Just a Thought: A Stagnant Truth.

How far does loyalty and American Patriotism take you when a young, supposedly heterosexual soldier is ordered to rape (FUCK) anally abuse teenage boys?  Forget whether the acts were performed in front of family members, or not. It’s the very act that matters.

Just following orders! (?) Foul, evil, conniving, self-righteous.  Humans enjoy nothing more than the act of harming other humans

Does it take this sick behavior to finally stop you in your tracks to say, “this, my entire way of life, has been a vast red-white-blue lie.”?  Does it?  Even a little bit? No wonder more and more of our soldiers and hurting. There are secrets to keep, they bought into the lie, too.

Yes, by all means, let’s offer a free ride and safe passage to George Bush and Dick Cheney, but do everything possible to draw-and-quarter the likes of Edward Snowden for drawing attention to their crimes, and others.

All humans are truly pathetic, dangerous creatures. We’d rather harm others who suffered as we have, than to banish that suffering and those who ordered it in the first place.

I am sick.

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Throwback Thursday: A Two-fer

Shot in the same hotel room 10 years apart. How strange is that?

1992: Washington, DC October weekend.  March on Washington for Equal Rights and the last display of the entire Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. It just got too big and fragile after so many years. Spent more time at the Quilt than in the march because that's where I was needed.

2002: Washington, DC October weekend. March on Washington against the War in Iraq. Dressed for the ordination of a friend which happened to be the same weekend. I offered the Prayers of the People during the ceremony.

Yep!  Same room, same hotel.  I never noticed it before now. What are the odds?

And so it goes.
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Just a Thought: Training

You're never too young to learn to live

in a Police State.

More later.
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Just a Thought: Gaza

Does anyone know when they will begin construction on

the Gaza Wing of the Holocaust Museum in Washington?

h/t Fearguth

Just a Thought: United!

Once upon a time.

More later.
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Just a Thought: Stop!

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Back to Iraq?

Yes.  The neo-cons and war mongers are sure there’s more money to be made by wreaking more destruction of lives and land.  So, they’ll provoke - or create - a scenario whereby the USA must send more of our already exhausted young men and women to save face for said imaginary incident.

I am reading the same disturbing lies comments and phrases that filled the media 12 years ago, just like it was yesterday. Even those already discredited “journalists” who shilled for the war in the first place are back in the public eye. Doesn’t anyone else remember?

Grandpa Walnuts can’t keep his stories straight, pointing fingers at everyone but himself, and I swear, if they drag out supreme asshole Doug Feith, I’m moving to Narnia

Besides, there’s no need to bother with expensive drones when human cannon fodder is all around us? 

We will send our young’s to die to make the rich even richer. We will never learn.  We never seem to learn from the past. We’ll be lied into another war and only years from now realize that we were duped yet again.

And so it goes.

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70 Years Ago

Remembering my uncles Jim and Joe

And so it goes.

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Memorial Day 2014

The Reality:

The Truth

When will our young people stop fighting rich man's wars that only profit the rich?

And so it goes.

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Power Drain

Yesterday in mid-afternoon there was a tremendous rush of sound and thundering noise of group of low-flying military aircraft (probably out of Dover AFB north of here) that shook the building and rattled things all around me.

No sure what happened. I know I didn’t dream it. It was too sweeping and happened too fast to comprehend at first.

Within a a half hour of the flyover everything run by batteries, or using battery backup, in my apartment began to die. Total power drain of every single device.

Sudden warnings that the cell phone needed a charge, as did the Nexus. The wireless keyboard went, the weather radio, followed by the batteries in the cordless phone handsets - both of them! 

The kitchen timers and then the cordless mouse. The kitchen wall clock stopped at 2:40 pm. I have 2 battery operated watches and they both stopped working within minutes of each other - also around 3 pm. 

The cellphone had a full charge in the morning and the mouse batteries had been replaced less than a day earlier.

Finally, all batteries were replaced, cell phone and Nexus charged last evening. All seems back to normal now.On standby overnight, those 2 devices had used less than 2% of their stored power.  WTF???

I have no answer for this odd and curious happening.  I just know it happened. Not imagined. I am no longer on Prednisone and one cannot hallucinate this stuff when the tangible evidence (a dozen dead batteries of all types) is sitting in a baggie ready for the recycle center drop off.

No, this is not an April Fool joke.  I’d feel better if it was.

Was the government up to something, or did I take the short bus to the Twilight Zone? Both possibilities are scary.

And so it goes.

