimmy Carter have just about pushed me over the edge. If I get edgy, I'm sorry, but I can't help myself.

On Wednesday, Carter said on CNN (imagine that, on CNN!) that the Bush administration tortures detainees in defiance of international law. Because I didn't see the whole interview with the sanctimonious, and increasingly desperate-appearing, old buzzard Carter, I didn't hear him say what Breitbart.com reported, to wit: "I don't think it, I KNOW IT, CERTAINLY," Carter told CNN television when asked if he believed the US administration allowed the use of torture [emphasis added]. Because I didn't see the interview, I can only surmise that the interviewer didn't ask the obvious follow-up question, which should have been, "What evidence do you have, Mr. Carter?" But remember, this is CNN, so no such follow-up question would be asked of a critic of the Bush administration. There is no mention of such a question in the written reports of the interview, nor is there any mention of Carter actually providing any evidence to back up his assertion that we are torturing detainees. Does he have photos? Medical reports? Videotapes? Audio-tapes of torture sessions? Has he personally seen detainees tortured? Does the former president have any EVIDENCE? Apparently not, but that obviously didn't prevent him from smearing his own country and implying that President Bush, and everyone in the American government and military, systematically lies about this subject.

SOMEBODY IN THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN PARTY NEEDS TO STAND UP IN FRONT OF THE MICROPHONES AND DEMAND THAT CARTER PRODUCE EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HIS ASSERTION--AND IF HE CAN'T DO THAT, SOMEBODY IN THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN PARTY NEEDS TO STAND UP IN FRONT OF THE MICROPHONES AND TELL JIMMY CARTER TO SHUT THE HELL UP. Shutting the hell up is something that almost all previous presidents have done after leaving office; the two most obvious exceptions are Carter and the former Narcissist in Chief, Bill Clinton.

As Joshua Muravchik wrote in his February 2007 article, Our Worst Ex-President, in Commentary magazine, "In contravention of the elementary responsibilities of loyalty for one in his position, he has denigrated American policies and leaders in public and private discussions in foreign lands. He has undertaken personal diplomacy to thwart the policies of the men elected to succeed him. . .At home, Carter's criticisms of the policies of his successors are offered up with reckless abandon. For example, when the Patriot Act and related measures curtailed the rights of defendants accused of terrorism, Carter editorialized that 'in many nations, defenders of human rights were the first to feel the consequences.' The charge was simply a concoction, and not a single example was offered to substantiate it."

Clearly Carter is taking the same path here--offering scathing criticisms of the administration and the president, but offering NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, to substantiate those criticisms. That barking you hear in the background is my inner attack dog and here's what I think he's saying: Jimmy Carter, shut the hell up; if you have EVIDENCE, produce it. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

AJ

Music of the Day: John Coltrane, Blue Train

A while back, while wandering aimlessly in the stacks at the local chain bookstore while MLB (My Lovely Bride) scoured the racks at her favorite clothing store, I stumbled across the new book by Norman Podhoretz, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. This was an unexpected find, as the tables are normally filled with books by folks such as the insufferable Jimmy Carter, the rude, bombastic and openly partisan Chris Matthews, the former Narcissist in Chief Bill Clinton, the incomparably tedious and preachy Al Gore, the shifty Barak Obama, the shrill and slightly scary Hillary Clinton, the pathological hater Noam Chomsky, the indescribable Michael Moore, and the profoundly irrelevant Al Franken. I snatched up the Podhoretz book, thinking that some poor fool employee had ordered it by accident and that if I didn't buy it, it would disappear forever from the store--purged and sent back to the home office for eventual filing on the remainder shelf in their outlet in Nome. I also thought that whoever ordered this was probably now working at the Tastee-Freeze across the way, next to the Sprint kiosk, banished forever from the book-buying and book-selling business.

I put down all other books and read this one quickly; it seems to me that some of what appears in the book is an extension of, and expansion of, numerous article published previously in Commentary (and perhaps elsewhere) on the subject, including (in Commentary alone) the following: World War IV: How It Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win (September 2004; The War Against World War IV (February 2005); Who Is Lying About Iraq (December 2005); The Panic Over Iraq (January 2006); and, Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? (September 2006).

The central idea of the book is straightforward--the struggle we in the west are engaged in with what Podhoretz calls the Islamofascists is in actuality World War IV, with World War III having been what has traditionally been called the Cold War, or that period between the end of World War II in 1945 and 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Podhoretz argues that World War III was a decades-long struggle that was "cold" in name only--and he's right when one looks at American casualty figures from various wars, police actions, and peace-keeping enterprises during that time, including nearly 37,000 dead in Korea and more than 58,000 dead in Vietnam. Think about that for just a second--95,000 dead Americans in just those two places, Korea and Vietnam--there's nothing "cold" about those two conflicts when it comes to American casualties. . . .

Podhoretz warns that the struggle against the Islamofascists may well take decades, too, as did World War III and he implies that the casualty figures in this new war will continue to climb, including the 3,000 civilian deaths on September 11, 2001 and the American soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen we have lost in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere before and since the fight against the state-less purveyors of religiously-motivated murder and terror. Podhoretz lays out the history of Islamic-style terrorism against Americans and westerners beginning in the 1970s in Sudan and Lebanon, and later in Iran and again in Lebanon (obviously, this implies some overlap with World War III), then here at home with the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996, Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998, and of course the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen.

He also addresses, and generally defends, the Bush Doctrine in detail, contrasting it to the world view of what he calls "liberal internationalists" and the foreign policy realists who view the Bush Doctrine as a hopelessly flawed set of ideas grounded in sappy moralistic notions about the universality of humans preferring freedom to tyranny and oppression--including, yes, even Muslims and Arabs of all stripes.

Whether or not Porhoretz and Bush are right in their view of the struggle, this is an interesting and important book--and it asks, and leaves unanswered, as many important questions as it answers. But on page 213, Podhoretz quotes Bernard Lewis, who says we have no choice in the fight that has been brought to us. "Either, he says, we bring them [Middle Easterners] freedom, or they destroy us." That may be over-cooking things a bit [my questions--are the Islamists ideologically stronger, or more creative, or more intellectually flexible, or more technologically adept than the mad dogs of the various and sundry communist regimes of the 20th century?], but it's worth thinking about in a serious way.

Next posting: World War IV and The Suicide of Reason, by Lee Harris.

AJ

Music of the Day: Tord Gustavsen Trio, Being There.

In my last posting here I made reference to the new book by Norman Podhoretz, but I did not give the complete title, which is as follows--World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism.

And now, the brief proposal. I have seen, recently, that three of our esteemed film "stars" have been consorting with the dictator, Hugo Chavez. They are: Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and Kevin Spacey. Two of the three, Penn and Spacey, are in my opinion very talented actors who have given excellent performances in various film roles. What the three of them know about world politics, totalitarian governments, strongmen, brutality, and systematic oppression I cannot say, but I can say this--I for one will not spend my money on films in which these people participate. They are free to consort with whomever they please, but I am free to avoid their films; I hope some of you will do the same. If enough of us stay away from the box office maybe they'll see a connection between friendly chats with real-world tyrants and loss of income.

AJ