My hero

Ii I were this young man's band teacher, surely I would have to make some comment in class the day following the concert to put the matter to rest. I would salute him!

Article: Allen West on the Marines Incident: 'Shut Your Mouth, War Is Hell'

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an widely republished e-mail exactly where liberal pundits could stick their opinions regarding the Marines allegedly urinating on a few corpses.  While the incident was wrong, it is amazing - the speed of information - and the speed to self-righteous indignation of the American media, and how quickly we seem to go after our own with the greatest zeal.  Is it any surprise that we now have sketchy "allies" like Russia jumping to get in a few hooks and jabs at the American human rights record whenever they can?  Yet they do, and it is absurd and sad. 

Excerpted from the Weekly Standard, January 13, 2012

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

QOTD: "Politically correct lockjaw"

   If John McCain had asked the same questions that Donald Trump now asks, he'd be President. But McCain got political correct lockjaw on the so called 'debates' and he was afraid he would be called a racist. His handlers seemed to be working for Obama, McCain did a disservice to the American People and we got someone that to this day we don't know who he is, where he's been, what he believes, if he's a Moslem and all the other questions about the communists in his background and now he's ruining the country most think on purpose. Trump would have asked the questions and would have been President, John McCain did a huge disservice to this country.

- From an article: "Trump rides birth certificate issue," Washington Times, 10 April 2011.  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/10/trump-rides-issue-of-presidents-birth/

"Lost Dog"

   About two years ago, I lost my dog. She was gone for a week, during the awful nor'easter as I remember.  Wind and rain blew in hard for days. It couldn't have come at a worse time, due the weather, and many personal torrents I was going through - some of the worst imaginable. (This brings to mind a Men's Health article I have clipped [somewhere] on surviving the most traumatic periods of adulthood:  Loss of a job;  divorce; death. How do men confront these crises head-on?). This was truly the last straw. I couldn't believe she couldn't find her way home - why did she run away? Where was she? Was she o.k.?

   Two years later, medical checkups are complete and she is loving her life being a dog.  I was suddenly motivated to wish a big THANK YOU again to especially Gary B., HR Animal Rescue, VBSPCA, VB Animal Control, and many kind people in the neighborhood. I know pets go missing every day, but you must stay hopeful. After a week, one of the fliers I posted got me a phone call and found her huddled under a bush, two full miles away from home, emaciated and covered in mud.  She whined all the way to Arby's, where she took her return-to-civilization feast from a relieved daddy.  The folks that'd helped lured her out with some tuna, and when I called her over it was truly a happy reunion for all involved. 

   That week was really hard.  She was antsy the day she left, I'd come home almost twice trying to get out the door for work to grab coffee, the lunch I forgot, whatever.

   I'd waited for a few hours to see what would happen after finding her missing, then my 'occifer' determination kicked in somehow and there I was, out putting up fliers at 4 a.m.

   I published 200+ lost dog posters with a pic and phone number on major intersections within a 1 mi. radius from my home/"command center". She was sighted at the gas station the day of, and then I would drive around daily, calling her name from my car and blowing a dog whistle. I remember the desperation I felt in doing so, but I was determined to find the little creature who brought me so much happiness at her antics. I surely owed it to her as her master, all she ever wanted was a place to sleep and a bite to eat in return for unconditional love and loyalty. Today, I take special note of how she "knows what I'm thinking" and is so attuned to me. She is well-behaved, sympathetic when I'm down, knows when it's time for a car ride or walkies with only a look & no commands. I'm so lucky to have such a friend, and I consider that the work I put in to get her back among my greatest triumphs, and a reminder of the divine.

Some final thoughts:

1. Get your pet chipped. This is important if your pet is found and turned in, or ever stolen.

2. There are GPS collars, about $200. Pretty expensive, but an oz. of prevention...
3. If searching, ask people you see out for walks if they've seen anything, pass them your info or one of your fliers.

4. Fliers need large text and photo and REWARD stated.

5. Contact animal rescue groups - they get the word out.

6. Ensure holes in your fence are shored up!!!  (My biggest screw-up - not noticing.)

7. Don't give up hope. Your pet is good at finding water and something to munch on. Craigslist is a high-visibility, useful community bulletin board. If you see a stray pet running around, I encourage you to use good judgement (safety) in your actions, and do your part to let people know.

Thank you again, and God bless.

Happy Independence Day

Today in good ol' small town Mudville, saw two young adults standing on a corner waving U.S. flags.
They weren't trying to bring people into a benefit car wash, they weren't selling anything, they were just showing love of country. They could be inside playing video games, stuffing themselves, playing horseshoes, but they were not.

That scene was the highlight of my Independence Day celebration.

Cue John Mellencamp. 

Memorial Day

"While visiting the American cemetery in Normandy, a French gentleman and his friends came upon Amos, and when he realized that Amos was a WW2 veteran who fought in Normandy, the French gentleman gave Amos a letter. My brother Joe read the letter to us and as we all listened, we all cried. You can see the thankfulness in the French gentleman, as he holds Amos's hand and thanks him as he leaves. A truly enchanting moment." - 'almeidaal'

Potpourri

Gentle reader, a few collected notes that I've not felt like putting into long form.  Cheers.

