The Morning Report 5/28/18

Good morning kids. Today is Memorial Day, so I'll give a brief overview of the big stories that carried over into the weekend and are continuing. First up, the weather is making news, with major flooding in and around the Baltimore area as well as a state of emergency preemptively declared by Florida Governor Rick Scott in advance of named storm Alberto. Stay safe if you are in either of those areas.

"Spygate" has now entered the lexicon and as a result of the truth of what we have all known or minimally suspected for at least a year, the Democrat-Left-Media complex is quite literally going absolutely mad with obfuscation, equivocation and just outright lies. The final bit to be revealed, as many have surmised is that Obama, with the help of his puppet master Valerie "the Farsi Ferret" Jarrett were actually behind the plot to spy on candidate and then President Trump in an effort to sabotage his campaign and then effectively overthrow his administration (while saving their collective asses in the process with the latter).

Mark Meadows, a big macher with the Freedom Caucus is signaling they are willing to sign on with some sort of Amnesty deal for the DACAns. Cave or strategic compromise? Discuss. It seems that despite Publix caving to Little Shitler the Camera Hogg, the cunning stunt might actually backfire politically on anti-NRA Democrats. In free speech news, it seems there is a huge backlash brewing across the pond with the persecution of Tommy Robinson who was jailed for reporting on the trial of the Muslim rape/grooming gangs, and Mark Levin ponders the damage to freedom our own press has inflicted over here.

Internationally, reports of the demise of the PDT-Whoa, Fat! summit may have been premature as the administration is still going ahead with preparations and RoK prexy Moon Jae-In says that Chunky has told him he is going to scrap his nukes after all. We shall see.

Lastly, today is Memorial Day, the day we set aside to honor and remember those Americans who for the past 242 years have laid down their lives in defense of this nation so that we all may be free. The day is of significance to me as I am named for the uncle I never met who was killed in action on Saipan in 1944 and will be forever 28 years old. I also pay tribute to those men of the 11th Armored Division who gave their lives to liberate my mother and her family from Mauthausen in May of 1945. Today, the youngest of those who survived (both as liberators and inmates) are now into their 90s and are passing into history. My fear is that when the last of them go, so to will the understanding of words like Pearl Harbor, Kasserine, Pelelieu, Anzio, Schweinfurt, Shuri Castle and the Hurtgen Forest. Considering what has been done to our culture and education system they may already be meaningless. What do words like Belleau Wood and the Marne mean to people of today? Or for that matter Chosin and Khe San, let alone San Juan Hill, Antietam or Valley Forge?

This is why, for me as I'm sure for everyone who had the terrible honor of hanging a gold star flag in their window, every day is Memorial Day. Lest we forget.

Finally, for anyone who does not understand the true meaning of Memorial Day, I leave you with the story of General Lucian Truscott, who in May of 1945 was sent by President Truman to dedicate the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy, where only a year earlier he had commanded troops in that theater of war.

Anyway, links from around the world, across the nation and up your street. Have a better one and remain blessed.

MEMORIAL DAY 2018

A Plague on Cities and the Poor

Carentan, O Carentan
by Louis Simpson

Trees in the old days used to stand
And shape a shady lane
Where lovers wandered hand in hand
Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal
Where we came two by two
Walking at combat-interval
Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground
Was soft and bright with dew
Far away the guns did sound,
But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke
Hung still above the sea
Where the ships together spoke
To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass
You would have said a walk
Of farmers out to turn the grass,
Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits
Waited til it was time,
And aimed between the belt and boot
And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is
A hammer at my knee.
And call it death or cowardice,
Don't count again on me.

Everything's all right, Mother,
Everyone gets the same
At one time or another.
It's all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,
Down such a leafy lane.
I never drank in a canal,
Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves
And it is not the wind,
The twigs are falling from the knives
That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,
The way to turn and shoot.
But the Sergeant's silent
That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly
Our place upon the map.
But the Captain's sickly
And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what's my duty,
My place in the platoon?
He too's a sleeping beauty,
Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan, O Carentan
Before we met with you
We never yet had lost a man
Or known what death could do.

* * * * *

Vergissmeinnicht
Keith Douglas
1920-1944

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copyboook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

(Capt. Keith Douglas, UK, was killed in action by mortar fire while advancing from Bayeux, 6/9/44)

* * * * *

(Son to Father...)
Do not call me, father. Do not seek me.
Do not call me. Do not wish me back.
We're on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase
our track.

On we fly on wings of thunder, never more to
sheathe our swords.
All of us in battle fallen - not to be brought back by
words.

Will there be a rendezvous? I know not. I only know
we still must fight.
We are sand grains in infinity, never to meet.
nevermore to see light.

(Father to Son...)
Farewell, then my son. Farewell then my conscience.
Farewell my youth, my solace, my one and my only.

Let this farewell be the end of the story,
A solitude vast in which none is more lonely,
In which you remained barred forever
From light, from air, with your death pains untold.
Untold and unsoothed, never to be resurrected.
Forever and ever an 18 year old.

Farewell then.
No trains ever come from those regions,
Unscheduled and scheduled.
No aeroplanes fly there.

Farewell then my son,
For no miracles happen, as in this world
Dreams do not come true.

Farewell.
I will dream of you still as a baby,
Treading the earth with little strong toes,
The earth where already so many lie buried.

This song to my son, then, is come to its close.

Extract from a poem by Jr. Lt. Vladimir Pavlovich Antokolski.

Killed in action, June 6th, 1942

posted by at 06:55 AM

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