He praised this book.

Okay. Colonel David Hackworth, Senator John McCain praise this book.

ARE THEY full of it?

Damn, RIP Hack, I wish you were alive not only would you have endorsed Jim but you would have cut an ad for him.

Here's my take. This is attacking EVERY veteran who has ever served and the things we have seen as a result to war.

I wanna know where the vets are, and where the Generals are on this.

Clark, Zinni, Newbold, Eaton, Batiste, Col. Wilkerson?

Seriously. In a military state, we need these generals if not in TV ads, in the spotlight.

Speaking of Wes Clark, I hear rumors that he very well may be in town soon to stump for Jim Webb.  Stay tuned for more details as I receive them.

That's my take on it, and I'm trying to be objective, though it is hard at this stage in a campaign.

Mike Shear pointed out, e.g., the following, which we all know:

Jennifer Allen wrote a book in 2000 that describes brutality at the hands of George Allen, including allegations that he dragged her to her bed by her hair and once dangled her over Niagara Falls.

Three weeks ago, Allen gave a two-minute televised speech to Virginians in which he pleaded for a return to issues after having defended himself against personal character scandals for months. "The negative personal attacks and baseless allegations have also pulled us away from what you expect and deserve," Allen said in the unusual paid commercial.

By Friday morning, however, the new allegations unleashed by his campaign had become the highlight of morning talk radio shows and cable news outlets.

Another section of the Mike Shear/Tim Craig article:

But others said Webb's novels are works of imagination intended to be informative and provide entertainment, not statements on actions that Webb endorses.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), who has endorsed Allen, enthusiastically praised Webb's book, "Lost Soldiers," and was quoted on the book jacket.

"James Webb's new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future . . .[and repeats the book jacket quote]

What gets me about the Allen attack is the suggestion that if Webb wrote about it he must secretly harbor pedophilia tendencies.  This is about as idiotic as saying that when a lawyer represents a rapist he or she is in favor of rape.  The writer reports what he sees and knows.  In war every sexual perversion, every possible permutation on the theme of use and abuse of others is present.  Heck, to be honest it's here, too. 

From CNN:
CNN'S WOLF BLITZER: But you had written a book entitled "Sisters."

LYNNE CHENEY: I did write a book entitled "Sisters."

BLITZER: And it did have lesbian characters.

CHENEY: No, not necessarily. This description is a lie, I'll stand on that.

BLITZER: There is nothing in there about rapes and brothels?

CHENEY: Wolf, could we talk about a children's book for a minute?

WOLF: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.

CHENEY: Well I have nothing to explain.

"In metzitzah b'peh, the mohel places his mouth on the freshly circumcised penis to draw blood away from the cut."

Ee gads.  Luckily, according to an article in Slate Magazine by Christopher Hitchens, "most Jews abandoned [this practice] many years ago..."

Thank God!  Still, I strongly recommend that you don't write about it in a novel and then run against George Allen.  Ha.

from:http://www.cirp.org/...

THE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE JEWISH RELIGION

CIRCUMCISION (Heb. milah), removal of the foreskin in an operation performed on all male Jewish children on the eighth day after birth and also upon male converts to Judaism. Circumcision was enjoined by God upon Abraham and his descendants (Gn. 17.10-12) and has always been regarded as the supreme obligatory sign of loyalty and adherence to Judaism. ***

To this was added a third requirement, metsitsah (sucking of the blood). This was originally done by the mohel (circumciser) applying his lips to the penis and drawing off the blood by sucking.

Here's a serious literary review of a fictional work where the bris is the subject:

http://yiddishbookce...

Moacyr Scliar’s fabulist novel, The Centaur in the Garden, is an extended Midrash replete with biblical references and mystical allusions. The book is narrated by the droll Guedali Tartakovsky, a Jewish centaur whose Russian immigrant parents are the only Jews homesteading in Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil. ***
The Tartakovskys encounter biblical calamities that include drought, flood, hail and insect plagues. Their closest neighbors are miles away. Yet this terrifying wilderness brings the family a measure of security when Guedali is born. After a difficult and shocking birth, the baby centaur can be easily secreted away in this new world. Eight days after his birth, Guedali’s circumcision is lewd vaudeville rather than a solemn, holy entrance into the covenant. In the humorous, erotically charged scene, Guedali recounts that “the mohel draws near, and my father separates my hind feet. And there they are, face to face, the penis and the mohel, the huge penis and the little mohel, the small fascinated mohel.”

Of course the U.S. is so uptight that the Wash Post won't even use the word "penis."  (It has, in its history, on a few rare occasions.)

I learned earlier this year that I can really only write about things that I believe in strongly.  So I've basically stopped writing about anything else, which has included not saying a whole lot about this Allen/Webb race.  When I see this sort of beyond-parody behavior from Allen, that's the kind of thing that gets me fired up.  How could it not?