Pearl Harbor Survivors

[Dont call me Shirley]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pe...l=la-home-local

Pearl Harbor lives in the hearts of its vets

After 66 years, some survivors wonder if they are the last reminders of the attack that led the U.S. into war.
By H.G. Reza, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 7, 2007
Their ranks thinned by age, Pearl Harbor veterans today are commemorating the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack and wondering whether Americans will remember one of the most defining moments in history after they die.

"When we're gone, we're gone," said 87-year-old Jack Ray Hammett. "We're already just a paragraph in the history books. Will even that disappear when the last one of us dies?"


President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a speech to Congress, immortalized the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other military installations on Oahu, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, as a "date which will live in infamy." Today, those words are remembered mostly by the generation that lived through World War II........

On the 65th anniversary last year, a reporter asked a sampling of people (mostly younger) at a shopping mall about the significance of the date. It was astounding how many didn't know.

 

[Garfield1966]

Not sure why we are surprised. Education has taken a back seat in this country for decades. People seem to be more concerned with keeping up with the Jones's than making sure little Billy knows his head from his ass. We are becoming little more than a joke on this planet. Aside from having a moron for a POTUS, we are falling in a death spiral. Reading, math and history are nothing ore than aside note to children. We do not want to hurt their feelings by telling them they failed so we make them feel good and move them right along with little to defend them elves in the real world. I remember reading a article by Lee Iacoa where he said that on the assembly line they had to put a picture of a hood being out of alignment next to the button to stop that assembly point because a large portion of the line workers could not read. And people want "American" as the official language? Hell, it seems most Americans cannot speak it much less the immigrants. While we are out fighting useless wars abroad (and noI do nt just mean the gulf) we are leaving the most important battle unfought.

Natioanal Geographic survey

I missed 3 questions. I messed the X files question which I don't count because I don't watch that much TV. Missed the question about which country has the most Muslems and I missed that US was the largest exporter of goods.

UNICEF ranks the US 18 out of 24 in education

U.S. falls in education rank compared to other countries

U.S. Education Slips In Rankings

This country neds to get its priorities right or we will continue on down to a third world nation.

 

[local 12 proud]

The USS Oklahoma gets her just due 66 years later, how Ironic is it that route 66 is the Mother road across this awesome state.

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/66-OklahomaMain.html

 

[777 fixer]

Chief John Finn then.

< http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/pers-us...rs-f/j-finn.htm >

Lt.(Ret) John Finn now.

< http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=52904 >

 

[WOAMX]

I remember reading a article by Lee Iacoa where he said that on the assembly line they had to put a picture of a hood being out of alignment next to the button to stop that assembly point because a large portion of the line workers could not read. And people want "American" as the official language? Hell, it seems most Americans cannot speak it much less the immigrants. While we are out fighting useless wars abroad (and noI do nt just mean the gulf) we are leaving the most important battle unfought.

As we move through life the question of what we leave behind might enter into ones mind as we all share in the single most powerful truth of life; none of us can escape the inevitability of death. This one universal truth binds us together in a common and forgotten purpose; the focused evolution and advancement of the human condition for all mankind.

So I submit for your consideration that we were all raised by a system that has nothing less than a depraved indifference for our welfare which induces all that are born into it to a form of choice slavery. The choice today is work hard to pay higher and higher health care, live in the home and own the car that we are breed to believe will make us feel good, or live in conditions that will lead to an early death.

I submit that we have the illusion of choice because having the choice of being healthy, safe, and protected or accepting poverty, no health care, and living in an ever present fear of getting sick, homelessness, and victimization through crime is no choice at all.

We as Americans believe we are free and at a fundamental level that is true because we can make choices for ourselves. We believe that if you apply yourself you can go as far as your dreams will take you. This is the emboldening vision of the American Dream. A dream that was born of the great depression and one that has been allowed to continue in spirit only.

The truth is that our society has been engineered over the past three generations to believe in "values" that promote the wealth and prosperity of a choice few but do not serve to promote a truly democratic republic. I therefore submit that our republic is riddled with diseased to the core. For the core of our republic does not appear to be "for the people and by the people" but rather "for the CEO and by the consumer". We are no longer citizens of the United States of America we are "Consumers of the United States of America".

It rocks me to my bone to think that if you tallied the death toll from every war that has ever been waged in the name of preserving and defending the republic, and allow for a moment of pause, so as to allow the true depth of the meaning that the number represents in real human beings who believed they were fighting for a better day, or to just get home, or protect the ones they loved, so they could have a better life of freedom,...

only to contrast that with the culture of indifference, ignorance, and idiocracy that prevails today it makes me angry because how we conduct ourselves as CITIZENS of the republic every single day is a direct measurement of respect we all owe those who died for our freedom.

I fly the colors every day possible, I stop and help my fellow citizens when I can, I am prepared for a natural disaster so that I may not only help my family survive but so that I may render aid to neighbors, and I honor the most sacred right I have as a citizen by participating in the political process by my vote.

It is time to wake up and realize that every aspect of our culture, our society, and fundamentally everything that supports our being is not geared toward the citizen of the republic having a voice but rather silencing the masses. Those invisible forces behind the curtain that feed off the suffering of the masses are content with uneducated, ignorant, and complacient masses who consume what they are told, when they are told, work how they are told to work, when they are told to work, and feed the invisible demons that are breed into us from birth of consumption, fear, and greed.

 

[Gilding the Lily]

As we move through life the question of what we leave behind might enter into ones mind as we all share in the single most powerful truth of life; none of us can escape the inevitability of death. This one universal truth binds us together in a common and forgotten purpose; the focused evolution and advancement of the human condition for all mankind.

........................

I think you left off the part about telling us to vote for Ron Paul.