Meet Roxanne Walker…The South Carolina Broadcasters Association named Roxanne Radio Personality of the Year in 2002. She has been honored for her political opinion commentary by the Greenville Chapter of Women in Communications.
Roxanne resides in Taylors, SC with her husband Alan and the best dog in the world Allie.
Entries by Roxanne Walker (356)
Keeping the President Insulated from Reality
USA! USA! USA!
When a reporter asked Laura Bush recently about her husband’s abysmal approval ratings, she said she didn’t believe the polls. “As I travel around the United States,” she said, “I see a lot of appreciation for him.” George W. Bush himself often notes the support he gets from the Americans he meets on the road. “Strangers stand up and say, in front of a couple thousand people, ‘I’m praying for you,’” he said at an “Ask the President” event in West Virginia last year. “It helps do the job, it helps keep perspective.”
Bush calls it an “amazing” part of the presidency.
Amazing? Not so much.
From the recently released “Presidential Advance Manual”:
“All presidential events must be ticketed or accessed by a name list method for preventing demonstrators. This is the best method for preventing demonstrators. People who are obviously going to try to disrupt the event can be denied entrance at least to the VIP area between the stage and the main camera platform …
“There are several ways the advance person can prepare a site to minimize demonstrators. First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route …
“The formation of ‘rally squads’ is a common way to prepare for demonstrators by countering their message. This tactic involves utilizing small groups of volunteers to spread favorable messages using large hand-held signs, placards or perhaps a long sheet banner, and placing them in strategic areas around the site. These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators. The rally squads’ task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drawn out protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove demonstrators from the event site. The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young Republican organizations, local athletic teams and fraternities/sororities …
“Once a group of demonstrators has been identified, the advance person must decide what action to take. If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the president, or has potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrators’ effect.”
Roxanne Walker
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Suicides Among Soldiers Soar
Another price of war
From the Associated Press: “Ninety-nine U.S. soldiers killed themselves last year, the highest rate of suicide in the Army in 26 years, a new report says.” With more than one out of four soldiers who committed suicide doing so while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, the report finds what the AP calls a “significant relationship between suicide attempts and the number of days deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops were participating in the war effort.”
U.S. Soldiers Summarize the Surge and the News isn't Good
“We are in the land of the blood feuds”
The new conventional wisdom on Iraq — although Iraqis aren’t doing what they need to do politically, the “surge” is working militarily — takes a blow from Sudarsan Raghavan’s on-the-scene report in today’s Washington Post.
Raghavan has been spending time in the “the unruly outer fringes of the Sunni area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death,” where “American soldiers navigate more than a dozen battle zones straddling the fault lines of sect and tribe.”
Some of what he’s heard from U.S. soldiers and their commanders there:
Col. Michael Garrett on how his troops are “fighting in multiple directions”: “I’m not fighting one sect or the other. I’m fighting both. And not only am I fighting both, but at certain points I have to put my forces in between the Sunni and Shia groups to protect the populace.”
Maj. Craig Whiteside on the difference between Shia and Sunnis: “Shiites don’t like to shoot… . They just EFP you. The Sunnis use snipers, RPGs, mortars — they’ll attack you in every possible way.”
Maj. Rick Williams on the nature of the fight. “We are in the land of the blood feuds. It’s very difficult to tell a tribal fight from a sectarian fight because interests are pretty mixed. You can’t just put up a fence … Any group you work with can turn on you. That is part of the operating cost.”
Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage on what U.S. troops accomplish when they attack forces of al-Qaida in Iraq and the Sunni Islamic Army: “We blow AQI and Jaish al-Islami up and make them bigger than they are.”
Sgt. Josh Claeson on how it all feels: “Our basic mission here is to drive around and get blown up.”