This was originally written for Canadian Remembrance Day, but it applies to all who have served and whom we honor today.
JAMIE’S PLACE FOR STUFF
A Stroll Though Memory, Time and Politics With Stops Along The Way
November 11th
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About Me
Retired great grandmother living in the Northwest US. Former radio Public Service Director and National Accounts Manager.
I’m a hair-dishevelled heilan’ coo,
Hamish McKay be ma name;
Welcome tae this dreichet glen
I’m cursed tae ca’ ma hame.
Depending on the mood I’m in
I’ll raise ma horns on high,
An’ if I like the look o’ ye
I’ll likely let ye by.
But should I dinnae like the look
O’ ye, then tak great care,
I’ll raise ma horns on high again,
Go on, get oot o’there!
So whether welcome yae or nae,
I’ll raise these horns sae mean,
Then ye shall ken ma meaning
By the twinkle o’ ma een.
Courtesy of
MARION GRAY Wollaton Road Wollaton Park Nottingham
45 responses to “November 11th”
thank you all who served and thanks to Jamie for finding us the fine offering above .
Thank You isn’t sufficient for what they’ve done, but it’s all I can offer. Which candidate has the best plan for fixing the problems with the VA? When Trump says vets should be able to go to any doc instead of traveling to a VA hospital, that sounds great. But how do you require a doc to do that? You can’t. It’s getting harder to find a doc that will take certain insurances or use their in-network labs for coverage.
No, I think you have to socialize healthcare in order to open up the same care everywhere in the country.
“I think you have to socialize healthcare in order to open up the same care everywhere in the country.”
Blue…. AMEN!
Yeah… thanks for your service is all I can offer on this blog.
BTW… I got so tired of all the lies the candidates were spewing last night that I fell asleep…. jesus what a bunch of losers…
The biggest reason for keeping the VA is that they specialize in the injuries of war, physical and mental. The normal ills of life can be cared for locally and paid for out of taxes, but when it comes to amputations, brain injuries, PTSD etc. the best possible care is available at the VA hospitals once the veteran accesses the services. That means cleaning up the administrative mess that poor funding and failure to prepare for an extended war has caused.
How the GOP Rewards Stupid Candidates
Think Donald Trump and Ben Carson are some sort of aberration? Nah. The modern Republican Party is designed to reward the freaks.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/10/how-the-gop-rewards-stupid-candidates.html
Jamie – Good point. All of the normal things that come as time marches on, though, those should not require a trip to a VA hospital.
Good to see you back here.
*I have been looking for an episode of something where a kid tried to stab someone and the person is saved by their belt buckle. It’s just so familiar to me. It seems like they were on a stage doing a high school play. It seems like an episode of “Highway To Heaven.” It’s like reaching for a word that your tongue can’t access from your brain. Based on Doc Carson’s worldview, I’m surprised he didn’t say the other kid was saved by a Bible in his pocket.
blue, maybe you saw this (according to wiki)
“Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story is a 2009 television drama film directed by Thomas Carter, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Kimberly Elise. It is a movie based on the life story of neurosurgeon Ben Carson from 1961 to 1987. A Johnson & Johnson Spotlight Presentation, the movie premiered on TNT on Saturday, February 7, 2009. Its title was reused from a 1992 direct-to-video documentary about Ben Carson released by Zondervan.”
there was also this story a couple of years ago http://abcnews.go.com/US/belt-buckle-saves-man-bullet-philadelphia/story?id=18933790
It was interesting seeing the clock in the Canadian film set to 11-o’clock. That setting, reflecting the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the effective moment of the armistice of the War to End All Wars. When I was a school child, everyone in school would stand for two minutes of reflective silence beginning at that moment.
This morning, while still in bed, I tried to think of all the places my brothers and sisters have picked-up arms in the more than fifty years that I have been affiliated with the military establishment. Surely it is in the dozens.
It is time to spread the wealth; resume conscription. Make every citizen responsible for ratifying governmental decisions that will realistically involve our troops as an instrument of our foreign policy.
