by David Phinney
Jan 14, 2007 — A guy I was standing next to in line at Murky Grounds on Capitol Hill pointed this out to me.
“That’s no headline,” he said, pointing to a stack of Washington Post newspapers by the cash register.
And there it was, above the fold on The Washington Post front page:
“HOUSE GOP SHOWS ITS FRACTIOUSNESS IN THE MINORITY”
Fractiousness???
Forget news stand sales, darling, please whisper sweet nothing headlines in my ear….
I’m weak on writing headlines myself, but the man was right. That’s definitely no headline word and certainly not the kind of word that wakes me up on a Sunday morning.
No wonder newspaper circulation is in a nosedive.
How about: “Unity Falls Apart,” “Republican Leaders Lose Their Grip,” “Republican Goose Stepping Ends,” or “Republicans Break Rank.”
The news media needs to get out of the Ivy Leagues and regain a little street sense (no matter how unruly and fractious those streets may sometimes be).
Fractiousness
A. noun
1. unruliness, fractiousness, willfulness, wilfulness
the trait of being prone to disobedience and lack of discipline.
Interesting story, nonetheless:
“You’re freer to vote your conscience,” said Rep. Jo Anne Emerson (R-Mo.), who received an 88 percent voting record from the American Conservative Union in 2005 but has so far sided with Democrats on new budget rules, Medicare prescription-drug negotiations, raising the minimum wage and funding stem cell research. “Or, really, I feel free to represent my constituents exactly as they want me to be.”
… Anytime you have a government (real or proxy) ftgniihg insurgents either:1. the government is clearly and unambiguously winning2. it’s losing. Not winning is the same as losing in that situation.Not true. Many insurgencies go through periods of stalemate then the side that can bear the attrition the best wins. The US has won other insurgencies – the Seminole, Apache, Huks, Confederacy of course, and Cold War by willingness to spill blood and wear down the insurgents into dust.Winning in Iraq would have required much less squeamishness on the sanctity of enemy life than we have chosen to take. Or more resistance to the old, tired MSM “death count” chant they have been on for 5 fucking years. We lost 329 people an hour in WWII, when we had less than half our present population. We lose 60,000 to 95,000 a year in preventable medical events we can’t seem to allocate a few billion to work on, or the 1800 motorcycle deaths…Unbearable number of US deaths in Iraq?????????As Lefties who honestly don’t care at all for the troops blubber and women who think with their hearts instead of their brains insist??We are losing less than 2 soldiers a day since 9/11. Tragic no matter what the number is, but “unbearable”??? The Soviets lost and managed to “bear” the loss of 14,000 people a DAY in WWII.***************************Pogo is right on the MSM death count mantra.That said, given our current constraints and the truth of the Arab Sunni and Shia’s ingratitude and suicidal stupidity – WE ARE LOSING at present. It is not a stalemate, but an insurgency we let grow then fought ineffectively with halfass measures, a pack of Iraqi shitheads with no interest in risking their own asses for a nation, just their tribes — and a feckless ROE policy.And Bush was an absolute moron for deciding to launch his “we’re actually winning on our current course and Rummy will be with me the whole way!!” campaign tour.Coming from a family of Reagan Democrats and huge pro-defense vets, it was disgust with Bush, and the economy of the Elites, and corruption that returned most of us to remembering the “Democrat” part of being Reagan Democrats.************************Tim – “Unfortunately, the defense draw down begun by G.H.W. Bush and continued by Clinton has hurt our ground forces most.”Don’t forget Bush II. He is as much a part of it as his predecessors and has far less of an excuse for having less fighters, subs, bombers, surface ships, tanks, reservist eligibility, bases AFTER 9/11 than what Clinton handed over. And after China’s huge buildup in missiles, subs, and army modernization started. Rumsfeld to the end believed we needed LESS grunts and MORE “high tech supersoldiers like the million dollar ones with college degrees now being blown up by IEDs planted by illiterate peasants for a 150 dollar payment by Iranian agents, Sunni moneymen”.Rumsfeld wanted to go from 10 Army divisions down to 8. Good riddance to him. He had some good ideas, but his opposition to a larger military and support of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and growing the Fed Gov’t by 40% in 6 years all but quaranteed that he would paralyze America by having our smaller ground forces bogged down in Iraq, burning out from overuse, and unable to act elsewhere (much to the glee of Chavez, Iran, N Korea, and Syria)*******************If I ask you, or the average American, how many Medals of Honor and Silver Stars have been awarded in this war, how many will know the answer without looking it up?Only 2 Medals of Honor. Very stingy compared to other wars, And one was for a grenade-flopper. With another flopper award pending. Only one was for a true hero that performed an astounding feat of valor and skill in the face of a superior enemy. And even SGT Smith died. Somehow Bush’s Pentagon has decided to get a MOH requires you to die – otherwise several Marines and SEALs that did Audie Murphy proud would have theirs. (A grenade flopper is just a soldier that sacrifices himself for his buddies by instinct, like the thousands who died spontaneously deciding to lead charges on machine gun nests so others could get close enough to grenade or mortar the nest and live. Or people like the Japs that came at us as suicide bombers.) Better we gave a few more out to living soldiers who did great feats of valor and skill – in WWII and Vietnam grenade floppers got theirs, but the military was far better at making awards for true feats of valor that helped win battles, not just “taking one for the team”.