Tom Watson

Why We Don't Mourn III

Two years now, and 1,521 Americans killed and 11,344 wounded. And yet, our national leadership refuses to mourn the dead, to stop our public life for even a few hours, and pay tribute to the sacrifice. Politics aside, this is a stark and terrible failure of the weak character of President George W. Bush and those who help to lead his administration.

This is the third post here to bear this title; the first inspired by the national funeral of Italian security agent Nicola Calipari and the second inspired by reaction to the first, and delving into what other Presidents have done in time of war. In the year or so of this Weblog's shadow upon the blogosphere, the reaction to these posts dwarves everything else.

My main argument is that President Bush and his administration don't care, view the troops as expendable, and won't get caught leading a national tribute to those killed because it would draw the attention of the nation to the cost. But one question recurred in many readers' comments, and it was legitimate. Fitz summed it up best (although a little caustically):

Certainly, if you’re so concerned about the troops dying that you insist we need a day of mourning, then you must have thought through a plan to avoid the need for future days of mourning. So let's hear it!

So here it is. If I had my way, the President would designate this Memorial Day (or Veteran's Day in November) as a national day of remembrance for the armed services people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He'd lead a national service and urge the big national chain stores to open an hour or two late that day. We'd have a national moment of silence, much as we did after 9/11. He won't do it. Doesn't care.

So, here's a real alternative, although necessarily more limited: a National Bloggers Day of Remembrance.

Each blogger would pick one soldier killed in action and write a profile, in their own iconoclastic blogging style. Use Google, read local newspaper stories, quote other online profiles. Build in links (or not). Add pictures (or not). But write about the life of one American whose dreams ended in this war.

Conservative bloggers, liberal bloggers, centrist bloggers, eeyores and pollyannas - doesn't matter. On that day (and let's pick Memorial Day, May 20th) dozens of profiles will soar across the blogosphere. Maybe we'll all feel a bit of pride, and understand the sting of loss - and the sacrifice.

Who'll sign up? I'm in. Let's remember.

Google's Tom DeLay Problem

A quick one kids: Google's AdSense, which I experimented with on this page for a while, comes up with some insane "contextual" advertisements. Last week, I pointed out a wacky ad on Fred Wilson's site asking readers to bid on RSS feeds on eBay. Well, this week takes the cake on this blog: I blasted Republican heavy Tom DeLay and his pals for their cynical politicking over the Terri Schiavo case and here's what AdSense delivered:

Pray for Tom DeLay
Only prevailing prayer will protect him from his political enemies.
www.prayeralert.org

Clicking on it sends me a micropayment for referring readers, so what the Hell ... ooops, heck .... here's what we got:

Dear Christian Friend,

Thank you for visiting The Capitol Hill Prayer Alert Foundation Website.

If you are a Bible-believing Christian who takes prayer seriously, you are needed on the front lines in the war for our nation’s soul.

You know that ungodly forces are out to destroy America. They hate the Gospel and America’s Christian heritage. They want to remove the Biblical foundations from American law and government, the very moral roots that made ours a free nation & a light among the nations.

Well, it goes on. And you know, I'm sure there are many good people who want to remember the The Hammer in their prayers. Maybe he'll reform his evil ways. But ahem, my main point here is that AdSense delivers little value, certainly doesn't pay the bills (as per my buddy Pamela Parker), and is fast becoming a humor meme in the blogosphere for its insane matching algorithms. Say it again folks: good advertising takes the mind of a human.

The Iger Sanction

A few weeks ago, I casually began mentioning to co-workers and friends that I was planning to visit Walt Disney World for the first time (I'm leaving for the airport now and will be writing lightly this week). My kids are the right age (12,10,7) and although I craved a quiet week on a quiet beach or in a cosmopolitan hotel room, my fatherly instincts won out. What I didn't expect was the reaction: surprise, glee, and advice. It's simply stunning how many people wear the invisible mouse ears! The advice on the inner workings of Orlando resort management was amazing. My immediate thought was: how did Michael Eisner fail? After all, Disney is clearly a brand experience with a huge emotional following. So as I wander through the Magic Kingdom later today - chasing the kids from ride to ride and dodging ankle-snapping double-strollers - I'm going to consider the challenges facing incoming CEO Robert Iger, and think about the opportunities. An army of Disney fanatics can't be wrong.

