Damn. This was like Hank and Roy Spim using the Lockheed Starfighter to bag the wounded mosquito.
But I enjoyed it. I surely did.
Flying. H. Spaghetti. Monster.
I do believe our callow commenter just got pwn3d like Kunta Kinte.
[Am I ever dating myself with THAT reference] 
Somewhere in the Great Cybercafe in the Sky, Steve is ROTFLHAO. 
And of course, FTFY!
From the swamps of Arkansas, IBW
That...is going to leave a mark. Damn. I too,read Petraeus' wiki entry and was struck by the sizzle, no steak aspects of it.
In reading Colin Powell's entry, it cites how he got fucked up in Vietnam, stepping on a punji stick (Goddamn!) and contracting a massive, life threatening infection from it.
He would later receive a medal for valor for when he songle-handedly rescued several men from a buring helicopter, including a Major General.
I noticed this stuff when I wrote the ”Medals Don't Lie. Men Do” post. It took someone with military experience to corral the infor and deploy it properly.
And you did just that.
Well done, Jesse!
The term I've heard used for Petraeus and his ilk (bright officers who go far on the basis of their excellent connections and willingness to use them) is Perfumed Prince.
Should anyone be confused by the meaning of that term, let's just say that real soldiers don't have many opportunities to smell like perfrume. It's not that they have anything against the stuff per se--they just don't often get to smell like it.
Jesse, I lived in Clarksville for a while in the lare 1980s-early 1990s--dated a guy who was in the highly deniable Task Force, lived next door to and amongst plenty of people stationed at Campbell. You could tell who did Real Work, and who made sure there were enough forms on hand to fill out, even when there wan't much action out in the world. Even when they were cleaned up, the fighters always looked a little tired. They trained harder, and for different jobs, and they worried about diferent things.
/me hands Tyler a bag of ice from the grocery store to sit his now-sore posterior upon
Get Petraeus out into the field, he gets hurt. Not in combat, oh no. He stays the hell away from combat. This idiot gets hurt in training accidents and having fun. Over and over again.
Karma sure is a bitch, ain't it?
What with Bush this morning and the antics in the Congress, it seems MoveOn.org's ad has touched a nerve over there on the right. All this Faux News outrage. They know Betrayus ain't all he's cracked up to be, even with his several dozen medals for boot polishing, etc.
Betrayus is practically a character out of Blackadder Goes Forth.
Senate passes moveon resolution
http://www.senate.gov/legislativ...on=1&
vote=00344
FTSD (that's Fuck the Spineless Dems)
Jesse,
I think your read is correct; he's a golden boy REMF. And I know some people who managed to earn a CIB in "peacetime" with some of those "quick response" ops in the eighties and nineties, so it wasn't solely a matter of timing. One of them helped me get my 100% service-connected disability a few years ago.
1st Cav, Vietnam, 68-69
I don't know what I just read except you apparently expected a general officer to do the duties of a team leader.
My "lol whut" comment still stands. You can get fired up because he didn't get into a major conflict until Iraq II, and call him all the bad names in the book.
Thing is, Iraqis who worked with him in Mosul (the police and army officers) swore by the man, as did the people who served under him during their time in Mosul during the invasion.
I guess this is where you go into your "back in my day, I marched 25 miles up hill with no boots and a Cobra on my back!" spiel. I'll just nod and pat your knee, grandpa, and take the advice of the people I actually know as opposed to some dude over the intarwebs.
Oh, and if we're going to talk about jinxed, can we talk about Shinseki losing half of his foot in Vietnam as well? Or Clark getting almost cut in half by a VC's AK-47?
Oh wait, that dosen't fit in with your very narrow point of view in this case. I guess Generals should only be making policy when you like what it says, and damn separation of powers!
I have to go pick up dinner now, otherwise I'd deliver more of a rebuttal then the "lol whut" I've got going on. If I get up to it, I'll post something in my blog shortly.
