Mike's Blog Round Up
By Mike Finnigan Monday Oct 12, 2009 6:16am
The Political Carnival: Tea partiers turn on GOP leadership
Brilliant at Breakfast: So presumably you can have blood pressure of 110/70 and low cholesterol, but if your BMI is over 25, you too, can be denied health insurance
AverageBro: Obama navel-gazing reaches another low
Submitted to a Candid World: Why did Arafat receive a Nobel Prize, and not Reagan?
pandagon: The point, you have missed it
Compare and Contrast. Who's the Five Star?
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The same reason Reagan did not receive an Oscar and Gore did.
Teddy Roosevelt, who got the prize in 1906 as reward for sponsorship of the Spanish-American war and ardent bloodletting in the Philippines?
to the poor, benighted wogs---
at the business end of a Krag rifle...
Are you sure he wasn't trying to keep his daughters in high cotton? Oh, you are talking about Roosevelt, not Obama's daughters.
Everyone knows TR got it for getting the Japanese to hold their fire on the Russkies until his cousin was in power so they could blow the fleet away at Pearl Harbor.
the morning coffee spit!
Associated Press – 27 mins ago
So what do you do when your being attacked? Sit there and say "whatever you want mister just don't hit me to hard"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ
1) Marksman (x4)
2) Good Conduct
3) Pres. Unit Citation
4) Vietnam Service (the really colorful-- bright, yellow, red, and green--one)
One more than Ike...
Pabst Blue.
?????
I certainly carry no brief for Petraeus, but the gaudiness of his uniform in contrast to Eisenhower's is not at all a matter or his or Eisenhower's personal choice.
Petraeus is wearing Class As, a uniform whose every element of gallimaufry is closely and carefully dictated by regulation. To fail to adhere to these regulations, which their subordinates have no choice but to follow, while practically possible for a general, really sends an even worse message of privilged exceptionalism than adhering to the arguably excessive standards prescribed by regulation. Think Patton and his non-regulation pistol.
The regulations in force when the picture of Eisenhower was taken, in contrast, were shaped by the practical needs of WWII. I don't know the details of the period, so I can't say exactly which uniform Eisenhower is wearing, but I know the general rule that the Army's uniforms get gaudy between wars, and get spare and practical during big wars. I'm not just talking about the difference between dress and work (or "fatigue") uniforms, between field and garrison uniforms, but the migration during peacetime even within the same category to more and more geegaws, even on field/work uniforms. All that crap disappears within the first few months of a real war, informally at first, then confirmed in regulation.
Which leads to the following conclusion required by the iron laws of military haberdashery: the Army isn't behaving like this is a real war, or we would have simpler uniforms, even garrison uniforms like the Class A. You can reach the same conclusion from other evidence, but it's nice to know that the uniforms confirm it.
Okay, fair enough. I do find it amusing how the chickenhawks cherry-pick the generals they worship, though, admire the shiny stuff and ignore the realities of warfare. And listening to our pundit class, you'd never know that a military general was ever wrong, let alone disastrously so.
Good stuff today. Jesse Taylor is right on, and that's a good piece on Reagan.
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