The World’s Largest Army… America’s Hunters!

An interesting slant on things

I had never thought about this…

A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion: There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin.

Allow me to restate that number: Over the last several months, Wisconsin‘s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world. More men under arms than in Iran. More than France and Germany combined.

These men deployed to the woods of a single American state,Wisconsin, to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed.

That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan’s 700,000 hunters,all of whom have now returned home safely.

Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. And then add in the total number of hunters in the other 46 states.

It’s millions more.
The point?

America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower.

Hunting.…it’s not just a way to fill the freezer…

It’s a matter of national security.

That’s why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed. Food for thought, when next we consider gun control.

Overall it’s true, so if we disregard some assumptions that hunters don’t possess the same skills as soldiers, the question would still remain… what army of 2 million would want to face 30, 40, or 50 million armed citizens.

(IF YOU AGREE, AS I DO, PASS IT ON, I FEEL GOOD THAT I HAVE AN ARMY OF MILLIONS WHO WOULD PROTECT OUR LAND AND I SURE DON’T WANT THE GOVERNMENT TAKING CONTROL OF THE POSSESSION OF FIREARMS)

For the sake of our freedom, don’t ever allow gun control or confiscation of guns. We need to protect our second Amendment rights at all costs!

God Bless America!

Mitt Romney — his real character!!!

On Romney’s character…

Sometimes, this facet of Romney’s personality isn’t so subtle. In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, had disappeared. She had attended a rave party in New York City and gotten high on ecstasy. Three days later, her distraught father had no idea where she was. Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter.

Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, and asked them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. Romney’s accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone.

That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day.

Romney’s former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter’s life, saying, “It was the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this to the day I die.”

So, here’s my epiphany: Mitt Romney simply can’t help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn’t do it for self-aggrandizement, or for personal gain. He does it because that’s just how he’s wired.

Many people are unaware of the fact that when Romney was asked by his old employer, Bill Bain, to come back to Bain & Company as CEO to rescue the firm from bankruptcy, Romney left Bain Capital to work at Bain & Company for an annual salary of one dollar. When Romney went to the rescue of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, he accepted no salary for three years, and wouldn’t use an expense account. He also accepted no salary as Governor of Massachusetts.

Character counts!! (and yes…that’s worth reading again!)

– Attributable to Mike Sage

Obama and Our 9/11 Trauma

This is an excellent article from The American Thinker…

Obama and Our 9/11 Trauma

Where did the idea of Obama come from? Let’s examine an obvious, yet overlooked source: the rubble of the Twin Towers. 9/11 was the most traumatic day in American history, and its horrors left deep gashes in our national soul. We stumbled around in pain and confusion for years, groping for a magical salve to heal our wounds — and there, suddenly, was Barack Hussein Obama.

As we turn our gaze from our current Obama-induced agonies to remember the terror attacks ten years ago, let’s do ourselves the favor of honesty and admit how tightly the two are connected.

On that fatal Tuesday, as the World Trade Center and Pentagon lay in ruins, President George Bush spoke to the American people, with simple words that pierced the heart of our new situation: “Freedom itself was attacked this morning… And freedom will be defended.”

But as it turned out, millions of Americans were not ready to defend freedom. Despite the “United We Stand” posters plastered everywhere, Americans almost immediately divided into two irreconcilable camps: those willing to understand the nature of our enemy and those who wanted to deny it, at all cost.

Within days of the attacks, a friend coolly informed me, “The people in the Twin Towers deserved it.” Still reeling from that shock, I almost lost it when another friend admiringly compared bin Laden to George Washington. Soon thereafter, a well-known academic in my circle complained that the sudden outpouring of patriotism made her sick.

This utter madness, which I thought would be confined to the fringe, rapidly spread to every corner of elite society. The more we learned about the savagery of the Islamist world, the more our moral and cultural superiors turned their wrath on us, instead of the enemy.

