Memorial Day 2016: Did Our Soldiers Die for Freedom?

Memorial Day, 2016.  I am rather apathetic about Memorial Day this year.  The Zeitgeist has determined that Confederate soldiers, sailors and marines are to be written out of American history and inclusion.  Monuments and memorials to these veterans are being desecrated and eradicated in a fanatical frenzy all over the country.  Placement of Confederate flags on Confederate graves is forbidden in national cemeteries.  Perhaps at some point, Confederate tombstones will be bulldozed, lest Black Thugs Matter be offended by men 150 years dead.

American soldiers have not always fought for freedom, though we like to attach that flowery phrase to their mortal sacrifices.  The American fighting man did indeed fight for freedom in the Revolutionary War and World War II, as well as Korea and Vietnam.  In those wars they opposed an enemy dedicated to the destruction of self-determination and self-governance.

Of course, in Korea and Vietnam, our troops fought for the freedom of someone else, not Americans.  Perhaps our involvement can be rationalized by the belief that, if Communist aggression were allowed to proceed unchecked, then our own freedom would be jeopardized in the near future.  Was the death toll worth it?  The answer is subjective.  I am happy that Korea was spared from the collectivist tyranny, and I regret that the Democrat Party sold our Vietnamese allies down the river.

Other wars in our history are not as clear cut.  Did we fight for freedom in the Civil War?  Yes and no.  The South fought for the right to govern itself; the North fought to prevent it.

Did we fight for freedom in the Spanish-American war?  If so, it isn't obvious to me.  Likewise in the Mexican war of the 1840s. Texas fought to secede from Mexico and govern itself, so as far as Texas is concerned, they were indeed fighting for freedom, i.e. Texas independence.  Mostly, however, that war was merely a land grab.  Mexico had lands that we wanted, and we took them by force.

Did we fight for freedom in World War I?  No.  We probably should never have gotten involved.  It is said that we were fighting "to make the world safe for democracy."  What balderdash.  If anything, we fought to defend our allies in Britain and France against the Germans -- kinfolk supporting kinfolk in a time of crisis, even though there was no clear-cut case of good vs evil.  World War I was a confused and chaotic mess without any clear goals for either side.  To this day I cannot tell you what the two sides were fighting for.  It remains a mystery.

Did we fight for freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan?  The answer seems clear:  no.  I think we fought there to destroy the threat of attacks by Islamists against other Islamists and against ourselves.  The theory was that by turning Iraq and Afghanistan into modern democracies, they would lose their aggressive tendencies, much as Germany and Japan did after their defeat in World War II.  This was prefaced on the mistaken belief that all peoples, everywhere, secretly yearn for democracy and individual freedom.  They do not so yearn in Muslim countries, or at least, the majority do not.  They want to be ruled by fanatical clerics and Sharia law.  Attempting to turn these barbarian cultures into modern, pluralistic democracies was a fool's errand from the start.  Most of the American lives lost there were wasted.

Not all American soldiers and sailors and marines died "for freedom."  Although we should keep our military strong and ready, it should not be used to enter ambiguous wars where there is no clear threat to our own freedoms.  The lives of our sons and daughters are too precious to waste.

Cemetery Musings: Preparing for My Final Expenses

Oak Hill Cemetery, San Jose California

Since my wife had heart surgery on Wednesday, she became concerned with the what-ifs of our earthly existence, and figured it was time to arrange for our burials.  We already had our cemetery plots picked out and, along with our coffins, paid for, just a few yards from the graves of my parents.  However, there is more to final expenses than that.  You need a tombstone and have to pick out the type and color of granite from a wall chart, as well as a "vault," which is a metal box that encloses the casket.  The vault prevents your grave from caving in and prevents water intrusion.  There are several types of vaults to choose from, including stainless steel, copper, bronze and others.  We chose the stainless steel.  We settled on a slate-blue gray for the flat tombstone, which will be one stone for the both of us.

