Musings Of A Retired Investigator

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech

General Douglas MacArthur's Farewell Speech
Given to the Corps of Cadets at West Point
May 12, 1962

General Westmoreland, General Groves, distinguished guests, and gentlemen of the Corps. As I was leaving the hotel this morning, a doorman asked me, "Where are you bound for, General?" and when I replied, "West Point," he remarked, "Beautiful place, have you ever been there before?"

No human being could fail to be deeply moved by such a tribute as this, coming from a profession I have served so long and a people I have loved so well. It fills me with an emotion I cannot express. But this award is not intended primarily for a personality, but to symbolize a great moral code - the code of conduct and chivalry of those who guard this beloved land of culture and ancient descent. That is the meaning of this medallion. For all eyes and for all time, it is an expression of the ethics of the American soldier. That I should be integrated in this way with so noble an ideal arouses a sense of pride and yet of humility which will be with me always.

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

But these are some of the things they do. They build your basic character. They mold you for your future roles as the custodians of the nation's defense. They make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brave enough to face yourself when you are afraid.

They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have compassion on those who fall; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness; the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

They give you a temperate will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, an appetite for adventure over love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

And what sort of soldiers are those you are to lead? Are they reliable? Are they brave? Are they capable of victory?

Their story is known to all of you. It is the story of the American man at arms. My estimate of him was formed on the battlefields many, many years ago, and has never changed. I regarded him then, as I regard him now, as one of the world's noblest figures; not only as one of the finest military characters, but also as one of the most stainless.

His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He needs no eulogy from me, or from any other man. He has written his own history and written it in red on his enemy's breast.

But when I think of his patience under adversity, of his courage under fire, and of his modesty in victory, I am filled with an emotion of admiration I cannot put into words. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism. He belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom. He belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.

In twenty campaigns, on a hundred battlefields, around a thousand campfires, I have witnessed that enduring fortitude, that patriotic self-abnegation, and that invincible determination which have carved his statue in the hearts of his people.

From one end of the world to the other, he has drained deep the chalice of courage. As I listened to those songs of the glee club, in memory's eye I could see those staggering columns of the First World War, bending under soggy packs on many a weary march, from dripping dusk to drizzling dawn, slogging ankle deep through mire of shell-pocked roads; to form grimly for the attack, blue-lipped, covered with sludge and mud, chilled by the wind and rain, driving home to their objective, and for many, to the judgment seat of God.

I do not know the dignity of their birth, but I do know the glory of their death. They died unquestioning, uncomplaining, with faith in their hearts, and on their lips the hope that we would go on to victory. Always for them: Duty, Honor, Country. Always their blood, and sweat, and tears, as they saw the way and the light.

And twenty years after, on the other side of the globe, against the filth of dirty foxholes, the stench of ghostly trenches, the slime of dripping dugouts, those boiling suns of the relentless heat, those torrential rains of devastating storms, the loneliness and utter desolation of jungle trails, the bitterness of long separation of those they loved and cherished, the deadly pestilence of tropic disease, the horror of stricken areas of war.

Their resolute and determined defense, their swift and sure attack, their indomitable purpose, their complete and decisive victory - always victory, always through the bloody haze of their last reverberating shot, the vision of gaunt, ghastly men, reverently following your password of Duty, Honor, Country.

The code which those words perpetuate embraces the highest moral laws and will stand the test of any ethics or philosophies ever promulgated for the uplift of mankind. Its requirements are for the things that are right, and its restraints are from the things that are wrong. The soldier, above all other men, is required to practice the greatest act of religious training - sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death, he discloses those divine attributes which his Maker gave when he created man in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instinct can take the place of the Divine help which alone can sustain him. However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country, is the noblest development of mankind.

You now face a new world, a world of change. The thrust into outer space of the satellite, spheres and missiles marked the beginning of another epoch in the long story of mankind - the chapter of the space age. In the five or more billions of years the scientists tell us it has taken to form the earth, in the three or more billion years of development of the human race, there has never been a greater, a more abrupt or staggering evolution. We deal now not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms: of harnessing the cosmic energy; of making winds and tides work for us; of creating unheard synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; of purifying sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of space ships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all time.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

Others will debate the controversial issues, national and international, which divide men's minds. But serene, calm, aloof, you stand as the Nation's war guardians, as its lifeguards from the raging tides of international conflict, as its gladiators in the arena of battle. For a century and a half you have defended, guarded and protected its hallowed traditions of liberty and freedom, of right and justice.