As headlines blared the almost surrealistic brutality of Al Qaeda, Senator Patty Murray told a group of high school honor students that Osama bin Laden was popular in poor countries because he paid for day care centers. “We haven’t done that,” Murray said. “How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?”(1)

While patriotic Americans were learning that Saddam Hussein used poison gas on his own people and gave his psychotic sons “rape rooms,” American college students were learning enemy propaganda. On the eve of the Iraq war, Professor Nicholas de Genova (2) of Columbia University convened an anti-war teach-in and proclaimed to the students, “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military. I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.”(3) Despite his public yearning for the mutilation of the American soldiers who’d volunteered to defend his worthless derriere, de Genova went on to a distinguished career at Columbia and the University of Chicago.

And so it went: The more evil the enemy committed, the more hysterical grew the attacks on us by our own elites. Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Al Qaeda operatives, who filmed the procedure and proudly put it online. Al Qaeda agent Richard Reid tried to blow up a plane headed to Miami with explosives hidden in his shoe. Jihadis in Spain blew up the morning commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people.

Meanwhile, Majority Leader Tom Daschle brought every Democratic Senator to the premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore’s viciously dishonest smear job of America and its president, and led the standing ovation. The Democrats then honored Moore with a seat next to Jimmy Carter at the Democratic National Convention, serenely untroubled by Moore’s gushing comparison of Saddam’s armies to America’s Minutemen.

The yellow brick road to Obama was paved with febrile insanity, a self-induced blindness that staunchly refused to see the massacres unfolding before our eyes. In 2005, the same year that homegrown Islamic terrorists blew up London’s buses and subways, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry went on Sunday morning television (4) and said, “And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women.”

A little-known incident in New York crystallized for me the obnoxious lunacy of our times. To the world, New York symbolizes the Ground Zero of pain, sacrifice and loss. Yet, New York almost immediately succumbed to self-hating delirium, desperate for vengeance against its greatest enemy: America’s Commander-in-Chief. In 2006, New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi spoke at the graduation ceremony of Queens College, a public university.(5) Here’s how he introduced New York’s Senator Charles Schumer to the fresh-faced graduates: “The man who, how do I phrase this diplomatically, who will put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”

And thus, from the ashes of the World Trade Center arose Barack Hussein Obama — the One who would redeem us, floating above the world like a multicultural Messiah. He bore a miraculous name, redolent of our two worst enemies, which seemed to promise some sort of divine intervention. He offered us the Muslim heritage of his father as a magical shield, deflecting the homicidal rage of seething hordes in scary, far-off places, and preserving our peace with no price to pay. His jutting jaw, tilted upwards a la Mussolini, would be our amulet, as all the world marveled at the Lightworker, the brilliant new god America had made.

The hysteria that accompanied Obama’s campaign — the fainting at his rallies, the Il Duce-like graphics, the Styrofoam Greek columns, the singing of his praises by glassy-eyed students led by enraptured cadres of apparatchik teachers — bore no resemblance to anything that had ever happened in mainstream American politics. We tried to create a god to defend our freedom, because it was easier than the hard work needed to defend it ourselves.

Alas, the destruction that Obama wrought may ultimately dwarf the wreckage of 9/11. As we are now relearning, there are no man-made gods; only the All Mighty who never tires of teaching us that the road to freedom has no shortcuts.

Links from article

1. http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Murray-s-remarks-on-bin-Laden-draw-GOP-ire-1103624.php
2. http://www.nicholasdegenova.net/
3. http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=19000
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXaoavV1d4s
5. http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/6/1/175047.shtml

BATFE To Issue “Demand Letter” To Dealers This Week

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BATFE To Issue “Demand Letter” To Dealers This Week

Multiple Rifle Sales Reports to Begin on August 14

Prior Belief That Executive Order Would “Enact” This Was In Error

FBI May Be Implicated in BATFE Gun Smuggling Program

NICS System Allowed Prohibited Sales

PHOENIX — July 25, 2011
by Alan Korwin
The Uninvited Ombudsman
Full contact info at end

According to four BATFE agents familiar with the planned Fast and Furious gun-smuggling “fix,” the bureau plans to release a “demand letter” by the end of this week, insisting that gun dealers in the four Mexico-border states begin reporting multiple rifle sales to the bureau.

All multiple rifle sales made to the same buyer within a five-day period will have to be reported beginning on August 14, on a form to be announced, according to the agents. The order will exclude rifles in .22 caliber, and rifles without detachable magazines. The agents acknowledged that congressional action, lawsuits, an injunction or other court orders might forestall the implementation of the hastily concocted scheme. Such preventive measures are already underway.

