The Real Meaning of Memorial Day

Today, May 30th, 2016, is Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is dedicated to the many heroic soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and members of the Coast Guard who have given their lives in the defense of our Great Country.

In fact, a total of 1,217,273 brave souls* have died in combat since the Revolutionary War began.  And today is dedicated to their memory.  

They all made the ultimate sacrifice for their Country.  Had they not done so, we could very well be speaking British English now, or even German or Japanese.  

More than 2,400 veterans are dying every day.  More than 400 World War 2 veterans are counted among that number. Those remaining are in the nineties.  And less than 16,000 of them remain.  

More than 50,000 soldiers, sailors and Marines, as an example, died just in the assault on Okinawa!  That statistic should be staggering to anyone who contemplates the enormity of war, and America's commitment to keeping our wonderful Country safe and secure.

Our commitment to winning the Second World War was total. Our Country dedicated more than 50% of our Gross National Product to winning it.  More than 16,000,000 Americans took part in this Great War.  405,399* died while fighting it. 

The average age of those sailors and soldiers and Marines was nineteen.  Nineteen!  Nineteen year-olds today seem to need a "safe place" to go and suck their thumb when they get offended.

Americans who couldn't take part in the War personally did so here at home by conserving food, fuel and natural resources, and by buying War Bonds to finance the effort. As a baby born during the height of WWII, I recall my father saving up War stamps our Government issued back then so he could use them to buy a bag of sugar, or flour, or potatoes, or even a new set of tires for the family car.  That's because the boys "over there" needed these items more than we did.

Our Country's total commitment to the War was demonstrated by the Ford Motor Company's Willow Run, Michigan's assembly plant's capability of putting out a brand spanking-new B-24 Liberator bomber in just over three and one-half hours! That's start to finish!  They built thousands of them, for thousands of them were needed to defeat the Axis Powers.

For a Country that now has great difficulty in keeping its planes flying and its ships sailing, with the smallest military we've had since before WWII began (!) (the subject of another posting to come), we should be in awe of what can be accomplished when we're all focused on a achieving a common objective.  We should try that again some time.

Today, in the era of all volunteer service, less than 1% of our citizens have served their Country in uniform!  

I am among that number.

The remaining 99% should enjoy their hamburgers and hot dogs and ribs and potato salad and icy cold beer today.  But while doing so, they should also take a moment to silently pay their respects to the generations of fine Americans who went off to war before them and made the ultimate sacrifice so we could all enjoy a barbecue and a day off.


So, simply saying to a veteran, "Thank you for your service," while surely appreciated, could well ring hollow unless the underlying understanding of what it takes in terms of bravery and commitment to don the uniform and go off to war is contemplated.  

Seek out a vet.  Shake his or her hand.  Wish him or her well. And say, "Thank you for your service." And mean it.  He or she will appreciate it.  And you will be better off for it...

* best available statistics.  

Observation, Humbly Offered...

As this is written, our Fearless(ful?) Leader, one Mr. B. Hussein Obama, is in Viet Nam to announce that our decades-old embargo against the sale of weaponry to these nice folks is being rescinded. The same folks, you might recall, who killed off a big chunk of an entire generation of our young men and women in uniform back in the 1960's and 1970's.

Yet, juxtaposed against that rather jarring factoid, Mr. Obama is still doing his level best here at home to disarm all of us good, solid, red-blooded, God-fearing, completely vetted and law-abiding 'Muricans.

One simply must ask, "Why?"  

He obviously doesn't fear a bunch of communists, who have proven themselves more than willing to strap themselves to a tree branch for who knows how long, armed to the teeth, just waiting for a G.I. to come looking for them, running around hither and thither with the newest, nicest, most powerful and lethal, shiny new made-in-America guns, rockets, bazookas, artillery, fighter planes and bombs, yet continues to pine for a time when Jim Bob and Luther will have to fork over their semi-automatic pistols, rifles and shotguns (how about that for a good long sentence?).  

All I can figure is that he is in favor of the Vietnamese form of government and wishes ours was more like theirs.  Then, he could simply wave his imperious, un-calloused, carefully manicured hand and all of our three-plus-million guns would simply vanish. He could then have his figurative way with us, you know, the Great Unwashed.  It would be soooo much simpler, then, to eliminate our freedoms, crank up our taxes, redistribute our existing wealth and enshrine himself into the pantheon of American lordship without fear that Jim Bob and Luther would come after his imperious little butt.

