Sunday, 1 August 2010
Buchanan High School in Clovis, Calif., Endures Loss of Seven Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Most From Any School in California
I'll be in Clovis at the end of August to attend my father-in-law's 70th birthday gathering. I called him this morning to give him the heads up on today's front-page story at the Los Angeles Times, "Wars Take a Heavy Toll on One California School." He thanked me, although Clovis is a small town, and he was well familiar with the losses:
The seventh funeral was Friday. The church was full, even strangers lined the streets and everyone in sight stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads as Brian Piercy's body moved from church to cemetery — the same as they had done for six others.RTWT.
Seven boys from Clovis' Buchanan High Shool have been killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
With Piercy's death, Buchanan has the somber distinction of more war dead than any other school in California.
There's no sure answer as to how such a thing could happen. But many people in this Central Valley city have a theory. They say Clovis is an extraordinarily patriotic community and its children are raised on God and country, duty and honor. They're willing to serve and willing to die, the same as Clovis' generations who went before them.
Buchanan's school colors are red, white and blue. The stadium is named Veteran's Memorial. Former classmates and older siblings come back in uniform for campus visits. Friday night football games include a moment of silence for Buchanan's fallen soldiers.
"The cheerleaders wear six stars on their uniforms. I guess it will be seven now," said 15-year-old Julie Thaxter. "We're not proud they died, but we're proud they fought. It makes others from here even more ready to go and honor them. My brother wants to join. He's 14 and he's been set on it since he was 8."
Also, "California’s War Dead" (for Buchanan High).
Cross-posted from American Power.
Weekend Roundup
Some Saturday blog samples:
* "Cancer Patient Nikki Phelps vs. Virginity Repairs in Britain — i.e., Islamic Hymen Replacement Surgery."And more great blogging at American Power.
* "Summer School 2010 — One of the Best Classes in Memory."
* "Eyes Without a Face (Stylin' Replay Version)."
* "One is the Loneliest Number (Saberpoint Fundraiser)."
* "Horrible Paris Rosen Front-Flip Crash at X-Games Motocross Event."
* "Mexican Drug Cartel Puts $1 Million Bounty on Sheriff Joe Arpaio."
* "FBI Releases 423 Files on Communist Historian Howard Zinn."
* "Outlook Dims on (Obama) the Economy."
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Best 'Out of Office' Automatic e-mail Replies:
1. I am currently out of the office at a job interview and will reply to you if I fail to get the position. Please be prepared for my mood.
2. You are receiving this automatic notification because I am out of the office. If I was in, chances are you wouldn't have received anything at all.
3. Sorry to have missed you, but I'm at the doctor's having my brain and heart removed so I can be promoted to our management team.
4. I will not be able to delete all the emails you send me until I return from vacation. Please be patient, and your mail will be deleted in the order it was received.
5. Thank you for your email. Your credit card has been charged $5.99 for the first 10 words and $1.99 for each additional word in your message.
6. The email server is unable to verify your server connection. Your message has not been delivered. Please restart your computer and try sending again... (The beauty of this is that when you return, you can see who did this over and over and over....)
7. Thank you for your message, which has been added to a queuing system. You are currently in 352nd place, and can expect to receive a reply in approximately 19 weeks.
8. Hi, I'm thinking about what you've just sent me... Please wait by your PC for my response.
9. I've run away to join a different circus.
10. I will be out of the office for the next two weeks for medical reasons. When I return, please refer to me as "Sheila" instead of Steve
H/T Shelly
A little girl goes to a pet shop and asks "Excuthe me, do you have widdle wabbits?"
The shopkeeper's heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he is on her level and asks "Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft fwuffy bwack wabbit, or one like that widdle bwown one over there?"
The little girl blushes, rocks back on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and whispers, " I don't wealy fink my anaconda gives a phuc."
H/T Liz B
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Doing HER best.............from Rico
Gotta give the gurl SOME credit for contributing to the estrogen-flow on "the View" and doing HER best, but Berry is so damned hard on the paper products!!!
- Fits right in with the rest of the....er, "ladies", though and Oprah and Michelle must be so proud!
News From the Reb
A new post over at The Daily Bayonet! What to Do?
(Though for some reason Wordpress is calling it Auto Draft!)
Over at the Reb:
Movie Review: 'Brokeback Mountain'
Short Review: Sometimes there are moments when the fast-forward button ain't fast enough.
Full Review Here
Halloween is HERE!................from Rico
Known for their love of lavish parties, $100# steak, heavy drinking, the Worst Family has decided that it would NOT wait for Halloween this year. They agreed to 'preview' their respective costumes now (fancy dress for my civilized friends) before seeing what the Vice-Doofus and wife were going to wear.
