Happy Days Are Here Again!

“For the first time since March, the Dow Jones dipped below 11,000,” the Media headlines cried, even Fox News.  Let’s see now…how long ago was that?  We old Tea Partiers have to use our abacuses.  It’s mid-June.  May.  April.  March.  That’s what?  Three months? About 90 days.  Oh my God!  That’s like, ancient history!

The Dow Jones only broke over the 12,000 mark in February.  Then it promptly flopped down again, and the Media is telling us this is the “first time” since March.  Three months ago.

What this is the first time for in awhile is what the Dow Jones has looked like since the 1960s – like a patient in cardiac arrest.  Financial experts call it “the whipsaw” – wild fluctuations in market prices.  Steep sell-offs and huge climbs.  Between 1960 and 1975 there were approximately 9 major whipsaws.  Up and down, up and down, up and down. And all the while, the Democrats were building up their social programs.

Then came the Reagan years, and just like the post World-War II climb through the Forties and Fifties after a similar Whipsaw period during the Great Depression (of the 1930s, and the Dow Jones made steady gains, like a successful mountain climber.

If you look at the Dow Jones in the perspective of the 1930s, they had some serious drop-offs, appalling to investors of the day.  Fewer people, less money by today’s standards, but the economic crisis was devastating.  Soup kitchens, unemployment lines, abandoned kids.  The children of that day were determined not to see that happen to their children.

However, their spoiled children, brainwashed by a progressive education movement, and aided by an eager drug culture, entered their own adulthoods oblivious.  Now we have several generations of extremely naive, financially illiterate, drug-addled, green-mailed children who don’t know a whipsaw from a chainsaw and couldn’t care less.

Employed adults are only now waking up to the fact that their 401ks are bankrupt. I wanted to jump off this flaming jet hurtling earthwards towards financial catastrophe and put the brakes my losses by making my own decisions before it was too late, but I wasn’t allowed.  Collective “bargaining” – collective anything – you just can’t beat it.  Still, I had fewer losses than my co-workers because I saw where things were headed.  While they were discussing who America’s Greatest Loser was, I was watching the stock market just sort of drop, like a rock from the Empire State Building.

The first clue was our rising food prices.  Didn’t anybody notice?  No one noticed during the Clinton Era.  I noticed it right away – inflation, major inflation in just a few months’ time.  But the Media denied it.  ‘Oh no, there’s no inflation.’  My mother’s manual typewriter there wasn’t.

We’ve got to get back to the good old days when we could make decisions for ourselves.  This collective stuff is for the birds.  Well, it works for me in my condo.  But then our association is pretty lenient about flags and gardens and pets and so forth.  However, in a moment, they could decide not to be.  Or, the whole group could decide to make a mass exodus to some empty, cheaper condos out in Michigan, selling out to some developer who wants to turn the place into a nursing home.

Judging by the DJIA historical graph, we’re in the third round of a government take-over – that is, the government is taking over.  The hippies of the Sixties are today’s bureaucrats and unless we do something (if there’s anything we can do); we’re going to be on their soup-and-socialism lines.  The DJIA is not only an accurate record of our modern financial history but also the Culture War of the Sixties.

How could so many people have been so stupid?  My Depression Era parents warned us in the Sixties and we listened.  One of my neighbors is busy growing a hanging vegetable garden from his porch.  Any time I want to, I could put in a veggie garden; I have a southern exposure garden.  I may plant a few root vegetables, which are more nourishing when you’re starving, if the soil will take them.

Since another, worse Great Depression is impending, the sooner I get busy on my garden, the better.  Food we can get, though it may be difficult.  The Liberals have been slowly weaning us off meat so we’re used to not having it now (and we have the jellyfish spines to prove it).

What worries me is the book burning.  More and more people are becoming addicted to electronic media, which is wonderful.  But – all that information can disappear with the click of button.  I fear the Progressives will invite the Gullible Generation to mass book-burnings – or “recyclings” perhaps – so the Gullibles can get rid of all the weighty books and make more room for computers and HDTVs and whatever is coming down the road.