Or, unlike his anti-gun self, so famous for having said, on videotape, doncha' know, that he didn't believe us ordinary Americans should be permitted to own guns (!), he could take a page out of The Donald's playbook.  Don Don has mastered the art of equivocation.  Brought it to a new level of sophistication, he has!  Just this past weekend, as an example, while being interviewed on Fox New Channel's early morning "Fox and Friends," he was asked whether he thought guns should be allowed into America's classrooms. He said, and I quote:

     "I don't want to have guns in classrooms.  Although, in some cases, teachers should have guns in classrooms."  He went on to add, "I'm not advocating guns in classrooms.  In some cases - and a lot of people have made this case - teachers should be able to have guns, these teachers should be able to have guns in classrooms."

Maybe that's why Obama has been named America's Best Gun Salesman of All Time and The Donald just earned the National Rifle Association's endorsement for President of the United States...

The Evil of Two Lessers...

So it's come down to this?  With somewhere around 330,000,000 people in America, not counting 10 or 12 or 18 or 50 million illegals, and a bunch of ISIS/ISIL/Al Queadeedada/Al Gore, and some number of foreign spies, and no doubt a significant number of those who arrived via UFO's, intermarried and are now teaching at the University of Chicago, the very best we can do is Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for President of the United States of America? The U. S. of A?  Really? 

Really?

As a good loyal 'Murican I must tell you I find this hard to believe!  With a starting lineup of a whole bunch of the very most qualified candidates in the history of our Country, we're left with these two?  Like, we're living in some sort of Bizarro World! Trump or Clinton?  Really?

In normal times, we're faced with choosing between the lesser of two evils at election time.  Today?  I suggest it is rather the evil of two lessers.  And here's why:

On the one side we have a woman who wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley on her hero, Saul Alinsky.  He's the guy who wrote "Rules for Radicals."  That's the tome that advocates the destruction of capitalist America from within to turn it, by any means necessary, forcibly or otherwise, into a socialist utopia.  By the way, our Mr. B. Hussein Obama is a very big fan of Alinsky and his little book and has been using his methods to "fundamentally transform America."  (For those of you who have been living in a dumpster behind Wal-Mart, this is what Barry O. promised during his January 15, 2009 speech, just five days before he was immaculated...the libby bozo.).

A woman who somehow managed to join in the Watergate Hearings during the effort to oust Tricky Dick Nixon from office.  Oh yeah, she was fired for lying under oath.  And lying became Hill's raison detre.  She's done almost nothing else since...

A closet socialist royalty-wannabe who has ridden the coattails of her serial sexual-predator hubby, Billy Jeff "Blue Dress" Clinton, into success she truly does not deserve. An aging woman of questionable health, no more than middling intellect and minimal political skills who, after failing her D.C. Bar exam, managed somehow to turn a Yaley law degree into becoming Arkansas's's's First Lady, carpetbag Senator of New York, Barry O's frequent-flyer Secretary of State, and now uber-rich Prez candidate with about $500 million in ill-gotten gains tucked safety away under a mattress somewhere. And all she had to do to achieve this level of wealth and fame was to trade influence to the Arkansas Statehouse, the White House, and then the State Department in exchange for gargantuan donations to her unscrupulous foundations. 

A woman whose voice is quite a lot like the sound a rusty file makes when vigorously and rapidly rubbed against spring steel.  A sound that is eerily similar to that made by a blue tick hound at full bay whilst treeing a terrified raccoon.  A sound that's similar to a runaway leaf blower brandished by an illegal alien early on a Sunday morning when you're trying your very best to sleep off a hard night on the town. A screeeeech that confounds the senses and makes the nerve endings vibrate eerily.  A sound that cannot be duplicated nor forgotten. Very unfortunately.  A sound that if played over the loudspeaker at GITMO's little jail, would guarantee those jihadist killer buttholes would swear to whomever to never, ever, ever go back to the battlefield if their keepers would just - please Mohammmmmed - STOP THAT NOISE! 

A sound that, when accented with a laugh, is much more a cackle.  A laugh that usually precedes your entrance into the House of Horrors when the carnival comes to town.  A laugh that comes at the most inappropriate moments.  A laugh that would however be appropriate as she lifts off on Broom Force One.  A laugh that's so unnerving as to cause milk to curdle. Yes, my friends, you know her as Hil(liar)y Clinton. The maybe, please God, hopefully not, never, ever, Pantsuit-in-Chief!

And on the other, we have a guy who was born on third base and thought he'd hit a triple.  An orange guy with a bushel basket full of cotton candy hair.  A guy who starts every single sentence with "I will tell you this!" And inserts "believe me! believe me!," and "very, very," and "millions and millions," and "am I right?," at least three times in every paragraph that tumbles willy nilly from his overactive mouth.  A guy who doesn't drink and doesn't smoke and doesn't do drugs, but makes up for all those non-vices by vicing the crap out of things by tweeting his ass off all day and all night.

A guy who will swear to something during a debate and tell you the very next day that he absolutely never said it, and sometimes just a few minutes later.  Or maybe even in the same sentence!  A guy who never had a business go upside down, he says, except for the very many that did, of course. A guy who, when asked to comment on a recent primary victory, said "I won bigly."  "Bigly?"  l know I make up words, but hey, I'm not running for POTUS!

A guy who is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, but rather a "Trumpian."  A guy who, depending upon when you ask him, is both for and against increasing taxes, hiking the minimum wage, building a wall on the Meheeeekan border, defunding Planned Parenthood, eliminating NATO, and recommending every single country on Earth have its own unending supply of nuclear weapons.  

A narcissistic, bombastic, buffoonish, egomanical, bloviating, blusterous, scowling, rude, crude, conniving, intimidating, misogynistic, carnival barker ruffian bully clown who has mastered the ability to say lots and lots of stuff at a fourth-grade level with machine gun rapidity, without ever uttering a single coherent thought.  A guy who is the smartest, the quickest, the coolest, the nicest, the toughest and the very most important POTUS candidate, except for Abraham Lincoln, of course, that ever lived. Or so he says.  

Some of us know better.  A guy who turned a very "small loan" of just $1 Million Dollars from his daddy, plus a "small inheritance" of somewhere north of $100 Million into his gargantuan empire.  (Full disclosure:  I turned a very "small loan" of $150 from my daddy into my first car, a very used 1953 Chevy. And I had to pay it back, with interest.  BTW, I loved that car!). His name is Donald John Trump. It used to be Donald John Drumpf, before daddy changed it).  The maybe next Media Star and Deal Maker-in-Chief. But you knew that.

However, given that we're heading into the General Election Season, and knowing that these two presumptive candidates, the most hated persons in America, the two politicians with the absolute worst negatives of any who have ever pursued The Office, will do their best to eviscerate each other over the next several months, I thought it might prove helpful to give you a little deeper dive into each of them as they prepare to run for President of the United states.  They will tear into each other with viggah, I tell you! They will explore each others' weaknesses, gaffes, foiables, duplicities, mischarac-terzations, misrepresentations, sexual proclivities and outright, bald-faced lies.  And each will present, using Top Gun-speak, a very "target rich environment" for the other.  

And so, my friends, and you are my friends, I will attempt over the coming weeks to provide you, my legions of loyal readers, with the inside dope on each of these remarkably flawed - and talented - candidates, and with some of the stuff they might each choose to use to disembowel the other in front of all to see.  In fact, maybe they'll choose to do so on Pay-per-View.  Stay tuned.  It should be interesting...   

Epilogue:  In closing, I prayed to God before the Primary Season began to grant me enough more life to see the process through; to watch our Country go through the "sausage making" to the point where we had selected a shiny new President of the United States.  A POTUS actually qualified for the office for the very first time in eight years. I wonder if there's someone out there in Internet Land who knows how to rescind a prayer?

Let's Adopt Meheeeeeko's Immigration Policies!

To all you wonderful folks who have been waiting breathlessly for the next installment from The Chuckmesiter, your faithful correspondent, here 'tis...

In response to the cacophony of positive commentary I received from my tens of rabid followers about including old TV opening themes in my postings, I've decided to throw you all a bone once again.  So here is the opening theme music from the wildly popular 1960's Batman TV series.  Ready?

