Trick or Treat. Well what kind of trick are you going to play on me if I don’t give you a treat? Huh? Back in the good old days, people knew what kind of trick would be played; soaped windows, tipped garbage cans, flat tires, flaming bags of deficant on the front porch, a mysterious knock on the door with no one there. We knew how to have some fun at the expense of our fudgey old neighbors. Try that stuff today, and see what it gets you? Most likely jail time.
Today I read an article titled “Obama’s Competence in Question” by Richard Cohen of Real Clear Politics. Cohen very articulately and logically chronicles the actions of Obama on both foreign and national policies. The author finally questions Obama’s competence or the lack of it.
I find the article amusing. Author Cohen missed the boat on what the president’s job description contains. He assumes a president should handle affairs of state as all previous presidents have done. What he misses is Obama”s agenda differs from past presidents. When your goal is the complete transformation of the greatest country on earth you must think outside the conventional box. Obama’s viewpoint comes from his book “Dreams From My Father.” Many have read this book, but few have understood it.
Cover via Amazon
Obama espouses the same ideology his father did, i.e. the redistribution. His father also abhorred colonialism. Obama Senior grew up in the British colony of Kenya. Barack’s father, and grandfather hated the occupiers and transferred that hatred to baby Barack. Obama Junior blames the ills of the world on colonialism, and blames the United States for exerting its influence over lessor nations, most specifically the Mid-Eastern oil producers, land theft from American Indians, and a land grabbing war with Mexico
The father worked for the Kenyan government as a presidential advisor. He wanted to implement the grandiose idea of income redistribution. The boys in Kenyan high places rejected the idea and promptly demoted him. Obama’s father died a hopeless drunk after losing his great opportunity to change the world, or at least Kenya.
What does this historical drivel have to do with Obama’s competence? His competence to implement an agenda to bring down the United States is genius. He has accomplished two back-breaking policies and is working on the third. First, is his effort to implement the Cloward-Piven strategy to overload the welfare system. Don’t believe me, how about spending over a trillion dollars per year on welfare?
The second step is taking over the health care industry. Progressives have known all along that the key to becoming socialist is to begin by owning health care. Bill Clinton repeatedly has promoted the idea of passing anything that resembles a health care law and then fixing it, aka making it into a single payer system. If Big Brother owns your health care he owns you.
The third step on Obama’s agenda is an open border with Mexico. This move along with total disregard for immigration laws will serve to further overload the system and bankrupt the country. Once the country is bankrupt, and chaos prevails, Commander-in-Chief Obama will declare martial law and take over as a dictator. Hello communism!
In conclusion I disagree with Richard Cohan. Obama’s competency as a regular president is not questionable, it is horrible. His competence as one who transforms the US into a third world country is phenomenal.
In two weeks, on November eleventh, we celebrate Veteran’s Day, at least I will. I suspect most moderns don’t even know the day exists, or why.
A veteran friend sent me a story about the Marine Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, better known as the Iwo Jima memorial. it is the world’s largest bronze statue, and it depicts the Marines raising the US flag on the Island of Iwo Jima during World War Two.
There are actually two stories here. The first is about Michael Powers a school teacher from from Wisconsin. The second story is by James Bradley whose father is one of the six Marines in the statue. I give teacher Powers credit for taking kids to Washington as part of their education. I commend him for his dedication to teaching real American history. This story is proclaimed “TRUE” by Snopes except for a couple of add-ons at the end which were not attributed. I stripped those statements off to keep the stories true.
1.) By Michael Powers. Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall’s trip was especially memorable.
On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history — that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II.
Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’
I told him that we were from Wisconsin. ‘Hey, I’m a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.’
(It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, DC, but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)
When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)
2.)‘My name is James Bradley and I’m from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.
‘Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called ‘War.’ But, it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don’t say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old – and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.
(He pointed to the statue) ‘You see this next guy? That’s Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph…a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
‘The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the ‘old man’ because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say, ‘Let’s go kill some Japanese’ or ‘Let’s die for our country.’ He knew he was talking to little boys.. Instead he would say, ‘You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers.’
‘The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona… Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, ‘You’re a hero’ He told reporters, ‘How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’
So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).
‘The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, ‘Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.’ Yes, he was a fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
‘The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite’s producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say ‘No, I’m sorry, sir, my dad’s not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don’t know when he is coming back.’ My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell ‘s soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn’t want to talk to the press.
‘You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, ’cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.
‘When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, ‘I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.’
‘So that’s the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.’
Suddenly, the monument wasn’t just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.
This day has been great. Even though three times bad dreams and visits to the john interrupted my sleep. I punched in early at Santa’s factory and finished a series of baby steps on my latest project. I punched out by two p.m. and had lunch with Peggy. Afterwards I scoured the news sites and cleaned e-mails. The afternoon was late but still sunny, so I asked Peg to go for a ride.
We headed south and east making a huge square around the proposed third airport site in south-east Cook County. The farmers are just starting to harvest the corn and beans. We ended the tour by driving down Aberdeen Road in Frankfort. It is beautiful just as the sun falls below the tree line and casts deep long shadows across the emerald-green lawns. Oh how I miss living there. On our arrival home I immediately went to my mother’s old green covered Hungarian cook book, and found the recipe for Turos palacsinta (Crepe suzettes with cottage cheese). I scoured the frig and the pantry for ingredients and discovered I lacked two items. Off to the grocery store to buy two items. Six items later we left Mariano’s for the kitchen. My stomach told me I should not begin cooking a complicated thing like crepes at seven p.m. The last time I made them was in 2006, or in other words a long time ago. The recipe remained open next to me until I finished. Peg assisted by cleaning and cutting strawberries (item three in the basket) for the topping. We finally sat down to eat by eight o’clock. By the time we ate, and cleaned up the big hand stood straight up and the little hand pointed directly at the nine.
Left over Crêpe Suzette
Occasionally I need an ethnic food fix, and the crepes were it today.
P. S. Items four, five and six were a raspberry coffee cake, a pound of thick sliced bacon, and a quart of pistachio mint ice cream. They all had Peg’s finger prints on them.
For my friends in Illinois: We are coming up on a critical election in 2014, just 12 short months away. Our current Senator Richard Durbin is in his third term(18 years folks). I must confess that I voted for him the first time. He hypnotized me with his rhetoric just as Obama has hypnotized the entire country. Over the last eighteen years I have listened and watched Durbin transition from a moderate Democrat to a flaming Obama loving liberal.
Illinois has a huge powerful political machine froth with corruption. Durbin is a part of that machine. Illinois has neutered the Republican party and essentially we live in a socialized state.
Today, I learned who Durbin’s opposition is. Doug Truax, an unknown, is taking on the Illinois Democrat Machine. I urge you to visit Doug’s website and become familiar with the next Senator from Illinois.
