Weird News: Randy Cassingham's This is True #1

This is True! A free newsletter on the web with unusual stories every week. Here they have branched into a video version. As a matter of fact, Uncle Vic's In Country will soon launch a weekly video blog and perhaps audio podcast called "How Come People are So Stupid?". It won't be this type of thing, but more basic decisions by people and governments that really are stupid.

USS Houston Survivor Harry Kelley - video

Harry Kelley's story is at this link for Ch49 ABCnews. A film about the saga of the USS Houston and its crew is available at www.buzzcreek.com . The website for the Houston is www.usshouston.org . Other videos can be found in the www.me3tv.org files. Photo: Harry Kelley (USN), Howard Brooks(USN) and Frank "Ned" Gallagher (USMC) - taken in Sept. 2006 at the Arlington funeral for Otto Schwarz.

Look in the mirror, Jimmy Carter

I HAVE SAID THIS ALL ALONG....   THERE WAS NEVER A WORSE PRESIDENT in our time since Jimmy Carter.

Yet .. also .. probably never a more deeply pentetant Christian...  one who became the worst president by failing to recognize that people are one thing and governments are another. He used the American people to puppet his deeply felt religious beliefs into the affairs of international diplomacy.   Pragmatism was not in his lexicon.  Bush on the other hand, is derided as a religious man ... and he is .. but his policies are driven by pragmatism and not by a personal religious dogma.

This is now posted at www.myemailstuff.blogspot.com   vic www.me3tv.org

 

 

 LOOK IN THE MIRROR, JIMMY CARTER

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

 

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

 

     Gracious as ever, Jimmy Carter says that when it comes to international relations, the presidency of George W. Bush has set an all-time low. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette last week, "this administration has been the worst in history."

 

     Former presidents don't usually insult their successors quite so blatantly, and Carter's slur, not surprisingly, drew international attention. Whereupon he claimed that his remarks had been "maybe careless or misinterpreted" and insisted: "I was certainly not talking personally about any president." No, of course not.

 

     If "Pot Calling a Kettle Black" were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records, Carter would be a shoo-in for the upcoming edition. History's ultimate judgment on Bush may not be known for some time, but its verdict on Carter, who vacated the White House 26 years ago, seems clear enough. And that verdict is -- well, let's just say he would be well-advised not to toss around phrases like "worst in history" when the conversation turns to presidential performance.

 

     Christopher Hitchens this week recalled arguing with Eugene McCarthy, a lifelong liberal who had voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. McCarthy was unapologetic about crossing party lines. Carter, he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."

 

     The worst of the 20th century, at any rate. During the Carter years, America's international standing went into freefall.  The 39th president entered the White House as the tide in the Cold War was turning in the Soviet Union's favor. Vietnam and Cambodia had fallen to the communists, and Marxist governments had seized power in Mozambique, Angola, and Ethiopia as well. Yet the new president went out of his way to dismiss principled anticommunism as foolish paranoia: "We are now free of that inordinate fear of communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear," he said in a Notre Dame commencement address 30 years ago this week. Instead of acting forcefully to block any further expansion of communist power, Carter sought to appease it.

 

     Before long, he was slashing billions of dollars from the defense budget, canceling the B-1 bomber program, and ordering US missiles removed from South Korea. He welcomed the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua, and provided the junta with $90 million in aid, disregarding what Lane Kirkland, head of the AFL-CIO, called "Nicaraguas headlong rush into the totalitarian camp." He began diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's dictatorship, unperturbed by the thousands of Cuban troops fighting with Marxist forces in Africa. As Moscow engaged in a vast military buildup and cultivated an international network of terrorists, the Carter administration sliced hundreds of intelligence positions at the CIA.

 

     Not until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan did the scales finally fall from Carters eyes. Moscows naked aggression, he said, "made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets ultimate goals are than anything theyve done in the previous time Ive been in office."

 

     Toward those who warned that American weakness was dangerously provocative, Carter was scornful -- "simplistic," he said of Ronald Reagan in October 1980, "jingoistic ... shooting from the hip." Toward tyrants and goons, on the other hand, he was creepily unctuous. "A great and courageous leader" who "believes in human rights" was Carters description of Yugoslav dictator Marshal Tito. To Romanias brutal Nicolae Ceausescu, the president fawned : "Our goals are the same ... to let the people of the world share in growth, in peace, in personal freedom ... in enhancing human rights." His sycophancy in the face of malevolence was memorably captured in photographs that showed him kissing Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev at a 1979 summit in Vienna, just months before the invasion of Afghanistan.

 

     Worst of all was the Carter administrations supine response to the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran later the same year. When Carter hinted that he might use military force to end the crisis and free the 52 US diplomats being held in captivity, he was mocked by the Ayatollah Khomeini. "He is beating on an empty drum," Khomeini sneered. "Neither does Carter have the guts for military action nor would anyone listen to him." The hostages were not released until Reagan was sworn in as president, 444 days after they were taken captive.

 

     The fruits of Carters spinelessness have been bitter, says scholar Steven Hayward, author of *The Real Jimmy Carter.* The fall of Iran, he observes, "set in motion the advance of radical Islam and the rise of terrorism that culminated in Sept. 11." Similarly, by doing nothing to prevent the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter invited an evil from which grew the jihadist violence that is such a dangerous menace today.

 

     It took Americans only four years to realize what a disaster Carter had been; they booted him out in 1980 by a 44-state landslide. "The worst in history," he says of Bush. Look who's talking.

