Heros and the way we honor and remember them

Recently I received an e-mail from one of my friends. The e-mail was one of those chain e-mails that usually have some sort of story that is designed to be compelling and to cause the e-mail reader to forward it to many contacts. Normally I am always suspicious of these e-mails simply because whatever message they are selling is usually false, but sounds plausible enough to the casual reader that they will simply forward it without thinking.

The e-mail in question concerned the supposed recent passing of Capt. Ed Freeman (USAF retired) who was awarded the medal of honor for his actions in Vietnam. The e-mail gave a vivid description of the battlefield, of certain death for many young American men, and how many of them lived to come home because of Capt. Freeman medevacing over 70 wounded men, ignoring heavy machine gunfire while flying an unarmed helo. He would even keep flying after sustaining 4 bullet wounds to the leg and arms. Truly his actions were those that embody what we as a country expect in a MOH awardee and selfless acts of heroism like his are what inspire so many who have served this nation before. At the end of this e-mail it takes a few pot shots at the American media complaining about coverage given to Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson while this man died and received so little coverage. That alone should have and to some degree did set off a red flag about this e-mail to me, but being a bit lazy and thinking of the man's heroism I decided to forward it than check the validity.

Of course as soon as I typed in Capt. Freeman's name I found out that he did not pass away recently, but actually passed in August of 2008. I also found that one of the first links to come up was to snopes.com, a website that specializes in debunking these kinds of e-mails. Sure enough I found that while Freeman was a real man and his actions were not embellished in his e-mail, the rest had been circulating for some time with the original version coming out some six months after the man had passed. Frankly reading the snopes report on this e-mail had an effect of really pissing me off. This man was a hero and his actions were of such courage that I can not imagine what it was that kept him flying into that hell, but six months after he died some douchebag who apparently wanted to run his fucking pathetic mealy mouth about the American media used this hero's death for a very selfish purpose. The sad thing is the originator of such an e-mail probably considers himself patriotic and a "real American." At the end of the chain e-mail it stated "shame on you American media for not covering this man's death." Frankly I'm more inclined to want to find the originator of this e-mail so that i can knock his ass out for doing this. Not that I'm a fan of the American media, but like any seller of a product they are catering to what the public wants. If they are reporting on Jackson or Woods it's because Americans are dumb and pathetic enough to value that more. So in the end it should be shame on the American public for not having their priorities straight.

Back to the original point though. folks, this is not the way to honor those who have served, and this sure as shit is no way to honor a man like Capt. Freeman. Too many men have sacrificed their youth, their lives, their sanity, and their health so that we can as a nation continue to live our lives the way our founders intended. Almost everyone of them has served selflessly and given this sacrifice for their own reasons. For them the most that they would want is for their actions to be remembered and for it to serve to inspire those who serve today. To remember such a sacrifice and remember the valor that lives in the heart of those that serve is the best way to honor these men. It serves no purpose and no honor to these men to cheapen their work by using it for something as trivial as politics and the national media.

The only good thing about this e-mail is that the vast majority who have been exposed to it and forwarded it likely did so for the same reasons I did, they were amazed by the Captains actions and forwarded it without waiting to think about it. Their focus was in the right place and that was on furthering the story of the man's actions and in that sense the e-mail was a good thing. In the future though, lets honor these men and leave the politics out of it.

-Zach

only a liberal deals in absolutes

Todays tittle brought to you by the good folks of Star Wars. I hope they don't mind me borrowing one of there lines.

Anyway, it's been awhile so now is the time to post some random musings of which you may or maynot gain some intelletual stimulization or consitpation from.

As we all know, President zero and the rest of the brain squad recently forced through healthcare despite the clear "no" that the public had sent them for months. In dealing with arguing the finer points on what to do with the healthcare system most conservatives got reaquainted with an old truth about liberals, and that is that if you do not agree ver batum with exactly their line of thought, than you are evil, ignorant, apathetic, a blight on humanity, or some combination of the four. For example, If you did not vote for President Obama and if you did not support his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the supreme court than despite the soundness of your reasoning, you probably just a racist to some liberals.

With the healthcare debate the tactic seems to have been by most knee jerk libs to claim that if you oppose the healthcare bill than you do not care about the uninsured and that you do not care about "people who will die in the streets." Often times when prodded to state how the healthcare bill will make this better you usually get some rambling, mostly incoherrant bit about holding insurance companies responsible and forcing them to not deny coverage. When pointed out that this will not lessen the rates and actually may raise it as companies seek to make up the added cost for doing business you usually get a shrug or a non response. If you suggest that people who are happy with their current coverage offered by their business will now lose it as those same business's seek to adjust to a government that taxes them more and so they move to a bare minimum option that the government ok's you again get a shrug of indifference from the compassionate leftists.

