I really can’t overstate how badly I want the neocon fuckchop GOP leadership like Karl Rove and William Kristol to disappear and never be heard from again.  They have ruined the Republican party.  Mark Levin agrees so some degree:

http://jenkuznicki.com/2013/02/the-gop-must-reject-karl-rove-and-his-divisive-tactics/

So does Michele Malkin:

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/04/kneel-before-zod-gop-control-freak-karl-rove-launches-new-effort-to-snuff-out-tea-party/

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Bill Stevens Gun Violence Prevention Working Group Public Hearing

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the world is divided into two kinds of people. The first category includes those who run private businesses in order to cheat and kill you, and the second category includes those selfless government workers who tirelessly labor to keep those other evil people from harming you

Government Is Good, Don’cha Know

by William L. Anderson

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This is a good read, via Stayc Chen

Sharing a post by Chris Diamond.  A bit of a long read compared to normal posts, but definitely two contrasting perspectives about US military service to consider:
I got a really interesting message on youtube… This will be a somewhat long read, but I would like to share what a 19-year old boy tried to tell me about freedom, and a soldier’s duty to help those less fortunate than himself. First, his email to me:

“I am ashamed I am going to be defending people like you when I leave for the Army in June. You libertarians have absolutely no care for the military ( the guys who actually fight for this country) you think that we are all safe from terrorism, and you kiss the enemies ass, this is what america has become, people don’t want to serve, and people don’t support their own damn country, shame on you. Keep pretending you are a freedom fighter, keep thinking only of american people, and not people around the planet, I enlisted because I wanted to defend my country and help others less fortunate than I, real soldiers fight for others freedoms, not their own. You talk of freedom, yet you aren’t willing to give others freedom, the founding fathers would be ashamed. This is the oath I gave,”I, Garrett D.____, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

— And my response to him…

Hi Frank, or Garrett…

Thank you for taking the time to write me. Allow me, if you will to examine your note and present my observations to you in response.

“You libertarians have absolutely no care for the military (the guys who actually fight for this country) you think that we are all safe from terrorism, and you kiss the enemies ass, this is what america has become,”… I checked your youtube page and saw a comment you left on someone’s video saying you’re 19 years old. Very shortly after you were born, I enlisted in the Armed Forces (surprised?). I have deployed, twice on less than 24 hours notice to war zones, I have transported the dead bodies of my brothers and guarded their mangled remains while we awaited a plane to take them home. I have lost 7 friends to the bullshit wars in Iraq and Afghanistan… 4 of them fathers of children who will never know them. 6 widows… 7 sets of parents and grandparents who will never again lay eyes on their sons/grandsons. One of my friends has PTSD so bad (some 8 years after his first deployment to Iraq, that he hides in a basement with earplugs in his ears and loud music playing on the 4th of July and New Years, and another friend was recently medically discharged from the Army after spending 5 of his 8 years of service in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he was blown up by IEDs, shot, shot at, and killed more people than he cares to tell me. He will never be the same, and the left-overs are what his wife and children have to deal with. So to close out this point, in your youth and inexperience, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. If you cared about vets, maybe you’d want our leaders to quit sending them off to be killed for moronic reasons that have nothing to do with liberty or defense. I caution you… if you take that know-it-all attitude with you into the Army, they will straighten out of you quickly. Save yourself the trouble, and recognize that you’re just a kid who doesn’t know shit. I don’t kiss ANYONE’S ass… least of all the lying bastards that have you and kids just like you convinced that ‘fighting for your country’ in the way they prescribed is brave and patriotic. It isn’t. It’s merely using well-meaning and highly propagandized people as pawns in a pretty serious chess game to achieve their own ends, which usually benefit their corporate and bankster masters a whole helluva lot more than it does protect the Constitution, liberty or the ‘less fortunate’ you’re so concerned about.

