Monthly Archives: January 2023

Current Events

Flyers or Faggots?

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Another good one from my friend and our fellow Marine brother, Greg who certainly has a way with words. Amazing that it takes a Russian to remind us who were are and what we stand for.  Surely the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL don’t know who they are or what they are supposed to stand for as role models.  Maybe they should change their name to the  Philadelphia Faggots – the pride of the city of Brotherly Love. I wonder what their attendance record is for home games?

The DIE penalty box
By: G. Maresca

On a recent mild January evening in the City of Brotherly Love, the affection of one home team NHL player was anything but mild. A firestorm of disgruntled wrath erupted upon Ivan Provorov, a Russian native and a defenseman for the Philadelphia Flyers, compliments of the LGTBQ+ agenda and their woke confederates of the diversity, inclusion and equity crowd (DIE).

It reminded me of the old standby: I went to a hockey game and a boxing match broke out.  However, this fight underscores how secular humanism is attacking religiosity for the cultural soul of the American nation.

Provorov, a Russian Orthodox Christian, refused to wear a “Gay Pride Night” jersey with the rainbow flag or use a rainbow-taped hockey stick during warm-ups before the game. “I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said following the game. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.” It is the gay lobby and their media allies who couldn’t help themselves in falling over each other making a huge issue over why one player decided not to conform and prostrate himself to the LGTBQ+ agenda.

Provorov is not making a stand saying gay pride night should not be held. He is merely exercising his right to decide and be left alone. Being compelled to support the tenets of a faith other than his own is as un-American as it gets – until now. No one should have to be a billboard for another’s political, social, or religious beliefs.

Symbols of faith, freedom, and courage are rare in contemporary American society and yet it is a Russian, no less, who is the model of strength and conviction in this torrid era of national wokedom.  This is why many supported him on several websites by selling out his jersey.

Provorov takes all the risk as standing tall against the leftist mob takes plenty of puck. Most would rather not jeopardize being maligned and browbeaten. Provorov spoke for others without the courage of their convictions, while expressing one of the basic dogmas of Christianity: “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

Since inclusivity is the goal, perhaps the Flyers will host a “Christian night” where players will wear jerseys saying: “Jesus Saves?”  What about “MAGA hat night,” too?

A truly free society does not mandate that their citizens conform to any agenda that forsakes their own believes and traditions. Such hollow virtue signaling only serves to chip away and rust our liberty. The fact that so many are unable to differentiate between honoring one’s country and applauding who people sleep with says much about how distorted our values have become.

First comes the demand for tolerance, then comes acceptance, followed by celebration, and finally mandated participation.  The perpetually aggrieved and offended are never satisfied, provided they do not get their way they move on to the next outrage and repeat the process over again.

As a nation we are consumed in a protracted episode of the Twilight Zone, where it is heroic to disrespect and protest the American flag, while hoisting and paying homage to the gay pride colors is not only expected but unquestioned.

The LGTBQ+ movement is not merely about acceptance of certain sexual proclivities and gender identity with preferred pronouns; rather it is a wholesale secular religion that must be acknowledged over one’s own religious and conscientious beliefs. The great marketing ploy that LGTBQ+ is about “love” is a canard in the first degree. Although they preach tolerance and acceptance, they embody the exact opposite provided you dare to disagree.

The harassment of Provorov violates our Constitutional rights. These are the same rights that leftists shove in your face when convenient for them. Provorov understands America better than the many who thrive on victimization and outrage. With his Russian roots, he knows all too well about Marxism’s groupthink.

Provorov deserves respect, not ridicule.

It has never been about tolerance, diversity, or equity.  Rather, it is about submission and conformity. If it were about inclusion, the left would acclaim Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett and Thomas Sowell.

They don’t.

They disparage them.

Sadly, we have devolved into what we once condemned and fought against, and it has taken a Russian to remind us.

I certainly have not forgotten what I abhor and am against, and I surely do not need a Russian to remind me – do you?