Sunday Papers

Good reading for a strong pot of coffee, a latop, and my old leather chair:

• Fred Wilson smacks one of my favorite companies, Apple, for its ill-advised anti-blog lawsuits. Fred doesn't go in for any phony blog triumphalism and citizen's media claptrap - he just says it's bad for business and the Apple brand, and I agree.
• Jack Shannon says watching the baseball steroid hearings "was like watching addicts circle each other trying to appear to be serious without actually doing each other any serious harm." Jack's interested in what comes next.
• Jason and I have talked about the great Charlie Rich a bunch of times over the years; this week he blogged it, and it's worth a read.
• Steve Gilliard takes on the right-wing bloggers and their success in defining fairness in the media on the various talking heads shows and blog panels - as usual, an entertaining read from the wild man.
• Conservatives and pollyanna types tend to hate Professor Juan Cole for his anti-Bush take on Iraq, but this guy knows his region. Here's a particularly fascinating take on neo-cons and their ill-fated plan to break up OPEC and privatize Iraq's oil industry.
• The prolific Joe Gandelman - almost always good for an awesome collection of balanced links and comments on any issue - has moved The Moderate Voice to its domain. Here's a particularly hilarious story I discovered (as happens every week) only through the great Joe.

Tom DeLay's Lifeline

Tom DeLay needs to keep Terri Schiavo alive in the worst way, because her tragic plight is a political feeding tube for his comatose, scandal-ridden career.

What else can explain DeLay's utter cynicism, and his blatant use of a terrible family tragedy for political gain, waving the flag of "life" to his religious base. This is a man who would subpoena a woman who has been in a persistant vegetative state for 15 years to appear before Congress. This is a man who would say this: "All we're doing in Congress is giving Terri Schiavo an opportunity to come to the Federal courts and review what this judge in Florida has been doing, and he's been trying to kill Terri for 4 1/2 years." Trying to kill Terri. Say it a few times out loud. Now just say "Terri" like you know her, like you know her husband, like you know her parents. Like you're right there for her, holding her hand. What breed of reptilian creature would say those words?

Walk across to the other side of the Capitol and here's what Bill Frist's leadership is handing out to its Republican Senators by way of GOP talking points:

• "This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited..."
• "This is a great political issue... this is a tough issue for Democrats."

Ah Frist, the respected heart doctor who - after viewing some videotape from the hospice where Terri Schiavo lays without communication - went to the Senate floor and said her doctors were wrong. "She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli," said the doc.

It would be wonderful if Terri Schiavo awoke, if her family didn't have this burden. I don't know if her feeding tube should be maintained or not, don't know if there's any chance at cognition. Her court-appointed guardian (that's Florida's state guardian, all you anti-Federalists) spent a great deal of time trying to get the young woman to respond. His report and his memories of the experience are moving indeed. I admit, as he does, that it's hard not to think of miracles.

I do know that the Republicans, as Jim Wolcott writes, are "treating this poor woman as if she were their personal pet rock." There's Senator Frist building his case for conservative support in the 2008 primaries. There's Congressman DeLay turning the spotlight from his ongoing corruption probes. And there's Terri Schiavo, unaware of either of them, or anything else.

UPDATE: Our embarrassing Congress (yes, including the Democrats) has apparently reached some compromise to extend the might of the Federal government's legislative branch into this family's tragedy, and our President plans to return to Washington on Monday to sign the slip of paper. Meanwhile, Joe Gandelman has a great round-up of other opinion on this ranging from calls to send in Federal marshals (from Republicans!) to personal descriptions of similar family tragedies (including one from Joe's own family). Chervokas recalls his father-in-law's last days, and adds this: "...as much as I despise the nattering, self-serving, hogwash of the Republican leadership, I nurture a special contempt for religious leaders who teach that the court-ordered force feeding of a woman who will never think again is a celebration of life." More in the same vein from Matthew Yglesias: "... the rank partisanship, crass opportunism, and utter disregard for principle or common decency that the GOP's been displaying on this front for the past several days are quite possibly the most stomach-turning series of events it's been my misfortune to witness in my (admittedly small number of) years as an observer of the American political scene." Hey Matt, I've been around a while and this also ranks as a stomach-turner for me as well. Jarvis points out that this is a rare public moment when liberals and libertarians agree and aren't afraid to say so. And The Bull Moose (libertarian, conservative Democrat) says that the Republicans "give grandstanding a bad name."

