P A T R I O T I S M

[tommie gorman]

I BET YOU THOUGHT I FORGET TO DO SOMETHING FOR MEMORIAL DAY ! !

For a little music! And for my link. Enjoy, I did!

http://www.angelfire.com/folk/patriotscorner/Patriotism.html

[cholla]

I thought I would add some more on The Pledge of Allegiance.This covers the addition of "under God".Although Red Skeltons' observation about "under God" & the Supreme court rulings of today seem very relavant.

The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise or oath of allegiance to the United States, and to its national flag. It commonly recited in unison at public events, and especially in public school classrooms, where the Pledge is often a morning ritual. In its present form, the words of the Pledge are:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to The Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

According to current U.S. custom, as codified by the United States Congress, persons are expected (but not legally required) to recite the Pledge as follows:

by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written for the popular children's magazine Youth's Companion by socialist author and Baptist minister Francis Bellamy on September 7, 1892. The owners of Youth's Companion were selling flags to schools, and approached Bellamy to write the Pledge for their advertising campaign. It was marketed as a way to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving in the Americas and was first published on the following day.

Bellamy's original Pledge read as follows: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. It was seen by some Brightonians as a call for national unity and wholeness after the divisive Civil War. Bellamy had initially also considered using the words equality and fraternity but decided they were too controversial since many people still opposed equal rights for women and African Americans.

After a proclamation by President Benjamin Harrison, the Pledge was first used in public schools on October 12, 1892 during Columbus Day observances. The form adopted inserted the word "to" before "the Republic", a minor matter of grammar.

The Knights of Columbus in New York City felt that the pledge was incomplete without any reference to a deity. Appealing to the authority of Abraham Lincoln, the Knights felt that the words "under God" from Lincoln

[cholla]

tommie gorman  posted a lot of wonderful patriotic articles but for those interested I posted a long post on Ira Hayes on page 6.The photos below show him & the other heros listed  raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

A photo colorized to show all six men - Ira Hayes (red), Franklin Sousley (violet), John Bradley (green), Harlon Block (yellow), Michael Strank (brown), Rene Gagnon (teal)

[EWO]

You guys  are great with your postings.  Red Skelton's words are very touching to me.  It's been; in some cases, a very long time since I have read the words posted here.  Excellent reminder to us all.

Thanks

Jim

[EWO]

This might not be exactly the right place for this but it's righter than any other place.

                                TRUE  AMERICAN

                                    True American

It is time to change from REDNECK humor to TRUE AMERICAN Humor!

Only I don't see it as Humor or limited to just the Southern Rednecks,

but the correct way to LIVE YOUR LIFE AS AN AMERICAN ! If you feel

the same, pass this on to your True American friends. Ya'll know who ya'

are...

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: It never occurred to you to be

offended by the phrase, "One nation, under God."

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You've never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public

places.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You still say "Christmas" instead of

"Winter Festival."

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You bow your head when someone prays.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You stand and place your hand over your

heart when they play the National Anthem.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You treat Viet Nam vets with great

respect, and always have.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You've never burned an American flag.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You know what you believe and you

aren't afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You respect your elders and expect your

kids to do the same.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You'd give your last dollar to a

friend.

If you got this email from me, it is because I believe that you, like

me, have just enough TRUE AMERICAN in you to have the same beliefs

as

those talked about in this email.

God Bless the U S A !

Git 'er done!!!!!!!!!!!!

God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called

[water]

This might not be exactly the right place for this but it's righter than any other place.

                              TRUE AMERICAN

                                  True American

It is time to change from REDNECK humor to TRUE AMERICAN Humor!

Only I don't see it as Humor or limited to just the Southern Rednecks,

but the correct way to LIVE YOUR LIFE AS AN AMERICAN ! If you feel

the same, pass this on to your True American friends. Ya'll know who ya'

are...

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: It never occurred to you to be

offended by the phrase, "One nation, under God."

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You've never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public

places.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You still say "Christmas" instead of

"Winter Festival."

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You bow your head when someone prays.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You stand and place your hand over your

heart when they play the National Anthem.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You treat Viet Nam vets with great

respect, and always have.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You've never burned an American flag.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You know what you believe and you

aren't afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You respect your elders and expect your

kids to do the same.

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if: You'd give your last dollar to a

friend.

If you got this email from me, it is because I believe that you, like

me, have just enough TRUE AMERICAN in you to have the same beliefs

as

those talked about in this email.

God Bless the U S A !

Git 'er done!!!!!!!!!!!!

God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called

I would only have a problem with the "christmas phrase".. but only because I'm a taoist and I only go along with christmas for my kids, but the rest I would embrace wholeheartedly..... I don't guess I believe in Chritsmar OR winter festival.... *is sorry* But I have a belief and I stand up for it!

