COMMENT OF THE DAY: "Human beings. People. Can’t get along with them and can’t use them for target practice, so what ya gonna do?" A question for which there is no answer.

“IF LIBERALS AND LEFT-WINGERS GET ANY MORE CIVIL, conservatives and Republicans might have to start wearing body armor shooting back.” Fixed.

SOME THINGS about the Vietnam Memorial Wall that we need to be reminded of every so often:

There are 58,267 names now listed on that polished black wall.

The names are arranged in the order in which they were taken from us by date & within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe it is 36 years since the last casualties.

The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth , Mass. Listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is listed on the Wall with that of his son, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965.

There are three sets of fathers & sons on the Wall.

39,996 on the Wall were just 22 or younger.

8,283 were just 19 years old.

The largest age group, 33,103 were 18 years old.

12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old.

5 soldiers on the Wall were 16 years old.

One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock was 15 years old.

997 soldiers were killed on their first day in Vietnam ..

1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam ..

31 sets of brothers are on the Wall.

Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons.

54 soldiers attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia.

8 Women are on the Wall. Nursing the wounded.

244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall.

Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons.

West Virginia had the highest casualty rate per capita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.

The Marines of Morenci - They led some of the scrappiest high school football & basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town of Morenci (pop. 5,058) had ever known & cheered. They enjoyed roaring beer busts. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest. And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci's mining families, the nine graduates of Morenci High enlisted as a group in the Marine Corps.

Their service began on Independence Day, 1966. Only 3 returned home.

The Buddies of Midvale - LeRoy Tafoya, Jimmy Martinez, Tom Gonzales were all boyhood friends & lived on three consecutive streets in Midvale, Utah on Fifth, Sixth & Seventh avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played ball at the adjacent sandlot ball field. And they all went to Vietnam. In a span of 16 dark days in late 1967, all three would be killed. LeRoy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 ~ 245 deaths.

The most casualty deaths for a single month was May 1968 - 2,415 casualties were incurred.

For most Americans who read this they will only see the numbers that the Vietnam War created. To those of us who survived the war, & to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these numbers created. We are, until we too pass away, haunted with these numbers, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons & daughters.

There are no noble wars, just noble warriors.

From my email.

CITIZEN NOTICE: Before I (was) retired from the defense industry, a notice similar to this always circulated immediately before a WARN Act notice:

Due to the current financial situation caused by the slowdown in the economy, the Government has decided to put citizens 50 years of age and above on early, mandatory retirement, thus creating jobs and reducing unemployment.

This program will be known as RAPE (Retire Aged People Early). Citizens selected to be RAPED can apply to the Government to be considered for the SHAFT program (Special Help After Forced Termination). Citizens who have been RAPED and SHAFTED will be reviewed under the SCREW program (System Covering Retired-Early Workers).

A citizen may be RAPED once, SHAFTED twice and SCREWED as many times as the Government deems appropriate.

However, citizens who have been RAPED can get AIDS (Additional Income for Dependents & Spouse) or HERPES (Half Earnings for Retired Personnel Early Severance). In addition, those citizens who have AIDS or HERPES will not be SHAFTED or SCREWED any further by the Government.

To improve job efficiency, citizens under 50 will receive as much SHIT (Special High Intensity Training) as possible. The Government has always prided itself on the amount of SHIT it gives our citizens.

Should you feel that you do not receive enough SHIT, please bring this to the attention of your Congressman, who has been trained to give you all the SHIT you can handle.

Sincerely,
The Committee for Economic Value of Individual Lives (E.V.I.L.)

PS - Due to recent budget cuts and the rising cost of electricity, gas and oil, as well as current market conditions, The Light at the End of the Tunnel has been turned off.

It's entirely appropriate that the President issue this WARN Act notice prior to his inauguration.

IT'S DIFFERENT when you're a 'little person'.

FOOD STAMPS cause obesity.

JOB APPLICANTS’ “cultural fit” can trump qualifications. Interesting. Now for the $64 question: does 'cultural fit' trump 'diversity'?

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL: willing to risk gov’t shutdown to force spending cuts and new revenue is not an option.

Let the revolution begin.

CONSERVATIVES explain to 'rich' liberals why their paychecks are smaller.

SIMPSON, BOWLES on the fiscal cliff: "[W]e’re the healthiest horse in the glue factory right now."

HEH.

FIRST GUN CONTROL, now finger control. In Maryland. Of course.

HOW MANY voted their way to a smaller paycheck? Fifty bucks a paycheck equates to roughly a $65,000 salary on a biweekly pay schedule.

Now they know where 'rich' begins....

“FOR YEARS how to revive the economy of rural New York has been a top-of-the-agenda item for politicians. Now that something comes along that could do it, they say, ‘Well, maybe not. . .’”

If people are offered a path off welfare, they can't be as easily controlled....

ANOTHER GREENFAIL: Cash for Clunkers. Unexpectedly, of course.

AL GORE sells Current TV to Al Jazeera.

The Americans who owned the anti-American network Current TV soon will be replaced as owners by foreigners who operate the anti-American network Al Jazeera. I doubt any of the 40,000 regular Current TV viewers would have noticed had the news not gone public. Of course, most of them spend their time writing diaries at the DailyKos, when not being yelled at by their moms to clean their rooms. But the big winner in all this is former Vice-President Al Gore. The private-jet-flying, limo-riding, mansion-heating/air-conditioning bearded Pope of the Holy Church of Global Warming stands to pocket $100 million in dirty oil money from the deal. Unfortunately for him, in spite of his scrambling to do so, he wasn’t able to seal the deal before the end of 2012 and will have to pay the higher tax rates he tried desperately to avoid. Seems like Al Gore is looking to win the Nobel Prize in hypocrisy.

Sadly, the current line-up of Current TV, Jennifer Granholm, Eliot Spitzer, The Young Turks, Joy Behar, etc., are not expected to be retained when the new owners take over. Even terrorists have some standards.

More news of the dumb here.

YES, IT IS ABOUT CONTROL.

MASSACHUSETTS FINDS ITSELF unable to locate 19,000 welfare recipients.

But I'm sure they voted....