Thank you Daddy...Butch ( Brother) Dan (Step son) Robert ( Borther inlaw) and all those who fight now and who fought than for keeping our country safe, in my eyes you are true Americans
you know what it takes to keep our country safe and to help keep freedom alive You are the ones
that truely understand the words * Freedom * Democracy*and Peace*

My best friend from high school is in iraq. I hope he comes back with the pieces he left with - despite not having the proper gear - because somebody cut taxes and the army went in on the cheap.
give me a freaking break.

Last edited: Saturday, November 11, 2006 at 6:49:59 PM

We call that 'Remembrance Day' up here.
We have 3 survivors left from WW1. The Govt is talking state funeral.

Really peculiar times we're in.
For a long time it was 'natural' for men to be warrior. Now it's the exception.

My step son is in Iraq my brother was in the gulf war and at the tail end of the vietnam war. My father was in the Korean war...We are not talking money here Tally we are THANKING those who were and are brave enough to stand up and fight for Freedom!!!!!!!

What Tally is saying is that it's one thing to go to war, but it's better if your military campaign is well funded and supported.
I *think* he's saying the US army in Iraq was under-funded somehow. So he's supporint the vets and army by wishing them better equipment. O well... We're always talking money; money buys technology and saves lives (power-up anyone?)

Good post Sheena!
Im glad someone remembered!
God bless our troops past and present!
My cousin survived the invasion in Iraq and said that things are better than the media will tell

Danke Brains. Ww1 survivors? Link us, that's crazy.
-
KKB, your cousin survived the invasion? I didn't know there were Iraqis in your family.
-
Unfortunately, it is technically difficult to converge ideas in different threads. A person in one thread thanks the vets woohoo, then in the next, is entirely anti-any-and-all-tax. One might ask then who, in fact, is looking out for their loose change and not the soldiers.
-
in the spirit of chest pumping, my dad drafted into 'nam and partied there during Tet and my grandfather was in korea, so perhaps I too have the credentials to speak here. I want everyone here to know how proud I am, but in truth, I wish I knew them before they went, because they both came broken bitter men.
-
calendar notes are not good posts. Why can't people on the right figure out a way to say their prayers quietly? NOT TO POINT OUT, LASTLY, THAT IF YOU THANK THEM HERE, THEY ARE NOT HEARING YOU. THIS IS NOT THE WAILING WALL.
-

Last edited: Sunday, November 12, 2006 at 1:29:29 AM

^What are you talking about?

^ He's bitter about everything.... :S

My cousin is dead in Baghdad and I don't really know any veterans, so I hugged my best friend Miranda.

Is this the place where we stake our claims to Real America by way of parading out our relatives who have served in the military, irrespective of how or when they served? The more of your relatives, the higher your standing as True Americans Who Really Are the Only Worthy Americans?

Hats off to your relatives. Its enough that they have served. Clearly, the very fact that they have served itself really is the point -- not to what end they have served -- especially those that have served in Iraq. Lets be clear: even though their sacrifices were squandered by lesser men for political ends, your veteran relatives have earned you some political capital.

Though the objective in Iraq isn't clear - that is - remains unclear despite several creative revisions, let us not be put off, but let us use the service of your veteran relatives to stake down a position, boolstered as we are by their sacrifices and especially positioned to entitlements through their participation in Freedom, Sacrifice, Democracy and all the rest of it. What better occasion to lay claim to the True Politics than by availing ourselves of this holiday?

This three day weekend, wonderfully positioned so near the holidays is brought to you on behalf of our fearless fighting boys who have asked that you shop merrily, enjoy yourselves, and eat much. But most of all, they who sacrifice ask that you yourself under no circumstances, sacrifice. The boys have asked me to tell you that the very thought of your spending the weekend contemplating their sacrifices really brings them down and by the platoon. They ask that you use these three days to the fullest. And this Veterans day is special, as this one is sponsored by Rumsfeld as a kind of parting gift to your relative soldiers. Cheney, Pearle, and Wolfowitz also contributed to the occasion. Thank you boys. I thank you on behalf of our most recent cohort of relatives & soldiers, themselves unable to thank you personally, occupied as they are in an occupied country. I realize that none of you men were yourselves veterans, but goddam it. I salute you!