When Michelle ma Belle came into the oval office wearing nothing but a pair of thigh-high vinyl go-go boots, the Won, horrified, asked: "What for the love of Allah kind of costume is THAT?"
- He didn't even need a teleprompter.
"I'm going as Puss-and-boots, and don't you EVEN take that tone with ME!" was the huffy reply, accompanied by a very Klingon-like scowl.
When the First Comrade appeared in turn, he was fully nude, whittling on a potato with a Chicago-style switchblade. When ready, he placed the potato on the end of his male organ. "You crazy MoFo! What you be doin?" asked the second-lady (hisself being considered the First Lady after since appearing on "The View").
"I'm going as a dick-tater!" he smugly replied, chin and nose elevated Mussoline-style. "And, let me clarify: Halloween is HERE. Now, and All year!....'cause I can and I sez so!!!"
- He didn't even need a teleprompter.
Communists, Reconquistas Protest Arizona's SB 1070 in Phoenix
At The Hot Joints, "Mexican Flag Waving Protesters Gather Outside Arizona Jail":
See also, "Communist ANSWER Coalition Spearheads Immigration Protests in Phoenix — Special Forum Edition, 'Moments With Fidel'."As always, more great blogging at American Power!
Friday, 30 July 2010
The brand new edition of."You know you're a redneck when.." is here!
1. You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.
2. You can entertain yourself for more than 15 minutes with a fly swatter.
3. Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.
4. You burn your yard rather than mow it.
5. You think ‘The Nutcracker’ is a vice on the work bench
6. The Salvation Army declines your furniture.
7. You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don’t want it.
8. You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.
9. You come back from the dump with more than you took.
10. You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
11. Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.
12. Your grandmother has ‘ammo’ on her Christmas list.
13. You keep flea and tick soap in the shower.
14. You’ve been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.
15. You go to the stock car races and don’t need a program.
16. You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.
17. You have a rag for a gas cap.
18. Your house doesn’t have curtains, but your truck does.
19. You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean?
20. You can spit without opening your mouth.
21. You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.
22. Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.
23 You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say ‘Cool Whip’ on the
side.
24. The biggest city you’ve ever been to is WalMart.
25. Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV
26. You’ve used your ironing board as a buffet table.
27. A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvements.
28. You’ve used a toilet brush to scratch your back.
29. You missed your 5th grade graduation because you were on jury duty.
30. You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65 mph.
H/T DML
News.........
Day 21 – July 30th 1940
Week 3 Summary: Trouble with the Enemy’s Seaplanes
Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, July 29
Proud Democrats Rally to Support Obama, McMahon in Back-to-Basics Traditional Democrat Values!
Israel's ruling class
City of Ruins
DaleyGator DaleyThought: Charges of RAAAAACISM are tactical strikes, not the truth
Nazi 'death camp guard' charged with involvement in murder of 430,000 Jews
Israel Beats Britain in Basketball
Police seize $1.7bn worth of marijuana in California
Enron's former CEO, Jeffrey Skilling, applies for bail
New Harrods Owners Fall Prey To Clampers
Raw Videos From AZ Protests, Today
Google: The search party is over
World's strongest pint: Dutch brewer creates 80 proof beer
Home Office staff 'failing to attend thousands of immigration hearings'
Thousands of grave sites at Arlington 'unmarked'
Robert Mugabe loses political ally as younger sister Sabina dies
and finally......
I feel the need for speed by little Jimmy May
The strange tale of the IUPUI women’s basketball team
Good Morning Blog World
New gangsta trend significantly reduces inner city shooting fatalities
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Insurgent Stinger MANPADS in Afghanistan
The keys news, in last week's WikiLeaks "bombshell" exposé, that Taliban insurgents armed with shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles have raised that stakes in Afghanistan, wasn't actually surprising. What's interesting to me is the supply origins of the missiles, for example, whether these were in fact the "Stinger" missiles the U.S. introduced against the Soviet Army in the late-1970s? Don't know for sure, although the Times of London reported last fall that Iran was shipping SA-14 Gremlins to the Taliban to help defeat allied forces in the region. Despite this, MSM press outlets are going wild with stories on the threat. See CNN for example, "Shoulder-fired missiles a threat to US troops in Afghanistan." The piece indicates that the threat could be from old Stingers supplied to the mujaheddin: "Perhaps the best known and most effective MANPADs are American-made Stingers, which the United States supplied to Afghan militia to fight the Soviets."
In any case, check the front-pager at today's Los Angeles Times (FWIW), "Reference to missile-downed helicopter in leaked Afghanistan reports highlights a threat."
