Patriotism

A Hero Recognized

Mark Noonan54 Comments

From a White House press release:

On May 16, President Barack Obama will award Specialist Leslie H. Sabo, Jr., U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry.

Specialist Sabo will receive the Medal of Honor posthumously for his heroic actions in combat on May 10, 1970, while serving as a rifleman in Company D, 3d Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division in Se San, Cambodia.

On that day, when he and his platoon were ambushed by a large enemy force, Specialist Sabo immediately charged the enemy position, killing several enemy soldiers.  He then assaulted an enemy flanking force, successfully drawing their fire away from friendly soldiers and ultimately forcing the enemy to retreat.  While securing a re-supply of ammunition, an enemy grenade landed nearby.  Specialist Sabo picked it up, threw it, and shielded a wounded comrade with his own body – absorbing the brunt of the blast and saving his comrade’s life.  Although wounded by the grenade blast, he continued to charge the enemy’s bunker.  After receiving several serious wounds from automatic weapons fire, he crawled towards the enemy emplacement and, when in position, threw a grenade into the bunker.  The resulting explosion silenced the enemy fire, but also ended Specialist Sabo’s life.  His indomitable courage and complete disregard for his own safety saved the lives of many of his platoon members.

Specialist Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary Sabo-Brown and his brother, George Sabo, will join the President at the White House to commemorate his example of selfless service and sacrifice.

We are a nation as long as we can find men like Sabo among us.

100k Wounded Warrior Bike Ride

Mark Noonan51 Comments

From Everything Lubbock:

The president is hosting the 100k Wounded Warrior Bike Ride, a ride dedicated to military members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Riding with veterans who have overcome an injury is not only an honor it is a huge inspiration,” President George W. Bush said.

For the second day in a row the former president and his team of wounded warriors dressed down, geared up, and rode across the Palo Duro Canyon today.

All 19 warriors served under the former president and today all 20 of them worked side by side to make it through the trail.

“There are some places where it is very steep and a group of people will wait for me to get there and sort of push me up a hill,” warrior Dan Gade said.

Sergeant Major Chris Self said wounded warriors are proof that obstacles should never stand in your way…

These are the best of the best and President Bush hasn’t forgotten them.  Neither should the rest of us.   Go here if you’d like to help out a Wounded Warrior.

Sgt. Dakota L Meyer, Hero

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Though he, like all true heroes, refuses the title…but hero he is:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Marine Embedded Training Team 2-8, Regional Corps Advisory Command 3-7, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, on 8 September 2009. Corporal Meyer maintained security at a patrol rally point while other members of his team moved on foot with two platoons of Afghan National Army and Border Police into the village of Ganjgal for a pre-dawn meeting with village elders. Moving into the village, the patrol was ambushed by more than 50 enemy fighters firing rocket propelled grenades, mortars, and machine guns from houses and fortified positions on the slopes above. Hearing over the radio that four U.S. team members were cut off, Corporal Meyer seized the initiative. With a fellow Marine driving, Corporal Meyer took the exposed gunner’s position in a gun-truck as they drove down the steeply terraced terrain in a daring attempt to disrupt the enemy attack and locate the trapped U.S. team. Disregarding intense enemy fire now concentrated on their lone vehicle, Corporal Meyer killed a number of enemy fighters with the mounted machine guns and his rifle, some at near point blank range, as he and his driver made three solo trips into the ambush area. During the first two trips, he and his driver evacuated two dozen Afghan soldiers, many of whom were wounded. When one machine gun became inoperable, he directed a return to the rally point to switch to another gun-truck for a third trip into the ambush area where his accurate fire directly supported the remaining U.S. personnel and Afghan soldiers fighting their way out of the ambush. Despite a shrapnel wound to his arm, Corporal Meyer made two more trips into the ambush area in a third gun-truck accompanied by four other Afghan vehicles to recover more wounded Afghan soldiers and search for the missing U.S. team members. Still under heavy enemy fire, he dismounted the vehicle on the fifth trip and moved on foot to locate and recover the bodies of his team members. Corporal Meyer’s daring initiative and bold fighting spirit throughout the 6-hour battle significantly disrupted the enemy’s attack and inspired the members of the combined force to fight on. His unwavering courage and steadfast devotion to his U.S. and Afghan comrades in the face of almost certain death reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

As long as we’ve got men like Sgt. Meyer, we’ve got a country.

9/11: Ten Years Later

Matt Margolis16 Comments

Ten years ago our country managed to put politics aside and unite as we mourned. Today, let’s put politics aside for the day to remember. Feel free to post your thoughts on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:  Major truck bomb attack in Afghanistan leaves 2 Afghans dead, 77 American soldiers wounded.  Keep those who are on the front lines in your prayers today.

UPDATE II, by Mark Noonan:  Presidents Obama and Bush mark 9/11 – from the Washington Times:

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, President Obama began a day of commemoration by honoring the nearly 3,000 victims at a memorial service at ground zero in New York with former President George W. Bush.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama joined Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, at a reflecting pool at the site of the north tower of the World Trade Center, where Islamist terrorists crashed planes 10 years ago. The Obamas and the Bushes viewed the names of victims etched into a wall and greeted family members of those who perished.