The rumored executive order to require gun dealers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to begin reporting multiple rifle sales to BATFE will not be issued. A previous Page Nine report that referred to the expected EO now appears incorrect. It is possible that the uproar over the program caused the administration to change its approach, and put all the heat on BATFE to “enact” law without Congress. The EO was widely reported and anticipated.

An exhaustive examination of statutory authority under which BATFE is required to operate revealed no legitimate power to demand these records, though the agents claimed they do have authority (two younger ones said they have no control over the process, and were simply following along). When questioned if they would consider resigning if asked to implement an illegally introduced rule, the agents all either declined to answer or said no, they would not resign.

Because a buyer will have to be identified to show that the sales reflect purchase by one person, the record collections will be a gun registry tied to gun ownership, which is strictly forbidden under federal law. No requirement to destroy these records exists, since no authority to collect the records exists. The BATFE agents said they would not be keeping the records, because they “lack authority,” but could not identify a time frame in which the registry information would be destroyed, or any audit trail.

When pressed, the senior official identified a statute that supposedly conveyed authority for the daring plan. The citation is to 18 USC §923(g)(5)(A) which states:

“Each licensee shall, when required by letter issued by the Attorney General, and until notified to the contrary in writing by the Attorney General, submit on a form specified by the Attorney General, for periods and at the times specified in such letter, all record information required to be kept by this chapter or such lesser record information as the Attorney General in such letter may specify.”

This does not confer the needed authority, because “all record information required to be kept by this chapter” does not include multiple sales of long guns to the same person in a five-day period. The agent disagreed. In fact, Congress specifically excluded such information when it enacted, by due process, a statute requiring similar information for handguns in the same law, in 18 USC §923(g)(3)(A):

“Each licensee shall prepare a report of multiple sales or other dispositions whenever the licensee sells or otherwise disposes of, at one time or during any five consecutive business days, two or more pistols, or revolvers, or any combination of pistols and revolvers totaling two or more, to an unlicensed person.”

In addition to the creation of this illegal reporting requirement, illegal gun-owner registry, with unknown details and no public control over the rule-making process, it amounts to record keeping specifically banned under the Firearm Owners Protection Act, 18 USC §926(a)(2):

“No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act [5/19/86] may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established.”

Like so many laws the federal government writes, this one declares that these acts cannot legally be done, but provides no specific punishment for perpetrators, such as those running this scheme inside BATFE. Laws could be written with teeth, to control bureaucrats. Instead of saying, “No one may collect this information,” the law could say, “Anyone who collects this information shall go to prison and pay a fine.” Given the common abuses now prevalent in government, such laws have been needed for a long time, on a state and local level as well as federally, some legislators say. Any legislator unwilling to draft laws that way, allowing “officials” to do whatever they please without consequence, deserves to be removed from office, according to leading experts.

FBI Implicated in Gun-Smuggling Operation

In other news, an insider source investigating BATFE’s gun smuggling to vicious Mexican drug cartels, reveals that several of the so-called “straw purchasers” were prohibited possessors, or had suspended drivers’ licenses and other problems that should have prevented them from passing the NICS background check.

Three of the straw purchasers, now indicted, had criminal histories, including a pending class 3 felony charge for burglary, an order of protection, a domestic-violence conviction, and a felony for resisting
arrest, later reduced (and criminal damage charge dropped). Any of these should have prevented, or at least delayed purchases when they hit the FBI NICS computer. One defendant even had a CCW permit, under circumstances that seem suspicious but remain unclear.

Whistleblower BATFE agent John Dodson apparently indicated that the NICS system had these buyers flagged for special treatment, and that when a sale request came through, it was routed to a special FBI office that approved the purchases, according to William La Jeunesse at FOX News. Dodson’s prior statements are absolutely incriminating, and riveting: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

This implies that the FBI may have been complicit in the scheme, allowing BATFE’s mules to get possession of guns when they should have been blocked. How people with disqualifying criminal records or a suspended driver’s license could have repeatedly gotten through the tightly run NICS system is difficult to otherwise explain.

