Over in another thread, Mr. A.B. and I were having a little chat about the "fairness" of life, perhaps, or maybe how hard life can seem, and what I told Mr. A.B. is that as for me, whether life is fair or not fair is a non-issue .....

Life just is .....

And the path goes this way and that ...

Follow it, or cut your own trail ....

And those are the choices ....

At least as I see it, anyway ....

Of course, you can always sit there and do nothing at all, but, me, well, I get tired of doing that pretty quick, and so ......

For me, it's a matter of energy ....

When you are pushing, then that is likely not the path ...

And so ....

A POST THAT MR. A.B. MADE ON ANOTHER THREAD, TRANSFERRED OVER TO HERE FOR REPLY ....

Just came back from a routine app't. with my cardiologist.

I see him every four months.

Everything is fine today, for which I am grateful.

I read several of your posts this morning, Livyjr but wanted to think about them before I replied and then of course, the Dr. app't.

Now I am sitting here thinking about life in general and Livyjr in particular and wondering why, at times, life seems to come at us with a seemingly hostile attitude.

On this forum, I am sure there are trained psychologists who can explain all that better than I can.

I just basically know as I have a feeling that you also know, the one big thing that shapes our outlook in life, that determines whether we are happy and content or on edge and restless, is what is going on in our relationships with other people.

Many people in my lifetime have said to me they don't give a tinker's damn what other folks think about them and I have said the same thing myself many times.

But that is not 100% true.

There is a saying, don't know where it came from, which goes like this - "No man is an island ".

I believe that is generally true.

So what does that have to do with you?

In my mostly uneducated opinion, I believe that somehow, these crooks and thieves which have found themselves in position to determine your well being have done what any vulture would do.

They have tried to tear you apart and unfair as that is, they have the means to do it if you let them.

So, is this a pep talk?

No Livyjr, I am not really the type to give pep talks.

I just know that if you had the chance to trade places with them you would not do it.

And that tells me that you are a far better man than any of them.

I understand your discouragement right now.

You took your best shot to get some justice done and the creeps with the power stuck it to you again.

I really hope you will not let them defeat you which only you can prevent.

As far as your personal situation with low finances, fighting a cold winter without the proper facilities, coping with nosy and self righteous townspeople, etc.that is another tough road but remember you DO have people, many on this forum that know your charachter and respect you highly.

Cling to those people, Livyjr.

Is there something, anything, that I can do for you?

Please let me know and keep your posts on this forum going.

I have told many a person that although there are officially only 331 members on CGCS, the postings are read by people all over the world.

Your thoughts, your words, your feelings have undoubtedly affected many more people that you can possibly know of.

A.B.

And if you are out there somewhere in the world, seeking to "attune" yourself to a more natural life, in synch with the seasons, and the ebb and flow of life in the world ................

There must come an acceptance of the world as it is, rather than as we would have it be ....

For that is the road to peace and harmony ....

As rough and rocky as it may seem ....

WINTER

At the winter solstice, the day is shortest of all and night is longest.

It can also be a time of bitter cold.

The wind blows with a frigid ferocity, cutting all before it.

Snow and ice become deadly.

Those who are homeless die of exposure.

Even the mightiest of trees can split from the drop in temperature.

The sound of a tree snapping is a sudden slap.

The horrors, the tragedies that this nadir brings.

Winter tortures the world with icy whips, and those who are weak are ground beneath its glacial heels.

Sometimes, we dare not even lament those who die in the onslaught of winter, in fear that the tears will freeze upon our faces.

But we see, and hear.

Huddling closer to the fire, we vow to survive.

No matter how affected we are by misfortune, we must remember that this is the lowest turn of the wheel.

Things cannot forever go downward.

There are limits to everything - even the cold and the darkness, and the wind, and the dying.

They call this the first day of winter, but actually, it is the beginning of winter's death.

From this day on, we can look forward to warming and brightening.

-Deng, Ming-Dao

You know, Mr. A.B., I keep reading your words in your post up above here about your feeling that the one big thing that shapes our outlook in life, that determines whether we are happy and content or on edge and restless, is what is going on in our relationships with other people, and that is the second time that you have said that in one of your posts aimed at me, and so .......

And I wonder about that from time to time, I guess, since you have said it before, what our relationships with other people really are, and who exactly determines that equation ......

Or what, maybe ......

As I recall, Mr. A.B., you were brought up in a city, presumably with other people close by to where you lived, while me, I was raised up out in the country, where you could not see your neighbors, and there was only one other kid around besides my brothers ......

SO ....

Relationships .....

Mine were largely with nature, because nature is who I was with the majority of time ....

Not other people so much, because they just weren't around, and people did not have a lot of liesure time back then to sit and chit-chat anyway .....

Too much work had to be done, just to survive ....

So maybe another of my "relationships" was with duty and responsibility .....

Whoever knows ......

Later, I went in the Army, of course, and there, I got to be in real close association with large groups of people, and you know, it is not my cup of tea, actually .....

Not to be jam-packed in with them, anyway, as you are in that situation ....

Which is something that you can probably relate to ....

And I am not what you would call "hail fellow" or gregarious, I suppose, like old "TWO-GUN TEXAS TOMMY" DeLay, who just loves a party with a hot tub as the centerpiece .......

I'm probably a bit more solitary than that, I would guess ....

Maybe like old Calvin Coolidge, who was said to have had no friends at all when he was president of the United States, back in 1921, or thereabouts, anyway .....

While you are out in a different kind of setting, with people around you, and a park right close nearby where you can go and pass the time with folks .....

And so ....

I don't know if in the end we are islands or not, but sometimes, many times, actually, I suspect that that is exactly what we are, and so ....

The question becomes one of what you do with your beach frontage, I suppose ....

But again, whoever really does know ...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/...h/index_np.html

"Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled"

In an impassioned speech, Sen. Byrd voices his shock and dismay over the Bush administration's practice of spying on U.S. citizens.

Editor's note: Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va., gave the following speech on Dec. 19, 2005.

Dec. 21, 2005 | Americans have been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an overzealous president.

It has become apparent that this administration has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against our country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution.

We have been stunned to hear reports about the Pentagon gathering information and creating databases to spy on ordinary Americans whose only sin is to choose to exercise their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

Those Americans who choose to question the administration's flawed policy in Iraq are labeled by this administration as "domestic terrorists."

We now know that the FBI's use of national security letters on American citizens has increased 100-fold, requiring tens of thousands of individuals to turn over personal information and records.

These letters are issued without prior judicial review, and provide no real means for an individual to challenge a permanent gag order.

Through news reports, we have been shocked to learn of the CIA's practice of rendition, and the so-called black sites, secret locations in foreign countries where abuse and interrogation have been exported, to escape the reach of U.S. laws protecting against human rights abuses.

We know that Vice President Dick Cheney has asked for exemptions for the CIA from the language contained in the McCain torture amendment banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

Thank God Dick Cheney's pleas have been rejected by this Congress.

Now comes the stomach-churning revelation through an executive order that President Bush has circumvented both Congress and the courts.

He has usurped the third branch of government -- the branch charged with protecting the civil liberties of our people -- by directing the National Security Agency to intercept and eavesdrop on the phone conversations and e-mails of American citizens without a warrant, which is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.

He has stiff-armed the people's branch of government.

He has rationalized the use of domestic, civilian surveillance with a flimsy claim that he has such authority because we are at war.

The executive order, which has been acknowledged by the president, is an end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which makes it unlawful for any official to monitor the communications of an individual on American soil without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What is the president thinking?

Congress has provided for the very situations which the president is blatantly exploiting.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, housed in the Department of Justice, reviews requests for warrants for domestic surveillance.

The court can review these requests expeditiously and in times of great emergency.

In extreme cases, where time is of the essence and national security is at stake, surveillance can be conducted before the warrant is even applied for.

This secret court was established so that sensitive surveillance could be conducted, and information could be gathered without compromising the security of the investigation.

The purpose of the FISA court is to balance the government's role in fighting the war on terror with the Fourth Amendment rights afforded to each and every American.

The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the president that amount to little more than "trust me."

But we are a nation of laws and not of men.

Where is the source of that authority he claims?

I defy the administration to show me where in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or the U.S. Constitution, they are allowed to steal into the lives of innocent America citizens and spy.

When asked yesterday [Dec. 18] what the source of this authority was, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had no answer.

Secretary Rice seemed to insinuate that eavesdropping on Americans was acceptable because FISA was an outdated law, and could not address the needs of the government in combating the new war on terror.

This is a patent falsehood.

The USA Patriot Act expanded FISA significantly, equipping the government with the tools it needed to fight terrorism.

Further amendments to FISA were granted under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2002 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

In fact, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission noted that the removal of the pre-9/11 "wall" between intelligence officials and law enforcement was significant in that it "opened up new opportunities for cooperative action."

The president claims that these powers are within his role as commander in chief.

Make no mistake, the powers granted to the commander in chief are specifically those as head of the armed forces.

These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens.

They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan.

There is nothing within the powers granted in the commander-in-chief clause that grants the president the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians.

We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.

The president claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11 attacks.

But that resolution does not give the president unchecked power to spy on our own people.

That resolution does not give the administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners.

That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them.

That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law.

That resolution does not give the president the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.

I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the legislative and judicial branches.

The president has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality.

He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed to Americans by the U.S. Constitution.

We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets.

We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush's gross abuse of power and constitutional violations.

But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law.

We listened to the president speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq.

He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances?

President Bush called the recent Iraqi election "a landmark day in the history of liberty."

I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark.

Never have the promises and protections of liberty seemed so illusory.

Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.

These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.

I am reminded of Thomas Paine's famous words, "These are the times that try men's souls."

These astounding revelations about the bending and contorting of the Constitution to justify a grasping, irresponsible administration under the banner of "national security" are an outrage.

Congress can no longer sit on the sidelines.

It is time to ask hard questions of the attorney general, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and the director of the CIA.

The White House should not be allowed to exempt itself from answering the same questions simply because it might assert some kind of "executive privilege" in order to avoid further embarrassment.

ONE OLD MAN IN AMERICA

I don't know how long I have known Mr. A.B. in here now, but I would say that it was a while .....

More that a few weeks anyway ....

Whether that makes a difference or not, since in the sense of having ever met Mr. A.B., well it that regard, I don't know him at all ...

But in here, well, that is just a different thing ...

For Mr. A.B. has become a "presence" in my "virtual life" in here, and that is a fact ....

"What would Mr. A.B. think of that" .......

That's something that goes through my mind when I am posting in here, anyway ....

Mr. A.B. sort of serves as a brake or "governor" in here, as I see it anyway, the "governor" being that type which holds an engine to a constant speed ....

Sort of a tone-setter, I guess you would say, and so ....

We rise to to planes we might not otherwise have been able to discern on our own ....

And at the same time, we hopefully stay away from those lower emotional planes where it is always so easy to go, but generally unproductive of your time, if you do .....

Mr. A.B. certainly has been an influence on me in here as a person quite a bit younger than he, and God knows I need such an influence as Mr. A.B., if I am to be the person that I am capable of being, rather than reverting to the person that I am all too often these days, an older disabled combat veteran who feels his age when the cold sets in, and becomes irascible, as a result, which is really nothing to be proud over, but there it is ...

And it is so ....

Sometime ago, Mr. A.B. made a statement about him and myself coming from vastly different places, and it is so ....

We do ....

Mr. A.B. is quite a bit further out there in life ahead of me, and in that extra time that he has had, he has acquired some grace and dignity and strength of character which will not be mine unless and until I were to go that extra distance myself, and so .....

Mr. A.B., I just wish to say at this time of the year how glad I am that you have taken some of the time in your life and shared it with me over here in my own ....

I'm far from being a perfect person, Mr. A.B., and so, in some senses, I am doubly glad for your trust in me, that keeps you checking in from time to time ....

And so ....

Best of the season to you and yours, Mr. A.B. ......

To everyone who has stopped by here to read these words, I want to wish you the best this season has to offer, and the best of the new year coming, as well .....

And that thought goes out to the world, as well, without exception .....

