The Obama campaign’s latest commercial makes fun of the fact that John McCain doesn’t use computers to type e-mails. In this lame commercial, the Obama campaign implies that Senator McCain doesn’t use e-mail because he’s out of touch with the current times. Admittedly, it’s one of the lamest commercials I’ve ever seen released and utterly harmless politically, but it’s incredibly insulting when you realize the reason John McCain does not type on a key board.
The reason McCain cannot type on a computer keyboard is due to the extreme torture and poor medical treatment he received by his captors in North Vietnam serving his country. Barack Obama clearly owes John McCain an apology. I won’t call this just a rookie mistake but rather a heinous insult to our country’s veterans.
I heard Monica Crowley’s moving interview with Jake Rademacher director of the new documentary “Brothers at Arms.” Rademacher goes to Iraq in an effort to personally witness (and experience to a certain degree) what his two brothers are going through in Iraq. Jake’s brothers, Capt. Isaac Rademacher, a West Point graduate and officer, and his younger brother Corp. Joe Rademacher, a highly trained sniper, offer two different perspectives in the interviews.
Predictably, as Hollywood pushes it’s election year propaganda and anti-war films, this pro-soldier film that honors the sacrifices on the battlefield and at home by our brave soldiers will likely get little to no support from big studios. That is a shame.
Please join me in doing what ever you can do to spread the word about this important film, and please watch the extended trailer below:
As mentioned earlier in The Conservative Post, Michelle Malkin has linked to Michael Yon’s article where he calls left wing zealot Michael Moore out on the illegal and “war porn” use of one of his famous photos of an American soldier holding a dying girl in Iraq. In Yon’s article he states the following:
A photograph can be a signal event in a war. Think of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the naked Vietnamese girl fleeing her napalmed village, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. These photos were not just important journalistically, but also strategically – each one literally shifted the course of a war. Photographs can be immensely powerful because they are single images, deep with meaning, able to resonate with disparate audiences, straight through language barriers, at an emotional, even visceral, level. A picture can tell a thousand words in a thousand languages, but placed in the wrong context, a photograph can be turned into propaganda, and the truth becomes a lie.
We need to know the truth about the wars we are currently fighting. That’s why I went to Iraq in the first place. Sometimes the difference between War Porn and the truth can be subtle, ambiguous, even subjective. But I know it when I see it. And if Michael Moore learned to respect not just my work, but other aspects of the truth, not to mention respecting his audience’s intelligence, he would better serve his own cause.
Somehow I imagine that Yon’s excellent points are lost on Michael Moore and his sledge hammer approach to driving home his political agenda. I applaud Michael Yon for standing up for his work and preventing it to be used in a manipulative way by Moore.
Last month, the incredibly commercially successful author Stephen King pulled a John Kerry and opined that if you don’t learn how to read that “then you’ve got, the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s, it’s not as bright.”
But how true is this insulting statement from the mega successful author? Let’s take a look at the official requirements for entrance from the US Military:
Success in any branch of the Military depends on a good education, and a high school diploma is most desirable. Candidates with a GED (General Education Development certificate) can enlist, but some Services may limit opportunities. It is very difficult to be considered a serious candidate without either a high school diploma or accepted alternative credential. In any case, staying in school is important for entering the Military.
He also fails to appreciate the technical training and discipline that many benefit from within the military. Perhaps King should read “Demilitarizing What the Pentagon Knows About Developing Young People: A New Paradigm for Educating Students Who Are Struggling in School and in Life” from The Brookings Institution.
He also insults young men and women who feel compelled to serve our country out a love for it’s ideals, freedoms, and institutions. How many of these young patriotic men and women read King’s fiction as a teenager? How much money has King made off of these brave young men and women? I remember enjoying King’s fiction as a teenager. It was entertaining and incredibly accessible for a middle school student.
I was listening to Jamie Allman and Crane Durham this morning on 97.1 on their show when I learned of King’s insult. For Jamie this is understandably personal. His son is about to graduate school this spring and he has decided to serve his country as a reservist. But here is the thing that King probably can’t understand. Allman’s son is a fine student who achieved excellent scores on his college entrance exams. His son wants to serve his great country out of love and not out of need.
Jamie and Crane also had a caller who was personally and understandably offended by King’s absurd and elitist statement. The caller is the father of a brave soldier stationed in Afghanistan. He relayed the latest request from his son. What did his son request? It wasn’t anything for him. The soldier requested coloring books and a bunch of crayons for Afghani children. He also requested ink for his printer. The ink was needed to print of coloring pages for the children. The kicker was that this soldier is a loyal fan of Stephen King. He had praised King for his skill at scaring him in writing to his father.
Stephen King has benefited greatly from fans like this extremely literate soldier, but I’d argue that this soldiers work with these Afghani children is vastly more valuable. I’m not sure how much that registers with King as he preaches to the choir or enjoys the comfort of his lifestyle while American troops help these children.
Toby Keith, the great country music superstar, has been on an 18 show USO tour through the Persian Gulf. He is a class act and we all owe Keith respect for the way he supports the morale of our brave soldiers.
Keith was giving a concert for 2,500 soldiers in Kandahar, Afghanistan when the base came under attack. How did Keith react? Like a professional! People reports:
“We all ran about 100 yards to a concrete bunker,” says Keith’s agent, Curt Motley, who is also on the USO tour. Keith, 46, and his band hunkered down with the soldiers in a bunker about an hour, signing autographs and posing for shots to pass the time.
This is the star’s sixth USO tour for our troops. God bless Mr. Keith for his active support of our brave men and women. And as always, God bless our troops!