Let civilian voices argue the merits or demerits of our processes of government. Whether our strength is being sapped by deficit financing indulged in too long, by federal paternalism grown too mighty, by power groups grown too arrogant, by politics grown too corrupt, by crime grown too rampant, by morals grown too low, by taxes grown too high, by extremists grown too violent; whether our personal liberties are as firm and complete as they should be.

These great national problems are not for your professional participation or military solution. Your guidepost stands out like a tenfold beacon in the night: Duty, Honor, Country.

You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the Nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished - tone and tints. They have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen then, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honor, Country.

Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.

I bid you farewell.

Historical Documents

National Center Home Page

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

SHORT AND SWEET LESSON

SHORT AND SWEET LESSON:

The last four letters in American..........I Can

The last four letters in Republican........I Can

The last four letters in Democrats.........Rats

End of lesson. Test to follow in November, 2012

Remember, November is to be set aside as rodent extermination month

Sent to me by Darryl Avery on August 23, 2011

Thursday, August 18, 2011

What is the difference between slaves on plantations and blacks who blindly vote for Democrats - Kevin DuJan

What is the difference between slaves on plantations and blacks who blindly vote for Democrats?
Posted at August 18, 2011 by Kevin DuJan // Hillbuzz, Identity Politics, The Left This is from an email that’s been going around for some time, but never stops being thought-provoking. OR TRUE.

What is the difference between slaves on plantations and blacks who blindly vote for Democrats?

What does a slave-owner have to provide, free, for his slaves?
1. Free Housing.
2. Free Food.
3. Free Healthcare
4. A menial education sufficient to the task he requires the slave to perform.

What is the one thing a slave owner required of his slaves?
1. Unquestioning Loyalty.

What do the democrats always promise to provide, free, to blacks?
1. Free Housing.
2. Free Food.
3. Free healthcare
4. A free menial education, sufficient to get them to the voting booth.

What is the one thing Democrats require of their constituents?
1. Unquestioning Loyalty.

The only question black democrats have to ask themselves is:

Who’s your master now?

The Democrat Party survives because it keeps blacks poor and dependent on Democrat hand-outs to survive.

Democrats do something similar with gays: they keep us in check by scaring gays into believing Republicans are evil and want to kill us, so the only protection we have is to vote Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.

Democrats keep Hispanics under control by pushing Spanish as much as possible, so Hispanics never learn English and don’t progress as much in society.

Women are kept in line by Democrats though cultural wedge issues like abortion, where, once again, people are convinced to vote against their own economic best interests because Democrats create boogeymen to scare them into believing conservatives are evil and want to harm them or take away their rights.

If even one of the groups above could be reasoned with, and would actually see what the Democrat Party does to them, the fragile identity-bloc coalition that makes up the Democrat Paty would collapse on itself.

If you blindly vote Democrat, year after year, without ever asking what you REALLY get out of it, you are either a slave or a damn fool.

Friday, August 12, 2011

‎2008: Talk radio won't let you make the same mistake twice

Posted: Aug 12, 2011 1:11 PM PDT Updated: Aug 12, 2011 2:45 PM PDT
By Christine Johnston, Rick Roberts Show Producer
760 AM KFMB Talk Radio, San Diego, Ca.

Rick Roberts Show Podcasts
Barack Obama got elected thanks in part to a slew of misinformation.

The president got elected by a swarm of people who are unaware of the truth... This was no mandate for socialism! This was a sad turn of events that showed the flaws of the primaries, the weakness of the two party system, and the masses of people who are perfectly content with getting their news from the Daily Show because CSPAN and doing your own research is widely touted as just too boring in contrast to things like Snooki's most recent mishaps...

2008: Let's not make the same mistake twice...

That is why the talk radio is so imperative; that's why the Tea Party movement is so critically important! Those involved are doing more of a service to their country than they may even be aware of:

They're serving the nation through exposing the TRUTH.

