Bruce McQuain joined us once again for our weekly tribute to the troops. Before we got to SYSK, we talked briefly about politics first. It was last call for GatesGate on Pundit Review Radio, so we started there.
We also talked about social networks and some of the amazing things you can learn by following interesting people. One of those interesting people that I follow is Boston Maggie, a great blogger who is focused on Navy issues. This week at Boston Maggie, I learned that John Quincy Adams is tweeting about his 1809 trip to Russia, via his personal diaries and the Massachusetts Historical Society. I also learned that the remains of Captain Scott Speicher, who has been missing since the first Iraq war, have been found and returned home. Finally, Maggie had tons of great coverage of the christening of the USS Jason Dunham in Bath Maine. Dunham, a former SYSK subject in May 2006, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his amazing service and sacrifice for our nation.
BostonMaggie was listening and called in and spiced up the conversation greatly. It was entirely our pleasure.
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On Boston’s Talk Station WRKO since 2005, Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week we give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called “groundbreaking” by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to the radio every Sunday evening from 8-10pm on AM680 WRKO, Boston’s Talk Station.
Welcome Hot Air readers! Thanks Allah!
More on the Gates arrest here.
Check out Pundit Review Radio’s weekly Someone You Should Know segment, a tribute to the folks who should be getting all this attention.
San Fran Nan went on one of her usual over-the-top rants today against evil big business. Last year’s target was Big Oil. This year’s boogeyman, Big Insurance and HMOs.
“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters, referring to insurance companies. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure,” she said, adding, “They are the villains. They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening.”
Mary Katherine Ham at the Weekly Standard reminds dear Nancy that,
Nancy Pelosi herself is in the top 20 House recipients of “insurance” contributions this cycle, and insurance companies are her 10th-most frequent contributor over the span of her career.
Could she possibly be any thicker? Why, yes, yes she could. Who do you suppose was the largest receipient of HMO money? Some big business loving Republican shill, right?
This is the story of the USS Indianapolis,
The world’s first operational atomic bomb was delivered by the Indianapolis, (CA-35) to the island of Tinian on 26 July 1945. The Indianapolis then reported to CINCPAC (Commander-In-Chief, Pacific) Headquarters at Guam for further orders. She was directed to join the battleship USS Idaho (BB-42) at Leyte Gulf in the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Japan. The Indianapolis, unescorted, departed Guam on a course of 262 degrees making about 17 knots.
At 14 minutes past midnight, on 30 July 1945, midway between Guam and Leyte Gulf, she was hit by two torpedoes out of six fired by the I-58, a Japanese submarine. The first blew away the bow, the second struck near midship on the starboard side adjacent to a fuel tank and a powder magazine. The resulting explosion split the ship to the keel, knocking out all electric power. Within minutes she went down rapidly by the bow, rolling to starboard.
Of the 1,196 aboard, about 900 made it into the water in the twelve minutes before she sank. Few life rafts were released. Most survivors wore the standard kapok life jacket. Shark attacks began with sunrise of the first day and continued until the men were physically removed from the water, almost five days later.
Whoever this young girl is that put this video together, my hats off to you. Incredibly well done.
No, this post isn’t about my looming Twitter addiction. It’s about what you can learn from using social networks. One of the people I decided to follow when I started on Twitter recently was John Perry Barlow ( @JohnPerryBarlow)
I mostly know of Barlow through his songwriting work for the Grateful Dead. He was a frequent collaborator with Bob Weir and helped write such classics as Cassidy, Lost Sailor, Saint of Circumstance, Hell in a Bucket, Music Never Stopped and I Need a Miracle. All great, great songs. I also knew that he was a very close friend of John F. Kennedy Jr. What I didn’t know was that he was also a lifelong friend of LSD advocate Timothy Leary and a founding members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In short, a fascinating character and someone I was definitely interested in following. Well, I haven’t been disappointed. They say brevity is the soul of wit and Twitter’s 140 character limit puts it to the test. Barlow, well, he’s made for Twitter.
Microsoft responds to Google by announcing it plans to eat itself: It’s releasing a free Web-based version of Office.
About a week ago comes this,
I’m in rehab. Folks say, You’ll admit that? Hell, why not? I was a famous drunk. I won’t mind being a famous alcoholic.
Damn. How about that. He throws it right out there and shares it with his social network. I don’t know why but this really struck me, the openness, the sharing. It was so social when most would try to keep it so private.
The way I see it… If an economy as fucked up as this one can be in recovery, why not me?
I’m sitting between Seattle & Tacoma with my dear pal Creighton King, surrounded by my fellow inmates in our green scrubs.
Rehab is for quitters.
I am heartened by the support of my friends & Twitterers. I went public about this ’cause I will need that support actively.
This is not in keeping with AA doctrine, but I’ve never fully embraced that religion. I associate anonymity with shame.
What came next was a thunderbolt, at least for me.
“One of these days I’m gonna pull myself together, soon as finish tearing myself apart.”
I wrote that line for Brent Mydland, dead 19 years today. A sweet, doomed genius he was, who could only speak in music.
Has it been 19 years since Brent Mydland died? Most of you are scratching your heads. He was an incredibly talented singer and keyboard player who played with the Grateful Dead from 1979 to 1990. I remember it like it was yesterday, exactly where I was and who I was with when I heard the news.
