Chamblee54

This is a repost of a previously published effort. This is a work of speculation, and has no basis in proven fact. The thesis of this post cannot be proved nor disproved.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These images are from the Crimean War, the first war to be photographed. It was the conflict that gave us “The charge of the light brigade”, with the line “ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die”. Or often, to do and die. Thousands of men died in the Crimean War, and not one person today can tell you why.
Listening to talk radio while you drive is a dangerous activity. You might start to think, and look at the man behind the screen. Neal Boortz (spell check suggestions:Boor, Booster, Boozer) was on a rant today about Jane Fonda. It it the same story you have heard many times…she gave aid and comfort to the enemy, she is a traitor, American troops died because of her,she should have been executed.
Sometimes when you hear something too many times, you begin to have doubts about what you heard. A light bulb went off in PG’s head when he heard the Fonda Rant again.. .What if Jane Fonda was working for the US government when she went to Hanoi?
What was in it for the government? This trip gave our government a discredited leader of the antiwar movement to denounce. When the government was trashing Jane Fonda, they did not have to defend the disastrous policies of that war.
Miss Fonda has been an icon of right wing hatred ever since, as well as of military training.
(Disclosure: PG was never in the service, but is repeating what others have said.) One story has Miss Fonda giving the North Vietnamese information about activities by American forces. How would she get this information?
The infamous trip to Hanoi took place in the Summer of 1972. American troops were being withdrawn, and anti war protests lost most of their passion. ( It was also soon after the death of F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the Watergate burglary) The war in Vietnam was essentially over for America. We were no longer trying to win, but to negotiate a face saving treaty. President Nixon called it “Peace with Honor”. Miss Fonda’s actions had little impact on these negotiations.
Miss Fonda made some radio broadcasts from Hanoi. Is it possible that coded messages to our troops were included in these broadcasts? Is it also possible that she gave the North Vietnamese misinformation on purpose?
Why would a women known for her left wing activism do such a thing? Maybe, the FBI had some dirt on her, and blackmailed her.
In 1967, Kurt Vonnegut published a book titled “Mother Night”. It tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr. Mr. Campbell made propaganda broadcasts for Germany in World War II, which were secretly used to pass coded messages to the Allies. He was condemned as a traitor after the war, but never prosecuted. He did not win an Academy Award.
The role of the government in this affair could have taken another role. Perhaps Miss Fonda was sincere in her actions, but aided by the government. Miss Fonda was under surveillance in 1972. The government would have known about her plans to go to North Vietnam, and perhaps could have stopped her. But, because her going to Hanoi was to their advantage, the government allowed the trip to take place.
The above is speculation, and could be horribly wrong. The fact that Miss Fonda has expressed regrets over her trip neither proves nor disproves this. She got great movie roles, and won two Academy Awards, during the seventies. This may be a coincidence, or maybe it was a reward for her service.
Clearly, the trip she made to Hanoi had propaganda value to the US government. It has been a Godsend over the years. You should always consider who benefits from an action.
During his rant today, Mr. Boortz said that US troops died because of Miss Fonda. ( He does not discuss the man who went to Nam in his place, after his draft deferment.) By saying this, he can ignore the tens of thousands of troops who died because Richard Nixon chose to wait until 1973 to sign a “peace treaty”. He could have made the same deal in 1969. Peace with honor indeed.

Some scholars, no doubt with government money in their pockets, have ranked the Presidents of the United States. Yes, rank is a good word for for that putrid, corrupt institution. As a fourth of july service, here is the list. Pictures are from The Library of Congress
.

