Today is Veteran’s day and I am a veteran. More specifically a Marine Corps vet,a Vietnam vet, a disabled vet. I did two tours in Vietnam, was wounded and returned home to demonstrations and catcalls. I put Vietnam and the coming home experience in the back of my head, locked away. Now I am dealing with the subsequent PTSD. So it was my mental wounds rather than my shrapnel wounds that define my disabled status. Up on the flight deck(psych ward) of my local VA hospital there vets from every conf
The Corps is 236 years old! Semper Fi,Oorah! The marines have survived another year.Numerous times in the past,people have lobbied for ending the Corps and delegating its mission to Army and Navy units. After Joe Rosenthal's famous Iwo Jima flag raising photo, someone was reputed to have said something to the effect of,this will insure the Corps existence. So far,thank God,with all the budget cutting frenzies going on,no one has raised the idea of abolishing the Marines. Marines have proven them
As a retired person who depends on investment income,the past few years have been like a financial roller coaster.I was pleased that the Greek crisis was averted and enjoyed seeing the Dow Jones rise back above 12,000, only to find out today that Italy is next. Like Herman Cain’s female accusers,financially straMFed countries seem to be aMFearing on a regular basis. Ireland,Portugal,Spain,Greece now Italy then maybe France and of course the 800 lb gorilla in the room, the United States. What’s g
God has already revealed all, in fact it was never hidden and needs no revelation.So when come to say that they have God’s revelation, what they have is a current understanding within their capacity of God’s ‘word’. So what was ‘revealed’ to Moses,Buddha.Jesus, Muhammad and others was an understanding of God’s ‘law’ within the cultural and scientific parameters of the age. So you have the Christian church denouncing Galileo because the Bible’s level of astronomical knowledge was 2000 years behi
The Coroner’s Court in London released information saying that Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning.
Winehouse’s blood-alcohol levels were 416 milligrams per 100 milliliters of blood, the inquest was told. The legal limit to drive in Britain is 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood.
Wow,thats a lot of booze and it shows how dangerous alcohol can be. While the Fed’s drug war seemingly spends billions combating Reefer Madness,hardly a word is said about booze. Booze lobbies
Wow, this one puzzles me. All of a sudden there are calls for the investigation of Gaddafi’s purported execution(bullet in the head),while Bin Laden’s death is covered by that wonderful phrase,”the fog of war” Albeit that the world is better off with both of these monsters gone,but why the hypocracy? Does this mean assassination by Americans is covered,but executions by Libyans not? OK,one can say the mission was to capture Bin Laden and during the shootout he was shot,or something like that. G
Sometimes i am amazed that I am still alive,given the abuse I have subjected to my body. The drinking,the drugs,the war, the wounds,years of poor eating habits,physically pushing my limits without training or forethought, and a litany of other abuses. In the first ten years of sobriety,I had gained 70 lbs, substituting eating for drinking. I lost most of that wieght in 2007 only to regain it while watching DVD’s of the whole Soprano’s series over a period of one month while eating tons of lasag
The sabers are rattling,again. The US government claims agents of Iran were involved in an attempt to assassinate Adel al Jubeir, the Saudi Ambassador. Iran calls it ridiculous lies. Who do you believe. Well Iran certainly has lied before and aMFears to lie continually about her plans to build nuclear weapons. And the American government? I hardly believe anything that comes from their lips,its all lies and spin. Even the Obama administration , who promised us transparency,has become as adept wi
Heading out to my morning walk in the woods,I put on the news station. I heard that that the Catholic Church in India is going to pay bonuses to Catholics who produce more babies. India, the worlds second most populous nation, soon to be first, who can’t properly feed many of its own countrymen. India, where vast tin and cardboard slums exist in every major city, India,where people scrounge garbage dumps for food, and the Catholic Church is calling for more babies! Why? More children to abuse? M
Why i it that we observe the threads and not the whole tapestry? While sitting still in the woods,mindfully meditating,my mind took notice of objects, a tree(what kind?) a rock(how old?),a bird(what species?), etc. I noticed them and moved on to the next wave of electricity in my head. Sounds,sights,smells,touch, all these faculties of observation. So we identify,catagorize,classify, and further break things down to understand them. But what we tend to lose is the whole. After about a half hour
Been away from the blog for a bit to enjoy long walks in the fall woods with fine dogs,but I have been meaning to comment on this for awhile. Finally,it seems, some people are waking up and coming to realize that this country is being stolen from under them. And the right is worried,oh boy are they worried. Conservative talk show hosts and candidates have been been on this the past few days,especially since the media has decided to cover it. They fume over spoiled kids,people who don't work and
