LEATHERNECKM31

Now... and then

Here's a good one about The Clintons' favorite source of ready cash... Tyson Foods. Debbie Schlussel reports that:

Well, folks, here it is--the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of America as we know it. Tyson Foods is now ending employees' paid day off for Labor Day and, instead, giving 'em the paid day off for the Muslim festival, Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. It is the most important holiday in Islam.

It will be interesting to see how Tyson calculates which day it is, since Muslims are never really sure on which day or two it falls until right before--and since Shi'ites and Sunnis frequently feud about when it falls.

Same thing happened with Cinco d-f'ing Mayo once the full on flood of wetbacks began invading our homeland and taking up positions in every state in the union.

This is but a small example of how our country is being attacked from within as well as without. Every facet of our lives has been breached... religion, marriage, patriotism, law, popular culture, language, entertainment and especially education.

The left's fifth columnists started opening open the gates during the 60s and now the barbarians are inside... "Gentlemen, prepare to defends yourselves."

This from 1999--I'm sure you remember: "Stupidity no color but ignorance sure is transparent. And ignorance showed through last week when Anthony Williams, the new black mayor of Washington, D.C., accepted the resignation of Public Advocate David Howard, who is white. Howard's offense was sounding offensive: In a staff meeting, he used a perfectly good word - ''niggardly'' - to describe the administration of a fund.

Which led to this: Wisconsin University student Amelia Rideau is upset that her professor used the 'N-ardly' word at least twice: Once on Jan. 25 during a class on 14th-century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, and once in a subsequent class to explain the word’s meaning.  Ms. Rideau was outraged, and is demanding the UW implement a speech code which would punish anyone using what she described as 'offensive' language - including the 'N-ardly' word.  She urged the university not to require proof of intent before punishing verbal villains such as her professor.

She's never heard of "due process" either.

I'm sure you'll agree the funniest thing in this story--other than affirmative action which allowed Ms. Rideau past the ivy-covered walls-- is that the Wisconsin Star-Trib used "N-ardly"; Or as Ms. Rideau pronounces it... "nard-lee". 

And if a newspaper is too frightened to use a perfectly good word, then a great deal of the battle for wisdom over ignorance is already lost. 

Now comes this:

Commissioner Defends 'Black Hole' as Racist Term

Dallas County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections and other court paperwork.

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, white, said that central collections "has become a black hole" intro which paperwork falls.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, black, interrupted him with a loud  "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, (surprise) to demand that Mayfield apologize for his racially insensitive analogy.

The honkey commissioners just laughed.

As a briefly famous black general said... "Don't git stuck on stoopid."

This from the WSJ via Debbie S.: The Department of Homeland Security has a new strategy to help deal with illegal immigration: self-deportation. This new "voluntary, self-deportation" program with a name as stupid as the idea: "Operation Scheduled Departure."

The numbers of course are staggering...

• 550,000 illegal aliens have received final deportation orders.
• 31,000 illegal aliens have been rounded and detained.
• Thus-- if ICE can only grab 31K of 550K ordered to be deported there's but a 5.6% chance of being caught. Wetbacks w/o a deport order have even less chance of being picked up by one of only 84 ICE fugitive teams.
• No wetback in his right mind heads south.

You're doin' a fine job "Cherty"

No for something to cleanse the palate:

Heroes

World War II hero and respected actor, Charles During received a tip on the hat with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame a couple of days ago.

He is the very last actor of his generation who also gave so much to our country in the military.

Like so many of the tough, unpampered men of his generation he lied about his age and forged his mom's signature on his enlistment papers.

Durning was in the first wave at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. He was captured during the Battle of the Bulge six months later; incredibly he survived the Nazi SS massacre of American POWS near Malmadey Belgium.

(Most people are unaware that the SS massacred more than 360 US POWs and more than 100 civilians during this time in the area around Malmadey.....  here. Durning was among some 40 Americans who escaped from the Malmadey group.) 

Durning was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts--one for being hit in both legs by German machine-gun fire.

Watching him in the great TV series "Rescue Me" with Denis Leary, it's clear his wounds caught up with him.  

Durning is well-known for participating in various functions to honor American veterans. He was the past chairman of the U.S. National Salute to Hospitalized Veterans

He is also a well-known participant in the National Fourth of July Celebration on the Washington DC Mall. 

We won't have him much longer, and then that era--so familiar to the WWII generation and fans of the great movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s-- will, save for memories, be gone.

Color-coding history

Okay. This is right in my wheelhouse.

Spike Lee, the director who seems to make only cache "black films" which do little business but are loved by guilt-ridden white critics, can't generate headlines with his work so the other day he called Clint Eastwood a "racist."

Lee couldn't carry Clint's .44 magnum... it weighs more than he does.

Lee attacked Clint because his two films--"Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" didn't give a co-starring role to the black Marines who served in non-combat units on the "sulphur island".

"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Soldier"? I thought we were talking about Marines.

