And here we go again with the draft talk…

Restarting the military draft after more than four decades of an ­all-volunteer force would be complicated.

But it could be done.

One plan calls for young conscripts to have a choice: two years on active duty or six years in the reserves.

Either way, they’d first have to ­undergo basic training and job training.

If draftees want to go to college first, they must participate in a Reserve Officer Training Corps program and then serve.

If they fail or quit ROTC, they must then enlist.

Whichever option they choose, their obligation is fulfilled with a single combat deployment.

Those are some of the details ­proposed by retired Army Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich, one of the nation’s most aggressive advocates of abandoning the all-volunteer force in favor of a return to the draft.

…

He and others believe that current wars have stretched the military to its breaking point. More than a decade’s worth of bonuses and expanding benefits has brought personnel funding to its limits. Civilians are more disconnected from the military than at any time in history.

— Bringing back the draft By: Todd South  

And so it goes again

draft nonsense and a smear about military benefits.

Some “f-you I got mine” retired officer moans about civility and somehow a draft will make the military ready and “give the young civic duty[TM]”.

“Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination– devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues — which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

As this article points out, it’s getting harder to find young men who are fit and legally able to serve.

Here are the thoughts of real active duty soldiers, the takeaway from this reddit thread? Old farts disconnected from reality should stick to the early bird special.

Society has moved on.

History has moved on.

And the bad idea of the Century Award goes to….

Instapundit links

Chris Hughes, the owner of The New Republic, said on Friday that he had sold the magazine to Win McCormack, a publisher and editor based in New York and Portland, Ore., who founded the literary quarterly Tin House.

Mr. McCormack will appoint Hamilton Fish, the publisher of The Washington Spectator and a former publisher of The Nation, to be publisher and editorial director, The New Republic said.

— The New Republic Is Sold, RAVI SOMAIYAFEB. 26, 2016, NYT.COM

This was the magazine the published Scott Thomas’ fake articles and faker Stephen Glass and sockpuppeter Lee Siegel.

And someone bought this crap?

A fool and other people’s money I guess.

Poetic justice give the damage this rag did, I’m just sorry it’s taking good money instead of going under.

And the band played on….

Shot:

Yet as troubling as that may be, the sixties were in many ways the Boomers’ finest moment. It was at least a fad then to pretend to care about racial justice at home and war abroad, to speak out against pollution and prejudice. But it was mostly just talk. As they came of age, and as idealism might have required some real sacrifice, idealism suddenly became unfashionable.
— The Worst Generation, Or, how I learned to stop worrying and hate the Boomers
By Paul Begala

Chaser:

TO some, millennials — those urban-dwelling, ride-sharing indefatigable social networkers — are engaged, upbeat and open to change. To others, they are narcissistic, lazy and self-centered.

I’m in the first camp, but regardless of your opinion, be fretful over their economic well-being and fearful — oh so fearful — for their prospects. The most educated generation in history is on track to becoming less prosperous, at least financially, than its predecessors.

They are faced with a slow economy, high unemployment, stagnant wages and student loans that constrict their ability both to maintain a reasonable lifestyle and to save for the future.

Longer term, rising federal debt payments and increased spending on Social Security and Medicare will inflict a tremendous financial burden on them, threatening their own prospect of receiving promised retirement benefits.

To a considerable extent, that’s the fault of my generation, the baby boomers. We were the children of the Greatest Generation, but we may also be the most irresponsible generation.

—We’re to blame for the millennials being such a bunch of jerks, Steven Rattner, NYT.com.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap….

“America as the new Scandinavia”

Question:

That’s right. That’s right. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong when you have more income and wealth equality? What’s wrong when they have a stronger middle class in many ways than we do, higher minimum wage than we do, and they are stronger on the environment than we do? Look, the fact of the matter is, we do a lot in our country, which is good, but we can learn from other countries. (Bernie Sanders)

Democratic politicians, and especially the furthest-left ones like Sanders, have always been more open to the Scandinavian example than others—but it’s been a long time since anyone so liberal has achieved Sanders’s prominence nationally. It’s especially unusual for any Republican to follow suit, but Jeb Bush did just that when he returned from a jaunt to Europe, marveling at technological innovation in government services: “You can fill out your tax return in Estonia online in five minutes.” (Yahoo)
— Is the U.S. Ready to Become Scandinavia? (Yahoo.com)

Answer:

Dare we dream? America as the new Scandinavia (HotAir.com)

Dare we dream? America as the new Scandinavia Greece.

