Reading The Wall on Veterans' Day

Since I am fairly well known in my community as "public veteran", i.e., I appear at a lot of functions and events wearing my Vietnam Veteran ball cap, I was asked to help a local grade school with their Veteran's Day celebration.

"I'll need to check with my parole officer first," was my first response. It was followed by a sharp intake of breath at the other end of the phone.

"I'm just kidding," I added quickly. "So what will I need to do?"

"Just read something to one of our classes. We have kindergarten, 3rd grade and 5th grade classes available for you to volunteer in."

A moment's thought. "Jeez, kindergartners are messy and smelly and have the attention span of a gnat, and fifth graders these days are already hitting puberty and some of them may be packing heat. I'll take the third graders."

Which is what I got. When I showed up at the Garfield School they gave me my reading material, a children's book called The Wall, by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ronald Himler(!). When I first heard the title, I was expecting maybe an abridged version of John Hersey's great book about the Warsaw Ghetto, The Wall, which I thought might be a little age-inappropriate for ten-year-olds.

But no, to my surprise, it was a book about a young boy's visit to the Vietnam Veterans Wall in Washington DC with his father to look for his grandfather's name.

It was actually a very moving book and I could hardly keep myself from choking up a couple of times while reading it. If you know children about that age, I highly recommend that you get it for them. As I say, it was a very moving story and a great introduction for children to the concept of the Vietnam War.

The kids were great, each and every one of them was quiet and well-behaved, and either really interested in what I was reading or making a great face of looking that way. Afterwards they came up and asked a bunch of ten-year-old questions. At that age they can be fairly blunt: "Did you kill anyone?" No. "Did you have friends who died and are on the Wall?" Yes, about a dozen of them. And so on.

And then we all filed out of the classroom and down what seemed to me to be a tiny hall -- it was constructed for gradeschoolers after all -- to the gym, where I joined up with about a dozen more veterans who had volunteered for an assembly where we were all honored and thanked for our service.

It was really nice, a really sweet thing to do, and I was happy to be able to do it. Now I thinking of volunteering more at the school, since everyone knows that the public schools need our help. If you ever get a chance to do something like this, go for it. You will surprise yourself at what happens when you do.

Now It's Getting Personal

Word comes today that an unnamed Republican senator has put a block on a bill to give disabled veterans a modest increase in disability benefits.

As you all know, I am a disabled Vietnam veteran, so this hits me right in the breadbasket. And it's so typical of the RepubliCONS to do something like this under the cover of darkness, as it were, and hide from the public scrutiny -- the public scorn -- that would deservedly be heaped on him if he came right out into the light of day.

Does anyone need further proof that the RepubliCON Party does not have the best interests of America's veterans in mind?

And the bigger question is this: Are they trying to lose elections? What's going on here?

Well, if losing elections is what they want, let's give it to them. Vote Democratic, all the way down the ballot. Let's get these pond-scum dwellers in darkness out of office as fast as we can.

Rethugs to Veterans: We've Got Your Back -- NOT!!!

Still think that Republicans have the backs of American veterans? See this and remember in November: Veterans’ Jobs Bill Blocked in the Senate.

My own senator, Patty Murray, has been an outspoken advocate for America's veterans. Her party affiliation? Democrat, of course.

Salutegate: More from My Wackjob Cousin

Even though I've taken some time off, my wackjob cousin hasn't. Here's one of her latest:

Disgusting absolutely disgusting. A few minutes ago Mr. Obama left the White House to board Air Force 1 helicopter. Upon approaching the helicopter the Marine in his dress blues snapped to attention and saluted Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama showed total disregard or respect for the marine refusing to return salute. Mr. OBAMA THE MAN JOINED THE MILITARY AND WOULD PUT HIS LIFE ON THE LINE FOR YOU ANY DAY OR ANYTIME . Out of respect you deserve to return that salute. ACTIONS speak louder than words. We know how you feel about our constitution and our country.

What a lie you tell. And where is he headed, to FT Bliss to parse the military, what an idiot.

Really? Well, you know -- and she should have known -- that I just couldn't let this slide by without a response:

Jesus, that's what you are going with now? Now I must conclude that your visceral hatred of Barack Obama knows no bounds.
Oddly enough, the same people who are now slavering over this alleged "disrespect" are the very same ones (WND, Faux "News", Free Republic, etc., i.e., all of the "regular" sources which you seem to cite routinely) who said that Bill Clinton had NO RIGHT to return that same salute because he was a "draft dodger" who had never been in the military.
Really?
If you want to consider a REAL affront to the military, take a listen to Romney's speech last night (here's the full transcript, from Fox News so you know it hasn't been edited: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/, in which you will find exactly ZERO references to the troops in Afghanistan, even though he had a virtually unlimited amount of time to speak.
Mr. Romney, those men joined the military and if you were president, they would put their lives on the line for you any day or any time. Don't they deserve at least a passing mention, if not a loud and enthusiastic "shout out" of appreciation for their service?
How about that?

Okay, so after a couple more emails back and forth, one of which addressed the Romney-ignoring-the-troops thing by her saying dismissively that Romney is a busy man and the troops didn't mind:

Funny thing on that whole salute business, but I can find no record of any president doing it before Ronald Reagan, not even Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had more right than any other president with the possible exceptions of Washington and Grant. I remember the discussion in my VA "rap session" rehab group around the time that Reagan whipped out that first salute in 1981. No one had ever seen it happen before (and our ages ranged from vets from WWI on up through WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and we were somewhat divided over whether it was proper or just more of that famous Reagan showmanship.

