Michael Totten goes out with US troops in post-Surge Baghdad, a place much quieter than it was before, but still menacing, still full of problems. Like a lot of his work, it captures the esssentials of a scene but doesn’t gloss over the contradictions. From the brief time I spent working with him, I think his main strength is to simply tell a story with all the funny, sad and absurd parts left in, in broad enough terms to let you glimpse the whole picture and ragged enough to convey that you will never understand it all. Take this paragraph, for instance, describing a security census in Baghdad.
The U.S. Army was conducting what it called “census work,” where soldiers knocked on doors at random and asked residents their names, their occupations, and a couple of security questions. Citizens selected for visits had no choice but to let the soldiers in, though they were always asked nicely as if they did have a choice.
A man wearing pajamas opened the first door we knocked on and squinted at us. His hair was messed up, and he looked annoyed. I wanted to apologize for bothering him. “Yes,” he said, “please, come in, welcome.” He spoke perfect English. I could tell by the tone in his voice that he didn’t want us in his house. He didn’t seem hostile, just irritated that he was forced to get out of bed. Lieutenant Dimenna rattled off his list of questions: How many people live in this house? What are all your names? Where does everyone work? How many cars do you have?
AdvertisementThe man’s adult son came downstairs and said hi. He did seem happy to see us, but the old man was still peeved. I felt like an intruder. I didn’t take pictures. I didn’t even ask if I could take pictures.
What’s so different about Totten’s style of work? It is usually easy to summarize a four page NYT or WSJ article into three sentences. But it is hard to repeat the gist of one of Michael Totten’s pieces without going on for nearly as long as he does. It’s better to say, “read the whole thing” than to attempt a summary. Some readers will no doubt recognize what not being able to reduce a message to a shorter length signifies: nearly lossless compression of a complex reality. The more complex a piece of information, the harder it is to compress. The reason lossy compression programs are able to shrink files is that they treat things that are nearly alike as the same and represent them with the same symbol but only at the cost of throwing away what is adjudged to be insignificant differences. A truly lossless account of things means that you can exactly reproduce the uncompressed data from the shortened version. The lossy compression of most newspaper stories means you can never get back even the essentials of a situation from what you read in the papers.
There’s a reason for this. Newspapers for reasons of slant and economics tend to reduce stories to familiar templates. They have little standard plots into which all the variety of the world is invariably shoehorned. And while this approaches manages to squeeze things into a consistent editorial policy and in the scant space above the fold of newspaper, it does so at the cost of throwing things away. You get sound bites, if that. The result is that you can read a decade’s worth of Newsweek and never be the wiser. If you’ve ever gotten the feeling that most NYT articles are all variations on a theme, that’s the reason.
The incompressible story gets you as close as you can to a scene without actually being there. But unfortunately, the kind of work Michael Totten does is very hard to support in financial terms. The numbers are depressing. Air fare, insurance, the mandatory body armor, ground transportation, etc — all cost money, and there’s no employer except the readers of his site and the occasional magazine which buys his stories. Even with burgers at a buck apiece in Iraq, as Michael reports, the cost of burgers add up. Before the economic downturn, it might have been a do-able proposition to fund things through reader contributions. But with the advent of hard times, there is less and less spare money to go around. I know Michael is finding it difficult just to keep going.
One day he might just have to stop. Then we would be back to the standard MSM product, made all the more assembly line-like by the shrinking of the traditional media flagships themselves. We’ll be back to the articles which, despite their length, are really no longer than a sentence and indistinguishable from other stories. We will have real information loss. I think the real challenge for the future media is how to make the Michael Totten model of newsgathering a viable proposition. During the six years that Iraq was fought, a few independent journalists, like Michael Yon, played a disproportionate role in describing things as they were. Not in rosy terms, but as they were. Uncompressed. Without them, the US would have been much closer to losing the domestic political fight to win it. Today, as the US reorients itself towards Afghanistan, the question is whether we as a society can afford to do without the tellers of long, complex and un-cookie cuttered account. Support Michael and those like him if you can. They’re worth it.
either that, or its back to Newspeak™ magazine
I have been reading Michael Yon since 2004, and contribute to his efforts when I can. I find in his narrative bits of humanity, those human reactions to events that have been a source of illumination about a culture, about a situation and allows us to better define our role in that situation.
Given the richness of the source, His training and his experience inform his observations in a way that cannot be replicated by journalism school. I find Yon and Totten’s reporting to be invaluable, even when I come to a different conclusion than that which the two Micheal’s arrive.
Their success is due to the similar mechanics which allow your articles, Wretchard, to illuminate a subject, enrich the general pool of knowledge and inform the debate in ways not achievable by an inverted pyramid.
And it’s not just a matter of compressing the data; it’s the loss of the part of the writing that makes people wnat to read it.
10 years ago I did a paper for a conference that i was pretty proud of. I got lots of favorable comment on it and was approached by a national military journal about their using it. Trouble was, they said it it was way too long for them.
So, I cut it down to their required length, and in the process lost almost all of the richness of the piece. I submitted it to the magazine and they did not want it; by that point neither did I.
Some years before I had submitted a piece to an official military journal. They rejected it. It did not fit the standard “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them” approach. In other words, it was not boring enough. And aside from that, it did not fit their worldview; they were incapable of understanding it. A few years later that paper was being circulated around the Pentagon as the definition of a major issue the Air Force had to address.
So you have two problems: The format and the preconceived ideas of the publishers.
I starts in third grade. You have to write something that’s 50 words long. Kids spend more time counting the words than thinking about what they’re writing.
It continues throughout school. Rare is the teacher who would give a passing mark to you for nailing the subject in one paragraph when he asked for a three page essay.
Term papers are, to a large extent, graded by the pound. Writers are paid a penny a word or the equivalent in column inches. Technical manuals are notorious. The writing department is given a budget and a Gannt chart specifying so many pages at various milestones. Even the major columnists and opinion writers work to deadline for pieces of a certain size.
Wretchard, your writing is very like Totten’s and Thomas Sowell’s. You’re writing to convey information, not display your erudition. In the au courant idiom: user friendly.
Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America” a sobrequet he earned while never having to make one policy decision called doing the nightly news “distortion by compression”.