It’s called learning from history – and other countries.
— Athos on August 2, 2015 at 1:04 PM, comment thread in repose to the above article

Ah, the Nordic “model”, as Reason.com points out: “A touch too much in the way of conformity, high taxes, and “benign totalitarianism”.

And Sweden is trying to privatize large parts of it’s industry, Finland has pretty much let Nokia die after selling large parts of it to Microsoft (Mariana Mazzucato can’t be reached for comment).

A lot of ink has been spilled and a lot of memes and pictures on the internets been used to say that America should be more like Scandinavia. Mostly so the young liberals can live like teenagers.

The problem is paying for all of it.  Even Scandinavia is trying to find out how to pay for all that socialism, unlike Greece.

The Iron Lady on socialism.

Margaret Sanger and the KKK

Wikipeida:

Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger’s efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of birth control and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement

And now:

As liberals excoriate Republican Congressman Steve Scalise for speaking to a group with a reported connection to David Duke, former KKK member, I’m reminded today—on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade—of a moment that liberals will never dare acknowledge: a 1926 speech to the KKK by one of their most revered ideological darlings, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
—Reflections on Roe: When Margaret Sanger Spoke to the KKK

And here is the Wikiquote:

Always to me any aroused group was a good group, and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing. […] Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabulary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my address that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand.

In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York.

Chapter 29, “While the Doctors Consult”, p. 366. Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography (1938)

And this is the woman who founded Planned Parenthood. She was a racist and a vile human being. Yet she’s lauded by the wackos in the left and the media who believe that the Earth is in a “population crisis”. Like the KKK, she targets the handicapped and minorities.

And yet Planned Parenthood gets taxpayer money.

The New Republic’s swan song

Shot:

In 2007, using the pen name “Scott Thomas”, Beauchamp filed three entries in The New Republic about serving at Forward operating base Falcon, Baghdad. These entries concerned alleged misconduct by soldiers, including Beauchamp, in post-invasion Iraq.
…
“We are not going into the details of the investigation,” Maj. Steven F. Lamb, deputy public affairs officer in Baghdad, wrote in an e-mail message. “The allegations are false, [Beauchamp’s] platoon and company were interviewed, and no one could substantiate the claims he made.”
— Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy

Chaser:

The New Republic will not publish the issue that had been slated to hit shelves on December 15, following Friday’s mass resignation by top editors and contributors.
—TNR cancels December issue after mass staff resignation

A fitting end for a liberal rag that has abandoned the truth for the pouring of hate and progressive ideas . Liberals love to talk about their “reality based” community and how the media is “unbiased”. TNR shows the sad fact that liberals and facts are in a messy divorce.

The midterms showed that we’re not socialists now (that was Newsweek, that got sold for pennies on the dollar after not being in print for awhile).

The “liberal moment” is over and the progressives have lost. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

And Salon Jumps the Shark

A WTF from Salon.com as they exceed their own parody:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.
— David Masciotra, quotes at This Ain’t Hell.

Yeah, douchenugget, it’s not the uniform that makes folks worthy of respect and a measure of adulation, it’s what the uniform says about the person wearing it and their commitment to the ideals that they are defending. Anyone can buy a uniform and put it on – our Stolen Valor page is chocked full of people who do that. Those spazwads do it because the uniformed services are the last government institutions which accomplish that for which they were created.
— Jonn Lilyea’s response.

Of course the left hates the military. After Vietnam, many leftists seethed. They almost got what they wanted. From the 70’s to the early 90’s the psycho veteran and military conspiracy was a stock trope of Hollywood movies. Phrases like “permanent war economy” and “military industrial complex” were twisted into knots until the men and women of the armed forces were seen as villains.