In january Obama in his hopes to gain support for the healthcare bill and to marginalize Republican opposition invited them to a open press conference in which both parties could offer ideas on reform. After zero's stunt backfired and Republicans gained more support, rather than seek to adopt the changes that Republicans called for or to scratch the plan all together and start fresh as the country and the Republicans stated would be the best option, zero pushed ahead because gosh darn it, he knows better than your just a dummy who doesn't get it.

In the coming election zero has dared Republicans to "go for it" in campaigning for the november elections on a repeal healthcare ticket. Clearly the plan here will be to charge that once again that Republicans want to take away "your healthcare" and let people die in the streets. Frankly, this thing needs to be taken down and quickly because if it's allowed years to take root and feaster there will be enough of a class of Americans dependent on this corrupt system that they will buy into it the same way they buy into the "republicans want to take your social security, abortions rights, minority rights" away.

In the end this is the liberal way. They deal in absolutes and there will be no room for discussion while they are still a majority in the house.

-P.S. A note to those that want to run Dem rep Bart Stupak through the mud for his compromise on healthcare i say lighten up. The man is a Dem who held up healthcare for about a month and his steadfast determination will keep federal funds from going to support abortions. The man was placed in an awkward position where lesser politicians would yield to party pressure and instead gave us one positive in this bill so lets show some class and not make this man a target as the tea party for whatever reason appears to want to do.

-Zach

Obamacare and unprecedented arrogance

Amazing, absolutely amazing. I knew, but still dreaded what was an eventual outcome this past sunday as the Democrates snuck in healthcare. I hoped for another Scott Brown like moment that would delay or finally derail this damn thing, but knew there was little to no hope as the Dems made their intentions clear for the previous month.

After thinking about it for a bit, the first thing that comes to my mind is the incredible amount of arrogance and disconnect with America it took for Obama, Pelosi, and Reid to continue to push for this bill. Obama ran his presidential campaign on a policy of being open with the American people and responding to their needs as he believed he was elected to do. Coming into office one of Obama's first priorities was to take advantage of his mega majorities in Congress and to pass national healthcare reform. He was convinced with his popularity coming into office that he could push for this change and gain the support of the American people. When the expected outcries of conservatives and the Republicans came about he was confident that he and the house democrates could neutralize it enough to force the Republicans into an awkward situation of voting in mass against a policy that presumably the American public would support only... of only President zero explained how important it was.

This did not work for a few reasons. First being the failure of the stimulus that Obama pushed Congress to pass in January 2009. Obama stressed that without the stimulus that unemployment could go above 8% and so it must be passed right away. After it was passed unemployment not only went past 8%, but then 10%. Later Obama displeased the public by weighing in on . This along with other incidents such as Sotomayor's nomination to the supremem court and the rediculous "beer summit" and of course a President that seems to prefer constant campaigning to actual governing has soured a public and so his message on healthcare increasingly viewed in a negative light.

Still though, even with the public increasingly against this and tea party rallies increasing across the country Obama and the democrates knew they had the numbers in Congress and through a side show production could easily pass what they wanted in healthcare reform by Christmas 2009. Enter Scott Brown. His election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat made amending the Senate bill in the house untennable because the Republicans now could and certainly would fillibuster the process. No worries thinks Obama and Pelosi, we can pass the Senate bill and tell others that we can change it afterwards. All this done again while taking the case to the American people who again and again tell them, we hear you and we don't want this.

What kind of ignorance and arrogance it must take to fail on all these levels to sell your policy to the opposition and to the American people and yet pass it under assumption that "they'll take us later." Even after signing the bill into law the President has stated he will hit the road again to tell us how great it is. For having such a great education this guy is about as clueless as Mr. Magoo. He's campaigned over and over and over and over on this same damn thing and now thinks somehow doing the same thing will change it? When he sees an angry public he will simply pat himself on the back and tell himself that "this is the way it must be, but give it time they will agree with me." November can't come soon enough. Every single one of this fucking dems needs to get tossed out on their ass where they will be forced to sit and watch as we repair or attempt to repair this unprecedented damage that has been done to our country.

Eh, kind of a bad write up, but dawg gone it I'm ticked about this and needed to type something.