In my lifetime I have found that to be the aim of the media rather than a side effect of attempting brevity while covering the essentials.
At best we have a developed into a nation of skeptics of every institution you care to name, due primarily to the aforementioned distortion/compression. The more ink devoted toward fleshing out a story, the less advertising space. The same in the electronic media.
You cannot applaud brevity and turn and say that the devil is in the details,and proceeed tp blow off the details. But we live in a “lie to me” culture and we do it all the time.
Journalists are going to have to learn to be online marketers.
“Eyes wide open,
all the time.
I got my eyes wide open,
all the time,
got my eyes wide open
Because you never know
what you might see
king crimson
“the power to believe”
I know I’m a little late to comment on the civilian surge – but I can’t believe, with all of our bio-engineering expertise, that if we haven’t already done so, we could quickly develop and apply, clandestinely if need be, strains of organisms that would completely wipe out the opium, and cocaine crops of the world in a growing season or two. This has not been done because for some reason it is not in our interest to do so?
here’s a great example of why the msm is held in such high regard. this is a headline from Reuters story today:
“U.S. fuel efficiency for cars up for first time”
really? the first time? that’s very interesting.
wretchard,
Over the years since he started, I have supported Michael’s work, and will do so again right now.
You have precisely captured a major reason why I like what he does so much, which I was not able to articulate before reading you today.
“Lossless compression” — very nicely framed analogy!
Jamie Irons
8. CornFuzed:
We don’t want to wipe out the opium crop, unless we want to turn Afghanistan into an even bigger terrorist hidee-hole.
And just think, you’d cripple the margins on multiple syringe business’ thus necessitating a Syringe bailout plan.
wretchard,
By the way, what you write about Michael reminds me of what I was thinking about your own approach which appeals so much to me.
Besides your obvious erudition and intelligence, and your ability to reflect on wide experience in many parts of the world to inform your analyses, I think what most moves me is your rather rare combination of tough-mindedness and a kind of gentle compassion.
Someone commenting on a thread last week praised you in a similar way (I can no longer recall who he (she) was or what the thread was), and I thought, yes, that is exactly right.
Jamie Irons
11. Habu: nonsense on both counts
In an ideal universe, a deep-story reporter such as Michael Totten, having well & truly proven himself, would have a flood of sponsorship offers by some of our many (taxpayer indirectly supported) foundations.
Dispatches such as MT’s are what a true historian would put in the time-capsule. Stores of well-writ truth are –you’d think –the very sort of thing to keenly interest a Ford or MacArthur or General Mills Foundation. The Hearst Foundation ought to be stumbling along behind MT’s every journey, waving grants and begging ‘please, let me help you!’
Afghanistan:
- forward bases at the crossroads of three major areas: the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia
- the meeting point of three growing powers – China, India and Russia
The air bases are growing, with Iraq, and Manas to the west
and above afghanistan on the map
@Cornfuzed: The opium poppy is a hardy, easily grown plant that yields useful product(s). What for you want to wipe it out?
Those that grow it sell to the bad guys because the bad guys are the only ones who will buy. So buy it yourself, at a higher price.
Then you turn it into petroleum and use petroleum products to meet the needs of the good guys. In doing that you generate economic activity/opportunity/demand where there was none before.
Those that cooperate with our side get to enjoy all this. Those that cooperate with the other side get all sorts of harassment.
Result: We win. They lose.
Keep up this drug war nonsense and they win and we lose.
Re War on Drugs, I sure would like to know what is REALLY happening on the Mex/US border.
“It’s a big turf fight between the cartels” –is probably true, but the diametrically opposed stories in regards th contraband weapons can’t help but raise questions. The admin people, and some line commanders of both nationalities, are claiming that the flow is from USA to Mexico. However, there is another story, coming from other line commanders of both nations as well as the NRA, saying that that’s untrue, that the weapons are coming from Mexican police & army, as well as smugglers from various locales in S. America and the rest of the world.
This ought to be an easily verifible matter of fact. Since it is apparently not such, the question is begged, what’s going on?
Steeple: Headline in the local paper: “Brawl in Bar Turns Violent.” Not like our usual nonviolent brawls.
I think that Michael Yon and Bill Roggio and similar “real” journalists are going to have to rely on income from books for their money source.
Such independent writers have an enormous creative advantage in that they do not have fit into any context but their own and don’t have to worry about their editor rejecting the story because they are the editor. These advantages would disappear with Success in the normal context.
Jason Blair of the NYT found himself excessively constrained by those factors, as well as the fact he was just plain lazy, even though he was the right age and color.
The first magazine article I ever sold was bought by a certain magazine. I sent them the next one I wrote, a much better piece I thought, and they asked for some changes that ran the gamut between ridiculous to impossible. I sent it to another magazine that published it almost before they told me that they wanted it – and did not pay me for it.
One expert interviewed last night on Greta van Sustenance’s Fox show 9in association with an exclusive Greta had with Sec Stae Clinton, staed that the AK-47s were the big probem and that they were coming into mexico from the USA. This strikes me as unlikely, mainly bcause such a channel involves the whole set of extraneous USA contraband ingress-egress. Why would the principals pay the extra cost, in cash, danger, and effort? And if the AK-47s are in fact NOT coming through USA, why would these false claims be made?
cornfuzed: the reason is that the USA is a signatory to several international treaties that say we’ll never, ever, ever, even think about such topics.
To learn a bit about the USSR’s compliance with these same treaties read Ken Alibek’s book Biohazard.
buddy: This is a red herring to cover for gun control, since real millitary hardware is not for sale in our gun shops. RPG’s, fragmentation grenades, automatic weapons, some may have once been made in USA, sold, transfered, then “retransfered” from their formerly legitimate inventories.
However, I suspect South Am. and South Asia are the source of the millitary weapons. Considering the AK-47 is the most popular weapon in Juarez at the moment and I don’t think there are any Kalishnakov factories in USA.
Last month several Albuquerque police cars were all robbed at once overnight to get the officer’s M4 carbines. These most assuredly went south.
The biggest crime problem in ABQ, by the way is car theft. The cartels come to NM and heist cars, sometimes even sending teams to get specific years, makes, and models. These vehicles end up used in the activities in mexico and are often used as untraceable war wagons during assassinations that can simply be abandoned.
