Sorry; I’m going to ramble a bit.

Autumn; one of my favorite seasons. I love the colors of the turning leaves, the chill in the air, the yellow leaves on the deciduous trees just outside my second story writing window. I have a cherry tree just a few feet outside that window and its colors and thickness indicate the seasons. Now, it still has the bulk of its leaves attached but they are floating down to the damp ground below, in its own time.

I also drove to Lake Tahoe today, as a mind releaser and to experience the spectacular mountains, clouds, colors, textures and scents to be encountered. While the outside temperature ran from 60 and then to 50 and then to 40, I had the driver’s window open so I could feel the mountain air in my face. The heater warmed my feet and the ambient temperatures, lowering, kept me vibrant and engaged.

Needing groceries, I stopped at the Raley’s at Incline Village and then rocketed down the hill on my new Bridgestone Potenza G009 tires.

BZ’s little 2.5L Subaru wagon kept up with and exceeded the bulk of the downhill traffic and three of us, me, a new 2007 Chevy Suburban, and a Suzuki Hayabusa — the fastest standard production bike in the world, with a stock top speed of 194 — traded positions as we diced and carved the curves past Truckee, Soda Springs, Yuba Gap, Emigrant Gap, Blue Canyon, and below.

This black Suburban with no plates was driven, I could see, by a solitary young man who could not have a small Subaru, piloted by an aging, gray-haired relic such as myself, not only on his ass but challenging his pole position when he could not keep a consistent speed because his mind lapsed. I instantly sussed him up as young, stupid, long on engine but short on experience. I watched his lines on the roadway and concluded: fresh meat.

The Hayabusa entered into the fray and things became interesting, at least for myself. I knew what this bike could do and, I’ll wager, the rider did too. With a smoked helmet and leathers, I could not determine the rider’s age but, with his actions, I could guess: a male with experience not only in terms of speed but freeways as well. He was toying with us but having fun as well. Both he and I knew full well that at any moment he could have twisted some HP from his right hand and warped into another dimension. But he chose not to. His lane changes were slow, deliberate, in front of us, behind us, but definitely in consideration of our greater collected bulk.

We ran down the long straight towards Emigrant Gap at 105 mph +. The freeway was clear and the wind was bubbling my cheeks not unlike Colonel Stapp on the rocket sled. The guy in the Hayabusa was maybe in third gear. We cornered uphill and right towards Blue Canyon. The Suburban got stuck behind a trailer in the right lane. The good thing about this triad is that we didn’t do stupid things to keep up with each other. I passed the Suburban in the left lane, tipped my The Ridge cap at him, and he waited politely for traffic to clear. The Hayabusa produced some hole shots when necessary and split some occasional lanes.

Of course I shouldn’t have done this and I’m way too old to engage in these activities but my reptilian brain refused to switch off and for that I am indebted.

In any event I experienced, pushing 60, the free wind upon my face, canyon carving, excessive and forbidden speed, in the company of two others who appreciated our pack for about a half hour.

It was the quickest I’d ever gotten down The Hill.

It was a 2003 Subaru Impreza Outback Sport 2.5L engine with 76,293 miles on the clock vs. a 2005 Suzuki Hayabusa at 1.3L and a blacked-out 2007 Suburban at 5.7L.

Quite frankly, I had a whole buttload of fun.

Then, because it was cold, I stoked up the first fire of the season in my stove. A little hot chocolate, a few beers, some chicken on the BBQ outside?

BZ

P.S.
By the way, I am an EVOC (Emergency Vehicle Operations Course) supervisor and instructor for CHP, my department, fire personnel and all emergency responders in my area.

Kids: don’t try this at home.

Okay; I was bad. How bad was I?

BZ

There is clearly a long and deep anti-military bias in the American media. And the press will likely do everything it can to bury John Kerry’s remarks.

But what happened is that John Kerry actually had the temerity to express the true feelings of the Dems and the DEM: any force wielded by George Bush cannot be good — despite Clinton’s Somalia, Clinton’s Haiti. Kosovo? Chechens?

Some persons even called Dennis Prager this morning to indicate the words attributed to Kerry were nothing but lies. But the truth is the truth.

