“[John Ford] was the only one of the Hollywood directors who fought who did not forget his men.”

– Captain Mark Armistead, USN –

Thus quotes Joseph McBride in his masterful biography Searching for John Ford, at the head of the chapter dealing with the director’s wartime activities. It is usually seen as lamentable when a genius is pulled from the practice of his art for any extended period, but here we must make a special allowance. As filmmaker Lindsay Anderson (1923-1994) explains in his essential critical volume About John Ford (which, like the McBride book, should be sitting proudly and dog-eared on the bookshelf of every conservative film fan): “War service took Ford away from the making of films for some three years when his powers were at their height. One would regret this interruption more had it not led directly to the making of a masterpiece.”

The masterpiece of which he speaks is a 1945 war film called They Were Expendable, and if you are a conservative who has never seen it, then you have denied yourself one of the most moving and achingly poetic expressions of your worldview ever put to celluloid.

They Were Expendable was made in the Fall of 1944, while most of the people portrayed in the story were still rotting in Japanese POW camps, if indeed they weren’t already dead. Just like our modern foes, the Japanese mocked the Geneva Conventions throughout World War II, and by the end some 40% of the POWs in their care had been executed, starved, or died of disease in their camps. This is compared to Europe, where only 1% of American POWs in German camps died. The events the film depicts took place in early 1942 when, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of Americans found themselves trapped in the Philippines and facing a fearsome Japanese invasion. The enemy bombed them with impunity, destroying their bases and leaving them with only four planes and an assortment of tiny boats. Supplies and morale dwindled into oblivion as, rather than be evacuated, they were ordered to hold their positions as long as possible against — and eventually be killed or captured by — an overwhelming enemy who was infamous for torturing and murdering prisoners.

How these Americans (and Filipinos) comported themselves as they were gobbled up by the Japanese war machine, buying time with their lives so that General MacArthur could escape the clutches of the enemy and prepare a counter-assault, is the focus of the film. And yet it is like no other war film ever made. Its long running time (two hours, sixteen minutes) allows us to linger on scene after scene of doomed men and women slowly losing their grip on their homes, their jobs, their culture, and each other. Under Ford’s direction, the movie rises above mere plot — battles, strategies — to become something much greater: the cinematic ennobling of an entire people, their way of life, their code of honor, and their selfless sacrifice. Lindsay Anderson would later declare it his single favorite film from his single favorite director, noting the presence of “image after image of conscious dignity” depicting a “love of brotherhood, loyalty,” and “the spirit of endurance that can wring victory from defeat.”

What prompts someone to make a movie like this? To throw away all of the Hollywood clichés, to indeed ignore the enemy entirely (the Japanese are only seen from afar via their planes and ships) and instead reach for something more vital: the very bedrock of our connection with country and culture? It’s so personal a picture that any essay has to be as much about the life and times of its maker as about the film itself — the two are intertwined too deeply to ignore. We thus turn away from They Were Expendable for a spell, and drift backward in time to the life of the director many call the greatest in motion picture history.

For John Ford (1894–1973), serving with the Navy during World War II was much more than boilerplate Hollywood patriotism. He was no green recruit, hastily enlisting in the wake of Pearl Harbor to toss on a uniform for the very first time. Growing up on the coast of Maine where he met many sailors, from an early age he was entranced by the discipline, hard ways, and exaltation of duty inherent in military life. During High School he applied to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and was devastated when he failed the entrance exam. In 1918, as a twenty-three-year-old fledgling director in Hollywood, he again tried to serve, this time volunteering as an aerial combat photographer. Bad eyesight ensured he flunked the physical, and numerous attempts to circumvent that ruling came to naught.

Despite these failures, he never gave up, making many military films throughout the ’20s and ’30s and taking every opportunity to schmooze with the Navy brass brought on as technical advisers. Finally, as a forty-year-old in 1934, and despite bad eyes once again causing him to fail the physical, enough strings were pulled by his Navy buddies to get him into the U.S. Naval Reserve. Given the rank of Lieutenant Commander, he was charged with creating “a course in naval photography; its uses, tactical, historical, and propaganda,” studying “infra-red and other super-sensitive films and complimentary filters as to their efficacy on sea and in the air, particularly in tropical waters” and “working intensely in an effort to collect photographic and camouflage information likely to be of value to the Navy.”

He also began spying for the Navy on a semi-formal basis during frequent trips of drunken carousing down the western coast of Mexico on his yacht, the Araner. With friends like John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Ward Bond in tow, Ford made observations of the coastline and filed detailed reports on Japanese ships and suspicious “sailors” in the area. These made their way to Navy intelligence, netting him several citations.

In 1940, with friends in the military telling him that America’s eventual entry into the war was all but assured, Ford attempted to establish an official Naval photographic unit that could not only use their skills to directly aid the front-line troops in the fight ahead (in the form of reconnaissance, mapping terrain, et cetera) but also help fight the nasty propaganda war that was already brewing between patriotic Americans and growing cells of anti-American Leftists who were becoming increasingly vocal in the media and Hollywood. The proposal he sent to his superiors reads today as if it was clipped from Big Hollywood’s own mission statement:

Radio, newspapers, motion pictures blast contrary ideas back and forth. . . A series of films which show factually the power of the American Navy is bound to give a psychological lift to the whole nation. Let them see the rigors of training; the skill of execution in maneuvers. . . our morale purpose is to show that a Democracy can and must create a greater fighting machine, in spirit and being, than a dictator power.

Unfortunately, Ford was pressing up against a lumbering, asleep-at-the-wheel Navy, the same one that would allow the Japanese to surprise its fleet at Pearl the very next year. With numerous agencies like the Signal Corps protecting their film-making/photographic turf against the interloper, Ford watched his proposals vanish into the gaping maws of military bureaucracy. The sense that namby-pamby Hollywood civilians would have little to contribute to an honest war effort might have played a part as well. As much as Ford liked being a Navy man, the endless red tape and politics were sources of constant aggravation, and he often lashed out at his superiors to a degree that would have landed anyone else in the brig. An oft-told story has it that, when asked by an officer what Hollywood landlubbers liked to do for amusement after making a movie, Ford cheerfully replied, “We all get on a bus and go down to San Diego and f*** Navy wives.”