 

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.) 

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Jeff Jacoby welcomes comments and reads all his mail. Unfortunately, he receives so many letters that he cannot answer each one personally.

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George Bush Speech - not

The speech George W. Bush SHOULD give:

Normally, I start these things out by saying "My Fellow Americans."

Not doing it this time. If the polls are any indication, I don't know who more than half of you are anymore.  I do know something terrible has happened, and that you're really not fellow Americans any longer.

I'll cut right to the chase here: I quit. Now before anyone gets all in a lather about me quitting to avoid impeachment, or to avoid prosecution or something, let me assure you: there's been no breaking of laws or impeachable offenses in this office.

The reason I'm quitting is simple. I'm fed up with you people.

I'm fed up because you have no understanding of what's really going on in the world. Or of what's going on in this once-great nation of ours. And the majority of you are too damned lazy to do your homework and figure it out.

Let's start local. You've been sold a bill of goods by politicians and the news media.  Polls show that the majority of you think the economy is in the tank. And that's despite record numbers of homeowners including record numbers of MINORITY homeowners. And while we're mentioning minorities, I'll point out that minority business ownership is at an all-time high. Our unemployment rate is as low as it ever was during the Clinton Administration. I've mentioned all those things before, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in.

Despite the shock to our economy of 9/11, the stock market has rebounded to record levels and more Americans than ever are participating in these markets. Meanwhile, all you can do is whine about gas prices, and most of you are too damn stupid to realize that gas prices are high because there's increased demand in other parts of the world, and because a small handful of noisy idiots are more worried about polar bears and beach front property than your economic security.

We face real threats in the world. Don't give me this "blood for oil" thing. If I was trading blood for oil I would've already seized Iraq's oil fields and let the rest of the country go to hell. And don't give me this 'Bush Lied People Died' crap either. If I was the liar you morons take me for, I could've easily had chemical weapons planted in Iraq so they could be 'discovered.' Instead, I owned up to the fact that the intelligence was faulty. Let me remind you that the rest of the world thought Saddam had the goods, same as me. Let me also remind you that regime change in Iraq was official US policy before I came into office. Some guy named 'Clinton' established that policy. Bet you didn't know that, did you?

You idiots need to understand that we face a unique enemy. Back during the cold war, there were two major competing political and economic models squaring off. We won that war, but we did so because fundamentally, the Communists wanted to survive, just as we do. We were simply able to outspend and out-tech them. That's not the case this time.

The soldiers of our new enemy don't care if they survive. In fact, they want to die. That'd be fine, as long as they weren't also committed to taking as many of you with them as they can. But they are. They want to kill you. And the bastards are all over the globe.You should be grateful that they haven't gotten any more of us here in the United States since September 11. But you're not. That's because you've got  no idea how hard a small number of intelligence, military, law enforcement and  homeland security   people have worked to make sure of that.

 When this whole mess started, I warned you that this would be a long and difficult fight. I'm disappointed how many of you people think a long and difficult fight amounts to a single season of 'Survivor'.

Instead, you've grown impatient. You're incapable of seeing things through the long lens of history, the way our enemies do. You think that wars should last a few months, a few years, tops.  Making matters worse, you actively support those who help the enemy. Every time you buy the New York Times, every time you send a donation to a cut-and-run Democrat's political campaign, well, dammit, you might just  as well FedEx a grenade launcher to a Jihadist. It amounts to the same  thing.

In this day and age, it's easy enough to find the truth. It's all over the Internet. It just isn't on the pages of the New York Times or on NBC News. But even if it were, I doubt you'd be any smarter. Most of you would rather watch American Idol.

I could say more about your expectations that the government will always be there to bail you out, even if you're too stupid to leave a city that's below sea level and has a hurricane approaching. I could say more about your insane belief that government, not your own wallet, is where the money  comes from. But I've come to the conclusion that were I to do so, it would sail right over your heads.

So I quit. I'm going back to Crawford. I've got an energy-efficient house down there (Al Gore could only dream) and the capability to be fully self-sufficient. No one ever heard of Crawford before I got elected, and as soon as I'm done here pretty much no one will ever hear of it again. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to die of old age before the last pillars of America fall.

Oh, and by the way, Cheney's quitting too. That means Pelosi is your new President. You asked for it. Watch what she does carefully, because I still have a glimmer of hope that there are just enough of you remaining who are smart enough to turn this thing around in 2008.

So that's it. God bless what's left of America. Some of you know what I mean.

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See what's  on at www.me3tv.org

and www.incountry.blogspot.com

 

Fathers, Sons And Brothers

IRAQ - Soldiers and families. Alas when coming from 60 min. we must view with a trained eye for bias, but the story has merit.
http://60minutes.yahoo.com:80/segment/71/fathers_sons_and_brothers

Army Air Corps Bombs POW's in WW2

Click To Play

Three veterans of WW2 talk about an incident that put them all in the same place one day. Two are former POW's who were in Japanese ships being bombed by the other veteran. The story of the POWS is recounted in more detail at www.usshouston.org. A video about the epic story of the USS Houston is available from www.buzcreek.com .

Army Air Corps Bombs POW's in WW2

Click To Play

Three veterans of WW2 talk about an incident that put them all in the same place one day. Two are former POW's who were in Japanese ships being bombed by the other veteran. The story of the POWS is recounted in more detail at www.usshouston.org. A video about the epic story of the USS Houston is available from www.buzcreek.com .