But there was always a group of people who did the right thing. From Welcome Home parties for Vietnam vets, service organizations that helped military families and those who say “thank you for your service.”

On my blog I have many former soldiers leaving comments about their time in the Army. They don’t talk about the garbage David Masciotra spews. Their comments are fond memories of their time in green.

David Masciotra, I don’t see your panty waist helping military families who’ve lost a loved one. No leftie has ever said “welcome home” nor have they tired to offer job placement for returning vets. Ditto their never helping police families or crime victims.

Nope, they love the stolen valor losers, posers and pot smoking hippies rail about the poor and imperialism. They praise murderers, dictators, criminals and hold signs that support terrorism.

David Masciotra does not support or help anyone but himself. Better men and women have died to protect his right to be a jerkass, for that at least he should be thankful.

A look at the left and it’s efforts to criminalize dissent…

Remember when  dissent was patriotic?  Good times:

The Ohio Inquisition, and the Minnesota Inquisition, and Harry Reid’s war on the First Amendment are hardly isolated episodes. Consider that the same Texas prosecutor that has indicted Governor Rick Perry on two felony counts for the so-called crime of exercising his constitutional authority to veto a bill — a bill providing funds to that prosecutor’s office — is now preparing to indict University of Texas regent and whistleblower Wallace Hall, on charges of . . . hmm.
— Democrats’ Push to Criminalize Dissent NRO.com

“For the past half decade, those cliques focused on “social justice” have been insulting, smearing and misrepresenting individuals or groups they decided represent “the other”. Because they received little or no push-back, they wrongly believed they represented the majority opinion on a given issue.”
—#GamerGate–the free ride is over,littletinyfrogs.com

I LOVE THE SPREAD OF THE TERM “SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR” TO DESCRIBE THE NEVER-SATISFIED LEFTY ACTIVISTS WHO TRY TO TAKE OVER EVERYTHING, Instapundit.

And so it came to past that the left has jumed the shark. The same tired old rhetoric and memes ain’t selling anymore. Zoe Quinn (a.k.a. Chelsea Van Valkenburg) slept her way to the top, tried to cover it up and then had her white knight dorkpire attempt to talk about her “harassment”.

R.S. McCain has more at his blog. And how sadly most Gaming websites all fell in lockstep, censoring discussion of their ading and abetting a fame whore in the name of “feminism”. All while Miss Van Valkenburg is trying to get her nude pr0n work censored away because of reasons.

This has been like those glasses in”They Live“: Accuse the accuser, pick a target and personalize it. Call people names and throw bombs. Lie, cheat and change the topic of discussion. Remember Bill Clinton? He gutting the military, missed Bin Laden and lied under oath. But to hear the lefties, it was all about the oval sex in the oral office. -_-

The left never changes. Will the twenty-somethings of today wake up?

“a hands off, leading from behind approach”

The U.S. has made the case as strongly as they can to regional countries, including Kuwait. But ultimately when you take a hands off, leading from behind approach to things, people don’t take you seriously and they take matters into their own hands.
— America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS, Josh Rogin, The Daily Beast.com

“The elephant in the room, unmentioned by Obama, is what happens if Iraq’s leaders — or the rebels — turn out to be uninterested in compromise. In particular, the president never said anything approaching this: “We will under no circumstances permit the terrorists to take control of Iraq.”

Barack Obama is a man who knows how to use words. It’s possible, then, that this omission was intended to prepare us for the worst.”
— What Obama Didn’t Say About Iraq, Stephen L. Carter, Bloombergview.com

America didn’t lose Iraq, it was given away by a party and an Administration bound and determined to “get out of Bush’s War.” The left cares not for foreign affairs, it distracts from the domestic agenda of taxing and spending*. When they do show interest, it’s to kiss the ass of oil sucking dictators or to kow-tow to any foreign tyrant. Or simply parrot the current thinking of Europe’s intellectual class.