01-F. Roosevelt
02-T. Roosevelt
03-Lincoln
04-Washington
05-Jefferson
06-Madison
07-Monroe
08-Wilson
09-Truman
10-Eisenhower
11-Kennedy
12-Polk
13-Clinton
14-Jackson
15-Obama
16-L. Johnson
17-J. Adams
18-Reagan
19-J.Q. Adams
20-Cleveland
21-McKinley
22-G.H W.Bush
23-Van Buren
24-Taft
25-Arthur
26-Grant
27-Garfield
28-Ford
29-Coolidge
30-Nixon
32-Hayes
33-Carter
34-Taylor
35-B. Harrison
36-W. Harrison
37-Hoover
38-Tyler
39-Fillmore
40-G.W. Bush
40-Pierce
41-Harding
42-Buchanan
43-A. Johnson

The credit/blame for these stories goes to JokesFunny.com. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” What did one flag say to the other flag? Nothing. It just waved!… What’s red, white, black and blue? Uncle Sam falling down the steps!… What would you get if you crossed Washington’s home with nasty insects? Mt. Vermin!… What did a patriot put on his dry skin? Revo-lotion!… Which colonists told the most jokes? Punsylvanians!… What was General Washington’s favourite tree? The infantry!… Where did George Washington buy his hatchet? At the chopping mall! … What quacks, has webbed feet, and betrays his country? Beneduck Arnold!… Did you hear the one about the Liberty Bell? Yeah, it cracked me up!… What would you get if you crossed a patriot with a small curly-haired dog? Yankee Poodle!… Why did Paul Revere ride his horse from Boston to Lexington? Because the horse was too heavy to carry!… What happened as a result of the Stamp Act? The Americans licked the British!…

There are a few stories floating around today. If you are in Georgia, you probably already know about Damon Evans. He is ( at last report) the Athletic Director of The mighty University of Georgia. Mr. Evans was observed driving erratically on Roswell Road, between Chastain (spell check suggestion: Chastity, Chastise ) Park and Nancy Creek. When the Georgia State Patrol pulled the vehicle over, Mr. Evans had a pair of red panties between his legs. His female companion, a different woman from his wife, was arrested for disorderly conduct. Read the arrest report .
The next segment is courtesy of The Field Negro. Field is a Philadelphia lawyer, who was born in Jamaica and has dark skin. PG has been reading him off and on for a while, sometimes agreeing and laughing. At other times steam comes out of his ears.
Field uses blogspot software, and it is tough to get a direct link to a story. This piece ( no pun intended), posted July 1,  has a picture of Tyler Perry, in grandma drag, holding a pistol. Before talking about Mr. Perry and Mel Gibson ( who would make a cute couple ), Field shares this story. These gentlemen live in the Atlanta area, and yet this story did not seem to make it to the fishwrapper. ( PG does not read the monopoly media carefully, and could have missed this story.)
According to a Georgia Bureau of Intelligence (GBI) news release, two brothers, Danny Lee Arnold, 19, and Thomas Marcus Arnold, 21, have been charged with child molestation, incest, cruelty to children and sexual battery for crimes against a 10- year-old girl…Authorities started an investigation…after it was discovered that the 10-year-old girl was pregnant…The two suspects were arrested in church, after a source called in a tip.. the aunt of the two brothers, Lisa Arnold, 28, was also arrested for incest, after the GBI found evidence that she had sex with her two nephews.
On a lighter side, there is the story of the soccer mom , who took her children to lunch. The people in the next booth could not keep their voices down. The highlight was this gem: ”The worst was the one-armed stripper tho. You should have seen how bad she sucked at the pole dance. Just watching her stump waving around, I had to order a double just to keep my buzz going.”