Current Events

Vietnam Remembered

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It matters not whether you were there or not. In fact, some of you are too young to even remember the state of the country during those tumultuous years. While I am not 100% a Webb fan, he is an intelligent Marine brother and I respect his service and loved his first book. The author; however, asks some good questions and presents an  interesting perspective on all that went wrong and what went right – yes there were some things that we did right. The Cronkite’s and Rather’s be damned, we did accomplish something there, and we certainly were not all drug addicts and baby killers. It’s somewhat of a long read, but I ask you to read it and think about those days, especially if you were there in the mud. I do apologize for the tardiness of this post; it should have been posted last Thursday, but my house took priority.

THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with Jim Webb

By Barton Swaim WSJ

Arlington, VA

Echoes of Vietnam, 50 Years Later

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, popular culture had basically one message on the Vietnam War: that it was conceived in American arrogance, was perpetrated by American savages, and accomplished little but psychological devastation and national disgrace.

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979), Oliver Stone’s “Platoon” (1986) and “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), Brian De Palma’s “Casualties of War” (1989)—these and a thousand other productions, documentaries and articles told my generation that the war had been a gigantic fiasco that turned those who fought it into war criminals and frowning, guilt-ridden drug addicts.

The war ended officially on Jan. 27, 1973, with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. That’s 50 years ago next Friday—an anniversary that will likely occasion a round of retrospective think pieces and cable-TV segments on the war’s legacy. More will follow in 2025 to mark the final American pullout from Saigon in 1975.

The country has moved on since the ’80s. The Vietnam War no longer elicits the sort of ostentatious regret it did a generation ago. To confine the discussion to Holly-wood, “We Were Soldiers” (2002) was one of the first major films to portray the average American soldier in Vietnam as decent and valorous; more recently “The Last Full Measure” (2018), though indulging in the usual antiwar pieties, acknowledges the bravery and decency of American soldiers.

We’ve moved on in politics, too.

The great scourge of supposed American war crimes in Vietnam, John Kerry—the man who averred in 1971 that American soldiers serving in Vietnam perpetrated war crimes “in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan”—was the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2004. He felt obliged to refashion himself as a war hero, and he lost.

The Vietnam War doesn’t lend itself to unambiguous interpretations in the way many wars do.

But with media-generated myths no longer dominant, and with the pain of losing 58,220 servicemen subsiding, are Americans ready to think about the whole thing anew? “Maybe,” Jim Webb answers after a thoughtful pause. Mr. Webb, 76, who served as President Reagan’s Navy secretary (1987-88) and a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia from (2007-13), commanded a Marine rifle platoon in the Vietnam bush in 1969-70. “Maybe,” he says again, looking unconvinced.

The biggest myth, to my mind, holds that the ordinary Vietnam combat veteran was so scarred by the experience that he couldn’t get his life together back home. Think of Travis Bickle, the lonesome, deranged vet of Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film “Taxi Driver.”

Is there any truth to the stereotype? Mr. Webb recalls an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1986 claiming to find that Vietnam veterans were 86% more likely than everyone else to commit suicide. “I read it,” he recalls, “I broke down all the authors’ numbers and figured out how they came to this conclusion, and it was total bulls—.” The paper considered only men born during 1950, 1951 and 1952, and only those who died in Pennsylvania and California between 1974 and 1983. That didn’t stop the press from touting the study, “in essence claiming if you served in Vietnam, you’re probably going to kill yourself.”

In 1979 Congress hired the Harris polling firm to survey Americans on what they thought about the war and its veterans. At the time Mr. Webb was counsel to the House Veterans Affairs Committee. “Of Vietnam veterans,” he recalls, “91% said they were glad they served in the military, and 74% said at some level they enjoyed their time in the military. And 2 out of 3 said they would do it again.”

Was the war worth fighting?

Mr. Webb thinks on balance it was. He recalls a meeting with Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore. “I asked him a similar question,” Mr. Webb says, “and in his view, America won—only in a different way. We stopped communism, which didn’t advance in Indochina any further than it reached in 1975. We enabled other countries in the region to develop market economies and governmental systems that were basically functional and responsive to their people. That model has stayed, and I like to think it will advance, even in Vietnam.”

