US elections: Danger lurks in Barack Obama’s comfort zone. (but, he’s been sent by god.)
on 11/04/2008 at 03:37 AM
All I am wondering on this is how many thousands of military folk are gonna bail out in the next year if Obenothing gets the job. I truly expect it to be massive.But on the bright side ,it will shrink the Mil budget Franks is gonna slash anyway.
Hadn’t thought of that BUT ... maybe not. An awful lot of young guys enter the military for the same reasons they have for a thousand years. Possible adventure (hey, when you’re 18) and many of them see it as a job. Youngsters not satisfied with where they are and out of a job for whatever reason, and for many the military looks pretty good. Referring to the younger ones now, who are less prone to be overly political.
Listening to radio here and it’s almost wall to wall American election. I am not trying to be crude when I say the left all over Europe has been having a collective Obama orgasm.
They really,really and I do mean REALLY, want Obama as our next president. Generally for dumb reasons and misplaced white guilt.I wish ALL Americans were as aware of just how much these folks want him in office.
And trust me please, their want borders on desperation.Point well made but I did see charts mapping military support for each candidate and they show an 80/20 preferance for McCain. And the mil blogs I skim through seem to have the same feeling.As to the euro luv for Obenothing,Why should they care.He aint gonna hose there system,The belgians are already doing that in brussels.
I’ll guarantee you that the military will hemorrhage its experienced enlisted people in an Obama Presidency. But back to the point of the article.
Like everyone, I knew that McCain had spent time in the Hanoi Hilton. What I had NOT known until a few months ago was that he was in a training film I was required to watch in Navy boot camp: “Trial by Fire - The Ordeal of the USS Forrestal”.
The Forrestal fire started at 10:50 local time and took until 4:00 the next morning to fully defeat. It killed 134 people and injured 161. It began when an electrical surge switching from external to internal power lit off a Zuni missile, which skated across the deck and impacted an external fuel tank of an A-4, immediately engulfing two aircraft *that were awaiting launch* in a pool of burning fuel. The pilots who suddenly found themselves in the middle of that flaming pool were LCDR Fred White and LCDR John McCain.I’m sure there are many other events in that man’s life of which I am still unaware. Nonetheless, no one can rationally deny that John McCain is the quintessential old warhorse, harder to put down than a charging rhino and with apparently more lives than a cat. And it is likewise inarguable that, even as a young man, he more than once found himself in circumstances where he not only had to make the right decision, but had to make it RIGHT NOW, with only seconds to assess the situation. He is no stranger to high-stress decision making, nor has he been for many decades.
Do we disagree on things? Hell yes we do, most notably on immigration and campaign financing. But as my mother pointed out to me, when pressed on immigration reform, he once told the questioner, “Well okay then, what would you do? You may not like my solution, but it IS a solution, it can realistically be made to happen. Ideal solutions are often useless in a less than ideal world.” In other words, when you’re sitting in a burning aircraft is NOT the time to bitch about proper maintenance being done on the aircraft that just mistakenly fired a missile into you. You deal with what IS.
Regardless of who wins this election, I think it would be fitting and proper if, sometime today, we were to all take a moment to acknowledge the respect this man has long since earned. And to reflect on how deeply flattering it is that people such as him consider US worth fighting, dying.... and yes, putting up with the dishonor of modern politics… to defend.
11/04/2008 at 04:25 AM