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Kristallnacht - 75 Years Ago

I had a friend in NYC; a good Jewish son who took care and watched over his elderly parents. They maintained their own apartment in Kew Gardens, Queens.  A newly built (mid-60s) high-rise with a convenient parking garage in the basement, a safe place for tenant's automobiles off the streets. 

My friend and I used to meet at least once weekly for lunch or Happy Hour after work. These meetings usually preceded his weekly trip to Queens for a dinner visit with the parents. 

At one point it became more HH than lunch and I noticed he would become sullen and withdrawn after a few drinks.  Then one night after a little too much HH, he was too drunk to deal with the parents, and asked me to have dinner with him, he needed to share something with me.

That night I learned that he had been begging his parents to give up their old car, they were in their 70s and didn't drive much anyway.  But they steadfastly refused to even think about such a thing, no matter how rational the arguments regarding their age, the extra expense of insurance, the parking space, etc.  

It turned out that on a previous visit his father became so upset by the subject being brought up yet again, that he began to shake and cry. Finally, he blurted out "If we don't have the car what will we do if they come for us again?" Dinner was forgotten as his parents told him of their escape (no easy feat by 1938) from Nazi Germany just weeks after Kristallnacht. They had to beg, borrow, steal, and ultimately leave everything behind.  They made it to Spain.  There they found passage to the US.  

They arrived with nothing, worked hard and built a life. Always with fear in the back of their minds. No news of family members who, for whatever reason, stayed behind.  They never told their only son anything until that night. To say we were both a wreck after relating this tale would be a vast understatement. I thanked him for sharing this horrible story with me as we finished our second bottle of wine. We agreed that the automobile issue would never be brought up again.  That was also the last time the episode was ever mentioned, by his parents or between us.  Just thought I'd share.

On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, gangs of Nazis attacked Jewish businesses and religious sites around Germany, destroying thousands of stores and synagogues. The violence would continue for nearly two days, and the Nazis chose to name it Kristallnacht or crystal night -- symbolizing the final shattering of Jewish existence in Germany. 

Pretext for the spree of violence was the shooting of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish-Jewish student, Herschel Grynszpan, on Nov.7. When the news of vom Rath's death reached Nazi headquarters in Berlin, the event was used to urge members to take to the streets and attack Jewish sites. 

By the end of Nov. 10, 7,000 Jewish businesses would be destroyed, 900 synagogues were torched, more than 90 people were killed and some 30,000 Jewish men were
deported, PBS notes.

Here's what President Obama had to say:

Statement by the President on the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht 
I join millions of people in the United States and around the world in marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy of Kristallnacht – “the Night of Broken Glass.” On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi paramilitaries marched under the cover of darkness throughout the towns and villages of Germany and Austria smashing Jewish storefronts, arresting Jewish men en masse, ransacking Jewish homes, burning books and littering the streets with the parchment of sacred Judaic texts. Throughout the two-day wave of violence, hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses owned by Jews were destroyed or damaged. At least 91 Jews were killed, while another 30,000 were sent to concentration camps. 

Kristallnacht foreshadowed the systematic slaughter of six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims. Seventy-five years later, Kristallnacht now signifies the tragic consequences of silence in the face of unmitigated hatred. 
As we mark this anniversary, let us act in keeping with the lessons of that dark night by speaking out against anti-Semitism and intolerance, standing up to indifference, and re-committing ourselves to combatting prejudice and persecution wherever it exists. In so doing, we honor the memories of those killed and reaffirm that timeless call: “Never Again.” 
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/08/statement-president-75th-anniversary-kristallnacht

Click the embedded links above then take a look at photos from those fateful days HERE.

And so it goes.

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To The Rich Old White Men Ready to Attack Yet Another Country..

Support another new war?

If so, then your privileged children and grandchildren should be forced to serve in it!

PS:  John Kerry, you ought to hang your head in shame. You lie and grandpa walnuts shows he cares by playing fake poker during vital hearings.  Or is it already a done deal?

More later.
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I Want to Have a Coffee With Paul Shawcross!!!

***Spew Alert!***
No, seriously.  This is an amazing/funny/serious response to a White House Petition:

Official White House Response to Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

By Paul Shawcross
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -- one wielding a laser -- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Go read the entire document HERE, especially if you are a fan of the original Star Wars films.

