That's Our Girl! You Tell 'Em, Cathy!!!

http://nyti.ms/1fUEgNY

Sometimes even scholars and grandmothers have had enough.  You tell 'em, Cathy!   

Status Update--P.S.*

Today's post is by Jim Feeney.  I know I'm on hiatus for important things, but Jim asked his readers to pass this on, so here it is--and thanks, Jim. 

You're a 19 year old kid.

You're critically wounded and dying in
the jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam .

It's November 11, 1967.

LZ (landing zone) X-ray.

Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense from 100 yards away, that your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the MedEvac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you're not getting out.

Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.

As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then - over the machine gun noise - you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter.

You look up to see a Huey coming in. But.. It doesn't seem real because no MedEvac markings are on it.

Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.

He's not MedEvac so it's not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.

Even after the MedEvacs were ordered not to come. He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 3 of you at a time on board.

Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses and safety.

And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!

Until all the wounded were out. No one knew until the mission was over that the Captain had been hit 4 times in the legs and left arm.

He took 29 of you and your buddies out that day. Some would not have made it without the Captain and his Huey.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Captain Ed Freeman, United States Air Force, died last Wednesday at the age of 70, in Boise , Idaho

May God Bless and Rest His Soul.

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we've sure seen a whole bunch about Lindsay Lohan, Tiger Woods
and the bickering of congress over HealthReform.

Medal of Honor Winner Captain Ed Freeman

Shame on the media !!!

Now... YOU pass this along.

Honor this real hero.

Please.

 *P.S.  Informed Comment has an excellent post this morning:  a Ghoul's Glossary for the Shutdown

...OW!

Thanks for the above image goes to Belgian Waffle.

Today begins the author's hiatus in US political and other pressing topics. If you want to read anything significant in that respect, please go to Informed Comment.

Meanwhile....

Juan Cole hits it out of the park today:  "Why Ted Cruz Should Sit Down and Shut Up!" 
To wit: 

In a performance that the rest of the world could not even comprehend, a wealthy, Ivy League-educated Texan talked until he was blue in the face to prevent poor children from seeing a doctor.

 Ivy league, yet?  Princeton, Harvard Law.  Who knew?

Well.....

So is Pope Francis for or agin' gays?  He can't be saying "who am I to judge" regarding gay people, and then excommunicating a pro-gay priest in the same week.  Of course, you can't believe everything you read.  Stay tuned.....

October 11--Historical Events on This Date*

First ten historical dates cited:

732 - Battle at Tours: France under Karel Martel beat Moors
1138 - A massive earthquake struck Aleppo, Syria.
1521 - Pope Leo X titles King Henry VIII of England "Defender of the Faith"
1531 - Battle at Kappel: Swiss Roman Catholic kantons beat protestant forces of Zurich
1531 - Huldrych Zwingli Swiss reformation leader is killed at the Battle at Kappel
1540 - Emperor Karel names his son Philip, Duke of Milan
1573 - Battle of South Seas - Dutch rebels beat Spanish navy
1614 - Adriaen Block and 12 Amsterdam merchants petition the States General for exclusive trading rights in the New Netherland colony.
1634 - the Burchardi flood — "the second Grote Mandrenke" killed around 15,000 men in North Friesland, Denmark and Germany.
1643 - Battle at Wincebt: English New Model-army beats royalists.

Last ten historical dates cited:

1995 - O J Simpson cancels a TV appearance on Dateline
1996 - Ford buys rights to named Detroit domed stadium for $40 million
Basketball Player Dennis Rodman

1997 - Dennis Rodman returns from 2nd longest NBA suspension (11 games)
1998 - A Congo Airlines Boeing 727 is shot down by rebels in Kindu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing 40 people.
2000 - The 100th Space Shuttle mission (STS-92) is flown.
2001 - The Polaroid Corporation files for federal bankruptcy protection.
2002 - A bomb attack in a shopping mall in Vantaa, Finland kills seven.
2012 - A further 83 people are killed throughout Syria by the Syrian army
2012 - A US appeal court overturns a district court ruling banning the sale of Samsung
2012 - Mo Yan, a hallucinatory realist writer, wins the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature

Hmm...It seems we in modern times have a fairly limited notion of history.  Ya think?

* Cited on HistoryOrb.com

5 things.....

I suspect that....

1. My laptop is leaving BROAD HINTS with all the junk mail arriving on "assisted senior living" and "local senior living options."  Hmph.