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said, in response to Kerry’s comments:

Senator Kerry owes an apology to the thousands of men and women serving in Iraq, particularly the many patriotic soldiers from Massachusetts who come from all backgrounds to defend our freedoms. As Governor, I represent thousands of Massachusetts National Guardsmen. They are more diverse, educated and prepared to do their job than at anytime in our country’s history. No matter where you went to school, or how many degrees you have, most people understand the strength of our nation comes from every corner of America.”

Kerry is so completely and totally wrong. America’s military isn’t fueled by a draft. It is fueled by an entirely volunteer force. Hugh Hewitt said today: “When you attack the war you end up attacking the warriors.” And that is so true. The trite phrase one customarily hears from many people, “I support the troops, but I’m against the war” is an impossibility. The war is attacked; now Kerry has legitimized attacking the troops themselves and that is reprehensible.

Reprehensible.

And as the photo indicates, Kerry is indeed giving the finger to the troops despite his lame retort that “it was a joke.” And, of course, no apology because, under it all, those are his true feelings and those of the Dems and the DEM. Tonight there are Liberals in the northeast drinking their martinis at elite cocktail parties, New Yorkers and Washintonians, slapping their respective backs wishing they’d had the guts to say the same.

President Bush said today that Kerry’s comments were insulting and shameful, and that “the members of the Unites States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave. And the Senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.”

So true.

What did Kerry say? Go here.

You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well; if you don’t you get stuck in Iraq.

Kerry wasn’t laughing, he wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t upbeat and joking, he was quite downbeat. Listen to his voice and draw your own conclusion. This was clearly not meant as anything even remotely resembling anything humorous. The comment was meant to be about the President? I don’t think so at all.

Additionally, I have a different take on his comments than others have indicated. I believe that, due to the nature of his audience, that of a college, that his comment was couched in terms of education; that is, following your education, if you attach yourself to the military you are stupid. Because only stupid persons or ill-educated people or persons with no education would “resort” to serving in the military and being shipped to Iraq for our Commander In Chief.

In essence, Kerry believes that anyone serving in our current military forces is mentally defective. Because, after all, if you buy off on anything President Bush does, you’re defective.

I don’t agree with everything Bush has done; on many issues he and I depart completely. He has overspent. He pissed away billions of our tax dollars on the senseless issue of AIDS in Africa. There has finally been a bill authorizing the construction of a 700 mile fence on our Mexican border but not written by Bush. He has called the Minutemen “vigilantes.” Big Government has thrived under Bush.

John Kerry made a stupid statement. If he’d fallen on his sword and apologized the DEM would ensure the issue died rapidly. Trust me. This won’t die.

And even some Democrats have said to ABC News, Tuesday, “I guess Kerry wasn’t content blowing 2004, now he wants to blow 2006, too.”

Contrition? Not a chance. Kerry said in response to the “attacks” over his comments:

It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who have never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did.”

Kerry, who is considering another run for the White House in 2008, angrily fired back. His statement called Republicans “assorted right-wing nut jobs.”

And at a hastily arranged news conference in Seattle, Kerry said: “I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.”

Kerry said the comment in question was “a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops … and they know that’s what I was talking about.”

Good politics: when you’re wrong, and everyone knows you’re wrong, and even persons in your audience cringe, not only deny but attack.

Wonder what’ll happen if the GOP ends up keeping the House and Senate?

BZ

I have been gone the past few days on a birthday jaunt, squired into another state by my beauteous fiance. She ensconced me into a pricey suite at the 8,000 foot level in Nevada, at The Ridge, where she also acquired for me a 90-minute deep tissue massage and various other birthday “gifts.” We enjoyed two indoor and outdoor hot tubs on our own floor, with a generous and breath-taking view of the Carson Valley some 5,000 feet below (see above). She took me to a teppan-yaki restaurant where the chefs slice, dice, and create massive fireballs at your table.

It was simply overwhelming. I am so in debt to her kindness.

In the meantime, of course, politics occurred unassailed by the BZ. Please forgive my absence.

It is apparent that Lynne Cheney managed to take apart the CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer, he of the white and clearly senior beard and glasses, following his attempt to back-door her when the point of the interview was to review her children’s book. Remarkably, however, Wolf managed to immediately detour the interview from her book to her husband to the Bush Regime and Iraq.

