Music of the Day: Ronnie Earl, Healing Time

Last evening I finished James D. Hornfischer's 2004 book The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour. If you are not familiar with the book, it's the story of what is known as the Battle off Samar. Samar is an island in the Philippine Sea just north and east of Leyte and on October 25, 1944 the smallish and under-armed destroyers and destroyer-escorts of the U.S. 7th Fleet engaged a much larger (in number, tonnage, and weaponry) group of Japanese naval vessels. Some 13,000 sailors lost their lives that day, about 10,000 of those Japanese and the rest U.S. Navy sailors.

The extraordinary courage of the American sailors who faced a vastly superior force is an absolutely remarkable story. What is more extraordinary about the story of the courage of these men is the fact that they were, for the most part, ordinary men. The survivors came home to the United States and continued normal life, most without complaint about their sacrifice or complaint about what they had seen or done, or had done to them. Hornfischer isn't sparing in his descriptions of the horrors these men faced in battle that day, but he clearly states that they conducted themselves with honor and dignity in desperate and at times hopeless circumstances.

Whenever I read something like this, I often wonder how I would have conducted myself in such circumstances; I often wonder if I would have behaved the way most of these men (many of them still teenagers) did, with courage and honor.

One sailor's example is worth mentioning here, a man named Comet. Before he left his West Virginia home for the navy, his Italian-immigrant father had a man-to-man talk with him and gave him the following advice: Don't dishonor your mother; this country (the United States) is worth dying for; a coward dies a thousand times. In the heat of the battle raging around him, Comet thinks of those words spoken by his father and they guide him through his ordeal and serve as the bedrock of his behavior. This lesson bears repeating and remembrance. . . .

AJ

. . .Anna Nicole Smith, RIP.

Thursday, for reasons yet undetermined, or unannounced, Ms. Smith expired and the media, of all stripes, have been in a reportorial frenzy since then. We have seen images of Ms. Smith for the last 36 hours and I'm guessing we'll hear more of the sordid details of her sordid life, and death, for the next few weeks.

She was famous apparently for being famous and for being infamous. To my knowledge she starred in no films and thus was not a "film star," but she was a "celebrity" nonetheless and apparently everyone in North America knew of her, if nothing else for her huge store-bought zip-in boobies and her "marriage" to an elderly gent of some considerable financial means who she outlived only briefly.

BIG STORY, the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Lots of media attention on Ms. Smith, her life, and her recent demise. Contrast that with another person named Smith--Paul J. Smith. Ever heard of him? Sound familiar? No?

It's a common name, Paul J. Smith, and that might account for the lack of name recognition. The more likely reason for Paul J. Smith's anonymity is the fact that in 2003 Paul J. Smith did something that only a few men in the history of the nation have done--his actions in Iraq in 2003 saved the lives of many of his fellow soldiers who were under attack by "insurgents" and SFC Paul J. Smith was killed in action. He was subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his selfless bravery. Paul J. Smith, RIP.

We ought to know Paul J. Smith's name, but we do not because he was in the Army, fighting a war that the American media geniuses have deemed wrong, illegal, immoral, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Have you ever heard of Jason Dunham? Sound familiar? No? Jason Dunham was a Corporal in the United States Marine Corps who also received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his act of selfless bravery in Iraq, an act that saved some of his fellow Marines in 2004 yet cost him his own life. You could read Michael M. Phillips book The Gift of Valor: A War Story, to learn more about Jason Dunham but you won't hear about Jason Dunham from the mainstream media.

We now know more about Anna Nicole Smith than we'll ever want to know and there's more on the way, of that I'm sure--more pictures, more footage, more blathering about her difficult life and her tragic end, but we'll not hear another word about either Paul J. Smith or Jason Dunham.

The only good news is that Anna Nicole Smith's name will before too long be entirely forgotten, while the legacy of Paul J. Smith and Jason Dunham will be revered by at least some Americans who know real difficulty and real sacrifice and whose lives, and deaths, carry real meaning.

PAUL J. SMITH, SFC, UNITED STATES ARMY.
JASON DUNHAM, CORPORAL, UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS.

Remember their names.

AJ

Music of the Day: Tor Dietrichson, Global Village

The Good Doctor returned my copy of Mark Steyn's book America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It and as I was speed-reading through the parts I had underlined, including a brief snippet about the sheer destructiveness of many of the Islamists of the world, I asked myself this question: Average Joe, do you know how many Nobel Prizes have been given in, say, the last 57 years to Islamic-types? I didn't know the answer to that question, so I did a quick search.

The answer can be found on the official website for the Nobel Prize, but I'll summarize to save you a trip there (unless, of course, you wish to get more information--I only searched back from 2006 through 1950 to get results). Here's what I found:

Physics: ONE, to a Pakistani scientist.

Chemistry: ZERO.

Literature: Two; one to a Turkish writer and one to an Egyptian writer.

Peace: (Don't laugh!) FOUR; one to a Bangladeshi, two to Egyptians, and most infamously one to the Palestinian terrorist thug, Arafat.

Economics: ZERO.

Physiology and medicine: ZERO.

In the last 57 years exactly seven (7) Nobel Prizes have been awarded to the millions and millions of denizens of the Islamic world, and one of those, the one to Arafat, is (and was) completely and utterly ludicrous. Islam may not be the "culture of death" or the "religion of death" that many claim it to be, but it sure as hell isn't the "culture of creativity" either, unless you consider the exploding belt and the IED significant creative inventions.

AJ

. . .why the "anti-war movement" isn't known as the "anti-victory movement."

. . .why there is such a thing as a "monster truck rally."

. . .why people think it's okay to be rude on the phone while doing business.

. . .why people think a published deadline is flexible--but just for them.

. . .why the Super Bowl is now played in freakin' February.

. . .why the ability to parallel park is no longer required to get a driver's license.

. . .why people think it's okay to pass a stopped school bus that has its red stop-lights flashing.

. . .why the hair in my ears grows like crazy but the hair on my head refuses to grow.

. . .why people don't yield to emergency vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances, or police cars.

. . .why my right foot always gets cold before my left foot.

Music of the Day: Tough Toung Tenors, Alone Together

AJ

Music of the Day: Spyrogyra, Stories Without Words

In October of 2006 a Republican congressman from Florida resigned from office because it was discovered that he had sent prurient e-mail messages to some congressional pages. Naturally, the same weasel-people who defended the former Narcissist in Chief, William Jefferson Clinton, were beside themselves with the revelation that a gay Republican was sending dirty electronic messages to various and sundry underlings (rather than, as in Clinton's case, ACTUALLY having sex with an intern, which didn't seem to bother the apologists at all).

And all of the usual media whiz-bangs were for weeks atwitter over this "scandal." Which brings me to this--the penchant for "instant analysis" that is rampant these days on both radio and the TeeVee. Actually, the term "instant analysis" is only half correct--it's nearly always instant, there's no question about that, but it most certainly is not analytical. It's just the same old posturing, and finger-pointing, and name-calling, and cheap-shot bloviating, along with the nightly appearance of different sets of four talking-heads interrupting each other and yapping at the same time. I predicted in my personal journal (pre-blog) that this particular "scandal" would disappear from the airwaves immediately following the November election and that in six months, the Average Joe on the street wouldn't be able to name the greasy former Florida congressman. I also noted that the "analysts" would soon be "analyzing" something else of profound importance, such as the newest super-model diet scandal.

So, even though we haven't yet reached the magic six-month mark, here is Today's Trivia Question: Can you name the greasy former Florida congressman over whom so much was made in October and November?

AJ