(And of course, he's wrong anyway, one of the Lee trademarks: One of Eastwood's co-producers, Robert Lorenz  had to explain to Lee that 12 black extras were used in the landing scenes. "They are there in this film ... but the focus of this film is the story of the flag raisers. This film is very much about racism and the treatment of Ira Hayes, the Native American flag raiser.")

Yeah, Hayes had it tough as a Pima Indian in the Corps at that time, but it didn't dominate what I thought was a very flawed movie anyway.

Some historical facts:

There were some 700 black Marines on Iwo in non-combat roles---if there was such a designation on the hellish island. There primary tasks included running ammunition to the front lines, burying the dead, and unloading the amphibian crafts at the waters edge. My guess is that there were thousands of Puerto Rican, and even Brooklyn and New Jersey Marines who performed the same and similar tasks.

Guess what, Spike...? Eastwood didn't feature them in either movie.

Guess what #2.... in neither of Eastwood's Iwo movies (one from the perspective of the six Marines who raised the flag on Suribachi and the other from the perspective of THE JAPANESE) did not feature any black Marines.

Why...? Because they were not assigned to combat units; to portray them as such would have stood history on its head. I have no doubt, however, that in some future movie about Iwo, a black, a Hispanic and a woman will take the places of three of the flag raisers on Suribachi... "... calling Mr. Stone, Mr. Oliver Stone."

You want a documentary on Iwo featuring black Marines in all disproportion to their actual role, Spike...? call Ken Burns. (BTW: And just look how unfairly even the libs' favorite documentarian was treated on his last outing. See here.)

By the way, where's the Spike Lee movie about black Marines or any Marines for that matter, on Iwo?

Wait for it....

Someone with half a brain might just suspect that Lee is such an insignificant little dipwad that he slandered Eastwood solely for the purpose of grabbing ink for his new movie, "Miracle at St. Anna", about four members of the 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Infantry Division in Italy during WWII.

Lastly, you know who was left out of "Flags and "Letters"?

The 27 Marine Corps and Navy Medal of Honor Recipients, that's who; if anyone has a bitch coming about Eastwood's Iwo movie it's Marines Herschel "Woody" Williams and Jack Lucas, and Navy Corpsman George Wahlen--our three surviving Iwo Recipients. There was not even a passing reference to any Recipient; in fact, "Flags" was almost devoid of any American heroism.

The single most decorated battle in history, one-quarter of all Medals of Honor earned by Marines in the entire war, the bloodiest, most costly fight in Marine Corps history... and no heroes?

So come to think of it, if anybody has a bitch about Eastwood's movie, it's Iwo vets, black and white, the Marine Corps and all Marines.

Attack of the Hypocrites

Just as Tim Robbins predicted, a “chill wind” is blowing in Hollywood… but it’s blowing in Mel Gibson’s face.

Some of the Gomorrah-by-the-Sea moguls have stated that they will never hire or work with Gibson in the future because of his self-financed film, “The Passion of The Christ.”

“Blacklisting”--the bleating battle cry of the Left for 50 years--is in fact practiced by… uh-huh, The Left.

The rising tide against Gibson began with Braveheart. The criticism sniped at the moral center of the film--the central character’s resistance to oppression and his willingness to die for his beliefs. The same hypocrites who lavished praise on Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Part I called Braveheart “gratuitously violent.” What did they think war with broadswords and arrows would look like?

Next, Gibson gave us The Patriot in which the central character (with Biblical foreshadowing) sacrifices one of his sons in the fight against brutal oppression. Worse… in avenging that murder, he puts guns in the hands of his surviving young sons who cut down as many Redcoats as they can. The usual pundits gathered their skirts about their knees and worried about “the message that sends” about guns and children.

Next, Gibson really offended with We Were Soldiers, a near-documentary film about young American’s heroism in Vietnam. The Hollywood Left (at least until John Kerry ran for president) ignored the truth of Vietnam, favoring instead, the portrayal of GIs as murderers, rapists, kooks and drug addicts… see: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Born of the Fourth of July, Full Metal Jacket, and Casualties of War.

General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway who wrote We Were Soldiers… and Young turned down numerous movie offers before accepting Gibson’s. “We were determined that the truth be told,” Gen. Moore said.

Critics criticized Gibson for the “unbelievable” dialog in which a dying solder asks a comrade to tell his wife that he loved her. It wasn’t a line; it was actual uttered by a hero in the Ia Drang Valley.

Once more, Gibson’s theme of fidelity, faith and sacrifice--and of a devout “father’s” love for his “sons”--played through the film.

Simply, Gibson does not follow the approved Left politics of secular Hollywood and they hate him for it.

And now, he’s made a film which is clearly for him an article of faith… his faith… it is the story of Christianity.

For what it’s worth, the box-office receipts for Passion indicate that an overwhelmingly Christian society is interested in such films; it’s every bit as clear as the hypocrisy of the Hollywood.

loneliness of the long distance swimmer

Spaulding Gray may finally be completing his longest swim.... a gifted but tormented practitioner of one-man shows largely structured around his depression and his not-so-skewed vision of the world...

A friend remembers:

http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/01/
is_spalding_gra.html