I’m being selective.  I don’t want to turn into the Book Lady with a cellar full of moldy books.  But I have an idea that I’ll be the local librarian when the time comes.  The librarians are all government employees.  No way are they going to stock “anti-government” books.  When the Gullibles finally grow up and realize their kids are learning the wrong things, I’ll have a lending library of “banned” books for them to borrow and learn from.

I’m convinced of it.  I know what I’m talking about because in the Sixties my elementary school didn’t have a library at all, until my father complained.  They finally installed one in the janitor’s closet then refused to allow my younger brother to take out a book.  My mother contacted all her old associates and loaded up the family car with 700 cast-off books (or 700 pounds of books).  She brought them to the school door and told the administrators never to any kid they couldn’t have a book again.

Oh, but things have changed?  Really?  On a photo assignment for my company, I covered a non-profit reading donation in the city.  All inner city kids, they were only allowed one book (okay – at least in the beginning).  Their teachers accompanied them.  Instead of letting them choose their hearts’ desires, the teachers would tell one kid a book was too long for them, or that it had too many words, or the words were too big.  Other kids wanted to take a book from the lower level selection for little brothers and sisters at home (this was after the one-book rule was waived).  Oh no, you’d be bored by that.  So I snuck the kids the books behind their backs.  

Yes, food and water are important.  But without our history and culture, we’ll be a lost people, a scattered collection of people fighting off the zombies you see in futuristic horror movies.

Or is the future already here?

Keeping Up with Technology

Decided to look into this Glenn Beck TV deal a little more closely.  The idea of ditching cable television is very tempting.  The technology is farther along than I suspected.  There are Internet-ready televisions, but there are also set boxes that bring in the Internet signal.

By definition – Wikipedia’s (so be warned) - internet television allows the users to choose the program or the television show they want to watch from an archive of programs or from a channel directory.  The two forms of viewing Internet television are streaming the content directly to a media player or simply downloading the program to the user's computer.  With the “TV on Demand” market growing, these on-demand websites or applications are a must-have for major television broadcasters.

The ability to access internet television is heavily dependent on internet-streaming speeds (how fast the program can be delivered to your player). This limits adoption in many countries, as broadband penetration is limited; in the Europe, only 25 percent of consumers had access to Broadband internet in 2010.  Using an Internet service provider, something which is common in many homes in the developed world, the user simply enters their chosen website address.  If the user has no select preference of streaming service, the name of a chosen television program can be inputted into a search engine followed by a phrase such as “online streaming” or “watch on the net.”  Accessing television on the internet has been simplified.  Due to this usability of streaming, services have been improved to maintain the simplicity of the process. Upon selection of a program and website, the user may have to wait a few seconds or minutes to allow their desired program to stream. A process called buffering allows the program to run in one smooth showing as opposed to stopping and starting to allow the program to stream.

But, the smoothness of the buffering depends on the broadband width (how many soldiers can cross the bridge abreast).  Heretofore, you had to have a computer for all this to happen, which would leave many older viewers marooned in cable television land.  According to his website, Glenn’s company is doing business with an internet television provider called “Roku”.

You buy one of three set boxes, similar to a cable box, which can receive the Internet signal even if you don’t have the Internet, that is, a computer.  Good news for Luddites.  The boxes range in fee from $59 to $79 to $99 with increasing features, according to price.  Roku’s website says it’s easy to install.  They list the various programs they have available.  Some, like the major networks and news stations, are free; others have modest to expensive subscription fees.

The one hitch is, you have to an Internet service provider.  Roku’s website is filled with testimonials, some claiming they unloaded their cable television within months.  Internet-ready TVs are priced between $800 and $1,100, at the present time.  That figures, since they’re the latest thing.  The box and an internet service provider such as AT&T ($19.99 per month and that’s just an example; no doubt, there are other, cheaper providers, although their DSL service may be slower) would work for those of us not ready to purchase new TVs at the moment (we’ve either recently bought a new or just can’t afford $900 for a decent set).

This new Internet TV service is all about freedom of choice.  Personally, I worry that we’ll eventually be let down.  Right now, Roku is advertising-free and offers many options at low cost.  How long Internet TV remains the channel of freedom remains to be seen.  When cable television first came out, it too was relatively low cost, advertising-free, and offered many options.