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Washington — Wherever there are Western troops in Afghanistan, the clatter-thump of helicopter rotors serves as the soundtrack. Choppers are the workhorses of this war, with hundreds of them moving soldiers and supplies daily across a rugged landscape.So that pretty much answers the question. Insurgent forces are simply shopping the global arms bazaar, and no doubt rogue regimes from Damascus to Tehran and beyond are all too willing to pump up the supply as the arc of terror stretches to South Asia. I guess the irony is lost on America's antiwar foes, but all of this demonstrates that American interest in AfPAK are as large as ever. (And the media's going to hype the threat, despite expert analysis to the contrary: "Stop Panicking About the Stingers.")
Because of the NATO force's heavy reliance on them, one of the most eye-catching revelations in a trove of classified documents posted on the Internet this week was that insurgents apparently used a portable heat-seeking surface-to-air missile to shoot down a twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook in Helmand province in May 2007, killing seven Western service members.
If the Taliban and other insurgent groups possessed large numbers of these weapons, it could dramatically alter the dynamics of a war effort that already is struggling. Shoulder-launched missiles downed scores of Soviet helicopters in the 1980s, helping ragtag Afghan rebels prevail against a vastly superior force.
Most experts believe that the antiaircraft threat currently posed by the insurgents is relatively limited, and that they don't have significant stocks of surface-to-air missiles, at least for now.
The shooting down of choppers remains a relative rarity in the Afghan conflict, and heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades are almost always found to have been used.
"After nine years, if they had a lot of them, we would have seen them by now," said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the subject on the record. Sporadic reports of attacks with surface-to-air missiles have often turned out to involve other weapons, the official said.
But portable surface-to-air missiles can be procured from many illicit sources in the region. Afghanistan's neighbors include Iran, Pakistan and China. NATO said this month that an intercepted memo from Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar suggested that the insurgents were redoubling efforts to obtain a variety of sophisticated armaments.
"It's wartime, and our warriors are searching for new weapons," said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, reached by telephone.
RELATED NON-SURPRISE: At USA Today, "More Dems oppose new war funding."
BONUS LEFT-WING FAIL: At NYT (FWIW), "U.S. Military Scrutinizes Leaks for Risks to Afghans."
Cross-posted from American Power.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Where Next? England?
I just cracked open a book I've been wanting to read for some time. I happened upon a page that "deconstructed" the War on Terror by basically saying Bush and Tony Blair were wrong to rank Islam as a "lesser religion." First off, I would have been thrilled if Bush or Blair had said, "You know what? We don't need Islam. We'll pay any takers $5,000 to convert to Christianity. If you accept, then change your mind afterwards, well . . . make sure your will's in order." I don't remember hearing anyone saying anything bad about Islam. I do remember a lot of dancin' around the subject.
Over at the Reb we've been studying Takuan Seiyo's latest installment to his From Meccania to Atlantis series, Shotgun Marriage in Europe. It pretty much expresses how we're feeling about things. I sometimes hear myself say, "This can't last. The West will wake up." But then I'm reminded of Hagia Sofya. Our ancestors have gone soft before in the face of threats.
Over at the Reb:
Tet!
Any AFPAK conversation with the feebleminded, easily discouraged or the outright "Defeat At Any Cost" Retreat Loser Lobby often mentions Viet Nam.
Doofus grande' at best or out right deceit at worst - truth is - AFPAK was never Vietnam and never will be.
At the height of the Vietnam War, there were 543,000 troops on the ground, or well over twice as many as are now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.
More than 58,000 soldiers had died in Vietnam by the time the war ended in 1975. Up to 1,000 GIs were dying every week in 1968, and the overall conflict claimed the lives of at least 3 million Vietnamese and well over half a million Cambodians and Laotians.
Most likely the thing that shapes ill concieved notions of AFPAK=Vietnam is the Mythology of Tet.
1968's Tet Offensive has been incorrectly portrayed as a magical event where NVA Regulars and invincible Viet Cong guerrillas double teamed Great Satan and handed her the worst defeat in military history - way worse than the Battle of Corregidor and Kasserine Pass -combined.
And it's all wrong.
Thankfully, Dr James S Robbins is unleashing "This Time We Win: Revisiting The Tet Offensive" and it is hot!
Literally hot 'cause it's at the printers today!!
Giving the lie to funk obsessed defeatists from the past - Dr R shows how Viet Cong fought to annihilation - never again able to mount anything even remotely insurgent - and how Americans hop scotched around Vietnam crushing communistic cadre, militant sympathizers and true believers
"...This Time We Win at last provides an antidote to the flawed Tet mythology that continues to shape the perceptions of American military conflicts against unconventional enemies and haunt our troops in combat. Indeed, America’s enemies recognize and find inspiration in the prevailing Tet narrative.
"...The result is an explosion of the conventional wisdom on this infamous battle, one that offers real lessons for today’s unconventional wars. Without a clear understanding of these lessons, we will find ourselves reliving the Tet Offensive again and again.
Another Offensive launched from GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD
