Monday Music "Learn to Fly" by the Foo Fighters

This song was one of the first songs I ever did with my "Monday Music" back in early 2012 and back then I did no background on the band or the video.  I always liked the music of the Foo Fighters, and this song came out and the video was hilarious!  I was surprised when I was doing my research on Nirvana a couple of weeks ago that Dave Grohl was part of Nirvana and I though it was funny in a ironic way that Dave felt totally intimidated by Kurt and his musical abilities.  Imagine if Dave and Kurt had written music together how awesome it would have been, or on the flipside with Kurt passing on it gave Dave a chance to shine, funny how life rolls.   I took a mini-break during the Thanksgiving Holiday to digitally detox as they say. 

Foo Fighters is an American rock band, formed in Seattle, Washington in 1994. It was founded by Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl as a one-man project following the death of Kurt Cobain and the resulting dissolution of his previous band. The group got its name from the UFOs and various aerial phenomena that were reported by Allied aircraft pilots in World War II, which were known collectively as foo fighters

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl joined the grunge group Nirvana as its drummer in 1990. During tours, he took a guitar with him and wrote songs. Grohl held back these songs from the rest of the band; he said in 1997, "I was in awe of [frontman Kurt Cobain's songs], and [I was] intimidated. I thought it was best that I kept my songs to myself."

Foo Fighters has been described as alternative rock, post-grunge and hard rock. When Grohl first started the band, its music was often compared to that of his previous group, Nirvana. Grohl acknowledged that Nirvana singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain was a major influence on his songwriting. Grohl said, "Through Kurt, I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that's stripped down". Foo Fighters also utilized the technique of shifting between quiet verses and loud choruses, which Grohl said was influenced by the members of Nirvana "liking The Knack, Bay City Rollers, Beatles, and ABBA as much as we liked Flipper and Black Flag, I suppose". Writing and recording songs for the first Foo Fighters album by himself, Grohl wrote the guitar riffs to be as rhythmic as possible. He approached the guitar in a similar manner to his playing a drumkit, assigning different drum parts to different strings on the instrument. This allowed him to piece together songs easily; he said, "I could hear the song in my head before it was finished."

There Is Nothing Left to Lose is the third studio album by American rock band Foo Fighters, released November 2, 1999. The album marks the first appearance of drummer Taylor Hawkins, and is often seen as a departure from the band's previous work, showcasing a softer, more experimental sound. In a 2006 interview, Dave Grohl states that the album is "totally based on melody" and that it "might be his favorite album that they've ever done."

There Is Nothing Left to Lose won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album in 2001, marking the group's first ever Grammy Award. The band would go on to win the Grammy for Best Rock Album for three of their next four studio releases (One by One, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and Wasting Light).

The music video for the song was directed by Jesse Peretz and won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.
The music video for the song takes place on an commercial airliner, parodying the movie Airplane!, and by extension, the films Airport 1975 and its sequel Airport '77. Two airline mechanics (played by Jack Black and Kyle Gass from Tenacious D) smuggle and hide their narcotic known as "World Domination brand 'Erotic' Sleeping Powder" in the coffee-maker. This ends up incapacitating everyone who drinks the coffee. The take-off sequence, in addition to the crew members hiding ulterior criminal motives, are a near shot-by-shot homage to the film Airport '77. The band, having avoided the coffee (choosing liquor instead), mirroring Karen Black's role in Airport 1975, find themselves forced to land the plane. For the video, each band member (Dave Grohl, Nate Mendel, and Taylor Hawkins) portrays himself as well as several other roles, including an FBI agent who arrests the two mechanics.

Light posting and some pithy comments...

My posting has been light this week as I have been spending time with the family rather than crawling around the internet looking for news.   Well we have had a couple of famous people pass or shed their moral coil as they say...We had  Florence Henderson A.K.A. "Mom" from the Brady Bunch pass to her heavenly reward..

 

From everything I have heard  about Florence was that she was a class act on and off the screen.   Now we have a different side of the coin....We have the very popular head of the Cuba Communist Party croaked.  In my mind  it would have been better for Castro to have either died of rope burns or lead poisoning.  He has poisoned the minds of generations of Americans with his ideology and has spread misery and despair in Africa where Cuban troops acting as Soviet Proxies tried to subvert several countries including Angola, South Africa and a few other countries not including the mayhem he pushed in South America.

And finally it seems that Jill Stein of the Green Party has succeeded in getting the money together, shocker there, how much was Soro's money to pay for a recount in 3 battleground states.  Now we have the Hillary camp glomming on it hoping to overturn the states that called it for Trump.  If they are successful, it will cause a lot of problems especially because we are getting news reports of electors getting death threats if they don't change their votes from Trump to Clinton.   The Gutter techniques of the democrats don't cease to amaze me.

Happy Thanksgiving and reading a new book...

First off, Happy Thanksgiving, enjoy time with your family, that is why the holiday is important..

  And if you have any liberal relatives...be nice to them...they have had a hard time watching the "chosen one" go down in flames like a gazelle in front of a pride of lions.