Ireland Forever

He is dead. Our Uncrowned King is dead.
O, Erin, mourn with grief and woe
For he lies dead whom the fell gang
Of modern hypocrites laid low.

He lies slain by the coward hounds
He raised to glory from the mire;
And Erin's hopes and Erin's dreams
Perish upon her monarch's pyre.

Last weekend, my children marched in the local Saint Patrick's Day Parade under the banner of their Catholic parochial school, two miles up the old Albany Post road in a celebration of all things Irish in the new world. As I watched my little ones walk by - the middle lad in my own green tweed cap - I thought of the praise I'd be sending the way of President George W. Bush this week on this Weblog.

No, not a common occurence in these parts; as rare as a shamrock in January or an Italian-American Club banner in the St. Paddy's march - oh wait, there was one of those. No, I give President Bush credit for banning terror's apologists from the White House, from these shores, from the traditional celebration of the contribution of the sons and daughters of Eire to these United States, a significant contribution indeed. The world knows why. The why is Robert McCartney, who may or may have not made a remark about a female friend of the lying, killing, thieving, sub-human Provos in a Belfast pub. They took him outside, slit his throat like swine in the slaughterhouse. Then they stepped through the blood, went back in the pub, locked the door, and swore their countrymen and women to secrecy in the name of Irish republicanism.

But the secrecy didn't hold. Robert McCartney had sisters, five to be exact, and as the world knows, courage lives in the hearts of Irishwomen. They talked. They named names. They called out Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness for the Arafat-like liars and cowards that they are.

Reports Wikipedia: Last week, the Daily Mail named the following men as three of the four men, all acknowledged members of the Belfast Brigade, whom the PIRA offered to shoot in retailation for the murder of Robert MacCartney - Jim "Dim" McCormack, Gerard "Jock" Davison and Gerard Montgomery. The Mail stated that McCormack, aged about 42, is the Officer Commanding of the Belfast Brigade of the PIRA. It also stated that Davison, 41, is a current and senior member of the Belfast Brigade, and its former O.C. According to the Mail, Montgomery — whom it showed in a crowd photograph — is also a long standing PIRA member, and has acted as a bodyguard to both Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. All three men have close ties with Gerry Adams.

This week, President Bush played the right kind of politics, banning the IRA apologists from St. Patrick's Day in Washington and inviting the brave McCartney sisters instead. They visit the White House later today, in a somber and politically charged St. Patrick's Day visit. Yesterday, the sisters met with Senator Edward Kennedy, certainly the most prominent Irish-American politician - and the Democrat Kennedy echoed the Republican Bush and like the President, cancelled his traditional visit with Adams and excoriated Sinn Fein:

"No political party can also have an armed unit that continues the violence and criminality in today's world. [The McCartney sisters']  presence in Washington on this St. Patrick's Day sends a very powerful signal that it's time for the IRA to fully decommission, end all criminal activity, and cease to exist as a paramilitary organisation ... There's no question that the Sinn Féin and the IRA are involved in a cover-up there, and Gerry Adams has to free himself. [Political parties] do not, and should not, and cannot have private armies, and cannot be involved in criminality and violence."

Speaking truth to power, and overcoming fear of retribution, this is our band of sisters upon this day of green: Catherine, Gemma, Claire, Paula and Donna McCartney. If they put the stake into the heart of the IRA, which has become nothing more than an organized crime operation, they deserve the thanks of the world, and certainly the gratitude of New York, the world's largest Irish city. To my eye, the Seattle PI got it right:

This St. Patrick's Day, the Irish Republican Army could do everyone a favor. The brutal organization ought to disband. After years of diplomatic efforts to create peace in Ireland, the IRA remains committed to its violent roots. It still hasn't given up its weapons. Even as the United States, Ireland and Britain try to advance justice and democracy in Northern Ireland, the IRA favors thuggery.