More later.
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6 Million Pounds Of Explosive Material Found

What the Hell do they mean "FOUND"? How could 6M tons not be hiding in plain sight?  It boggles the mind.  From the AP:

DOYLINE, La. (AP) — Weather could complicate the transfer of roughly 6 million pounds of explosives that were haphazardly stored at an industrial site in northwestern Louisiana and led to the evacuation of a small town, a state police spokeswoman said Monday.
If lightning is spotted within five miles of the site, authorities will suspend efforts that began on Saturday to move the artillery propellant, Lt. Julie Lewis said.
Light rain fell at midday in the vicinity of the site near the town of Doyline. No lightning was expected Monday, but thunderstorms were forecast for Tuesday.
Officials estimate that more than half of Doyline's 800 residents heeded police advice to evacuate in advance of the cleanup at the Explo Systems Inc. site. Col. Mike Edmondson, commander of Louisiana State Police, said the material is stable and would need an ignition source to explode. The precautions were taken because officials fear that any spark could set off a huge explosion of the material, which they said was stored improperly in a relatively small area.
One of several residents who relocated to a nearby state park expressed exasperation at the sheer volume of explosive material, which is more than authorities initially estimated.
"We got outside the evacuation area when they said there was a million pounds. Now it's six million," said Frank Peetz, 71, who was staying with his wife in a camper. "Maybe we ought to be up in Arkansas somewhere."
Edmondson was hesitant to estimate when it would be safe for Doyline residents to return home. He also said state police weren't sure how much damage an explosion of the material could cause, even after consulting with Department of Defense officials.

At least they eventually evacuated the town.  The rest is here

Northwestern Louisiana is not a hotbed of intelligence, to say the least. They voted for Willard last month.

And so it goes.
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An Immersion of Historic Proportions

Putting it mildly...

Always a lover of history, I've been enthralled by watching the many BBC documentary series', including "A History of Britain" - "A History of Scotland" - and well, can't you guess, "A History of Ireland". These are all available at You Tube in their entirety. Of course, religion played a big part in all the wars, intrigues, manipulations, and fear-mongering.  So, what else is new?

At the suggestion of my wee Irish GM, I've also watched another BBC series titled "The Coast" presented by archaeologist, Neil Oliver. Breathtaking images of the coast of the British Isles with powerful snippets of history thrown in at various points along the journey.  Great fun to watch.

During all this time I have been captivated by "Tempest at Dawn" by James Best; a novel of the probable events leading to the American Constitutional Convention.  The book brings our founders to life with great writing, historic accuracy and amazing wit. What has amazed me most is how entangled these varied histories are on many levels. Yes, including America.
An overview of Tempest at Dawn:

The United States is on the brink of total collapse. The military has been reduced to near extinction, economic turmoil saps hope, and anarchy threatens as world powers hover like vultures, eager to devour the remains. In a desperate move, a few powerful men call a secret meeting to plot the overthrow of the government. Fifty-five men came to Philadelphia in May of 1787 with a congressional charter to revise the Articles of Confederation. Instead they founded the longest lasting republic in world history. "Tempest at Dawn" tells their story.

Here is a bit of a review of Tempest at Dawn:

Author James Best tackled a massive project when he undertook the writing of this book, which took 5 years to complete.  Tempest at Dawn is a novel about the events surrounding the Constitutional Convention.  While there is no particular mystery, sex, violence, or suspense, the book has plenty of tension.  Best takes characters that textbooks render as flat or one dimensional, and makes them multifaceted human beings.  The fictional vignettes in his story are wrapped around actual compromises and the horse trading that was constant between the delegates. He does not distort history and his surmises about the roles of the participants are entirely plausible and in fact likely.

Readers will find that Tempest at Dawn “matures” as it progresses, and so does the caliber of the writing. Within the first 50 pages the dialog becomes more and more sophisticated. The reader is alternately smiling, laughing or saddened by the poignancy that Best introduces into the telling.  He is especially successful in his portrayal of a realistic and very believable Washington who, Best contends, was the behind-the- scenes puppet master at the Convention.

Best is subtle about including facts throughout the story, successfully weaving in actual quotes, first hand accounts and observations of those who lived through this period. The author has done his research and any reader of history will appreciate these nice touches.  In one scene, Washington is attending a play and leaves his box to get refreshments. The stage manager waits until Washington returns to his seat before resuming the play, a courtesy not extended to just anyone. This vignette provides an example of how the patronage of this hero of the Revolution was sought.  Washington fans will also appreciate a horse race scene in which Washington triumphs, and another in which he visits a carriage maker.  All of these episodes provide insight into Washington’s character.  Best knows his history, but he doesn’t bludgeon the reader with a clumsy display of erudition.

