Kabuki Village

Not Really A Huge Surprise

When asked how they feel about President-elect Barack Obama as commander in chief, six out of 10 active-duty service members say they are uncertain or pessimistic, according to a Military Times survey.

In follow-up interviews, respondents expressed concerns about Obama’s lack of military service and experience leading men and women in uniform.

Underlying much of the uncertainty is Obama’s stated 16-month timetable for pulling combat troops out of Iraq, as well as his calls to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to allow gays to serve openly in the military, according to survey responses and interviews.

“How are you going to safely pull combat troops out of Iraq?” said Air Force 1st Lt. Rachel Kleinpeter, an intelligence officer with the 100th Operations Support Squadron at RAF Mildenhall, England. “And if you’re pulling out combat troops, who are you leaving to help support what’s left? What happens if Iraq falls back into chaos? Are we going to be there in five years doing the same thing over again?”

1st Lt Rachel Kleinpeter is now one of my heroes… not only because she had the brains to ask the right questions but because her name in German means “Little Peter” and I can really identify with that.

Feel free to read the rest of the article at ArmyTimes Online… the rest of the data won’t surprise you a bit either but I’ll let you read it yourself and cringe at some of the more obvious socially based biases on your own.

The people have spoken... well, at leat the people who will be eating the sand, pulling the triggers, and dodging the bad guys have spoken

Glass Houses...

Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here and state the obvious:

A Vice Presidential candidate with two years of executive experience is preferential to a Presidential candidate with none.

There, I said it. It’s a travesty that I felt the need to say it at all, but for some reason the question of experience was the first thing thrown on the table by the left. If you look in the dictionary nest to the word “irony”, you’ll pictures of various left-leaning pundits harping on Sarah Palin’s alleged lack of experience while completely glazing over Obama’s actual lack of experience. You might also see the constant references to “Troopergate”… or as I like to call it “the little scandal that could be on a tangential basis at best if proved.” Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t exist left of center. Of course, you don’t hear about Obama’s donations from convicted criminals anymore.

You also might hear the big to do about Palin’s being Commander-in-Chief of the Alaska National Guard. The left paints this position and the Alaska National Guard as a joke… I’m certain that the soldiers (yes, soldiers… real, actual soldiers) in Alaska have a differing view of their status and hers. Several news programs have laughed about her status as “Commander-in-Chief” of the Alaskan National Guard, but they don’t mock Obama’s Commander-in-Chief experience. Of course that stands to reason since Obama has no experience as Commander-in-Chief of anything beyond a school newspaper. Zip. Zilch. Zero.

The big claim by the Democrats here is that she has no experience and that she is just a pretty face meant to get votes based on style instead of substance. Okay. Maybe she is. But since the Democrats started the ball rolling on that particular strategy I think it’s only fair that the Republicans get to play the same game. At least the Republicans are being more responsible about it. Obama has been painted time and again as an “empty suit” who was chosen only because of his charisma and good looks… if Sarah Palin is fulfilling the same function except in the Vice Presidential role vice the Presidential role, I am a lot more comfortable with that. Better an empty suit in the closet with some wear from experience than a crisp new one with the tags still hanging off of it at the Presidential lectern.

I do have to give Obama credit on one thing that he does have that she hasn’t got, though… she doesn’t have a running mate who claimed, in public and on national TV, that she isn’t ready for the job.

The DNC Falsehood Factory

I’ve got a bone or two to pick with the speeches at the DNC earlier this evening. My first gripe is about Beau Biden being introduced as “Captain”. If the guy wants to be introduced as the Delaware Attorney General, that’s one thing… but being introduced as a Captain when it was just announced by NBC that he’s a member of the Army (DelANG) is using his rank and status as a member of the armed forces of the US to further a political goal at a purely political and partisan demonstration. Beau Biden does not speak for the entirety of the US military. I have no doubts that it was arranged so that he could always blame the announcer for the faux pas, but the wording was obviously aimed at demonstrating his membership in the Army and ergo inferring support for Biden. The intro was crafted to be a political statement and I believe that Beau Biden knew about it and its implications.

Joe Biden then took the stage and blatantly took credit, on behalf of Obama and the rest of the Democrats in congress, for the forthcoming withdrawal timeline for US troops in Iraq. His assertion is that a timeline was the right thing to do the entire time. The fact of the matter is that a timeline is only feasible now because we eschewed one before. The Surge is what has allowed us to even think about a timeline… not Obama’s constant insistence that a timeline be established. The current talk of timelines isn’t due to political pressure from the left, but from relative stability in Iraq and their ability to stand on their own two feet. It’s called tactical patience… waiting for the right time to do the right thing.

My last gripe has to do with Obama himself. The MSM showed his family in an interview and all that Michelle Obama could say was how much her children missed their father and wished that they could see him. They even showed their eldest daughter approaching the TV screen that showed BH Obama accompanied by Michelle Obama’s commentary about how they missed him and were worried about him. Then, after Joe Biden finishes his speech (drum roll please), a surprise guest appears out of nowhere… Barack Obama! Yay! But here’s my problem with that little surprise appearance… where was the lie?

Someone was the perpetrator of a lie here; it’s just a question of who was involved. Was it Barack Obama lying to his own family about his whereabouts and ergo putting his daughters and spouse through needless heartache and sepration? Or was it Barack and Michell Obama together… a joint effort? Perhaps the whole family was in on it and it was just meant to dupe the general public… you know, like his entire platform of nebulous “hope” and “change” without any viable or even visible “plan”? I truly hope that it was the latter explanation because once Obama was done speaking the first people that he went to greet were not his family, not his wife or children, but his political cronies in the VIP section. I truly hope that he’s just a grandstanding media whore who would involve his family in a grandiose and heart wrenching, yet false, tale of familial separation to further his political goals of being the least qualified American to ever run for President instead of a truly heartless politico that would actually make his own children wait in line behind his party bosses for his affection after a long period of actual separation.

Obama told the crowd he was proud to have "the whole Biden family on this journey with me to take America back."

Too bad he didn’t have his own family on board.