But at the end of the day, the consensus was reached, as I recall, that no civilian, not even the commander-in-chief should salute a military person. Here's our reason why: One of the great concepts enshrined in our Constitution is that the military is always under civilian authority, command and control, and for a civilian, even the CIC or the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense), to salute a military man tends to blur that sharp distinction. For more on this topic, you might want to take a look at an interesting and lively forum discussion on this topic among some current and former service members on Military.com from several years ago, before this became a big current affairs issue: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/9150000112001.

BTW, you can't tell me with a straight face that, if the tables were turned and it was Obama who "forgot" to mention the troops in Afghanistan in a similar speech that you would be all right with that. I don't for a second believe that. And, on what the troops themselves thought of Romney's omission, we seem to be in disagreement -- you think they didn't mind, and I think that they did. Since neither of us is a mindreader, we'll have to let this one drop, except for me to add that when I was in the Army and in Vietnam, it was nice to have our commander-in-chief acknowledge our service and our sacrifices. It contributed greatly to morale and esprit de corps, and both Johnson and Nixon, consummate politicians that they were, knew that.

Hell, yeah, I'll play the Vietnam Card!  In a New York minute!

Well, as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed never tires of reminding me, you can't argue with stupid and you shouldn't argue with crazy... Yeah, true enough, but Jeez, sometimes it's just so goddam much fun!

Veterans Day

Time out from my regular snark to wish all of my fellow veterans a happy Veterans Day. We are the REAL 1%.

Thank you for your service, my brothers and sisters. Welcome home.

'Robin Hood Tax' -- A Brilliant Idea

So the super-rich don't want to pay their fair share of taxes, huh? Must be true as evidenced by all the backroom shuffling and keep-your friggin'-hands-off-MY-money attitudes they exhibit when the topic comes up.

The fact that it isn't a tax increase (as they continue to whine) but a reimposition of a tax they skated out from under during the years of the Baby Doc Maladminstration and his lackeys in a Rethug-controlled congress -- these guys are the ones who put the sunset provision in the law to begin with -- doesn't matter, apparently. But the capitilast meat puppets of the right in congress did this, so now you ought to go into the boardrooms and onto the golf courses and badger them: "What the fuck did you think you were doing?!!!"

Okay, so here we are with a situation that, sadly, seems to have grown some legs with "low-information voters" (i.e., the Moron-American Voting Bloc") that it's somehow "not fair" that these fuckers have to pay their fair share all of a sudden (as if no one saw it coming).

Robert Naiman over at Truthout, has the story of US Rep Bob Filner (D-Naturally, from CA) who has come up with a terrific solution: Earmark all of the income from the super-rich tax "increase" to into a Veterans' Trust Fund to pay only for the care of veterans wounded in the Republican wars.

After all, they wanted them, they started them, they profited from them, but precious few of the children of the rich have actually had to pay any price in blood for it:

The logic of this proposal is straightforward. The wars create a long-term liability for the government, because the government is obligated to pay for the medical care of veterans for the rest of their lives. The same logic that says that we ought to worry about the long-term liability of the government to pay Social Security benefits says that we ought to worry about the long-term liability of the government to pay veterans' benefits. But in the case of Social Security, there is a dedicated tax and a dedicated trust fund. In the case of veterans' benefits, there is no dedicated tax and no dedicated trust fund. So, we ought to feel more urgency about veterans' benefits than about Social Security benefits, because no provision has been made for veterans' benefits at all.

Any bets on whether this proposal, elegant in its simplicity, is going to get any traction? Right now the chance is zero, and if the Rethugs take over in January, it will be less than zero.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch

Jeez, every day I am reminded of the fact that it's not enough for the wingnuttery to smear the president at every possible turn, but they also have to just make shit up to get their unthinking sheeple to forward any and all emails about him that paint him in any kind of a bad light.

Since I am proudly and publicly a Vietnam veteran, I get a lot of shit by email that really isn't intended for an unabashed liberal/leftwing neo-Anarcho-Syndicalist veteran like me.

Case in point. I just received one of those "viral" emails with this photo, the latest of that whole "Obama won't salute the flag" meme left over from the campaign, this time couched a little differently:

And accompanying the photo was the following missive:

Check out this latest picture from Veterans Day 11/11/09 at the Ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. I don't know whether the National Anthem is being played, or the Flag is going by, or WHAT, but EVERYBODY in the picture is either saluting or has his hand over the HEART.

All except ONE.
Guess who.
I do not make this stuff up!

Yeah, YOU don't make this stuff up buddy because you lack the requisite number of brain cells to take a shit on a porcelain toilet, but you certainly don't mind passing this bullshit on to others.

Naturally, it ought to go without saying, it ought to be patently obvious to anyone with a working knowledge of how to negotiate to the nearest two-holer, it ought to be a non-starter in any political discussion, that the photo is likely a real one but the description is not.

I mean, come on! Do you really think that the President of the United States is going to do something like this at a public event???!!!

Jesus, people, just try to do the tiniest amount of research on this crap. Snopes is one of my favorite debunker sites, and they've already got the goods on this one: Check it out and be prepared to blast back at that IBIL* of yours when he brings this one up over the candied yams next week.

Context is everything!

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-In-Law]