Iraq could have used American troops. ISIS is an Al-Qaeda spin-off. A failed Iraq spells trouble for the US. Sadly, we American’s don’t care about foreign wars, but foreign wars do care about us.

The left likes to say that they ended Vietnam and now Iraq. That somehow the Democrats brought us troops home. Lies. George Bush signed the agreement to withdraw from Iraq when their coalition government didn’t want a Status Of Forces Agreement.

But if you see Tumblr, Reddit or other hives of lefty scum and villainy, the Democrats are treated like royalty for “bringing the troops home” (not really, we’re still gonna be in Afghanistan until 2017). Don’t forget the drone strikes. Clinton has his cruise missiles, this Whitehouse has kill lists and drones. Hands off and leading from behind.

So as the media has sown, so shall the American public be forced to reap the bitter harvest.

*: I’m not kidding about that. See TheOtherMcCain for our “reality based community’s” take on Iraq:

Yes, the most urgent business facing the United States Senate is a newspaper columnist’s thoughts about sex on college campuses.
— R.S. McCain

And the “racist military” smear continues.

All thorough out Hollywood and the media’s depiction of the military, we’re shown a bunch of mooks beacuse the military is teh evilz!

Part of this meme is that the US military is/has/trains/recruits rabid racists. They become “veterans” who are planning to/training to/stocking up guns for/working for INSERTSINISTERPLANSHERE.

Jackasses like Timothy McVeigh get branded about every so often (a SF washout and marginal soldier who was demoted from E-5 to E-1).

“Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, is accused of killing three people outside a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement community on April 13, according to media reports. The Fayetteville Observer reported that Miller is a former Ku Klux Klan leader as well as a retired master sergeant who served in Army Special Forces. He was forced to retire in 1979 for distributing racist materials.”
— Veterans slam New York Times piece linking vets to hate groups, Militarytimes.com

Yep, another “veteran”. And here is the MSM stock narrative:

“The number of Vietnam veterans in that movement was small — a tiny proportion of those who served — but Vietnam veterans forged the first links between Klansmen and Nazis since World War II. They were central in leading Klan and neo-Nazi groups past the anti-civil rights backlash of the 1960s and toward paramilitary violence. The white power movement they forged had strongholds not only in the South, but also in the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, California and Pennsylvania. Its members carried weapons like those they had used in Vietnam, and used boot-camp rhetoric to frame their pursuit of domestic enemies. They condoned violence against innocent people and, eventually, the state itself.”
— Veterans and White Supremacy, By KATHLEEN BELEW, NYT.com

Plenty of “weasle words” there, I’ve highlighted them. She goes on to say:

Mr. Miller obviously represents an extreme, both in his politics and in his violence. A vast majority of veterans are neither violent nor mentally ill. When they turn violent, they often harm themselves, by committing suicide.

And here is the epic smack down:

“Make no mistake—if there were extremists in the ranks, commanders would be quick to give them the boot; the Army’s regulations give them plenty of latitude to do so. In fact, that actually happened in the case of Frazier Miller,
…
Finally, understand that Mr. Miller represents just one of over 20 million veterans in America—roughly the entire population of the state of New York. One person does not make a trend.”
—
Racists in the ranks? Not in this Army., Crispin J. Burke, Medium.com

As both XBradTC, the Military Times and the Department Of Defense are quick to point out, being a racist nutjob gets a soldier back on the street with a quickness.

Tattoos are inspected, background checks are done. Sure there are some idiots who fall through the cracks. But contrary to what liberals, progressives and places like the Southern “Poverty” Law Center think, there is no mass movement of racist “vets”.

Extremist groups try, they send pamphlets, use the internets and attempt to use social media. And the IG, the DoD’s special law enforcement agencies and the FBI are quick to find them.

I suspect that this “meme” is more battlespace prep for 2014 and backlash over the fail of progressive causes. Expect to see Tea Party rallies peppered with “racist milita” and veterans running for office smeared with this.

The left hates the military and this is one way they have to swipe at recruitment and the treatment of vets.