Even if you’re not interested in Glenn Beck’s program, you still might want to look into it.  One of Roku’s main attractions is its offering of NetFlix films, which are rising in popularity due to the inexpensive cost of NetFlix films.  Internet TV is a radical change in the way we will watch television, but one that might just prove to be a good change for cost-conscious conservatives.

Glenn Beck TV

Glenn Beck has this hilarious commercial on his radio program.  An Elderly Parent wants to DVR Glenn’s television show.  But he doesn’t know how to do it.  So he calls his adult son and asks him to guide him through the recording process.  The Elderly P is confused about all the buttons on the remote and the adult son is frustrated.  Finally, the announcer advises adult children not to have their Elderly Ps try to record Glenn’s program.  “On second thought,” he says, “just do it for them.”

If Elderly Ps have a problem with recording on their DVD recorders, or DVR’g a program if they have that feature, they’re going to be really confused when they learn that Glenn’s television program is going away altogether and so is his radio program, pretty much.  All his programming is going over to the Internet.

I’m not sure (since I don’t have the service myself) but I believe you can get the Glenn Beck program on Satellite Radio.  You can’t get the program over the airwaves for free anymore in the New York City market.  If you want to hear his program, you have to plug into a computer or an Ipad to hear him.

That’s a heck of a lot of new technology we’re going to have to explain to our Elderly Ps.  My own mother is just grasping the concept of the Internet.  It took us forever to get her to subscribe to cable television and an awfully long time to get her to agree to owning a laptop computer.  Since we’ve programmed it for her, she loves it.  We put our Facebook pages up for her and she has e-mail now.

But now we’re going to have to sell our Elderly Ps and even financially cautious brothers and sisters on the idea of tuning into Glenn’s program on the computer.  When I told Mom that she’d be able to watch DVDs and even live content on her computer, she said, “Why do I have to do that when my television is right there [on a convenient shelf in her kitchen]?”

We do have our work cut out for us.  Mom is really old school.  I’ve had a hard time trying to wean her off CBS News ever since Fox started broadcasting.  She’s still stuck in the 1960s when the Big Three were the only game in town.  She probably would watch Fox, but she doesn’t approve of the mini-skirted anchorettes, even if some of them do have law degrees.  She considers Glenn a cult figure and that somehow I’ve been mesmerized by this rich money-maker.

The notion that she would have to pay to watch him on a device she barely understands would, frankly, appall my Depression-Era mother.  Fortunately, I already have the Insider Extreme subscription and can easily sign on her computer with my password.  She doesn’t have to know what I pay for it.

So, the fact that Glenn will have his own television network is a good sale for the Moms of the world – no mini-skirted anchorettes.  S.E. Cupp is young, attractive, smart, and demure.  Like helping our Elderly Ps with DVRg the old television program, we might just have to do “GBTV” for them.

However, even younger people are baffled by GBTV.  So here’s what it’s all about, you guys.

You all know about YouTube.  We’ve all watched some very funny videos on YouTube.  You can also catch concerts, school games, just about anything.  Glenn Beck’s new GBTV network works on the same principle.  Advanced technology is making increasingly possible to watch programs on the Internet on your television.  Optimum Online already offers this service.  I’m not sure what the service costs.  However, one day, you may not even need cable television anymore.

We will need Glenn Beck, however.  And Fox News.  We’ve seen just how bad the Progressive Socialists are from watching their televised behavior in Wisconsin.  Those of us old enough remember the Hippies and War Protesters from the Sixties, and all the riots in those long, hot summers.  Glenn is targeting the grown-up version of the Hippies – and they’re targeting him.

They’ve wormed their way up to the head of government, as well as corporations and advertising agencies.  They’re in charge of choosing the programs on which companies will advertise.  They use their organizational powers to lodge complaints against any company that advertises on Glenn’s program.  We’ve been paying our cable television bills all these years, originally for the purpose of not having to watch or depend upon advertising.  We saw how long that lasted.

We haven’t been getting “free” programming for a very long time.  Yet we still regard Glenn’s program as free, when it really isn’t.  Producing a television program is expensive.  Advertising costs are built in to every product we buy.  So we’re paying twice for a program.  Once, when we buy a product or service, and again, when we pay our cable bills, which are astronomical, and also socialistic.  Our bills are loaded with socialistic, bureaucratic fees.  Free computers for the underprivileged.