“It is time to spread the wealth; resume conscription. Make every citizen responsible for ratifying governmental decisions that will realistically involve our troops as an instrument of our foreign policy.”
flatus, amen to that. for those who unable or conscientious objectors to pick up arms, then there should be civil duties that can be fulfilled by the conscripted.
also the 2 yr mandatory service to country for all at age 18 always sounded like the way to go too in helping the electorate curtail unnecessary war due to it hits home.
Tom Brokaw Explains Canada To Americans
https://youtu.be/lrA4V6YF6SA
To paraphrase Betnie Sanders, if you can’t afford (or don’t want) to pay to support veterans, stop creating them by sending them.
I have a pic in my bedroom that belonged to my grandma. It’s titled, “The Hope of a Nation.” On the back is a paragraph about giving serious consideration before sending someone to fight. And while this was probably propaganda for an isolationist movement, I agree that we should be very careful about sending anyone to serve. Yes, the upper-class can avoid service, but they have always done that. How many deferments did some of these guys, like Cheney, get? How many safe places to see stateside instead of actually going to fight?
I do not see any good that would come from conscription, except that the ass-hats-in-charge would have a huge pool of warm bodies at their disposal. People are disposable, right?
If we had an capable diplomats, people who could actually build relationships, things would be better. Not perfect, but better.
but, blue, those ” ass-hats-in-charge” (or their family) will also be conscripted.
btw, did you see my reply to the belt buckle mystery you wondered about above?
Before voting to send anyone into combat, there should be a mandatory reading of Mark Twain’s “War Prayer” http://warprayer.org/
be sure to watch the video at 1:30 when he notes growing up in the bush family “you’re not a man until you’ve invaded Iraq or lost your virginity, whichever came first”
from http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/trevor-noah-jeb-bush-blackfish-free-jeb-petition
“The Daily Show” started a petition on Tuesday night to free former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush from his “cruel presidential campaign.”
“Jeb’s been bred and trained for life,” host Trevor Noah explained, not unlike the orcas at Sea World. “Every night, no matter how bad he feels, he has to go out there and perform.”
“I’m sorry to say this, but it’s obvious,” Noah continued. “Jeb Bush wants to be, no, he deserves to be set free. We know this because unlike an orca trapped in Sea World, Jeb Bush can voice his misery in a language we can understand.”
The petition, which can be found at http://www.cc.com/FreeJeb, wants to “pave the way for a more ethical treatment of all presidential candidates whose family members have already been president.”
From the petition: “Please help us urge his campaign handlers to release Jeb into the wild of ‘not running for president,’ so he can thrive in his natural habitat, somewhere in the Florida suburbs.”
Here is a direct link to the petition site:
https://www.change.org/p/jeb-2016-inc-right-to-rise-usa-demand-release-of-jeb-bush-from-cruel-presidential-campaign?recruiter=424030206&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
Save Jeb from ruinig George P’s career and making his Mom mad
from http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/10/politics/hillary-clinton-veterans-affairs-new-hampshire/index.html
Hillary Clinton on Tuesday rolled out her plan to address issues within the Department of Veterans Affairs, pledging in New Hampshire to “modernize” the struggling agency and “overhaul” its governance.
Speaking at a roundtable, Clinton said the current iteration of the VA is “failing to keep faith with our veterans” and promised, as president, that she would institute and top to bottom review of the maligned agency.
“These problems are serious, systemic and unacceptable,” Clinton said. “They need to be fixed, they need to be fixed now.”
neat way of recapping the goper debate…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/debates/nov-10-speakers/?hpid=hp_no-name_graphic-story-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
as for the kiddies’ table
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/elections/2015/11/11/75579592/
Lori Robertson of FactCheck.org breaks down the not-so-truthful answers given at the GOP Debate hosted by the Fox Business Network. This time around, the early debate took the prize for the most fibs and falsities.