Some of the buyers were young adults living at home with parents, and with no visible means of support. How they got the tens of thousands of dollars in cash they repeatedly spent has not yet been investigated, but is sure to come out. The tax and IRS angles are also missing from all reports, so far.

IRS is often vigorous on tracking down unreported income and huge cash transactions, but is not involved as far as published reports go. BATFE installed video cameras at some of the gun shops and have the straw-purchase smugglers’ transactions recorded.

No information is available on how the data BATFE hopes to collect will be used to prevent gun smuggling. Since the information will be gathered by the very bureau responsible for smuggling guns into Mexico, confidence in the scheme is very low. BATFE claims the scheme will generate 18,000 records per year, but how they could possibly know that is unclear, since this is illegal and has never been done before.

Congressional hearings on the BATFE gun-smuggling program continue tomorrow, Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 10 a.m. East coast time, 7 a.m. here in Arizona. The effect on the gun reporting and registration scheme, if any, is impossible to determine ahead of time.

Tangential but important —

According to Wikipedia, BATFE has digitized out-of-business records from gun dealers, with several hundred million records in its hands:

4. Out of Business Records. Data is manually collected from paper Out-of-Business records (or input from computer records) and entered into the trace system by ATF. These are registration records which include name and address, make, model, serial and caliber of the firearm(s), as well as data from the 4473 form — in digital or image format. In March, 2010, ATF reported receiving several hundred million records since 1968. [9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act

::::

One final note —

BATFE began circulating a flier at the Crossroads of the West gun show in Phoenix this past weekend, the state’s biggest gun show, threatening gun owners with arrest if they bear arms within 1,000 feet of a school.

Virtually all populated areas are within 1,000 feet of a school.

The gun-free-school-zones act, a feel-good do-nothing law passed by President Clinton, has languished basically unused for two decades, but essentially criminalizes almost all gun owners, creating tens of millions of unenforceable felonies daily. If Mr. Obama wants an under-the-radar gun ban, here it is on a platter, already on the books. This law MUST be dealt with by our legislators, and right quick.

The Crossroads gun show takes place within 1,000 feet of a school zone.

See the maps, and the simple amendment that would correct this travesty. http://www.gunlaws.com/Gun_Free_School_Zones.htm

This is a special report from The Uninvited Ombudsman, Alan Korwin, author of the Page Nine news media watchblog. http://www.gunlaws.com/PageNineIndex.htm

Sign up for direct email reports yourself http://www.gunlaws.com

Permission to circulate this report granted.

Alan Korwin
Bloomfield Press
“We publish the gun laws.”
4848 E. Cactus, #505-440
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
602-996-4020 Phone
602-494-0679 Fax
1-800-707-4020 Orders
http://www.gunlaws.com
alan@gunlaws.com
Call, write, fax or click for free full-color catalog
(This is our address and info as of Jan. 1, 2007)

“Don’t be a spectator in the struggle to preserve freedom.”

“No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing
because he could do only a little.”
–Edmund Burke

Public sentiment is everything.
With public sentiment, nothing can fail.
Without it, nothing can succeed. –Abraham Lincoln

Memorial Day – a tribute to our military

He was getting old and paunchy
and his hair was falling fast,
and he sat around the Legion,
telling stories of the past.

Of a war that he once fought in
and the deeds that he had done,
in his exploits with his buddies;
they were heroes, every one.

And though sometimes to his neighbors
his tales became a joke,
all his buddies listened quietly
for they knew whereof he spoke.

But we’ll hear his tales no longer,
for old Bob has passed away,
and the world’s a little poorer
For a Soldier died today.

He won’t be mourned by many,
just his children and his wife.
For he lived an ordinary,
very quiet sort of life.

He held a job and raised a family,
going quietly on his way;
and the world won’t note his passing,
though a Soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth,
their bodies lie in state,
while thousands note their passing,
and proclaim that they were great.

Papers tell of their life stories
from the time that they were young
but the passing of a Soldier
goes unnoticed, and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution
to the welfare of our land,
someone who breaks his promise
and cons his fellow man?

Or the ordinary fellow
who in times of war and strife,
goes off to serve his country
and offers up his life?