One aspect of the heated up violence in mexico is that smuggling is getting harder. Which means the amateurs are done and the pros have stepped up. There’s apparently a huge build up on the South side of the border (bottlenecking) and more of the mules are getting into the crop. (Sorry bad analogy) Apparently the cartels are having problems not only with their competition, but with the hired help as well.
I don’t think it’ll settle till one of the parties wins. At this point the Mexican government isn’t looking like it’ll be one of the winners. But what do I know…
I also saw a link recently that hezbullah is using these same cartels, forgers, and smuggling routes to get into the USA. I’ll look for it and post it if I run across it again. This is not a new development and was a concern even a decade ago.
Buddy: That is curious. I have investigated what it takes to get a working AK-47 (I have 90% of one) and they are not made in the USA. However, in order to get one you have to buy certain key components from overseas and then buy a minimum number of US-made components to build up a legal working rifle.
So, it is not a matter of going down to Wal Mart and buying an AK. You have to build them. Admittedly, those selling them to Mexican druglords are not likely to be too concerned about US laws, but must be some consideration, because it is another way for them to get caught.
I think it far more likely that the guns are coming in to Mexico’s large unguarded coastline from Cuba.
As to why to make the claim about the US being the problem, Ron Paul says the “stop the guns” ploy gives Obama an excuse to up the forces on our border without P.Oing the Mexican Government or the Mexicans in the US who voted for him illegally.
sorry I was kinda vague before. trying again:
one of the reasons it’s heating up is that the border security is much more effective and as a result the amateurs (who are family members, cousins, primos, etc.) can’t just throw another bale in the truck when they come back home from a visit.
Now the smuggling business is struggling and the sharp knives have come out to fight over the rights and access to the remaining lucrative routes.
Hope that was a better articulation.
Gee Buddy… you don’t suppose that the guvmint is getting ready to solve the problem by cutting gun sales in the US?
#8 CornFuzed,
That just goes to show that bio-engineering isn’t exactly what many people think it is. No one could engineer a microorganism specifically to destroy a certain species of plant, such as the opium poppy. You’d have to start with a bacterium or virus known to be a natural blight upon poppies, then selectively breed it for enhanced virulence in an intensive program that would no doubt require many years to complete. Then you’d have to work out the logistics of distributing a lethal dose of the contagion to the entire poppy popultaion, which is more or less an impossible undertaking. Even if you made it this far, there will always be some survivors. The next generation of poppies would have increased immunity to the contagion, and you’d have to start all over again.
Dave at #16 also makes a good point. The opium poopy is a great gift yielding a most valuable pharmacopeia. To destroy it altogether, just because some people turn it to bad use, would leave mankind very much the worse off.
Ahem, that’s “poppy”, not “poopy”. LOL
The problem is attitude not space or finances. I live in DC and subscribed to the Washington Post until I couldn’t stand the bias anymore. Over the years I’ve lost count of how much space they devoted to “special report series” screeds that took huge amounts of prime column space over several days.
They could support a Michael Totten or a Michael Yon if they wanted to. They don’t because these guys are old style “just the facts” type reporters. God forbid they have a guy talking about census taking in Baghad without injecting some sanctimonious sermon, preferably with an anti-American slant. He leaves it to his readers — that would be stupid rubes to the MSM — to form their own opinion. Even worse they exhibit common decency and humanity in their reporting. Totten doesn’t even ask the torqued off old gentleman if he can take his picture knowing he is pushing it. Editors would laugh at such scruples and if he wanted to make it in the MSM he’d get over it ASAP.
I’ll stop now because I’m getting angry. The trampling of what should be an honorable and sacred duty of reporting for others has been trampled to death and it horrifies me.
Nevertheless, I’ll make a donation, it’s the least I can do. Thanks for the post Mr. Fernandez. It has actually given me some ideas.
@Matt Beck#24: Current policy is akin to Roosevelt cutting off gasoline to Patton and Doolittle so Hitler could wouldn’t get any more Ploesti oil.
Yep, it is that insane all right.
Wretchard:
I donate monthly to Michael Totten via automatic charge to my credit card.
However, I read your work far more often than Totten’s. Does your tip jar allow for a monthly charge for the Belmont Club. Forgive me if this is already a possibility and I have been too ignorant to make use of it.
Thanks.
P.S. This is the BEST blog on the net without question.
Buddy@17
Hard to tell. If the press were to tell the truth, we’d all be arming up much faster, while having our personal weapons seized.
A) if the cartels are importing that quantity of arms from US, then they’re a well-armed, hyper-dangerous force, poised on our border, requiring far more military attention than is being focused on it today.
B) if the arms are from elswhere, then that knowledge would subvert Obama’s plan to take away assault weapons from US civilians.
Toss up?
Wretchard:
What happened to your tip jar?
Thanks.
NP
Last thread was getting a good discussion going about the twin durability of the opium poppy and the durability of Islam in hostile environments. Islam not only creates a moral desert within human beings by scraping away their connections with their own history and all the moral codes that arise in all other functional societies (for example Islamic society weakens the incest and the child abuse taboos in a way that no other society that emerged from the stone age ever did and survived) but also is associated with persistent degradation of the physical environment. Anatolia was a fertile breadbasket with irrigation systems that had been developed over thousands of years, until the Moslem conquest following the battle of Manzikert. Similar desertification occurred in North Africa and Palestine.
Richard, I’m doing some research now. I may email with an idea. No promises. Charles
16. Dave Sounds like George Bush corn logic to me – we see how well that works – where is the market – the market is for the drug not oil – more nonsense?
thanks for the thoughts –they all make sense, and one of ‘em is actually pro-America, that surmise of Ron Paul’s. Eventually we’ll get as good as the soviet person-in-the-street reading between the lines of Pravda. BTW, Izvestia was bought some time ago –by Gazprom. That’s a duckbill platypus from hell if ever there was one.
Serenity/26; –that was a wonderful statement. i just read something right up that alley, i’m sure you’d –well, ‘enjoy’ isn’t particulary the right word –maybe ‘find edifying’:
“Speaking Truth to Power” by a current favorite Jeremiah, JR Nyquist. If you like the piece, click ‘past columns’ –and experience another wave of disgust with the time you wasted on WaPo’s baby formula.