Sorry loveandlight, you can keep your ice. I'm not scared of giant walls of text that, once your pare them down a bit, really don't hold anything that substantial.
Ta!
Okay, give Tyler credit for keeping his game face on.
Jesse said, "Those who have eyes to see, let them see."
As Tyler's response indicates, "there are none so blind as those who will not see."
It is what it is, except when it isn't.
Rebuttal forthcoming. I'll try to use some brevity, as opposed to going off on every Ernie Pyle type tangent I can.
I doubt I'll get as many handjobs in my comments as you did, Doc, but here it is.
hmmm... this sounds a little suspicious:
Petraeus has been widely reported by several sources of trying to engage in acts of physical training with men 20-30 years younger then him
I'm sure in a purely heterosexual, non-gay, manner. Why are you telling us about your man-crush, Tyler? Shouldn't you be telling the boy-general himself? I'm sure he could use the attention...
And because the general has spent a career getting his ticket punched, we're supposed to swoon? Spelling awards and "being there" gongs don't make me get weak in the knees. Face it, he could have done something more with his career than polishing his superior's collective asses. The fact that Admiral Fallon noticed this - and told Betrayus to his face, the first time he met him, says something.
I know I must be in love with Petraeus. He does have that boyish, Mark Hamil charm to him. Blowjob and a coffee, yessir!
If you scrolled down you'd see where I already addressed the Fallon/Petraeus fault line, but I suspect you were spending all your time trying to craft that bit of wit that had no relevance to the discussion whatsoever.
Oh, and I guess if you want to comment on my post you could do it in my blog.
I guess we know "Jim's" surname. Tyler.
Way to ignore everything, Ref. Yes that must be it. Where the fuck is Marx and Lenin to help stop the madness when you think this place is on the verge of becoming a lefty echo chamber.
Tyler,
What am I ignoring?
Petraeus might look fine and dandy in an ironed uniform with loadsa medals, but that doesn't make him the Blownaparte in George Bush's imagination.
Uh, I never said it made him Bonaparte(nice strawman,BTW) but you'd have to be blind to see that he's not an idiot.
Schoomacher was a fucking Delta war hero, and look at what an asskisser he turned out to be.
Oh, and you don't have to be a blogspot user to comment now. Sorry about that mixup, anon.
Oh nos it ate my comment!
One suckass doing the bidding for another suckass. You are doing a heckuva job Tyler. Keep polishing the REMF's raisin.
bumpster,
I'm the suckass, having the dissenting opinion while you come along and just think name calling is as good as posting something tangentially on topic?
Yeah okay. LULZ!
You are not worthy of anything more than scorn and ridicule if not for anything other than blog whoring and cheerleading for a paid liar. Keep posting your challenges and drivel as you beg for hits on your blog.
Yes I know right. Because I was the one who called Jesse out. OH WAI-
When you can add to the discussion instead of abloo bloo blooing about how little you add, let me know. And FYI, I've been around here long before I had an actual "blog".
I can just imagine what yours would be like. "HERE I SUCK SOME MORE DELICIOUS COCK GULP YUM SLURP WHILE ADDING NOTHING TO THE DISCUSSION"
Sorry loveandlight, you can keep your ice.
[lolcatz] I CAN HAS MARGARITAS NOW PLEEZ? [/lolcatz]
Sorry loveandlight, you can keep your ice.
[lolcatz] I CAN HAS MARGARITAS NOW PLEEZ? [/lolcatz]
[lolcats]HAY IMMA BLOGGER![/lolcats]
“I can just imagine what yours would be like. "HERE I SUCK SOME MORE DELICIOUS COCK GULP YUM SLURP WHILE ADDING NOTHING TO THE DISCUSSION"
Kids. Gotta love 'em.
And the utterly laughable thing is the self-assigned “watchers of the blog”, who must—land sakes!— “prevent the place from becoming this and that and the other thing”.
