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Family day at Camp Ripley!

Wednesday Hero Blogburst 7-29-09

This Week's Hero Was Suggested By Deb

SSgt. Darrell "Shifty" Power
86 years old from Dickerson County, Virginia
E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division
June 17, 2009


The world lost one of it's true heroes a couple of weeks ago. Darrell "Shifty" Powers passed away on June 17 of cancer. "Shifty" was part of the famed E Co/2/506 of the 101st Airborne Division. Easy Company. The Band Of Brothers.

"I loved everything about my daddy," said Margo Johnson, daughter of SSgt. Powers. "He never bragged about what he did in the war. And for a lot of years, he never even talked much about what he did – unless someone asked him about it. But he truly was a hero to me. Just like he'd been to the people who know him as a soldier in a [mini-series]."

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Farenheit 451 Insanity...

Liberal lemmings are so far bent on Obamacare that they're willing to go on strike for it:

Four years later the American Federation of Labor (AFL), set May 1,1890 as the day that American workers should work no more than eight hours. Finally about 50 years later in 1938 the eight-hour work day was realized for most working people in the U.S. when the Fair Labor Standards Act made it a legal day’s work throughout the nation.

We now accept that the 8 hour day is the norm around the world, and no one would suggest going back to 14 hour days.

What is normal for us today began, and would not have been possible without what amounted to a national strike. That is why we must do it again today for national, universal health care.

Congress is not with us on this. They think it’s ok to go on vacation with this issue pending. Our advocate in the White House is not taking the firm stand that we need.

The overwhelming majority of Americans voted for this when they voted for Obama. To not do this would be tantamount to overturning what we voted for.

No, to DO this would be tantamount to overturning the very CONSTITUTION for which our forefathers and brethren have and continue to this day to shed blood and treasure.

I left a couple of comments to the post, which, surprise, have been deleted. They are not offensive in nature. They are factual. Yet, Malagodi (the blogger) has seen it fit to keep these comments from his readers:

Ask yourselves: If Obamacare is such a great deal, why are members of Congress and the President the only ones who will be exempt from it?

If Obamacare’s such a great deal and such a well-thought out plan, why did it take the Obamas more time to pick the breed of the family dog than he wants allowed to review the plan? Why the absolute RUSH to pass this thing, before anyone’s really even had a chance or has bothered to read it?

If there are currently 40 million uninsured (many, many of those who have access to insurance but for some reason or another refuse to pay for or take insurance), why not pass a plan to cover only those who are 1. Uninsured and 2., Uninsured because they CAN’T afford it? It will be a lot cheaper in the long run than spreading the misery to every non-elected man, woman and child (legal and otherwise).

Of course, the answer to this latter question is simple: It’s not about health care. It’s about CONTROL over every aspect of your lives.

Even the ACLU gets it:

http://aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

Think, people. Don’t be lemmings. THINK!

and

Under Obamacare, health care will be RATIONED, not extended. The costs of health care will be controlled on the CONSUMER side via rationing. There will be a bureaucrat who decides whether or not your condition is worth treating, or if you should merely be given a pain pill and told to tough it out.

Under Obamacare, say you’re 50-60 something and overweight, and you need heart bypass surgery. They may say that your health conditions are your own doing, that you’ve lived a good long life, and that your bypass surgery may not be cost-efficient. They will discuss “end of life” options for you during one of your bi-monthly ‘counseling sessions,’ and give you a bus ticket to see Dr. Jack Kervorkian.

All I’m saying is, be careful what you ask for.

You just might get it.

Yep. Those were the comments that were deleted.

Hell. Never let the facts get in the way of a fever-swamp stampede.

***Update***

Malagodi has apologized for deleting my comments.

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The beauty that is Mt. Ranier...

Chaos as a Tool of the American Left

A good friend of mine pointed me to a must-read article (READ THE WHOLE THING) by James Simpson that was actually written two months before the Presidential election, in September of 2008. In it, Simpson writes about the Cloward-Piven strategy, that is, a strategy formulated by two radical university lefitsts during the 1960s; a strategy utilizing contrived and orchestrated chaos to achieve political ends.

Immediately upon reading the piece, the following passage stood out:

Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky:

"Make the enemy live up to their (sic) own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1989 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one. (Courtesy Discover the Networks.org)

I might add, Alinsky is an ideological mentor to Barack & Michelle Obama.