Johnny Cash - Christmas As I Knew It

One day near Christmas when I was just a child

Mama called us together and mama tried to smile

She said you know the cottoncrop hasn't been too good this year

There's just no spending money and well at least we're all here

I hope you won't expect a lot of Christmas presents

Just be thankful that there is plenty to eat

That's quite a blessing that'll make things a little more pleasant

And us kids got to thinking how really blessed we were

At least we were all healthy and best of all we had her

Roy cut down a pigapple tree and we drug it home Jack and me

Daddy killed a squirrel and Louise made the bread

Reba decorated the tree with popcorn strings before we went to bed

Mama and daddy sacrificed cause this Christmas was lean

But after all there was the babies Tom and Joanne, babies need a few things

I whittled a whistle for my brother Jack and though we fought now and then

When I gave Jack that whistle he knew I thought the world of him

Mama made the girl's dresses out of flower sacks

And when she ironed them down you couldn't tell that they hadn't come from town

A sharecropped family across the road didn't have it as good as us

They didn't even have a light and it was way past dusk

And mama said well I bet they don't even have coaloil or beans to boil

A log, apples, oranges and such

Me and Jack took a jar of coaloil and some hickerynuts we'd found

We walked to the sharecropper's porch and set 'em down

A poor old ragged lady eased open the door

She picked up the coaloil and hickerynuts and said

I sure do thank ye and quickly closed the door

We started back home me and Jack and about halfway we stopped looked back

And in the sharecropper's window at last was a light

So for one of the neighbors and for us it was a good Christmas night

Christmas came and Christmas went Christmas that year was heaven sent

Then daddy put on his gumboots waited for the thaw back home in Dyess Arkansas

Well, it's Christmas, they say ....

And I guess it must be ...

Or why would so many people out there be saying it?

SO ...

It must be ....

But what really is it?

This thing of Christmas, I mean?

It must be something, because this morning on the radio news, I heard Donald Rumsfeld telling George W. Bush's troops in IRAQINAM that it is a special day for them and their families, more than anyone else in America, and so ....

I guess that defines it somehow .....

Christmas is a possession of George W. Bush's and Donald Rumsfeld's to bestow on who they will, and to similarly deny to who they will, as well ....

Which makes it quite a potent political weapon, when you think on it .....

Who gets Christmas proclaimed to them by George W. Bush and his is special ...

Those who do not get Christmas are outcast .....

PROSCRIBED .....

The ANATHEMA of George W. Bush, the REPUBLICAN PARTY OF THE WORLD and the GUMMINT of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA is called down on their heads, to single them out, for all the candid world to see ...

Undeserving ......

NOT QUITE HUMAN .....

And I am one of them ....

And George W. Bush is going down to Camp David, they said, for a big feast, and well, I guess that defines it, too .....

As something or other, anyway .....

Whatever, George W. Bush gets to eat good today, because of this Christams thing, and that is something, I suppose .....

And then, the news was saying something about Jesus being born today, but that would have had to be quite a long time ago, by my reckoning anyway, since Jesus has been dead for what, almost two thousand years now?

Got in the way of people and their sinning, he did, and he wouldn't proclaim Tiberius Caesar as his lord and master ....

And so, they killed him for that .....

For the sport of it, actually ....

And because they could .....

People go around shouting and proclaiming that Jesus died for my sins, but that, quite frankly, is a load of HORSE **** ......

Jesus did not die for any sins of mine, and that is a fact .....

I wasn't anywhere around back then when they killed him, gave him the death penalty, and so, I'm not accepting any blame for any of that ......

And had I been around, it would not have been my hand that killed Jesus .....

Nor my word to the crowd, either, "do with him as you will ..."

FOR I AM NOT PILATE .....

And if anyone is going to suffer for my sins, well, it would be me, and whoever I committed them against, if I were into sinning ....

And that is something that I had indelibly etched into my consciousness over there in Viet Nam, this thing of personal responsibility for OUR OWN ACTIONS .....

"DO THAT ONE MORE TIME, AND I WILL SQUASH YOU LIKE A BUG ....."

"DO NOT KILL MY PEOPLE ....."

"OR YOU WILL BE GONE ....."

In a heartbeat ......

Just like that ....

WHAM!!!!!

GOD's words to me, anyway, and there was no prattling back to him that "oh, Jesus loves me ..."

For that too is a load of HORSE CRAP .......

Jesus does not love sinners .....

If he did, he likely would have become a Pharisee himself .....

And an official in the Roman GUMMINT, to boot .....

If only Jesus had learned how to lie .....

SO .....

What one of them was saying this morning was that on Christmas Day, God became a human being, and so, now, we are all supposed to be happy ....

Happy .....

Because God became a human being .....

The other day, I was talking to a younger person about Christmas, and he was kind of troubled because the Jehovah's Witnesses had been to his house quite a bit, and they had convinced his wife to not celebrate Christmas because it was a pagan holiday, and there I stopped him ....

Because it likely is ....

And what is wrong, or evil about that, is what I asked him ....

December 21st is the shortest day, and the longest night, and so, it equates as the DARKEST DAY .....

In the days before Christmas, the DARKNESS has come ....

And when you are living with nothing, as the people called pagans were doing, and as I am doing, down in my hole in the ground where we were sitting around the woodfire that I keep going to try and stay warm this time of the year, that DARKNESS can really weigh down on you .....

SO .....

Knowing that in that one night, the tide has turned, so to speak, and that the days will start to brighten up the next day is a real important thing ....

A cause for hope ....

And by the 25th of December, the sun is certainly on its way back ......

Someone making observations at sunrise from a fixed point would know this ...

As the sun would have moved discernably back towards the south on the horizon, to confirm that the SUN HAS RISEN once again ........

New life is coming, once again ....

Or the possibility, anyway, if you can just make it through the rest of the winter that is yet to come .....

So, to me, "sun" and "SON" are interchangeable, in that regard .....

The sun has risen ...

The "SON" has risen ......

And I have no trouble associating GOD with the sun, myself .....

Nor do I have trouble associating CHRIST with the light .....

And so ......

"Come forth and walk in the light ..."

"Once more, it has been born again ..."

An act of faith .....

That's how I see it, anyway .....

For there is no reason on earth that the sun should do that .....

Give us light, I mean .....

And there is no one down here on earth who can make it do so .....

Just as there is no one down here who can make bread dough rise if it doesn't want to, nor make wood burn in a fire to keep one warm, if one is with evil intent in his or her heart ....

But those are the thoughts of a pagan, I guess, me ...

And that is just how it goes .....

And so ....

I don't know, right now, as I sit here this moment, what the future of this character Livyjr is going to be, quite frankly .....

And of course, that would have to include me, as well, since Livyjr and I have this "connection", so to speak .....

For those who do not know, Livy was some person back in the final days of the Roman REPUBLIC who was a "recorder" of the times .....

We today know something of that which was Rome because Livy bothered to put words down on a piece of papyrus, or vellum, or maybe clay tablets, whatever .....

And I have been doing the same .....

Sometimes it is me speaking, personally ....

And sometimes, it is merely the times themselves that are making themselves known to humanity and posterity, through me .....

And how does one ever separate the twain?

In here, where I am perhaps at my most "personal", I am who I am, which is someone from America who was taught a certain way, and who then adhered to that, perhaps not totally unflinchingly, and certainly not with perfection, because sometimes, to learn right from wrong, well ....

In 1969, I was "shot" in the back of the head, or "hit" would be more accurate, with shrapnel from the exploding warhead of an RPG-7 rocket grenade, the same RPG's that are still being used in IRAQINAM today, because they are cheap and quite effective, and that plagues me to this day .......

Having that shrapnel in there, near my spine .....

And all of the scar tissue .....

I used to have "discussions" about this thing of being a wounded combat veteran with various psychologists over here, and what I would tell them, if they wanted to know what it would be like to be like me every day would be to take a thumbtack, and a piece of scotch tape, and just set the point of the thumbtack lightly against the skin of your forehead, and then, carefully place the tape across the thumbtack to hold it in place, and then go the rest of that day being pleasant to people, and "MELLOW", and outgoing, and "HAIL FELLOW" and gregarious ......

"Oh, no, Livyjr, I couldn't do that ....."

"It would hurt ...."

Well, then, I would say, just put the piece of scotch tape on your forehead then, and go around that way for a day .....

Or for five minutes, even, without losing your cool ........

But, of course, they didn't .....

They had no need to ....

They are the "analysts", after all, and they have ALL the answers, so don't screw up their otherwise perfect world by introducing questions that they have no answers for, AT ALL ......

Some people in here have told me, off and on, that I should write down things about Viet Nam, but what I retain from Viet Nam is really a lot of outright revulsion .....

And what is the sense of writing about that?

There is these days what is called a "Viet Nam genre", a "style" of writing that is apparently taught in community college writing courses, or "writing workshops", perhaps, and what it is, as I read it anyway, is a lot of vulgarity, and conflicts between the "LIFERS" and the authors of these pieces, and duty-shirking and skating and such like that, and well, it just is not my style, to be truthful .....

I don't see virtue in vulgarity ......

"I don't give a **** and I don't care who knows it ....."

That is the centerpiece, it seems, of the Viet Nam genre of writing, and that, quite frankly, is not me .....

And then there is the MACHO side of that writing style, about how many people someone killed, and that is not me, either .....

Not because I could not write about that, but because I CHOOSE NOT TO, instead .......

SO .....

This thread just came to me, one day, and so, as I do, I followed the "urge" and here we now are ....

Where ever on earth that may be .....

Last year at this time, someone had given me a book entitled The Power of Many by a person named Christian Crumlish, and his subject in the book was about the power of the internet and forums like this, to change the way we think, perhaps, or how we see life, and as I do, generally, anyway, I read that book through, and I thought about it, and again, here we are today ....

Where ever on earth that may in fact be .....

In his book, this Christian Crumlish talks about his experiences with the Howard Dean campaign, and its use of the internet as a communications tool, and what he was doing was reflecting back on the strengths and weaknesses of the internet as a tool for politics, and especially political campaigns, in that case, for president of the United States of America .....

And in one part of the book, he was talking about people in California writing personal letters to people out in Iowa to tell the Iowa people why the California people thought Howard Dean was just so cool, and therefore should be president of the United States ....

And as a country person, I could just imagine some Iowa hog farmer getting one of these California letters, and I could see him turning that letter over in his calloused hands, turning it over and over and over again, as if trying to determine which end should be up, so as to be able to find the beginning .....

Because "cool" just isn't much of a word to an Iowa hog farmer, to be truthful ....

"COOL" is a word for people with a lot of leisure time ...

And that just might not be the Iowa hog farmer .....

COMMON GROUND ......

That is what we are supposed to be doing in here, I guess, finding this "common ground", just as the campaign of Howard Dean was supposed to be doing when these California people wrote these personal letters to the Iowa people ...

BUT IS THERE ANY, AT ALL?

Is there common ground between me and a psychologist?

I never really found any, to be truthful .......

And so, I wonder about in here, as well .....

One time, years back, I was involved in a "technology transfer" with a Japanese company, and during that time, my "team" spent day and night, pretty much, with this Japanese "team", going over details about this and that, and the evenings were supposed to be for "social" purposes .....

Small talk about things that are just flat inconsequential to me, anyway ....

Chit chat, and such ....

Well, during that time, I would try and sit by this old Japanese man who was the "mentor" of his team, and one thing he told me is that at the end of the day, all Japanese, whatever their job, or station, are still Japanese, and so, they have a type of "unit cohesion" as a result .....

The Japanese live on an island, and they know that .....

Over there, you can't go very far in any direction without walking into water that is over your head in a hurry .....

Over here, the old Japanese man told me, we just have too much space, and so, we don't care about things, because we don't have to ....

It's too easy to destroy something, the environment in one place, and then to simply move on, to do it all over again in another, and there is a lot of truth to that, I think, anyway, based upon my own experiences and observations in life .....

America stands for exploitation .....

That is why we were in Viet Nam ....

And that is why we are now in IRAQINAM ....

To exploit .....

The other thing this old Japanese man said to me is that at the end of the day, for us over here, there is no such thing as an "American", and there was a flaw, a "fault line", if you will, in what appears otherwise to be this MONOLITH that whipped Japan back in WWII .....

THERE ARE NO AMERICAN VALUES .....

There is no "unit cohesion" over here, the way there is in Japan .....

And America is for sale in a way no other country, or people on the face of the earth are for sale .....

And there is the greatest weakness of America, of all ....

It is not necessary, nor desirable, to go to war with America to conquer it ....

JUST BUY THE PLACE, instead, and so, the Japanese were doing exactly that .....

And the Germans .....

Both of whom we beat back in WWII .....

We taught them CAPITALISM by selling ourselves to them, to prove that we were for sale, and that we did not care who owned us, so long as the money was in the bank before the transaction was deemed complete ......

And here we are today .....

Where ever on earth that may actually be ...

And so .....

LIFE FROM THE OTHER END OF THE GUN ....

I think it is a good thing in a person's life to have access to older persons who are still vital .....

Because if they are, well, then they have some thoughts in their head that are worth hearing about to consider, is my thought, anyway ....

And in here, for me, that is Mr. A.B., who has quite a bit of gravity in here for someone, who like me, does not really exist except as a screen name, and some words on a virtual piece of paper, and not often does Mr. A.B. speak ...

And so ...

