Please go see a great portrait of a Marine veteran -- certainly of Iwo Jima and perhaps of the 4th Marines in pre-war China or Nicaragua in the 30s. Who knows what history it helped make?
To heck with our obsession with shiny newness in our relics. This one is museum quality.
Thank you, Wyatt.
Mar 17, 2011
Calling Ann Landers
Dear Ann,
I am soooo tired of being such an ordinary citizen. How can I become extraordinary enough for permission to defend myself?
Despondent in Smugley-On-Lake
-0-
Dear SOL Despondent,
You could certainly become an elected official, although I understand you may not wish to, for reasons of hygiene.
Ann
---
In California where firearms official policy for us of the other ranks can best be summed up as "NO," at least three lawmakers have decided that they are entitled to become only ones. Ordinary Californians face nearly prohibitive barriers to firearms possession and use. Their elected leaders find this personally inconvenient and have floated a bill to allow legislators and many other statewide officlals to carry concealed. Even the LA Times is somewhat incredulous.
The surprising thing about this bill isn't just that it has appeared in California, which tends to favor restrictive gun laws, but that its coauthors are all Democrats who in the past have voted to limit gun rights for ordinary citizens.
In Washington D.C., too:
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told reporters today that his staff is working on a measure to allow members of Congress to carry concealed weapons in the District of Columbia - including in the Capitol itself. D.C. laws bar regular people from carrying concealed weapons for self-defense.
In fairness, Louie is not particularly anti-gun. Nevertheless his bill would ensure that congressthings, like California legisthings, would become legally irregular. Okay, but try to hold it until you get off my lawn. Speaking of hygiene and all.
I am soooo tired of being such an ordinary citizen. How can I become extraordinary enough for permission to defend myself?
Despondent in Smugley-On-Lake
-0-
Dear SOL Despondent,
You could certainly become an elected official, although I understand you may not wish to, for reasons of hygiene.
Ann
---
In California where firearms official policy for us of the other ranks can best be summed up as "NO," at least three lawmakers have decided that they are entitled to become only ones. Ordinary Californians face nearly prohibitive barriers to firearms possession and use. Their elected leaders find this personally inconvenient and have floated a bill to allow legislators and many other statewide officlals to carry concealed. Even the LA Times is somewhat incredulous.
The surprising thing about this bill isn't just that it has appeared in California, which tends to favor restrictive gun laws, but that its coauthors are all Democrats who in the past have voted to limit gun rights for ordinary citizens.
In Washington D.C., too:
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told reporters today that his staff is working on a measure to allow members of Congress to carry concealed weapons in the District of Columbia - including in the Capitol itself. D.C. laws bar regular people from carrying concealed weapons for self-defense.
In fairness, Louie is not particularly anti-gun. Nevertheless his bill would ensure that congressthings, like California legisthings, would become legally irregular. Okay, but try to hold it until you get off my lawn. Speaking of hygiene and all.
Mar 16, 2011
Well, since the world is coming to an end anyway...
Pinned up above a hundred thousand GI bunks in the days before she had to splain anything.
We don't report, so you can't decide
Among the things our media do poorly is establishing a reasonable sense of perspective. A few hours ago, when Japan temporarily pulled its damage control troops from the plants, AP panicked. It even quoted a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists who said Japan had virtually "thrown in the towel."
At that same point in this frantic news cycle, Reuters was reporting somewhat more calmly that the work suspension was temporary with the nearby workers preparing to resume the fight. It may or may not have been the Reuters restraint which moved the other wire service to zip the OMG report down the memory hole.
But that is a relatively small thing, and I can understand it as a matter of on-the-ground reporter/editor fatigue and the vagaries of reporting a hugely complex batch of simultaneously breaking stories under nearly impossible circumstances. The reporters slogging around in the mud and debris along with the front-line editors and rewrite drones are as much to be pitied as mocked.
The greater failures happen in the home offices -- and I'm talking about you, you high-level thinkers back in your comfy editorial digs at the headquarters of our great newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles.
For instance, I have yet to see reports comparing the current danger to that of 1945-62 when we and the Russians were popping nukes in the atmosphere like a bunch of Chinese kids celebrating the new year. In that period we exploded more than 300 bombs in the open air of the Pacific, Nevada, and the South Atlantic. God knows how many Moscow set off. (Before bomb testing officially ended in 1992, and counting underground tests, the U.S. exploded at least 1,054 nuclear "devices.")
We don't know in detail the public health consequences of those dirty blasts, mostly because the governments decided they'd rather not.
But, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you The World; still intact three generations after Manhattan; still spawning new and healthy human beings at a frightening rate; still a place where we strive to live out our lives with the lights on and the thermostats responsive.
---
There's some Pollyanna here, which I would regret if it were not for the need to establish a small counterweight to the prevailing mediasphere view that, yep, the Mayans had it all figured out.
At that same point in this frantic news cycle, Reuters was reporting somewhat more calmly that the work suspension was temporary with the nearby workers preparing to resume the fight. It may or may not have been the Reuters restraint which moved the other wire service to zip the OMG report down the memory hole.
But that is a relatively small thing, and I can understand it as a matter of on-the-ground reporter/editor fatigue and the vagaries of reporting a hugely complex batch of simultaneously breaking stories under nearly impossible circumstances. The reporters slogging around in the mud and debris along with the front-line editors and rewrite drones are as much to be pitied as mocked.
The greater failures happen in the home offices -- and I'm talking about you, you high-level thinkers back in your comfy editorial digs at the headquarters of our great newspapers in New York, Washington, Los Angeles.
For instance, I have yet to see reports comparing the current danger to that of 1945-62 when we and the Russians were popping nukes in the atmosphere like a bunch of Chinese kids celebrating the new year. In that period we exploded more than 300 bombs in the open air of the Pacific, Nevada, and the South Atlantic. God knows how many Moscow set off. (Before bomb testing officially ended in 1992, and counting underground tests, the U.S. exploded at least 1,054 nuclear "devices.")
We don't know in detail the public health consequences of those dirty blasts, mostly because the governments decided they'd rather not.
But, Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you The World; still intact three generations after Manhattan; still spawning new and healthy human beings at a frightening rate; still a place where we strive to live out our lives with the lights on and the thermostats responsive.
---
There's some Pollyanna here, which I would regret if it were not for the need to establish a small counterweight to the prevailing mediasphere view that, yep, the Mayans had it all figured out.
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