Archive for the ‘Freedom’ Category

Judge Sonia Sotomayor blocks provision of Obamacare that would force all employers to provide birth control to their employees. This is a narrow decision that only applies to religious groups. I believe that this is the correct decision as the government has no business telling religious groups what to believe. This would have  forced a religious group to provide birth control to their employees. This would have gone totally against their beliefs. Catholic do not believe in birth control and the government should not force him to do anything against their faith. This is not only healthcare but religious faith in the government should be out of this

As per normal with me nowadays I am once again posting something late. This is still as important today as it was 4 days ago. November 11th is Veterans in the United States. Some may still call it by the name it once has as Armistice Day. That was when the guns fell silent in the war to end all wars, WW I. The agreement lasted a little over two decades and once more the world was at war again. That is all in the past and we need to remember the past. I was reading the Freedom Alert that my Senator, Jim DeMint uses as the title of all his emails to me. I intentionally left out the honorable part ’cause I am not so certain he is that honorable. The way I look at it pretty much all politicians are out to grab all they can and not worry about what will happen after we are dead and gone. The VHP a project  of the Library Of Congress’s American Folklore Center. We are losing approximately one thousand vets a day. Once they have passed there is no way to get their side of the story.

But I transgress. What I want to do is try and get everyone involved in the Veterans History Project. You can visit the Library of Congress and download the VHP field kit. Visit their home page and in the upper right there is a search box and you can simply type Veterans History Project. Your results should right on top. Visit the appropriate link then download the ebook that explains what they need and can use. There is an address inside of the papers that gives you the physical location to forward all of the information you have gotten. We need top remember the past and the sacrifices that they made so that we can live our life without the fear that could have happened if not for their bravery. I say thank you to all our veterans and try to speak to each and everyone that I see wearing caps and colors from their units and branch of our military. Try it. Next time you see one our vets proudly (and rightfully so) displaying what branch of the military their were in or a unit patch. I try speaking to each and every vet that I see and express my gratitude for their sacrifices and heroism all for us back at home. I am proud to say I am a veteran as was my father one brother and my sister also served. Us children were too young to go to war in Vietnam and I tried but they found my lie about my age. The next time you see a vet, young or old you should look them in the eyes and tell them “Thank You” for everything you did for us at home. I feel blessed knowing our family had so many vets. I feel lucky to have gotten to talk to WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam  vets. I felt I was in the presence of heroes every time we would go to the VA medical center in Asheville NC. I listened to many tales, but one really stands out in my memories. I was joking around with a elderly black man in the visitors area when grandpa was a patient. I told him he looked a little too old to be from WWII and asked him if he was a WWI vet to which he told me he was not a WWI vet. He told me he served in the Spanish American war. This excited me as I had never spoke to a vet that old. I was very surprised as that meant he was nearly a hundred years old. After he told when and where he served I was really excited. So I asked him did he charge up the hill with Teddy Roosevelt. That is when he told me that they only let him take care of the mules. It brought that ugly “race issue” to the front. We never talked about that but I later learned about the race card as they would not let a black man and a white man serve together. He did have an extremely important job but it was such a shame that he could not charge the hill and serve with the other men. Either man could actually get killed doing his duty but they had to segregate the races even on the battlefield where all men were equally killed.

I am glad to report that race no longer plays as a reason for rank, pay grade or units. That is the way it should be. No man is better than another simply because the color of their skin is different.

Today I site here feeling very privileged. I just got through a private screening of a movie that is to be released later this year. It was a documentary about our failing health care in the United States. The working title is “The Health Care Movie” and is narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. It compares our health care system to Canada’s health care system. Seeing it made the plan we have here in the good ol’ USA pale in comparison to theirs. They believe in taking care of their citizens and not favoring huge corporations over the masses. They also see it as a basic human right. Something we agreed to, and ratified when we signed the “The Declaration of Human Rights”. If you look it up and start reading go down to article 25.  There you will find us agreeing that health care is a human right. But I am off topic here somewhat.