[tommie gorman]

I must be true American, except the :

You might be a TRUE AMERICAN if:

You'd give your last dollar to a friend.

Too many friends say borrow with no intention of paying. But if they truly needed it, it would be theirs.

[EWO]

Like it says - You'd "give" your last dollar to a friend  -  not loan

[tommie gorman]

Again, if they really needed it. Lol

I would do even more than that if needed. Really.

[water]

what if the last dollar were the last 10 hours of your life, would it matter? The gift is YOU no matter what.

You give what you give because you choose to give.

there should never be parameters, otherwise it turns into a bribe

2 cents

*off to bed*

[water]

live the life of a soldier

my friend:

http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/ezine/article.php?article=644

he makes me cry .....

and I will support him always

I love you shadow Peace be with you always

[tommie gorman]

Yeah, after War shock is not cool. But he will get better. Some of them do terrible things. That is why they need all of our support.

Not like after Viet-nam. They were concidered criminals after the war, and so many turned to drugs and motorcycle gangs. Sort of a shame. And they were normal Americans like you and me. Makes you think.

[water]

*hugs*

My husband and my Air Force training insured that I would never be a "normal Americans like you and me" but we try

life is ok, it's actually good as I told him, and he's ok too, atm, but it's a burden... we all carry even though we aren't there ... our comrades are..... and it matters

We do what we must but we must not forget! (ourselves)

[tommie gorman]

I am a prior AF myself. I thought these might be cool. But I do not know how well they will download, so here we go.

Edit: They were supposed to be rotating but I guess not. They do in the link.

http://www.honoringamericantroops.com/

                                             *AMERICA'S MILITARY HEROES

All of our military personnel are our HEROES!!! Everyone in this great nation knows of a military hero personally!! Whether they are your brother or sister, your mother or father, your cousin, Aunt or Uncle, your neighbor, your spouse, high school friend, or a close family friend when our nation calls on them to defend our freedoms, to protect us, or to help another nation in harm's way they are there!! They are depended on, needed, and get the job done!! They are AMERICA'S MILITARY HEROES!!!

[tommie gorman]

A good link for some patriotic songs,

http://www.contemplator.com/america/

Here are a couple of my favorites, you should recognize them.

http://www.contemplator.com/america/ydoodle.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/ssbanner.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/america.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/marine.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/battle.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/dixie.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/whenjohn.html

http://www.contemplator.com/america/yelrose.html

[cholla]

waterRTBH;You don't have to believe in Christmas to use the word.It's a way of respecting the beliefs of us that are Christian.We Christians celebrate it on a date that's inaccurate for the actual birthday of Christ anyway.As far as I know there is not an exact date for his birth in the Bible.So if greeted with Merry Christmas just return it the same way.

tommie gorman ;Good find on the song site.& you included Yellow Rose of Texas.I loked at the site & it has a lot of old songs.

I had a friend that was a Nam vet that was in a moto cycle gang but he was before he went to Nam.He lost one leg to a mine in Nam & the other one in A motorcycle accident after he came home.I have lost track of him but the last time I saw him he was still riding a chopped Harley.

I also knew a tunnel rat Nam vet who commited suicide a few years after he came home.He was a little guy he could have gotten out of even going.They had to fill him up before they weighed him for his entrance physical.

I have respectually disposed of a couple of old flags by burning them.But this is different than doing it as a protest & better I think than throwing them away.They were at a place I worked that at one time flew them but these had been put on a shelf & allowed to become very dirty & the cloth was pretty rotted.So I disposed of them by burning.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode04/usc_sec_04_00000008----000-.html

US Flag Code. TITLE 4 > CHAPTER 1 > Sec. 8(k)

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem

for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

[resopalrabotnick]

heh. looks like we have a lot of former air force people in here. i however was in the german air force.

[cholla]

Hey resopalrabotnick I got a German  airforce joke for you.

Sven, a Norwegian pilot during World War II, was being interviewed on TV. He had been asked about the day he shot down 7 German airplanes.

'Well, Oi was jus flyin' aloong when suddenly Oi see this fokker flyin' oop at me,' explained Sven in his native accent. 'Oi looked aroun' and saw there woos another fokker off me right wing and then two fokkers off me left wing. There was a fokker behin' me, and two fokkers comin' doon at me.'

At this point the interviewer interjected, 'Perhaps I should explain to our viewing audience that a Fokker is a kind of German aircraft.'

'Ja,' said Sven. 'That, too. But these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts.'