One time, Mr. A.B. said to me that there really wasn't much more to getting old than simply hanging around long enough to actually be old, and I couldn't argue very effectively with him that it couldn't be that simple, since he has done it, and I have not ....

And that guides me along, actually, having to think on life from Mr. A.B.'s perspective of someone who has seen eighty-some seasons come and go .....

Because I haven't ......

And I know that as humble as Mr. A.B. might be, you don't get there hail and hearty by being stupid ....

Or lazy ......

Or at least not me, anyway .....

And so ......

In my conversations with Mr. A.B., I have come to realize that while he and I see clear on a lot of things, in some ways, well, Mr. A.B. is in a different place than I, and as I think on it, outside of the generational difference between us, where Mr. A.B. and I could be father and son, well, there just is this difference, I think, anyway, of this thing of which end of the gun we ended up being on .....

Which was itself a product of the times that we were in ....

And that was something totally outside of our control .....

In another thread, Mr. A.B. and I talked about what would be called "spiruituality", perhaps, and in that conversation, Mr. A.B. stated that his beliefs about spirituality came to him in his fifties, and so it goes, or at least I think so, anyway .....

Before a person can really become "spiritual", I think that you really have to see something of life, outside of yourself, and then, you have to reconcile yourself to it ......

Because outside of control over ourselves, we really have none at all ...

And so, facing each moment of each day is an act of faith, pure and simple, for me, anyway, and Mr. A.B. too, is what I also think ....

And especially do we not have control over what life itself may bring us on a day-to-day, or even moment-to-moment basis .....

And so ....

Old dead Marcus Aurelius .....

A captive of the courts of Rome, he was ....

And it made him unhappy .....

His captivity .....

His slavery, even .....

Slavery to the ROMAN STATE .....

Whereas I am my own man .....

Old dead Marcus ended up being an EMPORER of Rome, when what he wanted to be was a philosopher, and me, not wanting, ended up being myself .....

But that is not to say that Marcus did not try ....

At philosophy, that is .....

And maybe that is a kind of difference between Marcus and myself, although the jury is still out on that .....

Marcus was trying to be a philosopher, while I am just a simple person with a philosophy about life that I adhere to, regardless .....

And in the end, my philosophy is what keeps me from being an emporer like Marcus Aurelius ....

Because I am an American, and I know we don't have those over here ....

By choice ....

And by design .....

We have a REPUBLIC, here, or we are supposed to, anyway, where at the time Marcus Aurelius was alive, the REPUBLIC of Rome was long since dead and gone .....

Which is something that OUR American forebears in liberty knew quite well ...

That being this history of Rome that we in America were not to repeat .....

Because of OUR Constitution ...

Which was designed with the experiences of all these other REPUBLICS throughout history in mind .....

Study why all these other REPUBLICS or democracies failed, and then build a system of government that has these flaws removed .....

And that is the basis of AMERICAN HISTORY ....

A study of Rome, and Greece, and England ........

And France ......

And Europe ......

AMERICA is supposed to be the one place on this earth of OURS where the mistakes of past civilizations are known .....

And so, rejected and guarded against, here in OUR America .....

Or so the theory goes, anyway .....

And there is the flaw in America today ....

There is nothing real ....

No substance ....

No bed rock ....

Just opinion ....

And that is all .....

The United States Constitution IS NOT a source of positive law ....

In fact, the United States Constitution is nothing at all ....

Thus, when people like me took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic, we took an oath to defend NOTHING against enemies foreign and domestic ....

NOTHING AT ALL .....

Which is to say, the oath is a joke .....

"The United states Constitution is really nothing, but what the hell, yeah, I'll defend that nothing with all the gusto I've got ....."

The other day, what was called Christams morning in fact, FOX RADIO NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED YOU DECIDE had on someone or other to explain to the candid world what Christmas was all about, as far as this FOX NEWS is concerned, anyway, and what this person FOX had on to speak for them said was that Americans were celebrating something called Christmas because someone called God wanted us to love him, and so he sent us down his only begotten son to kill, which we did, and now we love God, because we were able to kill his son with no interference or objection from this God that FOX NEWS has, and that is why we celebrate Christmas in America, or some people, anyway, at least according to this FOX NEWS ......

And their expert on the subject, who must be an expert, or else FOX would never have put him on the air in the first place, as I see it from my limited point of view on the same subject, which is why I would have celebrated Christmas as an American, had I ended up doing so that same day ........

And as is my way, I heard this man, whoever he was, this EXPERT of Fox's, I heard him out, I listened carefully to what he had to say, figuring that he must be some kind of expert or other if FOX NEWS had him on, anyway, and you know .....

I don't know who this God fellow was that this expert was talking about, but in my way of seeing life, he must have been some real sick twist, indeed, if to be loved by someone, he would turn his son over to them to kill .....

Now, obviously, there has to be something that I am missing here, but I don't know what that is .......

I know that if I had a son, and someone told me that they would love me if I gave them my son to kill, I'd look at that person, or group of persons like they were pure goose fools, and that would be that ....

And I sure would not be very polite about it, either ....

Although not being polite goes against my grain, as a rule .....

It just is so outlandish, however, the thought that I would let someone kill my own son so that I would be loved, that politeness would probably go right out the window at the suggestion that this might be something that I would go along with, this giving of my son to someone to kill ...

And so, I had to wonder at what this FOX NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED YOU DECIDE was talking about ....

And what I decided, since they gave me that choice, was that this FOX NEWS must be kind of weird, to be truthful, to be peddling this stuff to people like me ......

Because the God I know would never condone the killing of any children of his ...

And woe unto anyone who thought to give it a try .....

The GOD I know does not really give a damn one way or the other whether anyone loves him or not, as I understand it, anyway, since he is God, and so .....

SO ......

What does that say .....

My GOD is not neurotic, and the one FOX NEWS worships is .....

I was taught to thank people when they say nice things about me. My Mom was a great teacher of how to live although, of course, I did not think so at the time
she was doing her teaching.

So. thank you Livyjr for saying nice things about me in public which as my Mom always told me is the place to say nice things about people. The critical things you say about people were to be said in private. So that is one of the things that has always stuck with me which is to compliment in public and criticize in private.

Too bad more people never learned that.

As far as being old is concerned, being old is really just a set of numbers.

A person can easily be considered a wise old man or woman - or - can be a good example of the saying " there's no fool like an old fool ".

Most of the time, I believe, which of the two examples fits the person depends on whether he/she has learned the one most important basic fundamental which is --

' When you don't know much about the topic being discussed, keep your mouth
shut '.

I think we all have a little trouble with that one.

But I am straying from the reason I respond to this post.

I wanted to make known my admiration for Livyjr who has encountered, in my opinion, more than just a fair share of trouble in his life.

A whole lot of the troubles I speak of are due to his service in Viet Nam and by the unfortunate situation of being in the wrong place when explosives were doing what they were made to do which is to explode.

And he has never to my knowledge, whined or complained about that.

A fellow named Brutus once said about Caesar that he ( Brutus ) s did not come to
glorify him ( or words to that effect ) and I did not come to glorify Livyjr.

All I know about the man is what I learn by reading his posts which include his basic beliefs and philosophies.

Frankly, I recommend that more and more people read what he has to say.

Was it Barnum that said " you might learn something "?

Actually, I know it wasn't Barnum but he'll do for now.

So ------ this is what I have to say about Livyjr. I know others feel the same way.

It wouldn't hurt if they said so in public.

My Mom would like that.

A.B.

And what brought me around to say some of these things above here is a comment that Mr. A.B. himself made above about "relationships", which do indeed have some impact on our outlooks and on our lives, as a result .....

And that brings me back to old dead Marcus Aurelius ....

Who also talked of "relationships", as well .....

In his Meditations .....

Which I read through every night, a page at a time, and when I am finished, I do it all over again ....

Just in case I might have missed something .....

Or simply did not understand .....

And what Marcus says is this, that in life, we have THREE RELATIONSHIPS, and they are these .....

i. with the body that we inhabit .....

ii. with the divine, the cause of everything in all things .....

And finally ....

iii. with the people around us, should there in fact ever be any, which is a point that Mr. A.B. and I discuss from time to time, however obliquely that might be ....

And I guess in the end, how we deal with these three relationships is unique to each of us, depending on how we got to where we are at any given time, and where on earth that just might be .....

In my own case, I suppose that my relationships with those around me are somewhat "short-stopped" by numbers i and ii above, which is my relationship with the particular body that I have to inhabit, which relationship then causes me to spend an awful lot of time with ii above, my particular relationship to the divine from my perspective as a wounded combat veteran, to the exclusion of iii, which is a difference between me and Mr. A.B. that likely can never be altered or changed .....

Pain clouds my vision ....

And so it is .....

But that is no excuse to be rude ....

Or short-tempered .....

Although, far too often, that is where I find myself heading towards ....

And then, there is Mr. A.B., serving as the counter-example .....

DON'T GO THERE ....

It is beneath your dignity as a human being to do so ....

And so it is, Mr. A.B., so it is ......

And so .....

And here, I guess, is where there is a difference in point-of-view between me and Mr. A.B., and that would be with respect to his statement above that in my life, I have encountered more than just a fair share of trouble .....

To me, it just is what it is, no definitions assigned .......

Or every attempt to have it be so, anyway ....

Ride the horse you have been given ...

Ride with dignity ....

Even if your feet are dragging on the ground .....

Still ....

Ride with dignity .....

And if you have no horse at all?

Well ...

What is that an excuse for?

As I see it in my own life, and as I accept it, God, or nature, whichever, gave me a set of circumstances to have to deal with ....

And that is that .....

Like Einstein, I also do not believe that God plays dice with OUR lives, that if we are given a task, it is not useless .....

And the harder that task may be, the less useless it is ....

And so ......

I've got an Army shirt, me, of the type that we wore back in Viet Nam, a green jungle fatigue shirt with my name on it, and on the collar, on the right side, you still can see the stain from the flow of blood from the back of my head in March of 1969 .....

Over thirty years, and the bloodstains are still there ....

Still visible ....

And when you look at it, which drop are you really seeing?

The first one?

Or the last?

When I look at those bloodstains, I am reminded of that night ....

I am reminded again and again that, yes, it was real ....

All of it .....

It was real ....

And a part of that was fighting desperately to be back here ....

To be alive ....

To remain alive .....

And how do you know ....

I lay there for several hours, maybe three, until daybreak, it was, and in that time, well, let's say that one has a lot of time to oneself to think in .....

And everything that happened after that leads to here in an unbroken chain ....

And so ....

It just is the way that it is ....

And so ...

Some thoughts just sent into me via the internet .....

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher,

who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter,

who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the VETERAN, not the poet,

who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer,

who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer,

who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the VETERAN, not the politician,

Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the VETERAN,

who salutes the Flag .....

I of course do not know who the real author of these platitudes or sentiments above really is ......

These particular platitudes or sentiments came off what was a glossy "presentation" that is making its way around America right now via the internet .....

Which is how I got my copy that I printed above here .....

Now, as a veteran myself, I wonder at who puts these things together ...

And WHY?

As a veteran, I think things like this are kind of insulting to non-veterans, actually .....

And so, I wonder at that .....

Actually, I guess I wonder at a lot of things over here in this place that calls itself America and wants so badly to have all the rest of the world think that it is the only best place there is on the face of the earth, when such may not be the truth at all, and far from it, actually, at least as far as this one platitude directly above here goes ....

That veterans have given us the right to a fair trial in this place that calls itself America ....

For that is not true AT ALL ....

First of all, this platitude makes a presumption that in America, someone, anyone, including a veteran, is entitled to a fair trial ....

Now, if that were true, then perhaps we could debate the role of the veteran versus the plain, ordinary citizen or attorney in making it be so, BUT IT IS NOT TRUE, and so ....

There is no debate to be had ....

At least on the alleged "fair trial" part of it, anyway ....

While there is room for plenty of debate as to why we DO NOT have a right to a fair trial in this place that calls itself America, and wants so desperately to have all the rest of the world believe that this America is the only best place that there is, anywhere, ever .....

And so ....

And no ....

No ....

As a veteran, I don't think that it was veterans who gave us freedom of religion ....

That is something that we took upon ourselves as Americans, because we had that at the time of OUR independence from the tyranny of George III of England ....

And then we improved upon that, because we are a tolerant people .....

Saying veterans gave us freedom of religion is just not a correct statement ...

Too many implications about something coming from the tip of a bayonet in there for me, anyway ....

"Sign tallying military deaths upsets Army"

By PATRICK CONDON, Associated Press
Last updated: 5:55 a.m., Saturday, December 31, 2005

DULUTH, Minn. -- Scott Cameron never imagined his modest memorial to American troops in Iraq would transform a quiet street here into the latest front of the nation's tense debate about the war in Iraq.