But clearly a lot did go wrong between 1963 and 1975. In his autobiography, “I Heard My Country Calling” (2014), Mr. Webb writes of “the arrogance and incompetence of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and his much-ballyhooed bunch of civilian Whiz Kids whose data-based ‘systems analysis’ approach to fighting our wars had diminished the historic role of military leadership.” He repeats the same criticism of the war’s civilian leadership, and he insists the military tacticians in the field—American and South Vietnamese— did their jobs superbly.

Mr. Webb describes two problems the U.S. military was largely powerless to solve. First, the North Vietnamese government’s policy of sending assassination squads into the South. “Bernard Fall, a great French journalist, writes about this in ‘The Two Vietnams,’ ” a book published in 1963, Mr. Webb says. “It had been happening since at least 1958. The Vietminh started sending these squads back into the South, particularly central Vietnam. They were extremely smart and ruthless about it. These guys would go in and execute anyone with ties to any part of the South Vietnamese government—government officials, teachers, social workers, anyone.”

Over time, these murders sapped the population’s loyalty to the government in Saigon, and there was very little the U.S. military could do about it.

The second problem was the one many readers will remember well: the radical left’s successful use of the war, with the news media’s complicity. “Take Students for Democratic Society,” Mr. Webb says. “They were founded before there was a Vietnam War. The Port Huron Statement of 1962”— the document that founded the SDS—“doesn’t say anything about Vietnam. The goal of these revolutionaries was to dissolve the American system, and they thought they would accomplish that through racial issues. They didn’t get any traction—until about 1965 and the Vietnam War.”

Mention of the news media raises the subject of class.

The journalists reporting on the war, interpreting events for the American public, “were articulate, were from good schools, had important family connections,” Mr. Webb says. “You could see it all coming apart.”

Coming apart?

Mr. Webb describes a “divorce” between “upper strata” Americans and the military’s base of enlistees. That divorce didn’t begin with the Vietnam War, but the war accelerated and exacerbated it. “The military draws mainly from people within a certain tradition. It’s a tradition of fighting for the country simply because it’s their country.” Mr. Webb’s first novel, “Fields of Fire” (1978), is in many ways an imaginative portrayal of this fragmentation.

The book, which captures the war’s brutality but carefully avoids criticism of its policy makers, follows the war experience of three American servicemen. One, a Harvard student, means to get a spot in the Marine Corps band as a horn player but winds up as a grunt. He begins his tour by viewing the whole conflict through the lens of Jean-Paul Sartre (“Suffering without meaning, except in the suffering itself”) and ends, permanently maimed, shouting into a microphone at antiwar protesters back in Cambridge: “ I didn’t see any of you in Vietnam. I saw . . . truck drivers and coal miners and farmers. I didn’t see you.”

The military’s present-day recruitment difficulties, Mr. Webb says, have a lot to do with this cultural stratification. When civilian political leaders announce they’re “going into the military to purge ‘whites with extremist views,’ do they know what they’re doing? A lot of the U.S. military comes from a certain cultural tradition, and right now a lot of parents are saying to their kids, ‘Don’t go. You want to have your whole life canceled because someone said you were at a meeting where there was a Confederate flag or whatever?’ ” Mr. Webb sought the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, although he dropped out before the end of 2015. At a CNN debate Anderson Cooper asked each of the candidates: “You’ve all made a few people upset over your political careers. Which enemy are you most proud of?” Others answered predictably: the National Rifle Association, the pharmaceutical industry, the Republicans. Mr.

Webb’s response: “I’d have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he’s not around right now to talk to.” The liberal commentariat disparaged him for boasting that he’d killed a man, but Donald Trump won the general election by appealing to the sort of swing voters who weren’t offended by Mr. Webb’s remark.

Max Hastings, in “Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy” (2018), writes of the Paris Accords that the U.S. “eventually settled on the only terms North Vietnam cared about, whereby its own troops remained in the South, while the Americans went home.” Mr. Webb, who speaks Vietnamese and has visited Vietnam many times as a civilian, agrees: “We did the same thing there as we did in Afghanistan: We cut our allies out of all the important decisions.”

