The seventy-first anniversary of “… a date which will live in infamy…”
The official US Navy site on the Pearl Harbor attack.
There will be a memorial service aboard NAS Pensacola that normally features local survivors of the attack. Obviously there are fewer of them every year.
They have their own license plates, fewer still drive themselves anymore:
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
8 comments
Eh, the United States has made a habit this past 30 years of launching surprise air attacks upon the militaries — and water treatment plants, sewage plants, bridges, power plants, and the like — of random countries that have never attacked the US and pose no threat to the US, the latest of course being March 19, 2003. So seems to me that the Japanese were merely ahead of their time, rather than the villains they were painted as being back in the day. Any moral high ground the U.S. ever had to criticize the manner of that attack is long since gone. Especially since the Japanese only attacked military targets, while the U.S. pretty much blows the whole country to shreds
– Badtux the Hypocrisy Penguin
The Japanese attacked more than just military targets, and killed more than just military personnel, but they were really sorry that a clerical problem in their Washington embassy prevented the declaration of war from being presented before the attack took place.
As long as Congress refuses to act on its power to declare war, Presidents can do whatever they want. Given the quality of people running for Congress, I don’t see it doing anything about the problem in the foreseeable future.
One of the things that makes me go “Hmm,” looking at the mentality of the Japanese military and the Tojo government, is the similarities between the way they thought about war and the way they thought about and treated non-Japanese (i.e., as inferior peoples who at best needed to be guided to the proper way of thinking and at worst were nothing more than animals) and the way that American neo-cons think about war and the way American neo-cons think about non-Americans. They are decidedly two peas in a pod. Unfortunately American neo-cons are unlikely to get their necks stretched the way Tojo did, due to not losing their wars (a stalemate isn’t victory, but isn’t the kind of total defeat that allows a necktie solution for the perpetrators of war crimes).
The neo-cons are scum, plain and simple. They are sociopaths who should never be allowed near any levers of power, no matter how limited. They want to rule the world, and believe that is their divine right.
This attitude is one of the reason I find the fundamentalist infiltration of the military to be so disturbing. Fundamentalist provide the ‘free pass’ that makes committing atrocities guilt-free. Everything they do is the will of G*d, and the individual has no personal responsibility. Torture, assassination, the killing of civilians – no problem because it is all part of the ineffable plan to make the world ready for the Second Coming. They are insane and dangerous.
Off topic, slightly, but not exactly, I imagine you’re pretty much laughing at the fact that Charlie Crist, tired of dealing with neo-cons and teabaggers, announced today that he’s now a Democrat. Congratulations to the fanatics in the Republican Party for driving yet another sane person out of their clown college.
Charlie was getting more and more annoyed dealing with the legislature, and trying to get them to deal with the state’s problems, instead of sending him a load of garbage every year. He spend a lot time vetoing things that were just too off-the-wall.
I get the feeling that he wants to make another run for Senator, and he knows he can’t win the Republican nomination.
Somebody said Charlie wants to run for Governor again. That apparently is allowed by the Florida Constitution (i.e., you can serve two terms, have to sit out a term, then can run for another two terms). On the other hand, vengeance against Rubio decidedly might be a motivation, and who can blame him? 😈
One can only hope it is governor because the ability of the state to survive the fraudster-in-chief is unknown. State government is so screwed up that things only worked when we were growing hand-over-fist. With the recession and oil spill, we are in sad shape, and the Republicans don’t seem to notice the problems.