The one problem that she had though is that she was in a minority.

Her brother was a Marine on duty in Afghanistan. Her father had been a Marine in Vietnam and her grandfather had survived the winters and the bullets of Korea while in the Army.

Miss Smith, because of family history, was a “Conservative”.

One morning on her way to school she heard something on the radio that disturbed her very much. She decided to try an experiment with her class.

“Who would like to pretend to be a General…..” but before she could finish her sentence little Willy Simpson was running to her desk waving both arms yelling, “Me. Me”

“You didn’t let me finish. We are going to play a little geography game today and the General will be the most important General today.

He will have to make a serious decision because he will be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Do you know what that means, Willy?”

“No Miss Smith.”

Willy was far from being the brightest kid in the class but she always appreciated his enthusiasm so she said, “OK Willy. You will be the General.”

She handed Willy a piece of string with a lot of knots in it.

“Willy, each one of those knots represents a thousand miles on the globe on the table over there.

Everyone who has watched TV must know where Iran is so Willy, put one end of the string in the center of Iran and hold it there. Move the string over to the Capitol of the United States, Washington, DC.

How far is it from Iran to our Capitol?”

Willy stretched out the string and said, “About six and a half knots.”

“Very good”, Miss Smith said, “That’s about six and a half thousand miles.”

“Now Willy, holding the string look at the globe and tell me what country is about two and a half knots from Iran.”

Willy looked and said, “Poland.”

“Very good Willy. Can you see the city that the string passes over?”

“Warsaw.”

“And what’s just past Poland?”

“The Baltic Sea.”

“Now General, suppose that someone in Iran wanted to shoot an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, an ICBM, at our Capitol and you wanted to shoot it down before it hit Washington would you want to shoot it down over the United States or somewhere else?”

“Probably somewhere else,” Willy answered.

“Willy, an ICBM travels very fast, about 15,000 miles per hour, and in ten minutes after it was fired it would pass over Poland. What would you do?”

General Willy answered, “I would ask the Polish people to shoot it down.”

Let’s get back to reality. If an ICBM fired from Iran fell short of it’s projected distance to Washington it would land in either New England or a bit further on, New York.

Do we have an anti-ballistic missile defense system in the US? According to the media we do not and will not until near the end of this decade.

Did we have an anti-ballistic missile system that could have been deployed in Poland?

Even a third-grader could figure that one out.

Copyright: John W. Malenda April  2010

A ‘Veteran’ — whether active duty, discharged, retired, or reserve — is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to ‘The United States of America,’ for an amount of ‘up to, and including his life.’ That is honor, and there are way too many people in this country today, who no longer understand that fact.

I am including in this posting the complete letter that appeared in The Day, our New London, Connecticut newspaper, on July23rd 2008. It was written by Michael Lewis of New London.

“The stars and stripes. What image do those words conjure up? For me it is the image of two tours of duty in Iraq fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom. My first tour was seven months. The second lasted three. That’s when the car bomb exploded. I am still full of shrapnel and have more scars than you can count in a day. To see the U.S. flag flying fills me with an enormous sense of pride and accomplishment.

I recently noticed a home improvement store in our area does not display the American flag. I approached the store manager to see what I could do to facilitate a change and was told, rudely, that this company is not interested in securing the necessary permits.

Where has our sense of pride gone? An American-owned store, in America, refuses to fly the flag. I am deeply offended – for me, other veterans and the six men in my platoon who died fighting to provide freedom for others. I am tired of Americans taking this country for granted.

I challenge all American businesses to fly the American flag and fly it proudly. It will be a poignant reminder to all.”

“Michael Lewis.”

This is MY opinion: This is, after all, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Why is it even necessary that anyone who wishes to fly the flag of this country is required to get a permit to do so?

If you live under the protection of the United States and you feel that your neighbor or the super market or the gas station does not have the right to fly the flag of this country then you don’t have the right to live here.

For a number of years I have been going to the same resort in Jamaica. Quite a few years ago I met the man who picks up trash and plastic cups from the beach, arranges the beach lounges and chairs for the next day and then rakes the beach.

He’s a Rastafarian as is his father and was his grandfather. They eat vegetables and some fish but not meat. They don’t believe in violence or war. They don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes but they do smoke marijuana. (A topic that I have planned to discuss in a future post).

He’s an interesting old guy who leaves the resort at the end of the day and walks to his home in the mountains.

He has been doing this for a long time. He told me that he had to cut off his ‘dreads’ that had reached to his knees in order to get this job.

