Archive for May, 2011

MOVING TARGET

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

No…it’s not a hunting column.  Well..maybe it is in a way, if you’re hunting for corporations that harbor an underlying anti-American sentiment.  Cases have been made against many companies, but usually it has to do with what they sell and where it’s made.  This one runs a little deeper than that, and it involves Target, the department store that we’ve all shopped in at one time or another.

I must be naive, I guess, because I’m constantly surprised by stuff that seems not to surprise other people.  This is such a case.  A friend brought to my attention that last Christmas, Target refused to allow Salvation Army bell-ringers in front of their stores.  In and of itself, odd but not a deal-breaker for me.  When it comes to folks who collect for different charities outside the entryway to major food or department stores, I admit I sometimes feel a little put out.  It’s like the guy who jumps in front of your car to get the windshield, whether you want it washed or not, and then waits for his dollar.  You feel like a jerk if you drive off, and feel “had’ if you donate.  After all these years I still end up feeling “had”.

But the Target story runs deeper than bell-ringers.  Dick Forrey of the Vietnam Veterans Association claims they recently asked the local Target to be a proud sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during their spring recognition event.  According to Forrey, he received the following response from Target:  “Veterans do not meet our area of giving.  We only donate to the arts, social action groups, gay and lesbian causes and education.”  Hmmm…sounds fishy, right?  Why would a store go out of their way to alienate veterans?

Forrey, no doubt inspired at this point, sent an e-mail to Target U.S. Corporate Headquarters.  Their response was just as firm.  It is their national policy not to donate to veterans groups.  As it turns out, they also will not allow Marines to collect for “Toys for Tots”.

Forrey dug deeper.  Target, it seems, also would not allow families of employees who were called up for active duty in the military to continue their insurance coverage while their loved one was at war.  Nice.  All of this considered, Forrey was not surprised, as I was, to learn that Target is a French-owned company.  Interesting, because, is there a country on the face of the planet that owes more to the American soldier than France?

I don’t know about you, but after considering all of the above, and the obvious additional fact that tons of profit in American dollars spent at Target end up in France…I can safely say that the last time I shopped at Target, was the last time I’ll ever shop at Target.

Tags: ,
Posted in Musings | 789 Comments »

LEAVE THE CHOPPER RUNNING

Monday, May 9th, 2011

We have a new addition to the list of “things you barely ever hear” which includes, with credit to Steve Martin, “it’s the Banjo player’s Porsche”.  I like to imagine a member of Navy Seal Team 6 telling his pilot to “leave the chopper running”, as they lowered themselves into the compound of Osama Bin Laden.  I also think we should have kept the body, sent it to a taxidermy shop, and had him stuffed…crouching behind an ottoman with a really surprised look on his face.

To give credit where credit is due, President Obama deserves kudos for making a tough call.  It could have gone horribly wrong and been a political disaster for him, a deadly disaster for the Navy, and a psychological nightmare for the country when we need it least.  Instead, a military maneuver straight out of Hollywood, and one for the history books, yielded a captured and killed Osama Bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attack on America.  It has been a long time coming.

There will be plenty of time to discuss the details.  The bounty of intelligence that is being culled from the “take” at the compound.  Imagine the information we will garner from this haul.  Already we know that indeed, OBL was still in charge, and actively involved in planning and dispensing terrorist attacks.

We also know that the Pakistan government is not our friend.  It is possible that many officials didn’t know that OBL was living down the street for the past six years.  It is implausible that nobody knew.  This compound was only 300 yards from a major Pakistani military base.  The compound was unique in the neighborhood, with high walls topped with barbed wire and no internet or telephone service.  All household trash was burned on-site.  It’s the old…”he was a quiet man…” neighborhood response.  Particularly quiet in this case.  He never left the building.

There will be time, because the media will be discussing this for weeks on end, to talk about the damage to our military secrets by having left behind large portions of a stealth helicopter.  There was some technological leakage there, but a small price to pay for bringing in the world’s most wanted criminal.

One thing that can’t, or shouldn’t, wait, is to give credit to former President Bush and his team for the policies they put in place that allowed for the garnering of the information that led to the capture of OBL.  It is a bit painful for some of us, able to remember how the Bush administration got hammered by the same Press that is now busy throwing rose petals on their President, when he tried to explain why we needed enhanced interrogation, wiretapping, and other forms of intelligence gathering that so rankled the Left.  This is not to take away from Obama’s big moment, but without the adults who go to work, make money and pay the bills, there is no Christmas Tree for the kids to have their magic.  It was the hard work, the ability to make unpopular decisions, and a more pragmatic view of our enemy, that was the Hallmark of the Bush administration…in other words…the War on Terror…that gave us the courier, that led us to Bin Laden.