“In 1972”—here he becomes animated—“ the South Vietnamese military was really starting to grow and become a lethal fighting force.” In the Easter Offensive, the North Vietnamese “ hit the South with everything they had.”

He picks up some nearby papers and reads figures: “14 divisions, 26 independent regiments and several hundred Soviet tanks hit South Vietnam. The Americans— we were nearly all gone by then. South Vietnam lost 39,000 soldiers; the communists admitted in their own records that they lost 100,000. They tried to take the South, and the South beat them.

And then, at Paris, we cut them out.”

Soon afterward, Richard Nixon resigned, Congress cut off funding, and Saigon fell.

“Then, of course,” Mr. Webb goes on, the communists “did the Stalinist thing—they put hundreds of thousands of the South Vietnamese finest into re-education camps. Two hundred forty thousand stayed there longer than four years. I have a good friend who was in a re-education camp for 13 years.”

Recalling a visit to Vietnam in 1991, Mr. Webb describes a night when hundreds of South Vietnamese Army veterans who had spent years in re-education camps gathered in a park near Saigon’s old railway station. “My Vietnamese friend told me many of these guys had been high-ranking officers. We could see some of them shooting heroin through their thighs. I thought to myself, ‘Wait a second— these were our people.’ ” Mr. Webb pauses for a moment, then recovers.

What have we learned from Vietnam? Not much, if the Afghanistan pullout is anything to go by. “The way they left was horrible, disgusting,” he says. “People said it looked like the fall of Saigon. No, it did not.”

As a military procedure, “the evacuation from Saigon was brilliant. In 1975, we had refugee camps all over the place ready to take people in—Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, Camp Pendleton in California, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, Operation New Life in Guam.

These places were ready to go before the fall. We got 140,000 people out of there. What this administration did was a disgrace. There was no excuse for it.”

Before I leave, Mr. Webb shows me various pictures and artifacts in his office. The leg injured by that grenade still troubles him; he walks around the office with a slight but discernible limp. One black-and-white photograph he particularly wants me to see.

Taken in 1979, it shows a much younger Jim Webb with two pals from his rifle platoon. Tom Martin, who enlisted in the Marines while a student at Vanderbilt and served as a squad leader, is in a wheelchair. Mac McGarvey, Mr. Webb’s fifth radio operator—three of the previous four were seriously wounded—has no right arm.

All three men in the photograph are smiling.

Current Events

Gas or Electric

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OMG, What’s next gang? There is not enough going on in this once great Nation, that we now have to hear that coking on a gas stove is bad for our health. This would be so hilarious if it weren’t so true. Keep it Joey, you are outdoing yourself.

Another good one from my friend and Marine Greg Maresca

A cooked-up nanny state crockpot

By: G. Maresca

The left wants you driving an electric car and now cooking on an electric stove as they want to ban gas stoves. Richard Trumka of the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission said gas stoves should be banned under the guise of public-health.

This is the same administration claiming the border is secure and inflation under control.  We are $31 trillion in debt with Social Security heading toward insolvency and the left wants to know what you cook on.

After criticism, Trumka backtracked saying President Biden is not in favor of banning gas stoves. Trumka mistakenly said the unspoken bestowing new meaning to the expression: gaslighting. When it comes to the climate alarmist agenda, there is always something simmering on the burner.

Rather than cook on gas stoves, the Biden’s will not only cook but heat the White House by burning all those classified documents stored in their garage at Car-a-Lago. Was this “find” of classified materials the roadmap to route Joe and his Corvette to the exit ramp? Such fodder is a column for another day.

The left had their bedrooms liberated with the Obergefell vs. Hodges decision and have now moved into your garage, bathroom, and kitchen.

Leftists claim gas stoves are a health hazard.

Cooking is chemistry and the noxious gases created are from the ingredients, the digestive tract and sometimes from poor ventilation, but not natural gas. This is not about your health or renewable energy; it is about power and control. People need to realize when government bureaucrats regulate health, safety, and energy, they are nothing but trojan horses for unchecked hegemony.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has taken the appliance truck hostage saying all new gas stoves, hot water heaters and furnaces will not be sold starting in 2025.  By 2035, New York will join their Californian brethren where it will be illegal to purchase a gas vehicle.