Dulce et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Deciphering Ben Carson on Foreign Policy
By Taylor Marsh
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2015/11/deciphering-ben-carson-on-foreign-policy/
“THERE REALLY is nothing that compares to the answer Ben Carson gave on the Middle East, at the Fox Business debate Tuesday night. The obviously rehearsed word salad didn’t answer Maria Bartiromo’s question, but it did give Carson a chance to prove to his fundamentalist base that he can be commander in chief.
Dr. Carson made absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Bartiromo asked Carson about security threats at home and abroad, citing terrorism statistics in the Middle East and Central Asia. Since Carson was against putting troops in Iraq, and against a troop build-up in Afghanistan, Bartiromo asked if he supported President Obama sending 50 Special Operations forces to Syria.
Putin came up, maybe to prove Ben could stand up to him, something, no doubt, that makes Hillary Clinton laugh out loud.”
The Killer Question Republicans Couldn’t Answer Tuesday Night
History hasn’t been kind to GOP arguments about taxes.
Jonathan Cohn
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republicans-debate-jobs_5642e734e4b08cda3486a9c6?onw89f6r
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
(“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”)
Horace (Quintas Horatius Flaccus; 65-8 B.C.)
Roman poet
From his poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” in Odes, Bk. III, No. 2 (35 B.C.)
This is one of the two most famous quotations from Horace’s Odes. (The other is “Carpe diem.”) The Latin word decorum has been variously translated as fitting, honorable, glorious and becoming. In the poem, Horace muses on patriotism and cowardice, saying:
”It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.
Yet death chases after the soldier who runs,
and it won’t spare the cowardly back
or the limbs, of peace-loving young men.”
Before becoming a poet, Horace briefly served as a soldier in the army of Brutus, one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. Marc Antony and Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) defeated Brutus at the Battle of Philippi in 42 B.C. It seems a bit ironic, given Horace’s brave words in “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” that he threw down his shield and fled the battlefield during the Battle of Philippi to save himself from death. After Augustus declared amnesty for Romans who served in armies used against him, Horace became a clerk in the government treasury and a poet in his spare time. His Odes, published in four volumes between 23 B.C. and 13 B.C., are considered to be among the greatest works of classic Latin literature.
Sturg, you keep enthralling us with your scholarly knowledge of the history of that ancient part of our world–thanks for that. Questions, physically, what form did Horace’s volumes take? Were they really published as we publish now?
And then there is Wilfred Owen who didn’t survive the war.
Dulce et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen, 1893 – 1918
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
from http://news.yahoo.com/trevor-noah-slams-donald-trumps-debate-praise-operation-050017332.html
On Wednesday’s Daily Show, Noah played a clip from the debate of Trump praising Dwight Eisenhower for deporting 1.5 million illegal immigrants during his presidential tenure. But Noah claimed there were two things problematic about Trump’s claim.
“First, Eisenhower ended up deporting probably 250,000 immigrants, and second, that program that Donald Trump loved so much was officially called ‘Operation Wetback,’ ” Noah said.
After the audience audibly reacted to the name, Noah replied: “There’s something to be said for a policy that doesn’t hide where it’s coming from. It’s like if ‘stop and frisk’ was called, ‘Hey, what’s in that black guy’s pockets?’ “
wapo editors also have something to say re trump’s neo-opwetback https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-inspiration-for-mr-trumps-immigration-policy-is-an-inhumane-plan-from-the-1950s/2015/11/11/61a8628e-88bd-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
Perhaps most salient, Operation Wetback was a disgraceful episode that involved inhumane treatment of Mexican migrants, an unknown number of whom died or were sickened by being forcibly relocated and in many cases deposited in sweltering, remote locations with little food or water. One observer depicted “indescribable scenes of human misery and tragedy.” A historian compared the forced journeys to that of an 18th-century slave ship.