I was talking about the movie I was allowed to see. It gives some shocking facts and numbers about our nonexistent health care. I hope that everyone will see this and be mad as hell. Writing their congressman  or senator mad. Everyone needs health care at some point in their lives. That is a fact no one  can dispute. The question is can you afford it? Is your insurance going to cover it. How much money comes out of my pocket? None of us can deny it. Even if you have health care you will have a co-pay and how large does that go? What if my bill becomes so large that my out of pocket money is too high for me? Will I have to sell the house to pay? Will I have to file bankruptcy because of an illness or accident? In our system all of these scenarios are not only possible but happen. A lot of times this is the story. Even a wealthy family can be bankrupted by a prolonged illness. I feel like this is a travesty that we allow for profit, private insurance companies run our health care system. They arbitrarily dictate what treatments we can or can’t have and we let them have their way in the name of democracy. If you were to remember your history you will find that Lyndon Johnson pushed medicare and medicaid through the halls of Congress. That was in direct apposition with insurance companies and their lackeys in Congress. Back then it was painted as an end to democracy and the beginning of socialism. Now it is considered essential. It is a sure fired method of losing votes if you voice a plan on cutting medicare and medicaid. It took some wrangling and over the objections of insurance companies they were passed into law. That is what we need now. someone to push expanding medicare and medicaid to cover everyone in the USA. But that is my simple plan. No need for all these tax credits and vouchers.

Anyhow that is my opinion. I have good health care from the VA but not everyone has served their country.

I was able to view the movie early because they used my sons song part of the movie. The title is Silence
Is Consent
It was really great to see my sons name in the credits. It brought tears to my eyes for him to be so honored. The song fits this movie perfectly as my son feels very strongly that everyone should have access to health care regardless of whether they have money or not. I made the song title a link to his website joshua121.   You can hear the song there on the site. I recommend that you listen to it then write your congressman or woman. Don’t forget that you have a senator that needs to know that we need health care. That is the only thing that matters to a politician, votes and how much money he can gather from corporations and others for his next reelection campaign.

I received an email today that has absolutely pissed me off to no end. It said that our President Obama wants to give Jane Fonda an award as one of the top women in the last hundred years. That makes me livid. I can still remember when she visited Hanoi during the heart of the Viet Nam war and actually fired anti aircraft shells at our planes as they flew over on their missions. That should have earned her a bullet in the base of her skull as far as I am concerned but I did not know everything and  this email described even more atrocities. I am going to copy and paste the entire email at the end of my rant. Please copy and email this link to everyone you know. Or at least copy and paste the text into your own emails. This makes me sick to my gut.

Barbara Walters comments on Jane Fonda

She can lead her present life the way she wants and perhaps SHE can forget the past, but we DO NOT have to stand by without comment to see that she is “honored” as a “Woman of the Century”.
( I remember this well)
Never Forgive A Traitor

For those of you too young to remember Hanoi Jane is a bad person and did some terrible things during the Vietnam war.  Things that cannot be
forgiven!!!!

For those who served and/or died. . .

NEVER FORGIVE A TRAITOR. SHE REALLY WAS A TRAITOR!!

and now OBAMA wants to honor her……!!!!

In Memory of LT. C.Thomsen Wieland  who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton

IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW!!!!!!

She really is a traitor.

A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED.  KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA

This is for all the kids born in the 70′s and after who do not remember, and didn’t have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear.

Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the ’100 Women of the Century.’

BARBRA WALTERS WRITES:

Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never
known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam

The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot’s name is Jerry
Driscoll, a River Rat.

In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ‘ Hanoi Hilton.’

Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in
clean PJ’s, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American ‘Peace
Activist’ the ‘lenient and humane treatment’ he’d received.

He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away.  During the
subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant ‘s feet, which sent that officer berserk.

In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which
permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant’s frenzied
application of a wooden baton.

