Dances with Wolves

Congratulations to the Arizona Republic on a remarkable, if not astounding, endorsement of Mitt Romney. Will they elaborate on what in the world they mean by job-creating "animal spirits" that Mitt Romney would encourage? Do they know something the rest of us don't? Is Mitt Romney a shaman. Maybe they the editorial should have been titled "Dances with Wolves."

I am surprised Senator McCain has been aggressive toward the current president in the matter of the attack on the diplomats in LIbya. There is some similarity between this controversy and the attack on the USS Liberty many years ago: was the attack deliberate, why didn't we protect our people, what's being covered up. Senator McCain's father, a great Navy hero, was in command of the fleet to which the Liberty belonged. For years Senator McCain and his father have been unfairly abused by those unhappy with the answers the Navy and the government have tried to provide.  Yet McCain rushes to give President Obama the same treatment.

Forget the Irish!

Leave it to the Arizona Republic, the newspaper that celebrated St. Patrick's Day by publishing the vile canard that Irish immigrants pushed Blacks off America's ladder of social mobility, as if an Irish minority made the Constitution's 13th and 14th Amendments necessary to end slavery. Covering the Al Smith Dinner, Linda Valdez provides the progressive America's regulation list of outsiders and leaves out the subject of the story and the quintessential outsider, Al Smith. He got trounced when he ran for President because he was Irish and Catholic, an alter boy at my great-grandfather's church. Italians got left off the Valdez list, too. They were once so outside that Valdez doesn't know they were outside. They were so outside that Smith wouldn't even tell people he was part Italian. The moral of this story for our Latino community is that if you want to stop being outsiders and have the quintessential insider dinner in America named after you: VOTE. Don't blame people like Helen Purcell for stopping you, she's a decent public servant who's devoted herself to the community: all of it. Get out and vote. Don't let anyone stop you, especially your own apathy. One of the most important offices on the fast track to the inside is the US Senate. It's a very powerful job, in part because the Senators have a lot of say about who gets to be a federal judge. You'll be amazed at how friendly big shot CEOs and lawyers become when the Senator's name is Carmona. Most of the big shots aren't any brighter than a pet dog. They'll sit and beg for whoever has the bone.

Note:  years after The Republic defamed Irish Americans, neither The Republic nor the canard's author Clarence Page have apologized for the politically incorrect remarks.

Who Won the Korean War?

A letterwriter from Scottsdale (10/30/12) claims his regiment of 4,500 defeated an enemy force of 60,000 in Korea, that American forces know how to win, and that they are being held back by people in Washington who don't. I am old enough to remember the Korean War. We did not win it (regardless of what the AZ Republican would lead you to believe). A Republican President Dwight Eisenhower signed the armistice that ended the fighting, leaving us with an undefeated North Korea that still threatens us today. If the great Eisenhower could not win in Korean, what makes the writer from Scottsdale think a presidential candidate who has never so much as led a platoon in combat, although there was ample opportunity during the Vietnam War, is going to do any better than the current administration. Would Romeny bring back Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates who left us with the unwon war in Afghanistan.

cocktail courage and dinner-table heroism

This October 26 The Republic published a rather lengthy opinion by Charles Krauthammer taking President Obama to task over a shrinking United States military. I am surprised to learn about Mr. Krauthammer's concern for the US military. Although raised in Canada, Mr. Krauthammer was born and frequently resident in New York City and its suburbs. Though eligible and able at the time, he took no interest whatsoever in the United States military or serving in it during the Vietnam War.

I am pretty fed up with hearing from people, the cocktail courage and dinner-table heroism crowd, who think war and preparing for war are wonderful ideas, as long as someone else or someone else's children do the fighting.

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With age you should fail to remember what it was that was long in the past
the men in their boats
the shock and despair in their eyes as they watched us
and the smouldering City of Vinh
their smouldering City of Vinh.