August 11, 2005, Aim high
It seems like being a blue state would be a state of mind if one's state has any desire not to have its Air National Guard facility shuttered by the Pentagon, according to this Grey Lady piece. To demonstrate that the Pentagon's commitment is to protect us from "threats of the present", note that one of the facilities scheduled for mothballing (or at least, losing its main fighter contingents) is none other than Massachusetts' Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, which was the location from which fighters were scrambled to confront two airliners that eventually crashed into the World Trade Center.
I wonder what new Dog Run member Bulldog Manifesto will make out of this... the Bulldog has been all over the 9-11 and WTC stories... and like me (and now the Grey Lady herself), is observing... problems... with how the 9-11 Commission (this generation's Warren Commission)... drew its conclusions (lately, of course, the 9-11 Commission seems to have blown off evidence that the military was actually well aware of the identities of Mohammad Atta and three other highjackers in 2000...)
Well, we briefly talked about base closures as just one of Secretarrissimo Rumsfeld's half-assed short term measures in our recent interview with Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Hackett Fischer, who compared and contrasted General George Washington's forward thinking approaches to building military infrastructure, as opposed to the current thinking about destroying it (though still raising its cost).
Who knows. Despite the longings of many (perhaps most) Americans to be told what to do, this remains a free country, and truth is slowly, slowly filtering out there. Frankly, this "punish the bastards who didn't vote for me" strategy of base closings will result in a blow-back: the GOP House Majority (a/k/a "the ballgame") is based on blue-state GOP Congressman (mostly from exurbs and some rural areas). They will not let the President's and Secretary's personal petty needs for budgetary revenge cost them their own cushy seats...
At least I don't think so... More mirth and merriment to follow...