Such “bans” are part of the Great Reset that will supplant individual freedom of choice with government diktats. Liberty is taken one small bite at a time all in the hallowed name of the common good. Famed science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein said decades ago that “there is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”

How convenient that the Inflation Reduction Act includes an $840 rebate for electric stoves. Provided subsidies, rebates, and tax credits are ineffective, coercion follows. We will be like Cuba is with cars except with gas stoves that are a half century old. We will be scrounging and fabricating parts to keep our gas appliances serviceable.

mocrats are pro-choice and follow the science loyalists except when it comes to gas. According to Consumer Reports, more gas is used to generate the electricity needed to run an electric stove than a gas one. Likewise, gas stoves are not the preferred stove to cook on and do not stay hot after use. How many restaurants on Martha’s Vineyard cook with electric? Moreover, gas stoves still function when the power goes out.

No matter what the science says, including published peer reviewed analysis of data, you will still be labeled as a “climate denier and a crackpot conspiracy theorist” if you don’t agree. Perhaps the solution lies in having your gas stove identifying as electric along with any other gas appliance.

As the electric grid grows more strained with each passing year, going all electric where a portion is dependent on unreliable and destabilized renewable power has plenty of consequences.

Electric cars, light bulbs, toilets, pronouns, and now gas stoves as it is one absurdity after another. What’s next? The FBI kicking down my door and wrenching away my quarter century chrome shower head from my warm wet hands.

Burger joints and steak houses will go the way of phone booths and VHS tapes. Enter gluten free soy cuts on an electric stove cooked by an LGBTQ+ illegal immigrant.

So, leave the key under the mat when they come for your gas appliances and go out and get your COVID booster and make sure your mask covers your nose.

What’s there not to like?

 

Current Events

Is USAA Too Big?

3 Comments

My unequivocal answer is YES! Next month, I will have been a member of USAA for forty-nine years. USAA has been my only bank, auto and home insurer, my brokerage firm, and until recent years my home loan company since February 1974. I was eagerly looking forward to getting my 50-Year sticker for my car next year, but that will not happen. Why do you ask? Well, bear with me and I will try to explain as briefly as possible. And I ask all those whom I had been responsible for recommending this one-time superb company to you to please read carefully and make your own decision. I am sorry.

As has happened over the years, back in December I had a suspected fraud incident on my rewards credit card, which my bride and I both have a card on that account. First let me explain that we use that card for EVERYTHING, and I do mean everything. Oftentimes I only have a few bucks in my wallet. In fact, I even bought my 2012 Mini Cooper on the card. Anyway, I called USAA and as always, I got a very polite, courteous, and knowledgeable agent who promptly took care of the problem by cancelling my card and issuing another.

I commented about having to notify all the companies that hit that card for monthly debits e.g., utilities, etc. She recommended I get another card and use it for bill paying but put the card in a drawer and not use it to buy anything but continue to use the current card for everyday purchases like gas, groceries, online purchase. That way if a fraud incident happened, I would not have to notify anyone of the card change. I thought WOW, what a great idea. I thanked her profusely. She transferred me to a credit card application agent who, as always, was another very polite, and knowledgeable agent. I explained what I wanted to do, and she agreed stating she does the same thing with two cards. I spent about forty-five minutes having to listen to four disclosures and filling out the application. She put me on hold and submitted it to the Underwriting Department. She came back on and informed me my application was disapproved. WHAT?

She blamed the disapproval on an Experian credit report. I asked for a copy of the letter outlining the refusal, which she forwarded to me. I immediately went to Experian and pulled up my credit report. My credit score was 803, and every comment on every account was favorable. They did mention I had too many inquiries during the last twelve months. I refinanced my house twice during the year to get down to a 1,75%. VA loan. Their last comment was, and I quote, “There are no unfavorable comments on this report”. Was I pissed? You Betcha!