Also I am reading my blog buddy's book Tom Rogneby who also operates a blog called "DaddyBear's Den".  I remembered when he started a few years ago turning daily events into a Norse Saga from picking up the kids from school or dueling some marauder in a grocery store, they were always funny and showed imagination.  A couple of years ago he published the first of the "Minivanians" series.  They are a good read and they get better and better.  I believe that rather than slay the annoying co-workers at his job like his blood calls out for, he writes instead...keeps the legal fees down, Lol.  Go read and he will tell you of tall tales when Norsemen ruled and traveled to far away lands for glory and treasure instead of looking for a parking spot in a grocery store.   Go read and hear the tales of Yore when mighty men and women rode into battle for glory and Honor, Go read tales of the Mighty Minivanians

Monday Music "How do you Do" by Mouth and MacNeal.

You have a song that you first remember singing to and playing all the time....well this one was mine...I remember playing the mess out of this song on my little 45 record player

                                                        It looked kinda like this one....
  I no longer have the record player, it vanished in the mist of time but I still have the .45 record that I played the crap out of.  I got it from my Mom's house a couple of years ago.   I was surprised that she still had it.  It is with all my other records that reside in my bonus room. I really liked this song when I was about 7 years old and it was awesome to a 7 year old's perspective.  I recently downloaded the song on my phone.  Yes the song is corny...very corny but it reminds me of my childhood and I had a good childhood so I can't complain. 

"How Do You Do" released in 1971 was an international hit single for Dutch duo Mouth & MacNeal. It was #1 in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and New Zealand. It also spent 19 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 a year later, and a cover version by Scots-German duo Die Windows (later Windows) reached #1 in Germany. The single earned Mouth & MacNeal, and its composers Hans van Hemert and Harry van Hoof, the 1972 Buma Export Award for the most records sold abroad by a Dutch musical act in that year.

They were formed in 1971 when record producer Hans van Hemert brought together the solo talent of Big Mouth (born Willem Duyn) and Maggie MacNeal (born Sjoukje van't Spijker). Big Mouth had previously sung in a number of 1960s bands, including Speedway. MacNeal had released one solo single before teaming up with Big Mouth, a cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine", also produced by van Hemert.
The duo released their first single, "Hey You Love", which reached #5 in the Dutch Top 40, while the next two singles "How Do You Do" and "Hello-A" both reached #1 in the Netherlands. In 1972, "How Do You Do" reached the top of the charts throughout Continental Europe and Scandinavia. "How Do You Do" was made popular in the United States by radio personality Jim Connors and the song eventually reached #8 in the U.S. in July 1972. "How Do You Do" spent 19 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 and won the R.I.A.A. gold disc on 2 August 1972. Selling over a million copies in the U.S. alone, global sales exceeded two million.
This propelled their 1972 album Hey You Love / How Do You Do into the Billboard 200 (US #77). More hit singles followed in 1973, and in 1974 Mouth & MacNeal represented the Netherlands in the Eurovision Song Contest with their song "I See a Star", placing third to ABBA and Gigliola Cinquetti. The song became a UK top ten hit, peaking at #8.
In December 1974, shortly after their success with "I See a Star", Mouth and MacNeal split up. Big Mouth continued with Ingrid Kup (who would later become his wife) as "Big Mouth & Little Eve", whereas MacNeal resumed her solo career. MacNeal went on to represent the Netherlands again at the Eurovision Song Contest 1980 held in The Hague, singing "Amsterdam", finishing fifth in a field of nineteen.
By then, Big Mouth was also pursuing a solo career; under his own name he charted with Dutch-language versions of Frankie Miller's "Darlin" (the song was renamed "Willem") and "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (based on German singer Udo Lindenberg's adaptation). In 1992 Duyn joined forces with rural-conscious rockers Normaal for Tenpole Tudor's Wünderbar while their own frontman Bennie Jolink recovered from a motorcycle-accident.
Duyn died from a heart attack in his hometown of Roswinkel on December 4, 2004 at the age of 67.
MacNeal dropped her pseudonym and performed as Sjoukje Smit; in 2008 she reformed Mouth & MacNeal with Arie Ribbens replacing Duyn, but with no success.
On March 21, 2012, Roel Smit published the Mouth & MacNeal biography; Mouth & MacNeal, duo tegen wil en dank.

Back from Camping and a brilliant comment I saw...

I came back from camping, was supposed to go through my Vigil ceremony but it got cancelled because the state govorner banned "recreational fires" until the extra dry conditions have left.  They are talking around February.   I came back and ran across this comment when somebody made the comment that all Trump supporters "need to die".   I saw this comment posted and it really was good.  

    

Had a liberal who wanted to play the "I watched as Obama did great things" speech game with me.
So I gave him a we watched list.
He blocked me
Here is my list
We watched as your president said "elections have consequences, and I won"
We watched, as he began the systematic destabilization of the world.
We watched, as he began with his "pen and phone" to systematically ram through his agenda and degrade our country.
We watched, as our jobs left, as what few were left began to be filled by illegal immigrants.
We watched, as our veterans and service members died waiting for medical treatment from the VA.
We listened as he promised to fix it, and yet did nothing.
We watched as he turned our police into enemies and thugs into saints.
We watched, as he bailed out wall street, as wall street execs got multi million dollar bonuses paid by the dollars we scraped together.
We watched as he bailed out the automakers, but forced them to repay the money, which he didn't do for wall street.
We watched as the housing market collapsed.
We watched, as the economy barely scraped by with 1.6% growth, stagnant at best.
We watched, as radical islamic terrorists murdered thousands, those terrorists created by him.
We listened as he refused to call them what they were.
We watched, as you put us in safe spaces rather than engage in dialogue with opposing view points.
We watched as racist groups like black lives matter advocated for the murder of police officers.
We watched as the liberal agenda went into overdrive, and began attacking being white as if it were a crime.
We watched as you mad pumpkin spice lattes white privilege (seriously, minorities couldn't enjoy that?)
We watched as minority supremacy ran rampant
We watched, as you began the most divisive, most hateful, most disgusting rhetoric.
We watched reverse racism take hold. And then grow like a wildfire.
We watched all of it. And then we staged our protest, at the ballots.
And then you cried, and the a tantrum, and passed out safety pins.
The country has spoken, and he is your president.
We have spoken, with ballots.
Don't make us speak with bullets.