James Joyce understood the painfully thin difference between a political movement and a web of street gangs when he wrote Death of Parnell into Ivy Day in the Committee Room. Mourning for Charles Stewart Parnell more than a century ago, the Joycean characters recognized treachery when they saw it. It was a tale that could only be written in exile. Amidst the new Ireland of technology and call centers and software, Robert McCartney's brutal murder seems like the return of a strange and violent past. But it's just another attack on modernity and law, the same brand of killers on the march in Spain and Baghdad and the skies over lower Manhattan.

Hillary Rising

There are few incontrovertible truths preceding an actual vote of the citizenry in republican politics, but here is one: if she wants it, Senator Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for U.S. President in 2008.

This is astoundingly clear to me. Indeed, it's a waste of ink, effort, and bandwidth to even type the names Kerry, Edwards, Biden or Bayh. If Senator Clinton makes the run (and I think she will) the nomination is hers. She is the leading American Democrat. And she is the leading American woman. Dual stature of that magnitude gives her the nomination for the mere asking, and at least even odds at leading the next administration.

Democrats who doubt this are wasting time and energy; the money will flow to Senator Clinton and she will clear the field easily. Republicans who dismiss her are whistling past the graveyard. Because the antidote the "great Democratic identity crisis" has a name, and it's Hillary Clinton. As a politician, Senator Clinton reminds me of a talented left-handed pitcher, the kind who actually learns how to pitch after 30, and suddenly shows up at the Cy Young Awards dinner a decade after beginning a career in the bigs with some wildness, a trip to the minors, and a well-planned comeback. If you're not paying attention, here's the scouting report - she's throwing high heat, displays a wicked curveball and the change....well, let's just say it's a Republican's nightmare.

Nick Kristoff gives a two-part answer to the question of Senator Clinton's viability in national politics in today's NYT, and he goes one-for-two, looking rather stupid taking a called third strike right down the middle in that second at-bat. First off, he's right that Clinton's "move to the middle" is really nothing of the kind; it's a switch of emphasis on the Senator's part, cleverly playing the press into reporting the "shift" on abortion and religion.

In fact, most of America is standing, conflicted, on middle ground. Many people are deeply uncomfortable with abortions, but they also don't want women or doctors going to prison, and they don't want teenage girls dying because of coat-hanger abortions. What has been lethal for Democrats has not been their pro-choice position as such, but the perception that they don't even share public qualms about abortion. Mrs. Clinton has helped turn the debate around by emerging as both pro-choice and anti-abortion. That is potentially a winning position for Democrats. Abortions fell steadily under Bill Clinton, who espoused that position, and have increased significantly during President Bush's presidency.

This is true. When asked whether I'm pro-choice or pro-life I have a favorite answer: "both." And I believe approximately 70% of the country goes various shades of gray on abortion rights. (I can't tell you the number of good New York liberals who have whispered over the years something along the lines of "you know, sometimes I'm against abortion.") So where does Kristoff whiff? In positing that Clinton cannot be elected President because people in the heartland don't like her. This is silly stuff, reminiscent of dismissing a certain Texas Governor in 2000 because he didn't seem all that bright to those residing on the coasts. For crissakes, John Kerry almost won and nobody liked him - even the Democrats! (Worse: Al Gore did win.)

Further, there is no heartland. It's a Republican myth, pulled out of the barn to clip-clop around the brain-brain dead political media landscape every year like those dopey overfed Clydesdales in the misty Budweiser Christmas ads. Hardly anyone lives in the vast middle of the country; most people either live in cities or very near to them. And we're all wired up anway. Most of that big red map you see on TV is empty space, town after town giving away free land if anyone would agree to build a house on the jobless prairie.