His sign tallying the war's dead and wounded rests feet from the local Army recruiting office, and Cameron's refusal to take it down despite Army requests has drawn national attention.

The fuss is giving the Vietnam veteran a chance to air a view he wishes he'd expressed long ago.

"The way veterans have been treated in this country is shameful," Cameron said this week.

His tribute has irritated the military recruiters next door, who dislike the daily reminder of friends lost.

Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander, requested that the sign come down for his colleagues' benefit.

"They're saying, 'Why should we have to look at that?'"

"'We lost people over there,'" said Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander.

"It's not just a number to them."

Some of Cameron's supporters believe the sign will hurt recruiting.

"You're a young kid and you see those stark numbers, you might realize there's a cost you didn't consider," said Gary Tonkin, a Vietnam veteran.

It all started a month ago, when Cameron, a volunteer for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Kelley, posted a sign in the window of the campaign's local office.

It reads, "Remember the Fallen Heroes," and contains three tallies: the number of American troops killed in Iraq, the number wounded and the days passed since the war began.

"The sacrifices our troops and their families are making are an important part of Minnesotans' lives right now," said Kelley, one of several Democrats seeking to unseat Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty next year.

"If this draws attention to that, it's all to the good as far as I'm concerned."

As of Friday, the sign reported 2,177 troops had been killed and 16,155 injured, after 1,017 days in Iraq.

Capan said the sign hasn't hurt recruiting: "We had three people sign up just today," he said earlier this week.

It's not the first dust-up over the U.S. military's continued presence in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed there, camped outside President Bush's Texas ranch for weeks.

Duluth seems an unlikely location for the latest flare-up.

The city of brick mansions and steep hills rising off Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota is a stronghold of blue-collar progressivism mixed with old-fashioned Midwestern patriotism.

Many residents seem uncomfortable with the controversy.

"This really shouldn't be that big a deal," Sam Johnson said.

His companion, Lisa Whitestone, said, "I think it's a fair thing to be reminded that there's a cost for us to be over there."

Cameron said he never intended to discourage recruiting efforts -- but he's not particularly concerned if it does.

A native of Spokane, Wash., he went to Vietnam at 19.

He was injured when AK-47 fire ripped through the floor of a helicopter he was riding in, hitting his spine and collapsing his left lung.

He's had nearly four dozen surgeries since then, he said, and supports himself with his disability pension.

Cameron said he's always regretted not speaking out against Vietnam after his injury.

He's hoping to steer media attention over the sign toward veterans' problems.

He wants Congress to pass legislation that would prevent future cuts in benefits.

He said he's contacted several manufacturers to produce and market a line of signs like his that war opponents could post on their lawns or elsewhere.

A portion of the profits would go to veterans organizations.

"I'm in awe of what's happening here," Cameron said.

"If that sign can be used as a force for good, then it's worth it."

Media attention ....

Now ....

That is quite a concept .....

Media attention ....

As if there really were such a thing as media attention .....

Media inattention, perhaps ...

Or more properly, media indifference .....

Or continual media unawareness ....

Blindness ....

By choice .....

Because there have always been "veterans' problems" .....

And likely, there always will be ....

And this goes back all the way to the American Revolution, and then comes forward again, through the Civil War, and then WWI, and on through Viet Nam .....

"Veteran's problems" .....

Which is to say, problems outside the "ken", or knowing, of people who are not veterans, but are in charge of the pocketbook out of which any funding for "veterans' problems" must come .....

The problem with "veterans' problems", of course, especially as far as America and the media is concerned, is that by and large, these problems are not attractive ....

Nor are they apparently comprehensible to the "media", since the media does not really seem to have all that much comprehension in the first place .....

Because if the media did have this comprehension, there would have been a huge uproar over those purple heart band-aids at the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION in New York City last year .....

A HUGE UPROAR .....

Where there was silence, instead ......

Purple Heart recipients, combat-wounded veterans, were openly mocked at the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION in New York City, and SO WHAT?

And there certainly would have been an uproar over the REPUBLICAN "SWIFT-BOATING" of John Kerry, who was awarded a Silver Star in Viet Nam for gallantry in action ......

But what does the media in America know about Silver Stars?

Or gallantry?

And that answer is either, not much, or nothing at all .....

Nor do they seem at all troubled by any of this .....

Because America itself is indifferent .....

When all of that REPUBLICAN "SWIFT-BOATING" was going on, I saw a picture in the newspaper of this fat, old guy wearing jungle fatigues, and the caption had words to the effect that this guy was a Viet Nam Swift-boat veteran on his way to the local "SWIFT-BOATING" session .....

Except the patch that he was wearing on his right shoulder was a MACV patch ....

Which is an Army patch .....

And any veteran seeing that picture would notice that right off, or so I think, anyway ....

I mean, it is quite obvious ...

But not to the media ....

They don't know a Marine from a sailer, not that there is much, anyway, and they do not know a sailer from a soldier, and there is a world of difference there ...

But not to the media ....

Who glibly talk about "soldiers" of this or that Marine Division, when in fact, those personnel would be Marines .....

Because that is what they are ....

Way back when, when I first came on the old John Kerry forum that preceded this one, I got into a sidebar conversation with what I thought was a younger person, and we were talking about John Kerry's Silver Star, and my thought to this person was that the Silver Star was a measure of the person wearing that decoration ....

Gallantry in action ....

Or supposedly, anyway .....

And from that REPUBLICAN "SWIFT-BOATING" of John Kerry, the emphasis would have to be on SUPPOSEDLY .....

As I followed that crap along, you would believe from media accounts that the United States military hands out Silver Stars to the undeserving all the time, and so, that is how John Kerry got his ....

By being dishonorable .....

Media attention ....

There is media attention ...

And this man wonders about focusing it on veterans' problems ....

Veterans have problems, I would say, because of what the media DID NOT DO when John Kerry was being "SWIFT-BOATED" by the REPUBLICANS .......

Which was to speak out strongly against that fraudulent attack on John Kerry's SILVER STAR as a disgraceful attack on all veterans who have donned the uniform to go and fight for this country in the field .....

Not a peep out of the media on that one, at all ....

Instead, they allowed that fraud to go on, as if it were the truth ....

And so .......

Media attention being focused on veterans' problems here in OUR America?

Not hardly is what I think ....

THE MEDIA IN AMERICA WOULD NOT KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT VETERANS' PROBLEMS IN OUR AMERICA IF IT FELL OVER THEM ......

And so .....

"VA's help is often unhelpful - Information given to callers by agency found likely to be incorrect"

By CHRIS ADAMS, Knight-Ridder
First published: Saturday, December 31, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A veteran who turns to the Department of Veterans Affairs for information about benefits might want to get a second opinion.

According to the VA's own data, people who call the agency's regional offices for help and advice are more likely to receive completely wrong answers than completely right ones.

To see how well its employees answer typical questions from the public, VA benefits experts in 2004 called each of the agency's U.S. regional offices, which process veterans' disability claims.

The so-called mystery callers, saying they were relatives or friends of veterans inquiring about possible benefits, made a total of 1,089 calls.

Almost half the time they got answers that the VA said were either completely incorrect or minimally correct.

According to an internal VA memo, 22 percent of the answers the callers got were "completely incorrect," 23 percent were "minimally correct" and 20 percent were "partially correct."

Nineteen percent of the answers were "completely correct," and 16 percent were "mostly correct."

The program also found that some VA workers were dismissive of some callers and unhelpful or rude to others.

One caller, for example, said, "My father served in Vietnam in 1961 and 1962."

"Is there a way he can find out if he was exposed to Agent Orange?"

The VA's response, according to the VA memo:

"He should know if they were spreading that chemical out then."

"He would be the only one to know."

"OK (hung up laughing)."

The 2004 survey found improvements in some categories compared with a similar study with identical questions in 2002.

Timeliness improved, but scores on "willingness to help" and "courtesy/professionalism" dropped.

VA officials acknowledge that the agency needs to do better.

Daniel Cooper, the department's top benefits official, said in a memo to the VA regional offices that the results of the mystery-caller program "are below expectations and are disappointing to the organization."

"... We must be able to provide prompt service and give correct answers with the courtesy and professionalism that our customers deserve."

end quotes

Customers .....

We're not "customers" ....

Or consumers .....

Like this was a clothing store, or something ...

We're disabled veterans ...

We're human beings ...

Not customers ....

But, alas, we really are not ...

Not quite human, that is .....

Not at the VA, anyway ......

Where we are now treated as "cutomers", instead of human beings .....

When the VA has its staff start considering us as "cutomers", automatically, they have "created" us into a "class apart" .......

"Treat the customer with respect ..."

As if this were a Walmarts, or a five and dime, instead of an alleged "health care" system for disabled veterans, many of them with grievous wounds suffered in combat, where the "implements" used by the "combatants" are designed by teams of high-paid engineers to render as much damage as they can to the human anatomy and physiology and psyche ....

Shrapnel, for example, which is what my wounds were caused by .....

I have a cup full of shrapnel that I dug out of a road in Viet Nam after a rocket impacted there, and every now and then, I will show those chunks of shrapnel to someone to demonstrate my point about lethality and maiming power being designed right into the shrapnel itself, which is what does the killing and maiming ....

High-tech stuff, when you come right down to it .....

Cleavage planes ....

Design the warhead properly, and treat the metal properly during the manufacturing process, and you end up with pieces of shrapnel like crystals, with cleavage planes on them that are like so many razer edges ....

So they tear away great huge chunks of flesh when they come into contact with a human body ....

And it is that tearing away of chunks of human flesh that gives them their psychological advantage over the "foe", supposedly, anyway .....

When I returned to here after Viet Nam, I myself went to school to become an engineer, so that I could use my strengths and skills in what I MYSELF WOULD CLASSIFY AS A "GOOD" PATH to help others .....

At the same time, this being the early-1970's, there was a big market for engineers who wanted to go into the death-and-destruction side of things, designing weaponry for the GUMMINT, and many that I knew back in those days went that way, for the money which was beckoning to them in that direction .....

And to my knowledge, none of them were veterans .....

Although I am sure that that field probably does contain some ...

Veterans that is ....

For killing is where the money is, and so ....

A young person came up to me today, and he said, "Livyjr, there are a lot of Americans getting killed in IRAQINAM again ..."

And I admitted that such appeared to be the case ....

And I attributed it to pissing off too many people ...

Like what happened in Viet Nam ...

Americans in other countries are kind of easy to kill off, actually, since we generally are the ones that don't look like the people who belong there ....

And so ....

How hard do they have to hunt to find us?

And that answer is "not very hard at all" .......

There we generally are .....

Not looking like them at all ...

And so .....

being a veteran of vietnam for 28 plus years ive been instructed meny things mostly false vets have no place to turn for real and legal answers i was told the va will not go back over 2 years or they say the va will not give you more then 100% these are personal quotes i can only rely on vets for the truth so if any one knows of more mis communications i need to watch out for let me know seems inappropriate vets are the only segment of us to experience this

HHHHmmmm ....

That is an interesting thought, indeed ...

Yes .....

It does seem strange that the United States Government would be giving out mis-information to its veterans' population, especially in a time of alleged war .....

As a former "light" infantryman, I find this next story interesting ....

Freedom of movement is an infantryman's best protection ...

"U.S. soldiers question use of more armor"

By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press
Last updated: 5:55 p.m., Saturday, January 7, 2006

BEIJI, Iraq -- U.S. soldiers in the field were not all supportive of a Pentagon study that found improved body armor saves lives, with some troops arguing Saturday that more armor would hinder combat effectiveness.

The unreleased study examined 93 fatal wounds to Marines from the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 through June 2005.

It concluded 74 of them were bullet or shrapnel wounds to shoulders or torso areas unprotected by traditional ceramic armor plating.

Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's 3rd Brigade "Rakkasans" are required to wear an array of protective clothing they refer to as their "happy gear," ranging from Kevlar drapes over their shoulders and sides, to knee pads and fire-resistant uniforms.

But many soldiers say they feel encumbered by the weight and restricted by fabric that does not move as they do.

They frequently joke as they strap on their equipment before a patrol, and express relief when they return and peel it off.

Second Lt. Josh Suthoff, 23, of Jefferson City, Mo., said he already sacrifices enough movement when he wears the equipment.

More armor would only increase his chances of getting killed, he said.

"You can slap body armor on all you want, but it's not going to help anything."

"When it's your time, it's your time," said Suthoff, a platoon leader in the brigade's 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment.

"[u]I'd go out with less body armor if I could."

The study and their remarks highlight the difficulty faced by the Army and Marine Corps in providing the best level of body armor protection in a war against an insurgency whose tactics are constantly changing.

Both the Army and the Marines have weighed the expected payoff in additional safety from extra armor against the measurable loss of combat effectiveness from too much armor.