Let’s not forget,also, all of the military, men and women, soldiers from all countries, that have fought this war for the last ten years…all with a common goal.  All of those injured, those who died, the enormous cost of this justice.  We are reminded, too, that there is no other military force on Earth the could have pulled this off.  Truly, truly courageous and masterful beyond belief.

Finally, once located with a 99% assurance that they had their man…a decision had to be made.  And how many choices were there?  Drop a bomb?  You lose the body and the intelligence in the compound.  Not practical.  Capture him and bring him out alive?  Too much work for too little payoff and the political nightmare of where, when and how to bring him to trial.  Uh-uh…no way.  So it was a Special Ops mission almost without question, so in that sense, it must have been a bit easier for the President to make the call.

Let’s enjoy the moment, because when the euphoria wears off, there is unemployment, a tanking economy, foreclosures and four dollar-per-gallon gasoline waiting for us.  Nonetheless…like dozing off on the couch…it was nice while it lasted.

Tags: ,
Posted in Musings | 211 Comments »

MAMA, HE’S CRAZY

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

Crazy like a fox, as they say.  That may best describe Donald Trump, loquacious New York business mogul and recent visitor to New Hampshire.  Look…for pure entertainment value, this guy is priceless.  Would I want him for President?  Ask me in six months, when I see who else is running, if gas has crested six bucks a gallon, how much closer this country is to the cliff we are approaching in a high-speed cloud of dust…and I’ll have a better idea.

Meanwhile, it would be hard to dispute the absolutely fascinating occurrence of his ascension in the polls.  To be sure, among Independents, he is near the bottom and polling around 9%.  In other polls, he is at the top, above Romney, Huckabee, Palin and everyone else.  Incredible.  He’s not even running, and I don’t believe he will run.  But even if he stopped right now…zipped it…said it was all a big mistake and moved to a cabin in Montana, he has provided Republicans with an invaluable lesson.  He has demonstrated, without question, which issues resonate the deepest with the average American. The economy, corrupt government, government spending, jobs and a Great Nation on the verge of fiscal and moral collapse, to name a few.

He vacillates between cartoonish and Reaganesque, at least to me.  That makes it hard to pin him down.  He did, I think, cause the President to finally produce his long form Birth Certificate, an issue I have always found wanting in importance.  I guess I never really doubted that he was a citizen and, really, if not, what are we going to do…deport him?  I found it to be in the “911 Truther” league…a little wacky.  Still, Obama finally feeling compelled to produce it, is pretty astounding.  It raises the question…why did he let it simmer with so many people for so long?  See the “Handbook of Chicago Politics”, Chapter 1, Verse 1.  They used the issue to keep that certain segment of “Birther’s” alive, well, and looking crazy to a large portion of the country.

Imagine, too, that the President had to vie for media coverage over Trump.  Obama’s announcement, and Trump’s little speech from the tarmac at Pease, were equally lofty news pieces and one could easily call “Trump-1, Obama-0″ on that one.  Again, incredible.

When Trump calls for an investigation into Obama’s grades and an analysis of how he landed at Harvard, he seems a little too edgy for me.  On the other hand, remember how the Press hounded Bush over his attending Yale?  Similar stuff, although Trump is hinting, I imagine, at Affirmative Action, and the implication with Bush was simply that he was an idiot who made Yale on his father’s coattails.

But when Trump says of Libya, and the effort to oust their leader and back the freedom-fighting rebels…”I want 5 billion bucks just to take the phone call…”, well, that actually makes sense to me.  Realistic? Probably not, but I like, and so do a lot of others, the politically-incorrect, shoot-from-the-hip approach.  Those kind of quips remind me of Reagan. There is a similar sentiment.  Think Governor Chris Christie on steroids and with really bad hair, and you have Trump.

Who knows where this will go, but in a Presidential race that will soon be heating up, and with a field of rather lackluster contestants at this point in time, maybe Trump is worth it just for the half-time show.  He has struck a chord, though.  “America has become the laughing stock of the world and we are in a serious decline”.   Pretty hard to argue with that.

Tags: ,
Posted in Musings | 217 Comments »