What little sense entered the GOP debate on this issue came from Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who called advocacy of mass deportations “silly” and juvenile, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who put his finger on the problem precisely. “It’s not embracing American values,” Mr. Bush said. “And it would tear communities apart, and it would send a signal that we’re not the kind of country that I know America is.”
Sorry Jack. I missed that you had already posted that magnificent anti-war poem.
https://youtu.be/Ao3_3yBv13M
https://youtu.be/wF7HFQSpDQE
from http://www.inquisitr.com/2559352/elizabeth-warren-commie-dictator-video-ad-attacks-cfpb-with-soviet-like-loan-denial-fears/
Although the attack ad portrayed Elizabeth Warren as a commie dictator, she believes the CFPB is helping the average person, not dragging them down like the Soviet Union.
“Wall Street has a problem: They know the CFPB is working, and it’s incredibly popular with the families it helps,” Warren claimed on Twitter. “The CFPB has forced the big financial companies to return more than $11 billion to people they cheated on credit cards, mortgages. Thousands of dollars on a TV ad is nothing compared to the money the big banks save if their GOP buddies go after the CFPB. Wall Street knows if they soften CFPB support, the GOP will feel better undercutting the agency in closed-door deals. So here’s my message to Wall Street & their GOP buddies: we’re ready to fight back to protect the CFPB.”
Poll Shows Hillary Clinton Maintaining Lead Over Bernie Sanders
By Patrick Healy and Giovanni Russonello
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/12/poll-shows-hillary-clinton-maintaining-lead-over-bernie-sanders/
Bill Clinton comes off the sidelines
The former president is taking a more active role and is staying calm.
By Annie Karni
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bill-clinton-hillary-support-campaign-president-215573#ixzz3rHXlDg4S
tony, fun on the trail
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/12/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-hair/index.html
whigs and wigs…. takes one to know one
and be sure to listen at 58 seconds when they broach again re the conspiracy theory that trump is actually, purposefully trying to help Hillary win.
Lol, Trump should continue to talk about Hillary’s hair as it just shows him to be the asshole we know he is..
How Insane Are Republicans’ Tax Plans? Just Look at These Charts.
By Jordan Weissmann
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/11/10/jeb_bush_and_marco_rubio_want_absolutely_insane_tax_cuts.html
Why no one’s dropping out of the GOP presidential race
By Dan Balz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fourth-gop-presidential-debate-did-little-to-narrow-the-field/2015/11/11/13968642-888c-11e5-be39-0034bb576eee_story.html
a kinder, gentler Donald… what’s up with that?
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/courting-new-hampshire-votes-trump-is-bizarrely-complementary-on-morning-joe/#ooid=M2YndyeDrT66mFYbIqlFOrVKZFmcnbf2
Jon Stewart: Donald Trump Is An Internet Troll Running For President
“Are we really doing this Donald Trump thing? We’re really doing that as a country?”
Ed Mazza
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jon-stewart-donald-trump-troll_5643ead2e4b045bf3dedc827
In old warfare, up until WWII, the First Sergeant had the worst job. When a company was attacking, its commander was at the front leading the troops into battle. The First Sgt was in the rear persuading any stragglers to rejoin the formation–and shooting them if they didn’t.
from http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/daily-show-trevor-noah-ted-cruz-debate-gaffe
When former Texas Gov. Rick Perry couldn’t list all three government agencies he would eliminate if elected President during a 2012 debate, the gaffe was seen as a teachable moment for future candidates.
Too bad fellow Texan, Sen. Ted Cruz, missed the lesson.
“A lesson could not have been more clear: If you are a statewide elected official from Texas participating in a Republican presidential primary debate hosted by a financial news network in the second week of November, then the one thing you should not do is list the federal agencies you would propose to cut using your fingers,” host Trevor Noah explained on Wednesday night’s “Daily Show.” “That’s all you have to not do. It’s a very specific lesson that everyone understood. Almost everyone.”
On Tuesday’s debate, Cruz proposed eliminating five government agencies: the IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce and House and Urban Development.