29. geoffgo:
Buddy@17
The administration has conveniently forgotten that Higo Chavez bought 100,000 AK from the Soviets (that we know of), and knowing how the Soviets are working night and day in central and south America they have probably brought in many, many more. It doesn’t stop there you can bet your last dime on that.
obamas game has always been to disarm and trash the 2nd Amendment so this strawman of the USA supplying the drug cartels is another BIG LIE he is germinating to take our weapons away.
He’ll use defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf as a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. obama is not to be trusted with guarding this country.
(snip from link in #34 –and apropos why Totten isn’t at WaPo)
The crisis of our time is a crisis of intellectual integrity. We are suffering a deluge, in which common sense is drowned by the career logic of millions of nonentities. They are nonentities because they are careerists, because they have put something trivial above what is non-trivial. Their indifference to truth is seen in their daily compromises, their evasions, their manipulations of each other. They have become accustomed to subtle distortions, euphemisms and rationalizations. “I have to make a living,” says the salesman. “I have to win votes,” says the politician. “I have to raise my ratings,” says the television personality. “I have to keep my job,” says the employee.
i might quickly note that it’s the credit money that makes us careerists.
Habu/35; obama is not to be trusted with guarding this country –what’s really destructive is the chronic wounds the type leaves behind. Right now, for example, three immediate foreign crises, Mullahs, NoKo nukes, and our burning southern border (i agree w/ you re Chavez –and i’m an old Venezuela hand) are direct results of James Earl “Enablin’ Jimmy” Carter — who’s been out of the office nearly 30 years.
the Troubles that flew up out of Pandora’s box –did she ever get them back in? But she just had to open the box. A Progressive myth-tress.
More bad news.
Russia outlines Arctic force plan.
Jimmy Carter, the gift that keeps on giving, like the clap.
Mr. Larson thanks for the link. It was a very interesting read; although, I’m not sure if that go along to get along mentality he speaks of is particularily endemic to our current situation or simply representative of the human condition. Nyquist is an interesting thinker and I like to read him even if I don’t always agree with his conclusions. He is honest which I think is some of the highest praise you can give a person. I believe that truth is largely beyond us — the best we can achieve is a fleeting glimpse of it — and honesty is the best we can aspire to. Diogenes. I remember him from my studies so long ago. I had forgotten. As for the Washington Post, at least I had fun for a time comparing their headlines to the Washington Times. It is sad indeed when the paper of our nation’s capital engages in such willful blindness.
I admire Totten and Yon for giving first-person reports, and that is enough, however that does not mean the reality cannot be boiled down, just that it’s another job to do it.
Buddy:
Given that at least one group in the drug cartel (the Zetas) was founded and is managed by Mexican ex-paratroop special forces officers from a unit known as GAFE (“Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales” or Special Forces Airmobile Group) the fact that they have access to military hardware is no surprise. That other cartel members also have access to such weapons is likely. Supposedly some military weapons also come in from Guatemala and elsewhere in Central America.
And… guys like Totten and Yon are the best. They get my support.
@ 44. Skookumchuk
Yah, it’s liek i can has a cheezburger and BC kayk 2.
Skook…those war correspondent types are brave men and women. Reminds me of Doug MacAthur leading his battion in WWI “over the top” on attack carrying only a swagger stick or numerous engagements George Washington was in where he rode in between the lines of battle, not 20 yards apart, encouraging his me on and didn’t give it a second thought. Brave, brave men.
Habu: it also helps to have some degree of empathy with the people you are covering… Totten and Yon are the latter-day equivalents of Ernie Pyle. It gives their writing additional power.
They’re HEEEEEERE!
“Washington Times – EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S.”
I wonder how many RINOs will go along with making 100 million new Democrats through amnesty. Last time it was the MCCAIN-Kennedy bill
Habu
Don’t forget brave horses. During the Civil War a Union General gained a reputation for bravery because his horse had gotten shot in the rear end at an early engagement and for the rest of the war never turned his back on the enemy.
What did he do if the Union lost the field — gallop backwards?
No buddy, she was a female horse, and like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, she did everything backwards, and in high heels.
aaron:
Years ago the smuggling route into NM was via a radar open corridor around Deming that flew nap of the earth to Albuquerque and then east over the Manzanos. The light craft popped up to altitude, kicked the bales of pot out the door then went to land at the Sunport. That has been closed. Now they truck it via the port of entry in Mexican trucks or by mule overland. The whole thing been going on for years.
Local DEA about had the meth thing beat a few years back. They had all of the labs in rural areas shut down then the cartels saw the business niche was open. Meth production moved south into Chihuahua. More of it than ever now.
Anybody who lives in the area knows that we have to shut down the border NOW or accept the drug cartels running their product up I-25. And Fatty Richardson won’t do it. He is probably in their pockets.
Haven’t read this yet, but sure feedback here will be interesting!
(Remember Bergen’s name, but forget what he did to become infamous as I recall)
Graveyard Myths
By PETER BERGEN
Afghanistan is no longer the graveyard of any empire. Rather, it just might become the model of a somewhat stable Central Asian state.
“As to why to make the claim about the US being the problem, Ron Paul says the “stop the guns” ploy gives Obama an excuse to up the forces on our border without P.Oing the Mexican Government or the Mexicans in the US who voted for him illegally.”
—
RWE,
I was thinking it was also more ammo for gun control arguments.
If you need more info on finishing off that AK, tell me and I’ll see if I can pry the recipe from our son, he’s built one legally.
Fatty Richardson, the Major League Baseball Player?
Rogers & Astaire –they must have been envoys from Neptune, the helium planet. They could barely keep from levitating. You could see they were holding themselves down, trying to touch the dance floor like Earthlings.
Yep, Buddy, I was talking about from Permian Basin up into the Big Bend.
Old friend had a great or great-great granpappy in Mexican War of 1848. He took his discharge and took the scenic route home. Used his mustering out pay to buy an old Spanish Land Grant Paper.
He died in Georgia but after the War Between the States, a couple of descendants acted upon that paper and set up cow-keeping.
Used snares to collect their first herd as they dared not risk unacclimated Georgia horses to round up wild longhorns.