“Keep pretending you are a freedom fighter, keep thinking only of american people, and not people around the planet, I enlisted because I wanted to defend my country and help others less fortunate than I, real soldiers fight for others freedoms, not their own.” — I don’t pretend to be anything. I simply am what I am: a reasonably intelligent person of moderate erudition who has a ton of experience and insight into this topic that you absolutely lack. The job of the soldier is not to ‘help those less fortunate’. The job of the soldier is to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. If you want to help those less fortunate, join the Peace Corps instead, and go help people obtain clean drinking water, shelter and sustainable food production. Find a local hospital and ask where you can volunteer to sit with babies who’ve been abandoned. Through holding them, you can help them learn how to connect with other human beings and do miraculous things like cry again. Serve food in a local homeless shelter because, even if you’re oblivious to it, as you apparently are, there are Americans who hunger, have no shelter and would greatly benefit from your volunteer work. Any of these options does IMMEASURABLY more to help the less fortunate than deploying into someone else’s country so you can boss them around from behind the barrel of a gun. And as far as only caring about America and Americans, I have a question: are you joining the World Army, or the US Army? If your loyalties lie elsewhere, you should reconsider enlisting in the US Army. Perhaps the UN is accepting applications for “peace” keepers.

“You talk of freedom, yet you aren’t willing to give others freedom, the founding fathers would be ashamed.” — If you knew anything about the founders you would understand how what our country is doing as World Policeman is not hardly what the founders intended. They would indeed be ashamed… of all of us for allowing this kind of crap to happen. Additionally, freedom is not mine or yours or anyone else’s to ‘give’. We are born with it by the nature of our humanity, but people across the world have chosen instead to allow that freedom to be taken from them for any number of reasons. For perspective, I’m not the one who can’t wait to deploy and boss others around from behind my body armor and machine gun. And how would you behave if another country invaded us? Would you resist? If you would, then you understand the motivations of the insurgency we face in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia… I hate to have to bitch slap a lil’ whipper snapper with some perspective, but you’re in desperate need of it.

You contend that a soldier doesn’t fight for their own freedom, but for the freedom of others. You made specific mention of people around the world, but there is absolutely not one mention in the oath of enlistment of any duty for any US soldier to defend and protect and provide freedom to anyone, anywhere. The oath is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over you. Even then, you’re supposed to be able to make some judgment as to whether orders are Constitutional or not. So your oath has obligated you to the Constitution, not to the betterment of other peoples elsewhere.

I will ask you to remember this one observation, and let it sear into your mind: the military doesn’t want you at 19 because you are in the best shape physically speaking, they want you at 19 because you are in the worst shape, emotionally, mentally and philosophically. You are a lot more malleable at 19, and more easily programmed/indoctrinated at 19 than you are at, say 23, or 25.

But go puff your chest out, and prep yourself for some delusion of battlefield glory. Continue talking about shit you obviously don’t understand, and recognize that you’re going to infringe on the freedoms, rights and responsibilities of other peoples in order to give them freedom, which was never yours to take, or give.

Please reconsider.

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Pictures / Posters / Memes:

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Let me count the ways in which I absolutely love this piece. Matt Welch’s context here is damn near perfect: “By insinuating himself successfully into the heart of the GOP, Rand Paul is doing more than mainstreaming libertarian-flavored foreign policy: He is forcing the purist, and therefore theoretical, instincts of his father’s coalition to come into contact with the messy business of broad political persuasion.”

• formerly anti-gun and formerly anti-second amendment
• surprised that the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting
• second amendment is about freedom
• freedom needs protecting; how do you protect freedom?
• last group of people in this country that were forbid from owing guns were black people
• what would happen if you gave a slave a gun?
• founders wanted the people to have the power to rise up against any oppressive government, just like they did with theirs
• an armed society is what keeps the society free – because the government is less inclined to enslave people if they know they can rise up against it
• every dictator in modern history has begun with a gun ban in their country under the auspices of protection and safety, but disarmed the citizenry
• you can ban guns, but you can’t ban evil
• The best you can do is to tell your children, “I will do everything in my power to protect you from evil… even if it means blowing its head off when it walks through the door”

You Can’t Ban Evil

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