Grey's blog: "Thoughts"

At one time in my life, I thought I had a handle on the meaning of the word "service." "It's the act of doing things for other people." Then I heard these terms which reference the word SERVICE: Internal Revenue Service Postal Service Telephone Service Civil Service City & County Public Service Customer Service Service Stations Then I became confused about the word "service." This is not what I thought "service" meant. So today, I overheard two farmers talking, and one of them said he had hired a bull to "service" a few of his cows. BAM! It all came into perspective. Now I understand what all those "service" agencies are doing to us. I hope you now are as enlightened as I am.

Assuming that Hillary Rodham Clinton receives the Democratic nomination, would we really want to give her a chance to loot the White House AGAIN??? Not in this lifetime

Recently as I was staring at the monthly calendar and planning my monthly budget, I happened on this thought. Most of us have heard the story of creation from the Bible and learned that God created the Earth in six days and on the seventh day he rested. That would mean that the Sabbath (Sunday) would be the seventh day. So why is Sunday always shown as the first day of the week on calendars rather than the seventh day? Hmmm

A lot of talk and debate has occurred over the last couple of years about an exit strategy for Iraq. Whether the invasion of Iraq by a multi-national force led by the United States in 2003 was right or even justified has ceased to be as much of an issue as how in the hell we are going to get out of there and let the Iraqis take care of themselves. Well, I think I may have found one of the stumbling blocks. I just read a most fascinating story from the Associated Press that discusses an investigation of a Federal contractor called DynCorp Intl. This company was to provide housing, food, security, facilities and training support for law enforcement staff with various specialties as well as weapons and armor for personnel assigned to the program. You would think that a trained and equipped police force of native Iraqis would be one of the steps toward eliminating the need for armed American troops to patrol the streets over there. I would think that, anyway. However, auditors have discovered that invoices and records on the project are in such disarray that $1.2 billion cannot be accounted for. Let me put that another way. Your Federal govt gave a company called DynCorp one billion, two hundred million dollars three years ago to train and equip Iraqi police, and now DynCorp can not only not show any police for the money, they cannot show any reliable records on the money having been spent on anything! It's just gone. Even if you spent an exorbitant $100,000 on training and equipment per man...you would be able to field a police force of 12,000 officers. That is about the equivalent of the entire Chicago police force. DynCorp and your Federal government has been able to field zero. The next time you receive your paycheck I want you to look at how much Federal taxes has been deducted. Now you know where it went. Where is the accountability? I have to maintain my finances better than that. Seems one part of the Federal government (read IRS) would rather chase and harass some poor unlucky bastard for a measly sum, than see to it that the dollars they have extracted from the populace are being properly spent. Why don't we see this on the mainstream new reports? Maybe it's time to "just say no" to the tax system until the government cleans up the way our hard earned tax dollars are spent. I am sick of trying to exist on a measly monthly disbility benefit while the government spends $600.00 on a toilet seat or $365 on a claw hammer. Of course maybe my mindset would change if only I could develop a scheme to bilk all of you out an income that would set me up in life. But, alas, somewhere along the path of life I missed the line to join the government gravy train.

A good piece of chocolate has about 200 calories. As I enjoy two servings per night, and a few more on weekends, I consume 3500 calories of chocolate in a week, which equals one pound of weight per week.... Therefore.... In the last 7 years, I have had a chocolate calorie intake of about 360 pounds. I weight only 220 pounds, so without chocolate, I would have wasted away to nothing some time ago! I owe my life to chocolate.

Suck up this freedom and liberty while you can. It seems that the populace of this country doesn't like it as it is. The constant barrage of the socialistic news media and the Politicians bullspit are folding up America as we know it. I think they have had it too good for too long. The end is getting near. There is no patriotism of any depth! There is no belief in anything except I wanna do what I like to do and hang everybody else. It is a me, me, me, me country. I got news for you. "You ain't gonna like losing." President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism. But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq. Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. IT IS NOT! Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders. Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not. And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war. But that did not matter. The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war. Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old, pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort. Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort. Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home. Harsh rationing of things from gasoline to tires to soap to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining. You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale. And a bunch even enlisted. The next one is really hard to believe if you been in institutes of higher learning. Now they teach communism. They hate democracy. They worship Karl Marx. Talk about demon fueled. Wow! Imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with a Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops! Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning. There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio. We did not have legions of crackheads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets. No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve. It is not the same country. It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorrah and the land of Oz. We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices. We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims. They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam. It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause...Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits. The DemoRATS allowed this socialistic movement to take over their party. The RePUKEians have allowed their candidates to preach the conservative message that usually gets them in. They have not had a true conservative since Reagan. Once these new morons get into office they turn to the left and call it centralism. They all belong to the same Country Club. The fate of America will be in the hands of it's people uniting and getting the job done. The bad and horrible truth of the entire Big Picture will be retained through fighting in OUR STREETS! So...we either win it - or lose it - and you ain't gonna like losing. America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the mall. The attitude of this country and it's citizens will lose it all. Hang on to your butts because you ain't gonna like dying.

A veteran - whether active duty, retired, national guard or reserve - is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to the "United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including my life." That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

A wealthy old lady decides to go on a photo safari in Africa, taking her faithful aged poodle named Cuddles, along for the company. One day the poodle starts chasing butterflies and before long, Cuddles discovers that he's lost.. Wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch. The old poodle thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep doo-doo now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the leopard is about to leap the old poodle exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard! I wonder if there are any more around here?" Hearing this, the young leopard halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees. "Whew!", says the leopard, "That was close! That old poodle nearly had me!" Meanwhile, a monkey who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So off he goes, but the old poodle sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up. The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The young leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!" Now, the old poodle sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?", but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old poodle says. "Where's that damn monkey? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another leopard! Moral of this story.... Don't mess with old farts...age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill! Bullshit and brilliance only come with age and experience. I am in no way insinuating that any of you are old, some are just more youthfully challenged.