Perhaps a lesser woman would have melted; Dr. Cheney, instead, took Blitzer’s Insurgent Propaganda and managed to ram that large pike directly into his own tight heterosexual rectum:

WB: Democrats are now complaining bitterly in this Virginia race. George Allen using novels, novels that Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger, has written, in which there are sexual references. And they’re making a big deal out of this. I want you to listen to what Jim Webb said today in responding to this very sharp attack from George Allen.
LC: Now do you promise, Wolf, that we’re going to talk about my book?
WB: I do promise.
LC: Because this seems to me a mighty long trip around the merry-go-round
WB: I want you to respond. This is in the news today, and your name has come up, so that’s why we’re talking about it. But listen to this:
James Webb: There’s nothing that’s been in any of my novels that in my view, hasn’t been either illuminating the surroundings, or defining a character, or moving a plot. I’m a serious writer. I mean, we can go and read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian love scenes if you want to, you know, get graphic on stuff.
LC: You know, Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit. His novels are full of sexually explicit references to incest, sexually explicit references…well, you know, I just don’t want my grandchildren to turn on the television set. This morning, Imus was reading from the novels, and it’s triple X rated.
WB: Here’s what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional Senatorial Campaign Committee. Lynne Cheney’s book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a book called Sisters, which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels, and attempted rapes. In 1988, Lynne Cheney wrote about a Republican Vice President who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress. Is that true?
LC: Nothing explicit. And actually, that is full of lies. It’s not…it’s just absolutely not true.
WB: But you did write a book entitled Sisters.
LC: I did write a book entitled Sisters. This description…
WB: And it did have lesbian characters.
LC: No, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.
WB: There is nothing in there about rapes and brothels?
LC: Wolf, Wolf, could we talk about a children’s book for a minute?
WB: We can talk about the children’s book. But I just wanted to…
LC: I think our segment is like 15 minutes long, and we’ve now done ten minutes, so…
WB: I just wanted to clarify what’s in the news today, give you a…
LC: Sex, lies and distortion. That’s what it is.
WB: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.
LC: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to explain.

Lynne Cheney started right off the bat and so did Wolf:

LC: You made a point last night of a man who had a bookstore in London, where radical Islamists gathered, who was in Afghanistan when the Taliban were there, who went to Pakistan. I think that you might be a little careful before you declare this as a person with clean hands.
WB: You’re referring to the CNN Broken Government special…
LC: I certainly am.
WB: This was the one that John King reported on last night.
LC: You know, right there, right there, Wolf. Broken Government. Now what kind of stance is that? Here we are, we’re a country where we have been mightily challenged over the past six years. We’ve been through 9/11. We’ve been through Katrina. The President and the Vice President inherited a recession. We’re a country where the economy is healthy. That’s not broken. This government has acted very well. We’ve had tax cuts that are responsible for our healthy economy. We’re a country that was attacked five years ago. We haven’t been attacked since. What this government has done is effective. That’s not broken government. So you know, I shouldn’t let media bias surprise me, but I worked at CNN once. I watched the program last night…
WB: You were a co-host of Crossfire.
LC: …and I was troubled.
WB: All right. Well, that was probably the purpose, to get people to think, to get people to discuss these issues, because there are a lot of conservatives…
LC: All right, all right, Wolf. I’m here to talk about my book. But if you want to talk about distortion…
WB: We’ll talk about your book.
LC: Right. But what is CNN doing running terrorist tape of terrorists shooting Americans? I mean, I thought Duncan Hunter asked you a very good question, and you didn’t answer it. Do you want us to win?
WB: The answer, of course, is we want the United States to win. We are Americans. There’s no doubt about that. You think we want terrorists to win?
LC: Then why are you running terrorist propaganda?
WB: With all due respect, with all due respect, this is not terrorist propaganda.
LC: Oh, Wolf…
WB: This is reporting the news, which is what we do. We’re not partisan…
LC: Where did you get the film?
WB: We got the film…look, this is an issue that has been widely discussed, this is an issue that we reported on extensively. We make no apologies for showing that. That was a very carefully considered decision, why we did that. And I think, and I think, of your…
LC: Well, I think it’s shocking.
WB: If you’re a serious journalist, you want to report the news. Sometimes the news is good, sometimes the news isn’t so good.
LC: But Wolf, there’s a difference between news and terrorist propaganda. Why did you give the terrorists a forum?