Once someone else starts paying our bills, freedom goes out the window.  The Progressives have managed to force Glenn’s program off the air.  Advertisers refuse to underwrite the “risk” of running Glenn’s program.  Fox News can’t afford to keep losing advertisers.  What’s more, Roger Ailes has to put the kibosh on a lot of Glenn’s content.  So much for freedom of speech.

In Ailes’ defense, he also needs on-air talent that’s going to show up and Glenn has been on the road quite a bit.  Finally, they decided to part ways.   Cable television is pretty much sewn up and hemmed in now by regulations, advertising dollars, and politics.  But cable’s days were already numbered anyway once YouTube hit the scene, making it possible to view content online.

Enterprising businesspeople have come up with ways to make computer content viewable on television sets, which have different screen dimensions.  The Internet is largely unregulated, for the time being.  The start-up costs, as Glenn, has noted, are expensive, but the long-term benefits for both producer and viewer are enormous.

Right now, he does have to charge a fee in order to make viewing his program possible.  Remember – we used to have to pay a fee for advertising-free cable television as well.  But then production and regulatory costs rose, and in came the advertisers.  Subscription is the only way for free speech to survive.  You don’t get magazines for free, but you only get the ones you want.  Internet TV will be no different.  Freedom isn’t free.  Eventually, this melding of the television and the Internet will catch on.  Popularity will drive down the cost but will drive out free speech and Glenn Beck, and his successors, will be forced to pioneer new mediums.

The Glenn Beck TV title is confusing right now because you’ll be viewing him on your computer or Ipad not your television, but one day, it won’t be, because he’ll be back on regular television sets, but they’ll be new televisions with a different way of broadcasting. The change will be hard on lower and middle-income viewers, and the elderly, especially in this bad economy.

I remember when color television sets first came out.  We were very poor and couldn’t afford one.  We had to make do with black and white.  We only got a color television set about the time cable television came into being, which we subscribed to almost right away.  By that time, I was working at my first job and could afford the bill.  At that time, it was only $9.95 a month.  Now, it’s over $120 per month, although that includes my telephone and computer bills.

In another week, our company is going to make an announcement about office closings.  The prospect is quite grim for our office.  By this time next year, I will probably be making decisions about budget cuts of my own.  On consideration, I suspect what I will be dropping is not my internet connection, but my cable connection.  I’m not a big eater, my mortgage is nearly paid off, and I’ll have more time to cut coupons and bargain-hunt.  I’ve made sure that my needs are few and have saved a survivable sum for the future.

My most expensive habits are books and DVDs, and blood pressure medication.  I’ve eliminated all the salt I can.  I’m hoping maybe one day I won’t need them.  I have quite a collection of DVDs.  I always bargain hunt, and the number of times I’ve watched most of those movies has more than made up for the rental fees.  I class my books in the education category.  Since I never went for my graduate degree, and couldn’t afford one now even if I could get past the GREs (and that’s sure not going to happen), I feel the cost of the books is justified.

My other justified educational costs are my magazine subscriptions and the subscription to Glenn Beck’s program and Rush Limbaugh’s newsletter.  I already know most of what Glenn knows, but not everything.  I consider his and Rush’s important voices in the struggle for freedom, and I’m willing to underwrite them as long as I’m able.  Their voices need to be heard, one way, if not another.

Even if we have to pay to hear them, what they can tell us and tell America, especially America’s brainwashed younger generation, is a solid investment in our future.  You can buy a used car.  I’m within walking distance of every store I need to shop at.  The New York City bus stop is a three-minute walk (even closer than the stores).  I can lower the insurance on my car, watch more carefully my use of electricity, buy cheaper goods.  I do have to replace my kitchen sink and cabinets, which are rusting away, but everything else in my home, I can make do with.  Even if I have to replace yet another water heater or refrigerator, I can find a way.

But once freedom, truth, and honor are gone, all the money in the world can’t replace them.  Subscribing to Glenn Beck’s Internet TV program is like taking out an insurance policy on your liberty.  You can play it cheap.  You’d certainly have reason to and no one would blame you.  But do you really want to take that chance?