The cost of all this is $9,000 for the two of us, paid over five years:  $1,000 down and $150 a month to pay off the balance.  If one dies before payment is complete, the balance due for that person is forgiven.  If we both die, the entire balance is forgiven.

So when we die, our corpses will be sealed and preserved for centuries to come.  Why?  For what purpose?  I would prefer the old-fashioned way of burial, in a pine box where the remains are allowed to completely decompose back to their basic elements, perhaps adding some nutrients to the soil.  The other alternative is cremation.  As I watched the blur over the crematory's smoke stacks, i.e. the heated air carrying water vapor from burning bodies, I decided that was not for me.

Walking through the administrative offices of San Jose's Oak Hill Cemetery gave me the creeps.  Death is all around you.  Somewhere, down the halls in the back rooms, corpses are being washed, embalmed, coiffed and dressed in their Sunday best, then laid out in richly upholstered coffins for display.  A large HD screen in back of the reception desk displays the names of the deceased, the funeral services to be held, the burial dates, the chapels to be used.  A large percentage of the names were Vietnamese.

Everywhere you go, in the sales offices, the viewing rooms, the main vestibule, and even the bathrooms --  there is the cloying smell of flowers. It is a perfume that seems spread through the facility through the air conditioning system.  No doubt this has the same purpose that funeral flowers have had for millenia -- to hide the smell of death.  In older times, the smell was that of decay, but today the smell is that of formaldehyde, i.e. embalming fluid.  The smell took away any appetite I might have had.  I didn't even want to drink the bottled water they gave us.  It was "dead people's water."  Or so I imagined.

I first noticed the weird smell of a funeral when I was around seven years of age, and saw my first deceased person in a coffin -- my maternal grandfather.  I was very aware of the odor of embalming fluid, a smell that I will forever associate with funerals and death.  Which is convenient, since that's about all it is used for.

It's pretty hard to have any cheerful thoughts when visiting cemetery offices, to prepare for one's own final expenses.  You have to finally admit that you are mortal, that you are going to die.  You can ignore it and not think about it, and delay the morbid feelings that acknowledgement brings.  Let your surviving relatives worry about what to do with your body and how to pay for it.  Or, you can do as I and my Mrs did this week, make the arrangements well in advance, sparing your relatives the burden.

In spite of my morbid thoughts about this experience, I am grateful that cemetery companies exist, that morticians and coffin makers and florists and grave diggers exist.  Sending someone off on their final journey is not a pleasant task, but someone has to do it.  Now that it is settled, I plan to wait around for the Grim Reaper to show up, then punch him in the mouth and run.

A Day in the Hospital

On Wednesday morning my wife checked into Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos for a surgical procedure on her heart.  She has long suffered from irregular heartbeat and tachycardia, and this procedure was to see what was going on and what, if anything, could be done about it.

She checked into the Short Stay Cath Lab in the basement, and was awake during the procedure, viewing her own heart on a television screen as the doctor talked to her about what he was seeing.  It seems she had a second heart node that was likely the cause of the rapid heart beat.  They cauterized it, and hopefully that will end the problem.

Before we arrived at the hospital, we went to Oak Hill Cemetery in San Jose to finish preparations for our final expenses, just in case.  More about that in the next post.

The Billboard Music Awards 2016: Pathetic

I watched the Billboard Music Awards last night on television.  I could hardly believe my eyes or ears, that anyone would put such talentless and artless crap on television and call it music.

Britney Spears did a kind of slow walk-through of a dance(?) routine, singing or chanting or making barely audible sounds in any case.  Her routine was very simple and meaningless, like something a child would learn in grade school for an entertain-the-parents play.  Also, the words were stupid, the music awful.  Any teenage garage band could have done better.  The people in the audience clapped listlessly at the end of each number, like "Whatever."  No one seemed impressed.

Justin Bieber was also terrible.  Stupid songs, no tune, no beat, meaningless words, and Bieber's voice was completely blah.  The searing mediocrity of the performances was not hidden by the overuse of lighting effects and pyrotechnics.  One lady sang suspended from a large, burning clock.  Nice, but actual music and talent cannot be replaced with gimmicks.

