So. here I go, posting raw into radio. I don't know, and I'm too disgusted to find out after trying to salvage my spaces for the past 12 hours, but I think that this is the piece that caused idiots to try to wipe out my weblog AND my web space. And you will not win.
And I will repost as often as needed. F U ALL!
Max Meets
I'm not a political junkie, and I can't say that I know that much about Max Cleland aside from the usual boilerplate. I know he was a senator from Georgia, and I knew he was a Vietnam veteran and an amputee. (I didn't know that he was a triple amputee until I started writing this.)
Here is the briefest of bios from a relatively nonpartisan location, the Library of Congress:
Max Cleland, former U.S. Senator and American war hero, lost both legs and his right arm when a grenade exploded during his service in Vietnam. Drawing on his own experience of pain, depression, and frustration, he rose up to accomplish significant improvements for veterans returning from war. Youngest administrator ever of the Veterans Administration, and Senator from Georgia for six years, he has earned respect for his work in health care, bio-terrorism preparedness, and homeland security.
What else do I know about Max Cleland? Let's see, I know he was a Democrat, and he was voted out of office in the 2002 mid-term elections. Remember 2002? The senate was split 50-50, and occasionally would not roll over for every little thing that George Bush wanted. Georgia was a key state. Bush comes down to Georgia to campaign with Cleland's opponent on five separate occasions. Nothing wrong with that. It's politics.
And then we get the ad. A classic of character assassination. We open up with a picture of Osama bin Laden and move on then to someone who's working their way up to the top of the hate parade, Saddam Hussein. A solemn voice intones: "As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators. Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush's vital homeland security efforts 11 times!"
What the Fuck! thinks Cleland, and in an instant it's all over.
Cue John McCain, a man who's seen similar attacks from the same source. "I've never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to a picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful, it's reprehensible."
"I'd never seen anything like it," said Max. But that was before he met...
the überBitch
Leaving office hasn't made Cleland's heart beat any more fondly for the man who helped retire him. He has been speaking out against Bush's Iraq policy, which is bad enough. But then he rolled out and demanded to see Bush's 1972-1973 service record. This was more than Ann Coulter could stand, and she is showing no mercy to this beast who would attack her man.
Former Sen. Max Cleland is the Democrats' designated hysteric about George Bush's National Guard service. A triple amputee and Vietnam veteran, Cleland is making the rounds on talk TV, basking in the affection of liberals who have suddenly become jock-sniffers for war veterans and working himself into a lather about President Bush's military service.
(I understand where Ann is coming from here. Military jock-sniffing is traditional conservative territory, and I'm sure she would like to see it stay that way.)
...On "Hardball" Monday night, Cleland demanded to see Bush's pay stubs for the disputed period of time, May 1972 to May 1973. "If he was getting paid for his weekend warrior work," Cleland said, "he should have some pay stubs to show it." The next day, the White House produced the pay stubs. This confirmed what has been confirmed 1 million times before: After taking the summer off, Bush reported for duty nine times between Nov. 29, 1972, and May 24, 1973 - more than enough times to fulfill his Guard duties. (And nine times more than Bill Clinton, Barney Frank or Chuck Schumer did during the same period.)
Barney Frank? What on earth are we doing discussing Barney Frank? I know why it's fun to drop his name, Ann, but next to someone who fetishizes Dick Cheney, he seems straight as an arrow. But let's not linger here, lets skip forward and see why Cleland is not worth our jock-sniffing respect.
Cleland lost three limbs in an accident during a routine noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with friends.
A beer! The scumbag was about to drink a beer!
He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up.
He saw a grenade on the ground and picked it up. Dude did not have a brain in his head. He was probably all high and showing off for those "friends". Hey, look here guys, I got me a grenade!
He could have done that at Fort Dix. In fact, Cleland could have dropped a grenade on his foot as a National Guardsman - or what Cleland sneeringly calls "weekend warriors." Luckily for Cleland's political career and current pomposity about Bush, he happened to do it while in Vietnam.
One good thing about having been in the military is the fact that I get to sniff my own jock. And after twenty-one years on military bases (seventeen as a DOD civilian) let me be the first to assure Ann that I have yet to see a grenade sitting on the goddamn ground. That sort of thing is frowned on. I couldn't drop a grenade on my foot no matter how stupid I was (...although I will never be stupid enough to write an idiotic paragraph like the one above).
Indeed, if Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. senator in the first place. Maybe he'd be the best pharmacist in Atlanta, but not a U.S. senator. He got into office on the basis of serving in Vietnam and was thrown out for his performance as a senator.
Get on with your lamebrained "dropping a grenade on himself" shtick. Hannity laughs at you. (Oooh. I think I just came up with the best insult ever.)
Cleland wore the uniform, he was in Vietnam, and he has shown courage by going on to lead a productive life. But he didn't "give his limbs for his country," or leave them "on the battlefield." There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight. That could have happened in the Texas National Guard - which Cleland denigrates while demanding his own sanctification.
If we dropped a grenade on Ann, what do you think would be left? A grease spot? A pile of fingernails and blonde hair? I think it would be just like Terminator... the first one, you know, the good one, where Schwarzenegger was the bad guy, and kept on charging even after he had been turned into an evil pile of shit.
8:27:21 PM 
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"He said he would stop the motor of the world... and he did. But who is John Galt? A destroyer, or a liberator? Why does he fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?"