There is, however, a South and a Southwest - swaths of expanding cities and fast-growing, tightly-packed suburban domains. And this is where the Senator from New York and Illinois and Arkansas needs a handful of small victories to create the Clinton dynasty. She can, of course, get them - in Arkansas, in Florida, in New Mexico. I'm not saying she will; I'm saying she most definately can, especially if she starts dropping the hard G from present tense verbs again, and hangin' around pit row at NASCAR tracks. (You doubt she will? Fool, you!)

Have you noticed the love affair the press is having with Senator Clinton of late? All the quotes by Republican Senators who loooooove her for her kind, solicitous ways on Capitol Hill? (Cream in your coffee, Senator Graham?) And if you're a woman running for President as a Democrat, can you possibly buy better coverage than this on an anti-Bush Iraqi site (tip to Ben Smith for finding it):

Once again, showing that she's as evil politically as her husband, ex-president Clinton, the shill for Israel - Hillary Clinton is in the infamous American fortress called 'the green zone,' telling the Iraqis who should be their next Prime Minister.... After all, who tells Hillary what to do, and gives her the money to remain in office--the biggest zionist voting bloc in history, in New York City. Thus, Hillary is there to do the bidding of her zionist constituency, not the American people's constituency, nor for freedom or justice in the world.

I mean, who wrote that? Howard Wolfson? It's brilliant, as is Senator Clinton's feckless pro-war demeanor (hey, I didn't say I thought her perfect; my days of political idolatry ended as a 22-year-old Bronx political reporter). Look, you can cling to the "she can't win" theme all you want (those who do mostly possess the Y chromosome, sadly) but her numbers are moving up faster than Google's post-IPO price. Her approval rating in skeptical, anti-carpetbagging New York is a whopping 69%, higher than superhero Chuck Schumer. And these are the new national numbers from Quinnipiac against two Republican stars much less likely to get their party's nomination: Hillary Clinton (D) 43% - 44% Rudy Giuliani (R); Hillary Clinton (D) 41% - 43% John McCain (R). Now substitute names like Frist or Hagel. See what I mean? Sure, you can point out - as Kristoff did - that Senator Clinton's unfavorables turn to immovable stone at around 40%. But there's another fella on the national scene who suffers from the same political malady.

Middle initial W, address Washington ... seems to be good buddies these days with a Mr. Clinton.

Squeeze Play

Major League Baseball lives in an alternate American universe with these characteristics: no competition for their customers' dollars, no regulatory oversight, no answerability to Congress and the courts, "owners" who make money in a centrally-controlled economic commune and a "union" that acts as a combination butler service and knee-breaker squad for its wealthy clients. "Labor" is hitting a fastball and "management" is running a legally exempt trust. So no surprise this week when MLB and its players union both expressed shock - shock! - that the U.S. Congress would attempt to subpoena its star players, past and present. How dare Congress stick its nose in our business; the little speed bump (poor choice of words in an amphetamine-laden business) of steroidal athletes!

How right then that WFAN's Mike Francesa ripped both the monopoly ownership and its cartel-leveraging players assocation: Congress, said the Big Man last week, can subpoena anyone it damned well pleases, tackle any issue it wants, mount any grandstand it desires. Prosecutors have wide lee-way to indict their ham sandwiches. And columnists can make judgements on morality - and well they should. MLB's never-never land is in deep denial, and under mortal threat. After noting his own paper's terrific expose of the icon Popeye-armed Mark McGwire - via a former FBI informat - and arguing persuasively that Bud Selig's club of ownership knews about the Giambino and his needle-thrusting friends all along, the Daily News scribe Mike Lupica rightly predicts that the pols will come a callin' and not let go:

This scandal will go on and on, through the circus of a congressional hearing until we get back to the main event in the Senate. Because one of these days Sen. Joe Biden, who unlike Rep. Tom Davis and Rep. Henry Waxman actually knows something about this subject, is going to come after baseball again.

I've said before that this is the BlackSox scandal for this century, and I think the spreading puddle of steroidal goo will prove that out over the coming months and years. Yeah, the politicians are turning over stones and grandstanding from the grandstand. So what? That's their job, and God bless 'em, paid as they are less than the third-string catcher in the Devil Rays. The big names will never recover, the franchise values will drop for the first time in a century, and the anti-trust exemption will go the way of all flesh. See ya.