Talk radio is the key. It is, for the most part, the only media outlet that encourages freedom of thought and the dissemination of debate and opinion. Information is power...and that's exactly what we promote! But it's no wonder those outside the talk radio loop see us as extreme; as fringe... just look at how we're portrayed! Case in point, Reuters, Tom Brown, July 29th:

Glenn Beck, the arch-conservative U.S. television host who has an almost cult-like following among many Tea Partiers, was mockingly depicted on the cover of The Economist news weekly as the "Mad Hatter" of the movement after the character in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Har, har, har. They may as well have said "Ring-wing extremist" followed by "Neo-Nazi". What ever happened to neutral reporting? Why are conservatives in media painted as arch-enemies of peace and perpetrators of panic? Either that or "shock jocks"...

Talk radio is a raw outlet that, yes, is overflowing with opinion and viewpoints, but it's also chock full of people that encourage independent thought...and to go do your own damn research.

Viva la First Amendment!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Why are we ignoring simple, painless debt solution -

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Why are we ignoring simple, painless debt solution?
Posted: July 28, 20118:09 pm Eastern© 2011
David Kupelian

Suppose you were so broke – I mean so hopelessly in debt – that in just a few days your money would run out and you'd find it difficult just to stay in your home and feed your family.

But then, miraculously, you discovered a large stash of money you had completely lost sight of, but which would easily take care of all your family's expenses for the rest of the year, giving you plenty of precious time to figure out how best to deal with your long-term financial situation?

Wouldn't that be cool?

Of course. And that's exactly the kind of overlooked money stash the United States government has at its disposal – right now. Stay with me.

Washington today is dominated by the daily melodrama, propaganda and brinksmanship of the debt-ceiling debate. The Republican House is operating in good faith, but is opposed by the modern federal government's other major branches – the Senate, the White House and the Propaganda Ministry (aka "mainstream media").

The city is approaching panic level. Minnesota congresswoman and GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann correctly notes that Obama, should he invoke a rogue interpretation of the 14th Amendment and bypass Congress to raise the debt ceiling on his own authority, "would effectively be a dictator." Likewise, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, absurdly accuses House Republicans of the same thing, imposing "dictatorship" on the country while trying to "spark panic and chaos."

So here's the question: With this game of cosmic chicken currently being played with its myriad plans – "Cut, Cap and Balance," the "Gang of 6 plan," Harry Reid's plan, Boehner's latest plan and so on – what about the remarkably simple and painless plan offered by GOP presidential candidate and Texas congressman Ron Paul?

Oh. You never heard about that one?

Last chance to stop the debt limit hike with big push from “No More Red Ink” campaign.

Neither have most people – in fact, it seems to be entirely absent from the debate in Congress.

When I called Paul's D.C. office this morning to ask why his plan hadn't gotten more traction, communications director Rachel Mills told me, "It's too bad it wasn't taken more seriously than, say, dependent seniors not getting Social Security checks. We heard plenty about that."

Here's the plan in a nutshell: Out of the current $14.3 trillion federal debt we keep hearing is rapidly approaching the congressionally approved borrowing limit, over $1.6 trillion of that sum is money you and I "owe" to the Federal Reserve, in the form of bonds the Fed bought from the U.S. Treasury over the last couple of years in implementing its controversial "quantitative easing" policy.

Paul, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and arguably more knowledgeable about monetary policy than any other member of Congress, says just don't pay it back, because it's not a real debt.

Here's how Time magazine senior writer Stephen Gandel explains the Paul plan you've never heard of:

Paul's plan starts with the Federal Reserve. In the last year or two the Fed has been buying up U.S. Treasury bonds in an effort to lower interest rates and boost the economy. The most recent round of that buying has been dubbed QE2, and has come under a good deal of criticism, though most economists agree that it was a generally helpful policy. The result is that the Fed now holds nearly $1.7 trillion in U.S. debt. But that is really phony debt. The Treasury pays the interest on the debt on behalf of the U.S. government to the Fed, which in turn returns 90 percent of the payments it gets back to the Treasury. Nonetheless, that $1.7 trillion in U.S. bonds that the Fed owns, despite the shell game of payments, is still counted in the debt ceiling number, which caps that amount of total federal debt at $14.3 trillion.

Paul's plan: Get the Fed and the Treasury to rip up that debt. It's fake debt anyway. And the Fed is legally allowed to return the debt to the Treasury to be destroyed. A trillion and a half dollars is currently about what spending is expected to exceed tax revenue in 2011.

So, dissolving the phony debt the government (remember, that means you and me) "owes" the Federal Reserve would cover all our government's expenses, when added to expected tax revenues, for the rest of the year.

