July 12, 2015

I see a couple of videos and one deleted.

Is this the one to which you refer? I see the Cambridge resident become unglued at the Jones reporter, calling the Jones guy a Mother Fucker and a whole tirade. I always learned that the person doing the name calling does not have a debate and lost.

The bad thing is that the Cambridge resident just needed to stick to the story. He becomes defensive and goes into a tirade. He could have asked the Jones reporter to present his evidence. The resident could have done much better, but the reporter uses the oldest trick in the book to bait him. Even the woman asks the guy why he is using insults. The Cambridge guy turns a straightforward debate into making himself look really bad, in my opinion.

July 9, 2015

Did you ever serve?

Anybody can serve in any job or any endeavor in life. Simply being in an organization or a job is not the equivalent of serving. The idea that you put a monopoly on the word "serve" speaks to the silliness surrounding the awe of military.

July 9, 2015

It also appeals to a lot of large companies that accept it.

Amazon, Target, CVS, Reddit, PayPal, Expedia, Zappos, Whole Foods, Microsoft, NewEgg, Sears, Gap, Dell, etc.

July 8, 2015

You said:

"You look at the stands of a WNBA game and it's mostly men in the stands! Why aren't female fans out there supporting other women? Men go to games to watch other men play. Men go to games to watch women play."

It's actually however, mostly women in the stands at WNBA:

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/8/29/wnba-hoop-skillsnotenoughforwomenasteams.html

This matches the stats back in the 1990s. The game I went to had mostly women. If you watch on TV, then you hear the distinct sound of women cheering.

July 2, 2015

The country is not providing you the right to sit.

This idea of sitting or standing is not even a good one to discuss rights.

People are not entitled to rights because some military figure died. People have rights by virtue of being born. My rights don't depend on foreign interventions. My rights don't depend on you. Connecting your military interruptive nonsense with rights is inaccurate and irrelevant. Connecting it with sitting or standing at a ballgame is inane.

Also, which countries imprison you for sitting during the national anthem? And I'm not talking about causing an over-the-top scene. We're talking about simply sitting.

June 30, 2015

Not sure what you mean when you ask

"So do I turn my back, walk away and say 'not my problem' or try to make an iota of change?"

You willingly joined an organization where (I would think) you knew what you were getting into. We now have such history that NO ONE who is 18 years old has an excuse not to know what is happening. Eisenhower warned of this problem. It was reinforced by Vietnam. You also have the internet, forums, etc. to gather even more information. Instead of learning anything however, people chose to bury their heads or do the opposite.

I really hope you did not buy into the "winning hearts and minds" tagline. I sincerely hope you're not buying into now. People confuse a cheering village with broad change. Of course you can connect with some villager and kids and bring a smile to the faces of some people. That however, is not "winning hearts and minds" in a political sense. That phrase is now a colossal joke and I can't believe that people are still naive or disingenuous enough to use it (okay, maybe I can believe it).

Going into war does not save lives. It means lives will be lost. It's like the cashier who says, "You saved $15 today," when you just spent a hundred. Yeah that's a pithy example for comparison, but at least I will tell you like it is.

I did not say you should have shame. If however, you believe that you changed hearts and minds in the big picture or think that a war saves lives, then that is a problem.

I don't know you personally. People get caught up in all kinds of situations. Sometimes shit does happen. A lot.

I'm saying however, that I am not going to stand by and salute "heroes" who don't learn from history, don't acknowledge wrongdoing, don't acknowledge mistakes, justify their actions with silly propaganda tag lines, etc. The military is not some abstract entity of "they," or, in your words, "None of us started the war,..."

I have a real problem with that last sentence because SOMEBODY started the war, but most will not own up to that beginning or it's perpetuation. It's reflected in the mantra I hear from soldiers all the time: "We're fighting for our freedom." If they are saying that, then they are either mentally deficient or spouting baloney.

I would certainly like to know how we are fighting for our freedom. No one has been able to answer that yet, but these people claim it's so. Yet, they are somehow not responsible for starting a war or perpetuating it. These are the people we label "heroes."

June 25, 2015

There's a new invention out now.

It's called a dictionary.