I decided to stop hi-jacking other threads to pass along some of the things I run across. All comments, discussions, quotes, jokes, or anything you just want to get off your chest are welcome.

Here is my first one:
JOHN GLENN - WELL SAID

Things that make you think a little........
1. There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January.....
In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January.
That's just one American city, about as deadly as the entire war torn country of Iraq.

2. When some claim President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following ...
FDR...led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us: Japan did.
From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost, an average of 112,500 per year.
Truman....finished that war and started one in Korea, North Korea never attacked us.
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost, an average of 18,334 per year.
John F. Kennedy. ..started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. Vietnam never attacked us.
Johnson....turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost, an average of 5,800 per year.

Clinton...went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent, Bosnia never attacked us.
He was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing.
Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.

3. In the two years since terrorists attacked us
President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran and North Korea without firing a shot, and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people.
The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.
We've been looking for evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.
It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick killing a woman.

Wait, there's more.......................

Some people still don't understand why military personnel do what they do for a living. This exchange between Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one man's explanation of why men and women in the armed services do what they do for a living. This is a typical, though sad, example of what some who have never served think of our military.

JOHN GLENN ON THE SENATE FLOOR
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13

Senator Howard Metzenbaum to Senator Glenn: "How can you run for Senate when you've never held a real job?"

Senator Glenn: "I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps. I served through two wars. I flew 149 missions. My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions. I was in the space program.

It wasn't my checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. It was not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the daily cash receipts to the bank. I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day... to a veteran's hospital and look those men - with their mangled bodies - in the eye, and tell THEM they didn't hold a job!
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA and go, as I have gone, to the widows and orphans of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee... and you look those kids in the eye and tell them that their Dads didn't hold a job.
You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch those waving flags.

You stand there, and you think about this nation, and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job? I'll tell you, Howard Metzenbaum; you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there were some men - SOME MEN - who held REAL jobs. And they required a dedication to a purpose - and a love of country and a dedication to duty - that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible.

I HAVE held a job, Howard! What about you?"
NOTE: For those who don't remember - During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney representing the Communist Party in the USA

If you can read this, thank a teacher.... If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran.
Please keep this circulating.

BIGREB

Good post. I received something very similar to that sometime ago, I didn't want to begin a new thread, but like you, locate an appropriate existing one.

Vet,
I saw this before also but I lost it before I could figure out where to post it. Now we don't have that problem. We can post anything we like here.

GREAT IDEA, REB...I'LL FIND SOME THINGS FOR YA:-)

Ben Stein's Last Column...


For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.


Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein


[Joseph Gyomber] Also:



We truly take a lot for granted.
Forget the Hollywood "stars" and the sports "heroes"...
and pass this on!

quote:

June 20, 2005
An Open Letter To Senator Dick Durbin:

Senator Durbin,

You’ve gone too far with the disgraceful comments you made on the Senate floor comparing our troops to Hitler, Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin.

I’ve seen some disgusting and foolish statements made by politicians in my time but yours would surely win the prize.

Pol Pot? Senator do you know how many Cambodians Pol Pot murdered in the killing fields? Millions. How many have died in Guantanamo? None.

Joseph Stalin? Nobody even knows for sure how many innocent Russians died at the hands of this demented lunatic and you have the nerve to even mention his foul name in the same breath as the United States Military?

Hitler? Well there’s one I remember, Senator. I remember seeing the newsreels of bulldozers pushing thousands of skeletal,
naked Jewish bodies into mass graves like so much garbage. When’s the last time that happened at Guantanamo Bay?

Gulags? Senator, you apparently don’t even know what a gulag is. Well to educate you, the gulags were cruel prisons in some of the most desolate places in the world where Stalin sent anybody who happened to disagree with him to be starved and worked to death. The detainees in Gitmo don’t even work and are fed better than they’ve ever been in their lives.

I’ve been to Guantanamo. Have you? Or are you just taking some nameless person’s word for all the things you claim happened
there?

And you say that not having the air conditioner set on the proper temperature in the detainees’ cells is torture? Well there were no air conditioners in Stalin’s gulags and Hitler’s concentration camps.

And the music was played too loud? Well mercy me, isn’t that just about the worse thing you can do to a human being.

You need to go back to school, Senator, and learn the facts. The facts being that there is absolutely no comparison between Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, gulags or concentration camps and what is going on in Guantanamo Bay. And you should be totally ashamed of yourself for making one.

You’ve gone too far, Senator. Even an out of control Howard Dean wouldn’t say what you’ve said. In guess it’s just the left wing of the Democrat party showing its true colors.

And no I am not a Republican. I am not an anything. I don’t vote along anybody’s party lines. I vote for the person not the party.

I’ll issue a challenge to you Senator Durbin.

Let me arrange a trip to Guantanamo Bay and you can see for yourself how the detainees are being treated. They could even put you in a cell for a while and you can have first hand experience and maybe they could even arrange to put you in one with one of the dear little darlings you’re so concerned about.

But if that happens, be sure you don’t carry any sharp pointed
articles into the cell with you.