Why We Don't Mourn II

My post earlier this week seems to have touched a distinct nerve among readers, American and non. One point of clarification to those who pointed to Ronald Reagan's national funeral/festival as proof that yeah, we do too mourn, bucko. Well, yes. As Chervokas points out in a terrific blast, we mourn our celebrities with depths of grief unimaginable in lower species. This is exactly correct:

A pilgrimage of strangers to a public space in order to deposit wreaths, flowers, notes, candles, and personal effects on a curbside has become a new ritual in American life. It happens every time a celebrity slips away from cancer or pilots his Cessna into a death spiral. Man-on-the-street interviews with public mourners form the basis of obligatory obit sidebars. TV stand-ups shot in front of makeshift mourning displays are mainstays of cable news.

What my inelegant prose meant to convey was this: specifically, we don't mourn the deaths of those our very actions and policy and votes send into the crushing jaws of war. Memorial Day? Shopping. Veteran's Day (Armistice Day)? Shopping. An occasional parade. In our town, they still roll out the limo for the Gold Star Mothers, who wave with white-gloved fingers at my kids with their flags abreeze on the sidewalk.

Many of the comments on this post intuitively looked back for proof of what we needn't spend time and energy on in the present. Did we mourn the deaths of WWII or Vietnam (only much later)? What President ever publicly mourned mass death in combat? Well, Republicans, there is one shining example - a tall fella out of Illinois made it a habit for the last three years of his Presidency, and his life. You may recall one chapter in his long line of public ceremonies of mourning (well-covered in the newspapers of the day), a little bell-ringer called the Gettysburg Address. Strange that a Republican President worried about public opinion - and running against a Democratic war hero - would risk it all by dedicating every major military cemetery personally.

Still, it was a good point. No matter that FDR wore the conspicuous black mourning band on his suit from Pearl Harbor till his stroke in Warm Springs for the soldiers he ordered to die for their country. We don't collectively mourn our soldiers' deaths until well after the fact. Frankly, LBJ hiding away in the White House as the death toll climbed to an eventual 50,000 in Southeast Asia is pretty much the model for how we - as a nation, led by our President - handle the return of our dead. Heck, Tom K. has a decent point when he observes:

Yout confidence in the goverment's ability to affect the behavior of the average person when it comes to intimate things like mourning is unjustified, in my view. If most Americans don't mourn, it's because most Americans don't care in the sense of caring that would trigger mourning. The government could try to whip up concern, but could neither supress it nor make it happen contrary to the popular will.

That's libertarian sadness for ya. Different from the rampant red-eyed socialists of Europa. As one anonymous poster noted (correctly, in my view):

We don't mourn because it's a collective activity, and that doesn't fit in with the individualist ethic that is America. You are allowed to pay your respects to individuals that have died, if you want to, but it's not required - it's your choice.

Yes, it is our choice, and both libertarians and liberals are correct when they say this can't all be laid at the feet of the President and his chicken hawks. We share the blame (if blame is to be bestowed in this matter). Maybe we don't want to know, we don't want anything to break the at-the-mall insouciance of America's vast middle. On the other hand, there is a public relations effort at the White House, and within the Republican Party. This is a strategy. And the blogging Texan Jim Childers is correct when he notes a distinct activism in minimizing the cost to the general public:

I fully agree with Tom that the leadership does not care about the deaths of the troops or innocent civilians, and in fact they take active steps to decrease the visibility of wartime horrors. Anything that lessens American bloodlust is to be actively eschewed, and the administration certainly has its allies to help it in that wicked task. But this has been true since World War II, when the "military industrial complex" that Eisenhower so presciently warned us about came into ascendancy. But the American people, after years of conditioning, are culpable in their own right. The causes of this silence are debatable, the silence itself is not.

So what type of person would make hiding the caskets, minimizing the dead an actual national PR strategy? Answer: the kind of political leader to whom the intellect of the ideal follower appears something about the level of this:

You guys are so transparent. I wish I could see out of my windows as clearly I as I can see through you. The death of this Italian is tragic to say the least, but you are not looking for a national day of mourning for American soldiers lost in combat. You want to take an unfortunate international incident and frame so America looks bad. I know it, you know it and most Americans know it, which is why Bush is president for another 4 years. Please keep it up.