(A note to Glenn Beck - I've done my part here.  Now enough with the jokes about workers who listen to your program.  How else are we going to drown out the dreadful Muzak?)

Phallic Phollies

Years ago, my maternal grandmother wanted to liven up the front porch of her house.  She thought a different colored light bulb would give the porch more atmosphere.  She chose a red bulb.  When my mother came, Grandma proudly switched on the light.  Inside, the house, they could hear my grandfather laughing hysterically.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she enthused, ignoring Grandpa (a merchant marine).

My mother was at a loss for words.

“Mom,” she said, “that’s a red light.”

“Yes!  Doesn’t it have a beautiful glow?” was the answer.

“Mom, don’t you know who uses red lights?”

“No.  Who?”

So my mother told her.  The house was practically shaking from my grandfather’s laughter.  The light bulb immediately came out and was replaced by a more modest light bulb.

Those were innocent times.  Flowing underneath the dainty feet of polite society was the sewer of profanity and pornography, illicit relations of every kind, crime, corruption, wickedness.  Nice people, especially nice women, didn’t talk about such things.  At the central core of this decadent cesspool were the politicians.  Dressed in fine suits, with expensive haircuts, and manicured nails, some, if not all, flouted every moral of society.

If decadence existed within government, American society didn’t want to know or see it.  Decency was well-protected from its evil twin.  Today, however, with modern technology – cable television, the 24/7 news cycle, cell phone cameras, Photoshop, the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube – there’s no escaping the indecency and indiscretions of our politicians.  They’re in our face.

Political/Sexual scandals have been scorching history since ancient times.  Witness Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra.  Guenevere and Lancelot (Guenevere was always being threatened by the mobs of Camelot and Lance would have to come to her rescue).  Henry the VIII.  Mary Queen of Scots and James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.

In more modern times, FDR and his Lucy.  John F. Kennedy and the many women he entertained at the White House, who was succeeded some decades later by the disgrace of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski using the Oval Office for their recontres.  Nor is it by any means the province only of Liberal Democrats.  Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich have presidential aspirations hindered by romantic baggage that won’t make it through the x-rated machine.

The politicians seem to all have caught one another’s stupidity.  It’s as if there’s a full moon over Washington, D.C. and all the wolves are out.

 

Arnold Schwarzenegger managed to elude the impeachment hatchet before admitting he’d sired a lust-child with his housekeeper of 20 years.  We have another dalliance to thank for the political mess in N.Y. District 26.  There was also Eliot Spitzer and Client No. 9.  Now we have to deal with Weiner the Weenie and his twitter-pated escapades of lewdness.  And these are just the sexual deviants; never mind the outright crooks like Charlie Rangel or flying governors who misuse state police helicopters to see their sons’ baseball games – and damn the press for making a scandal out of it.

The world is agog and no matter how nauseating it is, the Media simply can’t escape the desire and the demand for more coverage of this latest scandal.  We should have put our foot down when Bill Clinton was using his cigars for something besides celebrating his hornswaggling of America.  He should have been impeached right out of office.  Instead he was given a slap on the wrist by Congress and the Media.  No wonder Weiner is looking to Clinton, the master, for advice on how to stay in office.

Lately, politicians have learned the art of contrite weeping.  Shed a few tears, say how sorry you are for hurting everyone, but how you want to get on with life – and we let them.  After all, we’ve all done something wrong in life.  How can we judge these miscreant public figures?  Everyone makes mistakes.

They make mistakes, but they’d make fewer of them if they were drummed out of office for their offenses.  Technically, they say The Weenie committed no crime for which he can be charged by Congress.  Neither did Clinton.   The only offense with which they can be charged is, like Nixon, lying and covering up their misdeeds.

His constitutents could recall him.  But it’s unlikely that they will.  Being a shifty fellow, they find Weiner to be a useful sort of representative who “fights for them.”  In other words, he brings home the pork, the federal taxpayers’ money, the boodle.  To them, he’s just fine.  He Twittered his Fruit of the Looms for all to see?  No problem.  It could happen to anyone.

We want and need transparency in our government.  But not this kind of transparency.