These people play for keeps.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels
June 20, 2005

This is powerful! Speakers ON!

http://patriotfilesannex.org/General_Patton_Message.htm

Vet,

I have to disagree with "Patton's Ghost" on one thing...
Abu Ghraib was dispicable and inexcusable- not because the rapists, thugs, and terrorist murderers being held there didn't deserve it.

It was wrong because Military Police know better. It was wrong because the United States Military knows better. It was wrong because Americans are not animals. Leave the sickness, immorality, and disgusting behavior to the real animals- the jihadists.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Uncle_Sams_Kid,

Alyssa,

I caught your "error" prior to you editing it and it had me puzzled. NOW I get it Kid!

Kid and Vet,
Thanks, guys. I had a silly little joke to post this morning but after reading (and listening) to your posts I decided to wait a while.

Reb

GUESS WHAT TODAY IS...

THE 18TH ANNIVERSARY OF OUR 25TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!

OH, TO BE YOUNG, AGAIN

RONCO

Ummmmm...uh....okaaaay then, Happy Anniversary.

Ronco,

Isn't it great to have your best friend around this long? My mom and dad have been married for 55 years and you'd think they were still on their honeymoon.

ONLY GOOD FRIENDS CAN SURVIVE TOGETHER THIS LONG! WE HOPE TO SEE OUR 75TH TOGETHER!!

The straight about Gitmo [Peemo]


The Straight Scoop from Charlie Daniels

I've just returned from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Naval Air Station base where we did three shows for the troops and toured several locations around the post visiting with some of the finest military personnel on planet earth. The kids seemed to really enjoy the shows and especially liked "This Ain't No Rag, It's A Flag" and "In America". We had a great time with them.

We saw Camp X-Ray, where the Taliban detainees are being held only from a distance, but I picked up a lot of what's going on there from talking with a lot of different people.

The truth of the matter is that this operation is under a microscope. The Red Cross has an on site presence there and watches everything that goes on very closely. The media is not telling you the whole truth about what's going on over there. The truth is that these scum bags are not only being treated humanely, but they are probably better off healthwise and medically than they've ever been in their lives. They are fed well, able to take showers and receive state of the art medical care. And have their own Moslem chaplain. I saw several of them in a field hospital ward where they were being treated in a state of the art medical facility.

Now let's talk about the way they treat our people. First of all, they have to be watched constantly. These people are committed and wanton murderers who are willing to die just to kill someone else. One of the doctors told me that when they had Taliban in the hospital the staff had to really be careful with needles, pens and anything else which could possibly be used as a weapon. They also throw their excrement and urine on the troops who are guarding them. And our guys and gals have shown great restraint in not retaliating. We are spending over a million dollars a day maintaining and guarding these nasty killers and anyone who wants to see them brought to the U.S.A. for trial is either out of their heads or a lawyer looking for money and notoriety. Or both.

I wish that the media and the Red Cross and all the rest of the people who are so worried about these criminals would realize that this is not a troop of errant Boy Scouts. These are killers of the worst kind. They don't need protection from us, we need protection from them. If you don't get anything else out of this soapbox, please try to realize that when you see news coverage much of the time you're not getting the whole story, but an account filtered through a liberal mindset with an agenda.


We have two fights on our hands, the war against terror and the one against the loudmouthed lawyers and left wing media who would sap the strength from the American public by making us believe that we're losing the war or doing something wrong in fighting it. Remember these are the same people who told us that Saddam Hussein's Republican guard was going to be an all but invincible enemy and that our smart bombs and other weapons were not really as good as the military said that they were.

They also took up for Bill Clinton while he was cavorting around the Oval office with Monica Lewinsky while the terrorists were gaining strength and bombing our Embassies and dragging the bodies of dead American heroes around the dusty streets of Somalia. It's a shame that we can't have an unbiased media who would just report the truth and let us make up our own minds.

Here I must commend Fox News for presenting both sides much better than the other networks. They are leaving the other cable networks in the dust. People like being told the truth.

Our military not only needs but deserves our support. Let's give it to them.

The next time you read a media account about the bad treatment of the Taliban in Cuba, remember what I told you. Been there done that.

Footnote: I got an e-mail from a rather irate first cousin of mine the other day who has a daughter who's a lawyer and she seemed to think that I was painting all lawyers with the same brush. Please understand that I'm not doing that at all. That would be like saying that all musicians were drug addicts. There are a lot of good and honest attorneys out there. I happen to have one of them. But it seems that they never get any airtime. It's always the radicals who get their opinions heard, who fight the idea of the military tribunals and cite The Constitution and the integrity of America as their source of justifying their opinions. Well, first of all The Constitution says "We the people of the United States", it doesn't mention any other country.

And secondly as far as integrity is concerned, I don't think some of these folks would know integrity if it bit them in the posterior.

What do you think? God Bless America.

Charlie Daniels

BIGREB

I felt is more appropriate to post THIS here, rather than on another thread:

I was taking to a few people from Detroit, MI. last night (Saturday) Detroit. They told me that is the "Murder Capital" in the USA. I told them it was DC, they told me it switches back and forth. They also told me that "8 MILE" is a road/street that separates Detroit from the 'burbs. Once you near Detroit on "8 Mile," you either turn around or if you decide to "press on," be prepared for the worse! BTW, they were engine builders, race car engines.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: usmcvet,

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