SELF

~Grateful for the encouraging calls from my mentors and friends, they seem to come just when needed, everytime I start to dip a little bit. Each one is a sign of growth, a notch in the belt, and a blessing.  The full range of topics comes out - from news reports of dancing girls in buses (the so-called "Skank Tank" roaming somewhere near CENTCOM proper), to very personal recollections of the outbreak of war, and its unseen heroes.

-> Task request: Finish digesting the New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics to help refresh and enrich my perspectives of literature, music & lyrics.  It's a phone book - there's no way I'm going to upload all that knowledge, but it's a healthy diversion.  I've converted the spare bedroom into my ready room, it'll find a good home from there and outside of my bookcase, it's primed for action.

~Valuable repost for you:  Managing Oneself, by Peter Drucker.

~Today's going to be a good day for creativity, one of my favorite words was just featured on dictionary.com

Sylvan
-adjective
a.of, pertaining to, or inhabiting the woods.
b.consisting of or abounding in woods or trees; wooded; woody: a shady, sylvan glade.
c.made of trees, branches, boughs, etc.

Another interesting find came from Wikipedia:
Metonymy and synecdoche


One example of a single sentence that displays synecdoche, metaphor, and metonymy is: "Fifty keels ploughed the deep," where "keels" is the synecdoche as it names the whole (the ship) after a particular part (of the ship); "ploughed" is the metaphor as it substitutes the concept of ploughing a field for moving through the ocean; and "the deep" is the metonym, as "depth" is an attribute associated with the ocean.
~Grateful for my favorite tree, the weeping willow, whose little cutting alone sprang roots and leaves in my window.  Amazing.

~Star Hustler is geek chic.  Loved him ever since my paper route days - 3a.m., you're the only one awake and watching, the truck drives, the bundles crash with a thud, and you're putting on your sneakers in front of the bluish hues from the screen.

~Got the chance to drive on the legendary Route 66 driving west out of D.C. last weekend, it's been far too long off the open road.

~Made the exciting discovery of a lean-to in the tiny woods around my house. Every kid should have a little fort out in the brush and scrub that's only accessible by a tiny hidden path.

POLITICS

~Story of a true daughter of freedom, Star Parker.

"Parker said the war on poverty has really been a war waged by liberals on four fronts -- "war on the family, the war on thought, the war on tradition and a war on religion."
"The poverty that we see today is directly related to people having children outside of marriage and then not working to support those children," she said.

~Annelise Anderson writes in the National Review about the great communicator:

"The triumph of free markets and democracy over totalitarianism is the great political story of the 20th century, and Ronald Reagan was one of its most visible authors. The man who emerges from these writings is different from the public figure we all know. It was often said about Reagan that 'what you see is what you get,' and in a way this is true — he was open and honest and believed what he said. He spoke from the heart."

~Quote of the day, found in the fora:

Internet jackass: "The term 'illegal' is a media/hate word that doesn't reflect the complexities of the individual cases of undocumented aliens, nor does it have any bearing on the legal or societal merits of allowing any particular individual to stay or deciding to deport them. But by all means, stick with your one label fits all approach to other people. It works for lots of ignorant bigots every day."
The tongue-in-cheek response: "Kind of like 'racist' is a word used by the morally weak to automatically trump all rational dialogue.  Kind of like the word 'homophobe' is a label to tear down morally straight people.  Kind of like 'teabagger' is applied to a group of people that aren't fans of being taxed to death (but you are?).  Tired of heterophobes like that guy."

Ouch.

~A good parent to the rescue:  "Had a 'date night' with his daughter (15yo) to show her how a real man (gentleman) with class and manners treats a date with respect. Not that her mother and I are ready for her to start dating, just to teach an impressionable young lady the minimum standards she should accept. However, our daughter took the opportunity to attempt to persuade me to let her start dating!!! My daughter: the negotiator!" 

POP CULTURE

~On 24:  Fan of Kiefer but haven't watched much of the show. Saw they're maybe making a movie. One of my best friends tried to get me into it, but nowadays I watch mainly movies and a show that starts with "L."
Beyond the first two seaons, was the theme mostly that they had to prevent a terrorist from carrying out some task within a given time frame? Thus, the whole clock thing. It was funny that on Simpsons and South Park, virtually identical '24' spoofs came out at the same time.  Also, did they choose our usual "politically correct terrorists" e.g. Kiefer vs. Irish Republican Army, Kiefer vs. former Soviet republics trying to sell a nuke... were any of the bad guys "post 2001 era bad guys" or not? Just curious for the sake of my own pop culture osmosis.
P.S.: Funny how Lost came into play around the same time Survivor had so much momentum - i.e. both going with the stuck on deserted island theme.

~The Simpsons program is abundantly, erm, liberal, which is really no secret.  It's a show that should've been put to pasture long ago.   I watched a gag on the "Stealing First Base" ep with a montage of kissing from popular movies...  I thought, "Please don't.  Please don't," and - yep, men kissing. 