And this one:

What a load of horse manure. The Italians are making a big deal out of this tragic death as a means of making a political statement. The journalist is an avowed communist previously outspoken in her total contempt for the US action in Iraq; in addition, she had written favorably of the Saddam Hussein regime in the years prior to the start of hostilities. With each passing hour, her story about the incident becomes less believable. The government's actions relative to the death of our soldiers in Iraq is fundamentally indistinguishable from practices in virtually all previous wars in which the US has been involved. The very obvious point of your silly rant is NOT to express concern over our soldiers, but rather to make of the Italian story another bludgeon against the government's Iraqi action.

Yes, I'm all about making America look bad. But thanks for the kind words, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you. What a fool - but emblematic of the millions of fools who believe that anyone questioning the costs of this war and the motives of our leadership is somehow un-American. They're too stupid, too conditioned to see the irony: that questioning power, questioning leaders, questioning everything is the most American trait imaginable. And throughout history, beyond politics, it's why we fight.

These people aren't wearing armbands....well, not the black armbands of mourning anyway.

UPDATE: One reader sent a link about the funeral in Texas of Specialist James Kiehl, killed in combat operations early in the war. More than a 1,000 people lined the route of his funeral cortege. Very moving, indeed. Man I hope the former Governor of that state is paying attention. And as this war drags on, we can't forget the ongoing sacrifice - strange how no one talks about how high the number is getting. Further, here's a Website by someone who actually does seem to care about national mourning and recognition of our dead - please visit.

UPDATE II: Lots of folks who posted in this series mentioned President Reagan's funeral as an instance of national mourning, and deservedly so. But Reagan (with whom I disagreed on most policies) was also a master at leading during moments of national mourning, of creating a movement among the people to remember the sacrifice of others. Sure, you can say it was staged, the masterwork of a trained actor - but it was effective and it did (for many) unite. For a President who cites Reagan as his true emotional and political father to ignore his true example is a gut-level indictment - it shows George W. Bush and his chicken hawks don't care. I found this image, among hundreds, in the Department of Defense online photography database - a President publicly mourning the dead in the spirit of Lincoln. Can you imagine Bush doing this? I cannot.

Google's Death Throes

Sure, you can read analysts' reports, examine P/E ratios, look at insider stock holdings, and listen to the CEO conference calls. But if you want to know how Google and eBay are really doing, you might just pop over to Fred Wilson's site. There you'll see that one of the companies is selling fraudulent crapola - and the other one is buying it!

To wit, here's the Google AdSense advertisement I saw on Fred's Weblog today - see if this one makes any sense at all:

Blog Rss
Great deals on Blog Rss Shop on eBay and Save!
www.eBay.com

If you hold stock in either of these rocket-fire Internet companies (and I do), this little ad on Fred's site has to make you very nervous. That's because Google's entire revenue stream (just about) comes from serving ads on other people's Websites that have some sort of context, and collecting money on a pay-per-click basis. And eBay relies on wired consumers continuing to make their marketplace (the largest unregulated marketplace in the United States) the place to go to sell junk someone doesn't want. Back in my business reporting days, this little item would be what I'd use to lead a critical analysis of their prospects. It's a mini-alarm bell that speaks volumes about the piss-poor defensibility each company has in their sectors - and the clear lack of hands-on human quality control.

Fred has, btw, done a terrific job (better than most of the trade press) of covering the poor value proposition that Google's automated AdSense offers to the market, as he experiments with it over the course of a year. I've also been trying it out, with very mixed results indeed. So if you click on this ad and send Google its 20 cents (while costing eBay it's four nickels) what do you get? "0 items found for blog rss." What a shock.

UPDATE: Turns out that crappy "contextual" ads may actually make sense for both Google and eBay - but for how long, I wonder? Anyway, to my eye, Tony Gentile has an excellent rebuttal to my post that analyzes the current numbers and what they mean - good blog as well.