Undeterred by being ignored, Ford decided to proceed unofficially, confident that someday soon the talent of Hollywood would be called upon, and that he would be ready. He began enlisting men from the rank-and-file of Hollywood film crews — cinematographers, grips, editors. He borrowed prop guns and uniforms from the Fox costume department, and set up impromptu military film classes on unused soundstages. There his Hollywood recruits learned from experts like the Oscar-winning cinematographer Gregg Toland (The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, et al.) about cameras they would use during a war, how to shoot in all lighting conditions, and how to develop film in the field if need be. They also were drilled in the basics of military life by Jack Pennick, a member of Ford’s regular acting troupe who happened to be an expert on military history and rules.

The rest of Tinseltown, and the skeptical Navy brass, began jokingly referring to this motley crew as “John Ford’s Navy.” And yet, by the time he was through, over a hundred of his Hollywood trainees had joined the active service or reserves, ready for a war they knew was coming.

After Pearl Harbor, with the Navy in shock and disarray, Ford finally found his long-sought benefactor. William “Wild Bill” Donovan was in the process of setting up the OSS — the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to today’s CIA — and Ford’s moxie, skills, and penchant for skirting the bureaucracy was just what he was looking for. Soon the director had brought his Hollywood gang under the official auspices of the OSS as “The Field Photographic Branch,” and it wasn’t long before they were filming reconnaissance, troop movements, and full-on battles all over the world.

At forty-seven years of age, after three decades of trying, John Ford was finally a soldier.

Ford served without pay, traveling across the globe and dodging enemy bombers and U-Boats to fulfill his duties as head of Field Photo. Iceland… Panama… North Africa… West Africa… Cuba… Australia… Ceylon… China… India…. Burma…. Saudi Arabia… Brazil… France. Ford filmed potential base locations, assessed the security of existing sites, captured now-historic battles on film, often in color, and coordinated the movements and missions of his men, thirteen of whom were killed in action. For these efforts, he was promoted to Captain on April 3, 1944. In later years he would state that — although he was the recipient of many of the highest awards in the film industry, including several Oscars — he was most proud of having earned his Small Arms Expert’s medal in the Navy.

John Ford had a knack for showing up in interesting places. He was on the deck of the USS Hornet, deep in enemy waters, when the famous Doolittle raid lifted off for Japan, his camera recording the historic moment for posterity. He was at Normandy on June 6, 1944, capturing rare footage of D-Day as it unfolded. He first (and last!) parachute jump occurred behind enemy lines in Burma on a secret OSS mission, with Ford terrified and murmuring Hail Marys all the way down because, a mere few days before, he had filmed a cargo drop and watched as chute after chute failed to open and the boxes smashed into the unforgiving earth.

Someone else who was scared was Ford’s wife, Mary, who only saw her husband on several brief occasions during the years he was off to war. She was from a Navy family herself and understood the sacrifices involved, but that didn’t make it any easier. One extant letter has Ford gently chiding her, “Ma, you can’t call up long distance just when you’re blue and lonesome. It’s just too damned expensive. We’ve really got to adjust — not financially necessarily, but mentally.” Lonely and bored, she wrote back to her husband that she felt guilty for not doing anything herself for the war effort while he was away fighting. One stateside friend wrote to Ford that his wife was, “pretty miserable just sitting on a hilltop worrying about you and waiting for you to come home.”

Eventually, Mary found some solace in volunteering her time at the now-legendary Hollywood Canteen, the star-studded entertainment hangout for servicemen passing through Los Angeles, where GIs could be served dinner by movie stars and dance the night away with popular starlets to the tunes of world-famous big bands. Mary threw herself into kitchen work there, and quickly became Vice President of the Canteen’s board. Her letters during this time reveal that she helped stars like Bob Hope and Bette Davis fight off a coven of Hollywood Commies, who were trying to get the military MPs (charged with keeping order in the Canteen) booted out, so they could then begin using the venue for staging and promoting leftist propaganda unimpeded.

Ford’s relationship with his wife wasn’t perfect — he was a notorious alcoholic, and one who had flirted with his share of Hollywood actresses during the early years, most notably Katharine Hepburn. But his wife had closed her ears to the gossip and never wavered from his side, vowing to remain “Mrs. John Ford until I die.” They had been married almost twenty-five years, raised two kids, and had overcome problems that would have doomed a lesser marriage. “I pray to God it will soon be over,” he wrote to her in another letter, “so we can live our life together with our children and grandchildren. . . God bless and love you Mary darling — I’m tough to live with — heaven knows & Hollywood didn’t help — Irish & genius don’t mix well but you know you’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

By the end of John Ford’s life, he had been married for fifty-three years.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, we continue our look at John Ford’s war years, and address his Oscar-winning WWII documentary The Battle of Midway (1942).

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Searching for John Ford: A Life by Joseph McBride: Without question the bible for John Ford fans. Ford is lucky in that most of the biographies written about him have been pretty good. But McBride’s masterwork — the culmination of three decades of intense research — towers above them all. Heavily drawn upon whenever I write or think about Ford, it is a must-read for all conservative film fans.

John Ford’s Sex Hygiene (1940): A footnote to Ford’s war career, mentioned here solely for the benefit of the morbidly curious. Only for the strong of stomach (and not safe for work). Actor Charles Trowbridge (later to play Admiral Blackwell in They Were Expendable) narrates and stars in this still-ghastly training film, which fully accomplished its goal of scaring the hell out of millions of randy enlisted men. In graphic, venereal diseased detail, young recruits are shown the perils of fooling around with ’dem dirty wemmins in their off-hours. At one point during the production of this little documentary Daryl Zanuck, the head of Twentieth-Century Fox, burst in on Ford interviewing a guy glistening with disgusting sores and declared, “He don’t scare me — send him to makeup!” When asked to comment on the film years later, Ford quipped, “I looked at it and threw up.”

Sex Hygiene Part I at YouTube | Sex Hygiene Part II at YouTube (again, it’s thoroughly gross, and there’s lots of medical full-frontal male nudity — you have been warned.)

The Hollywood Canteen is an idea that could and should be resurrected today, but do you dare take a peek at the modern incarnation of The Hollywood Canteen? One featuring not patriotic movie stars serving our troops, but pampered, puerile celebrities like Paris Hilton and Marilyn Manson being feted by armies of vapid Hollywood wannabes? Steel yourself against massive disappointment and check it out.

