Merry Christmas To All

Happy Thanksgiving

The West Wing, both fairly and unfairly, took a lot of crap as The Left Wing, but despite the libtard leanings of its actors and production staff more off-camera than on, it mostly wasn't that. It was mainly, and most belovedly, a yearning for America and the White House staff at the best we wish they were, and want them to be. 

For the first four seasons, under the helm of creator and chief screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, one of the most brilliant wordsmiths of all time where any script is concerned, it was mostly an attempt to cobble together, using cinematic immunity, a far better representation of those in government they wished  they had than the Democrats could ever get from such real-life execrable human mediocrities foisted on the republic as Jimmy Peanut, Fat Bill, Obozo, and Dopey Gropey Joe, or any of their lesser minions.

And for those moments, I think he ought to be forgiven for the lesser jabs and earnest fantasies, and given the accolades due for the moments when entertainment was made to serve a greater truth.

You have our warmest best wishes on this holiday, and we only hope you can use it to celebrate the best this country is and can be, and to give thanks to whatever power or deity you recognize to maintain and sustain it in its better state, rather than its worst moments. Take a moment to remember and help those less fortunate, and to consider those who must needs be far from home and family on this holiday weekend because of work and duty.

We have much yet to do, but much more for which to be truly thankful today.

May God bless and keep you and yours today, and all days.

Absent Comrades

h/t Borepatch

Easter Sunday Music: Jesus Has Risen

Merry Christmas

May your Christmas wishes come true.
P.S.: Don't shoot your eye out.

Benediction

 

Unplug. Enjoy your holiday weekend. Nothing's going up here except Sunday Music and a holiday message this side of Tuesday. Probably won't even update comments before then.

Watch an appropriate movie.

Listen to quality music.

Eat too much, if you can.  Share with others less fortunate, if you can.

Be the Grinch at the end of the story, and keep Christmas like Scrooge at the end of the tale instead of the beginning.

All the nastiness and strife in the world will keep for a few days. Take a holiday, and let if go for a weekend. We promise, it'll be right where you left it all too soon.

Recharge your spiritual battery. Enjoy the blessings of the season with friends and family, with our warmest wishes for a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

Be A Man Among Men

Epic Moments

Happy Thanksgiving to one and all.

The Great Anniversary Festival

 

"[Independence Day] will be the most important [period of time] in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this forward forever more.

You will think me transported with enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can se that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not." - John Adams, July 1776, in a letter to his wife, Abigail

As SiG noted today, you can always go back to bitching and moaning about the problems tomorrow; they'll all still be here on the 5th.

Enjoy the holiday. And perhaps give at least a passing nod to "solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty". It surely couldn't hurt.

Sunday Music: Jesus Has Risen

 

I've posted this one before. And may do it again. I heard it live and in-person, when it was still fresh news to me. The song still rings true, pushing towards 50 years later, and with where the world is careening day after day, it's ever more necessary to note it on this Day Of Days. What you do with it is your business. Truly.

Sunday Music: Merry Christmas

 

Happy Thanksgiving

 

We will be working as a lifeguard in the shallow end of the gene pool most of the weekend, so posting is expected to be light, and hopefully light-hearted.

In which vein we offer our annual favorite TV moment ever, which still cracks us up as much as the night we saw it, when first broadcast. Enjoy.

The Line

 

Besides myself, and two tours with the guys whose birthday I talked about yesterday:

Neice who pulled a tour as an Army medic during the GWOT.

Younger brother who served as a Cold War tanker in the Fulda gap, and punched one Baader-Meinhoff terrorist's ticket on guard duty one night.

Older brother who served in Da Nang, and a string of outposts in the farthest reaches of I Corps in Vietnam in '66-'67.

Cousin who led a rifle company of Marines in Vietnam, same time frame, and eventually put in decades in both Marine and USAF reserves.

Uncle who was killing communists with the Army on the DMZ in 1951, and brought back some Nork- or Chinese-carried Japanese Arisaka as a war trophy.

Father who was ground crew in the USAAC in WWII. During which time he met mom, which is how I came to be here.

Grandfather, who left the backwoods as a boy, and sailed around the world on a light cruiser in Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet a decade before WWI. I have his Shellback certificate from crossing the equator festivities at the Galapagos Islands in 1908.

Those are just the ones I know about firsthand, but per the genealogically inclined relatives, the line apparently stretches back to at least the late unpleasantness of the 1860s, to both sides.

Surviving US military veterans all. Just one family's contribution to the maintenance of the republic, and like all the rest who did their part, the reason for the US holiday today.