Of Primary Importance

Most voters discount the importance of primary elections, especially in an off-year election.  New Jersey’s general assembly and senate seats are all up for grabs this year.  Voters figure whoever is on the primary ballot will be on the ballot in the general election so why bother?

But that’s not the case in New Jersey this year.  There’s a group, at least in Passaic County, called “Republicans for a Better Passaic County” who are not Republicans at all.  Unwary voters might not know the difference and fall for their false advertise.

‘Why vote for the same old Republicans with the same old Conservative values?  Who cares whether Paul Revere alerted the British as well the Colonists on his famous ride?  In fact, he didn’t – he went as quietly as he could from house to house where he knew there were Whigs and dispatched more riders from those homes.  There’s your Conservative Republican Party for you!  They don’t know even know their American history.

‘Vote for the Republicans for a Better Passaic County.  We believe in uniting the States.  We’ll bring more Federal tax dollars your way.  We’ll put candidates into office you can be proud of.  You’ll set a role model of your children and blaze a new path for the GOP, one that believes in universal health care, taxing the rich, saving the planet, and creating good union jobs with benefits you can count on for life.’

Unfortunately, many younger voters might just believe that hogwash and vote for these crooks.

GOP Strong so-called Republicans for a Better Passaic County are making a heck of a mess.  This is a letter from Kristin Corrado, who ran as a GOP Strong candidate last year and is a protege of the convicted felon Peter Murphy,  who founded the GOP Strong and is still behind it according to newspaper and other reports.   It is clear from this letter that she and the candidates she mentions are anti-pension reform and very pro-union leadership.  McLaughlin is a former police union delegate and has been very anti-Christie pension reform:

“Kristin M. Corrado

74 Raphael Road

Totowa, New Jersey 07512

June 1, 2011

Dear Friend,

In 2009, I was proud to have received the endorsement of the Passaic County Education Associations, Inc., when I ran for the office of Passaic County Clerk. I truly believe their support made all the difference when I was elected as a Republican in Passaic County in a year that saw Governor Corzine win our County by over 9,000 votes.  Since that time, I have continued my relationship with the PCEA and value the friendships I have made over the past few years.

I am once again asking for your help in the upcoming primary election scheduled for Tuesday, June 7, 2011.  I am supporting Michael McLaughlin for Surrogate, Donna Anderson and Michelle Joustra for Freeholders.  They are common sense conservative Republicans who will work together to make Passaic County an affordable and better place to live, work, and raise a family.  They are not the party of Governor Chris Christie and Scott Rumana, who have threatened the health benefits, pensions and collective bargaining rights of all teachers and public servants in New Jersey.

McLaughlin, Anderson and Joustra are the candidates for all the people of Passaic County.  We must work together to protect our livelihoods and our future.

Please help us in our fight against the anti-union regime of Christie and Rumana by voting for ‘Republicans for a Better Passaic County’ on Row ‘C’ in the primary election on Tuesday, June 7, 2011.

Sincerely,

KRISTIN M. CORRADO’

If the voters of Passaic County wish to protect their livelihoods against union corruption, excess and waste, if they want to preserve their own future health care, they’ll vote Row B, for the Passaic County Regular Republicans.  It is important to get out the vote in this primary. The unions can and will turn out their vote and we don't want to lose by being apathetic.  Should they win in the Passaic County primary, it won't matter who wins the general election because Democrats or GOP Strong will vote to support union resistance to pension reform.  

New Jersey is set to lose even more private sector jobs.  Losing this primary to Democrats masquerading as Republicans will seal the deal.  The time to act is now – today!  Get out and vote for the Passaic County Regular Republicans.

Hitting the Beach

At a recent Toastmasters meeting, our Table Topic for the meeting was what we did on Memorial Day and what we’d be doing for the summer.  Everyone got a separate question.  My question was:  “What beach will you be going to this weekend?”

The fact that I never go to beaches anymore because my skin can’t take the sun was simply too much information.  Besides, going to the beach wasn’t on my agenda for Memorial Day – it was a graduation and two Memorial Day parades.  In any case, what were my fellow toastmasters thinking?  Memorial Day isn’t about going to the beach or the mall or a barbecue.  It’s about remembering the military members who gave their lives so we could enjoy those things in peace and freedom.