Alinsky

I never really had any insight into the pure comic genius of Saul Alinsky until I saw his new age Method followers display their considerable chops on the national stage. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, the Master’s ostentatious and envelope-pushing Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner-like proteges, whose hilarious ACORN skits also showed brilliant flashes of the late great Allen Funt. The Mysterious Mister X, the L.A. street comic who “Alinskyed” Faris Alkhateeb’s boredom-fueled Obama Joker art into an urban poster as devilishly humorous as Hannibal Lecter, also made as big a national splash as a 300-pound chub doing a cannonball into a crowded public kiddie pool.

Now I see the funny side. In fact, I’m getting Alinsky-inspired comic epiphanies of my own now. Who can say that deep down, that pathetic weepy drama queen performance by Nancy Pelosi on national TV pleading for people to “just stop it!” wasn’t the old Alinsky talking? Unfortunately for Madame Speaker, I’ve got the new age mischievous spirit of Saul Alinsky tugging at my muse. Struck me right away: the Pelosi video from 2006 in which Madame Speaker, addressing a moonbat rally, called Lefty anti-war protesters “patriots” and praised disruptions of town halls as a public service.

Eureka! What a side-by-side video comedy skit that would make! First cheering on the mad Lefty crowd like Ernst Roem rallying the Brownshirts, then all mournful like Vivien Leigh at the end of Gone With The Wind. Frankly, Madame Speaker, not only do I not give a damn, I’m going to hoist you on your own goddamn Saul Alinsky petard! Just like the Master would have wanted me to.

Another Alinsky-inspired banana peel laff riot might be editing videos of any Pelosi-like liberal Democrat Congressional reps who tearfully pleaded for support of the massive ObamaCare and Cap-and-Tax bills, then joked about not reading them. Getting the Alinsky hang of it now, people? Saul Alinsky was a comedic poet, and we didn’t even know it. Who’d a-thunk it, except perhaps those who knew him best? You know, I’ll bet if you canvassed his old neighborhoods in Chicago and Carmel, it would be just like the SNL interviews of neighbors who knew Buckwheat’s assassin:

REPORTER: “Did you know Mister Alinsky was a news-making community organizer?”

NEIGHBOR: “Yes. Very nice man.”

REPORTER: “Ever think he’d become the world’s most subversive political comedian?”

NEIGHBOR: “Oh, sure. That’s all he ever talked about.”

Here’s where I need your Alinsky-like help, my fellow mischievous political terrorist comedians, which we Americans all are at heart. Fight The Power! We The People are all in this together. I’m a comedy writer, mostly. My own brand of Alinsky humor is subversion with words. Don’t know the first fucking thing about making videos. That’s the director’s job, at least until I can take that two-day crash course that greatly helped Tarantino, Rodroguez and Chris Nolan, okay?

Doesn’t help me now. So would some helpful street comedians please throw those sharply contrasting Pelosi and other damning LibDem Lefty videos together in Alinsky-like subversively comic fashion? You can even edit in the videos where Madame Speaker first screams to the skies about CIA lies, then fumbles and stumbles on the air for five minutes trying to remember her own. Make a whole skit out of it. Scenes with biased reporters getting “Alinskyed” when they preach about objectivity write themselves. And it will all be classic Saul Alinksy and SNL-style comedy fun, fun, fun!

I am finding more and more that the Alinsky Method of comedy is manic brilliance. As sophisticated and erudite as Tracy and Hepburn, yet as moronically slapstick as the Three Stooges. And that is the sheer Wile E. Coyote genius of the Alinsky Method. Turn the whole show on its head for all sides. It is as insidiously and comically brilliant as the wave of professional hit men sent to the Oktoberfest in Munich to assassinate Inspector Clouseau, then wound up killing each other off to the last man.

For forty years the American Left has been having all the fun adhering to the Alinsky Method. Even drove its most charismatic protege into the White House, and his fellow Alinskyites to near-absolute power in Congress. Sans humor, but what do want from the Left? Yet the blackly comic Alinsky Method of today may yet drive that same humorless old school Alinsky army to Exit Stage Left faster than you can say “ACORN!” And that is the sheer subversive comic ingenuity of the Great Mr. Alinsky.

I know that wherever he is today (and I really hope it’s Heaven, he deserves it), the great Saul Alinsky is smiling down on the absurdity of it all. He must have been rolling on the streets of gold when he saw that first Pimp and Ho video, at least as much as when he saw Eddie Murphy’s White Like Me skit. Life Is Beautiful, and so is Saul Alinsky. May he forever Rest in Peace. At least during the times he isn’t falling to pieces over the ACORN videos, and glowing in the realization that it is all his fault.

Alinsky seminar over. Here’s your reading assignment: the Master’s Playboy interview. Let’s get busy, people! Oh, and if want a tagline for my recommended Pelosi comedy montage, my pick is PELOSI LIES, THE CIA AND FREEDOM OF SPEECH DIES! It’s all in how you pitch it, folks. I would also recommend as a great source of material the Alinksy-like pics and videos of Lefty protests in the past, for both side-by-sides and slogans of our own. Just like the Viet Cong scavenged our unexploded bombs to use against us, but much better. It’s all in fun, and nobody loses an eye.

God Bless You Mr. Alinsky, wherever you are. Wiseass punk! Ledger’s Joker ain’t got nothin’ on you!

Today my point is the LAW. I touched on it briefly in the article but no one seems to be discussing the LAW. Many on the left and maybe even some on the right are applauding the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to name a special prosecutor. I only have one question: What crimes were committed? Those supporting the decision to name a prosecutor say, “torture.” 

 The federal statute can be found in Title 18 chapter 113C of the Federal Criminal Code and Rules. Section 2340 defines torture. Section 2340A says:

Whoever outside the United States commits or attempts to commit torture shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years or both, and if death results to any person from conduct prohibited by this subsection, shall be punished by death or imprisoned for any term of years or life.

According to John Helgerson, who prepared the 2004 inspector general report for the CIA, the most egregious case was that of Abdul Wali, an Afghan suspected of rocket attacks on military bases. Wali died after four days in custody. A CIA contractor, David Passaro, was convicted in federal court of assault for the techniques he employed in June, 2003 during the interrogation. 

