Thank you...

Another benchmark achieved this date, thanks to you who've dropped by to visit.

This blog has now racked up 20,000 hits since it began a little over six months ago in September 2002.  That's far more visitors here than I ever expected.  I appreciate greatly the time you take to stop in, read and comment.  As readers you push me to read and think more daily, motivate me to ponder and question everything; in general, you help me grow.

I am extremely grateful; I hope you'll see results of this growth as I continue to blog.  Thanks very much again.

~ Rayne

10:22:14 PM    comment []

Great tolerance for more casualties, so say Kristol and Ledeen

I don’t know how I missed these bits in Salon or the Washington Post.

From William Kristol:

"I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties," said Weekly Standard editor (and Project for a New American Century founder) William Kristol, adding that "in a certain way, the willingness to stick it out would be as impressive as" a quick victory.

From Michael Ledeen:

"I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a war-like people and that we love war ... What we hate is not casualties but losing."

These sacks-of-dung Kristol and Ledeen should try and say this face-to-face to the grieving families that have already experienced the loss of loved ones in the last week.  Surely they’ll be feeling more tolerance real soon.

Try telling terrified families who know their loved ones are caught up in a fool’s crusade, prematurely at war, with insufficient backup troops to support them, in an effort to make rich people richer by far, that they’ll be having greater tolerance for loss soon.

Human beings do not become inured to personal tragedy.  There is no tolerance level that one builds up for bloodshed and heartbreak, unless of course one is truly sociopathic or psychotic.

We’re not sticking it out in a war to just to impress any one (as if it’s some hobby and we’ve got nothing better to do).  The American people will do what they can to make the best of a grim situation for themselves and the Iraqi people.   The Bush Administration and their sycophantic groupthink leaders would to well to clue in soon -- there is a point beyond which the American people will not tread.  We will not be building calluses around our hearts and minds when it comes to our loved ones.

---

Oh piss on it, that doesn’t begin convey the amount of anger and frustration I feel about these not-getting-their-hands-dirty hawks who sit in their lovely little cushy offices wearing their starched business shirts and their silk neck ties, spouting words like great tolerance for casualties as if they were ordering ham-on-rye-no-mayo for lunch.  How completely immoral to treat human lives as expendable resources.  You're the kind of people who label human assets as fungibles.

The gloves are off:  Kristol, Ledeen, come here and say that crap to my face, right now, either of you.  I’ve got a husband who’s heartsick with worry for his firstborn son who’ll be fighting for whatever it is you believe in.  I have no compunction about bitch-slapping the insipid hawk-speak off your lips, and your lips off your smug hawk face.  Now that might be a greatly tolerated loss.

11:14:18 AM    comment []

The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business – 2002 issue

Thank you, Business 2.0, for a pile of laughs.  What a hoot.  Too bad I actually had stock in some of the companies mentioned, or it would have been a real knee-slapper for me.  There were a few that inspired a wince rather than a guffaw because of the level of stupidity on the part of the company or on my part for owning their stock.

Numbers 8 and 82 are at the top of my list for most humorous.

What do you think?

12:14:22 AM    comment []