The politician’s stipend
and the style in which he lives,
are often disproportionate,
to the service that he gives.

While the ordinary Soldier,
who offered up his all,
is paid off with a medal
and perhaps a pension, small.

It is not the politicians
with their compromise and ploys,
who won for us the freedom
that our country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger,
with your enemies at hand,
would you really want some cop-out,
with his ever-waffling stand?

Or would you want a Soldier–
his home, his country, his kin,
just a common Soldier,
who would fight until the end?

He was just a common Soldier,
and his ranks are growing thin,
but his presence should remind us
we may need his like again.

For when countries are in conflict,
we find the Soldier’s part
is to clean up all the troubles
that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor
while he’s here to hear the praise,
then at least let’s give him homage
at the ending of his days.

Perhaps just a simple headline
in the paper that might say:
“OUR COUNTRY IS IN MOURNING,
A SOLDIER DIED TODAY.”

The Silver Lining or In God We Trust

Tour boats ferry people out to the USS Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes. We just missed a ferry and had to wait thirty minutes. I went into a small gift shop to kill time. In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled, “Reflections on Pearl Harbor” by Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Sunday, December 7th, 1941–Admiral Chester Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington D.C. He was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the phone. He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and defeat–you would have thought the Japanese had already won the war. On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every where you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, “Well Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?”

Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?” Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, “What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?”

Nimitz explained. Mistake number one: the Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk–we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Mistake number two: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships. If they had destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to America. And I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Mistake number three: every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away over that hill. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our fuel supply. That’s why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could make or God was taking care of America.

I’ve never forgotten what I read in that little book. It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it. In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan, born and raised in Fredricksburg, Texas — he was a born optimist. But anyway you look at it–Admiral Nimitz was able to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where everyone else saw only despair and defeatism. President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the right job.

There is a reason that our national motto is, IN GOD WE TRUST.

HISTORY NOT taught in High School!

HISTORY NOT taught in High School!

Tinian Island, Pacific Ocean…

It’s a small island, less than 40 square miles, a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue.

Fly over it and you notice a slash across its north end of uninhabited bush, a long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt runway. If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t give it a second glance out your airplane window.

On the ground, you see the runway isn’t dirt but tarmac and crushed limestone, abandoned with weeds sticking out of it. Yet this is arguably the most historical airstrip on earth. This is where World War II was won. This is Runway Able:

On July 24, 1944, 30,000 US Marines landed on the beaches of Tinian…. Eight days later, over 8,000 of the 8,800 Japanese soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328 Marines), and four months later the Seabees had built the busiest airfield of WWII – dubbed North Field – enabling B-29 Superfortresses to launch air attacks on the Philippines, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.

Late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945, a B-29 was maneuvered over a bomb loading pit, then after lengthy preparations, taxied to the east end of North Field’s main runway, Runway Able, and at 2:45am in the early morning darkness of August 6, took off.

The B-29 was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force, who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay. The crew named the bomb they were carrying Little Boy. 6 hours later at 8:15am, Japan time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours of August 9, a B-29 named Bockscar (a pun on “boxcar” after its flight commander Capt. Fred Bock), piloted by Major Charles Sweeney took off from Runway Able. Finding its primary target of Kokura obscured by clouds, Sweeney proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki, over which, at 11:01am, bombardier Kermit Beahan released the atomic bomb dubbed Fat Man.

Here is “Atomic Bomb Pit #1” where Little Boy was loaded onto Enola Gay.

There are pictures displayed in the pit, now glass-enclosed. This one shows Little Boy being hoisted into Enola Gay’s bomb bay.

And here on the other side of ramp is “Atomic Bomb Pit #2” where Fat Man was loaded onto Bockscar.

The commemorative plaque records that 16 hours after the nuking of Nagasaki, “On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor, without his cabinet’s consent, decided to end the Pacific War.”

Take a good look at these pictures. This is where World War II ended with total victory of America over Japan. I was there all alone. There were no other visitors and no one lives anywhere near for miles. Visiting the Bomb Pits, walking along deserted Runway Able in solitude, was a moment of extraordinarily powerful solemnity.