According to a summary of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's study obtained Friday evening by The Associated Press, the 93 Marines who died from a primary lethal injury of the torso were among 401 Marines who died from combat injuries in Iraq between the start of the war and June 2005.

A military advocacy group, Soldiers for Truth, posted an article about the study on its Web site this week.

On Friday evening, The New York Times reported in its online edition that the study for the first time shows the cost in lives lost from inadequate armor.

Autopsy reports and photographic records were analyzed to help the military determine possible body armor redesign.

Of 39 fatal torso wounds in which the bullet or shrapnel entered the Marine's body outside of the ceramic armor plate protecting the chest and back, 31 were close to the plate's edge, according to the study, which was conducted last summer.

Some soldiers felt unhappy that ceramic plates to protect their sides and shoulders were available, but not offered, when they deployed for Iraq in September.

"If it's going to protect a soldier or save his life, they definitely should have been afforded the opportunity to wear it," said Staff Sgt. Shaun Benoit, 26, of Conneaut, Ohio.

"I want to know where there was a break in communication."

Others questioned the effectiveness of additional body armor.

"It's the Army's responsibility to get soldiers the armor they need."

"But that doesn't mean those deaths could have been prevented," said Spc. Robert Reid, 21, of Atlanta.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who was in Iraq on Saturday, said military leaders told him that body armor has improved since the initial invasion in 2003 and that the military hoped to gradually transition to the improved armor.

The debate between protection versus mobility has dominated military doctrine since the Middle Ages, when knights wrapped themselves in metal suits for battle, said Capt. Jamey Turner, 35, of Baton Rouge, La., a commander in the 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment.

The issue comes up daily on the battlefield in Iraq, and soldiers need to realize there is no such thing as 100 percent protection, he said.

"You've got to sacrifice some protection for mobility," he added.

"If you cover your entire body in ceramic plates, you're just not going to be able to move."

Others in the regiment said the issue of protecting soldiers with more body armor is of greater concern at home than among soldiers in Iraq, who have seen firsthand how life and death hang on a sliver of luck when an improvised explosive device hits a Humvee.

"These guys over here are husbands, sons and daughters."

"It's understandable people at home would want all the protection in the world for us."

"But realistically, it just don't work," said Sgt. Paul Hare, 40, of Tucumcari, N.M.

------

AP Military Writer Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

"What are you going to do to me ....."

"Take away my birthday?"

"Or send me to Viet Nam?"

- A refrain often heard in Viet Nam during the Viet Nam times, when the Army threatened punishment to a troop for this or that or some other thing .....

"FTA"

- Another refrain ......

Which leads to .....

Does poor planning on the part of the Army and the Pentagon and the White House in a time of alleged war then create an emergency in the lives of American citizens?

"Army begins action to discharge reservists"

By ROBERT BURNS, Associated Press
Last updated: 4:27 p.m., Monday, January 9, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Army on Monday began moves to expel dozens of reserve soldiers who failed to report for duty months after being mobilized for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, in effect serving notice to hundreds of others that they could face penalties for ignoring or refusing orders to return to active duty.

The proceedings mark a turning point in the Army's struggle to contact, train and deploy thousands of Individual Ready Reserve soldiers, nearly half of whom have requested a delay in returning, asked to be exempt or simply ignored their orders.

The soldiers in this category of reserve status, who have served previously on active duty but have not completed their eight-year service obligation, are different from those in the National Guard or Reserve, and they are rarely mobilized.

The Army began mobilizing them in the summer of 2004, reflecting the enormous strain it felt in providing enough soldiers for Iraq at a time when it was becoming apparent that no early withdrawal was likely.

So far, mobilization orders have been issued for more than 5,700 IRR soldiers since mid-2004.

The Army announced that about 80 soldiers will face review panels, known as separation boards, although the number may grow.

If it is determined that they intentionally failed to obey a mobilization order, they would face one of three levels of discharge from the service: honorable, general or other-than-honorable.

They do not face criminal charges.

"Because of these soldiers' disregard of their duty, the Army will initiate separation proceedings on all IRR soldiers who fail to obey mobilization orders," the Army said in a statement explaining its decision to act.

As of Dec. 11, the latest date for which the Army had figures, 3,954 IRR soldiers had reported for duty.

In addition, more than 1,600 had been excused from duty and 463 had been sent orders but not yet reported.

Of those 463, the Army has been unable to locate 383.

The other 80 are the ones who now face discharge.

When the Army initially found that it was facing resistance from some IRR soldiers who did not want to get back in uniform, there was talk of declaring them AWOL and pursuing criminal charges against them.

But that was deemed too harsh and the Army spent many months trying to contact those who were ignoring their orders.

In its announcement Monday, the Army said that in addition to those who have openly refused to report for duty, those who do not respond to repeated communications from the Army may face discharge proceedings.

All of the 80 who now face discharge proceedings are enlisted soldiers, according to Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman.

It was not immediately clear, he said, how long it had been since the Army took discharge action against IRR soldiers who refused to be mobilized, but it probably has been more than 15 years.

Of the three possible types of discharge that an IRR soldier may face in these proceedings, the most severe is "other than honorable."

While a soldier given an honorable or general discharge would continue to be eligible for payment for accrued leave, and for health benefits and burial in an Army national cemetery, those given an "other than honorable" discharge would not be.

Two even more severe types of discharge -- bad conduct and dishonorable -- will not be considered in the IRR cases, the Army said.

Last November the Army started a new policy that ended the practice of involuntary callups of officers in the IRR.

The policy change affects 15,000 officers who completed their eight-year military service obligation but chose to stay in the IRR.

These officers can now avoid being forced to serve on active duty, but only if they resign their commission. '

Previously, an officer could not resign once ordered to active duty.

The last time members of the IRR were called to active duty was 1990, when nearly 20,000 were mobilized for the Gulf War against Iraq.

In recent years, most in the IRR had come to assume they would never be called up.

But the strains of simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have forced the Army to mobilize IRR to fill certain vacancies.

------

On the Web:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

This morning on the radio news, Fox, I believe it was, there was played a tape of a portion of the Senate Confirmation Hearing where New York State Senator Charles Schumer was questioning Judge Alito about the Constitution itself, and Judge Alito responded that he could not discuss the Constitution because it might come before him as a United States Supreme Court Justice ...

And I was flabberghasted, myself .....

Flabberghasted at the answer ...

And then flabberghasted that Senator Schumer accepted that as any kind of answer but a ridiculous one ....

As a United States Supreme Court Justice, this man, this REPUBLICAN Judge Alito, would have the United States Constitution before him at all times, open for all the world to see, and heed ....

And he would be an expert on that document, and its history, and its meaning ...

He would be a source of law ....

If he were worthy of such a high position of responsibility here in OUR REPUBLIC OF AMERICA, which does not belong to these militant christians who march with the DEMAGOGUE REPUBLICAN SENATOR SANTORUM in support of this man, this REPUBLICAN man, this Judge Alito ....

As a United States Supreme Court Judge, this man, this REPUBLICAN man, Judge Alito, would be the living embodiment of OUR United States Constitution ...

And the long tradition of law which has descended down to us in OUR times, from the time that United States Constitution became law of the land here in OUR America ...

And this man, this REPUBLICAN man, this Judge Alito, did not seem to know that ...

Or did not care ......

In a news release on the subject, it is made incandescently clear that in these hearings, in answering Senator Schumer in the condescending manner this man, this REPUBLICAN man, this Judge Alito has done, that he is posturing for these people who he is beholden to, these REPUBLICAN backers of his, and so, HE IS NOT INDEPENDENT ....

He is not at all independent ...

And so should not be put on the bench of the United States Supreme Court by the United States Senate ....

That simple ....

One day, we walked into a village in Viet Nam, out near the Cambodian border somewhere north and west of Saigon, out from Trang Bang, towards Cambodia .....

1969, this was .....

There was a woman there ....

I can see her yet .....

Grief-stricken .....

Shrieking .....

A helicopter had come along, and the pilot fired a rocket and hit a twelve-year old girl ....

Made her into nothing but scattered chunks of meat ....

Now, I didn't speak Vietnamese, but it was not necessary to do so, so intense were the feelings coming from this woman ....

A disbelief that this could happen ....

"WHAT THE **** ...." screamed out at the top of her lungs ....

"WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY GIRL?"

WHY ....

Why would a helicopter pilot just rocket a little girl like that?

That is what she wanted to know ....

And the answer is for the sport, of course .....

"Sport-shooting ..."

Or gunnery practice .....

Or whatever you really wanted to call it, since no one was going to say anything to you about it, especially a helicopter pilot, who would be long gone from the scene with no way of being identified ....

By anyone ....

And since no one was looking, well ...

BUT ....

There we were, on the ground, right after it happened, and so ....

I remember this woman coming up to our captain, and I remember him giving her a real good shove .....

"Get away from me, you old fool ...."

It's the shove I really remember, however .....

The shove ....

What a scene .....

Burned into my forebrain ...

Or somewhere, anyway ....

Since it plays and plays, in full sight and sound, all these years later ...

And what brings this back right now is the headlines in my local newspaper this morning concerning the CIA bombing that residential compound over there in Pakistan, where they allegedly managed to kill some more children ....

And women, of course .....

It seems America is big on killing women and children ....

A "manhood" kind of thing, or something, I guess ....

You know you got your "MANHOOD MOJO" working when you are man enough to kill women and children .....

And this was at a distance, too, I believe, this killing of these people in Pakistan, where in Viet Nam, at least the helicopter pilot was kind of "right there" when he killed that little girl with the rocket .....

To me, who walked point in the "woods" of Viet Nam, there is something very cowardly about this killing at a distance that America is doing these days, especially under this George W. Bush ....

Who ran the other way when he was offered an opportunity to go and be in a real war himself ....

Some kind of Agincourt thing, maybe, this thing of killing at a distance, where you cannot see the eyes of the other person .......

Anyway ....

It must be really something to be George W. Bush, or these CIA guys, is what I think ....

To be able to kill women and children to your heart's content, like George can do, through his surrogates of course, knowing full well that there is no one out there who can do doodly-squat about it, because you are so far away from them and hidden way down deep in your bunker complex to boot ....

And now, for a dose of American HISTORY ...

From the days of my youth ...

An America of hatred ....

Of bigotry ....

A world that George W. Bush and his are determined to bring us back to, with their all-out assault on SOCIAL LEGISLATION and the United States Constitution, here in OUR America ......

"Alabama remembers black soldier's defiance"

By AMANDA THOMAS, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:17 a.m., Monday, January 16, 2006

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Five years before Rosa Parks launched a bus boycott by refusing to give up her seat to a white man, a uniformed black soldier balked at an order to board a bus through a back door and paid with his life.

Yet the 1950 police shooting of Pfc. Thomas Edwards Brooks had largely been lost to history until it was brought up again during the events marking the 50th anniversary of the boycott and in a new book about the historic protest.

Now the case is getting the kind of attention boycott veterans say is long overdue.

"A lot of this stuff that went on on the buses will never really be known except among the black people who quite often felt there was nothing that could be done," said Nick LaTour, son of boycott organizer E.D. Nixon.

"This is the kind of thing that had gone on through the years that led up to the people saying, 'This was enough.'"

Harassment of black bus riders had gone on for years before Parks' famous defiance on Dec. 1, 1955.

And sitting in the back of the bus was just one of the indignities blacks faced.

Under the segregated system in the 1950s, they were forced to pay the driver at the front, then go to the rear of the vehicle to board.

Brooks, a 21-year-old soldier who got on a Montgomery bus on Aug. 12, 1950, made the mistake of entering through the front door instead of the back.

According to the account by Donnie Williams and Wayne Greenhaw in their book, "The Thunder of Angels," Brooks refused to get off the bus and board again from the back.

The confrontation escalated and a policeman struck him on the head with a billy club and pulled him down the aisle to the front door.

Quoting witnesses, both white and black, the authors say Brooks shook free, pushed the officer and driver aside, and bolted out the door.

The officer shouted "Stop!" then shot Brooks, who stumbled, fell and died, the authors say.

E.D. Nixon, a civil rights activist who would later help organize the yearlong boycott, drove to the police department that night, demanding to know what happened.

After being told that Brooks was killed by a law enforcement officer who was protecting himself in the line of duty, Nixon filed a complaint.

The official response was that the shooting was unavoidable, according to Williams and Greenhaw.

State Rep. Alvin Holmes, a veteran black political activist in Montgomery, is pushing for a statue or marker to be erected as part of the 50th anniversary, which will culminate Dec. 21, the official end of the boycott in 1956.

Authors Greenhaw and Williams agree that Brooks is particularly deserving of such an honor.

"This man gave up his life for all of us just as if he were in a war on foreign land," said Williams, who spent years researching the boycott.