Federal career prosecutors have already reviewed the 2004 report and concur only one criminal case warranted prosecution. I can only assume there were no other situations warranting the death penalty. Every pundit seems more concerned with the water-boarding and “threats” to Abu Zubayda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM), and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, none of whom died from the interrogations. 

The Statue of Limitations for federal offenses is spelled out in Title 18 Section 3282:

Except as otherwise expressly provided by law, no person shall be prosecuted, tried, or punished for any offense, not capital, unless the indictment is found or the information is instituted within five years next after such offense shall have been committed. 

In other words, unless someone was killed all prosecutions must be brought within five years. Math was never my strongest subject but the report came out in 2004. Obviously the incidents occurred earlier and it’s now 2009. To prosecute anyone the offense must have taken place after August, 2004 otherwise the Statute of Limitations has run. KSM was captured on March 1, 2003; Abu Zubayda in March 2002; and Abd a-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002. Even assuming some interrogator violated the law prior to that date, he can’t be prosecuted. So why the need for a “special prosecutor” to review what career federal prosecutors have already studied? 

Maybe I’m missing something but this sure looks like a political move designed to distract the masses, embarrass the prior administration, and destroy morale at the CIA.

Prove me wrong.

His latest novel “Extreme Measures” was released last fall but once again Flynn may end up just a little too real. I won’t give away the plot but Mitch Rapp finds himself in front of a Congressional committee explaining why he needed to employ “extreme measures” to protect this nation. Sound familiar? Attorney General Eric Holder named a federal prosecutor this week to examine the abuse of prisoners during interrogations by the CIA. I wonder if Mitch will be called as a witness. 

The administration has minimized the War on Terror calling it a “contingency operation” to prevent “man-made disasters.”  I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised it would choose to re-investigate a subject the President has publicly said he prefers not to explore and one that has already been reviewed by federal prosecutors. Even after Holder’s announcement, White House aides declared the President “wants to look forward, not backward” at the previous administration’s policies. Forgive me if I am skeptical. 

How can this latest action be anything but a political move to placate the left in Congress, the ACLU, and Amnesty International? 

In “The Last Undercover” I detail many of the cases in which I was the FBI undercover agent. All were federal cases and resulted in hundreds of convictions. I am well aware of Justice Department guidelines requiring a reasonable certainty of conviction before bringing an indictment…none of this TV crap when the prosecutor indicts on weak evidence hoping to get the bad guy to cooperate during a commercial break. 

So how does my experience impact my opinion of the administration’s decision?  First, John Helgerson, the former CIA inspector general, who wrote the report in 2004 which was released Monday said, “I think it would be very difficult to mount a successful prosecution in any of these cases.” Then there is the matter of the law. The Statue of Limitations for most federal crimes is five years. A criminal act requires mens rea, a “criminal intent” and prosecutions require evidence. Most of the cases in the 2004 report were among the many investigated by Alexandria, Virginia federal prosecutors in which no charges were brought against anyone in the CIA. Government attorneys who reviewed these incidents cited a lack of evidence, witnesses, and even victims. 

The report released on Monday cites as “abusive”… threatening the man charged with plotting the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, a Navy destroyer in which seventeen sailors were killed and thirty-nine injured. The “threat” was to bring in his mother thereby possibly inferring his female relatives might be sexually abused. At no time did the CIA interrogator bring in a female relative let alone physically abuse the man or his family. And if you think that was abusive how about staging mock executions in the room next door or worse yet blowing cigar and cigarette smoke into prisoners’ faces (doesn’t the President still smoke?). Various media outlets have referred to these tactics as “severe” even “brutal.” I must be missing something. 

In February, 2007 David Passaro, a CIA contractor, was convicted of assaulting Abdul Wali, an Afghan suspected of rocket attacks on military bases. Wali died in custody. The federal prosecutors did their jobs. John Helgerson said none of the remaining cases compared in severity to the Passaro matter. 

In response to Holder’s announcement this week, the CIA released internal reports calling the interrogation program “a crucial pillar of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts” and saying it “dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge on al-Qaeda’s plots.” 

Granted both are Republicans but former Vice President Cheney said the CIA efforts kept the nation safer and Rep. Peter King, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, called Holder’s decision “disgraceful.” 

Dennis Blair, the current director of national intelligence, said the interrogation techniques provided “high value information…a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” He admitted, “…the information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances…” 

Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA said, “The use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.” 

Even John Brennan, the President’s recently hand-picked selection to lead the administration’s interrogation policies, said in a 2007 interview regarding the Bush administration interrogation techniques, “Would the U.S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities? I would say, yes.” 

I have no problem with the administration determining what techniques will be used while it is in the White House, but this decision looks like a pure political move to appease the left-wing of the party.  At the same time it has to have a chilling effect on those who are tasked with keeping us safe, fearing anything they do, even if sanctioned by the current administration might subject them to criminal liability down the road. Although most of my career was spent working criminal cases, I did interact with the CIA on several occasions. Those case officers with whom I dealt were intelligent, hardworking, and patriotic. As former Vice President Cheney said they “deserve our thanks.”   

Mitch Rapp, thanks. If you do exist and need me, give me a call. Let me know what you want done. I’ve got your six. We owe you a lot!

Alas however, it was not meant to be. A major stumbling block was a personality test the Agency gave all Jack Bauer wannabes. Scoring applicants on a 0-10 scale…a zero meaning you could live on a deserted island for years, a ten meaning you had to be constantly surrounded by people…I scored a ZERO. Yep, a zero. The psychologist said in all the years of administering the test he had never seen “a zero personality.” Now, I admit I somewhat skewed my answers. I figured they were looking for paid assassins they could drop behind enemy lines and remain secreted for weeks. Wrong! The agency was looking for “threes” and “fours.” On occasion my wife still reminds me I have been rated a zero personality by the federal government. I actually think I’m up to a .5, maybe even a one, but needless to say I’m not really comfortable in public settings making small talk… unless I’m undercover (but then I’m a completely different persona and my criminal alter ego takes over).

It’s not easy going through life with a zero personality, but I’ve recently learned of some ice-breaker questions certain to make me a hit at the next party:

What is your name, address, and date of birth?

What is your race?

Are you Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?

Where were you born?

What is your ancestry or ethnic origin?

How many cars do you have at your house?

Do you have a flush toilet?

Do you have a sink with a faucet?

How much is your rent/mortgage?

Do you have a second mortgage? How much is it?