I also might add that our own book of rules is a list of ideals for which to strive, which, as is the case with the Commandments, we all fall short, though we continue to strive for those ideals.

The Socialist book of rules is a dumbing down, a nihilist concept that since we all fall short of moral purity and perfection, why even strive for it? The definition of moral purity is then defined down to living according to the Machiavellian tenets that any means, including the economic and moral destruction of one's own nation, are justified if they will serve to create their inarguably unattainable earthly socialist utopia. With the leftist rule book, and with tactics such as moral relativism the left can change the rules as they go along; consequently, in their minds, they ALWAYS live up to their rules..because essentially there are none.

It's time that socialists are held not to to their own book of rules (since in effect, they have none), but to the results they promise as they tout their policies. The socialist policies of Barack Obama and the dems have netted not a utopia, but the exact opposite world in which moral degradation and chaos rule the day. They decapitated the black families in the great society, initiated unending cycles of poverty, placed moral standards at their lowest common denominator til in their 'moral equavalence' game neither a standard of morality nor the will to strive to live by morals exist, period.

They have left and continue to leave societal, moral and social destruction in their wake.

They have promised a better life for all who subscribe to their philosophy, yet, through the redistribution of wealth and through moral equivalence, multiculturalism, not to mention their zeal to throw God out of the picture at every turn, they have and continue to create pandemonium.

Where is their neo-socialist/neo-communist paradise on earth?

Despite the left's rising tide this past decade and a half, I've yet to see any sign of it. Despite the "great society," despite the transfer of untold trillions of dollars in wealth, I haven't seen a smidgen of benefit to the individual, nor the society at large.

Where are the results, lefties?

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at the foot of Mt. Ranier

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At 4th of July pass in Idaho...

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Lookout Pass at the Montana-Idah border...

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my son and I are on a long-waited father-son vacation. right now we're at New Salem, ND in front of the world's largest holstein.

Julia Ward Howe..

With all the hubbub over Michael Jackson's contribution to music, he can't hold a candle to Julia Ward Howe..

Orson Welles tells the story like no one else can:

Watch The Ad That's Driving Liberals Nuts...

(h/t Freedom Post)

Buffalo, MN Welcomes Home its Heroes

I participated along with a hefty contingent of Minnesota Patriot Guard in welcoming home nearly 180 heroes after a year-long tour of Iraq. I was there to send them off a year ago, and was overjoyed to see that they all came home safe and sound!

The 353rd TC out of Buffalo came back home today, and it was an honor to be among these brave men and women!

Among the dignitaries to speak at the event were Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, and a representative of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

But, of course, they weren't the stars of the show...
And the look on this soldier's face as he hugged his loved one said it all...

Welcome home, men and women of the Armed Forces-- and our unending gratitude for a job well done!

Those Amazing Inscrutables...

Can eating candy somehow give one the ability to empathize with rabbits?

These chaps gave it the ol' college try, at any rate.

Welcome to Minnesota...

...The state where absolutely NOTHING is allowed.

Montana Mountain Solitude...

Montana Mountain Solitude

Wednesday Hero Blogburst 7-8-2009

Cpl. Reynold Armand
21 years old from Rochester, New York
2nd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force
August 7, 2007


Reynold Armand didn’t want to wait until he turned 18 to join the Marines. He persuaded his adoptive mother to sign papers allowing him to sign up a year early.

"I'm very proud of him," said his father, Carl Armand. "When he was home, he gave no sign of being afraid." Armand didn’t speak much about his experiences in Iraq, according to family members, saying only that most Iraqi civilians he encountered were very nice.

"We used to send him a lot of candy," said his mother, Alma Armand. "He would pass it out."

Manny Rodriguez, 21, of Rochester met Armand five years ago at New Day Church in Rochester, where both young men were members of the youth group. "He was such an amazing all-around person. He was so easy and comfortable to be around. He liked people for who they are."

No definitive report could be found on how Cpl. Armand died. Some report that he was killed when shot and others report that he was killed by an IED that exploded near his vehicle in Balad, Iraq.

All Information Was Found On And Copied From MilitaryCity.com with help from Kathi

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.