"He was a soldier and was willing to give up his life in a war for us."

"He was also a soldier in another way -- a civil rights soldier -- and he did die for us all."

1950 .....

A young man in the United States Army is gunned down on a street in Alabama, in the United States, because he is black ...

And I was a small boy ..

Out in the country ...

Quite a ways north of there ...

And a bit to the east ....

Unknowing of that world, actually ...

Unknowing of a world where people could be clubbed on the head and dragged down a bus aisle by the arm to be tossed unceremoniously out in the street for all to see ......

But my being unknowing did not change anything ....

That world was still there ....

And by 1954, or so ....

That world and its existence began to become well known ...

Through the then-new medium of television ....

So that you could sit in your rural or urban living room somewhere in OUR America, and watch people getting the crap beaten out of them somewhere else, maybe a thousand miles away, or better, as if it were in your own living room ...

And it was ....

When you think about it ...

Hatred and bigotry pouring out of that television into living rooms all over America like sewage pouring out of a broken pipe ....

Polluting the hearts and minds of Americans all over ....

Or infuriating them instead .....

Which led to what I perceived, as a young boy, as a very tangible separation, or division, here in OUR America ....

Some people, me, specifically, were for "equality", in terms of protection of law for all alike ...

And others ...

Well, let us say that there were those who call themselves "conservative" .....

And so .....

They were for the status quo ....

Classes ...

Separate ...

But equal ...

Which the United States Supreme Court then rejected as a "policy" in OUR America ....

And there has been smoldering unrest since .....

Which brings us to today ...

And the times that we are now in ....

After posting this story this morning, I have not only looked back over the meandering course of this particular thread, but over the years of my life as well, and I find in a lot of ways that not much has changed ...

At all ..

Which is how it is, I think ...

Inertia ....

The world goes at its own speed ...

And we along with it ...

"Lawsuits demand answers by VA - Widows of veterans who died in drug study say men were guinea pigs"

By BRENDAN LYONS, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, January 17, 2006

ALBANY -- The last of seven widows of veterans who died while enrolled in corrupted drug studies at Stratton VA Medical Center have filed lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

For many of the widows, the litigation is not about money.

They say it's about getting answers to why their husbands were used like guinea pigs and making sure it doesn't happen again.

"It was terrible," said Bertha G. Merritt, 74, who was one of two widows to file a lawsuit in the case last month.

"We were married 51 years, and a month and a half later he passed away."

Charles G. Merritt, a World War II Army veteran from Selkirk who died in August 1999, was one of dozens of men whose medical histories were forged or manipulated to qualify them for cancer research studies.

Once Merritt began taking the drugs, he became unable to swallow, talk, eat, breathe or walk without assistance, and his death was hastened by the experiment, according to court documents.

He was 74.

Hospital officials have placed blame on a former research assistant, Paul H. Kornak, who was sentenced last November to nearly six years in prison for negligent homicide and falsifying medical records.

Kornak posed as a doctor at Stratton, including carrying the title "M.D." on his VA-issued business cards, even though he never finished medical school and had been convicted in Pennsylvania of trying to illegally obtain a medical license.

Many of his supervisors allegedly knew about his troubled background and lack of credentials.

In all, Kornak is accused of undermining at least four major research studies involving dozens of veterans and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The hospital earned thousands of dollars for each patient enrolled in the programs, in which pharmaceutical companies tested new drugs on cancer patients to obtain approval for them from the Food and Drug Administration.

At his sentencing last November, Kornak apologized for his crimes but told a judge he was "used" by the hospital's former cancer research director, Dr. James A. Holland, who was fired along with Kornak shortly after the scandal broke more than three years ago.

No one else, including Holland, has been charged in the case.

But the widows' lawsuits will enable the families to delve deeper into the scandal, which they contend was larger than Kornak.

"They gave my husband experimental chemo(therapy) after they asked him if he wanted it and he said 'No,' " Merritt said.

"They gave it to him anyway."

"The reason he did is because Dr. Holland kept after him and after him and kept coercing him."

Sixteen months ago, the Food and Drug Administration, which unearthed the corruption during an audit of the hospital's research program, took action seeking to disqualify Holland as a clinical investigator.

In a 12-page report that has been made part of the widows' litigation, the FDA said Holland "failed to protect the rights, safety and welfare of subjects ... repeatedly or deliberately submitted false information to the sponsor and repeatedly or deliberately failed to comply with the cited regulations, which placed unnecessary risks to human subjects and jeopardized the integrity of data."

Holland and his attorneys have declined comment.

He now works for a cancer hospital in Thomasville, Ga.

FDA officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Holland's case during the past two weeks.

Alan C. Milstein, a Philadelphia attorney representing some of the widows, said he also has had difficulty finding out the status of the FDA action pending against Holland.

Meanwhile, a settlement conference is scheduled next month in federal court regarding the death of James J. DiGeorgio, a 71-year-old Air Force veteran from Brunswick who died at Stratton in June 2001.

Attorneys for DiGeorgio's family recently filed a motion saying the case should be settled because there is no dispute that his death was caused by experimental drugs that he should never have been given.

"Our target is the VA," Milstein said.

"This was an institution-wide problem that really extended beyond Albany."

"We're not aiming really at Holland or Kornak at this point because the VA is the one that really has to defend their actions."

Merritt and other widows said their goal now is not to have the VA pay for what went on.

"It's to make sure it doesn't happen again to some other poor guy," Merritt said.

And speaking for a moment about disabled veterans, of which I am one, I would like to take a serious moment in here to post my thoughts for this morning regarding this story above here that has been in the newspapers up here for quite some time, that being the wrongful deaths of these old men over at the Stratton VA Hospital in Albany, N.Y. .....

Maybe a kind of eulogy ...

For what the community of mankind has lost, with the wrongful deaths of these old men at a facility in Albany, New York that is run by the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STAES OF AMERICA .......

Whatever in God's name that entity is anymore ....

This post was made in another thread, and so there will be some references perhaps, in here, unique to that other thread, but that should not serve to take away from the substance of the post, and so ....

I don't know how many people out there would even recognize some of these old men as combat veterans of some horrific struggle that most of us cannot even conceive of ..

And yet, by and large, they would never say a word ....

Oh, they have to me, of course ...

Because in many ways, I am one of them ..

Although younger ...

Like them ...

I know the eternal pain that ultimately, only death is the real cure for ...

And that comes soon eniough in the best of times ....

And all to soon in others ....

Like these old men, I too cling to life ...

And so ...

And if these words to follow in here are too harsh, please ...

DO NOT LOOK TO ME WITH OPPROBIUM ...

For this is not what I fought for then....

Nor now ...

THOUGHTS FROM ANOTHER THREAD

I wonder how many people out there reading these words can appreciate the asset to OUR community that these old men represented ...

The things they had seen ...

The things they had done .....

What they had endured ...

For YEARS .....

People like Mr. A.B. in here, who was down on some island on the other side of the world, in the southern hemisphere, which would give that island a totally different sky at night, for years ....

Our own Mr. A.B. .....

It is not the stories these men could tell that made them so important to us in the younger generations .....

It was their "BEING" itself .....

They were living embodiments of their times ...

And the experiences of their lives ...

And when they stood tall, well ......

How could a younger person find an excuse to not do the same?

And now .....

These assets to OUR community are gone ...

KILLED FOR MONEY ....

By the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA .....

Yes ...

That is right ....

DRUG TRIALS .....

"Hey, guys, let's pump some of this **** into this guy's veins and see what it does to him ...."

And that is what they did, the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ...

They pumped **** into the veins of these old men ....

And they killed them ...

And for killing them in that horrible way, the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GOT PAID ...

And handsomely so, by all accounts .......

And so ....

MY QUESTION ......

As American citizens, what are we owed ....

And this thread has been dissecting that question all along, as this case made its way from United States District Ccourt for the Northern District of New York to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City ....

What are we owed?

Protection of law?

And as these old men who were killed for money by the GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA found out, that answer is NO ..

NO ..

Protection of law in America is a chimera ...

A will-o-the-wisp ....

A nonentity ....

After all, what does a government that will kill old men by injecting **** into their veins to experiment on them for money care about protection of law?

When you arre killing people for money, or torturing them, protection of law is an impediment ...

And so ...

I wonder ....

At many things, actually ....

But especially about life itself ....

Or at least, how it has been for me ......

As a disabled Viet Nam combat veteran back here in what is called civilization, here in OUR America ....

The thing of adapting .....

But probably not really ...

For when you are a disabled veteran, all too often ....

That is your full-time occupation ....

And so ....

You are invisible in the community ....

You are not there ....

Not there at social gatherings ....

Not there at town functions ....

Just ....

Not there ...

But where, then?

Well, for me, that would be on a little patch of scrub land in upstate New York, and that is that ....

Today, it was raining ...

Pouring down rain ...

Cold rain ...

And I was out there walking in it ....

Smelling it ....

The journey that water had taken to get to that place where I was standing ....

I found myself comparing it to being out in the monsoon, and found it similar, but totally different at the same time ....

Just ...

Not the same ....

And I got wet today, me .....

And that's alright ....

It wasn't below freezing ....

And besides ....

I had a good wood fire waiting for me ...

And so ....

This following is a post made by Snuffysmith over in Life in OUR America .....

Since it is directly relevant to the "fireside chat" that is developing in here, well ....

I'm going to borrow it from Life in OUR America ....

And post it in here ...

Since it goes right to the heart of this thing of being a veteran in OUR America today ...

New York Times, January 18, 2006, Op-Ed Contributor

Purple Heartbreakers By JAMES WEBB, Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles.

This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice.

The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career.

This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility.

To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency.

The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire.

John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha.

The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts.

The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable.

It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee.

One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals.

Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards.

While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents.

One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam.

The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities."

The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam.

This display has been up for more than two years.

One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly.

It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.

As a boy, and yes, I was once one, in my small hometown, the Fourth of July, or INDEPENDANCE DAY, as it was once called, was the BIG DAY, and it was then that you would see these veterans coming out with their medals and ribbons on ....

And I never knew what half of them were for ...

And I still don't actually ....

You see some guy, Major General this-or-that, and he has maybe thirty or seventy-five different ribbons all over the left side of his uniform, sometimes right up and over the left shoulder and on down his back, and you wonder ...

"My God, what is it that a man must do to get all those ribbons?"

And a lot of the time, the answer is simply "become a major general", because all those ribbons go with the rank ...

And maybe that is so ...

I don't know myself, because I was never a major general ....

Oh, I could have been, of course ...

Or at least I heard a recruiter from the Marines telling people that at the induction center when I was signing myself in ...

This great big huge Marine sargeant followed along by a couple of hulking lance corporals ....

"Say there, son, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD BE A MAJOR GENERAL ..."

"SO ..."

"Step into file here right behind my associates, and we will start you on your way ..."

"You are now a United States Marine ..."

And out of gratitude, apparently, well, some of those picked to be MAJOR GENERALS in the United States Marines would just break right down in tears of joy, I think it was anyway ......

But look at me ...

I digress ...

Which is probably just a function of age ...

You know how it is with us old folks ..

DEMENTIA comes calling, and there we go ...

Anyhow ....

When I was a boy, I would see these men with their medals and ribbons on, and I would wonder ....

And the answer I would get, if any at all, was "Son, I got these for being a good person, and for doing what had to be done ..."

Or a variation on that ...

All of which pointed towards you do the job that is in front of you, and you don't complain ....

That is the sum and substance of what all those ribbons and medals were supposed to be ...

Not, "OH, look at me, see how great I am ..."

No ...

None of that ...

Or I did not experience it, anyway ...

Not while young in that small town, anyway ...

That was all to come later ....

I did not know purple hearts from silver stars then .....

Nor did I need to know, which is the case with most Americans, then and now ....

For it is not the ribbon or medal that makes the man ...

Or woman, for that matter, since they are deserving too ....

Rather, it is the man or woman who makes the medal or ribbon worth something, and mean something, down through the ages, and that is done by demeanor, not by stories of all these "past glories" that most people cannot appreciate anyway, and stories that are often quite depressing to boot, since purple hearts and silver stars are things obtained in hell, and not anywhere close to heaven ...

Or such has been my experience of it, anyway ...

And so ...

"State's military leader may be sued - Suit says adjutant general forced Guard members to use leave"

By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, January 21, 2006

ALBANY -- A judge has ruled that 15 National Guard technicians may sue state Adjutant General Thomas P. Maguire Jr. for denying employment benefits based on military status.

Maguire heads the state Division of Military and Naval Affairs and is commander of the state's military forces, including the New York Air National Guard, Army National Guard, New York Naval Militia and volunteer New York Guard.

