Last Post - Honest - Kackered

[John Fitzpatrick]

Jack-
I'm old enough to remember sitting in front of the Philco radio on Friday night and listening to The Shadow- Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men?- and Inner Sanctum, with the sound effect of the door creaking as it opened. It sounds like you might have listened to them too.

Did anyone else here spend Saturday mornings listening to Big John and Sparky with Smilin' Ed,Midnight the Cat, and Froggy the Grimlin, "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", Captain Midnight, Tom Corbet Space Cadet, Captain Video, Gunga Din? Sometime around 1952, I think, the year before we got the TV.

It's possible that listening to the radio was nearly as good as being read to for developing an ability to imagine an entire reality for yourself. I wonder if there's a consequence for children having every story fully presented visually? Watching Tele-Tubbies jump around seems a vapid substitute to sitting on grandma's lap while she told you the story about the time they got stuck in the mud on Christmas eve the night the floods came. It's hard to know whether age gives me perspective and a keen insight into these things or just engenders the fond musings of an old man.

"And all the things that I myself once knew are like a glittering ship in the dark, moving away from me as I am left in homely silence".
Mark Halprin knew.

 

[Jack]

You nailed it John, telling our age now too! I do remember ALL OF THEM.

 

[Keith]

Jack-


Did anyone else here spend Saturday mornings listening to Big John and Sparky with Smilin' Ed,Midnight the Cat, and Froggy the Grimlin, "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", Captain Midnight, Tom Corbet Space Cadet, Captain Video, Gunga Din? Sometime around 1952, I think, the year before we got the TV.

Er no, but it does explain why Obama wants to invade Syria...

 

[David Morton]

I have to admit - I have absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about. WTF.
In fact I think this shit is totally inappropriate for the paddock. Get a life. The war starts today and the talk here is a load of bollocks.
GET A GRIP.

 

[Keith]

I have to admit - I have absolutely no idea what anyone is talking about. WTF.
In fact I think this shit is totally inappropriate for the paddock. Get a life. The war starts today and the talk here is a load of bollocks.
GET A GRIP.

Hoooray! A Morton missile strike deep into the Paddock bunker!

That'll show 'em!

Er, us.....

Men Down!

MEDIC! CORPSMAN!

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

David, I have enjoyed your posts on flying and life in general over the years but, with respect, you stepped on you foreskin here. Hearing that someone else has been where I’ve been, or enjoyed the same trivial things I did, makes me smile. Keith, perhaps too. You don’t understand, fine, but it isn’t “a load of “bullocks” just because you don’t. My son is in the Army Active Reserve, and I am probably more frightened than you can understand over current events. You’re a smart guy, so cut me some slack if I don’t seem properly engaged in world events. I sort of am.

We aren’t going to war at least until Congress reconvenes on the 18th, and until then, President Obama is posturing because his core supporters consider the US military an instrument to enforce our views on human rights. But it isn’t in our national interest to go to war in Syria, and sane people in Congress and most American people know it. Obama may lob a few cruise missiles at some long-gone poison gas caches and draw another line in the sand, but until Israel gets attacked, it’s all for show.

Now, contrast that to why we went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can make an excellent argument for or against those actions, but we did what we did in both cases because the President and the Congress of the United States at that time believed it to be in our national security interests to do so.

That is not the case with Syria. As Dr. Shackleford put it, and I have condensed part of his essay here, “we view that conflict through the post-Arab Spring lens ---- especially the post-Egytian uprising lens. It's not just that we're sick and tired of foreign wars -- which many of us are -- it's also that we no longer trust what will come after regime change. The devil we know is bad enough, but we don't trust that the devil that will replace Assad will be any better. In fact, many of us are afraid of US throwing its weight into the fight will tip the scales toward people who very well might be much, much worse.
Moreover, we no longer give a damn. Sure, it's very sad that Assad used chemical weapons on children. But it's not our responsibility. If France and Turkey want to punish Assad, I'm more than happy to let them have at it. It's time for someone else to be the global policeman.”