Mr. Obama read Psalm 46, which begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Relatives of the victims took turns reading the names of the dead in alphabetical order…

…Mr. Bush, who was commander in chief on the day America was attacked, read a letter from President Lincoln in 1864 to a mother who lost sons in the Civil War….

UPDATE III, by Mark Noonan – from CNA:

The World Trade Center cross is still a “sign of comfort” to many people, says the Franciscan priest who describes himself as its “unofficial guardian.”

On Sept. 13, 2001 construction worker Frank Silecchia found a 20-foot, cross-shaped T-beam from World Trade Center 1 standing almost upright in the wreckage of World Trade Center 6.

Fr. Brian Jordan, O.F.M., blessed the cross later that year on Oct. 4 and promised that it would be preserved…

In the darkest of times, we are still given hope…

 

 

The TEA Party Keeps Rolling

Mark Noonan36 Comments

And here’s why – from Pajamas Media:

I have been part of the kick off of the Tea Party Express bus tour as it starts its 17 day, 30 city tour, ending in Tampa, Florida on September 12th for the Tea Party Express/CNN debate.  The tour starts in Napa Valley, and then heads east to Reno, NV, then across the nation up to Maine, finally following the eastern seaboard South to Tampa Bay.

On Friday, August 26th, the Napa Tea Partyheld a dinner in celebration of the impending Tea Party Express launch.  Over 400 people attended a night of music, laughter, conversation and cigars (if you were anywhere near me!)  At the table I sat at, I met a gentlemen in his sixties who drills water wells. With his wife by his side, he told me that he has been drilling for near 40 years, and this is the first year – ever – that there is simply no work.  The economy has just stalled his business…

Things our lousy, our country is broken and our leadership incompetent when it isn’t corrupt.  That is why there is a TEA Party – patriotic Americans who want to rescue the nation.  And no matter how much slander and filth is heaped upon it by the DNC/MSM smear machine, it will just keep rolling on.  And this is just a curtain-raiser…in 2012 it will just stride from strength to strength as the people mobilize for a revolutionary change in our government.

Mayor Bloomberg, Numbskull

Mark Noonan30 Comments

Showing just why we GOPers are glad that people like Bloomberg leave the party – from Fox Nation:

Religious leaders are calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reverse course and offer clergy a role in the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Rudy Washington, a deputy mayor in former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s administration, said he’s outraged. Mr. Washington organized an interfaith ceremony at Yankee Stadium shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“This is America, and to have a memorial service where there’s no prayer, this appears to be insanity to me,” said Mr. Washington, who has suffered severe medical problems connected to the time he spent at Ground Zero…

This from the guy who defended the “Ground Zero mosque”…just how idiotic do you have to be to get yourself in to that position?  Sure, put a triumphalist, Moslem religious center right next to Ground Zero…but don’t let a Christian or Jew offer so much as a prayer during the memorial ceremony!  That makes sense…if you’re an uber-rich, elitist member of the Ruling Class.

Now We’re Exporting our Heroes, Too?

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Rather astounding story by Ron Radosh over at Pajamas Media:

The new statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. opened on the National Mall yesterday, with much hoopla as well as with much controversy. It was sculpted by a Chinese artist named Lei Yixin…

Denver based artist Ed Dwight, who was on the planning committee for the King memorial, was anything but happy. Dr. King, Dwight said,  “would be turning over in his grave if he knew that the artist who sculpted King was from a Communist country.” Others added that they thought King looked confrontational, and that his face looked Asian rather than American…

I’m not turning over in my grave, but only because I’m not dead yet.  If I were, I’d be spinning so fast that Earth would be knocked off its axis.  Why in heck as a Chinese artist chosen to sculpt an American icon?  Does someone want to assert to me that there wasn’t a single American artist capable of doing this?  For crying out loud – how the *%&*)@! did this happen?

The sculptor has made his living by carving statues of Mao…a brutal, in inhuman tyrant with the blood of tens of millions on his hands.  Now this toady of the Chinese communist Ruling Class has carved for us a “socialist realism” statue of one of our greatest Americans.  I am absolutely disgusted.  I want that statue blown up, the rubble put on a rocket and shot in to the sun – I don’t even want the materials used in that sculpture to exist in the world.  Get an American artist to sculpt King!

 

When Britain Had Courage

Mark Noonan60 Comments

We got this:

Now we get a supine population being roughed up by welfare bums.

You know something, I’ve never actually owned a gun.  Always figured that enough of my fellow citizens had them to ensure a general defense against riot.  But now I’m going to buy one.  To all the barbarians out there – you go ahead and start a riot in my town, we’ll have words.

Civilization stands on the edge of destruction – the once-great nation of Britain, which used to boast that it never had and never shall lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, is dying.  This is the left wants for us, too…a disarmed, cowardly and government-dependent serfdom, while barbarians prowl unchecked.  Not for me – my America shall live, even if it requires the shedding of barbarian and patriot blood.