My answer was:  Omaha Beach.  They looked at me blankly.  A strip of sand on France’s Normandy coast, where thousands of men were slaughtered trying to scale Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and save Europe from his tyrannical rule.

Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold, and Sword.   The U.S. First Army landed on Omaha and Utah beaches.  The Army Rangers landed at Pointe Du Hac (the cliffs over Omaha Beach).  D-Day is one of those famous battles, that if you’re any kind of American, you need to remember.  The battle was so savage, the casualties so overwhelming that, like Pearl Harbor Day, it gets its own date on the calendar.  This is not a holiday; it’s an anniversary.

That means no sales, no barbecues, no parades, no day at the beach.  Well, maybe you should go to a beach on this day, if you can.  Take the sunscreen and hat with you, but leave everything else behind you.  Find a solitary section of the beach, away from the beach balls, brightly-colored umbrellas, and nearly naked bodies.  Down the beach, away from the merriment, imagine yourself a 19 year-old kid, probably just off a farm, or maybe from a city.  You’ve probably been seasick from the journey across the channel from some port in England where you’d been waiting for days and days.

The ramp of the transport splashes into the water.  Omaha Beach, the mostly heavily fortified of the Atlantic Wall, is up ahead.  But you have to swim inland because the transports can’t get any further ashore due to the mines and obstacles.  The first men out of the transport are instantly slaughtered by heavy machine gun fire or drown in the six to ten foot-deep water, their packs weighing them down.

The machine gun fire is so heavy it’s like running into a wall of steel.  Men beside you (you’re underage – in 1944, adulthood wasn’t officially granted until age 21) fall down, heads and limbs blown off.  Then you feel something sharp hit you with an incredible pain and you fall face down into the sand, your helmet tumbling off ahead of you.  It’s all over.  Just like that.  Your last words, your last cry, because you’re so young, is for your mother.

Imagine, as you’re standing there on your protected beach, that young man lying before you, the waves lapping at his boots.  He didn’t want to die.  He didn’t want to have to get out of that transport, where he knew the odds of surviving weren’t good.  But he did it.  So did thousands more like him.  Ultimately, America won the war.  Those who survived D-Day to return home seldom spoke about June 6, 1944.  They don’t like being called heroes (even though they most certainly are).  For us, being there was enough.  But we must respect the distinction.  Those who died made the ultimate sacrifice.  If we don’t remember what they did and how they died, we’ll begin to take freedom for granted.  We’ll forget.

And then we’ll lose our freedom.  So this summer when you’re at the beach, struggling through the sand dragging your beach umbrellas, coolers, and blankets, and building sandcastles, remember for a moment the Atlantic Wall and the sands of Omaha Beach. 

Remember D-Day.

Hitting the Beach

At a recent Toastmasters meeting, our Table Topic for the meeting was what we did on Memorial Day and what we’d be doing for the summer.  Everyone got a separate question.  My question was:  “What beach will you be going to this weekend?”

The fact that I never go to beaches anymore because my skin can’t take the sun was simply too much information.  Besides, going to the beach wasn’t on my agenda for Memorial Day – it was a graduation and two Memorial Day parades.  In any case, what were my fellow toastmasters thinking?  Memorial Day isn’t about going to the beach or the mall or a barbecue.  It’s about remembering the military members who gave their lives so we could enjoy those things in peace and freedom.

My answer was:  Omaha Beach.  They looked at me blankly.  A strip of sand on France’s Normandy coast, where thousands of men were slaughtered trying to scale Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and save Europe from his tyrannical rule.

Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold, and Sword.   The U.S. First Army landed on Omaha and Utah beaches.  The Army Rangers landed at Pointe Du Hac (the cliffs over Omaha Beach).  D-Day is one of those famous battles, that if you’re any kind of American, you need to remember.  The battle was so savage, the casualties so overwhelming that, like Pearl Harbor Day, it gets its own date on the calendar.  This is not a holiday; it’s an anniversary.

That means no sales, no barbecues, no parades, no day at the beach.  Well, maybe you should go to a beach on this day, if you can.  Take the sunscreen and hat with you, but leave everything else behind you.  Find a solitary section of the beach, away from the beach balls, brightly-colored umbrellas, and nearly naked bodies.  Down the beach, away from the merriment, imagine yourself a 19 year-old kid, probably just off a farm, or maybe from a city.  You’ve probably been seasick from the journey across the channel from some port in England where you’d been waiting for days and days.