By now, the word is out about the illness of Christopher Hitchens. The man is going to have a tough time. He became famous for writing rude things about the recently departed, and some are going to return the favor. PG would prefer not to lower himself to that level.
PG wrote about Mr. Hitchens when the drunken one was up and running. There is no need to pile on. It will not bring back  people who died in the invasion of Iraq, which Mr. Hitchens supported.
Mr. Hitchens was famous for his atheism. Giving the Christian obsession with life after death, this part of his life if getting a bit of attention now. PG has not read his books about religion, and is not privy to the details. What PG sees as atheism is a reaction to the Judeo/Christian/Islamic triad that dominates modern thought. Atheism is based on the belief paradigm of religion. Atheism is about as relevant to PG as Jesus worship, though not nearly as loud.
In a time like this, people want to say positive things about the diseased. This quote is typical : “I’m sorry about your friend. But he’s a tough cookie and if nothing else, I believe he could send those cancer cells packing by simply telling them where they are being oh so unreasonable. and frankly stupid. If I were a cancer cell I’d be afraid of Christopher Hitchens.”
Now, this reporter is not sure that drunken bravado is the same as toughness, or a vulgar cover up for something else. It is the last sentence that defies reason. The fact is, this is a Christopher Hitchens cancer cell. This cancer is going to have all the qualities of the host body. It may be the cancer cells that tell him to finish his drink, put out his cigarette, and shut up.
The attached video is a remarkable document. It is a tv show, produced after the death of Jerry Falwell. The three living talkers are Sean Hannity, Ralph Reed, and Christopher Hitchens. At the 5:42 mark in the video, Mr. Hannity says to Mr. Hitchens, “you are incredibly mean, incredibly selfish, and incredibly thoughtless”.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

What follows is a supplement to commentary posted earlier today. It is a repost, and the first part deals with Laura Ingraham.
Miss Ingraham is number 17 of the 100 worst conservatives in America. . The attitude described in this post closely fits the “kill because I’m bad” mindset discussed in the preceding post. The second part is an incident on the road, which also fits in.
There is a Lady named Laura Ingraham, with a radio talk show. She is on at the same time as Neal Boortz, and I usually find her too annoying to listen to.
She was one of the “Gang of Five” talkshow hosts who had a private meeting, in the oval office, with W, last year. Since the meeting was off the record, we don’t know whether they all did lines of coke, or whether Ms. Ingraham wore kneepads.
Ms. Ingraham was discussing the war in Babylon, and she came up with a doozie. The following is an almost verbatim quote: ” I say let the troops kill as many people as they can. That’s what they are good at, killing, not nation building. They should kill as many people as they can, and make this so painful that they won’t ever think of doing that crap again”
Doing what again? Defending their country against a foreign invader?Ms. Ingraham, any country that is invaded by foreign troops is going to resist. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates has been conquered many times, and the invaders were never greeted as liberators.
Or, is that a reference to 911? Iraq had at best a marginal role in that attack. And if you are referring to the Wahhabi foreign fighters in Iraq, many Iraqis are tired of them and starting to fight back. They are a foreign army, and are not greeted as liberators.
The Wahhabis view the Shia as infidels, and more worthy of killing than Americans. Are we going to discriminate between these groups while killing as many as possible, or do we just shoot anything ?
There is a reason for these rules of engagement that you find so troublesome. You don’t win wars by killing civilians, and thus recruiting their relatives in the struggle against you. Also, we need the support of at least some Iraqis…you don’t win wars by killing your allies.
I would be curious if this strategy is what W told you about in the oval office. Of course, that meeting was off the record.

I was driving on Nesbit Ferry Road this morning. Now, this is a narrow two lane road, with a speed limit of 40 mph. Like many roads here, it was a country back road a few years ago, which is now loaded with subdivisions and a golf course.
I noticed a bright red sports car behind me. It was uncomfortably close. There was a little turn lane for a subdivision, and I pulled into it so he could pass me.
Now, this is an everyday thing. People love to drive fast, and consider someone ahead of them driving the speed limit to be a personal insult. I was happy to accommodate him by pulling over and letting him pass.
The red car zoomed by, until it was behind a truck ,which was driving at an unsatisfactory rate of speed. This continued for another couple of miles.
Now, I knew what was going to happen. This road went on for another mile or so, until it came to a dead end at Holcomb Bridge Road, with a red light. Sure enough, when I got to the red light, and got in one of the left turn lanes, there was the red car. I even got a bit ahead of him.
A rather dorky looking man was looking down at something, then held a cell phone up to his left ear.
Driving fast is such an easy way to prove your coolness and masculinity. You don’t have to work out and build muscle, you don’t have to make babies, all you do is crank the car and step on the gas.
At least he didn’t have a chrome fish on his red car.