     "Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Batman!  Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Batman!  Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Batman!  Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da Batman!  Batman!  Batman!  Batman!  Batman!  Batman!"

You're welcome.  Now on to the subject of this posting.

A major reason, some would say the major reason The Donald's campaign has caught fire is his position on illegal immigration.  Regardless of what you think of him, whether Internet-era reality show billionaire visionary super famous rock star, or circus clown loudmouth self-satisfied ego-maniacal rude crude buffoon jerk, he's touched a nerve within the electorate which has forever altered the way we view, and conduct, our elections. And because of him, we've been hearing more and more about 'Murica's need to reform our immigration policies.

Yes, my friends, and you are my friends, America's borders are like Swiss Cheese. Without the cheese part, of course. Just a bunch of gigantic, gaping, enormous holes. Holes through which millions of Mexicans and Central Americans and Cubans and who-knows-who-else pour through on their way to Valhalla.  We have a few miles of effective fencing from the Pacific Ocean heading inland just south of San Diego.  And then from there heading east for, oh, about 1,760 miles, not so much.  

The Trumpster wants to build a fence all across the Mexican - American border, and force the Mexicans to pay for it.  They say they will not!  Actually, their previous President said "No" with an "F" word thrown in for emphasis. One has to wonder just how tall such a wall would have to be to prevent some Chinese ladder manufacturer from creating one tall enough to scale it. Whatever, "the Wall" has ignited - some say reignited - a national dialogue over this signature issue for our 2016 General Election.

The Rio Grande, which means Grand River in Meheeekano, doncha' know, is a natural barrier between us and that big 3rd-world country to the south.  But it is unfortunately about three feet deep in most places.  And so that "natural barrier" isn't such a big barrier it turns out after all.  Millions of illegals have streamed across it, barely getting their feet wet, much less their backs, setting up shop and insinuating themselves into our society.  

That's been going on, pretty much unabated, since we stole Mexico from our brown brothers down there fair and square via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. That Treaty ended the Mexican-American War, during which we kicked their asses, and took the area previously known as "Alta California" as our spoils.  That "area" was a vast stretch of real estate from the Border north to San Francisco, and then east covering a dozen states or so and on to west Texas.  It represented about a quarter of what became the United States.  So winning this big chunk of dirt was kind of important to us, and one can certainly understand that losing it was a pretty big blow to the Mexicans.  

They not only took the loss hard, they have still failed to come to terms with it.  In fact, they refuse to accept its legitimacy. That's why they call the border between us "La Frontera," or The Frontier. That's also why they don't consider it a crime to cross it without our permission.  They feel breaking into our country is their right, not a privilege. And they feel that coming here, taking our jobs, and our subsistence, and a free education for their newly-minted American citizen kids, and then sending home the money they earn as just payback for our having screwed them out of a big portion of their land.   They call such payments "remittances,"  and it turns out to represent about $20 Billion a year in hard currency.  That's big bucks to Mexico's economy.  So their biggest export is oil, and second is their poor.  Think of that.  They send us their poor so they don't have to feed and clothe and house and educate them, and then welcome the dollars they send back.  And we seem to embrace that stark reality with open arms.

Some of us are pretty pissed about that.  Some, particularly of Liberal persuasion, not so much. But all would say we need to do something, even if it's wrong. Particularly because that "3rd-world country to the south" doesn't seem to share our same idea of immigration laws.     

In fact, about the only ray of sunshine about this upside-down immigration situation is that our economy has soured under the reign of B. Hussein Obama, and Mexico's has improved quite a bit. A major reason has been that many American companies have relocated their manufacturing there so as to avoid our increasingly onerous taxes and tremendously burdensome rules and regulations. It seems we can't keep out  Mexicans and we can't keep in corporations.  Thus, the flood of immigrants our way has slowed a bit, with many heading back down south where the jobs picture has improved considerably.  

You wouldn't think that Mexico would ever, ever complain about our immigration laws unless theirs was above reproach, would you?  Me neither.  But they do.  Often.  And loudly!  So I decided to do a little research on behalf of my tens of loyal readers and see how their immigration laws stack up with our own.  Drum roll please.  The results:

If you break into Mexico without permission, you get two years in their Graybar Hotel, at hard labor.  And their idea of "hard labor" is quite a bit different from our own.  Put simply, no flat screen TV for you, Gringo.  You then get deported, if you're still alive, that is.