Point is that West Texas was prime pasture
going into the XXth Century. All that grass though exhausted the shallow moisture and the mesquite took over. Hence 150 acres a pair.
However, where there has been long-term oil production, make that 75 acres instead of 150.
Here in Nevada, where there is ranching, golf courses etc. the desert tortoise is plentiful. Where human activities are limited, it is endangered.
So we gotta go wipe out those opium plants
because to make intelligent use of them would threaten and destroy all sorts of fantasies.
Ode to the War Bloggers
As I read of the long war in Baghdad
My thoughts turn to life in my neighborhood
Where peace and prosperity is still had
By all those who wish to live as one should.
Iraq is so far from life in the States
Those who record this distance close at hand
Do honor to the soldiers who shrink that span
And to the nation which still has the traits
Its Founders held and today give this land
Totten and Yon and their warblogger clan
As triumph turned terrible they were there
To tell the truth of the insurgent rise
While media betrayers fled in despair
They told us of the Awakening’s prize.
As battles progressed on two active fronts
These brave bloggers fought in both at one time
Eyewitness accounts were sent to the West
Of heroes, from generals to just grunts,
Who beat the enemy and stopped their crime
While plans for withdrawal were lib’rally pressed.
Some men take up arms to shield their nation
But these bloggers shielded the arms-bearers
As they surged toward total transformation
And destroyed all the thugs who caused terrors.
The future is bright for the new, free Iraq
Thanks to writers and fighters who stayed strong
During dark times, under dreadful duress.
The neighborhood kids will one day take stock
Of the stories missed by the journo throng
But preserved in their truth by the true press.
— —
L3
Very nice, L3, very nice indeed. You don’t have to be armed to show bravery and guts, and you don’t even have to be animate. Ships are living things, with souls. Ships, as well as men, can be tough, can be brave. Such were the ships of Battleship Row.
0755 SUNDAY, 7 DECEMBER 1941
A quiet, peacetime Sunday morning. Seven battleships swung gently at their moorings; Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and California. Pacific Fleet flagship Pennsylvania was in drydock. When the attack came, half their crews were ashore, and most of the officers. None had steam up, for it was Sunday, and all was at peace. Except Nevada. Nevada had steam. Nevada could move. At the height of the attack, with burning and exploding ships all around her, already severely hurt by a torpedo to her port side, Nevada, under Lt. Commander Francis J. Thomas, senior officer aboard, broke out her big battle ensign and stood down the channel, heading for the open sea. Sailors on the burning ships cheered and threw their caps in the air, but Nevada’s gallant sortie was short lived. Five Japanese dive bombers laid her low, beaching her.
The battleships were ultimately raised and rebuilt, all but blessed Arizona. They rejoined the fleet, but the war had passed them by. It was a carrier war now, and the World War 1 era battleships were too slow, could not keep up with the fast carriers. They were relegated to fire support, and accompanied the marines in their march across the Pacific, bombarding the beaches, their 14 and 16 inch guns trained on palm trees instead of dreadnoughts, declared unfit to do the job for which they were built. Until Surigao.
SURIGAO STRAIT, 0351 TO 0409 hours, 25 OCTOBER 1944
Vice Admiral Nishimura, with a force of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, was heading for the Leyte beaches. Standing across his path was Admiral Oldendorf, and six old fire support battleships, all but two, Maryland and Mississippi, on Battleship Row that Sunday morning in December. The other four were California, Tennessee, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Oldendorf put his weary old battleships in line ahead, a Battle Line, as battleships had fought since the 17th century, and waited for Nishimura. At 0351 the big guns lit the sky. Oldendorf brought his big ships across the Japanese front, crossing the T, the dream of every admiral down the centuries, doing to the Japanese what Togo had done to the Russians at Tsushima. The Japanese fought back, but when Nishimura turned away his battleships were gone, along with most of his heavy cruisers.
Surigao was the last battleship to battleship action of WWII, and very likely the last big gun surface action battleship fight the world is likely to see, and it was fought by ships that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor and returned to life. West Virginia, Wee Vee to her crew, entered Sagami Bay, Japan, on 27 August 1945. As for gallant Nevada, it took two atomic bombs at Bikini to finally sink her. Ships, like men, can be judged by their deeds.
Torn by bombs, wracked by fire
They settled slowly to the harbor floor
Breathing their last, or so some thought
But not they
Rising, they joined their kind
Who scorned them now
As the young scorn the old
The slow
They did their job
Plodding the vastness of the central sea
Island to island
A supporting cast
Gaining no praise
No, that was for the young
The swift
The carriers
Until
Until
That blessed night
When called upon to be themselves
They were
Themselves and more
Thanks, Walt.
Salvaging Pearl
Narrated by the wife of the man who took the pics.
(picture of righting Oklahoma shows what a local bridge company did in very little time, today it would take ten years, if the EPA did not deny permission first.)
How a War Was Won and a City Vanished at Pearl Harbor
You amaze, L3!
—
Dennis Miller on listening to Timmy Geithner:
“Haven’t seen so many Zeros since the last time I watched Tora! Tora! Tora!”
A Last Look at Updike and Cheever – Dick Cavett
Dear reader, I’ll try to keep this to a reasonable length so you can savor the accompanying video.
I loved reading the outpouring from you (and others) about the Cheever/Updike column. A large number asked, and some begged earnestly, to see the full show from which the clips were taken.
I lobbied on your behalf and The Times has thoughtfully agreed to run the full show.
Wretchard,
Man, you wordsmiths take the long road! Now we know why guys like you and Totten don’t write ad copy. I will make a pitiful attempt to reduce his debt load asap.
@8 CornFuzed,
Depends on what your definition of “our” is…
@14 Buddy,
With given money comes the leash. Just ask the Bankers/Wankers. I suspect Mr.Totten as well as Wretchard would gladly forgo the leash even if it meant poverty and dependence on the public’s goodwill. Then again maybe not.
@16 Dave, “Keep up this drug war nonsense and they win and we lose.”
HEAR! HEAR!
@17 Buddy,
The reason is that no crisis is to go unused. The O is redlining the crisis engine to push the sheep into voting to give up what little is left of our sovereignty and liberty for pseudo safety.
