Still Pathetic

Jennifer Rubin says that President Obama did too go around apologizing for America. Don’t remember that? It helps to understand that “apologizing for America” is another way to say “assuring the world that the George W. Bush administration was over.”

Liberals don’t even see that Obama’s excoriating his predecessor is apologizing for this nation, but of course it is. George W. Bush wasn’t acting as a private citizen, and whatever he actions he took were done in the name of the United States.

As Kevin Drum says, “This pretty much mocks itself, doesn’t it? In any case, Jimmy Carter will certainly be glad to hear that conservatives plan to stop criticizing all the actions he took in the name of the United States.”

See also Paul Waldman.

Dear Right: Please Stop Being Pathetic

While I’m still waiting for someone else to notice that Paul Ryan appears to think the modern U.S. Navy commissioned fleet includes battleships — it doesn’t — the Daily Caller has “fact checked” the President’s assertion that the military has less need for horses and bayonets these days.

Wrong, says the DC.

“Obama snarked that “we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

“But horses and bayonets both remain vital parts of the U.S. arsenal.”

Horses? I tried to find out how many horses are owned by the Department of Defense these days. And yes, there still are cavalry horses. I learned there is a small ceremonial horse cavalry detachment that is part of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood. And here they are:

Yes, I can see that the modern military would be crippled without horses.

The Daily Caller recalls that some of the Special Forces in Afghanistan commandeered and rode some local horses at one point in October 2002, but to conclude from that that horses are “a vital part of the U.S. arsenal” is, um, a stretch. And as I recall, they weren’t even our horses.

As far as bayonets are concerned, I defer to John Cole

Yes, Petunia. A couple hundred special forces guys rode horses in Afghanistan, basically because you can’t take an M1A2 or Hummer up the Khyber pass. Likewise, the Marines do still do carry bayonets (as does the Army!), but I don’t recall the last bayonet charge. The number of combat troops carrying bayonets is a small fraction than the 3.5 million grunts we had in WW1 wearing pith helmets and dying in bayonet charges and mustard gas. Likewise, there were tens of thousands of horses in WW1 in combat, there were a few in Afhanistan.
These people are just insane.

So it’s a plain fact that we do have fewer horses and bayonets, although there are some horses and bayonets. No battleships, though.

See also:

Eagerly awaiting Romney’s plan to make up our shortfall in Naval Colliers.”

“‘Horses and Bayonets,’ ‘Clear Eyes,’ and ‘Battleships’ at Final Romney-Obama Debate

Weaponry on the Cutting Edge

Romney May Have Done Worse Than I Thought

Last night was the final episode of the reality series “Big Bird, Binders, and Bayonets.” I came away thinking that the President was much more knowledgeable and coherent, but that it wasn’t as decisive as I would have liked. But the fallout says otherwise. The Right is visibly dispirited. The best Brett Stephens of the Wall Street Journal could say is that Mittens would make a “perfectly plausible” President. Basically, he didn’t have a psychotic break and accuse Grandpa Bob of putting ants in the porridge, so he’ll do.

The less stable elements of the Right are not so cautious. Glenn Beck tweeted, “I am glad to know that mitt agrees with Obama so much. No, really. Why vote?” Other tweets show righties going through the five stages of grief.

Charles Pierce:

It was early in the proceedings here on Monday night when I was struck with a horrible vision. It may have been right about that moment in the final presidential debate when Willard Romney — who, for most of the past two years, has been the most bellicose Mormon since they disbanded the Nauvoo Legion — looked deeply into the camera’s eye and, inches from actual sincerity, said, “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.” Or, perhaps, it was when, in a discussion of his newfound dedication to comprehensive solutions to complex problems, he announced his devotion to “a peaceful planet,” or when he cited a group of Arab scholars in support of loosening the grip of theocratic tyranny in the Middle East.

It was the horrible vision of John Bolton in four-point restraints.

Today, the President said Romney suffers from “stage three Romnesia.” See also the “Abbreviated Pundit Roundup” at Daily Kos.

The “horses and bayonets” line is the most talked-about part of the debate. This morning Paul Ryan said he didn’t understand the “bayonets” reference. He was not wearing a T-shirt that said “Because I am a moron,” but he might as well have, because most of the rest of the nation seems to have got it.

[Update: Ryan’s comment was even dumber than I had realized. Ryan said that “to compare modern American battleships and Navy with bayonets, I just don’t understand that comparison.” He thinks we still use battleships?]

(BTW, my dad really was in the horse cavalry, at Fort Riley, nearly 75 years ago. After Pearl Harbor the horses were put out to pasture and the cavalrymen reassigned. My dad ended up being an airplane mechanic. Notice that since then all the battleships have been put out to pasture, too, so to speak. I’m surprised Mittens doesn’t want to bring them back.)

Let us now look at the horse race overall. I keep running into news stories that say Romney is still surging, but Sam Wang and Nate Silver have both been saying the surge stalled and began to recede about a week ago. This morning’s tracking polls have Obama in the lead with the exception of Gallup, which has been an outlier lately. But there is no better indicator that Mitt’s recent surge has stopped than the fact righties are starting to fall back on poll denial again (or, at least, Nate Silver denial).