Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined "To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad."

In each case, Hadley's audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley's share's worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

You know I remember this argument.

I was warned by Mediamatters years ago to tone down my obscenities.

We had these generals or retired generals arguing for war in Iraq who were paid monies from defense contractors and propaganda agencies and they would appear on MSNBC and CNN and certainly FOXNEWS arguing for the war or wars as it were.

And then we were informed of the generals' stake in all of this.

These generals or ex-generals had signed contracts involving their recompense...as it were.

The longer the war(s) lasted, the more money they would receive.

Unlike HUFFPO I was not denied access to Mediamatters.

I was just asked to get rid of the 'obscenities'.

The 'F' word and the 'S' word have little to do with the real issues. Although the Obscenities have even less to do with the real issues.

It is stupid to simply attack the right with obscenities!

Let them do that, as it were.

The point of all of this is that generals still are being paid to promote war.

Oh, but they are ex-generals.

DAMN!

These ex-generals are paid by the Masters of War for chrissakes!

I used to get so damn mad at this; but what else are we to expect?

Of course these generals only receive a pension three times the medium income of Americans plus a few checks working on the  Board of Directors of some war making corporation.

But that is not enough!

To not disclose all sources of income from ex-generals when they pontificate or propagandize is a mortal sin in my opinion.

DAMN!

BUSH AND CHENEY!

Bush and Cheney were never quite friends. They did not see each other out of the workplace. Cheney did not spend social weekends at Camp David. On election night in 2000 and again in 2004, they watched the returns separately at first, coming together only late in the evening when they thought they could publicly claim victory. “They weren’t personally close,” said Ari Fleischer, the president’s first White House press secretary. “Cheney didn’t go jogging with George Bush. He was everything that Bush designed when he chose Dick Cheney to be counselor” — meaning a veteran Washington hand who would give him straight advice.

That's what friends are for.

CURLY RAND PAUL

Instead, his speech made me realize just how desperately Rand Paul wants to be President. Paul opened his speech with an attention grabbing line:  “From Boston to Zanzibar, there is a worldwide war on Christianity."

Why isn't it from Antarctica to Zanzibar?

What about Australia?

I mean Russia has been battling Muslims after it was the USSR and before it was the USSR! FOR CHRISSAKES!

Now in fairness, Paul did use about a minute of his speech to acknowledge that many Muslims are peaceful. He even stated that he hoped that the faith could one day return to a time where Muslims valued, “the scientific method over fanaticism."

I mentioned as a comment on some other blog recently that we must admit that there are as many Christians in the world as Muslims. Do we go to war against 1.5 billion people?

But is Curly Rand really saying that the fundamentalist Christian is locked into science? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT!

Send your kids to Texas for their education and they will make real fine ditch diggers.

Not that I have anything against ditch diggers.

HEALTH INSURANCE

William F. Buckley, Jr., in so many ways the father of modern American conservatism, once famously described the conservative as “standing athwart History, yelling ‘Stop!’” But the shrill faux-individualism of today’s Southern-fried conservatives actively abets one of the most destructive trends in American life: the fact that our notions of agency are increasingly fragmented even as the structural forces which constrain agency grow ever larger. In a 2012 Republican Presidential debate held in Florida, Ron Paul, Rand’s father, asked rhetorically what should happen if someone without health insurance shows up at an emergency room. “Let him die!” roared part of the audience, to loud applause.

But the greatest line I have read in a month came from the New Yorker as regards Health Insurance:
 

The dream of keeping poor people from seeing a doctor shall never die.