We have truly come to the Ben Franklin moment. Where when asked by a lady as he was leaving the Constitutional Convention. What have you wrought here today Mr. Franklin. And Franklin replied ” We have given the public a Republic if they can keep it” to paraphrase.
And Claire Wolf will so cry the time is nigh!
37. Buddy, “i might quickly note that it’s the credit money that makes us careerists.”
Such a small sentence with such enormous consequences for the human race. People can’t see it. More the pity even if they could a majority would pick it. You wrote it nicely and with decency. I have put it out there in less prosaic terms.
Credit money makes us all wage slaves. It comes off the top even before you see the flower of the fruit of your labor. It is akin to you planting a tomato plant and someone eating all the tomatoes and you get to eat the roots.
Jim
One of the commenter makers, on Michael Yon’s site, suggests very definitely that much of the US military hardware in use by the cartels comes from the US Government, via programs to train and up arm various Mexican military and LEO units. I do not know how much can be attributed to that source, but I suspect there lies a fair amount of the problem.
Other wise common sense tells me the weapons problems are not of US origin. I am still of a mind that the vast majority of Mexican and Honduran citizens who cross into the US illegally do so because their lives in their own countries having become unsustainable, do what humans for centuries have done. They move. That the movement is not controlled or that the forth part of back and forth is limited is due to laws and law makers that refuse to pass sensible Visa legislation and allow for realistic numbers and preconditions. It is not rocket science, but since Washington has allowed the thing to fester virtually untreated since President Eisenhower, it will now require very risky and highly invasive brain surgery to separate the parasite from the host.
It is Our national lack of will and willful lack of attention to things south of the southern border that have allowed such unhealthy conditions to thrive. I submit that the doctrine of Monroe, lying unenforced is if not now dead, on limited life support.
That only charges about the source and numbers of weapons smuggled has been lobbied, and not one wit of substance has yet been levied tells me this is another crisis to be taken advantage of.
Inspiration for our resident poets:
Elvis poem fetches $20,000
By WENN.com
A short poem Elvis Presley wrote about a dead bird has sold at auction for a staggering $20,000.
The King of Rock scrawled the rhyme on a piece of paper after apparently killing a robin that perched on his window ledge.
The note, written on his own stationary, reads,
“As I awoke this morning when all sweet things are born, a robin perched on my window sill to greet the coming dawn. He sang his sweet song so sweetly and paused for a moment’s lull, I gently raised the window and crushed his f**king skull”.
The poem was part of an online sale of Elvis memorabilia, which closed on Thursday.
Other items sold in the auction include a jumpsuit he wore at a concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, which went for $212,588.40, and the typed lyrics for his song Young and Beautiful, which went under the hammer for $1,155.60.
Oklahoma did not sail again, either.
O/T- Protest March in Oaktown against the Oakland Police Department and in memory of the shot dead 12 year old raping piece of human debris that shot the cops. The spirit of Huey Newton and Eldredge Cleaver lives on. Thank God for the men and women of all the Police Departments nationwide who hold back the Barbarians at the Gate.
Trangbang,
The people in the neighborhood at the time of the event were saddened by the cop’s deaths, and what it said about their security.
The protestors are no doubt professionals both local and carpetbangers.
—
Allah si, Heysoos no
Barack Hussein Obama’s 7th Circuit Court nominee David F. Hamilton (a former Clinton appointed judge) ruled that prayers in Jesus’ name at the Indiana House of Representatives were unconstitutional, but prayers to Allah were not.
– “Michelle Renee” aka Teresita
At the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay, of course the USS Missouri was the center of attention.
But parked right next to the Big Mo was the USS West Virginia, sunk at Pearl Harbor. The Navy did that to send a message: “You sunk that one when you started the war, but now it is sitting in Tokyo Bay. How do you like them apples?”
Doug: I know how to get an AK built. I have all of the parts but the receiver, and an American company makes one of those that will work. They will sell you the parts or take your parts and build you one. But all of the companies that do that are way backlogged with orders at present.
The Virginia looked a lot more damaged than Oklahoma, but I have no doubt they knew what they were doing.
—
Maybe one of Barry’s Brain Trust could explain this run on guns to us?
Yep, Doug, it has gotta be her. Who else would charge forth with that dinky smallbore 9 and a one-handed stance?
Only somebody too contrary to use a 1911 in the Weaver.
However, does look like she might know what a front sight is for. And does look like enough sense to eschew a crunchenticker for a singleticker.
Wonder what is up her stovepipe? A 110grain JHP or that subsonic 147grain SWC?
I’ll be sure to ask!
—
“That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?” ”
—
We, the patriotic taxpayers, supporters of our Civil Servants, are gonna make a profit outta this in the end.
Just you wait!
OT but linked to the Desert thread…
http://tinyurl.com/d4yx9j
The story is out.
a wee bit O/T ….
I’ve noticed that Resident obama is moving into a very critical phase of his Residency, and doing it much more quickly than any, well truth is there haven’t been any other Residents. All the others have been legit.
But our Presidents are always tested and obama is facing a crisis (everything is a crisis) that can’t be chalk talked into a solution in an NSA meeting.
He is becoming the main focus of sarcasm, comedy, and is the titular king of the tin foil hat wearers association. The teleprompter, the constant man-in-motion thing, the Biden like gaffes about the Special Olympics, his hissy fit over his blackberry. The guy is facing an economic meltdown, rising Soviet,Chinese. NoKO, and South American aggression and all he has done is campaign for his maybe next term and appear on every TV show with a two share. He truly is a joke.
While still in ‘positive’ territory, O’bumble’s Approval Ratings Have Been Dropping Like A Rock
Rasmussen has it by the numbers.
When our Founding Fathers wrote the Natural
Born Citizen phrase they had in mind somebody much like Obumble, I believe.
I just finished reading Totten’s story and my reaction was “Wow!” You never see this kind of writing in the overwhelming majority of our rags. I am going to donate to Mr. Totten’s tip jar, but right now I’m on my laptop and don’t have my PayPal account and password available (so many of these damn account names and passwords I have to keep them written down). This is the first time I’ve read anything of his and I was greatly impressed. The story was rich and riveting, which is a far cry from the crap one has to skim through in most newspapers and mags. And when you think about it, no wonder so many of the MSM journalists hang out in bars and get sloshed. Theirs is a depressing reality bereft of real freedom and creativity. They have sold their souls for the inane template from their bosses, with the requirement that they just add some words round the edges as filler and style (or what passes for style).