The lawsuit claims Guard members were forced to use annual leave, unpaid leave and sick leave when they were called to active military duty before the war on terror began

The plaintiffs allege that prior to December 2000 Maguire improperly charged military leave for all consecutive days they were on reservist duty, rather than by the actual days they were scheduled to work, including non-workdays and holidays.

"This case is momentous in that it opens the opportunity for justice not only for these plaintiffs, but for tens of thousands of other National Guard technicians employed across the country who were subject to this type of illegal treatment," said attorney Matthew Tully, himself a major in the Guard.

Military technicians such as New York National Guard employees were previously excluded from compensation because they are paid with federal money and considered federal employees.

Tully originally filed the complaint in federal court, but withdrew it to state court because his clients are under the jurisdiction of Maguire, a state official, even though he has federal responsibilities.

Lawyers seek retroactive compensation for the technicians, several of whom are from the Capital Region, and said they plan to file complaints on behalf of many others.

"Given that this is a pending litigation, it wouldn't be appropriate to comment at this time," said Kent Kisselbrack, a spokesman for Maguire.

But court papers show that Maguire sought to dismiss the discrimination complaint through the state attorney general's office, which represents him.

He claimed allegations failed to state a cause of action, should have addressed the federal government, and were past the statute of limitations.

However, a Jan. 17 decision by Court of Claims Justice Thomas J. McNamara rejected Maguire's assertions.

McNamara said Maguire is the plaintiffs' employer and is authorized to administer that employment.

Since he had an obligation to properly administer military leave benefits, "the court therefore determines that the plaintiffs have named the proper party defendant."

The judge also turned back Maguire's request to limit all claims to within a few weeks of a December 2000 policy change where the Federal Office of Personnel Management said military leave only applied to scheduled work days.

"State's military leader may be sued - Suit says adjutant general forced Guard members to use leave"

By MICHELE MORGAN BOLTON, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Saturday, January 21, 2006

ALBANY -- A judge has ruled that 15 National Guard technicians may sue state Adjutant General Thomas P. Maguire Jr. for denying employment benefits based on military status.

Maguire heads the state Division of Military and Naval Affairs and is commander of the state's military forces, including the New York Air National Guard, Army National Guard, New York Naval Militia and volunteer New York Guard.

The lawsuit claims Guard members were forced to use annual leave, unpaid leave and sick leave when they were called to active military duty before the war on terror began

The plaintiffs allege that prior to December 2000 Maguire improperly charged military leave for all consecutive days they were on reservist duty, rather than by the actual days they were scheduled to work, including non-workdays and holidays.

"This case is momentous in that it opens the opportunity for justice not only for these plaintiffs, but for tens of thousands of other National Guard technicians employed across the country who were subject to this type of illegal treatment," said attorney Matthew Tully, himself a major in the Guard.

Military technicians such as New York National Guard employees were previously excluded from compensation because they are paid with federal money and considered federal employees.

Tully originally filed the complaint in federal court, but withdrew it to state court because his clients are under the jurisdiction of Maguire, a state official, even though he has federal responsibilities.

Lawyers seek retroactive compensation for the technicians, several of whom are from the Capital Region, and said they plan to file complaints on behalf of many others.

"Given that this is a pending litigation, it wouldn't be appropriate to comment at this time," said Kent Kisselbrack, a spokesman for Maguire.

But court papers show that Maguire sought to dismiss the discrimination complaint through the state attorney general's office, which represents him.

He claimed allegations failed to state a cause of action, should have addressed the federal government, and were past the statute of limitations.

However, a Jan. 17 decision by Court of Claims Justice Thomas J. McNamara rejected Maguire's assertions.

McNamara said Maguire is the plaintiffs' employer and is authorized to administer that employment.

Since he had an obligation to properly administer military leave benefits, "the court therefore determines that the plaintiffs have named the proper party defendant."

The judge also turned back Maguire's request to limit all claims to within a few weeks of a December 2000 policy change where the Federal Office of Personnel Management said military leave only applied to scheduled work days.

And in this next story from this morning's newspaper up here in the corrupt State of New York ....

We have a glimpse of why disabled veterans in this corrupt state are likely to get "short-shrift" when they try and get aid or assistance from the New York State Veterans' Service Agency ...

Or what is alleged to be a veterans' service agency, anyway ....

Because in reality, this agency is not about veterans, AT ALL ....

At least ones who are not PC", anyway, which means "POLITICALLY CONNECTED" .....

It is a place to stick "POLITICAL HACKS", instead ...

Stick them in there somewhere, so as to get them on the state payroll, which is what PATRONAGE in the corrupt state of New York is all about ....

Which is why we have no integrity in OUR government up here ...

Or faith ...

Or trust ...

Which perhaps is something all these veterans over there in IRAQINAM ought to consider when they are asked what state they want to return to, here in OUR America, IF they are ever allowed to return home again ....

When you have to make "CONTRIBUTIONS" to the REPUBLICAN PARTY to get straight answers about your veterans' benefits, perhaps yopu are living in the wrong state, here in OUR America ....

And when you have to pay for the protection that the laws of the United States of America are supposed to afford disabled veterans, perhaps you have returned to the wrong country ....

"A fall, a glimpse of patronage - Records reveal how Erin Dreyer used friends in high places to get and keep political jobs"

By BRENDAN LYONS, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Sunday, January 22, 2006

In 1994, Erin Dreyer graduated from college with a degree in political science and a plan to put it to good use.

She took jobs that summer as a waitress and a bookstore clerk to bide time as she kept close tabs on George Pataki's first campaign for governor.

As the daughter of William Ennis, a politically influential insurance broker from Saratoga Springs, Dreyer gravitated toward a career in government.

"I did not want to become a civil servant."

"... I wanted to work as an appointee," Dreyer said in a deposition that's part of a lawsuit she filed against the state.

"I wanted a political job."

"I wanted to work for the governor."

When Pataki won election that fall over incumbent Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo, Dreyer's connections paid off.

Saratoga County Republican Chairman John "Jasper" Nolan, who was poised to take advantage of the patronage offerings that come with victory, shipped her resume to the governor's office among hundreds of other applications from the politically faithful.

Patronage, after all, is as old as politics and perfectly legal.

Now, more than a decade after Dreyer netted her first state job -- a low-level position in the Department of Labor -- her scandal and litigation-plagued career provides a rare look inside the shadowy world of political patronage, where people with little or no qualifications can end up in some of the most important jobs in government.

Dreyer, court records show, repeatedly used friends in high places to get and keep jobs -- people in the offices of the governor, a local congressman, Senate majority leader and the Saratoga County Republican Party.

Years later, a Saratoga County grand jury would declare that she had engaged in misconduct and demand she be removed as the trusted executive over the Saratoga Springs Police Department.

For her part, Dreyer, 33, who is married and has two young children, has denied the allegations, and her attorney filed a lengthy response challenging the assertions.

In a brief interview last week, Dreyer said her problems have left her reeling.

"I (still) have a passion for government," she said.

"Have I seen the dark side of politics?"

"Yes, I have."

After leaving the Labor Department, she went to work as a legislative aide in the Senate, joining the staff of Sen. Robert DiCarlo, R-Brooklyn, before he lost a re-election bid in 1996.

From there, the governor's office secured Dreyer a job as secretary to the director of the Division of Veterans Affairs.

"She kind of came to me through politics," said John L. Behan, a former state assemblyman and decorated Vietnam War veteran who ran the agency for a few years before retiring in 1998 amid allegations he'd made sexually charged comments.

"In working with Erin, although she had some difficulties, she was very independent and strong thinking."

"My memories were that she was faithful and she showed up."

But when Behan left, Dreyer's work habits, including working shortened days to juggle motherhood and a 30-minute commute, began stirring trouble.

George Basher, who took over when Behan left, said he inherited a "chaotic" agency.

Soon, he has testified, he began to sense resentment from staff members about Dreyer's short days, poor work ethic and inability to learn the agency's mission.

A little more than a year later, Basher would finally get clearance from the governor's office to fire Dreyer.

As a result, Dreyer sued the state, Basher, and Harvey McCagg, a longtime appointee in the agency, claiming she was fired because of gender bias and after being told by a colleague that veterans didn't want to deal with a woman.

McCagg, a former newspaper editor from Columbia County, declined comment.

Dreyer contends he told her he could not work with a woman "as my equal."

Behan said Dreyer's problems with McCagg were widely known.

"Harvey had a problem just working with women," Behan said in an interview.

"He also wasn't that cooperative with me."

But sworn testimony from numerous other people who worked with Dreyer at Veterans Affairs tell a different story.

Mary Quay, a longtime secretary, said Dreyer delegated her duties to other secretaries, talked down to people, and rubbed her political connections in the face of anyone who challenged her authority.

"It became clear to me after a period of time that Erin's chain of command didn't run through the division," Basher said in a deposition.

"She was more inclined to respond to the political hierarchy that she had worked with, and was more loyal to that organization."

At one point, Basher said he told Dreyer she was ruining morale by working short days and refusing to answer phones, even though her title was "secretary."

He also fielded complaints that Dreyer knew little about the agency, which links state veterans with federal health benefits.

"Her response was that that was other people's problems, and if they wanted the same privileges she had, they could work on the same number of campaigns she worked on and do the same things she did," Basher said.

Despite her strong political connections, Dreyer was fired in March 2000.

The termination took place after attempts to save her fell short by officials with the governor's office, who had offered her a new job with the state Ethics Commission, which she declined.

Officials with the offices of U.S. Rep. John Sweeney, R-Clifton Park, whose campaign Dreyer had supported as a volunteer, and state Sen. Joseph L. Bruno, R-Brunswick, the majority leader, also tried to intervene at the request of Saratoga County Republican party bosses.

Thomas F. Doherty, Jr., Pataki's former deputy secretary, said he doesn't recall Dreyer ever mentioning problems related to sexual harassment or gender when she called him about her problems at work.

"I just got the sense that they didn't think she was doing a very good job there," Doherty said in a deposition.

Looking back, Dreyer's case raises questions about how someone with such a troubled work history, and no law enforcement experience, ended up running a police department after she'd been fired from a state agency.

Nevertheless, Dreyer was appointed deputy public safety commissioner in Saratoga Springs in May 2003 by her father's friend and political ally, Thomas Curley, the city's elected, part-time public safety commissioner.

The job paid $60,152.

But running a police department proved more problematic for Dreyer than what she had encountered at the veterans agency.

Her two-year run ended last May when her post was terminated by the City Council in the wake of a grand jury investigation into corruption and cronyism.

Curley refused to fire her, so the council voted 4-1 to eliminate her job and force her out.

While the grand jury declined to hand up criminal charges, it concluded after hearing from two dozen witnesses over seven months that Dreyer had no business running a police department.

The grand jury recommended she be fired for abusing her authority, and it accused her of endangering the public in a quest for political gain.

She also fixed tickets, had an extra-marital affair with an officer, and terminated the prosecutions of political associates, according the grand jury.

"It appears that almost every decision made by the deputy is determined by how the outcome shall advance her own political interest," the grand jury wrote.

"Her behavior reveals a greater interest in reveling in the perks of power rather than taking up the rigorous burden of public service."

Her attorney, Ronald G. Dunn, contends Dreyer was victimized by a political witch hunt, and that the outcome of grand jury proceedings can be manipulated.

"If you're going to be writing stories and accepting that things are established, you should be careful because things are not established," Dunn said.

"She got publicly excoriated and humiliated in the newspapers ... for, in her mind, doing her job."

Dunn also noted that in the lawsuit Dreyer filed against veterans affairs officials, in which she seeks $500,000, a federal judge has declined to dismiss the case.

It's scheduled for a settlement conference in the coming months.

"The problems they have are these inconvenient statements they made to her (about being pregnant and being a woman)," Dunn said.

"All of the sudden somebody who had been quite a good employee is now a bad employee."

It's now the second case Dreyer has pending in federal court.

Police Chief Edward Moore filed a lawsuit against Dreyer in August, contending she violated his rights in an attempt to force him into retirement.

Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a good government group, said his organization has never done an analysis of the effects of patronage hiring.

Still, he said, "there are cautionary tales for politicians about abusing patronage positions."

"Our view is there should be far fewer patronage positions," Horner said.

"There are thousands, probably, of political appointees in state government."

"But no (one) human knows that many people."

"You end up relying on your allies, your politically connected friends, the people who deliver for your election, to get you the names of people who are hired."

The results, in many instances, are people with limited qualifications serving in important positions as part of a "patronage crapshoot," he said.

John "Jasper" Nolan, the longtime Saratoga County Republican Committee chairman who helped Dreyer get several government jobs, did not want to talk about Dreyer's problems.

But in a deposition that's part of her lawsuit against the state, Nolan said funneling resumes to Albany is just how the game is played.

"In 1994, when the governor won, I then had the opportunity to ... send letters to the governor's appointments office," Nolan testified.