Barlow’s reminder of his death got me thinking about Mydland’s daughters, who were close to my kids ages (6, 5) at the time of his death in 1990. Nineteen years. I wondered how they were doing. Were they married? Have kids of their own? Think of how much he missed in nineteen years. Addiction is like cancer in that most everybody knows somebody who has struggled with it. Some more than others. I’ve known more than one, believe me. What a destructive force addiction is. It is like a hurricane that blows through lives and destroys everything in its path. If you’ve ever watched Intervention on A&E, you know.
Mydland got plucked from relative obscurity to join one of the most popular and profitable bands in the world. He was married with two beautiful little girls. What would drive a man in his position to shoot a speedball? Addiction.
Inevitably I started thinking about my life, my health, my priorities and my kids. I don’t want to miss a thing.
And what got me thinking all these deep thoughts? A guy Tweeting from rehab. Life lessons in 140 characters or less.
If you believe the Professor, then yes. Gates was “Crowleyed”, arrested and released. The Iranian terrorists were only arrested and released. Advantage Iranian terrorists.
Blackfive points us to a Long War Journal report by Bill Roggio,
US released senior Iranian Qods Force commander
A senior Qods Force officer who led one of the three commands in Iraq assigned to attack US and Iraqi forces was one of five Iranians released by the US military on July 9.
…Farhadi is considered one of the three most dangerous Iranian operatives to have been captured in Iraqi since the US began targeting the Iranian-backed Shia terror networks. His role as one of the three theater commanders in the Ramazan Corps means he is directly responsible for planning, coordinating, and executing attacks against US forces.
The Ramazan Corps is responsible for the death of hundreds of US soldiers in Iraq, and the corps backed the various uprisings by Shia extremist groups. Ten percent of US deaths in Iraq are estimated to have been caused by the Iranian-supplied, armor-piercing explosively-formed projectiles, or EFPs.
Blackfive’s James Hanson, aka Uncle Jimbo, a retired Special Operations Master Sergeant, adds his perspective,
Make sure to read the entire piece as it contains the usual deep background on the extent of Iranian actions in Iraq and the fact that they were directly responsible for the deaths of far too many US servicemembers and Iraqi civilians. Iranian actions such as these exposes their operatives to detention as terrorists. The fact that we are now releasing them is shocking and needs to be discussed far more vigorously. Some of this is driven by our security agreements with Iraq, but it seems likely that some is to push negotiations with Iran on multiple issues. They have been complaining that we hold and must release their operatives and it seems we are putting the desire for talks with Iran above the safety of our troops and Iraqi civilians.
It doesn’t make sense to me and I’m sure there is some complicated, nuanced, multi-pronged reason. I’d like to hear it. This seems to me like an area where an enterprising journalist might want to start asking questions. Paging Pamela Hess, paging David Martin, Jim Miklaszeswki. Hello, anybody there? So far, a short AP article is all I’ve seen.
Bill Roggio, by the way, is someone you should be reading and following @billroggio for your Twitterers.
An Army veteran himself, Bill has embedded with the Marines, US Army, the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi police in Iraq in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, and with the Canadian Army in Afghanistan in 2006. According to his bio, Bill has been published in The Washington Times, The New York Post, The National Review, The Toronto Times, and Die Weltwoche. His photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He also presents regularly at the US Air Force’s Contemporary Counterinsurgency Warfare School on the media and embedded reporting.
In other words, he’s the best the blogosphere has to offer, a subject matter expert who take deep dives in their areas of expertise and share it with the world. In Bill’s case, it is reporting from the world’s most dangerous places. He has helped build Long War Journal into an indespensible resource for those interested in Obama era Overseas Contingency Operations. Like Michael Yon, Long War Journal is supported by its readers. If you value this type of citizen journalism, please consideer making a donation. In addition to being a new media pioneer, citizen journalist, Bill is a great guy and a family man.
I’ve interviewed Bill from Iraq and Afghanistan and had the pleasure of meeting him in May 2007, when we talked about the Long War Journal and the Anbar awakening in Iraq,
Liberals have a reputation for being soft on crime and weak on military issues. If you have ever wondered why or whether it was justified, Blue Mass Group , Massachusetts leading liberal blog site, has the answer.
Just read their website. Here is an overview of Blue Mass Group posts on GatesGate.
Hey Boston Globe, Why Won’t You Post Police Report Now? WITH POLL
No evidence to support CPD version
Some thought-provoking analyses of the Gates arrest
Stupid is as Stupid Does: Cambridge PD Attorney Doubles Down on Acting Stupidly
Police unions get their backs up; Obama talks with Crowley [update] and Gates
Crowley to Critics: “Up Against the Wall, and Spread ‘Em!”
The Anti-Violence Project questions the legality of the Gates arrest/detention
Cambridge police officer, stupidly, won’t apologize
Obama: Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Shame on Globe and Local Media Critics
Cambridge cops take black, disabled professor away in handcuffs. Read the police report here.
See a theme here? Sgt. Crowley, the Cambridge PD and the police union are the bad actors, not Henry Louis Gates, despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. This from a group of people whose tag line is “A reality-based community on politics and policy in Massachusetts”.
Since this community of Massachusetts liberals is “reality-based”, I thought I would do a site search on Jared C. Monti. After all, what is more reality-based than the Medal of Honor? Since 2001, there have been only five awarded, before Massachusetts native Jared Monti was posthumously awarded one last week. Here’s what I found,
Blue Mass Group Site Web Search
Your search – Jared C. Monti – did not match any documents.
Here is a reality for the “reality-based community” of Blue Mass Group liberals, your reputation for being weak on law and order and military issues is well earned and richly deserved.