It's all about where you draw the line

Life imitates The Onion:

We are so screwed.

I just hope the revolution come soon enough that the people who caused this are still alive to be put against the wall.

Major General John F. Kelly
February 3, 2009
Al Anbar Province, Iraq

I don’t suppose this will get much coverage in the States as the news is so good. No, the news is unbelievable.

Something didn’t happen in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, today. Once the most violent and most dangerous places on earth, no suicide vest bomber detonated killing dozens of voters. No suicide truck bomber drove into a polling place collapsing the building and killing and injuring over 100. No Marine was in a firefight engaging an Al Qaida terrorist trying to disrupt democracy.

What did happen was Anbar Sunnis came out in their tens of thousands to vote in the first free election of their lives.

With the expectation of all of the above (suicide bombers) they walked miles (we shut down all vehicle traffic with the exception of some shuttle busses for the elderly and infirm) to the polling places. I slept under the stars with some Grunts at Combat Outpost Iba on the far side of Karma, and started driving the 200 miles up the Euphrates River Valley through Karma, Fallujah, Habbiniyah, Ramadi, Hit, Baghdad and back here to Al Asad. I stopped here and there to speak with cops, soldiers, Marines, and most importantly, regular Iraqi men and women along the way. It was the same everywhere. A tension with every finger on a trigger that broke at perhaps 3PM when we all began to think what was almost unthinkable a year ago. We might just pull this off without a bombing. No way. By 4PM it seemed like we’d make it to 5PM when the polls closed. At 4:30 the unbelievable happened: the election was extended an hour to 6PM because of the large crowds! What are they kidding? Tempting fate like that is not nice. Six PM and the polls close without a single act of violence or a single accusation of fraud, and nearly by early reports pretty close to 100% voted. Priceless.

Every Anbari walking towards the polling place had these determined and, frankly, concerned looks on their faces. No children with them (here mothers and grandmothers are NEVER without their children or grandchildren) because of the expectation of death. Husbands voted separately from wives, and mothers separately from fathers for the same reason. In and out quickly to be less of a target for the expected suicide murderer. When they came out after voting they also wore the same expression on their faces, but now one of smiling amazement as they held up and stared at ink stained index fingers.

Norman Rockwell could not have captured this wonderment. Even the ladies voted in large numbers and their husbands didn’t insist on going into the booths to tell them who to vote for.

One of the things I’ve always said was that we came here to “give” them democracy. Even in the dark days my only consolation was that it was about freedom and democracy. After what I saw today, and having forgotten our own history and revolution, this was arrogance. People are not given freedom and democracy – they take it for themselves. The Anbaris deserve this credit.

Today I step down as the dictator, albeit benevolent, of Anbar Province. Today the Anbaris took it from me. I am ecstatic. It was a privilege to be part of it, to have somehow in a small way to have helped make it happen.

Semper Fi.

Kelly

Hat tip: Blackfive, via Brian.

This guy gets my vote for Best Use of Webcams:

Hit & Run > Gotcha! – Reason Magazine.

Nicely played.

Finally, the Black Community™ has the tools they need to move past this country’s racist past. Yes, that’s right, it’s Blackbird: the Web Browser for Black People.

Remember: you’ll never really become part of the American mainstream until you’ve first done everything in your power to separate yourself from the American mainstream.

I was going to say “my guy lost”, but it would be more accurate to say “The guy who is less not my guy lost”. Which is to say I didn’t really like either of them, but McCain was significantly the lesser of two evils.

But it’s done, and I’m not going to be one of those “Not MY President!” assholes that have plagued the political left for the past eight years, nor am I going to pursue arguments that he’s not “legitimate” for some reason or another; because acting like a petulant child is not the proper response to others acting like petulant children. Come January 20, he will indeed be my president, for better or worse.

And frankly, I hope I’m wrong. I think he’s going to be a poor president, but I hope I’m wrong; because my country is more important to me than winning the argument.

So good luck to you, Mr. Obama. You’ve got one hell of a can of worms on your hands, and will very quickly have to deal with Russia, a potentially nuclear Iran (and almost certain Iran/Israel nuclear war to follow), and the ongoing war on Islamic Fascism, not to mention all of the promises and wildly overinflated expectations of the people who elected you. Good luck and good health. Do well for your country.

And we’ll see what happens in four years.

I remember a number of years ago (probably a decade or so now…) when a British actor came on one of the late-night talk shows. Frustratingly, I don’t remember the actor, and I can’t recall if the show was Conan’s, or Dave’s, or (less likely) Jay’s. He talked about how he absolutely loved the United States, and had an interesting statement as to why he thought things were better here than in England.

He said (paraphrasing):

“In America, a guy with no money can be walking down the street and he sees a hot sports car parked along the street. He’ll stop and look at it, saying, ‘Oh yeah, that’s awesome. I love this car — one day I’m going to make it big and I’m going to have a car just like this.’

“In England, that car can be parked along the street, and the guy with no money will come along, and he’ll get mad. He’ll say, ‘Screw you you bastard with your fancy car.’ And he’ll pull out his keys and key the car.”

I thought it was an interesting distinction, and it’s really the type of thing that a non-American is more able to observe. Americans don’t see it, because we’re too close to it to realize it exists. We talk about it. We used to see it. We even have a name for it. But in the crush of media manipulation and the politics of class envy, we’ve lost sight of it. That interview was probably over ten years ago, and it’s only gotten worse since. Our name for the phenomenon the actor was describing? The American Dream.