Now, Ron Paul is a big opponent of the Federal Reserve; in fact he favors its abolition. So does his debt plan require the end of the Fed, and would it therefore be favored only by Fed critics?

Not at all. Even left-of-center economist Dean Baker, co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research, says it's a good idea. Here's how Baker explains it:

The basic story is that the Fed has bought roughly $1.6 trillion in government bonds through its various quantitative easing programs over the last two and a half years. This money is part of the $14.3 trillion debt that is subject to the debt ceiling. … Each year, the Fed refunds the interest earned on its assets in excess of the money needed to cover its operating expenses. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion to the Treasury. In this sense, the bonds held by the Fed are literally money that the government owes to itself.

Unlike the debt held by Social Security, the debt held by the Fed is not tied to any specific obligations. The bonds held by the Fed are assets of the Fed. It has no obligations that it must use these assets to meet. There is no one who loses their retirement income if the Fed doesn't have its bonds. In fact, there is no direct loss of income to anyone associated with the Fed's destruction of its bonds. This means that if Congress told the Fed to burn the bonds, it would in effect just be destroying a liability that the government had to itself, but it would still reduce the debt subject to the debt ceiling by $1.6 trillion. This would buy the country considerable breathing room before the debt ceiling had to be raised again.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, on his excellent Fox Business show "Freedom Watch," plugged the Paul plan twice this week. "With respect to the Fed," intoned the judge, "Congressman Ron Paul has recently pointed out nearly $2 trillion of the $14.3 trillion in national debt is owed to the government's own bank – that would be the Federal Reserve. That should be defaulted first; it's money the government owes itself."

And as Paul himself commented recently: "We owe, like, $1.6 trillion because the Federal Reserve bought that debt, so we have to work hard to pay the interest to the Federal Reserve," Paul said. "We don't, I mean, they're nobody; why do we have to pay them off?"

In fact, last month, Paul told CNN that the world's investors would likely regain confidence in the U.S. were it to wipe out the debt owed to the Fed: "They'll say, 'Hey, they've just reduced the deficit by over a trillion dollars, now they can handle it. They can go back to meeting their other obligations,'" Paul said. "It might give some reassurance to the market."

OK, if this is such a great idea, doesn't require new taxes, doesn't require controversial spending cuts and buys us valuable breathing room, why is almost no one even talking about it?

Good question. Critics have grasped at anything and everything that could conceivably go wrong to discredit Paul's plan: "Ron Paul's plan is just an accounting gimmick." "Paul's plan to tear up T-notes would lead to inflation." "I would think that could indeed cause liquidity problems for banks for low excess reserves." And get this one: "There is no practical difference between raising the debt ceiling with this debt ostensibly outstanding and lowering the debt outstanding by canceling it in order to create space under the existing debt ceiling, except that the Fed loses some flexibility in managing the money supply."

Like what?! You've got to be kidding.

You're telling me that my children and your children are going to have to slave for decades to earn $1.6 trillion to "pay back" a private banking cartel whose stockholders are the nation's best-kept secret, and all because you're worried about possibly causing "liquidity problems for banks for low excess reserves" or the Fed "los[ing] some flexibility in managing the money supply"?

Do you have any clue how much money a trillion dollars is? Let me help you out: If you had gone into business on the day Jesus Christ was born, and your business lost a million dollars every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, it would take you until October of 2737 to lose $1 trillion.

Here's another way to think of it: Spending money at the rate of one dollar every single second, or $86,400 every day, it would take you nearly 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion.

But it takes the Fed only the time required for the requisite keystrokes to create this kind of money out of nothing. Seriously, even the proverbial printing press is no longer required to create what we call "printing press (fiat) money." It's just a computer entry. But it takes your children and grandchildren umpteen generations of blood, sweat and tears to earn this kind of money.

It's a phony debt. It should not be "repaid" – not now, not ever. So why is there no discernible debate in Congress over Rep. Ron Paul's plan?

The Federal Reserve has devalued our currency – once "as good as gold" – 95 percent since its founding a century ago. It has also caused many major economic downturns during that same period, including, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself has admitted, the Great Depression. Here's a chance to finally get a little benefit from this troublesome institution.

Republicans in the House: Is anybody home?

Read more: Why are we ignoring simple, painless debt solution? http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=327389#ixzz1UXp9dWae