I returned home yesterday bringing with me an interesting topic.

While sitting on the beach near the end of the day Pablito noticed that I started to pick up a plastic cup not too far from my lounge.

“No mon, leave it. I pick it up.”
I told him that it wasn’t mine and that I wouldn’t leave a cup on the beach.

“I know,” he said. ” Inside you Rasta too. But if everyone was like you who didn’t leave trash on the beach, I would have no job and my family would go hungry.”

Slobs do, after all, have a place in ‘the order of the universe”.

Since I posted the previous article I have talked with a number of people and everyone feels that it would restrict their freedom.

The second concern is if there were such a card could someone be arrested for not carrying it?

First, it would be an identification card not a government ‘tracking device”. The US government already has such a device. It is your credit or debit card.

If the government wanted to, they would know how much money you spend with respect to your income, what you buy and where and when. They could follow your activities in great detail at present if they wanted to.

They know the make, model and year of your automobile and knowing how much gas you purchase, they can know how far you drive in a year and where you have purchased gas therefore where you have been.

When I go to vote in Connecticut, I must present my driver’s license or I don’t get to vote. It’s as simple as that. The police don’t haul me away to prison.

We carry all sorts of “cards” today already. You have your driver’s license, your Social Security Card, your medical insurance or Medicare card, your library card and so on.
If you do not present that card you are not arrested, you simply do not receive some service appropriate to that card.

Now to the consequences as a result of NOT having this card.

Saudi terrorists would have been unable to obtain drivers licenses which they were able to use to receive flight training leading to pilot certificates in the US.

They would have been unable to board those large commercial aircraft.

The World Trade Towers would still be standing. Those lives would not have been lost. The US would not have gone into Afganistan. The US would not be fighting a war in Iraq.
Billions of dollars would be instead taking care of problems at home. Thousands of American servicemen would be alive today and more thousands would not be crippled.

A National Identity Card would have prevented all this.

What lies in store for us without this card?

It’s your decision.

I have to paraphrase the incident because I wasn’t paying enough attention at the time to record the actual words. We tend not to take notice until we realize that something of interest is taking place.

Anyway, the interviewer was stopping people on the street and asking them if they were for or against repeal of the 1975 (or some date) Bill of Income Adjustment.
He stated that most were for the repeal. What’s interesting is that there was no such bill!

Where I am going with this is that if one were to take a poll as to what the most important task for the new president would be, it would be a very different answer depending on where the poll was taken.
In Arizona, it might be border security. In Detroit it would be jobs. In New England it might be the economy. In San Francisco it might be the legalization of marijuana.
If the pollster takes his poll regarding war at a college he will find a much greater percentage of people against war. Why? These young people would be the ones required to carry the rifle.

How the question is asked also alters the answer.
Certainly the restrictive nature of the question, whether a “yes or no” answer is expected, when there is no clear answer possible to the question.
For instance, “Sir, do you still kick your dog when you get home from work every day?”

Everyone wants to be associated with a winner and unfortunately the polls can create winners.
We are seeing this effect at the present time with funding for some of the Presidential candidates drying up.
If polls are taken in specific regions that favor one candidate over another, people will shift their allegiance to the perceived winner.
This has been going on since primitive cultures formed and will continue forever.

For years my skeptical nature has caused me to ask, “Who’s telling you what and why?”

Beware how the pollster asks his questions and where he asks them for they can significantly influence the outcome of an election.

The pawns pay the price.

Ignoring the entire point of the book I have noticed that throughout history, wars have depleted the treasuries of the countries involved. If one country had more disposable gold than another, it usually won.

When both treasuries became empty a truce usually ended the fighting.
Often a country would attempt to borrow money from another country without success which caused the conflict to end. It was an interesting case of international politics and financing.

The world is a different place today. Perhaps the real reason that the Soviet Union collapsed was not because of Ronald Reagan but because it ran out of money.

This I don’t know with any certainty but it is probable.

Being a Korean War veteran I took the following oath:

“I DO SOLEMNLY SWEAR THAT I WILL SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC…SO HELP ME GOD.”

I still feel that way. I want my readers to be absolutely sure of my views regarding our military-past and present.

I am in favor of whatever it takes to preserve the United States and our way of life but I wonder who we will go to when we run out of money.

Not only are we dealing with the cost of the war itself but we are shipping our money by the bucketfuls to people who don’t have our best interests at heart and who may be stockpiling it to finance their war against us.

What if?