Something that Americans often don’t see about the wide world around them is just how unique this country is in terms of social and financial mobility. A person can be born with nothing and become a multimillionaire, and vice versa. More important is the fact that people in this country aren’t born into “classes”. People are not so segregated into the groups into which they are born. Again, politics (this time of identity) has caused some damage here, but the proof is in a little girl named Condoleeza who grew up in the segregated 60s in a poor Alabama neighborhood, and grew up to become the Secretary of State.

In the story of the sports car, the hypothetical American knows that even though he doesn’t have much today, tomorrow is another story. The course of your life can go in whatever direction you take it. The Englishman in the story sees his life as much more set. He resents that somebody else has such desirable things because he knows that he will never have it. There is a divide between the wealthy and the “common folk” that can’t be crossed, so why try?

What brought this to mind was the recent attacks by leftists against Joe Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. “Joe the Plumber”. I read a lot of blogs, and in the attacks against Joe, the most common I’ve seen is that he’s a liar because he doesn’t make the $250,000 that would cause him to fall under Obama’s take hike on “the rich”. If you’re paying attention of course you know that Joe didn’t say he did. He said that somewhere down the road he was going to buy a business. He was talking about the future. Why is this important?

The attacks on Joe go beyond the simple fact that he doesn’t make that amount of money. I have seen, over and over again, very pointedly statements that he doesn’t make that much money, and never will. That is, he’s a liar because he says that some day he’ll make that much money, when “we” all know damned well that he’ll never make that much in this lifetime.

“In this lifetime”. I see that particular turn of phrase in many of these statements. Apparently they believe very strongly in the lesser model that you are born to a particular station in life. You’re a fool (or, for Joe, a liar) if you think otherwise. What happened to the American Dream?

I personally know a plumber who almost certainly has at least a million dollars to his name. He’s in his 70s now, and retired; but he worked hard for years, invested his money, built a good business, and made good. Need I say that he is an immigrant with a heavy accent? I don’t think the fact that he is foreign-born is a coincidence. People born in this country are in recent years inundated with a message that the rich “got lucky”, whereas those on the outside looking in know that American opportunity — the American Dream — is something you have to jump at, grab on to, and use, actively.

When I was shortly out of college I had a job at a bookstore. I worked full time, quickly became a supervisor, with corresponding pay raise and added responsibility. A co-worker was a woman hired around the same time I was. After we’d been working together about six months, we had a conversation in which she was stunned to learn that I had only worked there as long as she had, and she became angry that she wasn’t a supervisor too. “You work part-time” I pointed out. I then discovered that the reason she worked part time was that she was on welfare, and if she earned more than X amount per week she would lose the government payout. This folks, is not “bad luck”. She had explicitly chosen to keep herself on welfare when there was full-time work for the taking. (Not unrelated, she also had the “bad luck” to be unmarried and pregnant.)

This is why I am so infuriated when I hear politicians such as Barack Obama refer to the wealthy as the ones who “got lucky”, and conversely the poor as the “less fortunate”. America is not a lottery — success is far more likely the result of hard work, and responsibility. As the founder of Jimmy John’s Sandwiches once said, “Tenacity will beat brains seven days a week.” Tenacity. Work. Guts. Luck is in there somewhere; but as in poker, luck will carry you for a hand, but not for the whole game.

When Obama talks about the “fairness” of evening things out between the tenacious and those resting on welfare payments, it is a lie. When he acts as though success is just a result of being “lucky”, it is a lie. When he talks about tax cuts as “giving” something to the rich, rather than letting them keep what is already theirs, it is a lie. When he refers to his plan for writing checks to people who don’t pay taxes as “tax cuts”, it is a lie. It is an offense against reason, and it is a direct assault on the American Dream. His brand of socialism threatens to destroy the very thing that makes this incredible country unique in the history of mankind: the ability to have such dreams, and for such dreams to be attainable by anyone willing to take responsibility for their own fate.

[Update: Brian links and responds.]

Guy Puts up McCain/ Palin yard signs.

Within the hour, someone steals McCain/Palin yard signs.

Guy puts up new yard signs, and electrifies the suckers.

Hilarity ensues:

Things to note:

• The kid is holding an Obama/Biden sign in his other hand — the soft sign part, not the wire fame. Clearly he intends to swap signs.
• The kid’s daddy called the cops, claiming the kid just wanted to see how the sign was put together. Rrriiiight. Most likely daddy put the kid up to it.
• The police did not file any charges against the sign owner. Good for them.
• Shame they didn’t file charges against the sign stealer. Then again, he’s probably had enough charges for the day. (heh. “charges”)

But remember the narrative, folks — it’s Republicans who stifle free speech.

Got this via email:

Found these over at Treacher’s place:

In recent years I quite frequently hear references comparing Democrats to that hero of western folklore: Robin Hood. We’re told that so-and-so congressman, “like a modern day Robin Hood”, wants to “take from the rich and give to the poor”. It’s false comparison — a bum rap. Robin was framed.

Leftist (i.e. Democrat) policies frequently are targeted at the emotions — the arguments supporting them talk a lot about “fairness” and “caring”, and how they’re doing it “for the children”, or the poor, or for the victims of some Bad Thing. Then when anyone (e.g. Republicans) suggest that maybe that policy isn’t such a good idea, they obviously (or so the argument goes) don’t care about children, or fairness, or whatever “victim” group benefits from the great new social policy. The heroic comparison to the esteemed Mr. Hood plays directly into this model.

And as for Robin Hood? Go back and reread the story. He wasn’t robbing random rich people; he was stealing money from the tax collectors — the government.