Another cowardly, cut-and-run hippie?

To hear some people tell it, the only Americans who want to pull our troops out of Iraq forthwith are limp-wristers, hippies, women and people who hate our military and our country.

The truth, of course, is something else. For example, check this video for a strong antiwar statement from retired Gen. John Batiste (pictured on the left), a former Army commander in Iraq. It's part of a TV ad campaign sponsored by VoteVets.org.

And check this stuff from The National Security Network, wherein a bunch of retired generals denounce President Bush's recent veto of the war-spending bill with its non-binding timeline for withdrawal of our troops.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that so many of the people who impugn the patriotism of the so-called cut-and-run crowd have never served in the military themselves. Many of them also refuse to acknowledge that the ranks of the war critics include lots of veterans, these aforementioned generals among them. This uncomfortable truth doesn't fit the stereotypes peddled by these chickenhawks.

(Disclaimer: The Rascal hasn't served in the military, either, but neither have I been a cheerleader for either the Vietnam War or this current misadventure.)

Coming soon: A look at the Duke

John Wayne's 100th birthday rolls around later this month, and The Rascal will mark the occasion with an examination of the Duke's place in the pantheon of conservative Republican heroes.

This special feature likely will appear here within the next week or 10 days so as to gain a jump on the orgy of Duke tributes we'll see in the mainstream media on his centennial on May 26.

So, check back, Pilgrim.

Good morning, Frank

Frank Newport, the Gallup Poll dude, is here with the latest numbers on what you folks out there think about our glorious adventure in Iraq.

Terrorist attack by doofuses thwarted

Read all about it right here.

This helps explain things

Dick Morris, a frequent right-wing bloviator on the Fox News Channel, offers here a reason to keep our troops in Iraq.

He says the troops provide a more convenient target for terrorists, thus reducing the need for the bad guys to come to our shores to kill Americans.

UPDATE: Well, we probably don't have to worry about terrorists following our troops home from Iraq. According to Condoleezza Rice, we might have to keep our troops over there forever.

UPDATE II: Of course, using our troops as diversionary bait is nothing new. Remember when Bush actually invited terrorist attacks on our troops? "Bring 'em on," he said. Tom Tomorrow remembers.

Hey, hawks! Can you help me out here?

The Rascal is a little confused on a few points concerning the war in Iraq, and I was hoping that you stalwart supporters of the war could help me out. Here's the problem:

President Bush has said that if we withdraw our troops from Iraq before they've finished the job, the "terrorists will follow us home." That suggests to me that our military campaign has got all the terrorists -- you know, all the al-Qaeda types -- preoccupied in Iraq and unable to free themselves up for mischief anywhere else, like here in America.

But I'm also told by experts on the subject that most of the al-Qaeda folks in this world are located in various far-flung locales and countries outside of Iraq. So, how does what we're doing in Iraq prevent these terrorists outside of Iraq from coming after us? By scaring them with our unswerving resolve? But aren't suicide bombers immune to fright? I mean, they're obviously not afraid to die.

I'm also told that most of the violence in Iraq amounts to sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites who have nothing to do with al-Qaeda. I'm further informed that about 90 percent of al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq are Iraqis, not foreigners, and that their concerns are mostly domestic and that they'd still have their hands full dealing with their Shiite adversaries even after our troops left.

This theory that the terrorists would "follow us home" seems based on the idea that all or most of the anti-American terrorists in the world are pinned down in Iraq by our troops, as if the bad guys constitute one big army as in past wars, like WWI and WWII. But that theory makes no sense. It seems not to jibe with the facts.

Help me, patriots. Help me make sense of these inconsistencies.

While you're at it, perhaps you can argue against the increasingly plausible notion that the longer we are in Iraq, the more we are creating terrorists worldwide.

Thanks a lot. I knew I could count on you. (Cue the crickets.)

How much longer must this obscenity continue?

Who really supports our troops? Those among us who applaud the futile effort that results in this sort of thing? Or those among us who don't?

(By the way, be sure to click on the video at the bottom of the piece to which I provided a link in the previous paragraph. It displays the names of the fallen warriors.)

This is a hoot

As I noted here yesterday, President Bush was mentioned only once in last week's debate among the 10 candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.

The point is emphasized in this funny video.