>From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E’s). He spent 6 years in the ‘ Hanoi Hilton’,,, the first three of which his family only knew he was ‘missing in action’. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive.  His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a ‘peace delegation’ visit.

They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that
they were alive and still survived. Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper,
with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand.

When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man’s hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: ‘Aren’t you sorry you bombed babies?’ and ‘Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?’ Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.

She took them all without missing a beat.. At the end of the line and once
the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper..

Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.

I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.

I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year in a ‘black box’ in Hanoi . My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Banme Thuot , South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)

We were Jane Fonda’s ‘war criminals….’

When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her..

I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs
received… and how different it was from the treatment purported by the
North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as ‘humane and lenient.’

Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my
arms outstretched with a large steel weight placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.

I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I
asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.

These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of ’100 Years of Great Women.’ Lest we forget….’ 100 Years of Great Women’ should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.

There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane’s
participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to
forward to as many people as you possibly can.. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.

RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt,
USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron,
Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343

PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK.

IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER STATUS WILL CHANGE

According to the Boston Globe, Massachusetts wants to establish a database with the information gathered by license plate scanners installed in police cars. The scanners will scan license plates of every car the police vehicle passes and transmit that information (along with the location) to a database that will be made available to various government agencies. The data will be kept indefinitely. Civil libertarians are raising an alarm and rightly so. This makes me wonder if “1984″ was accurate other than the timing with the date. This sounds like another move towards fascism by our government. Our founding fathers could never have known that technology would proceed as far as it has come. I am sure that if they had of known what was coming they would have definitely banned it while they were defining the Ten Amendments that guarantee our civil liberties.   So many of our liberties are being tossed out the window as our new technological feats make gathering and storing data on individual citizens becomes easier and easier. I can see where they would be of great use if they were simply used to scan the thousands of vehicles a police car sees almost everyday. If they were using the plate readers to look for a specific license plate of someone who was wanted by the authorities and they were not saving all the information gathered into a huge data base where they could check your whereabouts and track your movements maybe that would be a good idea. However scanning all those plates seen by the plate reader into a database to be used by whomever managed to get into the data base is wrong. Keeping track of your movements when you have committed no crime should not be allowed. If you live in Massachusetts you need to contact your local Senator and Representative to block this legislation.

Also a note to Massachusetts politicians: Such videos will be used against you at some point. Count on it. If you don’t care about the privacy of the citizens, at least think of your self interest before voting for this.

I am very proud of my son and he is a very good musician and I would say that even if he were not my son. He, like the majority of these people who keep us entertained does not have health insurance. Besides being a talented musician he is also blessed to have other talents as well. He also has taken the simple html we used to start his first website and blossomed into a first rate webmaster for himself and others. He now owns DragonTreeStudio and creates websites for others too. I am getting off subject but what he does for musicians has started the Musicians Project and they are trying to aid others to get health care information and services.

Where I was going when I started this post is that on their facebook page they have posted about a prescription assistance program. You can find them on their web site Partnership for Prescription
Assistance
I am going to copy their mission statement off their home page:

Prescription Assistance Programs

Prescription Help is Here

The Partnership for Prescription Assistance brings together America’s pharmaceutical companies, doctors, other health care providers, patient advocacy organizations and community groups to help qualifying patients without prescription drug coverage get free or low-cost medicines through the public or private program that’s right for them.”

If this post helps even one person gain some independence from exorbitant drug prices then I have succeeded in helping them get their message out. I am proud and lucky to be a veteran so I can get almost any help with my health care from them but that leaves my wife and daughter along with my son uninsured like so many of our citizens. Most qualifying patients will get free or vastly discounted drugs.

There are currently two versions of a bill in Congress that would protect a  journalist’s right to keep his or her sources confidential, effectively banning the government from forcing journalists to reveal whistleblowers. One version though–the House version–gives an incredibly stupid definition of journalist that excludes not only bloggers, but freelancers, independents, and nonprofit journalists as well. For the most part, the Senate and House agree on what a journalist’s duties are and what journalism are:

“the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photography, recording, writing, editing, reporting, or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”


The house version though adds this to the description of a journalist:

“for a substantial portion of the person’s livelihood or for substantial financial gain and includes a supervisor, employer, parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of such covered person.”