Bought on and hopefully it comes in tomorrow. can anyone sSPAM!!!est the best shisha and reasonable prices? I also dont want to paymore in shiMFing then the product
We hear this phrase alot these days,both in religion and politics. Evangelical Christians tell us that the Bible is the word of God,Jews say that Mosaic law is the word of God. Islamists tell us that the Quran is the word of God. Glenn Beck tells us that he follows God's word as it is spoken to him. George Bush answered to a higher Father. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad speaks to the Hidden Imam,who I imagine is in direct contact with God. Of course all these voices aMFear to hear some very different thing
First off,let me state at the outset that I believe that the gods of mankind are usually cultural inventions to explain what we cannot usually fathom. Some people break thru this veil and “see god”. They try to explain it as best they know how in cultural terms. Surely the concept of god has included polytheists,monotheists,animists and a host of others. All describe god or gods as having various forms or attributes. Classical faiths counted numerous gods, shamanists and animists counted spirit
Alright, we are faced with yet another threat of government shut down. Didn’t we just finish playing this game? Oh,yes its all politics. Speaker John Boehner assures us that there will be no government shutdown. The issue seems to hinge on monies for federal disaster relief,which times seems to be a disaster itself and rarely a relief. Granted that in my humble opinion, there should be such a thing as disaster relief,but it should work,too. So once again the GOP holds us hostage for political ga
When Obama was running for president in 2008, I thought,here is man standing at the crossroads of greatness,a junction history doesn’t often offer. I bought Obama’ change rhetoric,only to find it was business as usual. Nothing was done to address the crimes of the Bush era,our military adventures increased,big oil spoke and everyone listened,green environmental issues were given lip service until the recession gave cause to side with those who exploit the planet. More of the same,more pandering
When will we as a species learn to accept the views of our fellow man as valid? For me it was travel,it was living in other cultures,not as tourist but as close to a native as possible. Trying to live their life as they lived it. They had different solutions for the same problems of life and those solutions worked as well as ours and were just as valid. Their vision of a higher power was one I could always live with. The names we call God matter very little,really. The laws we ascribe to God ar
Becca looked like Shiva in a hoop of flame doing the dance of bliss.Bliss reigned on Magic Mountain in West by God Virginia. My dear friend K invited us and proceeded to teach me how to stretch muscles that haven’t stretched since retirement. I want more Yoga. Doug taught us how to meditate thru our pain,how mindful meditation is the goal, not mental aviation( do I have to get rid of my flying carpet?) Aaron, the Rastaman,a few tents down was an artistic wave of beauty and creation. My yellow,r
Junior that is,not the one suMFosedly buried in the Meadowlands. Finally people are beginning to stand up against the Tea Party. Its nice to see some spirited progressives like Hoffa, Maxine Waters and Rep. Carson awakening to realize what the Tea Party is up to. The rich of America have decided they want our wealth and they are in the process of taking it. Wall St gambles your earnings away,banks rip you off and sell you junk bonds to invest your retirement money in. The vision these guys have
Anders Breivik brought world attention to the fringes of the far right in Norway. With the resurgency of Islam, Europe once again awakens the fears first kindled by the Arab conquest of Spain,the Crusades,the fall of Constantinople and the Turks at the gates of Vienna. Laws are passed to restrict Muslim attire,ban minarets and other such Islamophobic actions that only heighten the tension between Islam and the west. In Israel a militant right wing Netanyahu seems about to erode the gains made at
In an older history of the Middle Ages, the author refers to the nomad control of the Eurasian steMFe as tyning the mouth of the sack. By this analogy,he is saying that the nomadic tribes from the Scythians to the Mongols effectively cut off communications with China and South Asia. Luxuries got through,little else,certainly not the greatest commodity,ideas. Yet a recent history on the effects of Genghiz Khan and his Mongol invasion says that singular nomad control of the entire Eurasian steMFe
Mu’ammar Qadaffi sits somewhere in a hole in Libya making radio broadcasts to exhort his subjects to rise,women,children,all to drive the “rats” out of Tripoli. Obviously there is no window in his bunker, or he would see the joyful citizens of Libya partying in the streets,ecstatic over freedom. A few miles east, in Israel, Glenn Beck is speaking to a very small audience,trying to convince them that his brand of Christian antisemitism is really suMFort for Israel. A few on the Israeli right are
08/21/2011
I’ve often wondered about this,what with all the videos coming out of Libya and the Middle East,and also having spent more than one New Year’s Eve in American cities where this custom is adhered to on certain holidays. Here are some statistics from Wikipedia:
Bullets fired into the air usually fall back at speeds much lower than those at which they leave the barrel of a firearm. Nevertheless, people are injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down