I am an Economist by education and hobby; I understand the banking industry and the FED rules. This disapproval was not a result of a banking industry rule; it was USAA’s. I called USAA asking to speak to a supervisor or manager and was told none were available, but she would make a note and as soon as one became available, I’d get a call, – I never did!  So, as I have done one other time over the years, I wrote the CEO, now Mr. Wayne Peacock, a personal letter knowing full well he would never actually see the letter since he has a department who handles his letters – they are too big for him to be bothered with such trivial matters.

About two weeks later I received an email stating USAA had tried to reach me by telephone but was unable to. I never received a voicemail nor a phone call from them. However, they did provide a link for me to call them back, which I did.  The extension was to the CEO’s grievance department. I was told it was a recorded call. She said she was calling about my problem with a fraud charge on my credit card – she obviously had not understood the reason for the letter; therefore, I had to enlighten her. We spoke for almost an hour, and I got the party line – sorry too many inquiries. I asked if there were any mitigating circumstance considered e.g., longevity with the company, or even some sort of loyalty to a member’s record of NEVER paying a dime in interest charges or late fees. She said no, everyone is treated alike to be “fair.” She understood my frustration, but there was nothing she could do as too much time had passed. My only alternative was to reapply, but there is no way to tell what the result would be.

I asked if the CEO had seen the letter, and she said no. I asked was there any way for her to get him to see it; she said she would try, but there was no guarantee. She did say she would try and contact the underwriting dept and see if there was any way at all for them to relook at it, and she would get right back to me. That was over a week ago and I have not heard from her and won’t.

The fact is USAA has gotten too big. I am simply just another client, one of the masses and my record means nothing to them. Don’t get me wrong, it has nothing to do with my retired rank. Oh yes, they call me Colonel Bathurst when I talk to the nice agents, but that is not the point. I am talking about forty-nine years of an exemplary record.

As I stated in my letter, when I joined USAA, it was for officers only. Then they lowered it to E-7’s and above, which I applauded. Then as I best as I can remember they lowered it to E-4’s and above, Again I applauded that action. Then they lowered the threshold to any Vet with an honorable discharge or a general under honorable conditions. That concerned me! I considered that a mistake. Did they understand who gets a general discharge under honorable conditions? As many of you reading this will surely understand, many of those are not the most favorable vets around. It means they probably had official problems such as a court martial or several Article 15’s, and they just weren’t up to par with their peers. I personally believe that move has caused USAA some problems, which may be why our year-end bonuses are not what they used to be. Granted there were many who were young, wild, and foolish, and may have done something to grant that discharge, but have now grown up and became reliable trustworthy citizens.

One more issue in the letter. My RV was totaled during Ina. My insurer, Nationwide since USAA sends you Progressive because they don’t insure RV’s, paid off the loan. A debit to my checking account was to hit in two days. The loan company, US Bank because USAA’s interest rates are over the top compared to them. I called US Bank asking them to not issue the debit because of the loan being paid off. The agent said she would try but it normally takes two days to stop it, but she would try to expedite it. It was Thursday and the debit was to take place on Monday. She recommended I call my bank and tell them to not accept the debit in case she cannot stop it. I called USAA and was told it takes them three “business days” to execute a stop. I did not know USAA’s computer systems and data updating do not work on weekends. Luckily, US Bank came through and it was not executed. Maybe I will go to US Bank when I leave USAA, they don’t seem to be too big.

Sadly, I am done. I will not get my 50-year sticker. As soon as I get my year-end bonus and my senior bonus in February, I will un-ass USAA and take my business to another financial institution who understands there are exceptions to every rule, and one who recognizes and appreciates longevity and loyalty.

Cavet Emptor,

Jim

PS, Strangely, I have in recent years spoken to several members, even within my own family who also left USAA for a variety of reasons, all of which point to being too big. I do know I can get auto insurance locally for a lot less than USAA even considering their yearly bonuses, but I stayed with them for loyalty reason.

Additionally, in Oct 2017 I posted a letter I had sent to then CEO, Mr. Stuart Parker, about their advertising campaign. And I did get a call, but not from him. You can see my posts should you desire.