And not being a blogger or a radio host, she didn’t press Wolf Blitzer when she should have:

WHERE DID YOU GET THE TAPE, WOLF?

WHERE DID YOU GET THE TAPE, WOLF?

WHERE DID YOU GET THE TAPE, WOLF?

He never answered.

And that should bespeak volumes.

A “little innocent woman” took his ass apart.

Wolf Blitzer wasn’t even Man enough to say that “we got the film from the terrorists.” LC has more balls than most all the collected men on the Democrats in the House.

BZ

I went to go see the film “Flags of our Fathers” today and found myself deeply moved. Some persons have quantified this film as “anti-American.” I would completely disagree with that conclusion. I found it refreshingly realistic.

Clint Eastwood, still a major, major force in filmdom, directed the cinematic interpretation of the 2000 James Bradley book of the same name. In interviews the 76-year-old Eastwood has said:

As a young man I started out in a lot of action movies, but now I have reached that stage of life where I just felt it is time to address a lot of different things that are more important to me than fantasy characters.”

“It is important to realize that war is a futile exercise at best. It doesn’t speak so well for mankind that we keep on having wars, but we have had wars since the beginning of mankind. I don’t have the answer.”

And keep on having wars shall we do. Despite this, Eastwood has created an emotional, jarring, realistic and factual film about a different time, a different age, a different generation whose power brokers, in my opinion, did the right things for the right reasons. That is to say, “considering the alternatives.”

The film focuses on three of the raisers of the second flag over Iwo Jima: Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon and John “Doc” Bradley (father of the author of the book). Photographer Joe Rosenthal happened to be in the right place at the right time in order to snap “the” photo of World War II.

The movie, more than the book, attempts to make something of the propaganda war effort behind taking these three men back from the Japanese theatre and placing them smack dab into a massive war bond effort — an effort to raise more money from the civlian populace to produce more bombs, bullets, ships and aircraft for the war.

But this, in truth, should come as no shock to anyone familiar with history; the Germans were Masters of Propaganda (Joseph Goebbels sound familiar?) as were the Russians and certainly every country these days.

In fact, Goebbels had the title of Reichsminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment. He wrote of his Principles of Propaganda:

1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.

2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.
c. It must oversee other agencies’ activities which have propaganda consequences

3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.

4. Propaganda must affect the enemy’s policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity

5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign

6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.

8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.

9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.

10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy’s prestige or lends support to the propagandist’s own objective.

11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.

12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.

13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness

14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof

15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.

16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves

17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective

18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.

19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.

In America this was nothing new; following their successful completion of a 25-mission series, the crew of the Memphis Belle found themselves likewise returned to the US to make a public tour of the nation and a 1944 documentary. The US needed conspicuous heroes and the crew exemplified heroism.

The movie was effective and factual; for those unaware of the effort behind the effort and the personal toll that war takes, it will be relevatory. For me, it was decent storytelling and wonderful cinematography — the producers being not only Clint Eastwood but Steven Spielberg as well — many of the beach and land scenes reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan.

Despite this, I do not feel Eastwood’s effort is an anti-American film.

It is simply a story that can be told and is being told — but something that should come as no shock to those familiar with history.

In war, there is always a toll. War is Hell. Make no mistake. But I still feel that, in the overall context, we did what we needed to do, in WWII, because we needed to do it when we needed to do it. And that includes the dropping of two atomic bombs. Truman made the right decision. Sacrifice two cities in Japan, or commit hundreds and hundreds of thousands of American and allied troops to death by making a beachhead and air assault on the nation of Japan.

In retrospect, having years and years to think of alternatives I conclude: there was no alternative. And no right thinking American can believe there was any alternative. Without that sole decision I submit we’d be speaking German or Japanese to this day.

Easy Monday Morning Quarterbacking.

BZ

P.S.
We would do well to read Goebbels. Our enemies certainly are.