If you break in again, and they catch you, it's ten years' hard labor!  Of course, if you try to come in from countries across Mexico's southern border, such as Nicaragua, El Salvador or Guatemala, you'll face their entrenched army and a bevy of machine guns pointed in your direction.  In other words, don't try to break in. Think we should try some of that?  I'm thinking some pay-per-view of Mexicans facing down our chattering machine guns could help us reduce our ballooning Federal debt quite a bit.

But assuming you emigrate to Mexico legally, and that's not easy, you'll then face a daunting list of conditions.  It will take you at least a year and cost thousands of dollars to earn the privilege of a driver's license.  Here in Taxifornia we give, give drivers' license to illegals!  There?  You need to bend over backwards and pay through the nose to get one. NOTE: To those from other states (you lucky dogs!), Taxifornia issued more than 670,000 drivers' licenses to illegals last year, just over half of all those we handed out.  So those who can't be here legally, can now drive here legally, while being here illegally. I kid thee not.

There, you may not participate in any political actions, regardless of the type.  You may not run for political office. You have no freedom of speech.  You may not march, protest, wave signs and placards, desecrate their flag or attempt to influence public opinion. I think we could use some of that.  Remember reading about the illegal who graduated from one of Taxifornia's prestigious law schools awhile back, on a full-ride scholarship, no less, and then was awarded the right to practice law by our highest court?  Breathtaking. 

Mexican citizens in Mexico are given preference in hiring over foreign nationals, even those with visas and proper documentation. Here, Mexicans are given preference because they'll often work for less, "doing the jobs Americans won't do". 

Only citizens may serve in Mexico's police and armed forces, on airline crews, or at seaports and airports.  You may not obtain a pilot's license there or be an engineer on a train. Sounds a bit jingoistic, doesn't it?  

Members of both houses of their Congress and their Supreme Court must all be natural-born Mexicans. Immigrants - even legal ones - may not serve in their clergy. This racial profiling they practice down there is getting somewhat tiresome, don't you agree?  

Foreigners, legal or illegal, may not own land within 50 miles of any body of water, whether ocean, lake, river or stream. They may take possession through a type of holding company, however, but may not own such land directly. Here, we'll sell anything to anyone anywhere as long as they have a saddlebag full of cash.  

Think not?  Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged the sale of more than one-half of all our uranium production capability to a Russian company a few years back in exchange for a small $100 Million donation to her little tax-exempt Foundation.  Nice.

Any Mexican citizen may arrest illegals and their accomplices and turn them over to the authorities.  Foreigners, legal or otherwise, may be expelled at any time, for any reason, or for no reason.  Wait a minute!  Since about half of all Mexicans are already here, perhaps we should simply deputize them and put them to work arresting Mexican gang members! What a great idea!

According to their immigration laws, you will be barred from entry if your presence "...upsets the equilibrium of the national demographics."  You will not be granted legal residency unless you can "...contribute to the national progress," and that you have "...the necessary funds for sustenance."  Try some of that here and the ACLU would have your ass.

And once you finally get your visa, if you violate it, you're guilty of a felony, which gets you six years in the slammer. Think of that; it's a felony to violate their immigration laws by overstaying your legally-obtained visa.  Here?  It's a misdemeanor to break into our country, or overstay your visa.  NOTE:  It's estimated that up to half of all the illegals here are visa overstays.  And the ACLU and most Liberals would like to do away with that little impediment to signing up more voters-to-be.  There's more, but hey, space is limited, even for The Chuckmeister.

Well now, it would seem that those nice Mexicans must believe that their immigration laws are superior to our own. Otherwise, they wouldn't shoot off their mouths about how unfair we 'Muricans are to their exported poor.  It makes sense, then, for us to start the process of reconciliation by adopting theirs.  Then, working together with our most excellent friends and neighbors to the south, we can work jointly toward any mutually-beneficial compromises.  Maybe we can dig fox holes across the Rio Grande from each other, deploy our respective armies, with machine guns pointed at each other, and then wait for the next poor fool to dip a toe in those muddy, muddy waters... 

Just a thought...