[water]

I was reading through Snopes.com, and stumbled cross the Katrina Header, and since I am in a fairly happy mood, thought it would be fun to click my way through. Needless to say, I fell upon some inspiring writing by people in countries other than ours.

I thought I would share it, since their is always so much predominant America/Bush bashing by many other countries people of our country: it gave me a feel good moment I wanted you all to feel as well.

From http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?artID=510

SUNDAY SPECTATOR

September 11, 2005

Blame throwing

There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. (Everybody's asking.) I'm tempted to say, the only difference from Canada, is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.

But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being, that when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults live.

And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, it was once again the U.S. military, efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.

We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one feckless government after another, who have cut corners until there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At which point, our national smugness is of no avail.

From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass.

This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing, receive food stamps and prescription medicine and government support through many other programmes. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, sans input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses parked in rows to be lost in the flood, that could have driven them out of town.

Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.

The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented. There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas, and that nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets".

The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers' state of mind.

Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States, and you will learn that the U.S. federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.

Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other federal assets, two full days in advance of the stormfall. In the little time since, he has managed to coordinate an immense recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently Presidential to respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and childish blame-throwing.

One thinks of Kipling's "If --" poem, which I learned to recite as a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that is good, beautiful, or true:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise...

Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.

David Warren

[tommie gorman]

Truly great readings waterRTBH!!  :thumbsup:

But it is so easy to always blame the gov't. Nothing New!

A good link for some patriotic songs,

http://www.contemplator.com/america/

Sorry, I guess to get the tunes to go with the music you have to be in the original link. I just tried it myself.

[water]

This touched me as well:

During Hurricane Isabel, sentries guarding the Tomb of the Unknowns remained at their posts.

http://www.snopes.com/military/isabel.htm

[tommie gorman]

Good find waterRTBH, I enjoyed their dedication.

[tommie gorman]

I just thought this was an awsome find. Nice floral arrangement. That has to be a lot of work.

                                            THE ONLY FLAG THAT DOESN'T FLY

Between the fields where the flag is planted, there are 9+ miles of flower fields that go all the way to the ocean. The flowers are grown by seed companies. It's a beautiful place, close to Vandenberg AFB. Check out the dimensions of the flag. The 2002 Floral Flag is 740 feet long and 390 feet wide and maintains the proper Flag dimensions, as described in Executive Order ..10834. This Flag is 6.65 acres and is the first Floral Flag to be planted with 5 pointed Stars, comprised of White Larkspur. Each Star is 24 feet in diameter; each Stripe is 30 feet wide. This Flag is estimated to contain more than 400,000 Larkspur plants, with 4-5 flower stems each, for a total of more than 2 million flowers. You can drive by this flag on V Street south of Ocean Ave. in Lompoc, CA!

Aerial photo courtesy of Bill Morson Soldiers' Prayer

[tommie gorman]

Pictures from post-saddam Iraq. Some pics of our mean soldiers. 

1).U.S. Army Captain Marcus Wildy from Charleston, South Carolina belonging to the First Armored Division speaks to children at an amusement park in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Saturday July 19, 2003. The amusement park was reopened to the public under U.S. Army security.

2)U.S. Army Private First Class Oronde Homan from Detroit, Michigan belonging to the First Armored Division pushes a child on a swing at an amusement park in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Saturday July 19, 2003. The amusement park was reopened to the public under U.S. Army security.

3)U.S. Army specialist Jose Garcia from Alice, Texas, belonging to the First Armored Division gets mobbed by children as he hands out sodas at an amusement park in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Saturday July 19, 2003. The amusement park was reopened to the public under U.S. Army security.

4)A U.S. Army soldier belonging to the First Armored Division carries a handicapped child to a ride at an amusement park in Baghdad, Iraq (news - web sites) Saturday July 19, 2003. The amusement park was reopened to the public under U.S. Army security.

5)I can't find a caption for this pic but I think it says enough.

6)Specialist David Buell clutches a stuffed animal as he looks for his family upon his return, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2005, in Salt Lake City. His children gave him their toy to protect him while he spent the last year serving in Iraq (news - web sites) with the 116th Engineering unit. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

7) Again no topic.

I think I got them in order.

[tommie gorman]

I have not seen this yet.

Patriotism For love of country, the life we love. And the men who serve to protect it.

Bush bans protests at military funerals

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bush bans protests at military funerals By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

Mon May 29, 10:33 AM ET

WASHINGTON - President Bush, marking Memorial Day with a speech paying tribute to fighting men and women lost in war, signed into law Monday a bill that keeps demonstrators from disrupting military funerals.

In advance of his speech and a wreath-laying at America's most hallowed burial ground for military heroes, Bush signed the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act." This was largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths symbolized God's anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.

The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060529/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_1