JackRiddler wrote:http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=8427312Thu May-27-10 12:11 AM
Apparently Rachel Maddow now works the Pentagon channel.(This is not an essay. Sometimes I get to ramble.)
Happened to watch the totally lefty-liberal Rachel Maddow Show the last two nights.
Very good coverage of the BP situation. And much else besides.
But mainly, what have I learned?
The military is really cool. Everyone involved in it is totally competent and so well organized. Fleet Week is cool. New Yorkers all love Fleet Week, we look forward to it. Let's go do cool things!
Okay! Here we are with Rachel, on an aircraft carrier. The Iwo Jima. They have such interesting jobs on this ship, as Rachel tells us. Here they are describing their excellent jobs. Some of them fuel planes, some are mechanics. Others do ordnance. A translation is provided for that: "Ordnance would be bombs and missiles, things that blow up." Laughs all around. Ha ha.
Both nights have also had DADT coverage, which was fine as far as the undeniable issue of human rights and fairness goes. But otherwise, again: No critical distance to the military at all. It is so good to serve, serve, serve "your country" by signing up!
Last night she had a guy on in favor of ending DADT. He had fine logical arguments. Then he concluded the interview by saying, forcefully, that a fellow soldier should never care about your sexual orientation, but only care about how good a soldier you are:
"I want to know how good you are at kicking down doors!"I'm serious, that was how the interview ended, with this guy suddenly yelling, "I want to know how good you are at kicking down doors!"
It's so cool to serve your country. Kick down some doors. It's liberal. Just doing our best.
Or as Gen. McChrystal said about incidents at US checkpoints in Afghanistan:
"WE HAVE SHOT AN AMAZING NUMBER OF PEOPLE, BUT TO MY KNOWLEDGE NONE HAS EVER PROVEN TO BE A THREAT."
Oooh, and now Rachel's posting photos of her exciting visit to the USS Iwo Jima. Go to her site to see. The liberal press.
And then they pretend to have stories about the banksters, and the financial crisis, and money bleeding everywhere. Funny how in all the talk of the budget, taxes, spending, whether to cut or stimulate, scarce resources, hard times, in all that talk... the liberal media, Maddow, Olbermann, Stewart, Colbert, they never seem to mention the 700 billion dollars a year (plus another 200 billion in war appropriations) and the endless resources and energies pulverized to maintain what is increasingly a vanity empire that the rest of the world is leaving behind.
Record sums still spent for "defense," and all these shows include guests from the military, basically doing recruitment. And all of them run recruitment ads from the military services.
(And never mind Rachel's fluff piece yesterday, on how the CIA once used magic tricks. It was noted that the program had a peripheral relation to MKULTRA -- meaning, the mind control and torture program under Dulles -- but never mind that. Let's look at some of the wacky ways the CIA wanted to use magicians. Those funny guys.)
Anyway, God forbid we should cut the Pentagon budget. Or even mention its existence on these liberal programs. God forbid we should see military recruitment as anything other than "service" doing totally cool things on big exciting ships.
"WE HAVE SHOT AN AMAZING NUMBER OF PEOPLE, BUT TO MY KNOWLEDGE NONE HAS EVER PROVEN TO BE A THREAT."