No matter what your position is, this is an excellent essay that we should all read and give some thought to. SOME OF YOU MAY NOT BE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER THAT NEARLY EVERY FAMILY IN AMERICA WAS GROSSLY AFFECTED BY WWII. MOST OF YOU MAY NOT REMEMBER THE RATIONING OF MEAT, SHOES, BUTTER, GASOLINE, AND SUGAR. NO TIRES FOR OUR AUTOMOBILES, AND A SPEED LIMIT OF 35 MILES AN HOUR ON THE ROAD, NOT TO MENTION, NO NEW AUTOMOBILES. READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT HOW WE WOULD REACT TO BEING TAKEN OVER BY FOREIGNERS IN 2008 or 2009. This is an EXCELLENT essay; well thought out and presented by Raymond S. Kraft, a writer living in Northern California who has studied the Middle Eastern culture and religion. Historical Significance Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat. The Nazis had sunk more than 400 British ships in their convoys between England and America taking food and war materials. At that time the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war. Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, who had not yet attacked us. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies. France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers. Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia. Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe. America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it. All of Europe, from Norway to Italy (except Russia in the East) was already under the Nazi heel. The US was certainly not prepared for war. The US had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WW I because of the depression, so that at the outbreak of WW II, Army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. A huge chunk of our Navy had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor. Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England (that was actually the property of Belgium) given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact). Actually, Belgium surrendered in one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later. Hitler, first turned his attention to Russia, in the late summer of 1940 at a time when England was on the verge of collapse. Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany. Russia lost something like 24,000,000 people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 soldiers. Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. If that had happened, the Nazis could possibly have won the war. All of this has been brought out to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. Now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history. There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants, and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world. The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs. They believe that Islam, a radically conservative form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world. To them, all who do not bow to their will of thinking should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is their mantra.(goal) There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East. For the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not yet known which side will win, the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists. If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC. Not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis. Do you want gas in your car? Do you want heating oil next winter? Do you want the dollar to be worth anything? You had better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins. If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away. A moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge. We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing... in Iraq. Not in New York, not in London , or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things. (1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades; Saddam was a terrorist! Saddam was a weapon of mass destruction, responsible for the deaths of probably more than 1,000,000 Iraqis and 2,000,000 Iranians. (2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to be killed here. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed. WW II, the war with the Japanese and German Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before the US joined it. It officially ended in 1945,a 17-year war, and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again... a 27 year war. WW II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP, adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. WW II cost America more than 400,000 soldiers killed in action and nearly 100,000 still missing in action. The Iraq war has, so far, cost the United States about $160,000,000,000, which is roughly what the 9/11 terrorist attack cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly equivalent to lives that the Jihad killed (within the United States ) in the 9/11 terrorist attack. The cost of not fighting and winning WW II would have been unimaginably greater.. a world dominated by Japanese Imperialism and German Nazism. This is not a 60-Minutes TV show, or a 2-hour movie in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. It always has been, and probably always will be. The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away if we ignore it. If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an ally, like England, in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates to conquer the world. The Iraq War is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war. Now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons, unless some body prevents them from getting them. We have four options: 1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons. 2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is). 3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East now; in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America . OR 4. We can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and possibly most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier. If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today. The history of the world is the history of civilization clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win. Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them. Remember, perspective is every thing, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind. The Cold War lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989; forty-two years! Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany! World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50,000,000 people, maybe more than 100,000,000 people, depending on which estimates you accept. The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WW II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WW II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far. The stakes are at least as high... A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms... or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law). It's difficult to understand why the average American does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. "Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's safe. Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most? I'll tell you why! They would be killed! The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy!

Written by a housewife from New Jersey and sounds like it! This is one pissed off lady. "Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001? Were people from all over the world, mostly Americans, not brutally murdered that day, in downtown Manhattan, across the Potomac from our nation's capitol and in a field in Pennsylvania? Did nearly three thousand men, women and children die a horrible, burning or crushing death that day, or didn't they? And I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was "desecrated" when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet?...Well, I don't. I don't care at all. I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11. I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start caring about the Holy Bible, the mere possession of which is a crime in Saudi Arabia. I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed throat I'll care when the cowardly so-called "insurgents" in Iraq come out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by hiding in mosques. I'll care when the mindless zealots who blow themselves up in search of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide bombs. I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights. In the meantime, when I hear a story about a brave marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care. When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college-hazing incident, rest assured: I don't care. When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank: I don't care. When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a Koran and a prayer mat, and fed "special" food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining that his holy book is being "mishandled," you can absolutely believe in your heart of hearts: I don't care. And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled "Koran" and other times "Quran." Well, Jimmy Crack Corn and -you guessed it -I don't care ! ! ! ! ! If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your e-mail friends. Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this ridiculous behavior! If you don't agree, then please don't complain when more atrocities committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great country! And may I add: "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." Ronald Reagan I have another quote that I would like to add and.......I hope you forward all this. "If we ever forget that we're One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under." also by... Ronald Reagan One last thought for the day: In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the anti-American sentiment and negativity, we should remember England's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words during a recent interview. When asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America, he said: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in, and how many want out."