France sets a good example

Pseudopatriotic Americans like to deride the French for their refusal to join in our military misadventure in Iraq (a smart decision on their part, in retrospect).

One wonders, then, how our legion-hall jingoists will react to the massive turnout of voters for today's presidential election in France. The French, it appears, generally take democracy more seriously than do we Americans. We're lucky if we can get half of our eligible voters off their dumb asses for our presidential balloting.

By the way, our francophobes seem to be unschooled on their own country's history. Were it not for the French, the American Revolution against the British might well have failed. Not only did France provide crucial financial support to our fledgling nation, but a French naval victory in Chesapeake Bay led to the surrender of the British at Yorktown in 1781.

But the dipshits among us, the guys who refer to "freedom fries" and brag that their goosebumps at the sight of Old Glory are bigger than yours, know nothing of these matters.

A few pet peeves

The Rascal (who admittedly makes his own mistakes from time to time) doesn't like it when he hears:

• Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey use that awful word "visioning."
• A bureaucrat or developer refer to homes as "rooftops."
• A newscaster refer to local government officials as "leaders," which is not always accurate.
• A television reporter (usually not an anchor) start every sentence with the word "now," which I suspect is some TV consultant's idea of conveying immediacy. ("Now, the committee will meet again Thursday night to...." "Now, police say the investigation...")
• Somebody use the word "myself" or "yourself" where the word "me" or "you" belongs. ("Fine, thanks. How's yourself." "Bob will be riding with myself and Tom."
• An advertiser say that something is "free" when I have to buy something else to get it. ("Buy two and get one free.") Why does the government allow the lying bastards to get away with that?
• A candidate for public office claim that he or she is "not a politician." Even a school board candidate is, in fact, a politician.
• Somebody refer to "one of the only..."
• A reference to the Rockford area as the "stateline" or the "Rock River Valley," neither of which is used by ordinary people in everyday conversation.
• A school teacher (or any adult, for that matter) use the word "like" in place of "said" or "says." ("So, then, Jim is like, 'Why don't you.....'") Isn't it bad enough that most kids talk that way?
• A TV weather report called a "futurecast" instead of a "forecast."
• Somebody call a veterinarian a "vetinarian," or a meteorologist a "meterologist."
• Somebody refer to something as "inter-est-ing." The preferred pronunciation is "in-trest-ing." After all, the bank doesn't pay "inter-est" on your savings account. It pays "in-trest."
• A football announcer, player, coach or fan use the word "football" more than once (or even once, if unnecessarily) in one sentence. Why do these boobs have to refer to a football player, football team, football field, football game, etc.? Baseball people, a more intelligent lot, don't discuss their sport that way.
• Uptalking. If you don't know what uptalking is, you're probably guilty of it. It's an annoying speech habit that inflects sentences as though they were questions. ("Back when I was in college? We had a rule at our school about smoking in the dorms?")
• Somebody refer to the "Christian point of view" or to what "Christians believe." There is no single Christian point of view on hardly any subject. Beliefs vary widely among Christians, which is why there are thousands of different Christians denominations.
• Rockford Police Chief Chet Epperson refer to somebody as an "individual" or a "subject" rather than "a man," "a woman" or "a person." ("We're looking for a male subject...") Why do law-enforcement brass use this kind of police-blotter jargon in their public pronouncements?
• Somebody pronounce "wouldn't" as "wood-unt", "student" as "stew-dunt" or "stew-dent," "important" as "impor-dunt." The second syllables in these words should be pronounced without a vowel sound. For example, it should be "woodnt" or "stewednt." The trick is to employ what linguists call "syllabic consonants," which require that the vowel sounds be squeezed out of the syllables at issue (as in the word "cotton," which is pronounced "cot-n," not "cot-tun.") The mispronunciations of "wouldn't" and the others are most common among young people. For example, listen sometime to a young TV reporter pronounce "students."

It's that bad, huh?

Your nose would be out of joint, too, if your presidency was the most unpopular in a generation and your party's prospects for success in next year's elections were sinking like a rock.

Newsweek has the numbers here.

Barring a political miracle, congressional Republicans and other erstwhile GOP loyalists soon will be jumping overboard. George W. Bush is such poison that his name was mentioned only once among the party's 10 presidential candidates in their debate the other night.