There is some chattage recently about whether waterboarding is torture. There are some studies showing that the press called WB torture before 2004, when the USA began to practice WB as a part of the GWOT. Now, PG maintains that it doesn’t matter much what the press calls WB…these people are terrorists, and they deserve whatever is done to them. That is how Amerika sees things.
This is one of the corollaries of a blogfest going on today at obsidian wings . The blogfest quotes a previous post at Unqualified Offerings .
The thesis that generated this term paper is : “Across a whole range of problems there’s a class of responses I’ll dub the “low road” and another class I’ll call the “high road.” Examples of the former include war, torture, sanctions and blockades, imprisonment, aversive conditioning of all types (spanking; “dominance”-based animal training). Examples of the latter include diplomacy, rapport-building, civil disobedience, the free exchange of goods and ideas, decriminalization and rehabilitation, positive conditioning (of humans and animals).”
The basic concept here is that the low road is seen as strength, and the high road as weakness, even when the high road is tougher to take, and arrives at the destination. The idea is that people are wild animals, who get off on combat. The goal of the aggression is not as important as proving how bad you are. It is a touch more complex than that, and if you have the time the seminal post and the comments are worth your time.
This avalanche was set in motion by an (subscription required to read) editorial in the Wall Street Journal about, of all things, Cuba . In an era when Communist regimes the world over are imploding, the one 90 miles from Florida continues to operate. This is in spite of an undeclared war by the USA, and much political shenanigans. The bottom line is, after fifty years of low road conflict by the USA, the commies are still in charge of Cuba. (There are rumors of drug smuggling protected by the commies, with nod and wink approval of the yankee regime. Sometimes the status quo, no matter how many lives are ruined, is too convenient for the powers that be.)

Chamblee54 has avoided, until now, comments about the Dave Weigel/journo list affair. It all seems a bit too “inside baseball”, not to mention the whole liberal/conservative mudfight. Whoever selected the bits to leak has talent…the thing about Matt Drudge caught the eye. While the rumors about Mr.D come and go, setting yourself on fire is just a bit too kinky.
This does not deter Andrew Breitbart (spell check suggestions:Breathing, Breadbasket )from mixing things up. Mr. Breitbart is number 15 on the worst conservatives list. He facilitated an expose of ACORN, which has largely been discredited. This is part of what he is squealing about in the video above. At the very least, he seems like a very unpleasant, loud, showboat.
Mr. Breitbart offered $100,000 for anyone who had the archives of the now defunct Journo List. When Andrew Sullivan (who has a skeleton or two in his own closet, and possibly a fire extinguisher) heard about this, he had a few harsh words to share with his close electronic friends.
Where it gets bizarre is the counter response of Mr. Breitbart. After some huffing and puffing, he wonders : “Why was Mickey Kaus not excoriated for breaking the sacred JournoList bond when he posted a series of leaked emails that showed collusion against not-liberal-enough New Republic editor Marty Peretz for his crime of sticking up for Israel?” Hmm, maybe because no one reads his column. ( PG looked through some of these messages, and could not make heads or tails of them. Anything about Israel was stuck in a message after PG gave up. Maybe the Israel thing was a red herring to get a few more people to pay attention.)
The “hypocrisy” piece by Mr. Brietbart is not well written. There are some ninety degree turns, like when he says, out of nowhere, “I would never divulge an individual’s sexual secrets.” ( perhaps Weigel and Drudge had a “hot” romance).
The article goes completely out of control two paragraphs down. The section about to be quoted is above a (possibly posed) picture of Sarah and Trig Palin playing.
“The election of Barack Obama was facilitated by a corrupt Fourth Estate. It didn’t get corrupted by accident. The political left, on its self-proclaimed Long March Through the Institutions, walked in the front door, took control, and since has done everything in its power to keep it, including secretly massing on the Internet, sharing notes, sharing ideas.. and wishing death to their political enemies.”
Holy rhetoric, Batman.