IRONIC AND SAD DEPT.

~Tulsa Chicken Hut new marketing promo: "I'd step over a dead body for a three-piece bucket!" - Marv

~"Commentate." Why do folks in & around sports insist on using this word? There is such a thing as a "commentator," but no such thing as the verb "commentate."  The word they're looking for is "comment," which is quite sufficient.

Photo of the month

(Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

A West Point cadet reads "Kill Bin Laden" while awaiting the President's speech on Afghanistan.

Potpourri - "The path ahead is without stations or timetables"

I. A new 80s video for your advancement in post-graduate 80s studies:




"The Thin Red Line" in film and literature has represented defensive maneuver and resistance from a "thinly spread military unit." "The first use of the expression referred to the resistance by the red-coated 93rd (Highland) Regiment of the United Kingdom in the Crimean War." (Wikipedia) The Glass Tiger namesake vid hearkens back to other 80s ballads, I'm thinking Cutting Crew in particular.

II. Film: OHorten - 7/10 (Very good)
Thoroughly enjoyed this off-beat Norwegian film from 2008, especially for its aesthetic. I used to be the first to step around symbolism like a superstitious kid jumping over cracks; too much seems pretentious. Even though symbolism is the main expository-creative device in this film, it's not overthought, not overused, and is a pleasant experience and an artistic statement. Collectively, OHorten stands out like it's trying to be a portrait in an art show. We open quietly: Hurtling through a frozen hinterland, in and out of tunnels, the eponymous hero of the film makes his penultimate trip. Streaking through familiar territory and a life afforded the comforts of routine, we are quickly aware that OHorten's transition is going to become extraordinary. To me, the train is the most elegant metaphor for change, and therefore is an original and intriguing pairing of subject to plot. The soul of OHorten is a vagabond finding home.

Bombshell indictment of Donkey shenanigans appears in Salon.com

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down." - Camille Paglia

Excerpted from: http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/index.html


Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.


No need for me to boast in a period of national political turmoil, so please don't interpret this as such. However, there is a need to rally - being that events fall ever quickly from public consciousness in time for the next news story - and it is the shift in balance of what's making news today that deserves examination.

A haymaker of an article appeared in Salon.com this week (Wow, on Salon?), probably leaving many rat-out-your-parents ethics libs catatonic. This honest indictment by Camille Paglia is some of the finest writing I've seen: graceful, dot-connecting, cogent. Rarely will one of the left's own have the honesty to dare criticize her cronies. Some of the GOP ignore this painful lesson (prominent voices in the party admit they're in disarray and have long been in tatters), but Sen. McCain, the former presidential candidate obviously hadn't when he impaled himself with his own lance, courting the hispanic "open-the-floodgates" lobby, and shishkebabing the rest of the party with him.

So when honest, courageous voices like Paglia's surface, we need to listen well. Her courage invested with this is pallates taller than the shoebox I saw mustered by the GOP in producing a leader for the 2008 election. It's courage we've seen highly evident in these vitriolic town hall meetings capturing so much press (!) and I'm hopeful for Salon for producing an alternative viewpoint. I won't go as far as being "optimistic" though.

Americans, far too long feeling helpless to throw a wedge in the revolving door of legislators and MSM antics quickly forget what a house of cards is in their midst. How often can grassroots America stand by while their intelligence is insulted? From "flyover states" to "astro-turf," it's evident how far out of touch the liberal elite is with its constituency. A unique feature of Paglia's article is making us confront the cumulative nature of these looney goings-on in government. She not only talks the health-care reform debacle, she stacks up all the other remarkable stories which had quickly scuttled away, winds up, and sends them all reeling:

• Speaker of the house (3rd in line to the Presidency) "Representative" Nancy Pelosi calling private citizens "Nazis"

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom I used to admire for her smooth aplomb under pressure, has clearly gone off the deep end with her bizarre rants about legitimate town-hall protests by American citizens. She is doing grievous damage to the party and should immediately step down."

• - Not-so subtle caste warfare from the White House (Don't jump to dismissing the storied "beer summit" and criticism as racism)

"Of course, it didn't help matters that, just when he needed maximum momentum on healthcare, Obama made the terrible gaffe of declaring that, even without his knowing the full facts, Cambridge, Mass., police had acted "stupidly" in arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. Obama's automatic identification with the pampered Harvard elite (wildly unpopular with most sensible people), as well as his insulting condescension toward an officer doing his often dangerous duty, did serious and perhaps irreparable damage to the president's standing. The strained, prissy beer summit in the White House garden afterward didn't help. Is that the Obama notion of hospitality? Another staff breakdown."

• Incomprehensible information warfare thrust initiated by former jour-nihilist, now comms-Chief-of-Staff backfiring: http://www.breitbart.tv/spokesman-calls-fox-news-host-flabbergasting-for-questioning-white-house-request-for-fishy-e-mail/ "Report fishy concerns about health-care to flag@whitehouse.gov"

"But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House."



Paglia's article is a modern-day Crisis. Thomas Paine would be proud. Pulitzer, please.