"There were thousands of people coming in, and I mean thousands, over that period in 2002 that were looking for ... our support to find a job at the state level."

Dreyer, who is now selling pharmaceutical products, contends she has been treated unfairly.

"I feel like what you're doing is reviewing a movie halfway through," she said.

"I just can't seem to get my day in court."

Brendan Lyons can be reached at 454-5547 or by e-mail at blyons@timesunion.com.

Well ....

I've been out of here ....

On an enforced absence ....

Computer woes ....

But finally ......

The computer is repaired .....

And here I am ...

Back again ....

When I am without the computer ....

I realize just how isolated I really am ...

Out here in the country ...

As a disabled veteran .....

This computer connects me to the world in ways that I could not even imagine just a few years ago .....

And now that I have experienced this connection ...

Well, it is tough to go backwards ....

Not impossible, of course ......

But tough ...

Because there is an emptiness without that connection ....

That is hard to fill, otherwise ....

And so ....

And here I want to do something that perhaps is a bit "unorthodox" .....

Which is to personally thank God, on-line in here, for taking it somewhat easy on me over these last several weeks, or more, while I am "ganted up" and having trouble getting around .....

Which is a dangerous thing when you live out in the country as a disabled veteran, or any kind of older person, actually ....

But since I am me, with my own set of restrictions, well ...

I guess I just have to look at it from my own perspective .....

I'm up here with an "unhappy hip", and it has been real unhappy these last so many weeks, to the point, at one point, anyway, of where my right leg would just fold right up beneath me, and so .....

I have been a "crip", or a "gimp", in the parlance .....

And here, some in OUR America would interrupt me and say, "Why you pure goose fool, you, why are you thanking God for being good to you when you are lame and cannot get around" ......

And they would have an apparent point there, it might seem ....

But I don't think my bad hip is really God's fault, and so ....

And if it was, what would come of cursing God for making me lame in one leg?

Besides being made lame in the other, as a reminder of who I was talking to, or shouting at, as the case may be ....

No, the responsibility for the bad hip is mine, as I see it anyway .....

And so ....

I am thankful to God right now for sending me a young person from the community out there who does care what happens to an old gimpy Viet Nam veteran living out in the country up here .....

If it were not for this person, likely I would not have firewood this winter to keep my fire going, and so ....

When I was in Viet Nam, part of my job as a light infantryman, or a part of the day-time component, anyway, since infantrymen have both day and night jobs, was to make what were then called "combat assaults", or C.A.'s, out of helicopters .....

And that is partly why my hip is unhappy these days ....

Or so I think, anyway ....

And since it is my hip ....

Well ...

I give my own thoughts some credence .....

Because I was there when it happened ...

And I felt what I felt ....

And so .....

Now it is years later ....

And I am confronting what I call stored up pain ...

Or harm ....

Or injury ....

And in the end, it makes no real difference what name you might put to these things ...

For what counts is getting through .....

Or at least ....

That is what counts with me ...

Who cannot afford to be a cripple living alone up here in the cold country ...

Where I am, anyway ....

I came out of a helicopter badly one time ....

And jammed my hip when I landed .....

And that made my hip pretty unhappy back then I will tell you ...

But right then, tending to my hip was the last thing on my mind ...

And not getting killed outright was at the top of the list ....

And so ...

You hobble ....

Or limp ...

Or crawl ...

It makes no difference ...

Only survival does ...

And so ....

You bite down on the pain ....

And you do your job ...

And that is that ....

And that is why I don't shake my fist in God's face over my hip ....

Because that was not his doing ....

So far as I know, anyway ....

It was just one of those things ....

There we were ....

Coming in .....

And as always, I was seated in the open doorway ...

Watching the ground approach ....

Watching for my spot ...

Waiting for my moment ...

Because the one thing you know as an infantryman .....

Is that you want off that helicopter ....

As soon as possible ....

And you want to be far away, as well .....

And so ....

And no ...

They do not come in and land ....

They come in ...

And then ...

They are on their way again ..

And never once did the skids hit the ground ....

If you are lucky ...

You'll get a short hover ....

Close to the ground ...

But if you are expecting that ....

You are a damn fool ....

And so ...

And you never know ....

What the pilots are going to do, I mean ...

Because until it actually happens .....

They don't know what they are going to do, either ....

Beyond getting you somewhere near the ground ...

So you can continue your mission ...

Whatever that is to be that day ....

This day in question, when I jammed my hip, as I was about to come out of the helicopter ....

For some reason ....

The pilot pulled back up ....

And instead of coming down as I expected ..

I was "tossed" upwards instead .....

And so, came down from higher up than my hip was designed by nature to withstand the shock of .....

And so .....

Now I'm an old man ...

And lame ....

SO ....

How about that?

Old soldiers never die ....

But they think about it ...

And maybe some of the time ...

When the pain gets really bad ....

Well ..

They might think about it more seriously ....

As a release ....

But who ever really does know?

As for me, I continue to cling to life ....

Because I like it ..

And because I remain curious about this world that I find myself in ....

And because it apparently is not yet my time to go ....

The days are definitely getting longer, up here where I am ....

The sunlight is stronger ....

Encouraging, actually ....

Makes me want to get up and get outside ....

Yesterday, I heard phoebes singing ....

And I answered them ...

Yes, I am still here, is what my answer said ...

And glad to see you back as well ....

Which I am ....

If these small birds can not only survive the rigors of life up here in the out-of-doors, but find a reason to sing as well, then what about me?

After all, I am a whole lot bigger than they are ...

And I have a roof of sorts over my head ....

While they have the sun and stars ....

And the snow ..

And freezing rain ....

And still they sing ....

While we humans find endless things to complain about ...

Especially the better off we really are, it seems .....

What a world, eh?

Well .....

I'm living in a new climate ...

At least for the moment ....

And I did not even have to move ...

For the climate moved for me, instead ....

Or so it seems, anyway ...

Since it surely has changed .....

Warm today ...

Beautiful outside, in fact ....

And I was out there in it ...

Smelling the air ...

Sweet smell of spring ...

And it is only January .....

And while I might be living in a new climate in terms of the weather outside my door .....

In many other ways, the "political climate" today in OUR America seems to not have changed much at all from what it was back in the days of Rome's REPUBLIC, near its end, or our own history as a nation before 1787, and the alleged "more perfect union" between the thirteen original "states" here in OUR America that supposedly was formed when the United States Constitution was ratified by the original thirteen states, here in what is now OUR America ...

And here I am thinking about quite a few things which have emerged in OUR America as "issues" since this last presidential election in 2004 .....

And what has kicked me over into this "frame of mind" this morning is an e-mail which I received from what I call the "HE-MAN" set down there in Texico, the HOMELAND of George W. Bush and the rest of the Bushes, as well ....

In this e-mail, these Texicans down there in Texico were talking about Miss Hillary Clinton, who happens to be a United States Senator from up here in New York State, where I happened to be born, and where I am sitting right now, typing these words .....

In the e-mail in question, which was passed around quite a bit before I received it, apparently anyway, since I did not personally travel through the aether with it to ensure that each person had actually added their comments to it, these various individuals were making comments about what would happen to OUR America IF Miss Hillary were in fact to be elected president, and one of the HE-MEN made a comment about why, in his opinion, Miss Hillary was elected United States Senator up here, and in his opinion, it was because we are some kind of socialist eastern European back-water up here, where a Hillary Clinton would fit right in ....

Which then, in this person's opinion, made us up here, BAD FOR AMERICA, or un-American, if you will, because of Hillary ...

Who these HE-MEN see as the living embodiment of everything that is wrong with OUR America ...

Which is kind of intetresting, because these HE-MEN Texicans down there in Texico are all apparently very hairy-chested REPUBLICANS who are staunch supporters of George W. Bush and his war against humanity in IRAQINAM ..

AND SO IS MISS HILLARY ....

A supporter of George W. Bush's war against humanity, that is, because I don't think Miss Hillary is a REPUBLICAN yet, and I have never heard it said that she has a hairy chest like these HE-MEN down there in Texico do, although I suppose that could be an anatomical possibility, anyway, although I personally do not claim any kind of expertise in those matters .......

And since I am not really a supporter of Miss Hillary myself, I really did not become too concerned with their comments about her ...

After all, she is a politician, and she stepped into the "ring" of her own apparent volition, and so, she gets what goes with all of that, including japes and jibes from the HE-MEN REPUBLICANS down there in Texico ....

But I was caused to do some thinking about the thoughts of these HE-MEN about OUR United States of America, and the "place" of New York State in that alleged "more perfect union", and so ....

Here I am, with that as my train of thought for this morning, anyway ....

And this has been on my mind for several days now, since I received that e-mail sometime last week, and I tend to be slow in forming my thoughts, and responding to these kinds of things, which I take quite seriously ...

Which is my responses, I mean ....

Just because ten or twenty or a hundred fools somewhere might all have the same or similar opinions about something does not mean that I should just join in as a fool, too, because there is company in numbers .....

As an infantryman in Viet Nam, I learned that "company in numbers" out in the field meant that you were in the bunch that was being targeted by Charlie for some morter rounds, or an RPG sent into your midst, and so ....

I tended to be an "outsider" then ....

And I guess I am still one today ....

"Keep your own mind ..."

"KEEP YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU, SON, IF YOU WANT TO LIVE TO SEE THE END OF THIS DAY ..."

And that is how I still live, to this day ....

Because they are my wits ..

However few in number they might actually be ....

And more importantly, it is my own personal head that they are contained within, and so ...

And I don't mind these people down there in Texico bashing New York State itself, either .....

For that is their right as American citizens to be able to do so ..

And so .....

And I am not "proud" of New York State, or "proud" to be a New Yorker ....

It's just a place, after all, on a map of the world, and so ....

And you cannot tell these people down there in Texico that without New York, there likely would not be a Texico, because there is absolutely no way to prove that, and so ..

I won't try ....

BUT ....

Without a New York, and a Massachusetts, there might not be an AMERICA ...

And so ....

While there might still be a REPUBLIC called Texico ....

It would not be a part of America ...

Nor would it be surrounded by a friendly nation to it such as OUR America is and has been, despite the fact that an American president, John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas, in what was then openly billed or advertised to the world as a city full of people hostile to an American president ....

But that is in the past .....

And so ....

And here an off-screen audience member who is clearly audible nonetheless asks me why I am calling these HE-MEN down there in Texico Texicans, instead of Texans ...

And the answer to that is that they are not Texans ...

By their own assertions ....

A Texan is somebody like a cowboy, or simple folk, who live down there in the Republic of Texas, here in OUR America ....

These old boys are Texicans, from Texico, which is the STATE OF OIL ....

Not some piece of parched land down there to the south of Oklahoma, and west of Arkansas .....

That's Texas ....

These Texicans are not associated with that part of it .....

Texico is a STATE OF MIND, after all ...

And not a place ...

Just like the word Viking does not refer to where you are from ...

But to who you are, instead ....

And Texico is a kind of transcendent thing, which is where my concerns about the opinions of Texicans arise .....

Texico does not really have a east-west running squiggly border with Mexico at its southern end ....

To the contrary, Texico transcends that border, and subsumes Texas and Mexico up into itself ....

And makes it all kind of "one big thing" ...

And this is done in corporate boardrooms, of course ....

Which is where Texico is embodied .....

The real "state" behind the state ...

And so ....

And here I have to admit that in getting to the heart of my "topic" here, I am kind of like an old dog circling around a room three or four times before finally finding a place in front of the fire to lie his dog self down .....

I'm just taking some time to get there is all ....

Because it is like trying to look into a bright light for me right now .....

It makes you squint ....

And so ...

You can't see clear ...

And I don't like to be hasty ...

Or fly-off-the-handle ....

And so ....

But it has to do with CONSTITUTIONS ....

And OUR UNION ....

And OUR HISTORY AS A NATION .....

Which seems to be getting altered as we go along here ....

Into something unrecognizable .....

As well as something that never happened ....

And here I am thinking of a recent statement made by United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a United States Supreme Court decision to the effect that when the United States Constitution was ratified, THE INDIVIDUAL STATES WERE KEPT ON AS EXPERIMENTS ....

And that we now live in a time when that experiment is coming to an end ...

And all I could think was where on earth is she getting this "experiment" stuff from?

Because there is nothing in the United States Constitution that I can find about New York State being KEPT ON AS AN EXPERIMENT ....

And so ....

What is the United States Supreme Court up to here?

And why?

What is America anymore?

Or what was it ever?

These are the thoughts that are on my mind in here as one of America's many disabled combat veterans .....

What exactly was it for that we went to war ....

For America .....

Besides PROFITS for PROFITEERS off of war .....

Was it for anything else?

Was OUR America made stronger because of OUR efforts?

Or was it all just a charade?