It was a moment of deep reflection. Most people, when they think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reflect on the numbers of lives killed in the nuclear blasts – at least 70,000 and 50,000 respectively. Being here caused me to reflect on the number of lives saved – how many more Japanese and Americans would have died in a continuation of the war had the nukes not been dropped.

Yet that was not all. It’s not just that the nukes obviated the US invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, that would have caused upwards of a million American and Japanese deaths or more. It’s that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of extraordinary humanitarian benefit to the nation and people of Japan.

Let’s go to this cliff on the nearby island of Saipan to learn why:

Saipan is less than a mile north of Tinian…. The month before the Marines took Tinian, on June 15, 1944, 71,000 Marines landed on Saipan…. They faced 31,000 Japanese soldiers determined not to surrender.

Japan had colonized Saipan after World War I and turned the island into a giant sugar cane plantation. By the time of the Marine invasion, in addition to the 31,000 entrenched soldiers, some 25,000 Japanese settlers were living on Saipan, plus thousands more Okinawans, Koreans, and native islanders brutalized as slaves to cut the sugar cane.

There were also one or two thousand Korean “comfort women” (kanji in Japanese), abducted young women from Japan’s colony of Korea to service the Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. (See The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, by George Hicks.)

Within a week of their landing, the Marines set up a civilian prisoner encampment that quickly attracted a couple thousand Japanese and others wanting US food and protection. When word of this reached Emperor Hirohito – who contrary to the myth was in full charge of the war- he became alarmed that radio interviews of the well-treated prisoners broadcast to Japan would subvert his people’s will to fight.

As meticulously documented by historian Herbert Bix in “Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan”, the Emperor issued an order for all Japanese civilians on Saipan to commit suicide. The order included the promise that, although the civilians were of low caste, their suicide would grant them a status in heaven equal to those honored soldiers who died in combat for their Emperor.

And that is why the precipice in the picture above is known as Suicide Cliff, off which over 20,000 Japanese civilians jumped to their deaths to comply with their fascist emperor’s desire – mothers flinging their babies off the cliff first or in their arms as they jumped.

Anyone reluctant or refused, such as the Okinawan or Korean slaves, were shoved off at gunpoint by the Jap soldiers. Then the soldiers themselves proceeded to hurl themselves into the ocean to drown off a sea cliff afterwards called Banzai Cliff. Of the 31,000 Japanese soldiers on Saipan, the Marines killed 25,000, 5,000 jumped off Banzai Cliff, and only the remaining thousand were taken prisoner.

The extent of this demented fanaticism is very hard for any civilized mind to fathom- especially when it is devoted not to anything noble but barbarian evil instead. The vast brutalities inflicted by the Japanese on their conquered and colonized peoples of China, Korea, the Philippines, and throughout their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was a hideously depraved horror.

And they were willing to fight to the death to defend it. So they had to be nuked. The only way to put an end to the Japanese barbarian horror was unimaginably colossal destruction against which they had no defense whatever… Nuking Japan was not a matter of justice, revenge, or it getting what it deserved. It was the only way to end the Japanese dementia.

And it worked – for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity- and peace- than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued fighting and not been nuked. The shock of their getting nuked is responsible.

We achieved this because we were determined to achieve victory. Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking Japan…Hopefully, America never will.

Oh, yes…Guinness lists Saipan as having the best, most equitable, weather in the world. And the beaches? Well, take a look:

I find stories such as this one just plain fascinating. Although we do not forget, history fades into the shadows of our mind and we seldom think about it. But, we should remember and we should be constantly reminded of our history, where we came from and how we got here.
Kind of interesting… Anyway, I think so………..

Walter Breuning – The OLDEST MAN IN THE WORLD…

Walter Breuning – The OLDEST MAN IN THE WORLD…
Living in Great Falls, Montana, USA

Walter Breuning (born September 21, 1896) is a Super-centenarian. At the age of 114 years, he is currently the 2nd oldest [verified] person in the world.  He has been the oldest living MAN in the world since July 18 2009, and the last known man still living who was born in 1896. On his 110th birthday, Breuning was declared the oldest living retired railroader in the United States. The governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, and the city mayor attended his celebration. He is one of the last two males still alive today who were verifiably born before the year 1900. He is one of only five men in history to have undisputedly reached the age of 114. Breuning is the oldest undisputed American-born man ever, and since December 12, 2010, the fourth oldest undisputed man ever.