Gone Camping...

Gone Camping.....

Will be back tomorrow night....

   Read the folks on the sidebar...they are very good :)

Millennials get a grip....

I cribbed this from one of the UK Newspapers and from Piers Morgan no less.   I didn't care for Piers for his 2nd amendment issues but he is outspoken and has liberal chops and he spoke well in this article.   I have been very busy with work and kid stuff this week so I havn't been able to post like I wanted to.

Cheer up, American millennials!

I mean, seriously, CHEER THE **** UP!

Oh, I know you’ve had a rough week ever since Donald Trump won the election.

But it’s time to get a grip.

STOP crying.

STOP taking personal days off work to ‘process’ what happened.

+6

Millenials need to get a grip. Stop whinging and crying and complaining how unfair life is because Hillary Clinton lost the electoral vote to Donald Trump

STOP huddling with your equally distraught buddies in Starbucks over your Venti Iced White Chocolate Mocha.

STOP howling away on social media about how unfair life is and how it’s the end of the planet as we know it.

STOP updating the exact number Hillary won the popular vote by, because it doesn’t bloody matter.

STOP marching around screaming your fury at the result when many of you couldn’t even bothered to vote.

STOP retweeting all your favourite celebrities’ own outbursts of pique, rage and anguish.

STOP demanding the Electoral College reverse the decision in December.

In short, STOP being such a faux-tormented bunch of absolutely deluded cretins.

Want to know why Trump is going to be your next president?

It’s because he is what’s called a ‘winner’.

+6

Trump is going to be your next president because he is what’s called a ‘winner’. I know it’s not ‘cool’ to be a winner these days and it's an ugly, dirty word in your PC-crazed universe

I know it’s not ‘cool’ to be a winner these days.

It’s become an ugly, dirty word in your PC-crazed universe.

Far better, the social media millennial mob cries, to be a gallant loser who tries their best but comes up short - like Bernie, or now Hillary.

To which I say: bulls**t.

Winning is what life’s really about - whether in sport, politics, or simply producing the best decorated pumpkin in your town’s Thanksgiving parade.

If you don’t strive to be the very best at whatever you do, however big or small, then what’s the point in doing it, or frankly even being alive?

Why wallow in self-induced mediocrity?

Yet that is precisely where so many of America’s 80 million millennials enjoy wallowing, and as a result they have become the most pampered, privileged and selfish members of the human race in history.

+6

America’s 80 million millennials have become the most pampered, privileged and selfish members of the human race. The NIH reported that 40% of millennials believe they should be promoted every two years regardless of performance. 77% of millenials can’t even name a senator from their home state. Here are University of Chicago students protesting on Tuesday

Where’s my evidence for such a shocking assertion?

Try the National Institutes of Health, which reported that 40% of millennials believe they should be promoted every two years regardless of performance, and are so fame obsessed that three times as many middle school girls now want to grow up to be the PA to a talentless celebrity like Kim Kardashian as want to be a senator.

(Hardly surprising therefore that 77% of millennials can’t even name a senator from their home state…)

Oh, and 80% of millennials say they’ll be richer than their parents, yet more of them live with their parents than with a spouse, still take cash off their parents, and work half as hard.

The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.

They don’t understand the concept of ‘losing’ because they’ve never had to experience it.

At school, to avoid any ‘low self-esteem issues’, they were all given endless ‘Participation Prizes’.

It’s hard to think of a more ridiculous, insidious ‘honour’.

What possible pleasure can there be in ‘winning’ a prize for just turning up? What incentive is there to compete in anything if you’re going to ‘win’ anyway?

Participation prizes converted a whole new generation into people with no understanding of what genuine competition actually means.

This, coupled with the advent of social media technology that allowed them to post relentless ‘filtered’ images of themselves, led to staggeringly self-absorbed figments of their own perfection.

The combined effect of these two things has been to create a deep-rooted sense of entitlement that manifested itself in a breakdown of biblical proportions when Trump triumphed last Wednesday.

Well, welcome to the real world, my delicate little Instagrammed snowflakes.

+6

Millenials don’t understand the concept of ‘losing’ because they’ve never had to experience it. They were all given endless ‘Participation Prizes’ at school. This, coupled with the advent of social media that allowed them to post relentless ‘filtered’ images of themselves, has led to a deep sense of entitlement. Here are some DC protesting students Tuesday

This is how democracy works…

You all have a chance to vote…

Someone wins, someone loses…

To the winner of a US presidential election goes all the spoils of being the most powerful person on earth...

To the loser, no gold stars for effort.