Are you covered by a health insurance plan? Which type?

Do you have serious difficulty hearing? Seeing? Concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?

Do you have difficulty dressing or bathing?

How many times have you been married?

When did you last get married?

Where did you work last? What’s the address?

What time do you leave home to go to work?

What is your income?

What is your retirement/pension?

Do you have a VA disability rating?

What’s the most important thing you do at work?

Do you think these questions are too personal or even stupid? Apparently the federal government doesn’t… and if you don’t answer them you can be fined $100-$5,000. All of these questions and more are on the American Community Survey. To my knowledge I’ve never been part of a census survey. I thought they just knocked on your door and asked how many people live at your house. Maybe the surveys have always been this detailed but as we slide further and further into the federal government running every aspect of our lives, this intrusion concerns me. I can see no reason why the feds need to know how many times I’ve been married, my health care provider, or whether I can or can’t concentrate. I will admit to some hearing loss that allows me to tune out my wife and my wife often questions the way I dress but is that the fed’s business? According to the FAQ on the website, the government needs to know all these answers for their government programs. Maybe the reason I’m balking at answering is because we seem to have too many programs as it is…. but they don’t ask my opinion on that issue in the survey.

16 July 2009
Ghor Province, Afghanistan

On a per capita basis, Afghanistan is becoming more dangerous for British and American troops than Iraq ever was. For those who fought in places like Anbar, Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and Nineveh, that’s saying a whole lot. On a per capita basis, there are strong indications that Afghanistan will prove more deadly than Iraq during 2006-2007. One can only imagine how many days and nights Secretary Robert Gates and his advisors must have agonized over troop levels here. On the one hand, we have a fraction of the troops we need, but on the other, increasing troop levels increases hostility toward us. Secretary Gates has made it clear to me that his biggest concern is that we will lose the goodwill of the people and they will turn against us. This happens to be my own biggest concern. The agony is in knowing we need more medicine and the medicine can be highly toxic here. Many people have complained that the new restrictions on air strikes will hurt us, but from my boots, General McChrystal (the new boss here) has fulfilled the intent of his boss, and that the decision, though tough, was wise; if we lose the widespread assent of the Afghan people, it’s all over but for the bleeding.

Today our chances are not good, but there remains a real chance to succeed. Those chances improve dramatically when we take a no-kidding inventory of the situation and refine our goals to align with reality.

While war ravages neighboring narco-provinces, sluggish progress is being made in others. Here in Ghor Province, the Japanese, Lithuanians, and a host of other nations have teamed up in this remote area of Afghanistan.

Please click the image above for a larger view.

So one morning the Lithuanians loaded up a patrol and headed out West, in the direction of Herat, and took along four Japanese who are involved in the oversight of spending $2 billion of Japanese money in Afghanistan. Both the Japanese and the Lithuanians exude a sense of purpose; everybody seems to wish they were elsewhere but the mission is important.

We started from the Chaghcharan Provincial “Re”construction Team (PRT); the first step in revealing truth with no mercy about Afghanistan is to call things what they are. There is not a single “Reconstruction” team in Afghanistan. The place was never constructed. Just why the faulty name “reconstruction” was picked is unclear, though it would be fair to guess that political expedience is the culprit. Peoples of developed nations might be more likely to “re” build something they are made to believe they destroyed. The governments can call these PRTs, but henceforth this writer will call them Provincial Construction Teams, or PCTs.

So we loaded up the trucks and headed out West from the PCT. Some readers might recall the last dispatch, wherein we accidentally found Lizard Hole (Karbasha) Village up in the mountains while searching for Kuchi nomads. Today we were heading to Sangow Bar Village. The satellite imagery shows no paved roads because the closest, the “ring road,” is about 175 miles away if you are flying, and much farther if you are on a camel or driving. And so it might seem that we are in the middle of nowhere because by most developed standards we are. If visitors from other galaxies land in this largely Stone-Age place, they can expect to be greeted by small-arms fire and RPGs. Though various star-watching peoples are known to have lived here for many thousands of years (including Buddhists, Jews, and invaders of all sorts), there were not a lot of road builders.

Provincial 'Reconstruction' Teams (PRTs) will henceforth be called Provincial Construction Teams or PCTs, on this website. (Please click the image above for a larger view.)

It’s worth a moment of silent reflection to look at the image above and ponder this: though the area appears extremely desolate and remote, there is hardly a fold or wrinkle in the land where you can walk or drive that you will not run across someone. There are areas where few people venture, such as the “Desert of Death” down south, but it seems that as a rule Afghans diffuse into the available volume as if they have a partial pressure. Independence is a key personality trait; if they had a meter of road for every meter of wall they build, the major communities likely all would be connected. Out in the boonies, just when you think you are at the end of the world and nobody could possibly be there, you find a shepherd, or some bearded guy cutting grass with a daas (a long crescent-shaped knife) for his livestock. The people pick over this arid land like ants. Afghan life in the hinterlands is like an eternal camping trip. By their calendar, the year is 1387, but it seems like it could be thousands of years earlier. Young American soldiers who served in Iraq learned about our own country. Often, soldiers would say things like, “Why can’t the Iraqis just get along? They keep themselves down, dragging fights around forever. They fight over stupidness!” Nobody had to fill in the blanks. The reflection was healthy for us.

Along the dusty road to Sangow Bar Village, we passed by shepherds whose livestock shaves the land of nearly every nibble of green.

We rolled into the village of Sangow Bar and were greeted with quiet acceptance. Ghor Province is touted as being poppy-free, and indeed it’s nothing like the rolling hills of Urozgan, the fields of Kandahar, or the mega-producers in Helmand, where I’ve seen miles of poppy growing along the roads and just near bases. This tiny patch, about the size of a walk-in closet, was for personal use.

The sluice gate near the center of the image controls water to the generator downhill.

The village of Sangow Bar was dark. It had no electricity until 2006 when Lithuanians invested about $40,000 to build this micro-hydro generator with the idea of watching the village to see if true improvement was made. Today, Sangow Bar has plenty of electricity and the people have lights and satellite television, yet despite that opportunity, nobody seems to watch Oprah. The old saying, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it watch Oprah,” is an unfortunate reality in many parts of Afghanistan.

Sangow Bar: Little Red Hen incarnate. (Please click the image above for a larger view.)

