Saturday, September 01, 2012

News Item

President Barack Obama was greeted with fleeting applause and extended periods of silence as he offered profuse praise to soldiers and their families during an Aug. 31 speech in Fort Bliss, Texas.
His praise for the soldiers — and for his own national-security policies — won cheers from only a small proportion of the soldiers and families in the cavernous aircraft-hangar.

The audience remains quiet even when the commander-in-chief thanked the soldiers’ families, and cited the 198 deaths of their comrades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The audience’s reaction was so flat that the president tried twice to elicit a reaction from the crowd.
“Hey, I hear you,” he said amid silence.

The selected soldiers who were arrayed behind the president sat quietly throughout the speech.
CNN and MSNBC ended their coverage of the speech before it was half-over.
Why am I not surprised?

9 comments:

  1. Yeah, I saw that art in the DC too. Obama must think the troops can't read and are deaf as well. There are these things called newspapers, radio & TV and the internet, you know. Has Obama ever heard of 'em? The news about the O-Administration fighting tooth & nail to prevent the loosening/extension of voting times for overseas troops is all over the news. First Obama slaps the troops in the face and then asks them for a date--works every time...right you are, superstar.

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  2. (I mean isn't that how YOU hustled women, Buck? Is that the wrong approach? I always wondered why I stayed home alone on Fri & Sat nights.. )

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    1. Ummm... no. I always wound up sleeping with my friends. I found that works a LOT better than any other method I tried. ;-)

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  3. Hey Buck, did my orig comment go straight to spam?

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  4. Having served in war, I can say it is a feeling of sadness 24/7. You try to put up a front to your fellow troops, and they do the same for you. Everyone knows they are worthless pawns, and the thing to do is to die like a bishop/ship (always tacking the wind, or pulling the invasion toward your strong side). Note: The Pope demanded the chess piece that was a ship, be changed to a bishop, as only a bishop could sit next to royalty).

    If you survive, you don't ever want to think about it again. Simple things trigger this melancholy, and sometimes I have to fight my way out of it, otherwise I just do stupid things. My boss once asked me if I had his [insert important thing] finished, and I wanted to say: fuck you, your [insert important thing] is shit on my boots.

    That's the way I feel about politicians coming onto a base and using troops as a prop. You sir, are shit on my boots. That's not anything personal, it's available for all politicians and REMF Generals.

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  5. I am, as ever, proud of our warriors in all things. And in this they show themselves to be far more intelligent that POTUS gives them credit for.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, but NO ONE is smarter than Obama. That's just not possible.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.