There is a scene depicting military ineptitude near the beginning of George Lucas’ film, The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire is about to do battle with the rebels on the ice planet Hoth. One of his minions tells Darth Vader that the element of surprise has been lost. In frustration and as a display of sheer stupidity, Darth Vader then uses the Dark Side of the Force to kill his current Admiral and then tells the guy standing next to him to fix everything, calling him by his new designation, “Admiral.”
In a development we hope is not a parallel to this, we find a story where field commanders in Afghanistan are being “disciplined” when there are failures on the battlefield. The story then reports, “In response to the recent reprimands, some military officials have argued that casualties are inevitable in war and that a culture of excessive investigations could make officers risk-averse.”
This sounds like politically motivated, cover your a– behavior to us.
We would not be shocked to find out that this is a response to some Obama minion trying to be Darth Vader. We would like to understand the military value of doing what seems to be analogous to a football game and disciplining the quarterback because the defense he went up against was better prepared than he or his team imagined.
Are the higher-ups now requiring some degree of clairvoyance on the part of their field commanders? Do the field commanders have all the resources they need such that an expectation that there will be no battlefield failures is reasonable (seems doubtful to us)? Is it more likely that Obama has made a number of inept people his “Admirals,” and that they are simply following an Ayn Randian pattern of jackals so effectively story-told in Empire Strikes Back?
Again – we don’t know. We can only hope that for once in his miserable little life, Obama is not screwing yet another thing up.
- Off-the-cliff.com
Note: If you are not a scientist, and if you do not understand the rigors of the scientific method, this entry is not to you. It is to the people who have studied the scientific method, who respect it, who believe it is the best hope at getting at the structure of our world. If that’s not you, but your a “climate change” proponent or an “environmentalist”, you are a political animal – not a scientist. This entry is for scientists who might happen to come across this blog. Unlikely, but what the heck.
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An open letter to scientists in the area of ecology, meteorology and climatology:
We at O-t-c believe that most people who call themselves scientists WANT to perform per the scientific method. We also believe that environmentalism has put people into your field who have virtually destroyed it – especially insofar as Read more
We now have 3 friends who were dyed in the wool liberals who are now finding they have buyer’s remorse about Obama.
This is reflected in the national polls to be sure, but we’ve so far been told that it’s Independents who are leaving Obama in droves. Not liberals. Liberals, we’ve been told – even on FoxNews, are still with the President. But we have 3 friends in our small circle who are yelling at the Messiah to knock it off.
And of course, the Messiah won’t knock it off, because he never was about representing Americans. He has always been about “transforming” America into the United Soviet Socialist States of Amerika. Our liberal friends, it turns out, are patriotic. Who knew? We thought that to be a liberal meant you hate this country as it has been – that you thought that America’s warts were not really warts but were true measures of its character.
Turns out that at least some liberals love America, with a robust private sector, with real freedom as distinct from government doled out permissions, etc.
And to a person, our friends, who enthusiastically voted for Obama (one even dragged friends to the polling booth in order to get Obama more votes!) now says she won’t vote for him again in 2012 and will not be voting for Democrats in 2010.
That indicates that the Democrats have overreached yet again! (What a surprise – NOT!)
One of our friends, who used to see nothing wrong with political correctness, is now regularly sending us stories about it. 
This is most gratifying to us. The President turns out to be a master salesman for the political Right! Keep it up, Mr. President. Oh – please keep it up. We have been trying so hard to convert our friends for years! And here you go and do it in 9 short months? Oh – we want more.
November 2010 is looking better and better (as long as there’s no ACORN or others like it).
- Off-the-cliff.com
America
Failing
Day 295
What’s going on at ABCNews? Are they starting to take the rose colored glasses off when they look at Obama and his administration?
We were very surprised – and pleasantly so – when Bill O’Reilly had on his show Brian Ross of ABCNews – advancing the story that the terrorist Hasan who massacred 13 and injured many more at Fort Hood last week – was not merely a guy with a screw loose.
Can we not stipulate that anyone who murders has a screw loose? Therefore, the question of motivation comes into play. And ABCNews was out in front, acknowledged by O’Reilly of a competing news organization, in saying that Hasan had the indicators of a terrorist.
We have begun seeing stories that are a bit more centrist coming out of ABCNews. Did someone in upper management go on vacation so that the staff can now do what they know how to do? Report the news straight up? Or did someone in upper management get some business sense and say, “You know – we can’t cede the sane sector of society to FoxNews. We need to be in that arena competing head on.” Or do we have some rogue reporters who are soon to be leaving ABCNews (e.g., Tapper and Ross), going the way of Stossel?
Whatever the answer, we are going to begin watching ABCNews a little more closely to determine whether what we’re seeing is real or just a flash in the pan.
Here is a story about some people of darker complexion being denied entrance into a popular Chicago bar.
We personally find the facts of this story very disturbing. There is no indication that the people asking to be admitted were unruly in any way; and the bar owner’s alleged criteria seems to have been unevenly applied. But as we were not there, we move from reality and enter into a hypothetical evaluation.
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Supposing you are with a group of 5 friends and all of you want to attend a concert. All of you have done the wonderfully American thing and put away your hyphens. You are simply Americans. You are all cut from the same cloth; have similar values – as one might expect among friends.
The person manning the ticket office has not, however, put away her hyphen. She views the world through hyphenated lensing, which, while not illegal, is dumber than dumb, and is certainly unamerican. She says some of you that you can enter, but not the others. (Sort of like in Star Wars, where the barkeep is willing to let Luke come in, but not the droids: “We don’t serve their kind here.” Just stupid and evil.)
There is nothing in our hypothetical to suggest that the ones denied entry are different behaviorally from those who are admitted. In fact, let’s stipulate that this is the case: behaviorally, you are all cordial; perhaps a bit rowdy, but nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing to say that one of you is OK but the other of you is not.
Can there be any extenuating circumstances that would justify such behavior on the part of the person manning the ticket office?
We can’t think of any.
We leave it to you to agree and/or to connect it back to the original story or not.
- Off-the-cliff.com