The ramp of the transport splashes into the water.  Omaha Beach, the mostly heavily fortified of the Atlantic Wall, is up ahead.  But you have to swim inland because the transports can’t get any further ashore due to the mines and obstacles.  The first men out of the transport are instantly slaughtered by heavy machine gun fire or drown in the six to ten foot-deep water, their packs weighing them down.

The machine gun fire is so heavy it’s like running into a wall of steel.  Men beside you (you’re underage – in 1944, adulthood wasn’t officially granted until age 21) fall down, heads and limbs blown off.  Then you feel something sharp hit you with an incredible pain and you fall face down into the sand, your helmet tumbling off ahead of you.  It’s all over.  Just like that.  Your last words, your last cry, because you’re so young, is for your mother.

Imagine, as you’re standing there on your protected beach, that young man lying before you, the waves lapping at his boots.  He didn’t want to die.  He didn’t want to have to get out of that transport, where he knew the odds of surviving weren’t good.  But he did it.  So did thousands more like him.  Ultimately, America won the war.  Those who survived D-Day to return home seldom spoke about June 6, 1944.  They don’t like being called heroes (even though they most certainly are).  For us, being there was enough.  But we must respect the distinction.  Those who died made the ultimate sacrifice.  If we don’t remember what they did and how they died, we’ll begin to take freedom for granted.  We’ll forget.

And then we’ll lose our freedom.  So this summer when you’re at the beach, struggling through the sand dragging your beach umbrellas, coolers, and blankets, and building sandcastles, remember for a moment the Atlantic Wall and the sands of Omaha Beach. 

Remember D-Day.

Economics: It's All Greek to the Greeks

“Austerity” is a late Latin word first used in the “severe self-discipline,” first coined in the late 14th Century. In other words, it took the world 1,400 years from the birth of Christ and the end of the Roman empire, preceded by the death of the Greek and Egyptian realms, to figure out a word to describe self-discipline.

But the Greeks are going into that good night of self-denial quietly. According to Reuters, at least 80,000 protesters gathered in Athens’ Syntagma Square to let the Greek officials know that they’re not ready to surrender their heritage of economic profligacy. Never mind that Athens is struggling to avoid a debt default and that the Greek government has already had to agree to one set of austerity measures in order to get a bail-out from the European Union. Or that it needs to make another deal involving several years of extra budget cuts and more privatizations to merit a second bail-out from the EU and the International Monetary Fund.

The Greeks are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore. The budget cuts imposed under the first bailout one year ago pushed government worker unemployment close to 16 percent. Protesters have gathered on the square every night for 12 days, inspired by similar protests in Spain. Some carry banners that evoke the Arab Spring movement: "From Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square, we support you!" read one banner raised above a sea of splayed hands waved at the parliament building—a highly offensive gesture for Greeks, according Reuters.

Prime Minister George Papandreou’s parliamentary majority has passed successive rounds of austerity including cuts to pensions and civil servants' salaries. But faced with the popular anger, some PASOK lawmakers are becoming uneasy that the unrest could lead to early elections. A political stalemate would raise the risk that the new bailout deal might unravel. The new bailout could end up costing more than 100 billion euros, if Athens still needs foreign aid in 2013 and 2014.

Greece agreed its first, 110 billion-euro, bailout a year ago. But this assumed that it could resume borrowing commercially early next year, which now appears inconceivable. This is what happens when a public, government sector outgrows, or worse, replaces the private sector: it consumes itself, spiraling ever downward in an attempt to keep itself going. Higher salaries, more benefits, more unionized employees lead to more taxes, more loans, more debt, and a devalued system of increasingly worthless paper money.

Every attempt to rein in the excessive spending only leads to more civil unrest by the socialized unions. Credit is ruined, private sector businesses cut back on their employees, or go under altogether, further reducing the tax base until there’s nothing left but a spinning game wheel and a government bank printing out funny money.

The object of studying history is to learn to not repeat it. In this case, it’s modern Greek history Americans need to study – and not repeat. This is a history lesson we can’t afford to fail.