Feel free to read. Comment if you like. But 'round here, you're Reagan in ”Kings Row“.
“Ain't got no legs, not runnin' jack.”
Take that tack as you're not an admin here, and that's a call out, not the blogger's reply to it.
And again...for God's sake, grow up a little. For what good you bring to the table, you actually embarrass yourself with comments like the “I can imagine what yours...“ jobbie.
And you know it.
Wait wait wait.
Back it up a bit - it was YOUR cocksucker that was jumping on me for "pimping" my blog when Wendel called me out.
I'm not a self assigned anything - if you guys want this blog to turn into some sort of lefty circle jerk, that's not my business. But don't go defending your girlfriend because she decided to go get out of line.
And uh, I'm not embarassing myself here. Why don't you go post some more bad 1st person stories about what you were doing on 9/11, full of SEETHING ANGST and lots of cuss words.
To be honest, LM, the "I can imagine" line was just so I could talk about delicious dicks somehow, considering how gay I am for Petraeus'.
Kid...you have become (or have exposed yourself as—others can make the call) the living, breathing punchline to fifty “How many retards...?” jokes.
With that, done with you. Enjoy “life”.
Now who's jobbing?
Man, I feel like I've missed out on the full "LM" experience. I mean yeah, you've got your offbase personal attack, but what is it without the overboard assembly of curse words? I mean, I don't feel complete unless you make me feel like I'm being addressed by a Catholic grade schooler who just started cursing yesterday.
And hey, at least this "kid" can make an actual argument from facts without resorting to ad hominems and strawmen fallacies, among others. When you can top that trick, let me know, gramps.
The point is that this was a terrific piece of analysis of the Betray Us career through the analysis of his ribbons. A real inside baseball analysis. My Vietnam era jacket hangs in my closet with three rows of non valorous (Air Force staff officer) ribbons which is most impressive to everyone except me. Though I get the impression that Betray Us is impressed with himself. Jesse's blog helps us understand Admiral Fallon's take on his supposed subordinate. You guys are continuing in the Steve G. tradition. Keep it up.
I guess we know "Jim's" surname. Tyler.
Now that's more than a little unfair, really.
Tyler --
Up until you started talking -- in this thread -- like a troll, and I mean very specifically, attacking long-time people on this blog and I don't need any crap back from you about "Oh, but they started it first." I don't give a damn who started it. It's all happening around YOU. You're the focal point for all this bullshit -- until all this happened, no one's been picking ON you. We've been treating you like a veteran.
A slightly slow, kind of stupid veteran, but none the less, not a troll, not a fool. Someone who is over here with -- and I know this because you've posted it on your blog -- a vet with PTSD -- who is over here, socializing, a bit mis-guided from our point of view about the military, but what the hell, he's a kid and he's just out of the service. That's normal.
You've been razed about it because we razz everyone. And we're not just speaking to you. We have a readership in the tens and tens of thousands. The posters you read are an enormously tiny fraction of our readership; those who choose to hang out and talk. We love those people (this is my editorial "we" voice) but we also love all the other people who simply read us. All of y'all matter to us.
When we see an opportunity to make a broad point to the GNB community as a whole, consistent with what we've been talking about, put in a correction with you specifically (always nice to do something for a young man fairly recently out of the service who's struggling with PTSD), and much more importantly than all that, write a story about the good REMF MoFo inside the larger political conversation about what kind of a guy he is... we're on that in a moment.
That's what we do around here.
For you then to get all shitty with people in comments...not gonna fly.
You've got some options.
You've managed to piss off LM which is really, really hard to do. He's fucking DONE with you. That's stupid. Sorry to be so blunt, but seriously dude, that's just stupid.
I'm not Wendel, not to you, not to anyone. I'm Jesse to friends and enemies alike. You can also call me Doc. If you're writing a formal article about me in the third person, it's fine to say "Wendel said, blah blah blah", but no one calls me Wendel on my blog, not if they want to stick around.