There was one other singer, a young male who started playing an acoustic guitar, then moved to a room where a simulated downpour could be seen through the windows, where he then switched to piano.  His voice wasn't too bad, but again the song was to barf for.  My wife noted that the song "had no hook," and she was right.

The state of American music is at such a low point, there is opportunity for a new star to arise from the ashes.  Someone who can sing and play and provide a beat that makes one want to move his feet.  If they hurry, they won't have hardly any competition at all.  Somewhere out there is the next Elvis, the next Beatles, the next Michael Jackson.  Let's hope he, she or they show up soon.

The New Genderless Society

I have often poo-pooed R.S. McCain's seeming fixation on the sick subculture of feminism (think ugly lesbians who hate men).  However, I am beginning to see the value of his walk on the weird side.  It seems the fat, ugly lesbians (also known as FULs) want to eradicate gender from our society altogether.  Is this where the current madness came from, the move to make all public bathrooms genderless or "trans-gender"?

It seems the Democratic Party (as well as liberal Republicans) are too willing to follow the lead of the Kook Element on college campuses.  Whatever new extremist fad is invented, it will be immediately picked up by the mainstream political establishment who see it as revealed truth.  New victims must be found. lest we run out of ways to signal our virtue and demonstrate our enlightenment.  If no new victims can be found, they must be invented.  Hence, a boy who likes to dress up like girls and use the latter's bathroom is the new victim.

Next will be the "furries," a new group of people who like to dress up as animals.  A guy in my previous rock band now dresses up like a wolf, and hangs around with various other species cross-dressers.  Someday soon Target will pass a policy allowing those dressed as giant chickens to use the stall next to yours, and if the clucking bothers you, too bad.

In the end, the long-term goal of the radical left is to eliminate all class, race, and gender divisions.  There are to be no differences between humans, at all.  Socialists have long advocated that everyone in society earn the same pay, from the CEO down to the mailroom clerk, and that will become a burning issue sooner or later. "Inequality of income" must be removed.  Perhaps we will adopt a kind of uniform so that everyone will dress in the same fashion and color as everyone else.  Only one deodorant will be manufactured, so that everyone smells the same as well.

How else can we achieve universal equality?  Well, no more bands and orchestras can be allowed, because of the divisions -- rhythm, brass and woodwinds.  And what if someone plays better than another?  The latter's feelings will be terribly hurt.  Therefore, bands and orchestras will have only one instrument that anyone can play, perhaps a kazoo.

Yes, America will become a Freak Show.  Or should I say, MORE of a freak show.

Decline of the West: Who Cares?

Western Civilization is on a downhill slide.  Massive Islamic and other Third World immigration is changing the European demographic to one more amenable to the new fascism the left has in mind.  Our free market system is to be replaced with collectivism, and our society to be strictly regimented into what we can say, think or do.

The latest leftwing obscenity is a frontal attack on the idea of gender.  Are we men and women, or something else?

We are being erased and replaced, but we don't care.  Screw it.

I actually do care, but feel resigned to it.  The left is insane and wants to commit cultural and demographic suicide.  Moreover, they want to take us all with them.  Resistance is futile.  Or so they would like you to believe.

Google's Goofy Graphic

This is the goofy graphic that Google is using today.  It shows a homely yet smug Asian woman speaking into a microphone, probably to urge on the sign-bearing demonstrators behind her.  Their signs spell out "EQUALITY," as if they didn't have it already.  This graphic conjures for me the ugly image of college campuses, where strident minorities rail against the white oppressor, while making absurd demands.  The "equality" they seeks is equality of access to your pocketbook or wallet.  They want free stuff, and they feel so morally superior in demanding it.

Of course, equality of responsibility and productivity is not what they seek.  The world owes them a living for just being here and taking up space.

UPDATE:  I found this info on FakeBook's "Crony Capitalism" site, referring to this graphic:

Today Google celebrates Yuri Kochiyama the woman who once said this -
“I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire.”