Winners like Trump don’t believe in ‘participation prizes.’ They believe you either win or lose.

Winners like Trump don’t weep and wail when they lose. They vow to win next time.

Winners like Trump don’t take days off to ‘process’ their loss. They dust themselves down and get on with life.

Winners like Trump don’t assume they’ll win. They do what it takes to win.

Winners like Trump don’t leave anything in the field of competition. They give it 100%.

‘Winning,’ said the great NFL coach Vince Lombardi, ‘is not a sometime thing, it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.’

Lombardi further clarified: ‘Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.’

That’s Trump’s life mantra too. It’s why he’s now heading to the White House, and also why he may now surprise people and turn out to be a rather effective president.

The millennials can’t handle it because it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

+6

The millenials can't handle Trump's win as Hillary Clinton was their anointed one, their heroine, their pick for first female president - thought she was a dull, humourless, uninspiring candidate mired in Wall Street greed, Washington dogma, and her dodgy server

Hillary Clinton was their anointed one, their heroine, their pick for first female president.

No matter that she was a dull, humourless, uninspiring candidate mired in Wall Street greed, Washington dogma, and dodgy email servers.

Trump won because he didn’t even bother trying to conform to this new world order of eggshell-hopping me-me-me millennials who infest places like New York and California.

Instead, he invested his time and effort in America’s rust belt states where such idealistic, sugar-coated nonsense is complete anathema.

The reaction to Trump’s win has been absurdly, dangerously over-the-top.

A San Diego based cyber-security firm founder and CEO millennial named Mark Harrigan resigned this week after posting the following on Facebook:

‘I’m going to kill the president elect. Getting a sniper rifle and perching myself where it counts. Find a bedroom in the whitehouse that suits you motherf***er. I'll find you. In no uncertain terms, f*** you America. Seriously. F*** off.'

Hardly the personification of ‘#LoveTrumpsHates’ is it?

+6

Winners like Trump don’t assume they’ll win and do what it takes and don’t leave anything in the field of competition. They give it 100%. Trump won, fair and square. The moaning millenials may not like it but refusing to accept the result is un-American. Suck it up

Today, it emerged that 200 students from a Manhattan high school were allowed to skip lessons to join the protests outside Trump Tower.

Can you imagine the furore if Trump-supporting students had demanded the right to do that if Hillary had become President?

It’s all so pathetic.

The simple fact is that Trump won, fair and square.

The moaning millennials may not like it but refusing to accept the result is not just undemocratic, it’s un-American.

Nobody rioted when Obama won, twice – though feelings ran just as high against him from those who voted for the other side.

As Trump’s rally song by the Rolling Stones so perfectly summed it up: ‘You can’t always get what you want.’

So suck it up you squealing softies, get back to work or college, and if you want to win next time, get a candidate who’s a winner not a loser. 

Monday Music "Ice, Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice

 This has been an adventuresome weekend for me, I and another scout leader went to Alabama near Anniston to attend a "NLAT" course or "National Lodge Adviser Training".    we had 3 kids with us attending NLS or "National Leadership Training".   We got there and checked in, we stayed in a Baptist conference center, it looked like a hotel complex, wasn't bad. Our classes started at 8:30 and at 9:00 I was in the way to the  emergency room suffering from nausea and dizziness.  Nothing like spending Friday night in a hospital.  Everything came back good but it really started my weekend off right.  I believe it was dehydration and exhaustion, but I have followups with my Dr.  Anyway enough about my weekend.  

The first time I heard of "Vanilla Ice" was in 1990 and we had gotten a group of new soldiers and they were talking about this thing called "rap" and vanilla ice was their spokesman for lack of a better word, Remember by this time I was 25 years old, been in the green machine 6 years and didn't have the same interest as the younger soldiers.  That was the first time I really experienced "The generation gap".  Seeing a couple of Italian kids trying to rap was hilarious.  I listened to the song..."like I had a choice", it was everywhere!!!.  I did notice that the AFN station would start it off with "under Pressure" by queen then follow it with vanilla Ice or they would reverse it.  It made for an interesting combination.  I have gotten used to the song, it don't grate on me like it used to.  I do know that Vanilla Ice had a hard time with "Street Creed" in the rapper scene.  Being a white guy in basically a black music world was hard and he didn't get the respect he should have gotten.  The later rapper Emimen in my mind had it a bit easier because Vanilla Ice was there before but in a way Eminem had it harder because of the controversy surrounding Vanilla Ice.  Eminem really had "street Creed" in spades, where Vanilla was accused of manufacturing his.  After Vanilla faded out of the mainstream music stream he had to reinvent himself to get away from the image.  From what I have seen he has done a good job, he has a dedicated base to his music and he is "keeping it real".

"Ice Ice Baby" is a hip hop song written by American rapper Vanilla Ice and DJ Earthquake based on the bassline of "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie, who did not initially receive songwriting credit or royalties until after it had become a hit. Originally released on Vanilla Ice's 1989 debut album Hooked and later on his 1990 national debut To the Extreme, it is his most well known song. It has appeared in remixed form on Platinum Underground and Vanilla Ice Is Back! A live version appears on the album Extremely Live, while a rap rock version appears on the album Hard to Swallow, under the title "Too Cold".
"Ice Ice Baby" was initially released as the B-side to Vanilla Ice's cover of "Play That Funky Music", but the single was not initially successful. When disc jockey David Morales played "Ice Ice Baby" instead, it began to gain success. "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard Hot 100. Outside the United States, the song topped the charts in Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, thus helping the song diversify hip hop by introducing it to a mainstream audience. The song came fifth in VH1 and Blender's 2004 list of the "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever."