You don't get to call people cock-suckers or talk about "defending your girlfriend." It's homophobic and we don't play that game here.
You want to remember a couple of things as I say this next thing.
1. I have more years of serious experience as a field paramedic than you have since you started high school.
2. Following that and partially concurrent (and you wouldn't know this because I haven't talked about it much) I've spend 25 years experimenting with, learning & teaching everything from various new age & emerging religion programs and techniques, to Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and the most cutting edge work being done world-wide in linguistics, biology, philosophy and ontological design.
3. I personally have gone through years of advanced therapy with a guy considered to be one of the best therapists in the western United States. Among his other credentials, both in the past for many years, and recently, he returned to taking care of the U.S. Women's Figure Skating Team. These are not the only Olympic class athletes he advises.
4. I am in pre-production as the producer/writer/director of a major motion-picture documentary dealing with why people date the same kind of person over and over again, What's Your Pattern?. People whose names you know -- whom everyone knows -- will be appearing in the film. At least that's the plan. *smiles* And I have a reputation for hitting my target benchmarks. Ask LM, Hubris or Sara. Really, it kinda freaks them out how accurate I am calling my shots.
5. Oh yeah, and I survived a no-kidding all-out serious suicide attempt in spring 2002 and fifteen months afterwards on the watch list. Took me three years to get back to ground zero, and not till just in the last twelve months have I become fully myself again in a whole new way which is, alive, happy, fully myself. I have walked all the way through the Valley of the Shadow of death and out the other side.
In other words, I am NOT some guy in a diner talking about how people work. I've spent my entire adult life deep down in the trenches both professionally and personally, figuring out people at their source. There's a reason people trust me. It is not an accident.
All the posturing people do. People seem like glass, I see straight through them. Truly you have no idea how deeply who you are is transparent in my listening. What this leaves me with for most people, even when they're raging, is a sense of watching a little kitten going "fffffhht." It's kind of cute. All they want is for people to pick them up and say, "ahhh" and pet them. To be connected anyway they can to something larger than they are, even if it means drawing blood with their baby kitten claws.
We try not to let that happen around here. Around here, we try and heal people who are wounded. You're wounded; by definition -- you've got PTSD. And you're attacking the wisdom of your elders, which is fine, but you're being a jerk in the process. You're going to get well, you're going to shut up, or you're going to leave. If you handle this, you're welcome to remain connected here, this place so many of us call home. And without having to draw any blood to get attention. Which no one is going to give you any more.
But you're going to have to do your own work, because I have a blog to run and I'm not chasing you. There's a reason you keep hanging around here and it isn't because you want to be treated like a troll.
This is what you need to do not to be treated like a troll after your above comments, and why I told you all that, my background, why you should listen. (And still, 5:1 you don't. So it goes.)
Go to Orcinus. (Sara is a principle blogger there, long before she ever wrote here.) Down the left-hand column you'll find a bunch of article titles under the Heading: Sara's recent series: Read Cracks in the Wall & Tunnels and Bridges. Read all of both series. I strongly recommend but don't require you read all of The Authoritarians as well, the book Sara based a large chunk of the underlying thinking behind the series on.
Reading Sara's series is a non-negotiable requirement I place on you. You are to stop commenting on GNB till you've finished reading Sara's series. I have no way to check on you. You're on your honor to do what I'm telling you to do.
Finally, if you want to be on this blog as a commenter, you need to stop being a jerk. No more calling people names. No more jerking people around. And for now, shut up about the military. It's too much of a trigger for you. GNB isn't an an echo chamber, far from it. But you're not listening to what we're saying and we don't have time to repeat ourselves.
Go read. Till then, I'm done with you also.
Two comments added hours later, courtesy of my admin account:
1. I have enormous patience, but not forever.
2. I really love something Terri in Tokyo said earlier this week: congratulations y'all - this blog mends broken hearts...