This will eliminate freelance journalists (no boss) anyone who does it as a hobby or public service this includes most blogggers who are not paid. The government then has the right to force you to tell who told you anything that you might report about much like they tried to do with journalist Judy Miller under the Bush Administration.

In just a matter of a few days in office President Obama is approaching the matter of Muslim extremists in a way that the Bush administration never tried. He is reaching out to the people. In his very first television interview since being sworn in as President he reaches out to the average Muslim on the Arabic satellite TV network Al-Arabiya which is based in Dubai. Instead of simply talking to government officials he is speaking to the common man, something that hasn’t been done before. I think it is a step ahead to engage the people of the Middle East and the Muslim world. This could go further in the war on terror than guns alone. I think we should let them know that there can be no better friend or worse enemy than the United States. He touched on it a little in his inauguration speech but this goes further and is in their language. He even goes on to talk of him spending time as a child in Indonesia, the Muslim worlds most populous nation, while his mother studied there. That speaks to the commoner that he at least understands some of their world. He points out that he has relatives that are Muslim. Things they can understand. The Arab world is actually two worlds. One in which the people live in, that is a world overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, under-served lacking the freedom of choice and the basic civil liberties denying them, as a result, their dignity as human beings. The other is the happy go lucky world of the elite who may as well live on a foreign planet the conditions are so apart. They are the ones like the Shah of Iran, who we kept up because he was friendly toward us and our eavesdropping on the Soviets from Iran, that oppressed the people with our blessings. Now he is speaking out directly to the Muslim world telling them that we intend them no ill will. Maybe an outstretched hand will be met with a more favorable view than a boot heal of oppression. I see from reading on the english page of Al Arabiya News Channel that they hold optimism also.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic at rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.

The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.

Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked without fear,
‘Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve.’
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts.

To the window that danced with a warm fire’s light.
Then he sighed and said ‘It’s really alright
I’m out here by choice, I’m here every night.’
‘It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.

No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at Pearl Harbor on a day in December,
Then he sighed, ‘That’s a Christmas Gram always remembers.’
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam’
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.

I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue. . . American flag.
I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother. . .
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that his flag will not fall.’

‘So go back inside,’ he said, ‘harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be alright.’
‘But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
Give you money,’ I asked ‘or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.’

Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
‘just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.’

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN – 30th Naval Construction Regiment – OIC, Logistics Cell One, Al Taqqadum, Iraq

A new bill, co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI),and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) would make ISPs who fail to provide service in a non-discriminatory manner subject to anti-trust violations. The legislation requires Internet service providers to connect with the facilities of other network providers on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis. It also requires them to operate their networks in a reasonable and nondiscriminatory manner so that all content, applications and services are treated the same and have an equal opportunity to reach consumers. Any ISPs that do not follow these net neutrality rules would be subject to antitrust enforcement. The legislation has been praised by on line and consumer rights groups. “Americans have come to expect the Internet to be open to everyone,” Conyers said. “The Internet was designed without centralized control, without gatekeepers for content and services. If we allow companies with monopoly or duopoly power to control how the Internet operates, network providers could have the power to choose what content is available.” You may say we do not need any legislation to insure that the internet remains open as it is mostly today, but large providers are already wanting to charge big providers a fee so their content flows fast and is not hampered or restricted. Right now the internet is neutral with your blog content available to everyone at the same speeds. What would happen to your blog and its readers if the large ISP’s slowed down access to your blog to others simply because you did not have the money to fork over for premium service. I can understand tiered service levels for your access but not to the content on the web. If yahoo took forever to load and google zipped right along you soon would quit using yahoo’s services. Small content providers such as bloggers could not afford premium access so their pages could be intentionally slowed down in favor of larger sites. That is what net neutrality is all about.