Robert Van Winkle, better known by his stage name Vanilla Ice, wrote "Ice Ice Baby" in 1983 at the age of 16, basing its lyrics upon his experiences in South Florida. The lyrics describe a shooting and Van Winkle's rhyming skills. The chorus of "Ice Ice Baby" originates from the signature chant of the national African American fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. Of the song's lyrics, Van Winkle states that "If you released 'Ice Ice Baby' today, it would fit in today's lyrical respect among peers, you know what I'm sayin'? [...] My lyrics aren't, 'Pump it up, go! Go!' At least I'm sayin' somethin'.^"
The song's hook samples the bassline of the 1981 song "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie who did not receive credit or royalties for the sample. In a 1990 interview, Van Winkle said the two melodies were slightly different because he had added an additional note, an anacrusis ("pickup") between odd-numbered and subsequent even-numbered iterations of the Under Pressure sample^.   In later interviews, Van Winkle readily admitted he sampled the song and claimed his 1990 statement was a joke; others, however, suggested he had been serious. Van Winkle later paid Queen and Bowie and as a result, Bowie and all members of Queen have since been given songwriting credit for the sample. In December 1990, Van Winkle told British youth music magazine Smash Hits where he came up with the idea of sampling "Under Pressure":

“

The way I do stuff is to go through old records that my brother has. He used to listen to rock 'n' roll and stuff like that. I listened to funk and hip hop because rock wasn't really my era. But having a brother like that, well, I just mixed the two, and he had a copy of 'Under Pressure'. And putting those sounds to hip hop was great.

”

Van Winkle described himself as the first rapper to cross into the pop market and said that although his pioneer status forced him to "take the heat for a lot of people" for his music's use of samples, the criticism he received over sample use allowed sampling to become acceptable in mainstream hip hop.

Veterans Day 2016

     I and many of my friends have served in the Military, some in the Army, some in the Navy, Marines and Air force but we all have a common thread, we served. We walked the ramparts to use an old phrase.  We trace our lineage back to the Roman legionnaire walking the wall to protect home and hearth from the barbarian horde on the other side of the Danube river.  This holiday was created out of Armistice day, on 11-11-1918 at 11:00 AM the time the war to end all wars ended.  After WWII they renamed "Armistice Day" Veterans Day and it has remained as such.   This is a special day to us veterans because this holiday honors those of us that are alive and carry on the tradition of service to inspire the next generation,  and we veterans remember our fallen brothers on this day. 


"For those that will fight for it...FREEDOM ...has a flavor the protected shall never know."

   I have seen this quote and it has resonated with me since I first patrolled the 1 K zone between East and West Germany, you were scared but you really appreciated the fact that you are alive and serving an honorable service.  To have Freedom to choose your destiny, to choose your path the taste of freedom and the cost of protecting it is something that we veterans can experience.     I had googled the phrase the story how it came to be popped up so I cut and pasted it.  It is a good read.