Today, Sangow Bar has surplus electricity, so a Japanese asked why the power lines did not cross the river to the dwellings on the other side. The village headman said the people on the other side of the Hari River had refused to help build the micro-hydro, so today they get no juice. The Lithuanians have determined that the project was a success, and the project appeared to be a success to the Japanese and to me.

With this success in mind, the Lithuanians together with Iceland decided to build thirty more hydro-generation stations. Now, if we look at this in context of the broader picture, thirty, three hundred, or even three thousand might seem like an irrelevant number. But it’s not.

During my eight trips to Nepal, and my training with Ghurkas in Borneo who had served in Afghanistan, the Ghurkas have educated me in “Gobar Gas,” and they wonder why Afghans do not use Gobar Gas. Gobar Gas is a simple, cheap, and very ecologically friendly way to collect methane from human and animal waste, and that methane is then used for heating, lighting, and cooking. The system improves sanitation, and the by-products make great fertilizer. And so one Ghurka soldier who had served in Afghanistan insisted that I learn the five virtues of Gobar Gas, and that I be able to name them offhand.

Gobar Gas systems cost only a couple hundred bucks each, and any villager can operate and repair the system. Today I see Gobar Gas all over Nepal, but the older Ghurka soldiers will say that when they were kids, Gobar Gas was practically nonexistent in Nepal. But some far-thinking Westerners came in and installed some systems here and there, and the Nepalese people saw the incredible value, then ran with it. If you go trekking into the villages in Nepal, you might ask villagers to see their Gobar Gas system, and before you know it you’ll have the grand tour because they are quite proud of these excellent little contraptions. And it started with seeds.

And so the Lithuanians and their thirty generators will likely spark more than a few light bulbs. We and our allies cannot construct Afghanistan, but we certainly can nudge this caravan in a better direction.

Americans implored the Japanese to get more serious about Afghanistan, but it was the Lithuanians who actually petitioned the Japanese to come out here to Ghor Province. The match is working well; the Lithuanians provide support, such as security and some investment, but when it comes to capital, the Japanese have the big guns.

Hisako Ishizaki is a First Secretary from the Japanese Embassy. She has worked, studied and traveled around the world, including in Mindanao in the Philippines, where I just left. While Hisako stayed involved in the discussions about the hydro-plant, she wasted no time in sitting down and teaching this child to write a few characters.

The feet tell the story.

Pencil from Japan.

Ambassador in UN Affairs, Shigeyuki Hiroki, is the key man when it comes to the investment of the $2 billion Japan has so far pledged. Mr. Hiroki told me that $1.8 billion is already invested, and that the final $200 million is not the end of the road here for Japan. Ambassador Hiroki told me that Japan would be involved for 10, 20 or 30 years. Mr. Hiroki has been one of the most realistic officials I’ve spoken with from any country, though the Lithuanian Commander of the Provincial Construction Team, Colonel Alvydas Siuparis, also is under no illusions. Nor are Secretary Gates or General Petraeus under any illusions and they speak frankly. It would seem that our greatest asset today is the small but strong and growing nucleus of people who understand the magnitude of the problems, but still believe in the endeavor.

That said, the Japanese time frame is more realistic than I hear coming from most American, British, or other officials.

Hisako prepares to cross the sluice, followed by Counselor Hiroyuki Orikasa and First Secretary Jiro Kanzawa, while the Lithuanians, whose names I am not permitted to publish (photos are permitted), stay vigilant. Luckily, the only danger here seems to be the sluice.

The Japanese who have landed out here have enormous collective global experience. Hisako, for instance, speaks Dari fluently after having lived in Iran. She studied in Costa Rica, the Philippines, and has traveled extensively from Tajikistan to the United States. This is true of the entire Japanese team, including Chihiro Imai who has worked and traveled extensively in the most bizarre corners of Africa and South America, visiting about twenty-five countries. Hisako and Chihiro have both been to India, and both women laughed when I said that I go to war to take a vacation from India.

Unfortunately, the deteriorating security situation is causing the Japanese to dramatically cut their staff in Afghanistan. It would seem that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates agrees that Japan is cutting back right when we need them most, though he has publicly praised the Japanese commitment and urged them to stay involved. It is important that the Japanese stay heavily involved and not decrease but redouble their efforts.

Window through time: Purples, greens, and reds seemed popular with the girls.

A wrestler is born.

Echoes of Alexander.

No food shortage in Sangow Bar.

A weathered sign for Afghanaid in the background. Water wells are popping up all over the place. The Lithuanians say about sixteen NGOs work in Chaghcharan and have made their own significant contributions.

Little girl who followed the Japanese and Lithuanians.

Unfortunately, these kids had already been taught the benefits of begging and this analogy extends directly to their parents. In Afghanistan, like Iraq, when we invest resources into installing a diesel generator for a neighborhood, the people will complain that we don’t supply the fuel. When the Indians paid for local broadcasting equipment in Chaghcharan, the station manager complained that the Indians didn’t make a new office, and there is often a tone that we need something or “give us or we will misbehave.”

“Trick or Treat” was a common theme in Iraq and is so here, too. Many children in Chaghcharan beg, but unlike the kids in this village of Sangow Bar, kids in Chaghcharan often throw stones at the vehicles if the soldiers refuse to play Santa Claus. Many of the Lithuanian vehicles have spider-webbed windows and windshields.

There was a time when some Iraqis began to revel in the attention, and they seemed to lose context that one day the war would end—for us anyway—and that attention would evaporate. One sees the same in Afghanistan. Prosperous nations are trying to psychoanalyze Afghan behavior, and some Afghans revel in this newfound influence, but what many apparently do not understand is that this storm is apt to end as quickly as it began. For this very reason, many Iraqis are filled with nervous anxiety that the Americans are packing out. Influence at local levels in Iraq had diminished precipitously by 2008, and it’s only a matter of time until local mayors and governors in Iraq have no open line to American upper echelons. Business will be conducted at national level. Gone are the days when the mayors of small cities like Tal Afar could get the attention of Generals and even the President of the United States. The world is big, and there are tens of thousands of “Tal Afars” out there. The curtain opened and now it’s closed in most of Iraq.

Interestingly, Iraqi contractors are following the money and popping up in Afghanistan.