Yeah... She said it good.
JW, as a reader, not commenter, of this blog (since inception) and of the late very much lamented Steve, I thank you for your cogent response to Mr. Tyler. Bravo, sir.
You don't get to call people cock-suckers or talk about "defending your girlfriend." It's homophobic and we don't play that game here.
To be completely fair, what about what ceabaird said at 7:20 PDT yesterday, namely:
I'm sure in a purely heterosexual, non-gay, manner. Why are you telling us about your man-crush, Tyler? Shouldn't you be telling the boy-general himself? I'm sure he could use the attention...
I seriously doubt Tyler actually wants a piece of the rock ([puts on geek hat] the "petra" in "petraeus" being Latin for "rock" [/POGH]), but even if he did, like that should be any business of ours?
Loveandlight -
Let it be. Leave him alone now.
Completely, totally alone.
Everyone -
Leave Tyler alone. Including commenting about him. He has work to do.
Let him get to it in peace please.
Thanks.
lol whut?
Off to the island of misfit toys for me then!
And as far as "not listening" goes, I was listening to you, and my tedious ode to the greatness of Petraeus (no) should prove that. If you want to look at Petraeus and see (somehow) that his schooling makes him an asskisser and a suck up, that's fine. I see him as an experiment, whether through accident or some sort of long range thinking to create a Savant-type general (oh shit I sound like I'm going into D&D classes here) as opposed to a bureaucrat or warrior type. But whatever, it dosen't fit with your Tarot card reading of Petraeus' charecter so I guess we might as well ignore the fact that he's probably better suited for what's needed over there then an Odierno or a Franks.
The fact is this place has always had a hard time listening to views that didn't fit into its tidy little packet. I'm sure you can remember a time when vic_silverfish, myself, and Marx and Lenin were all the same person. The reason I'm getting all the attention is because I'm going against the flow, rubbing people raw because I'm saying "uh no". You've got 42 comments here in this post. The majority of them are high school football game ass slapping nonsense comments.
And as an aside, I wasn't the one who started the queerbaiting. So there's "listening" for you. Nor was I the one who started the name calling - I left that to your fans and they were more than happy to deliver.
But no worries, I've got a boat to catch!
Tyler -
As I said, it was 5:1 you'd do anything else. "But he did it first" is not an excuse. They're still here and you're out on your ass. Inciting to riot doesn't justify rioting.
Like I said... you're a kid. You need to grow up. We offered you multiple chances and a community of people willing to be your friend. You not only turned them down, you were happy doing so, all in order to be a self-righteous know-it-all asshole.
No problem and your business. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. You're invited to the world.
It is relatively simple for people to change IP addresses, thus you might think you can simply avoid our ban on you by changing IPs. But you are a troll by our standards.
You are permanently baned from GNB. You are not to post at the Group News Blog on any thread, ever, under any name, pseudonym, or anonymously, under any circumstances at any time, using any means of hiding your IP or other means. It is you who are baned, not just your IP address or whatever computer you happen to be on.
Goodbye.
Modified Sat morning 9/22 to add:
Late last night I was speaking with one of my colleagues about you. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have patience, but not forever.
He said, one of the reasons he won't have anything ever to do with you again, is you keep whoring your blog on our site, trying to get people to go read you. So just for grins, I went and ran your numbers through Technorati. (I'm not linking to you here, obviously.)
Currently, your blog "has no authority." That means, NO ONE, ever, so far as Technorati knows, has EVER linked to your blog. Out of all the posts you made, out of everything you've had to say, it's attracted so much attention that... no one cares. No one is listening. No one thinks what you say matters. No one. What you're saying isn't moving anyone. At all.
The reason I'm getting all the attention.