And as we noted here a few days ago, even the eminent conservative William F. Buckley says there are "grounds for wondering whether the Republican Party will survive" what Bush has done to it.

Read 'em and weep (or laugh)

Hey, it's Saturday!

That means it's time to check out Bob Geiger's weekly collection of political cartoons.

Note to readers

A recent comment on one of The Rascal's posts went more than a bit too far, so I've decided to activate the comment-moderation option for at least a while to ensure that this idiot (who probably looks like the fellow pictured here) doesn't violate the sanctity of this award-winning and widely esteemed blog.

This means that comments won't appear until they are approved. This doesn't mean, however, that comments will be barred on the basis of political content or disagreement with the views of The Rascal. Indeed, I welcome spirited dissent.

Sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.

Please, God, let me keep a straight face

I'm trying hard not to laugh about this, because, after all, we're talking about war and death.

But it's hard not to chuckle at the rhetoric offered by George W. Bush in explaining his veto of the war-spending bill. He said success in Iraq does not necessarily require the complete elimination of violence. "Success," he said, "is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives."

When Democrat John Kerry said essentially the same thing during the 2004 election campaign, Bush and his pals roundly chided the Massachusetts senator, and so did the supplicant media.

With a nod to Think Progress, the Madison blogger Griper Blade details the hypocrisy.

Zeke Giorgi is spinning in his grave

Nobody's ever said that State Rep. Chuck Jefferson, the Rockford Democrat, is the sharpest knife in the drawer, and with good reason.

Yesterday, Jefferson took to the floor of the House to push for legislation that would allow Rockford to begin collecting an additional penny in sales taxes in July rather than having to wait until next year. But in his address to his fellow lawmakers, Jefferson read from the wrong bill; he extolled a measure having to do with railroad links to Winnebago County.

At no point in his remarks did it occur to Jefferson that he was talking about a matter completely unrelated to the tax legislation.

If the late and legendary E.J. "Zeke" Giorgi, whose House seat Jefferson now holds, was watching from that great General Assembly in the sky, he must have felt a heavenly cringe.

The story of Jefferson's flub is here.

Rockford historian Jon Lundin is dead

I received word a few minutes ago that Rockford historian Jon Lundin died suddenly last night.

Lundin, the author of "Rockford -- An Illustrated History," of which there were several editions, was president of the Abilities Center and a community activist.

The Register Star Web site at rrstar.com likely will have details of Lundin's passing later this morning.

UPDATE: The Register Star has a nice piece on Lundin here.

Is Rockford guy covering for Karl Rove?

There's speculation in the blogosphere lately (here, for example) that Rockford native Michael Elston, a Justice Department official who finds himself in hot water in the Prosecutorgate scandal, has been telling falsehoods to congressional investigators to protect White House aide Karl Rove.

There's also more speculation (here, for example) that Elston's alleged intimidation of three fired federal prosecutors amounted to illegal witness-tampering.

Background on Elston's role in the scandal can be found here and here.

UPDATE: Speaking of Karl Rove, an acquintance of his says the man is an atheist (or at least an agnostic). Hmmm. That throws a whole new light on Rove's political manipulation of the religious right.

UPDATE II: By the way, Rove's son, Andrew, is now of military age, and some of us are wondering if he'll soon volunteer to serve in the war his daddy so enthusiastically supports.

Brilliant conservative analysis

Have you ever heard of a guy named Erick Erickson?

He's the head man over at RedState.com, a prominent conservative Web site that draws tens of thousands visitors each day. He's apparently also a man who likes to cover all his bases, even to the point of being ridiculous about it.

The Rascal was roaming the Net this morning in search of commentary on last night's debate among the Republican presidential candidates when I stumbled upon a piece by Erickson. It was so confusing, I had to read it three times.

In short order, Erickson declared that "John McCain won" and that "Fred Thompson...really won." He said that "not one of the men on the stage rose to a level to really stand out" and that "Mitt Romney shined, he stood out, he did well." Getting back to McCain, Erickson said he "reigned supreme."

Oh, Erickson also said: "Let's not dance around about this."

They actually pay this guy to write this stuff. Read it here.

Non-Jewish shabbiness reported

I think the author of this piece meant to use the word "genteel."