To paraphrase Ru Paul, the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is. A function of the english department of San Jose State University, in California, the contest awards “a pittance” to the winner. The idea is to submit the opening sentence to a horrible novel, and give the winner to the worst of the worst, the scum of the the skimmer, the Milhous of the Nixon. Email entries are accepted, preferably in Arial 12.
The award is named for Edward_Bulwer-Lytton . Mr. B-L was the model for Monty Python’s English Upper Class Twit. The opening words of his novel “Paul Clifford” are “It was a dark and stormy night”. Entrants in the contest are discouraged from saying ” It was a stark and dorky night”.
As a public service, chamblee54 has reviewed all of the entries on the web page, and selected a handful to reproduce below. If you want to see who won this year, go to the bottom of the barrel. HT to Andrew Sullivan . Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” The beauty queen is Miss Agricultural Ammonia for 1957.
In honor of America’s independence, from the nation that gave us Edward Bulwer-Lytton, this post is imaged in red, white, and blue. If you must read a white entry, highlight it with your mouse. It probably won’t be worth the effort. Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, “There goes the most noble among men” — in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur. When Hru-Kar, the alpha-ranking male of the silver-backed gorilla tribe finished unleashing simian hell on Lt. Cavendish, the once handsome young soldier from Her Majesty’s 47th Regiment resembled nothing so much as a crumpled up piece of khaki-colored construction paper that had been dipped in La Victoria chunky salsa. She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so. The band of pre-humans departed the cave in search of solace from the omnipresent dangers found there knowing that it meant survival of their kind, though they probably didn’t understand it intellectually since their brains were so small and undeveloped but fundamentally they understood that they didn’t like big animals that ate them.
The dark, drafty old house was lopsided and decrepit, leaning in on itself, the way an aging possum carrying a very heavy, overcooked drumstick in his mouth might list to one side if he were also favoring a torn Achilles tendon, assuming possums have them. The wind whispering through the pine trees and the sun reflecting off the surface of Lake Tahoe like a scattering of diamonds was an idyllic setting, while to the south the same sun struggled to penetrate a sky choked with farm dust and car exhaust over Bakersfield, a town spread over the lower San Joaquin Valley like a brown stain on a wino’s trousers, which is where, unfortunately, this story takes place. The Zinfandel poured pinkly from the bottle, like a stream of urine seven hours after eating a bowl of borscht. She purred sensually, oozing allure that was resisted only by his realization as an entomologist that the protein dust on the couch from the filing of her crimson nails was now being devoured by dust mites in a clicking, ferocious, ecstatic frenzy. Cynthia had washed her hands of Philip McIntyre – not like you wash your hands in a public restroom when everyone is watching you to see if you washed your hands but like washing your hands after you have been working in the garden and there is dirt under your fingernails — dirt like Philip McIntyre. t’Bleen and Golxxm squelched their way romantically along the slough beach beneath the three Sommodian moons, their eye-stalks occasionally touching, and tenderly belched sweet nothings like, “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a charming evening,” and, “Say, would you like to gnaw that hunk of suppurating tissue off my dorsal appendage—it really itches.” Wearing his new slacks from L.L. Bean, and entering the pen to feed his three big dogs their usual three cans of dog food, some of which ended up on his new pants, Kevin then left the house to attend a revival screening of ‘Serpico’ with Alpo chinos. He walked into the bar and bristled when all eyes fell upon him — perhaps because his build was so short and so wide, or maybe it was the odor that lingered about him from so many days and nights spent in the wilds, but it may just have been because no one had ever seen a porcupine in a bar before. His chest glistened like a pumpkin seed, either one fresh out of the pumpkin but with all the orange strands of pumpkin flesh removed, or one straight out of the oven after being coated in just the right amount of oil and then baked; the point is that it was smooth, fairly shiny, and that color. Living next door to the Lesters for nearly twelve years now, Mrs. Nestor, fully aware of her husband’s fondness for pulchritudinous posteriors, was unable to deter Chester Nestor’s constant quest for Mr. Lester’s sister Hester’s monster keister. And the winner is…For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss–a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.