2. I shall soon come to truly, truly DISLIKE all the freaking advertising that has cropped up in the past week on any video clip I should be so silly as to open (especially from newspapers)!   This even happens on one of my favorite blogs of late, though not on the other one. And so far, the blizzard of videoclips of my great-grandsons are ad-free! Thanks, y'alls, for not succumbing.

3. The people doing the hiring for the contractors at the Navy Yard have their heads up their butts.  They hired a guy who had been discharged from the Navy for a gun-related offense and apparently gave him a special card that lets him get into the building through the only door that does not have people (marines and the like) watching and allowing them to come in and out--or not. Yesterday, he walked in with a shotgun, used it to shoot a security guard, and took the person's weapon (weapons? they still haven't figured out how he also got one of those nasty automatic rifle things), and used those to shoot and kill almost a dozen people. 

4. The guy who threw the firecracker over the White House fence at suppertime (nice touch, turistico!!) yesterday was a tourist. Did you see the outfit? Maybe he was just from Virginia or Murlan'.

5. Yes, we do have brave men, and they do work for the SS. The SS guys, in the photo* I saw of firecracker guy's capture, managed just fine without major weapons displays and fancy black protective gear with white lettering. One of them, however, was big, standing way over firecracker guy and the two other SS guys holding FG's arms in a steely grip.  (Well, at second glance, he was not ALL that big.)

*Believe me, I wanted to link to this, but I got a) ADS and b) Fox News, which is a nono in chez XE!!

About Syria....

Juan Cole's post today starts with this:

Ambrose Bierce is said to be the author of the saying “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” Despite the vigorous national debate about intervening in Syria, there is some reason to think that most Americans could not find it on a map. Here are some key points about Syria that this blog has been trying to underline.

I recommend this post if you are not well acquainted with the actual country of Syria.  I certainly learned a lot--about its size, for one thing, and its cultural makeup to name just two items.  My thanks to Juan Cole for his contribution to our knowledge.  Cole's post has two helpful maps:  Syria in relation to all the other Mediterranean and Mideastern countries and Syria's Balkanization.

Cop Car's Post for today, September 11, 2013

Just as I groaned at the prospect of reading more about September 11, 2001, Cop Car, one of my favorite brilliant bloggers, published this:

Visible from space, a smoke plume rises from the Manhattan area after two planes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center. This photo was taken of metropolitan New York City (and other parts of New York as well as New Jersey) the morning of September 11, 2001. "Our prayers and thoughts go out to all the people there, and everywhere else," said Station Commander Frank Culbertson of Expedition 3, after the terrorists' attacks.

The following day, he posted a public letter that captured his initial thoughts....

More in this Incredible post. 

Commander Culbertson was in space,  yet this letter brings back many memories of this day.  I was
at the dentist, and when I arrived, they had set up a TV set on one of the dental chairs.  We all watched, unbelieving. 

I Am Not A Cook, Either.....

The "local" Trader Joe's--it's still in the city limits, but it takes at least 45 minutes to get there--has labels like these on the ready-made items.  All you have to do is take them home and either eat them after you walk in the door or heat them first. 

Recent Pictures.....(getting sick of war, etc.)

Green leaves!  I love this plant....it's some kind of ornamental, but the green is VERY bright!

 

Soup, soup, beautiful soup....soup of the hour, soup of the day!  (well, yesterday).  Used all the veggies on hand except a big bunch of kale, which is still very fresh.  Love making soup to clear out the fridge.

Can you believe this is the BOY SCOUT monument in DC?  a woman, a young boy, and a naked man??  Much puzzling over this one. 

What Are John McCain, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama Thinking?? They're Not....

Here's Juan Cole today:

Some excerpts:

President Obama’s plan to bomb Syria with cruise missiles will do nothing to hasten the end of the conflict. Instead, it will likely prolong it.
It should be remembered that the US couldn’t end the Iraqi civil war despite having over 100,000 boots on the ground in that country. It is highly unlikely that Washington can end this one from 30,000 feet.

Fed up with the supposed support for U.S. intervention?  Consider this:

By striking Syria, Obama has all but guaranteed that a negotiated solution becomes impossible for years to come. In the absence of serious negotiations, the civil war will continue and likely get worse. The US should give serious thought to what the likely actual (as opposed to ideal) reaction in Syria will be to the landing of a few cruise missiles. The anti-regime elements will celebrate, convinced that it will all be over quickly if the US gets involved. The last thing they will want will be to negotiate with the regime.

 Remember what the Quakers say:  "War is not the answer!"