Other Afghans are more circumspect, seeing themselves in larger context, realizing that aid can be a fickle blessing and is not an obligation, and that we all know we owe nothing to Afghanistan. We are not paying off a debt and there are other ways for us to protect our self-interests. Many NATO partners, and other partners with big pockets, are here for larger political considerations that have little to do with Afghanistan per se.

Dr. Yaqubi, Director of Ghor Provincial Hospital, has a clearer perspective of the situation, and in fact returned earlier this year from a conference in India. Dr. Yaqubi said his hospital goes six months out of every year with no running water, and when he does have water, it’s unfiltered and unpurified. The cleaning men fetch water from the Hari River during six months of the year, but in the summer they have a reservoir, and get water from the nearby girls’ school, whose own director is upset that the hospital uses their water. (A bright spot in Chaghcharan is that the locals want girls to go to school, and many children are learning English.) During the wet times, the hospital floods, causing the septic system to overflow.

The hospital has ten General Practitioners, three specialists, an anesthetist nurse, two X-Ray machines—one of which works—and an ultrasound machine. They have no female doctors and the male doctors are not allowed to deliver babies other than by Cesarean. During delivery, women are on their own with the midwives, and the male doctors are not permitted to treat “female problems.”

Dr. Yaqubi said he did eight Cesareans in last three months with no complications, and that during the last 90 surgeries had only two deaths, and that complications usually occur because people wait too long to seek treatment. The average post-op stay is four days.

No NGOs offer assistance at the hospital, according to Dr. Yaqubi. There is room for 85 patients, and the Lithuanians donated two tents, adding twelve more beds, but those tents are used for storage. I sat on one of the beds and tried to imagine being a patient here. There is no exaggeration in saying that Americans probably had better medical care during the time of our Civil War. The dusty hospital with its buzzing flies is a living museum of unplanned misery, and I heard the cries of babies wafting through nearby open windows. Bedraggled women sat with pitiful-looking children, waiting on steps into the hospital. Dr. Yaqubi said that if there were two shipping containers for storage, the tents would offer a dozen more beds.

Dr. Yaqubi wants to show people that health care is not free, but he says that the parliament in Kabul thinks it should free to all. The Afghan government can’t even drill a well for this provincial hospital, and all their machines and supplies were probably donated, yet they want “free” healthcare. The beggars of Kabul who refuse to drill a well for the Ghor Provincial Hospital want free health care for all!

I told Dr. Yaqubi that the same argument is raging in America, and I asked the Lithuanian doctor sitting beside me if this is an issue in Lithuania. She confirmed that it is. Dr. Yaqubi said that if treatment is completely free, the hospital would be overwhelmed. With about 750,000 people in Ghor Province, they’ve got 85 dirty beds here, and two smaller clinics elsewhere. Free health care? How about steady electricity to run the X-ray machine?

During winter, most patients cannot journey to the hospital no matter what the case. If a baby is burned during a cooking accident, there is no chance to make it to the cold hospital. If people become too sick they just die and are buried in the icy ground next to the village. Five years ago, Dr. Yaqubi recounted spending five months in the remote district of his birth, administering aid to the people stranded by the snows. He conducted more than 150 surgeries, including ten Cesareans, saying that was the first time the locals ever saw such a thing. Usually the women just die if there are any complications, and he said nine women died that winter. “The woman thinks she is going to die, so she does,” he said.

According to their calendar, the year is 1387, and New Year’s Day this year was 21 March. During the year 1386, the main hospital raised the equivalent of $8,447 in fees from patients, according to Dr. Yaqubi.

Every village has a Mullah. The less primitive Mullahs realize that modern medicine—more or less—can actually work, while other Mullahs, through ignorance or power-wielding, claim monopoly on healing rights, and forbid or discourage people from seeing doctors.

Let’s grab a napkin and do some coffee table math. According to the CIA World Factbook estimate, the population of Afghanistan, as of July 2009, is 33,609,937. Just how the CIA arrives at such a precise number but can’t find in Iraq the WMD that certainly existed at one time, must leave the math-whizzes rolling on the floor. For the sake of humoring the CIA, let’s round to the more napkin-friendly number of 34 million. The CIA World “Guessbook” opines that about 24% of the people are urbanized. This leaves 76% in the sticks. Sticks and mountains. And deserts. So that’s about 26 million people in the boonies. Afghanistan is geographically slightly smaller than Texas, the people are 99% Muslim, and the place is home to some of the most forbidding mountains in the world. Deep Appalachia has nothing on Afghanistan.

There is no estimate for the average size of Afghan villages in the CIA Guessbook. My big guess from seeing villages in various provinces and many districts is the average community probably consists of less than a hundred people. Former USMC officer Tim Lynch has lived here more than four years, and estimates the average village might have sixty people. For the sake of coffee table math, let’s say the villages in micro-communities are home to some 26 million, and have about 100 people each. That would leave 260,000 villages, plus the 8 million people who live in cities and towns.

Those 260,000 villages are spread out in some of the wildest country you can dream of. Now imagine putting one schoolroom and one teacher in every village to teach all kids through all ages. According to the Guessbook, about 28% of the people are “literate”; that’s about 43% of the men and 13% of the women. The hand that rocks the cradle can’t read, and the fact is that the Guessbook has no idea how many people can read because in all the years of war, most villages are never visited.

And so, it’s not a far stretch to say this is a girl without a future as we know it.

It’s too late for most kids who are already born. Outside the cities and towns, most will never learn to read.

The world behaves cruelly and precipitously. If this girl gets sick during the winter, likely she will be out of luck. The hospital is too far.

The girls in many villages wear the same color lipstick, which they slather on with abandon.

Lithuanian and Japanese officials visit a park under construction in Chaghcharan.

When Shigeyuki Hiroki, Japanese Ambassador in UN Affairs, walks through villages inspecting projects, it’s doubtful that anyone around understands the gravity of his recommendations on how to spend that $2 billion. Unfortunately, due to the increasing violence, the Japanese are thinning their staff in Afghanistan. The Afghans must realize that they are facing competition for Japanese assistance. Other places, such as Cambodia, are not dangerous for Japanese aid workers.

Lithuania and the U.S. teamed up to build a training center in Chaghcharan, which a local authority then tried to take as his residence.

These children likely will learn to read because they live in Chaghcharan. In fact, I think this girl was in a nearby school I visited. The Lithuanians, Croatians, Ukrainians and others have been helping with schools and supplies. Many of the kids in Chaghcharan are learning to speak English.