Those of you who never served, and never will, owe them a small debt of gratitude for the country you enjoy today. If you get the chance, pay a little of it back to the ones you meet, as the opportunity arises.

Memorial Day

If you are able, save them a place inside you

And save one backward glance when you are leaving

For the places they can no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say you loved them,

Though you may, or may not have always.

Take what they have left, or what they have taught you

With their dying, and keep it as your own.

And in that time when men decide, or feel safe,

To call the war insane, take one moment

To embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.

                    - Maj. Michael Davis O'Donnell

                      KIA, Cambodia, March 1970

We'll remind those who need it that this day is not to wish any veteran a "thank you" for their service.

Unless you're doing it while laying a wreath at their gravesite.

But it's okay to enjoy a ball game, a picnic, a long holiday. They'd not begrudge you that. Just take a moment to recall that they bought it for you, and gave up all their tomorrows, to pay for your today.

And take a moment, if only in your heart, "to embrace those gentle heroes left behind".

Sunday Music: Christ The Lord Is Risen Today

 

It's not about bunnys and chocolate eggs. Bigger things are afoot.

Advent

 

Blogcation is in effect.

I would suggest turning off your computer the rest of the weekend, and enjoying time with your loved ones. And before you go, enjoy this classic, masterfully done, and so apropos.

Merry Christmas.

A Visit From St. Nicholas

 

The post title is the original one of probably the best-known poem in American history. You know it by the following title:

And more than its equal in prose, the best-known and most beloved work of Dickens' entire life, done best by George C. Scott at the height of his powers, and with a stellar supporting cast, here in its entirety (with a couple of interludes):

"It was said of Ebenezer Scrooge that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge."

Present Arms

 

Ignore Gropey Dopey and Kneepads the Twatwaffle, and use the day as it was intended.

Give no thought to how dark the days are now. Our turn may come, but when it does, we will join our fathers, in whose mighty company we need not be ashamed.

"He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of Hosts is with us."

Memorial Weekend

John Wilder has some thoughts on the occasion for this weekend's holiday.

We commend it to your reading.

Great essay.

Wrong tense. 

I'm afraid that was the essay for last Memorial Day weekend.

"If...then" has become "Because...when".

SCOTUS voted last January that the Constitution doesn't apply to America. It's too late to take that move back (short of ritual seppuku by at least five of the bastards, a consummation devoutly to be wished).

The Constitution is as dead as canned tuna. 

All that's left now is the smell when you open the can.

We don't have to talk about sacrifices on foreign shores with foreign names.

Pointe du Hoc is coming to your town and mine.

For some people's towns (Portland...Seattle...Minneapolis...Chicongo...etc.), it's already there.

The only question left for actual Americans is whether they're willing to Ranger up, and hit the beach.

And while I'm up, let's don't sell out those second-gen Americans quite so fast.

That'd be me.

While mom's side of the family goes back to the 1600s on this continent, with a pedigree that'd impress the bluest blue-nosed New England snob, dad's parents were both off-the-boat Ellis Island graduates: granddad from Ireland, and grandma from Germany. Around the turn of the last century. Both dead before I was born.

Dad was the first generation of his family native-born American.

That makes me a second-generation one, just as much as a tenth generation one.

There are Americans everywhere. Even now. Some of them just weren't born here.

We used to be choosey and select them out from amongst the rotten fruit of the grifters just looking to make a buck off the rest of us without working for it. (And no, paying a coyote and bussing tables is not "working for it". Ever.) They'll never be Americans if they live here for centuries. They're simply Turd World hobos from Shitholia and Trashcanistan, who never "got" America, and never will. Thieves sneak over the fence. Honest people come in the front door. And they knock first, and ask permission. And every legal immigrant knows that in their bones too. Illegals should get one second chance after deportation. Second offense should be a lifetime ban from ever legally residing here, for any reason, including tourism. Three such offenses should be life imprisonment at hard labor. And repatriation of your remains when you died, back to Shitholia or Trashcanistan.

Half of this country, including those born here who should know better, wants to destroy America, even the very idea of it.

Life imprisoned at hard labor, and repatriation of their remains to outside the territorial limit off the coast seems a fitting end for them, too. With no marker, and removal from all records, as if they never existed. Let's call it "retroactive abortion".

Our country: Our choice, right?

Make that executive order #1 of a future Aesop administration.

Ratified by popular acclaim.

Because we don't select emperors in this country.

We elect temporary Chief Executives.

And we've seen what being without one of those for just over four months has gotten us. It only gets worse from here.

Loosen your packs and helmets, and don't bunch up.

We're about to hit the beach.

Ready or not, whether you wanted to or not.

Happy Easter

 

Merry Christmas

 

Enjoy the holiday.