Even though Washington is a key figure in the Convention and the book, he is sparingly used in Best’s tale.  Madison, however, is a pivotal character both in the actual Constitutional Convention and in Best’s story.  The reader gets a sense of a man driven by patriotism to build a “perfect” republic based on the leadership of an enlightened elite.  As the story progresses, he is forced by the stolid Roger Sherman to compromise some of his rigid beliefs and finally comes to realize the validity of the opposition’s argument. As the convention nears its conclusion, former combatants work together to bring their constituents into the fold with a series of machinations that would make Machiavelli proud.

The events of recent years in American Politics and the recent elections bring to mind that "everything old is new again" - "been there, done that, have all the tee-shirts", and then some.

And so it goes.
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Stratospheric Jump Breaks Record

After another work day filled with great live jazz, I found an email waiting for me from a friend with this link. Imagine my surprise when I came upon this story. It amazed (and scared the hell out of) me. Jump from 24 miles UP! Reminded me of the old NASA enthusiasm, the early space program and the film "The Right Stuff" - which is still a fave.

ROSWELL, N.M. — Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner landed gracefully on Earth after a 24-mile jump Sunday from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic feat that officials said made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound.
Baumgartner came down safely in the eastern New Mexico desert about nine minutes after jumping from his capsule 128,100 feet, or roughly 24 miles, above Earth. He lifted his arms in victory, sending off loud cheers from jubilant onlookers and friends inside the mission's control center in Roswell, N.M.
"When I was standing there on top of the world, you become so humble, you do not think about of breaking records anymore, you do not think of about gaining scientific date. The only thing you want is to come back alive," he said after the jump.
Brian Utley, a jump observer from the International Federation of Sports Aviation, said preliminary figures show Baumgartner reached a maximum speed of 833.9 mph. That amounts to Mach 1.24, which is faster than the speed of sound. No one has ever reached that speed wearing only a high-tech suit.
Baumgartner says that traveling faster than sound is "hard to describe because you don't feel it." With no reference points, "you don't know how fast you travel," he told reporters.
"Sometimes we have to get really high to see how small we are," he said.
The altitude he leapt from also marked the highest-ever for a skydiver. Organizers said the descent lasted just over nine minutes, about half of it in free fall. Utley said he traveled 119, 846 feet in free fall.
Three hours earlier, Baumgartner, known as "Fearless Felix," had taken off in a pressurized capsule carried by a 55-story ultra-thin helium balloon. After an at-times tense ascent, which included concerns about how well his facial shield was working, the 43-year-old former military parachutist completed a final safety check-list with mission control.
As he exited his capsule from high above Earth, he flashed a thumbs-up sign, well aware that the feat was being shown on a live-stream on the Internet.

Channeling Sinatra: Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away...

The rest of the story is HERE, and includes lots of photos of this most handsome devil and the entire program.This story certainly made my evening.

And so it goes.
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Homecoming

I meant to post this last week, but clouds got in my eyes.

What can I say? I cried, too. And so it goes. *

Homecoming!

 Don’t Tell, Show of the Day: After a photo of US Marine Brandon Morgan being welcomed home by his partner Dalan went viral in a big way on Facebook, Morgan issued the following response to the thousands of comments it generated:

To everyone who has responded in a positive way. My partner and I want to say thank you. Dalan, the giant in the photo, can’t believe how many shares and likes we have gotten on this. We didn’t do this to get famous,or something like that we did this cause after 3 deployments and four years knowing each other, we finally told each other how we felt. As for the haters, let em hate…to quote Kat Williams, everyone needs haters, so let them hate. We are the happiest we have ever been and as for the whole PDA and kissing slash hugging in uniform…it was a homecoming, if the Sergeants Major, Captains, Majors, and Colonels around us didn’t care…then why do you care what these random people have to say?

From HERE.

More later.
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Pew-Pew, Caturday.

Not one word need be said.

More later.
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Cold War Secret Revealed: Making Spy Satellites

A chilling revelation:

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.

They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized "cleanroom" where the equipment was stored.

They spoke in code.

Few knew the true identity of "the customer" they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.

At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one — not even their wives and children — what they did.

They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors — "real cloak-and-dagger guys," says Fred Marra, 78, with a hearty laugh.

He is sitting in the food court at the Danbury Fair mall, where a group of retired co-workers from the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. gather for a weekly coffee. Gray-haired now and hard of hearing, they have been meeting here for 18 years. They while away a few hours nattering about golf and politics, ailments and grandchildren. But until recently, they were forbidden to speak about the greatest achievement of their professional lives.

"Ah, Hexagon," Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.

It was dubbed "Big Bird" and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth's atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.

The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.

This story makes me wonder even more about the spying capabilities of today; what we're not being told, and what propaganda may be forthcoming just before we launch a war on Iran.

Read the rest here.

And so it goes.
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