Totten humanizes our men and the Iraqis. They are not presented as props on a political stage-managed piece. And there is humor thrown in as well.
Doug,
I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Obama is an Indonesian citizen, not an American citizen. Why? Because if he even was an American citizen when he was moved to Indonesia his stepfather made him an Indonesian citizen and that country does not permit dual citizenships. Furthermore, there is no record of his being naturalized as an American citizen when he returned to the United States many years later. There is no record of him traveling to Pakistan under an American passport and visa.
Some very powerful people are covering up a lot. There is absolutely no way that Michelle and Barack have a million dollars (some estimates of what it has cost in legal fees and retainers to this point to fend off the numerous lawsuits on this matter) for legal defense. Clearly, his masters are determined that he should serve his term and get out of there having done their bidding. I believe the nation has been hijacked big time. The stakes are extremely high for these people and money is no object in getting done what they want accomplished.
A helpful thing to remember is that while one part of the internet has worked diligently on the craft of writing, another part of the internet has worked diligently on figuring out what google’s algorithms want–and giving it to them. Why? Web pages that can come to the top the search engines for keyword strings that are used by people in search of products/services/leads can be profitable.
Habu:
ObamOpra’s type has always depended on some actual adults to keep the water running and the lights on. He could dance around the margins, make witty cracks, and depend on the inherent Design Margin in the country to plaster over his failures and support his bribe structure.
The “rough men willing to do rough things” in his world were the guys who actually got their hands dirty and kept pluggin’ on. Like the Marine’s Old Breed at Tarawa and the 8th Air Force over Germany in 1943 they won in every day matters simply by refusing to lose.
But the Adults have gotten told to go home, over the past two years especially, and Design Margin has been eaten up by $1M spilled coffee lawsuits, Diversity, and the CRA.
fred,
No, let me be clear about this, NO!
While I do not like Obama and I would like to see the birth certificate and I’ll even concede the possibility that he might have effectively renounced his natural born citizen status by traveling on a foreign passport or claiming to be foreign national to get a scholarship, both unproven rumors, the fact is that his being moved to INdonesia and registered as an Indonesian adoptee when he was a minor does nothing, nada, zip, to his US citizenship. That is a tin foil hat crazy position to hold so give it up. US citizen children are kidnapped by their Saudi fathers and held in the KSA. If one of those US citizens ever escapes and returns to the USA they will be welcomed back as citizens. No CBP officer would say anything other than “Welcome Home” and no judge would question their status as natural born citizens. So be clear about this, if you can prove that Barack H. Obama as an adult renounced his US citizenship then you have something. What happened while he was a minor means nothing.
I believe the Founders intended a Natural
Born Citizen to have a citizen father and a citizen mother. Doesn’t really matter where he was born under this outlook.
bob,
Just where does that belief come from? You can’t just make this stuff up. Natural born has always been taken to refer to Lex solis not Lex sanguinis. It has everything to do with where he was born. The law is not a matter of personal outlook or choice, it is the law. The wiki is OK on this particularly
The United States has never had a judicial ruling or legislative act restricting the citizenship of children of illegal aliens. Even if we had that condition would not have applied to Obama. His father was legally present on a non-immigrant visa. He would be ineligible now and may have been then ineligible for citizenship as a polygamist.
Inculturation is the real issue for the Founding Fathers.
And on this basis the Democrats violated the essence of the Constitution. They certainly didn’t vet H.
In terms of national identity H is a person of the world and not a person of these United States.
His object is to enrich the remainder of the planet at the direct expense of white Americans, especially those of the productive elite.
H’s project must come to grief since on the economics it must destroy his political base in academe. H’s restrictions on charity means that the college endowment system will not recover from the pounding his candidacy delivered. After all, the markets only cratered as it became pole-numbers apparent that McCain was done for. Hence, the stampede for the exits.
The market has rallied because it’s being lied to. When the market realizes that the light at the end of the tunnel is a rabid gorilla with a flashlight the Resident is likely to halt the trading and holiday the banks.
At such a point our Gonnabee in chief will finger point with precision — in all directions.
In his dungeon Hitler railed against his nation and true believers for letting him down. Some such mental process will surely come to H, as there is no way he could ever come to accept that he collapsed our society.
I say again, we are at Financial World War I — all of the power politics, scheming and competition that one would expect in a hot war — but no bullets fly as the hyper-power so out classes every other power, even alliances, that the troops must stay in the barracks.
That is not so with spies, imams, proxy troops and cyber warriors.
The super-great civilizations are always defeated by internal factionalism coupled to peripheral warfare from a lesser, unexpected power.
Any serious political disruption within the US would trigger astounding re-alignments globally. There would be blood.
@LOTM: In the past, there may, or may not, have been some quirk in the law that might, or might not, have allowed a parent or guardian of a minor child to renounce said child’s natural-born US citizenship.
If so, said quirk was done away with NLT 1986.
A renouncement of citizenship HAS to be done by the person in question AFTER HAVING ACHIEVED THE AGE OF MAJORITY. Were this not the case, then foreign countries would be able to tell us who was a US citizen or not simply by issuing a passport in that person’s name.
As Obamas Mother was a US citizen at the time of his birth, he was born a US citizen.
He remains a natural-born US citizen unless and until somebody can prove that he himself renounced that citizenship on or after his 18th birthday in 1979. Kenya is irrelevent as is any Indonesian passport and travel around 1975.
I smell an Alinsky trap in all this. Remember the natural-born issue was first raised by the left concerning where John McCain was born. It was later that some other liberals started the non-native/non-citizen claims and litigations.
By seeming to stonewall on this issue, Obama keeps it alive because he much rather have
attention diverted there than to <say< the 2012 elections and/or to possible impeachable offenses. And, if he is as narcisstic as I suspect, because he loves being able to be snarky at mere mortals.
RWE
Amen bro..
Defining Natural Born Citizen
LeftofMind,
I agree with you that obama needs to produce the original birth certificate and have it validated by forensics (my words not yours)
His evasion,dissimulation, and aloowed representation on the Internet of a fraudulent document doesn’t give one a degree of comfort in what is a basic tenet of qualification ofr the Presidency.
