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By Weldon Berger, on October 25th, 2011
In recent years, both the civilian government and the military leadership have made a serious effort to elevate the cultural station of military personnel from that of citizen soldiers to the loftier and more separatist “warrior.” They’re all warriors now, and heroes. The end result is that both soldiers and civilians increasingly view the former as a breed apart.
That’s not a good thing. For obvious democratic reasons, one wants the military to identify and empathize with the populations whence they spring. Identifying common experiences is one way to do that, and one experience a lot of military personnel have in common with a lot of civilians is that they’re making crap money and the people signing their paychecks don’t seem to care much about them. Another is that if they lose their jobs, they’re in deep trouble almost instantly.
I ran across a couple of items yesterday that suggest an avenue for amplifying the Occupy protests within the U.S. by involving military personnel. One was a comment by my pal Schmutzie over at his place about a plan announced by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain to inflict some serious Bad upon veterans benefits, and the other was the first truly useful Twitter message I’ve received during my limited relationship with the service.
Continue reading Occupy the Military
By Weldon Berger, on September 23rd, 2011
Updated 9/24
Jacob Weisberg, who runs the parent company of online slapstick factory Slate magazine, regularly features himself in a Slate column called The Big Idea (The Thinking Behind The News). The last time I read The Big Idea, Weisberg impressively managed to discuss health insurance reform without a single mention of single-payer universal health care. This time, he tears into Ron Suskind and Suskind’s new, not especially flattering book about the Obama administration. The assault begins on an awkward note and gets worse, fast.
As an editor, you develop a B.S. meter—an internal warning system that signals caution about journalism that doesn’t feel trustworthy.
Houston, we have a problem.
Continue reading “Don’t Believe Ron Suskind”: Jacob Weisberg gives self-parody a bad name
By Weldon Berger, on September 18th, 2011
All of your woes can be traced to that one moment of missed opportunity.
President Obama said the day of the 9/11 anniversary that in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, Americans have preserved our values and our character. He’s right. America’s history is of a whiny, over-privileged, self-aggrandizing and self-victimizing bully, and the decade since 9/11 has been clarifying.
Continue reading If you really loved America, you would have died on 9/11
By Weldon Berger, on July 24th, 2011
Americans Elect, the new internet-based plutocrat-powered political party, is calling for delegates to help determine the issues around which the party’s candidates will be selected. In theory this allows Everybody to participate because You debate among Yourselves to determine the party Platform and then You choose a presidential candidate from the pool “certified by an [I]ndependent [C]ommittee to meet a set of standard qualification criteria such as background checks.”
Who chooses the Independent Committee? I dunno. Maybe another Independent Committee. Or God. Somebody centrist, in any event, so New Testament God rather than Rip Your Lungs Out On A Whim God.
Tom Friedman has endorsed the idea. He’s well known to be insane. Run.
Continue reading Calling all Greens, Reds, Pinkos, Paulites and Anonymi: Help fuck this up
By Weldon Berger, on July 20th, 2011
Before he was Dr. House, when he was still English and a comedian, Hugh Laurie had a fabulously successful career with fellow comic and raconteur Stephen Fry. Among their ventures was a show called “A Bit of Fry & Laurie.” Through fabulous happenstance I found myself watching the first episode of their final series this evening and there at the end of it was a wonderful little riff on “It’s A Wonderful Life,” featuring Hugh Laurie as a certain Australian press baron lately in the news.
Continue reading Dr. House goes postal on the Wonderful Lizard of Oz
By Weldon Berger, on July 19th, 2011
“Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.”
– Max Boot
Max Boot is my favorite neoconservative. He is completely unfamiliar with the concept of shame and like the rest of his clan he won’t ever flinch when it comes time to put somebody else’s life on the line. Anyone whose conscience survives initiation into that club soon gets voted out.
Where Max really shines is as a polemicist. He’s a good writer. He can turn a juicy phrase like few others. That one above, his juiciest ever—and I know writers, I know he looked at it and thought to himself, “damn, I am good …”—went into a piece he wrote for the Weekly Standard not long after September 11.
Continue reading What Max Boot learned about Libya from Afghanistan and Iraq
By Weldon Berger, on July 13th, 2011
That the rich relentlessly thieve from the poor is hardly fresh news, but a more attentive institutional press might see fit to mention, at least once in a while, how well off the negotiators wrangling over how deeply to cut social welfare programs are. Nobody in Congress will ever have to rely on Social Security to stay solvent, or on Medicare or Medicaid to stay alive.
The press might also see fit to mention that even the most impoverished inhabitants of Congress, even if they never work another day in their lives, have no other income and never get a dime from Social Security, will almost certainly take home more in retirement pay—they get generous pensions and taxpayer-assisted 401-K plans—than the median income in this country.
Continue reading Millionaires gather to steal from the old, the sick and the poor
By Weldon Berger, on July 7th, 2011
What’s wrong with these constructions?
But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.
There is something crazy about what is going on in our country today. Our fiscal condition continues on an unsustainable path, the European currency is heading for a crackup, the Arab world is in the midst of a crackup, unemployment is creeping upward and basically our two parties are telling us that they will not make the reforms that we know are necessary because it would involve too much pain and could imperil their chances of winning the presidency in 2012.
Continue reading Billionaire pundit has boundary issues and math deficiencies
By Weldon Berger, on July 7th, 2011
The day after Barack Obama was elected, I predicted that he would become the most disappointing president since World War II. I was confident that my prediction would hold.
Man, was I wrong. Now it appears as though one may have to look back to James Buchanan, who presided over the dissolution of the Union, for a president who disappointed his partisans more.
Continue reading Most disappointing president since World War II? My bad …
By Weldon Berger, on July 6th, 2011
“Medicare Cuts Could Help GOP Save Face in Debt Talks“
Thet thar is an actual headline from an actual post at the Atlantic Wire, which has supplanted Slate as the silliest respectable (in the social society sense) daily commentary site of this infant century.
Continue reading Republican Face: Our Most Precious Natural Resource!
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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