-Zach

Deem and pass? Absolute lunacy

So the latest scuttlebut from DC was an idea floated from Dem leadership in Congress, or Nancy Pelosi that house dems could attempt to pass healthcare reform through a process called "deem and pass." Basically the way this rule works is that the house deems the bill sufficient or the same as a bill previously passed and sent to the Senate and with this rule they could conceivably send the bill to President Obama's desk without the need for another vote on it.

Frankly there is no other world for such a procedure than sheer madness on the Dems part should they try it. This bill has been hyped and has been in front of the public for over a year now and to pass it in a way clearly due to it's unpopularity and the fact that they can't pass it with the votes would kill the dems more than a thousand gay sex scandals in the polls this upcoming novemeber. Frankly, I doubt that even they would be so bold as to go that far and recent news may make it so that they don't have to take such an undesirable route.

The CBO came out with their projections on Obamacare and for the dems the news was very encouraging. According to the non-partisan CBO they estimate that the healthcare reform bill would cost the country 940 Billion dollars over ten years and would save the country some cash by bringing down or controling healthcare costs more than our current system allows. The problem with these estimates though is that they are exactly that, estimates. In almost every other government system the estimates have been woefully lower than what was found to later be the ultimate cost of the bill. In Medicare the costs versus what the estimates were were so far off that Medicare ended up costing nine times more and as of now is still in need of massive government funding to keep from going bankrupt. Add on to that a system in which seeks to subsidize or take over a fifth of the US economy from the private sector and we still have a recipe for a system that could massivly baloon in cost.

Alas, with this score it will or may give some wavering Dems enough cover to vote yes on the bill and force through this bill as soon as this Sunday. From there it would then go to the Senate were the game plan for the Dems will likely be to pass it without any changes so it may go to Obama's desk for signature into law.

Sigh, I can now only hope that my own views on this bill and it's impact on our country are wrong, much the same way that I have hoped that my opinion of Obama was wrong during his campaign and how he would govern in office. Sorry to say, more often than not I have been right, but this time let's hope if this passes it does help our country.

-Zach

The National Debt and the Obama administrations first year in office

I came across this from another conservative commentator and thought I'd repost it in it's entirety here for those interested. I will also follow it with some brief comments of my own to keep this thing from being completely plagerized.

"How many times have we heard Obama say that he "inherited" the problems we now have? And one of those problems is our national debt. So it is time to take a good look at that debt, and how we got where we are:At the end of 2000, our national debt was $5.6278 trillion. During the first six years of the Bush administration, and under a Republican held Congress and Senate, our debt increased to $8.4514 trillion (at the end of 2006, the year the Democrats took control of both Houses). An increase of $470.45 billion a year ($2.8227 trillion in six years). Remember that number; $470.45 billion/year.Within two years (at the end of 2008) of Democratic control, our nation debt had increased to $9.985 trillion, an annual average of $767.2 billion, almost $300 billion a year more than under Republicans.In the 8 years of the Bush administration, our national debt increased by $4.2988 trillion.At the end of 2009, the first year of the Obama administration, our national debt had risen to $12.3114 trillion, an increase in one year $2.3265 TRILLION. ONE YEAR, only $500 billion less than the entire first six years of George Bush.Our projected national debt at the end of this year is over $14 trillion. That means that in just two years, Obama, and the Democratically held Congress will have increased our debt by more than Bush did the whole 8 years he held office.I don't want to read one more person on the left complain about the debt that was created under Bush or the Republicans. Not one."

The numbers there are pretty solid and while they again show us that congressional Republicans and President Bush were not fiscally conservative as many of us expected, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have increased spending at an incredible pace. Some might wonder where this massive spending increase has come from and to me, the first thing that comes to mind is the 780 billion dollar "stimulus" package that Obama pushed Congress to pass in January 2009 with the expectation that it would keep unemployment under 8%, today it is at 9.7%. Think that's bad? Well keep in mind that even though a large portion of that approved stimulus as yet to be spent the Obama administration is starting to push for yet another stimulus package. Perhaps the slogan on that one should read, "third times the charm."

Back to the topic of the national debt. Keep in mind that those numbers don't even take into effect the costs that will take effect should Congress pass the healthcare legislation. So far according to a WSJ editorial written by Congressman Paul Ryan the costs in deficit for this program over the next ten years would add 460-1.4 trillion bucks. That's all for one program and that's the best case scenario we can hope for. The more likely scenario would have this program ballooning in costs as Medicare has done and as the state provided medical care in Mass. has done. Either way you slice it we are spending at unprecedented levels and it will be much better for us to become fiscally responsible as a country by our own choice before we are forced into it.