 

Walter Breuning was born in Melrose, Minnesota. He is the son of John Breuning and Cora Morehouse Breuning, and had two brothers and two sisters.  In 1901 when he was 5, his family moved to DeSmet, South Dakota, where he went to school for nine years until his family broke up in 1910.  Breuning referred to this time as “the dark ages”, as his family lived without electricity, water, or plumbing, describing it as “carry the water in, heat it on the stove. That’s what you took your bath in. Wake up in the dark, go to bed in the dark. That’s not very pleasant”.  Longevity runs in Breuning’s family. His paternal grandparents lived into their 90s, and his siblings lived to ages 78, 85, 91, and 100 although his parents had more typical life spans for their cohorts.

In 1910 aged 14, Breuning dropped out of school; he began scraping bakery pans for $2.50 weekly.  He joined the Great Northern Railway in 1913, working for it for over fifty years. Breuning commented that during his early years, he would have to hide from the railway owner, James J. Hill, as Hill did not want any railroad employees under the age of 18 (Breuning was first hired at age 17).  Breuning worked for the Great Northern Railway until age 66, and was also a manager/secretary for the local Shriner’s club until age 99.  During World War I, he signed up for military service, but was never called up. He moved to Montana in 1918, where he continued working as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway. There, he met Agnes Twokey, a telegraph operator from Butte, Montana. He was married to her from 1922 until her death in 1957. They had no children and Walter never married again stating that “Second marriages never work; even first marriages don’t work today.” When World War II broke out, he was too old to serve.

In later years

Having lived at the Rainbow Retirement and Assisted Living Center in Great Falls Montana for the last 32 years, Breuning is in excellent health, even after a lifelong habit of smoking cigars, which he quit in 1999.  He is able to walk, and eats two meals a day. He still maintains a sharp mind and accurate memory. For example, he can remember his grandfather talking about his experiences in the American Civil War when he (Breuning) was three years old, and remembers the day President William McKinley was shot as the day “I got my first haircut”.  He takes no prescription medications. In November 2007, at the age of 111, Breuning was fitted with hearing aids.

On his 112th birthday, Breuning said the secret to long life is being active: “[If] you keep your mind busy and keep your body busy, you’re going to be around a long time.”

The week before his 113th birthday in September 2009, Breuning had fallen and bruised his scalp, but was otherwise unhurt.

Breuning still dresses in a suit and tie every day. In a recent interview, Breuning said, “Every day I exercise. Every morning I do all my exercises.” On April 24, 2009 at the age of 112, Breuning was interviewed on CBS by Steve Hartman for Assignment America. When asked by Hartman if he would do a second CBS interview in four years, Breuning said, “Well hell you sure can!”

On February 16, 2009, Breuning made an appearance on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, giving his views about the current state of the economy and the newly elected president. Breuning said that the first President he ever voted for was Woodrow Wilson, and that the most memorable news item he ever heard about in his life was the Stock Market Crash of 1929. He also described life during the Great Depression.

On April 24, 2009, Breuning was the focus of a segment done by Steve Hartman’s “Assignment America” on the CBS Evening News.  On September 21, 2009, Breuning was the focus of another such segment. During his 113th birthday celebrations, Breuning said: “Remember that life’s length is not measured by its hours and days, but by that which we have done therein. A useless life is short if it lasts a century. There are greater and better things in us all, if we would find them out. There will always be in this world – wrongs. No wrong is really successful. The day will come when light and truth and the just and the good shall be victorious and wrong as evil will be no more forever.”

The BNSF Railway named the west end of its new Broadview Subdivision, where it meets the ex-Great Northern Laurel Subdivision near Broadview, Montana, “Walter Junction” after Breuning. He was present at the dedication of the new line, which serves the Signal Peak Mine, on September 2, 2009.

On February 25, 2010, Breuning was honored by Montana Ambassadors for shining a spotlight on the state of Montana.

Here’s Some Photos of Walter

In this school photo, Walter is standing under the window, with the “X” above his head.  The slate carries the date of 1907, making Walter about 9 years old.

Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer chats with Walter.

Walter receives “his copy” of the Guinness Book of World Records, listing him as the World’s Oldest Man.

Weatherman for KRTV Television Fred Pfieffer – N7NMY, with Walter

(This story from Great Falls Area Amateur Radio Club – W7ECA)

 

UPDATE 6-11 Walter passed away April 2011 at 114 years of age. The current oldest man in the world is a 114 year old man in Japan.

Catching Wild Pigs – What the Government is doing to us!

A chemistry professor in a large college had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. ‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, welfare, medicine, drugs, etc… While we continually lose our freedoms — just a little at a time.

One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.

Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America; you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”   Thomas Jefferson

A Culture of Corruption

Here’s something to think about…

I remember asking dad about Castro when I was about 9 years old.  I asked, “Is Castro a good guy or bad?”  Dad said he couldn’t tell!!  This was about 1955.  We were living in Louisiana at the time.  Dad was in the army there.

Cuba was fairly close and in the news a lot.  The Cubans were asking the same question! Ike was president.

This past July, we had the pleasure of sharing a summer barbecue with a refugee from Cuba.  Our dinner conversation was starkly different than most. This refugee came to the United States as a young boy in the early 1960s. His family was more fortunate than most as they were able to bring a suitcase and $100 when they fled Castro’s newly formed revolutionary paradise.

Our dinner consisted of all-American fare: hamburgers, potato salad, watermelon and fresh ears of sweet corn.  This is a menu shared with family and friends nationwide, while celebrating the birth of our beloved America on the Fourth of July.

We began with a simple discussion about our country and the direction it has taken since Barack Obama came to power.  We shared the usual complaints about the sour economy and liberal social engineering emanating from the rulers in Washington.

But then he said it.  The sentence came naturally.  I assume it was unplanned. But it carried the weight of a freight train.  “You know when Castro took power, none of us knew he was a Communist.”

We sat stunned.  He continued, “Yes, we all thought he was a patriot, a nationalist.  Before the revolution he didn’t sound like a radical.”

The comparison at this point was easy, and I interjected, “You mean just like Barack Obama?”

He responded; “Yes, just like Barack Obama.”

He continued, “We were all shocked as the government just continued to grab more power.  First they said the revolution is over, so please turn in your guns.  We all complied.”

“I remember my uncle saying after it started, ‘Castro will only nationalize some of the big industries, he will never come and take our family hardware store.’ But that is exactly what happened; Castro started with the sugar mills and the large industries, but they eventually came and knocked on the door of our family hardware store.  My family had run this store for generations.  They said we now own the hardware store, you work for us.  And that nice, large four-bedroom home you own, it is now our property also, and you can move yourself and five children into two rooms of the house because others are moving in with you.”

The lesson learned from this discussion is a lesson most Americans refuse to hear.  Political leaders can lie about their agenda and once in office they can take totally unexpected turns.

If you had asked us three years ago if we thought General Motors would be nationalized, we would have never believed it.  We could never contemplate a country where the rule of law, the most fundamental building block of a justice society would be evaporating just like it did in Castro’s Cuba in the early 1960s.

But the news of injustice keeps increasing.  Black Panthers are not charged with wrongdoing by the U.S. Department of Justice because their crimes are against whites. The bondholders of GM are stripped of their assets without due process by the government.  Governmental leaders are bribed in full daylight only to have all investigation of the crimes stifled by the Attorney General. The U.S. borders are overrun with crime and illegal activity and the leaders in D.C. act as if it is important to protect the lawbreakers while the innocent are killed and overrun.  When local communities attempt to enforce the law, they are ridiculed and threatened as racists and bigots.  They are sued by the very administration entrusted with enforcing the law.

Without the rule of law the U.S. Constitution is a sham. Without the rule of law our beloved America is swiftly becoming a country where only the well connected and politically powerful will be safe. As Michelle Malkin has so eloquently explained in her recent book, a culture of corruption has replaced honest government.

The only way this problem will be fixed is by massive citizen action. All honest citizens that want to be treated equally must come together and demand that the favoritism, the bribes, the uneven enforcement of law end now.  And yes, it can happen here.

PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW …

And may God save the United States of America!