I think once the document is produced and verified as authentic will know the answer to a question that has profound validity and one, it seems in governmet. will take ownership of. I believe here the USSC is failing us.
At this point in time all we can with certitude is that we simply don’t know; which fails the test.
Davem Concur, except that Axelrod is more likely the trap-meister.
Habu, What is this LeftofMind stuff? Should I get pugnacious about this? Relax, it would be better for us if he collapses from revealed, but not apocalyptic, incompetence. Removal because some group, USMC or USSS become convinced of his ineligibility, should be the plot of a bad movie not the workings of the Republic.
bob, Sorry that site while attractively presented is unconvincing. The argument that citizenship precedes from the father is not and has never been the basis of American law or practice.
Thanks for the link bob.
Obviously the requirement for being a native born citizen was aimed at ensuring that any future President would be completely of our culture and that the emotional conflicts that George Washington noted would be eliminated.
Unfortunately we are now saddled with exactly the situation that the Founding Fathers foresaw.
This can not end well.
89. Lifeofthemind:
If you care to get vexed at what you pointed out, that the resident obama needs to produce the original birth certificate I have no control over that. The he has obfuscated and evaded this essential requirement is not debateable. Take umbrage if it makes you feel good. It doesn’t change his evasions.
Your opinion that it is better that “it would be better for us if he collapses from revealed, but not apocalyptic, incompetence.” Well I don’t give a damn how it comes about I just want the truth which he refuses to produce, but I assure you I didn’t write what I did to get your panties in a wad. You were the one who admitted it needed the light of day. I concur.
As an aside geting pugnacious. Don’t loose site of the fact that this is the Internet so that’s simply metaphorical…a kerfuffle maybe, but pugnacious?
In your posting #81 you said in a sentence that included “While I do not like Obama and I would like to see the birth certificate”
That’s what I was backing you about..I think we’d all like to see it. The real one.
Didn’t intend to ruffle any feathers.
Stupid Japanese wasting money on unproven missile defense:
“The U.S. has been leaning against trying to shoot down the North’s projectile and a senior U.S. official this week said the administration has ruled it out.
The Japanese government said two destroyers carrying sea-to-air missiles would also be deployed in nearby waters, joining U.S. and South Korean warships in the area.”
—
Hail the First Spawn from Hell POTUS!
Habu, always causin trouble:
You know damn well there’s no way to store dead tree docs in Hades.
LOTM: Yep, I should have said Alinksy-like as I could not think of Axelrod or other specific suspect as I wrote.
FWIW: I am a person who cannot produce his ORIGINAL birth certificate.
I can also tell you where I was born but you will find no record of that.
The first is because Texas says nobody gets to see it unless certain stringent pre-conditions are met. This remains common practice for people like me and there were lots of us at that time.
The second is because there is no more USAAC, under whose auspices I was delivered.
I would have plenty of opportunity to drive
people nuts and around in circles were I to feel the need for doing so.
So I do have some knowledge of Axelroddish capabilities.
So much for the small stuff. Now for the biggie. Do you really think Brushy Bill was The Kid and if so were Sheriff Pat and/or Pete Maxwell in on the deception? (We may hear from eggplant on this one.)
Bob: I believe the Founders intended a Natural Born Citizen to have a citizen father and a citizen mother.
Bob, no one was a citizen of the United States until there was a United States, so none of the Founding Fathers had parents who were citizens when they were born, not even George W. They were all grandfathered in, so to speak. So it had nothing to do with the status of one’s parents, but whether one was born in the 13 colonies.
#77 Fred: I have been reading Michael Totten for a while now. He is quite knowledgeable about the wider middle east, especially Lebanon. He is also an intrepid correspondent, as this post shows (one of my all-time favorites)
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001409.html
Habu,
Relax, I did say relax didn’t I? It was sarcasm, you misspelled Lifeof as Leftof, got it?
Again here is a pdf transcript of Kenyan National Assembly on Nov 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected. Over and over again there are references
to Obama being a “son of the soil” of Kenya and a Kenyan. On page page 3275 there is this passage:
HOUSE SHOULD ADJOURN TO DISCUSS
ELECTION OF MR. BARRACK OBAMA
Ms. Odhiambo: On a point of order,
Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir. It is not on this issue.
I stand on a point of order under Standing
Order No.20 to seek leave for adjournment of
the House to discuss the American presidential
election results.
(Applause)
Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, the
President-elect, Mr. Obama, is a son of the soil
of this country. Every other country in this
continent is celebrating the Obama win. It is
only proper and fitting that the country which
he originates from should show the same
excitement, pomp and colour.
Again. It is not the one thing. Rather it is the tide.
The Obama administration could put this to rest by releasing his long form birth certificate. But he doesn’t. Rather he spends — now over a million — on flaks. Why bother.
The Arnold would have run for president long ago and likely won if he were a “natural born” american. He’s not.
He’s naturalized. So he can’t run. And he knows it. (though there were some trial balloons sent up a couple years
When Wretchard said:
The reason lossy compression programs are able to shrink files is that they treat things that are nearly alike as the same and represent them with the same symbol but only at the cost of throwing away what is adjudged to be insignificant differences.
It made me think of this on Bruce Sterling’s blog: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/03/compression-rot.html
Charles,
How many Irish politicians have been called a “son of the old sod?”
We need meat if you want this to mean anything.
The whole point of Donofrio’s case, which seemed reasonable to me, was that Obumble could have been born in Hawaii, just like he claims, but Obumble himself says daddy was a Kenyan, therefore one parent wasn’t a US citizen, therefore he isn’t a Natural Born Citizen. You got to have two citizen parents to have that status.
Donofrio thought all this where was he born talk was missing the main issue.
He ended up calling the Supreme Court a bunch of wussies, and went back to playing poker.
Donofrio did some research on Chester Arthur that was interesting, too.
bob,
No, you are displaying what can be called Invincible Ignorance, like a 9-11 Troother. Only place of birth counts, if born in the US you are a Natural Born Citizen. Full Stop. If you think it should be different then get a Constitutional Amendment passed or at least a law that can be challenged in court. Just because you want to believe that “You got to have two citizen parents to have that status” does not make it true.