-Zach

The week in review

Well it's been sometime since I posted something here so let me type something out for the sake of keeping my blog somewhat current.

In the last week we had the oh so important health care summit in which President Obama brought together congressional leaders from both parties in what was supposed to be a last attempt to find compromise on the unpopular bill. In reality what it was to those who follow politics was nothing more than a stage play in which both sides essentially stuck to their talking points and which showed that compromise on this bill would not be coming. The purpose of such an event is that the President wanted another media event in which he could appear to be reaching across the aisle and seeking compromise and he when nothing was reached that pubic perception would be turned by some degree against Republicans and lessen any backlash Democrats will receive should they pass this bill.

So far that i can see though, the President's event did not have the effect that he hoped it would. Republicans showed up prepared and Congressman Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and Senate leaders John McCain and Lamar Alexander all showed excellent reasons exactly why Republicans oppose this bill and why compromise on this rather than starting fresh is so unappealing. Numerous polls conducted with voters who watched the event came away with a positive view of the Republicans as this event allowed them to see where the Republicans stood on this bill and surprise surprise, they oppose it on principle as this bill would allow the government take over of 20% of the US economy, would still see a rise in health care costs, would dramatically raise the debt, and would likely cause small business owners who do provide insurance to dump their current coverage for the bare government minimum in order to offset increased taxes on their business. Lamar Alexander himself brought up one part of the bill that will likely draw enough Dem detractors away from the bill to endanger it's passing, and that is that this bill would for the first time in 35 years pave the way for government funding of abortions. In short this bill is a big sloppy soup sandwich and if real reform and bipartisanship is to be achieved it should be shelved in order to start fresh with reforms that will work.

Last word on this, after the summit talking heads who support Democrats have continued to push for the passage of this bill despite it's unpopularity all with the logic that if they walk away with nothing that it will hurt them MORE at the polls than if they allow it to die. Sadly this again is where partisan politics works against the American people when we have representatives hoping to help their party rather than represent the best interests of their voters as they were voted in to do.

In other news the Marines, NATO, and Afghan forces have been on a offensive in Afghanistan in the southern province of Helmland. This is part of the new offensive against the Taliban and to date the combined forces have gotten the Taliban out of Marjah and have raised the Afghan flag over the town. This is all well and good but the thing that pissed me off recently was a story in which Afghan President Karzai appeared in his Parliament holding a picture of a young child killed in the offensive and denouncing NATO for not doing more to lower civilian deaths. This is not the way to win a war, Karzai, while he maybe making his statements to broaden his appeal to all Afghans is effectively legitimizing Taliban's narrative of the war as one in which NATO forces kill civilians. Simply put, you don't win a damn war by making statements that your enemy is right and more just than your own forces. General McCrystal and our NATO allies need to have a sit down with this moron and remind him how many civilians have been killed by the Taliban and how many of them have been used as human shields by this people. That is the narrative you need to have from out of Kabul. You need to deligitimize the Taliban so that after we kick their ass out of the battlefield the winning of hearts and minds becomes easier and keeps the Taliban from coming back.

I think that is enough for now. Till next time.

-Zach

A caution to Republicans counting victories 10 months early

I am more and more amazed as I listen to folks like Sean Hannity and other conservatives who seem absolutely certain in a massive conservative, read Republican, victory in the November elections later this year. Those elections are ten months away, so much in the political landscape can change from now to than that is seems the definition of foolishness to me to talk of victory as a forgone conclustion.

I also tend to think that it's a turn off for average Americans to hear Republicans talk of this gives me and others the impression that they are more interested in exploiting Democrates political weakness rather than attempt to govern and represent as they were elected to do. It isn't hard for me to imagine that the Dem label of the Republican party as the "party of no" starting to stick with time for the political pendulum to swing back in their direction. Now is the time to rather take advantage of a public who will be much more receptive to hearing Republican alternatives. It is time for Republicans to take a part in healthcare reform and bring down the cost of the bill while enacting free market reforms that will actually have an impact in lowering healthcare costs such as tort reform and expanind health insurance coverage across state lines. It is time to start our other narritive and let it stand because it is that, more than anything, that will bring Republicans and a Republican form of government back to where it should be.

A short post, but it's been a somewhat dull week in politics.

-Zach