L/Cpl Edwin L. "Tim" Craft, B Co 3rd AT's, Khe Sanh Combat Base, February, 1968

I graduated from High School in 1966, and all of my course studies had been academic. My main interests besides girls were Marching Band and Debate. Having won the Kansas State Oratorical championship in 1964 with a speech topic "Optimism Formula For Freedom", my intentions were to become a lawyer. I was aware of the Viet Nam war, especially when it began to heat up in 1965. Little did I know that before the next year was over that I would take a journey straight into the pits of hell and see the heaviest fighting our country has ever experienced.
After high school, I enrolled in junior college. I paid my own way by also working at night part time for the H. D. Lee Company that made clothing. When I quit college to join the Marines my professors and especially the office tried to get me to reconsider by saying "But your grades are well above average. You will never have to go!" My reply, and my reason for joining, was simply "those guys fighting and dying over there are no more deserving to be there than me, and I can't feel right letting them do something I would not."
My goal was never to be heroic or gallant. That was the last thing on my mind. After joining, I was barely in the states nine months when I was sent to Nam. En route, we landed on Wake Island. It looked like a grain of sand in the middle of the ocean when our commercial flight United 747 Jet pitched downward and aimed at that grain of sand. My thought was "You've got to be kidding me". All of the Marines that fought there became POW's of the Japanese. Later, I met one of them and got to know him well. I spoke at his funeral. His name was Bob Eaton.
Next stop was Okinawa. The next day it was Da Nang, then Dong Ha, then Hell at Con Thien. My first day in the field I met a Marine who would be my Commanding Officer…a fine man. Thirty minutes later, Lt. Dallas Thompson would move in front of me and die from an explosion. He fell right across my lap and died looking into my eyes. We were taking so much incoming that our Platoon Sgt. ordered us off the hill, mainly because they had our little bunker zero'd in. When I found a hole to jump in, the Marine in it mistook me for a corpsman and called me “Doc”. He said, "’Doc’, that is some of the fanciest footwork I have ever seen. They were following you all the way down. You would go right and they would explode left, then you'd go left and they would explode right. You probably saved all of those guys.” I told him, “I'm not a corpsman. I'm a Marine, and I just got here. All I was is scared and following orders. I don't know enough to plan anything!” He just looked at me for a long while and said, "That was still some run Doc!" (Jarheads!!!) Con Thien, by the way means "Place of Angels". We were under siege there for several months and were cut off from food and water for much of it.
Leatherneck Magazine called the siege for Con Thien "Time in the Barrel". We received a minimum of 200 incoming rounds a day, and it was a small place. It felt like they hit every square inch. One thing I quickly learned was how to know the difference in the sounds of incoming. That knowledge was literally a matter of life and death. Mortars made a high arch and the initial blast in the distance was a muffled report. An artillery round has a bassier sound. It gave you slightly more time to find cover, but if it was on you, then you were in deep trouble. The other one was the most terrifying. It was the rocket, and it screamed as it came in. You could not tell where it might come down, and it came fast. They also had recoilless rifles that fired large shells. They went off almost at the same time you heard them fired at you, and they had a flat trajectory.
My second day in the field another Marine and I wiped out an artillery section that had us pinned down. The Phantoms that flew over reported we had killed 162 of the enemy. This was L/Cpl Arthur Kennedy and myself. We went out under direct fire and had to get out and make sure the grunts (infantry) were down before we could fire our Ontos. If we had been in any other branch both of us would have received the Congressional Medal of Honor. The truth I learned over and over is the Marines were too small an outfit to allow its members to go to receive them, and many of the Marines I knew were cheated out of them. During 1967 and 1968 the Marines bore the brunt of the war, and that is a fact. World Book Encyclopedia reported that fact. Don't get me wrong. I am not medal happy and I wasn't then. When I returned I had at least four rows, and the Marines make you earn theirs.
After months of carnage we had a cease fire on Christmas Eve of 1967. I arrived there about the second week of August and saw many good men die. All of us lived with death every second of every day. On this particular Christmas Eve I heard a broadcast on Armed Forces radio and learned the "Clintonites" were marching on our Capitol protesting against us! I could not believe what I was hearing. Here we were fighting for freedom and these low life commies back home were fighting against us. I was dazed. I just could not understand it. I was hurt to my soul, angered, and disgusted. (This motivated me to write a message on a C-Ration case.)
Not very long after that night we got the word that we were going to a resort area called Khe Sanh. It had not seen any of this type of action. It actually had a mess hall and a laundry, and they marched to chow. Wow!!! What unfathomable luxuries. Also, during this time I was on an operation with B Co 1/9 called Kingfisher, where we got the name "Walking Dead", and a new phrase was coined "Thousand yard stare." One of the Marines started cussing one night, and there was a big commotion. The next day we found out a tiger had grabbed him by the arm and was just carrying him off. He was punching it in the snout. It got as far as the Ben Hoa River and didn't know what to do with him, so it just let him go. That story was in Stars and Stripes. (I was afraid to write back home about that one for fear they would think I was nuts.) The Marines just kidded him about being too grisly for the tiger and that it wanted a softer cut of meat.
When I got to Khe Sanh, sure enough, they were marching to chow, had on starched utilities, and what really blew my mind was that all of their bunkers were built above ground!!! What was wrong with these people? We were met by our new CO, whom I had met at Con Thien. I didn't know who he was, just that he was a big wig. Captain James Lea told us in no uncertain terms that we would fall out in the morning clean shaven and in freshly starched utilities, because special arrangements had been made for us. The Junior Officer took over after Captain Lea left and asked if we had any questions. Being an old salt by now I told him, "Sir, with all due respect for your rank you can go ---- yourself, because me and my men are not going to live in any of these above ground bunkers.” He said “Fine, Corporal Craft" (Actually, I was only a L/Cpl, lance corporal). He said “See that wire over there? You just take your merry men and go right out there and pick out any real estate you want because that is enemy territory and they will be glad to have you. But, as long as you are here, you will comply. Is that clear?” I said “Yes sir, perfectly.”
When he turned away and went back to the HQ, we beat feet for the wire and told them we were going to be an LP (listening post). You can bet we would be too! They said “And you're taking an Ontos to an LP?” I just said “You never can be too careful!” We went out and started digging in. We were the diggingest bunch of guys you ever saw. We just dug and filled sand bags. I think they knew they had been had because they ignored us for nearly a week. Then, our Lt was sent out to read us the riot act. En route, the siege began. The enemy hit the ammo dump, and it sounded like Volkswagens flying past us. It was Con Thien all over again. The next day I was sent for and they wanted me to work with some Seabees to show then how to build the new bunkers. (I wonder why?)
This siege lasted for 77 days and was the most intense fighting of our history. Some reports say there were 1,000 of us and as many as 400,000 of the enemy. Other reports show 6,000 Marines at Khe Sanh, but this was not the Combat base. This figure had to include the surrounding hills and supporting units. Khe Sanh Combat base wasn't that big! Essentially, it was a runway. We were taking some 1,600 rounds of incoming per day every day on this tiny piece of real estate. Someone calculated that we had an explosion from an enemy device every 30 seconds day and night for 77 days. I had been called away from my safe hole when they found out my secondary mos was Ammo/Tech. It was during this time that I spotted a reporter and asked him if he would please mind getting a message back to the world for me. He asked "What is it?" I told him and he looked shocked and asked if I would mind writing that down. I said “Sure” and wrote it on a C-Ration case. That message is: "For those that will fight for it...FREEDOM ...has a flavor the protected shall never know."  
Semper Fi!
--- L/Cpl Edwin L. "Tim" Craft, B Co 3rd AT's, Khe Sanh Combat Base, February, 1968  

Another Hitler parody video involving Hillary Clinton

Here is another Hitler Parody video and this one is actually pretty good, the person doing it paid attention to the screaming dialogue and almost matched it up with a modern flair.