About that political capital: let me hazard a guess: you reckon that your fightin' brothers, cousins, uncles and dads aren't laying their asses down abroad so that we can have health care here at home, or an educational system befitting a first world country, or for that matter...anything besodded with the label "Public Good" or "Public Institution." your fighting boys aint dyin' so that you have to pay taxes to support anything "public."

And why should they anyway? Public? What good is that? The field is level, as far as I can see, and so I declare "Everyman for himself!" Good conservatives, (that much gooder by way of famial connection to real heroes...)let us speak plainly, let us renounce the very notion of "public good" and call it what it really is: hand outs to the lazy, the criminal, the indigent, the shiftless, the stupid the fat pregnant minorities. Lets raze the very notion of "public." a curse, it is. Be gone, wretched public...ye huddled masses, ye got a heavy stink about ye!

And lets hear it for the "Private." lets have schools for those who can afford them and likewise medical care. Roads? Infrastructure? Parks? Beaches? Pay for play I say! Police, fire -- any service -- name your price. The free-market will bear us all out, those of us that are worthy. By the sweat of our own brows, we can stand on our own in a society that recognizes and rewards our work and bestows dignity on the term "private." those that can afford it, shall have it. Those that can't....can rot. It works for Brazil.

So come on, goddam it! We can all be winners, all you have to do is work real hard, like Donald Trump, Paris Hilton , K-Fed and millions and millions of other captains of industry. They've blazed a trail, the least we can do is follow! Onward Trump, Paris...show us how! Lets break the liberal yoke of taxation in support of the "public" and step boldly into the "Private."

Taxes my ass! I ain't paying em, and I don't have to. My goddam brother didn't spend two years fixing helicopters in the Airforce in that hell hole Ogden Utah so that I would have to do my part to educate some goddam minority kid or to house his shiftless father in some prison while his mother pops out kid number 8.

Can I get an "amen" from a cheerleading hillbilly on this one?

...glad you have the patience that I no longer have.

I only have patience for the occasional sneer...

Don't forget science. You can say 'I've read it on PTT so it's true'. Here we have the whole spectrum meeting, and it's amazing in a way this exchange. PTT was precious for me in that it exposed me to a wide variety of point of view.

These things are highly emotional; national anthem, military uniform, veterans, ranks, courage, etc. There's a whole mythology of the military in the US: look at your movies, news, your NYT best-sellers, etc. Always a spy, a marine, a sergeant, a hero out there doing something good, saving the world.

Not everyone has been shattered by the sheer absurdity of the wars of the 20st century.

Also re. The family thing...
I do not come from a family of military brass, my father was taken at birth from his mother at the hospital (she was 'native' i.e. Red race), and like was the policy at the time, he was given to a white family for adoption. My grandparents were absolutely uneducated, so my father spent his life educated himself. He was the first native lawyer in his province (natives were segregated from Law Schools up to the 70s). He rose to preeminence in a big lawyer office in Montreal, but quit in disgust after assisting to high-level bribery and corruption. He was shaken, and started from then on working in the legal aid system as a criminal lawyer. That was a long time ago, he departed this planet early.

So he did not train himself to kill people; he tried to help the illiterate and the poor. So I come from this tradition.

As such to honor people whose livelihood is to be ready to kill people is a bit against my grain; this said I respect the warrior type, I understand there's a tradition, and also a need for the military.

Remembrance Day is marking the end of WW1 - by extension we now celebrate all veterans, but it does not mean all wars are the same, nor that all wars are justified, noble, and holy... Lest we forget.

---
As to me, when the invader comes, I will serve and gladly fight and die to protect my freedom. But no standing will ever invade my country, and we seem to be understanding that finally up here. It's true in the US you have Mexico plotting to invade...