“Why? Why does this keep happening? It should not be this hard to remember a list of three to five things,” Noah said. “It’s like Ted Cruz is in a Greek tragedy where someone shows him his terrible destiny and he trains and he tries hard and he does everything he can to avoid it, but he still ends up banging his mom.”
Noah could not accept the slip-up.
“You’re auditioning to be the President of the United States of America. You can’t remember numbers?! Now you want people to trust you with nuclear codes.”
A president doesn’t have to remember nuclear codes. He doesn’t even need to remember where they are. Noah’s criticisms are unreasonable. And I can’t stand what’s his name.
Maybe the magic number is 4.
WSJ Cracks Up Over Populism Rise in GOP
Taylor Marsh
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2015/11/wsj-cracks-up-over-populism-rise-in-gop/
“THE CONSERVATIVE guide book for Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, is having a kind of crack up over the rise of populism in the Republican party. What the tea party began, Mitt Romney brought to an abrupt halt, but the defeat in 2012 made sure it would be resurrected in some form. On the left, Bernie Sanders has revived Democratic longing for a more purely progressive voice, which has impacted Hillary Clinton‘s campaign message.
The most telling moment for me in the debate was when Rand Paul schooled Donald Trump on China, because he didn’t know China is not part of the TPP.
Mr. Trump called it a “terrible deal,” though it wasn’t obvious that he has any idea what’s in it. His one specific criticism was its failure to deal with Chinese currency manipulation. But it took Rand Paul to point out that China isn’t part of the deal and would be happy if the agreement collapsed so the U.S. would have less economic influence in Asia. – Republican Fault Lines [Wall Street Journal]
All of this is a symptom at the bottom of the one question Democrats have refused to exploit. Why do people vote against their own interests? This phenomenon exploded with the advent of Ronald Reagan‘s deregulation of the airwaves that birthed Rush Limbaugh and the lies that launched a million “antediluvian” knuckleheads, a description we’ll get to in a minute, who sucked up the right’s propaganda. They actually believed that making the rich richer meant it would trickle down to them.
The latest presidential debate vividly captured how the 2008 financial crisis has reshaped the Republican Party by unleashing a potent populist strain that could further scramble an already unpredictable primary contest. Candidates vying for the 2016 GOP nomination have grown distinctly more leery of big banks, corporations and international trade deals, and outright hostile toward the Federal Reserve. [Wall Street Journal]
Now the joke’s finally come home to roost at the Wall Street Journal’s economic center and they’re cracking up over it.
If you’re not convinced, the way the WSJ finished their populist panic is by quoting Norm Ornstein and his direct shot at the Republican base who has hoisted Donald Trump and Ben Carson to the top of the polls.
The fourth GOP debate, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal and Fox Business Network, illustrated how Republicans are competing to bridge their populist message with the party’s traditional support for lower taxes and less regulation. Candidates castigated crony capitalism, questioned the value of a Pacific trade pact and bashed the Fed as a cause of the financial crisis and a tool of the Obama administration. […]
“The most dismaying element” of Tuesday’s debate was that “none of the candidates appear to have read, much less absorbed, the innovative ideas” of “reform-minded conservative economists,” said Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has advocated many of those policies. “Instead, they all promoted ideas that appealed to the antediluvian base.”
“Antediluvian base”… Ouch.
Of course, I’m not going to argue, but then I’m more focused on Marco Rubio and his “antediluvian” notion that a woman is expendable if her life or health is in danger over a pregnancy gone wrong. As to his foreign policy prescriptions, if you liked Bush-Cheney, you’ll love Marco!
All of this is illustrative of the Republican party house of cards, which has at its center a definition of “conservative” that no longer means what it once did.
Republicans are heading for a bruising, because populism is as American as Social Security and Medicare, which is how Ronald Reagan seduced Democrats. Socialistic components of the American dream that the GOP “antediluvian base” embraces, even as the latest conservative savior, Speaker Paul Ryan, wants them both undone.
The crack up has just begun.”
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