My own disgust is the total silence among the selectively and professionally outraged over Egypt’s Kristallnacht. Coptic Christian nuns dragged through the streets and sexually assaulted, Coptic churches and schools burned to the ground, and Coptics executed simply for their faith –all at the instigation and under the approving eye of the same people now helping orchestrate the internecine horrors in Syria.
“When they came for the Jews I was silent, when they came for the Gypsies, I was silent, when they came for the homosexuals, I was silent. When they come for me, there was no one left to speak out.”

And with that, I'm going to get knackered. Join me, Keith?

 

[Keith]

That's very profound John....

 

[David Morton]

One of our previous Prime Ministers lied to this nation. He asked his Attorney General for his considered and legal opinion and was told in no uncertain terms he did not have the just cause and therefore could not go to war. The Attorney General was threatened with his life and had to 'change his mind'. The Prime Minister was Blair.
You in the USA have also had Presidents who thought nothing of telling untruths and it is - to me at least - mildly refreshing to witness Obama asking the congress to approve his actions. Here, our PM could go to war without the Commons vote and its called Royal Prerogative (Royal Assent Act 1967?) but he would be ending his career by going down that route.

 

[Larry L.]

Jack-
I'm old enough to remember sitting in front of the Philco radio on Friday night and listening to The Shadow- Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men?- and Inner Sanctum, with the sound effect of the door creaking as it opened. It sounds like you might have listened to them too.

Did anyone else here spend Saturday mornings listening to Big John and Sparky with Smilin' Ed,Midnight the Cat, and Froggy the Grimlin, "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", Captain Midnight, Tom Corbet Space Cadet, Captain Video, Gunga Din? Sometime around 1952, I think, the year before we got the TV.

Don't forget "SGT. Preston of the Yukon", "Sky King", "The B-Bar-B Ranch" (with "Harka", "Lil' Boss" & the rest!), "The Lone Ranger", "Don McNeil(sp?) and The Breakfast Club", "The Buster Brown Show", "Could This Be You?", The Jack Benny Program", "Howdy Doody", "Fibber McGee and Molly", Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy", "Gang Busters", "The Great Gildersleeve", The Green Hornet", "Hopalong Cassidy", "Red Ryder", "Our Miss Brooks", do I dare mention "Amos 'n' Andy"?, "I Was a Communist For The FBI", "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour", "Let George Do It"...good krymuny...there were a whole bunch more of them, too.

(Edit: Let's not call the above "thread drift". Let's call it a well-needed "recess".)

 

[Jack]

I'm afraid so Larry!

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

Also, Crusader Rabbit, Winky-Dink, Ding Dong School, The U.S. Steel Hour, Playhouse 90--you Brits must have your own, but the era these of ours appeared in aren't called the Golden Years for nothing!

Now then, my previous post. I apologize to David Morton personally and the community generally for a haughty and inappropriate reply to David's post. I took his bullock comment personally when it wasn't intended to be, and my response was immature and no credit to myself or this forum, regardless of David's intent. Keith, this is your thread, and I apologize to you as well for behaving badly.
John Fitzpatrick

 

[Jim Rosenthal]

Damn, we could all learn something from that last post.

 

[Jim Rosenthal]

David, regardless of WHY one does the right thing, it is still the Right Thing. This is Obama's situation. Attacking Syria is not popular. Therefore, if he's bent on doing it, it's best to have support from the Congress for doing so. In addition, if they refuse to support it, he's able to say that he wanted to do it, but obeyed the law and asked them- and they said "no". He wins either way.

There's NO ONE as pious as someone conspicuously obeying the law when it is going to get them exactly what they want in the first place. NO ONE.

 

[Jack]

Precisely correct Jim! Should he decide to attack regardless, there will be a smell of
fish in the kettle.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

David, regardless of WHY one does the right thing, it is still the Right Thing. <snip>

It is indeed, but is there always a right vs wrong? I know, metaphysics and politics don't mix , but I'm reminded of the sarcastic quip a politician, probably English, once made: "We must do something, and this is something, so we must do it!"

