Decorate the Graves

Perhaps they volunteered, perhaps they were conscripted/ Perhaps they kept a shop, perhaps they tilled the soil/ Perhaps they left the States to shouts of "baby killer", perhaps they heard "no blood for oil"/ Perhaps they knew or feared that they would not return alive, perhaps they felt indestructible, filled with confidence, certain but sadly mistaken that they would survive/ Perhaps they left with timid heart afraid of what they'd face/ Perhaps, they knew our greatness as an exceptional place/ Perhaps they never wanted war/ Perhaps they knew America was worth dying for/ Perhaps they had loved this land since Mayflower time, perhaps they were fresh off the boat without a dime/ For the city on the hill in this land that still beckons even today/ It was their duty or privilege- their lives to pay/ For liberty is always purchased with blood spilled/ As tyrants and madmen refuse to yield/ Were they here long enough to say "a life well-lived"?/ Indeed they were, for freedom's sake/ The struggle to which every patriot must remain awake/ None went willingly to their young grave/ But it is the United States of America that their sacrifice continues to save.   God bless them and rest their souls

A Rogue Company

Is the corporation now entrusted with fixing the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico more interested in the media spin of damage control than actual control of damage? With an abysmal record of violations nearly one hundred times worse than the amount of wrong doing wrought by BP's nearest ranking competitor in terms of reported safety violations with BP held to account for more than seven hundred (700) and the second worst ranking offender responsible for only eight (8) in the same period, one must ask just how flawed the management of BP has been. No sane person would claim that BP deliberately unleashed this disaster, but no one could doubt that some grave, perhaps even criminal negligence has been involved. 

Matter of Fairness

It was never my tendency to blame US Presidents for acts beyond their control such as acts of God like hurricanes or acts of corporate negligence like oil spills. I could find no fault in the last President Bush for Hurricane Katrina nor initially in Obama for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But when the response was slow to Katrina, the responsibility shifted from Louisiana politicians who had diverted money sent from Washington to strengthen the levees for years to other purposes (including some purported to have been less than above board) and even away from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and to an administration that seemed slow to grasp the magnitude of need. So too was I loathe to blame the Obama administration for a catastrophe that they could not have prevented. But when President Obama tries to take credit for what turns out to be a failed attempted solution, "top kill"- I do start to doubt. And when White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs demands the press corps "stop asking so many questions" about the BP spill my skepticism intensifies. And the last straw for me might be when the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has the nerve to blame the last President Bush. At least with Bush's background as an oil man, he might have known more rapidly how to address the ongoing crisis or who to call to figure it out. Obama deserves no blame for the initial spill, some for the tardy response, but will gain no credit in my book for whatever it takes to eventually stem the tide of this disaster.

Defender of Civilization

As another Memorial Day approaches, where many will commemorate the sacrifice that each of us should appreciate every day, America continues her battles of the last century where the United States was literally the shield against benighted forces who would cast the world into darkness. In the First World War, the conduct of Germany was so brutal that they were derisively called "Huns". Troops of Kaiser Wilhelm II devastated tiny Belgium, massacring thousands of civilians before going on to rape the area of France they managed to occupy. They introduced weapons of mass destruction to the world, launching the first military attack with poison gas. Ultimately, only the might of the United States was able to thwart brutal German aggression in World War I. The Second World War only enhanced America as the protector of freedom for the globe. What the United States defeated with enormous cost not only in treasure but more importantly shed blood, was evil on the march. The Japanese who attacked Pearl Harbor had released a new brand of brutality on Asia as Japan started a war of aggression by promulgating their phony Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere- a conquest that included the notorious Rape of Nanking and the infamous Unit 731 and its fatal experiments on thousands of prisoners. Need I mention the unparalleled Nazi viciousness against Europe that gave us the world's worst genocide. Only America- the arsenal of democracy, the storehouse of freedom, and the spreader of liberty could confront and defeat the forces of fascism and slavery. The Red menace in Korea that only America could fend off still threatens the free South Korea even today. The same Communist threat cost American lives in Southeast Asia and where the US left, reeducation camps and crimes against humanity were sure to follow. Dangerous regimes in Grenada and Panama were pacified at a cost in US blood before we finally confronted the madness of Saddam Hussein. Americans have fallen in the war on terror which we were forced to wage as jihad hit our shores and we still find ourselves locked in this life and death struggle even if the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge this and plays a semantic game trying to call the battle something else. The United States of America has willingly paid the high price for liberty and not just our own but wherever it was threatened across the world. Sadly, more are bound to join the ranks of the honored dead as the struggle for freedom is never over.

A Media Infestation

ABC's Nightline aired a report last evening on head lice. For all the world, when I heard a report was going to air about vile little vermin, I thought the dinosaur media was doing an expose` about themselves. After all, would most people not describe the main stream media as conniving, self-promoting leftists, liars, and Obama flacks? The dinosaur press is no longer interested in ferreting out facts or shining the light of truth to power but an active participant in whitewashing any problems that can be attributed to Obama while promoting his socialist agenda which they share. It is just a shame that there is not a handy treatment to rid ourselves of their rampant corrupting influence.

Good Riddance Scowl

Occasionally, a figure transcends his medium and becomes emblematic of so much else. To many, John Wayne became more than an actor, his life reflected the physical embodiment of American patriotism. Wayne enhanced our sense of self, which was of course largely to the good, but sometimes a performer arises who pulls us down, whose very presence on the stage is coarsening and to the ill. Simon Cowell is in this league of corrupter. Cowell received some undue adulation last evening from ABC's Nightline as he temporarily exited the national stage with great fanfare and was praised for his candor, his supposedly refreshing honesty, where once again, the dinosaur media got it wrong. Cowell was no creature of virtue but a vicious breaker of dreams who criticized in the most inflammatory and damaging way. Cowell, so far as I know, is no singer of great repute but has seen fit to eviscerate his betters who had the guts to put themselves up on that stage under the microscope of scrutiny. Cowell put a twist on the FOX network catch phrase- his tagline should be "you create, I deride". Cowell has gained tremendous wealth and notoriety by mocking those whose talent and courage he could never match. What brilliant gift did Cowell ever display as he dished out his unique brand of heartless criticism bent on sidetracking careers and destroying psyches? Simon Cowell should go down as one who diminished the culture. I will not miss him ripping apart the aspirations of others as Cowell seemed to me the type who relished pulling the wings off butterflies as a child and grew up to vastly enrich himself by crushing hope.

Window on Taiwan

The author hopes sincerely that this is no more than one more paranoid rambling, and declares this commentary is a worst case scenario. What if the current tension on the Korean peninsula has been orchestrated by Communist China to deflect America's attention and resources away from Taiwan to enable the People's Republic of China to finally make a move against the Republic of China essentially unopposed beyond the meager means that Taiwan can muster on her own? What better time to consolidate the authority of Red China than when the US is led by Barack Hussein Obama who is palpably weak in foreign relations with American forces already involved in war in two nations than to start hostilities against Formosa right after our already limited forces are about to be forced to confront a third front in Korea? The Communist Chinese could win in a walkover with a US leader loathe to confront the People's Republic and having basically forsworn the use of nukes against Red China which would be the only weapons that could make a difference.