The Lithuanian-run Provincial Construction Team (PCT) at Chaghcharan.

There are still legacy mines near the airstrip next to the PCT, and just few days ago a mine was found and detonated just a meter off of the main road into the camp. Wounds from legacy mines here are relatively uncommon, though. Dr. Yaqubi said that only about one person per month steps on one.

Despite the remoteness of Ghor, the Lithuanian, Croatian and Ukrainian soldiers seem to take pride and joy in their work. The journey is long, but progress in this little patch of Afghanistan is obvious.

PS: The war is heating up and all signs indicate it will continue to worsen. The Afghan war has become more dangerous, on a per capita basis, than the Iraq war ever was. The unit I will soon be with took five KIA last week and many others wounded. July will almost certainly be the most deadly month so far in the entire Afghan war. The press makes it sound like the British must be shaken, but I know those soldiers. They will be striking back. Needless to say, our people will do the same as needed. Nobody over here is shaking in his or her boots. We don’t have enough troops, or Afghan forces, but our folks are ready for more action and will do what needs to be done.Please support this mission by making a recurring contribution. I need to stay focused on the war, not the funding. Recurring contributions are a great help in planning and budgeting.

Thank you and stay tuned…

Michael

The actual program was dropped early on – either because it was a dumb idea, or it didn’t work, or maybe something better came along. What bugs me is that the plan was probably canceled because it actually could work – but having to disclose the plan would have endangered those asked to carry it out.

I mean, if your job is to sneak around the globe killing really bad people, then it should be kept secret – which is something frowned upon by people who don’t understand that beating evil means eradicating it. We call them asshats. You see them now, trying to score political points out of something that didn’t even happen (although, I wish it did).

Which brings me to a handy quiz you can take while you’re on a bus, a train, or perhaps even a plane!

Of the two statements below, check off the one you most agree with:

-The thought of the CIA contemplating a secret plan to kill terrorists behind 9/11 strikes you as wrong – so wrong in fact that those involved in it should be investigated for war crimes.

-The thought of the CIA contemplating a secret plan to kill terrorists behind 9/11 strikes you as something the CIA is paid to do, and if they don’t do it, they should probably be fired or at least relegated to running the sexual harassment seminar in human resources.

If you agreed with the first statement, then get off that bus, train or plane. You don’t deserve to be there. After all, the very actions that you want to see prosecuted are the actions guaranteeing your safety on those modes of transportation.

You should travel by foot. And, if you’re in my neighborhood, be careful where you step. I have an active bladder.

Tonight we’ve got the great Jim Nortion, the delightful Mike Baker, the adorable Barrett Swatek. And highlights of the Red Eye softball game against a team full of strippers.(i chipped my tooth).

–

Note: I know the video gets a little personal, but thanks to Wanda Sykes… That is a concern of mine no longer!

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby.

Liberals argue for the sanctity of the 1st Amendment as if they had personally invented free speech, but they’re the same people who’d like to use the Fairness Doctrine to turn off the microphones of conservative talk show hosts.  Furthermore, they are so terrified of hearing or letting other people hear the words of those who disagree with them that they boo their opponents into silence on those rare occasions when conservatives are invited to speak on college campuses.

When George W. Bush and the GOP were in control from 2000-2006, the Democrats complained, generally without cause, that they didn’t have enough influence, that the Republicans didn’t reach out to them, even though John McCain, to name one, spent so much time reaching out that Cindy McCain began to worry that she’d lost her husband to Russ Feingold or Ted Kennedy.  These days, those same Democrats are so eager to disenfranchise Republicans that they’re ready to do anything up to and including sending the entire stimulus package to Minnesota if only they’ll make Al Franken a senator.

Speaking of senators, what’s the idea of Republicans Martinez, Bunning, Hutchinson and Brownback, announcing that this is their last term?  If I could suck it up and vote for McCain last November, the least these four can do is sign on for another six years.  It’s not as if being a U.S. Senator calls for any heavy lifting.  Heck, if Robert Byrd can do it, Sam Brownback certainly can.  This is simply no time for Republicans to go AWOL.

I admit that I’ve been delighted to see Nancy Pelosi catching some heat for lying about not knowing that water boarding was taking place.  Initially, I think she claimed she was confused by the term, believing it meant that the prisoners at Gitmo were learning to surf.  But things didn’t get a lot better when it came out that she had only bothered attending one of about 70 congressional meetings where the subject was discussed.  I suppose she was busy getting Botox injections.  But that doesn’t mean I want to see the Democrats replace her.  I mean, it’s not as if they’d give the job to Eric Cantor or John Boehner.  I’m sure they’d simply replace the incompetent Speaker of the House with someone like Barney Frank, the embarrassing lisper of the House.

Left-wingers are always wringing their hands over separation of church and state.  What we should all be arguing for is separation of communication and state.  What right does the federal government have supporting NPR, PBS and the NEA?  Frankly, I’d be opposed to the feds spending taxpayer dollars to fund public radio, public TV and the arts, even if they weren’t all run by left-wingers.  I’m sure liberals think I’m lying, but I’m not.  Nowhere in the Constitution is the government given the authority to meddle in these matters, and once it does, it opens itself up to charges of censorship or collusion.  Is there anyone who believes that NPR or PBS will ever question anything President Obama says or does?  Of course not.  Liberals in the media claim they speak truth to power, which sounds good, but would sound a lot better if they ever spoke truth when their own darlings were the ones in power.

It’s bad enough when NBC goes into the tank for the president, but NBC is not subsidized by the American taxpayer.  If the liberals want to disseminate left-wing propaganda, I say let them do it the old-fashioned way.  Let Howard Dean and the entire DNC crawl to George Soros and ask him to pay for it.

Finally, whenever someone gripes about the pay raises, perks, health care and pensions, that politicians provide for themselves, we’re told how much more money these “public servants” could make in the private sector, and I have to laugh.  These egotistical dunderheads would have to be running major corporations — assuming there will be any of those left by the time Obama gets done — to have the kind of fiefdoms that come with being in Congress.  Can you seriously imagine Barbara Boxer, Arlen Specter or John Murtha, running a store, let alone a major corporation?  For that matter, can you even imagine Barbara Boxer, Arlen Specter or John Murtha, being hired to sweep out a store?

burtprelutsky@aol.com