My own thought is that the time when any single set of actions might have brought about peace passed decades ago, and while we're focused on on a modern-day repeat of Mussolini's Ethiopian excursion (even to the extent of chemical warfare), the real evil is gathering itself in Iran while we listen hopefully to a photo-negative of Neville Chamberlain and our own degenerate League of Nations.

That doesn't absolve us, and you can argue that sometimes a horrible end is a better thing than endless horror. Myself, I honest-to-God don't know, but I distrust anyone who claims he does.

 

[Jack]

Well said John.

 

[Jim Rosenthal]

With regard to the Right Thing, I don't recognize the fellow I voted for and campaigned for. (I realize that this may not be the most popular thing to say here, but we're all friends, or at least FLOs- friend-like-objects- here) I think Obama is doing the Right Thing- which is asking Congress for approval to attack the Syrian military- for the wrong reasons, as noted above.

But it is still the right thing to do. It demonstrates, for example, how much different we are from Egypt, where for a year or less they had a democratically elected government, which promptly acted in ways so undemocratic that the military came in and threw them out, thus returning Egypt to the status of military dictatorship. The Arab Spring was hardly a flowering in Egypt. Frequently the process of getting enough branches of government on board with a proposed course of action is messy, lengthy, fractious and occasionally a failure. It is still the right thing to do. It's better than unilateral action by one branch of government, especially in circumstances so dangerous as this one is.

In this circumstance, Obama is saved by the founding fathers, or whoever wrote it into the rules that Congress must be consulted in circumstances such as these. He may be intelligent, but they were not only intelligent but visionary as well. It is possible that the framework of government that they devised is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. Caution is not a vice in this situation.

It is clear that the Syrians are laughing at us. I don't see that as a problem. When I go to the zoo, I see monkeys laughing at me. That's fine. They are still inside the cage, with no control over their own destiny. The Syrians can laugh if they wish. What they are laughing at are the actions of a kind of government that they can only dream about and are sadly unlikely ever to have. What they have now is a criminal kleptocracy and dictatorship. What they will have is either that same government, if it prevails, or an Islamic fundamentalist tossed salad of rival militia factions no more successful than it is in any other Middle Eastern country. There seems to be only one genuine democracy in the Middle East and it is Israel.

I expect that the process of political discussion and bargaining will go on for weeks. The Syrians will use that time to try to hide as much as they can. Most likely there will be missile strikes, and most likely they will not change the course of the war in Syria. What I hope is that there is not a second poison gas attack, or a second and third. What would please me more than cruise missile strikes would be a serious effort to get medical supplies into Syria to counteract the effects of poison gas attacks BEFORE the next gas attack occurs.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

That's well thought out, Jim, and I couldn't possibly care less who hates or laughs at us in that region either. The Christian Science Monitor (and isn't that an irony worthy of the ages) reports the Turks are trying to allow some "humanitarian" aid into Syria, but like the French smuggling arms to the Resistance in Holland via Red Cross shipments, one man's rebel is anther's traitor, and besides teasing out out who's shooting at whom, who's getting what seems equally unclear--to everyone!
One thing about the gas attacks that seems strange to me is what Assad would gain from doing it. Not that he'd hesitate for a moment if it would help him, but it didn't in the least. He knew everyone was watching, and he's a sly SOB to boot and a secular pragmatist (my neighbor is from Jordan and says he and his brothers used to go to Syria for the booze and babes Assad semi-officially encouraged in Damascus)-- anyway, why use Sarin when napalm works better, hurts more, and isn't going to bother polite society as much? "'Tis a puzzlement." and methinks there's some protest a bit too much.
Choosing sides in this one is like picking your favorite drug cartel.

 

[John Fitzpatrick]

I assumed the polling thread on Syria was a just that w/o much in the way of comments. After scanning through the posts, I see I missed that one big time. But, happily, we have a much firmer grasp now on how the ancient Egyptians came to worship insects. <sarc./> <off>

 

[David Morton]

John F,
Your apology is uneccessary. Your post was fine by me and I really didn't take any offence.
Dave