I will post some post election musings later.

Election day musings..

I intetially avoided watching any news and avoided as much as I could the gossip amongst the mechanics as we worked on the airplanes.  I did like when my lead commented after our crew meeting"alright you deplorables...Now go to work".  I was going to lunch and the word spread " they called it Trump won and Clinton conceeded",   I was pleased,    Now we have to come together as Americans....But first I will gloat a bit for all the media and other elitist that pushed the Clinton campaign....

 

Now we as Americans have to come together as a united people.  We have been separated by class, race and gender and people forget that we are Americans, now we have to be reminded of that.

 

I remembered a clip from my favorite show Babylon 5 right the liberation of Earth from the dictatorship that was the sitting president.   I remembered the phrase "we are sons and daughters of Earth and in the coming months we need to remember that."    That is my belief...

I saw this article from a pundit on Foxnews and last night and I really liked it so I shamelessly ripped it off.

 

Donald Trump shocked pundits (and many political experts) Wednesday by winning the presidency. But his followers weren’t shocked at all.
They understood from the start the power of Trump’s message, and the anger of middle class Americans.
Americans suffering from stagnant wages and lost jobs, who were the last to benefit from the liberal agenda of Barack Obama.
Americans fed up with the self-serving Washington political establishment, the crony capitalism and the insufferable political correctness stifling our workplaces and our universities.
Americans tired of the intellectual elites who look down on flag waving and old-fashioned patriotism and consider themselves morally superior.

Deplorables to Clinton: take that! A clear majority wanted to set the country on a new direction, and Donald Trump promised to do just that. He promised to Make America Great Again, and they believed him.
Even as the returns flowed in, the results appeared to shock the mainstream media commentators reporting on the vote. They didn’t expect blue collar workers in Ohio to flow to Trump; they couldn’t believe that union voters, such predictable backers of Democrats historically, would line up in the red column.

Where have these people been? This has been the bedrock of Trump’s support. People didn’t flood those huge Trump rallies because of rock stars like Jay Z or Lady Gaga; they turned out because Trump was saying what they longed to hear.

They cheered when Trump said he would revamp our trade policies to protect U.S. workers. They liked that he promised to close our borders and reestablish the rule of law. They especially applauded his pledge to take on the corrupt elites in Washington and to push for term limits.

The pundits expected Hispanics to hand several swing states to Clinton; while turnout was only modestly higher with the Latino community, Trump appears to have done about as well as Romney did with that community. That was unexpected.

Maybe next time Democrats should try to speak to the whole country, and stop slicing and dicing the electorate. Stronger together indeed!
Here’s what else happened in the 2016 election: voters decided to put the Clintons and their greedy corruption out to pasture. Clinton had everything going for her: a compliant media, a popular president in her corner, over a billion dollars in campaign fund and a well-organized party apparatus.
At the end, none of it mattered. Clinton had no message and no vision. She wandered as a candidate, portraying herself alternately as a benevolent grandma, a firebrand progressive and a champion of women and children.

In the closing weeks of the campaign she was the angry, shrill prude offended by Donald Trump’s lewd remarks about women, while at the same time lauding Jay Z’s foul lyrics. There is noting genuine about Mrs. Clinton. She is a hypocrite and she is dishonest, and the voters know it.
Clinton apologists will blame FBI Director James Comey for the loss, they will blame Vladimir Putin; they will say she lost because she is a woman. None of it is true. Hillary was a terrible candidate.

There will be enormous handwringing in both parties over the incredible success of Donald Trump. Pundits will dredge up any number of abstruse rationales for how Trump overcame long odds and humiliated both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
It’s not that complicated. Average Americans, the men and women who work hard and play by the rules, decided to make their voices heard.

Now comes the hard part. Trump will have to flesh out a thoroughly undernourished organization and quickly find the people who can carry out his agenda. The media will be gunning for him; impatient voters who took a chance on an untested leader may not have much patience.
Trump promised to quickly convene a special session of Congress and demand that they repeal and remodel ObamaCare. It is a brilliant idea. Imagine how excited the country would be to see actual progress. Maybe this will be the next shocker; Donald Trump might turn out to be a good president.

Election time...

Vote, Vote, Vote,   Go vote....it is one of our duties as citizens of the Republic. 

   I have already let my feelings known.....Go Trump.....but Vote

    Here is some Hillary Humor because I am like that....

Monday Music "It's the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine " by R.E.M

I decided to roll with this song, I figured it would be apropos because the election is tomorrow and no matter who wins, almost 50% of the population will be disappointed.   I have already made my political opinion known and I hope that the Donald wins, but I have concerns that there will be a fix for Hillary and her emails and other things will cause her to have a lot of problems.
     I first heard of R.E.M while I was in Germany.  I really liked this song along with "losing my religion" from a later album.   They were alternative before Nirvana and the other "grunge" bands became mainstream.  