My instincts were right.  Take one homely, smug Third Worlder with a microphone and you have a commie agitator.

Anti-Trump Republicans' New Strategy!

There is currently a lot of whining, cry-baby insults and memes from the GOP Anti-Trump crowd.  Dave at Moonbattery has been throwing some impressive temper-tantrums.

My major reasons for supporting Trump are clear:  (1) He wants to stop illegal immigration, (2) He wants to stop Muslim immigrations, (3) He hates political correctness and wants to destroy it, (4) He wants to rebuild the military that has been so badly weakened by Obama, (5) He wants to fix bad trade deals with foreign countries that transfer American jobs overseas.

However, the anti-Trump Republicans have a new strategy:  shoot themselves in the foot, and then reload and shoot the other foot.  Brilliant move, crybabies.  Grow up and get with the program.

The Secret Desire of Every Feminist! (Photoshop)

LONG LIVE THE PATRIARCHY

Just busting a few Feminist Fuses!

Why?  Because they piss me off.  I despise their invented code words and language, their assumption that their freakishness is normal, that their skewed viewpoints on gender and sexuality are deserving of respect.

Now that this Photoshop is on the web, may it spread far and wide, and utterly annoy warped lesbian, man-hating feminist freakazoids everywhere.

Make yourselves useful, Femi-Nazis.  Learn to make decent sandwiches.

Anger Over Trump's Success - and Other Stories of the Day

Donald Trump's Victory
It now appears likely, if not certain, that Donald Trump will gather enough delegate votes to win the GOP presidential nomination on the first ballot.  It is surprising to me the extent of anger from some conservatives, who have described Trump as "evil," or a boor or buffoon.  They almost seem to support Hillary to avoid having to vote for Trump.  Ben Shapiro is one of the most obnoxious, describing Trump supporters as "Trump Chumps" on FaceBook.

Well, too bad.  I have had to hold my nose during the last two elections and vote for John McCain and then Mitt Romney, because the Democrat alternative seemed so much worse.  I won't have to hold my nose when I vote for Trump here in California on June 7.  However, Trump's a gamble, just as McCain and Romney were gambles.  Maybe he'll be a great president in spite of GOP pessimism.  Maybe not, but I am willing to take a chance at this point.

I no longer care that much if a candidate claims to be a "conservative."  Conservative Republicans helped Democrats trash my Confederate heritage a few months back, and that's when my loyalty to the GOP was greatly weakened.  Do I want to "burn it down," referring the the Republican Party?  Hell, hand me the matches.

Brett Kimberlin's Successive Defeats in Court
I have been following the Brett Kimberlin saga over at Hogewash.com, for some time now.  It seems Kimberlin has been losing almost every motion and case, even without trial, as judges keep approving summary judgment motions by Kimberlin's lawfare victims, or othewise dismissing the case.  Aaron Walker sued Kimberlin and his wife for malicious prosecution recently, and Kimberlin failed to answer the complaint and this resulted in a default judgment in Walker's favor.  Kimberlin told the judge he was "Okay with the default," but he gave Kimberlin another eight days to answer the complaint before the judgment is filed.  If Kimberlin answers the complaint, the case may proceed to trial.  If not, the only hearing heard next is to fix the level of damages owed to Walker.  Kimberlin had earlier filed a motion for summary judgment, but it was denied.   This meant that discovery could begin and the case could be scheduled for trial.

It should be interesting to see how it all plays out.  Kimberlin has had seemingly unlimited energy in filing lawsuits and filing appeals when he loses by summary judgement or has cases dismissed (due to res judicata, statute of limitations, and other legal issues).  This is the first time I and others have witnessed what appears to be battle fatigue on Kimberlin's part.  He is just throwing in the towel.  Or maybe not.  We'll know by next week.

William Hoge has also filed a lawsuit against Kimberlin and some of his associates, for malicious prosecution and defamation.  After three years of fighting Kimberlin's many lawsuits, both Walker and Hoge have decided that payback time has arrived.  And you know what they say about payback.  Yes, it has a lot in common with Hillary.