Note to Doug: Yep, comment is gone. Off-topic, and possibly (although I'd hate to think so) malicious.

However, even if you're right, you may assume that it's not a problem with anyone in my food chain.

That is all.

Marsha, your name came out as "Doug" on your comment. Might want to look into that.

/inside joke

Brian,

Hah!

/more inside/

Hey, "angry clown" has been making regular appearances here. I might have to do a big "judicial restraint" post to see if I can get Slash to come out and play again...

/inside stuff

/inside jokes are funny.. to someone.

Just to rant a moment or five.

This morning I heard Camillo Hererra ( I beleive that was the name - Camillo is right), an army soldier who is refusing to fight in Iraq on moral and ethical grounds - essentially he doesn't agree with the President and views it as an immoral war.

While I may agree with the views of a person, once you've joined the military you are an instrument of policy. This person was on Wendy Wilde's show, a show I rarely listen to, and for good reason, she's a vapid whiner that puts Mitch to shame. I called up Ms. Wilde and said to Mr. Herrera that his obligation, once he joined, was to fulfill his commitment. The Armed Forces are not "instruments of good" as he described them, or there to "fight for freedom" as he perceived when he joined. Used rightly, the hope is they will do so, but that is the responsibility of the President and the Congress to decide, not the individual soldier. You are not expected to follow orders blindly, but unless the order is illegal, you are required to obey them. If we start allowing soldiers to selectively adhere to orders based on their political beliefs, we will have a nation without an army (or navy etc..) that cannot be relied upon. We will have an administration which must cull favor with a military for support rather than with the people and citizens who rightly fund and control that military. In short, while I may (or may not) agree Mr. Hererra, what you did was flat wrong, no ifs, no buts. Desertion is a crime, when you swore you oath you gave up your politics while in uniform. Put another way, the Army didn't love Clinton, had they been given a choice, we probably would not have been in Bosnia, that good act would have failed, what gives you the right to tell the people and the President that you'll only do your job if YOU feel the policy is sound?

The problem this points out is that both poles (the right and the left) are so strident and extreme that they use nice sounding catch phrases to advocate vulgarity and assinine positions that imperil us as a country. Mr. Hererra can "concientiously object" if he has an issue killing people, but that was not his issue, he just didn't want to kill the folks he was told to kill. At an extreme, he could claim concientious objector status and be given a job not killing them (it would be a fraud, but it was done in Vietnam, and is done now, without much of a question), but no one made him join.

The other story.. Oscar whomever, the mayor of Las Vegas, what an idiot..it just goes to show Democrats just like Republicans, can be corrupted by power and lose sight of reality.

PB

Another clueless neocon blindly stumbling into a quagmire? Wrong floor, wrong time Mitch.

pb, you need a blog so you won't hijack comment threads with unrelated ranting.

Seriously, it's free, and I'm living proof that anyone can do it.

(Meanwhile: Mitch, at least you didn't trip over your own feet in the hallway at work. And our hallways are NEVER witness-free...)

It has nothing to do with lack of caffeine. I work for Starbucks and have all the great coffee I could want at my beck and call and still occasionally walk out of my office, stop in the hall, and think "what the hell was I gonna do?"

It's just one of those things, I guess.

PB,

"/inside jokes are funny.. to someone."

Right. In this case me. The *owner of this blog*. If I laugh, the whole world (viewed from the perspective of this blog) laughs.

Jonathan,

"It has nothing to do with lack of caffeine."

I'm afraid you may be right.

Jonathan:

Starbucks, hummmm.... isn't that the blue-state equivalent to Wally World?

Or as a friend of mine once told me: "....yep, the greeter said "welcome to Walmorts.""

I can say with all honesty that working for this company has been a pleasure. I can also say with conviction that my center-right political ideology has not been held against me at all. This company truly respects opinions in all their forms. While the headquarters are based in Seattle, I would guess that has more to do with Howard's love of the city than to anyone's politics. I think our image of the liberal meeting place has been largely exaggerated. Just my thoughts, for what they are worth.

malicious?

Geez Mitch. Lighten up. It was a stupid joke. I didn't realized your skin was so thin.

What's kind of funny is that after spanking me for an off topic post, you engage in an off topic discussion with another poster.

Maybe my comment was a bit too close eh?

As I said, you may assume it's not a problem with my chain of command. However, there's no sense (for me) in making it a point of discussion on the blog. As John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson discovered, there are people out there who DO get incredibly malicious about these things. Glad you're not one.

I do not have a thin skin. It's just an area where I maintain pretty close control of things.

Nothing personal. Just business.

Mitch,

Jonathan was also off-topic..gonna pull him? and for the record, yah, you do have thin skin :).

BTW Jonathan, most large companies I know have center right politics, so not holding it against you is no mean feat.

Mitch - which chain of command are you in?

PB

PB, in order:

If I feel like it, no I don't, and it's a figure of speech so take a laxative.