The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Military Reform: A Key @GOP 2016 Issue

by Smitty I left Active Duty, inter alia, because I was disgusted by seeing uniformed officers held to a higher standard of conduct than their Commander-in-Chief, Monica Lewinsky’s ex-boyfriend. Contempt for #OccupyResoluteDesk, while not as great a driver, did not enhance my interest in supporting the Reserves past the bare minimum. Obama is an unpopular […]

The American Spectator Folds Like A Cheap Tent, And Other Signs Of The End Times

— compiled by Wombat-socho One of the more disagreeable things I saw on Facebook this week (and, having a number of acquaintances who report crap from ThinkProgress and similar founts of stupidity, that’s saying something) was this post by Ken White at Popehat pointing out that the American Spectator had surrendered, horse and foot, to […]

Israel/Gaza Ceasefire Collapses, Along With Joe Scarborough’s Credibility

The 72-hour ceasefire fell short by about 70 hours: A 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire agreed upon by Israel and Hamas collapsed shortly after it took effect Friday morning. Mortar shells fired from within the Gaza Strip landed near a border-regioning town some two hours after the truce deal brokered by the United States and the EU […]

The Gaza War Continues

No ceasefire: Israel will press its air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, preparing his country for a longer and bloodier campaign and dashing hopes that the three-week-old conflict would end soon. Rebuffing appeals from President Obama, the United Nations and others for an immediate cease-fire, Netanyahu said […]

Tales of the Mission Gone Wrong

Last night, my 12-year-old son Emerson got the DVD of Lone Survivor from Red Box. My wife can’t watch this movie — the true story of Marcus Luttrell and a squad of Navy SEALs that gets wiped out in Afghanistan — because Army son Bob is training to do this kind of special ops stuff, and his mother does […]

One Hundred Years Ago

Anniversaries often slip my attention. A.O. Scott has a long essay in the New York Times about World War I, which began in August 1914, so that we are now living in the 100th anniversary of the last summer of peace before that bloody atrocity. Scott points to a startling fact: On July 1, 1916, […]

‘Hold Until Relieved’

Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and Americans rightly take pride in the heroic courage of our troops who saw that historic day’s bloodiest fighting on Omaha Beach. However, one of my favorite stories of D-Day — vividly told in Cornelius Ryan’s classic The Longest Day — is of the British glider troops who […]

You Know You’re Baked When. . .

by Smitty . . .a three-day conference on the military featuring speakers such as Paul Begala and Chelsea Clinton. I used to encourage young men to consider strongly a bit of military service after high school graduation. But Chelsea Clinton knows as much about the military as Chelsea Manning knows about manhood. And the prospect […]

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