R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by lead vocalist Michael Stipe, lead guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/backing vocalist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first alternative rock bands, R.E.M. were noted for Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style, Stipe's particular vocal quality, and Mills' melodic basslines and backing vocals. R.E.M. released their first single, "Radio Free Europe", in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone. The single was followed by the Chronic Town EP in 1982, the band's first release on I.R.S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album, Murmur, and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, and the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R.E.M. achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love". The group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, and began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.

"It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" is a song by the rock band R.E.M., which appeared on their 1987 album Document, the 1988 compilation Eponymous, and the 2006 compilation And I Feel Fine... The Best of the I.R.S Years 1982–1987. It was released as a single in November 1987, reaching No. 69 in the US Billboard Hot 100 and later reaching No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart on its re-release in December 1991.

The song originated from a previously unreleased song called "PSA" ("Public Service Announcement"); the two are very similar in melody and tempo. "PSA" was itself later reworked and released as a single in 2003, under the title "Bad Day." In an interview with Guitar World magazine published in November 1996, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck agreed that "End of the World" was in the tradition of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues.". The song was featured in the third episode of the 13th season of The Simpsons, "Homer the Moe".

The music video was directed by James Herbert, who worked with the band on several other videos in the late 1980s. It depicts a young skateboarder, Noah Ray, rifling through an abandoned, collapsing farmhouse and displaying the relics that he finds to the camera

Facebook Rant and working...

I have been working the overtime, something about MD90's....I don't mind the Overtime but I ain't used to the MD90 series of airplanes....they are "cramped".  but they are old school airplanes as we call it.   I have been posting some political meme's and am surprised that I haven't been put in Facebook jail yet. 

    I posted this on a post from one of the older scouts, he voted for the first time and was proud to throw the lever for "Trump".  Some of the other people took him to task for doing so and I and others defended his choices.   I did this post at 0500 in the morning when I saw that a couple of people were being really ugly.  I normally don't post using my phone because I pride myself on my sentence structure and proper punctuation but I typed this one out.

To me it isn't the man but the message. It is a big "screw you" to the establishment. For 20+ years we have been blown off by the Democrats and Republicans. Both are more concerned about helping their big donors and protected groups than helping the middle class. We have watched our high paying middle class jobs leave never to return because companies find it cheaper to build it away and bring the products back. Our tax laws are byzantine in nature. We have unrestricted immigration into this country and the cheap labor is a boon to the donors and horrible to the middle class and drive down wages. We have people that will not assimilate to our culture and bring crime that impacts the middle class. The people that support this live in their bubble communities surrounded by people that think like they do, they don't see the devastation caused by the job loss and immigration. We see our culture and traditions mocked and we are having to apologize for being Americans. This is why we support Trump, perhaps he will not be able to change the culture of corruption in D.C but the fact that he scares the crap out of the establishment is a sign. It is not the man but the message. I flat out can't support Hillary, the fact that she played with classified documents on her private server. I remember the rules I had to deal with when I handled classified documents and if I had done what she did, I would be in Leavenworth confinement barracks. The rules apply to us but she is part of the establishment and gets a pass. Also the pay to play while she was a senator and secstate. Foreign countries had to do "donate" to the foundation before she would do anything. The same foundation that is registered in Canada to avoid Non disclosure laws here in America. She represents the culture of corruption that is endemic in D.C. also that the DNC shafted Bernie Sanders to help in the coronation of Hillary. I know I didn't use proper spacing and paragraphs. I am using my kinda Smart phone.

2 officers ambushed in Des Moines Iowa.

Damm what the hell, two more cops got  ambushed in Iowa no less.  This crap pisses me off and I blame the current denizen in the White House.  he has been fomenting a war on cops since he got elected.  The clown hasn't gotten past his "community Organizer" roots to realize that he is supposed to be President of all the people, not the select groups that form the base of the democrat party. 

 

I am glad that my Dad retired as a Chief of PoPo a few years ago.  This constant war on the cops and I wonder if it will be somebody from the BLM movement or some of the unvetted refugees that got dumped over there.    I am dismayed,  I haven't ever seen it this bad, In the 60's the government supported the Law and Order types and the Police and now you have segments of the government supporting the troublemakers and this will not end well.  I pray for the families during this time that they find the peace that they will need through the trying time ahead.

Updated 40 mins ago

DES MOINES, Iowa --

Two police officers were shot to death early Wednesday in ambush-style attacks while they were sitting in their patrol cars, authorities said.

Officers responded to a report of shots fired at 1:06 a.m. and found an Urbandale Police Department officer who had been shot. Authorities from several agencies saturated the area after that shooting, and about 20 minutes later discovered that a Des Moines officer had been shot in a patrol car at an intersection, Des Moines Sgt. Paul Parizek said. The shootings happened about 2 miles apart.

"There's somebody out there shooting police officers. We hope to find him before somebody else gets hurt," said Parizek, who became emotional at times during a news conference.

Authorities are developing suspect information but there was nothing that they were ready to share with the public, Parizek said. Officers are now doing patrols in pairs to better protect themselves, he said.

Parizek said he didn't have any more information about the shootings.

Urbandale is a city in the Des Moines metro area with about 50 officers.