Mamas - Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Soldiers

They Sign Up to Fight, but instead are sacrificed.
“The hearts and minds of the enemy are more valuable to this government than my son’s blood. This is submission and the cost of that submission on August 6 was my only son.” -- A Grieving Mother of a Brave American Seal speaking at the National Press Club, Washington DC
On 6 August 2011, a Boeing CH-47 Chinook military helicopter was shot down while transporting a quick reaction force attempting to reinforce an engaged unit of Army Rangers in Wardak province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. All 38 people on board were killed, including 25 American special operations personnel, five United States Army National Guard and Army Reserve crewmen, seven Afghan commandos, and one Afghan interpreter, and a U.S. military working dog. It is considered the worst loss of U.S Military life in the Afghanistan campaign.

"Eighty per-cent of the U.S. deaths in Afghanistan over the past twelve years have occurred during the four years of the Obama administration. 15,000 US soldiers have come home injured or maimed during that same 4-year period" (compared to 2700 during the previous 8 years). -- Karen Vaughn

Read The Conservative Mom about the Press Conference today at the National Press Club, Washington DC and the treachery from American leaders that has cost so many of our young soldiers to lose their lives. President Obama and Vice President Biden, disclosed highly secret information on May 4, 2011, about the Navy Seal Team 6 that carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in his death. This disclosure put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes, and they were shot down a few months later.

Fallen Soldiers the Media Ignores

Karen Vaughn, the mother of fallen Navy Seal Aaron Carson Vaughn, reacts to Barack Obama's political campaign ad "One Chance." Karen and Billy Vaughn lost their son last year in Afghanistan.

America's Second Civil War

Are we Americans in the midst of a Second Civil War, or did the first war never conclude?

It seems I have lived my entire life in the midst of the battles of the War Between the States. In 1950, on the playground of my grammar school in Baltimore we had to choose sides. "Are you a Reb, or a (spit, groan) Yankee?" I now live in Northern Virginia where one cannot drive ten miles without passing through a once bloody battlefield. "Are you a Reb or a Yankee" has become "Are you a right-wing conservative Nazi, or a loving, compassionate (spit, groan) Commie Lib?"

Last Friday the state of Arizona passed a law requiring local police to report undocumented workers (illegal aliens) to the Federal government. Although much of the Arizona law was crafted word for word from Federal law governing immigration, it is being condemned by other states as unconstitutional and racist. The people of Arizona support the law saying it is needed to curb crime in the border state, which is a key corridor for the smuggling of illegal drugs and humans from Mexico.

"A Carefully Crafted Immigration Law in Arizona" by Byron York

Minnesota is one state in opposition to Arizona's act and is contemplating shunning the desert state. The mayor of the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota has already banned publicly funded travel to Arizona. The state law set a "dangerous example to the rest of the country by creating a culture that made racial profiling acceptable," he said. A number of cities in the bankrupt state of California are threatening boycotts against Arizona for vowing to enforce the law. California's San Francisco has practically cut off diplomatic relations with Arizona, as Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on all official city travel to anywhere in Arizona. Los Angeles is planning a boycott, its Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony wrote that Arizonans are "reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation."

While other states are planning severe punishment for Arizona, Georgia and Texas and other State Legislatures across America are planning to propose similar state immigration enforcement laws. A Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona. Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle. "The first priority for any elected official is to make sure that the safety and security of Texans is well-established. If our federal government did their job, then Arizona wouldn't have to take this action, and neither would Texas" said Rep. Riddle. Republican Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James has vowed that if elected, he will require English to be the only language of Alabama's driver's license exam. "This is Alabama; we speak English. If you want to live here, learn it" he says.

Then there are the looming shadows of the secretive militias all across the land who do believe that federal border laws should be enforced: The Militias.

According to the famous poem on the Statue of Liberty, America once opened her doors.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now the cry is "MAY DAY, MAY DAY." as Latinos plan massive May Day rallies in more than Seventy American cities. "The marches and demonstrations are going to be far more massive than they otherwise would have been," said Los Angeles rally organizer Juan Jose Gutierrez. Meanwhile, the federal government of the United States, formerly known as "The Union" is coming down against Arizona and other states following Arizona's hubris in lawmaking. Is Arizona the second South Carolina? Time will tell.

The Holy Book of Islam

The holy book of Islam is al-qur'anu l-karîm. That is the Arabic word for what is commonly written as 'Koran', 'Quran', or 'Qur'an' in English. Apparently, for some unknown reason, only the latter is the correct English translation.

The University of Virginia refers on-line to al-qur'anu l-karîm, as the Koran and has turned it into an electronic version: The Koran at the Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia. The University of Michigan also has an electronic version of the Koran which is searchable at its website.

The University of Southern California has three translations of the Qur'an at its website, where they note: "any translation of the Qur'an immediately ceases to be the literal word of Allah, and hence cannot be equated with the Qur'an in its original Arabic form. In fact, each of the translations on this site is actually an interpretation which has been translated. The first-time reader is strongly advised to read the introduction to the translations we have made available. Corrections and suggestions are appreciated."

Catholic Encylopedia has a synopsis of the "Koran", from a Roman Catholic viewpoint of course, which is described as; "The sacred book of the Muslims, by whom it is regarded as the revelation of God. Supplemented by the so-called Hadith, or traditions, it is the foundation of Islam and the final authority in dogma and belief, in jurisprudence, worship, ethics, and in social, family, and individual conduct."

There is a site called Holy Quran Resource Group which has information on the Quran.

Scott Ott at Scrapple Face has an interesting post on the various names used for the Holy Book of Islam. Actually, I think he hits the nail on the head.

"Muslims Riot Over Spelling of 'Koran' in U.S. Media" by Scott Ott, (2005-05-17)
-- As many as 25 people died and dozens more were injured during riots in Afghanistan today which erupted over what one Muslim cleric called "the U.S. media's desecration-by-mispelling" of the name of Islam's most holy book. Indeed, American editors have failed to reach consensus on how to render the holy book's name. Some spell it with a 'K' others with a 'Q' and -- perhaps most offensive to Muslim sensibilities -- some insert a meaningless apostrophe in the middle of the word.

First published by Edna Barney, Tuesday, May 17th, 2005.

The Not Forgotten "Lost Cause"

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" is about the Danville train, the main supply line into Richmond during the War Between the States. During the Siege of Petersburg Stoneman's Yankees "tore up the track again." The siege lasted from June 1864 until April 1865, when both Petersburg and Richmond fell. The Confederates were starving: "We were hungry; Just barely alive." The South lost but forever afterwards, Southerners vowed to rise again. Perhaps that is what is a-happening now at this point in our history with the rise of Tea Parties, emphasis on honoring the Constitution and people's concerns with loss of liberties and the demise of capitalism.