Memorial Day Weekend

At a time when our president and other politicians tend to apologize for our country's prior actions, here's a refresher on how some of our former patriots handled negative comments about our country.

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when
DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US
Military out of France as soon as possible.

Rusk responded,
"Does that include those who are buried here?"

DeGaulle
Did not respond.

You could have heard a pin drop.


When in England, at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the
Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of 'empire building' by George Bush.

He answered by saying,
"Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return."

You could have heard a pin drop.


There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers
Were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying, "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does he intend to do, bomb them?"

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly:
"Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?"

You could have heard a pin drop.

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S., English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks but a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many Languages, Americans learn only English. He then asked, "Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than peaking French?"

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, "Maybe it's because the
Brit's, Canadians, Aussie's and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."

You could have heard a pin drop.

And this story fits right in with the above ...

Robert Whiting, an elderly gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane.

At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport inhis carry on.

"You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked
Sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.


"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

The American said, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible... Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France!"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at OmahaBeach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchmen to show a passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

We must continuously fine-tune our bearings.

Like a sailor, we must continuously fine-tune our life bearings.

Whether a change is welcome or not, we must respond.

Our main choice is not what will change but how we respond.

If we hold too tightly to willful thinking, we are not attuned.

But if we make peace with change, we grow.

We will be transformed into more than we could ever imagine.

A Great Fact

The great fact is just this, and nothing less:
That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences
which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life,
toward our fellows and toward God's universe.
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator
has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 25


A spiritual awakening is our greatest gift.

How To Simulate Being A Sailor

Any I still miss this ... some day. B-)

Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.

Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.

Repaint your entire house every month.

Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of the bathtub and move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.

Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot onto your neighbor's house. Ignore his complaints.

Once a month, take all major appliances apart and then reassemble them.

Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and back doors, so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.

Disassemble and inspect your lawnmower every week.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn your water heater temperature up to 200 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn the water heater off. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they use too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.

Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.

Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack".

Make your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house - dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.

Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 am, blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up".

Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your back yard at 6 a.m. while she reads it to you.

Submit a request chit to your father-in-law requesting permission to leave your house before 3 pm.

Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not.

Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item before delivering it to you.
Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.

When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting that your home is under attack and ordering them to their battle stations.

Make your family menu a week ahead of time without consulting the pantry or refrigerator.

Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.

Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.

Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread.

Set your alarm clock to go off a random during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks. Run out into the back yard and uncoil the garden hose.

Every week or so, throw your cat or dog in the pool and shout "Man overboard port side!" Rate your family members on how fast they respond.

Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string. Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup "Stove manned and ready". After an hour or so, speak into the cup again "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoebox.

Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4 hour intervals. This is best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.

When there is a thunderstorm in your area, get a wobbly rocking chair, sit in it and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. Make sure to have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

For former engineers: bring your lawn mower into the living room, and run it all day long.

Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and allow the pot to simmer for 5 hours before drinking.

Have someone under the age of ten give you a haircut with sheep shears.

Sew the back pockets of your jeans on the front.

Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go to the scummiest part of town. Find the most run down, trashiest bar, and drink beer until you are hammered. Then walk all the way home.

Take a two week vacation visiting the red light districts of Europe or the Far East, and call it "world travel".

Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you are going to take them to Disney World for "liberty". At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip to Disney World has been canceled because they need to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house

From An Old Sea Dogs Ditty Bag ... Military Script

From the Mail Bouy:

A former shipmate share a memory from old Navy days.

We did it years ago when the military overseas paid GI’s in script.

From “five cents” up to “$20 bills”… that is how we got our walking around money…. Good anywhere on base and even down at the French bistro in the village near our radar site in Morocco, at a discounted price (we had to take our script to the Air Base an hour away to trade our script for Francs, or if you could justify it, American dollars).

The Bistro owner would use the script he would obtain to get GI’s to buy him cigarettes and other items at the BX at the air base.

A black market if you will, and while you paid 20 to 30 percent more for a glass of wine and a baguette (tasted so much better than the chow we were getting), one would gladly pay it.

But then the day arrived, strictly unannounced, when the armored weapon-carrier arrived with the heavily armed AP’s (probably one of the future Smitty or Larry’s sergeants) and you had to exchange you script on the spot for brand new and different colored script.

That left the “black-market” guys holding their old script.

By the way, one of my hapless squadron members had been stupidly sending script home as a simple saving plan (instead of taking out an allotment and having half his pay sent to a bank). Try as he might, he was out the few hundred dollars (remember we were making $90 to $150 a month, depending on your rank back then).

PS…. Interestingly, script helped the balance of payments as the 350,000 or more GI’s operating around the world at the time (the Cold War) were paid in script.

So the 350,000 times $100, per month, wasn’t seeing “Greenbacks” flooding Europe, Japan, Korea, and all the other places we operated (North Africa, the “Phil,” Panama). That’s $35,000,000 a month.

Not a lot when you think of how many “Greenbacks” leave America every day to pay for foreign oil (billions)now but I remember at the time that there were a lot of economics types who worried that our dollar was going to suffer.

Who killed Bin Laden?

Here's a Marine's answer:
"America is not at war, the US Marines are at war; America is at the mall."
Let's be clear on this: OBAMA did NOT kill Bin Laden.
An American sailor, who Obama, just a few weeks before, was debating on whether or not to PAY, did!
In fact, if you remember a little less than two years ago, his administration actually charged and attempted to court-martial three Navy Seals from Seal Team Six, when a terrorist suspect they captured, complained they had punched him during the take-down and bloodied his nose.
Obama's administration further commented how brutal they were. The left were calling them Nazi's and Baby Killers.
Now all of a sudden, the very brave men they vilified are now heroes when they make his administration look good in the eyes of the public.
Obama just happened to be the one in office when the CIA finally found the guy and our sailors took him out.
Essentially, Obama only gave an answer, Yes or No, to him being taken out.
This is NOT an Obama victory, but an AMERICAN victory!!
Ed Schreiber
Col. US MC (Ret)
"Semper Fi"
OBAMA'S OWN WORDS TRAP HIM:
2008: "Navy Seal Team 6 is Cheney's private assassination team."
2011: "I put together Seal Team 6 to take out Bin Laden."
2008: "Bin Laden is innocent until proven guilty, and must be captured alive and given a fair trial."
2011: "I authorized Seal Team 6 to kill Bin Laden."
2008: "Guantanamo is entirely unnecessary, and the detainees should not be interrogated."
2011: "Vital intelligence was obtained from Guantanamo detainees that led to our locating Bin Laden."

Love is Vulnerable

The world is full of broken hearts because a heart can love and love is vulnerable. There are broken hearts scattered all over the world. Yes, the heart is a vulnerable thing because it yearns to love. The human heart is just like the heart of God.

— from The Humility of God

Dogs, Balls, And A Underwater Camera

A photographer in California decided to take a few of his furry friends, a ball, and a high resolution underwater camera to the pool. ... B-)

Housecleaning

Until we actually sit down and talk aloud
about what we have so long hidden,
our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical.

When we are honest with another person,
it confirms that we have been honest
with ourselves and with God.

Honesty is the absence of the intent to deceive.

Every Dog Needs A Cat

Every Dog Needs A Cat ... B-)

Making Love Visible

God sends us brothers and sisters who are—
or at least are called to be—warm, supportive, comforting.

They make God's love visible—
the ones still with us and those who have gone ahead.

— from Saint Anthony of Padua

The Presence Of Love

When we persevere with the help of a gentle discipline,
we slowly come to hear the still,
small voice and to feel the delicate breeze,
and so to come to know the presence of Love.
~ Henri Nouwen