Yeah, you betcha, people are truly listening and taking seriously what you've got to say; they're just spreading your wisdom all over the internet. We're been dealing with you here for two, maybe three reasons. 1. You're not well. We take injured vets seriously here, especially when there's a good chance they're so sick in the head they may not know how sick they are. That's what PTSD can do to you and I know a lot about it, including from the inside. I ended my career as a paramedic very burned out. I still get nightmares and command-level flashbacks sometimes. 2. We thought and hoped you were learning. Also that you were looking to join our community. So we -- make that I, personally -- worked with you, way, way, way past where most people would have told you to fuck off. And 3. You raised some interesting points which, in the larger political conversation, we addressed.
But when you start being an asshole, regardless of the reason, even if in the end it is a function of your PTSD, it doesn't matter -- it all gets flushed down the head and so do you. I won't let you or anyone damage the GNB. It isn't as if you're someone everyone here knows who's got himself in trouble somehow. You're an outsider making trouble. We don't owe you anything, and I've already bent way, way, way over trying to see if we could help you. You've abused my trust and this community.
Second, your current overall Technorati rank as a blog compared to everyone else is 7,996,799. Got a ways to go there sparky. You can read GNB'S current Technorati numbers here. Our authority right now is 266, our rank is 15,991. We'll be in the top 15K blogs in the world by the end of the month (we're already in the top 100 liberal political blogs in the U.S.).
My point isn't that what you have to say can't be worth something. But when you go around pissing everyone off, you just end up all alone angry and talking to yourself. You can't make a difference if everyone goes, "Oh, it's him..." when you show up. You have to be heard for anything you say to matter. Which is basically why you're being throw out...not for what you said, but for your actions, that is, for being an asshole in how you were saying it. We've had lots of non-liberals on our site and before that, TNB; IRR Soldier jumps instantly to mind. You were welcome here. And now you're not.
You did that. Your acts and violation of our community standards got you thrown out of our community. You were told what you had to do to stay in our community. You didn't do it and instead, gave even more smart ass remarks. Buh-bye. Then you went and posted more smart-ass remarks about it over at your blog, which you'll notice, no one here is following you over to, to say you were oh so right and abused. (I'm only mentioning it -- here, not there -- because it's my job, and much of what you're doing really is attributional to you being young, stupid and wanting to be all impressive and shit NOW.) Except we have a limit. We don't put up with much bullshit here; we have a community to run so you impressed us right out the door. It's your lack of willingness to take responsibility for getting your ass thrown out of here is a big part of the problem. Think on that as you sit there playing with your...keyboard.
If you're ever ready to grow up, write me a letter. You know what you need to do. Till then, leave my people alone.
No one is going to come read your blog. No one's going to check up on you. None of us, including me, actually gives a damn about how you turn out. You could have had friends who would be there for you in good times and bad. Go hang out at the VFW. I'm sure they'll care for you. *laughs* They and the Legion were always so sweet to me when I was in the shit.
Instead of an actual community, you've got just yourself all alone at your tiny little blog that no one ever sees, drawing rude comments on Kent State iconic photographs and thinking that it's hip. It isn't. It's sad, lonely, really pathetic, and just plain mean.
I've been the guy who kept giving you chances...but you know what? I should have cut you loose a long time ago. That photo is just wrong. Shame on you.
We really are done. *salts the earth on Tyler*
JW. I am in awe. Thank you once again. Now I'll go back to anonymity happily reading the posts and comments. Well done, Sir. Steve would be proud.
HT -
Thank you.
I got more than one 2x4 whooping (both the actual physical shit-kicking and this kind where people just told me I wasn't welcome; and meant it) before I woke the fuck up. Didn't happen till I was at LEAST 29, so the kids got a ways, least as far as my own record is concerned.
Which is probably why I spent so much time with him. Heh.
Eventually he'll figure out being alone and an asshole who is right all the time, isn't near as much fun as playing well with others. And he'll learn how to tone it down. But not here. Buh-bye...
Anyway, glad to have you here. Don't hesitate to jump in any ol' time. Always glad to have old friends we're just meeting. *grins*
This guy is stupid!
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