Yes, There Are Non-Weird People in Oregon — Like This Cowboy (Video)

Radio show host, Tami Jackson writes, "Every week I report on more depressingly weird stuff in my native state of Oregon." Her lead up to the non-weird part is a must read for conservatives in Oregon, who are in the mood for a laugh, a shoulder shrug, or an eye-role regarding... Portland. But then, she gets to the Cowboy, the hero in the promised video. If you haven't seen it, you're going to love it!

Read more at Saving the Future
(Hat tip: Carolyn Webb)

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Forget Oregon’s Gunman. Remember the Hero Who Charged Straight at Him.

The one to remember is 30-year-old Chris Mintz, the student and Army vet who was shot at least five times while charging straight at the gunman in an effort to save others. --Mintz did so on the sixth birthday of his son, Tyrik. --“It’s my son’s birthday, it’s my son’s birthday,” he was heard saying as he lay wounded.

Read more at The Daily Beast Read More......

Texas Supreme Court Tells Houston: Repeal Gay Rights Ordinance or Put It to Vote

There is now near certainty that Houston's controversial equal rights ordinance, known as HERO, will appear on the November ballot, as Texas Supreme Court has suspended it, ruling that City Council must repeal it by August 24 or put it to popular vote. --"We will now get to vote on Mayor Parker's personal, liberal, LGBT agenda this November!" Jared Woodfill, former Harris County Republican Party chief and ones of the plaintiffs, wrote in a blog post.

Read more at the Christian Post
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Want to make a difference today?

Operation Homefront(fb) Via Soldiers' Angels (Official)fb: WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE today? Please go vote for a Ft. Hood hero. He's candidate number 2, a survivor of the Ft Hood tragedy, and in the running for a new vehicle from an Omaha dealership: VOTE HERE! Read More......

Band Of Brothers Hero, Darrell 'Shifty' Powers Dies

(Circulating via email/Hat tip: Trey Sisson CDR XO (VFA-115) Embarked USS RONALD REAGAN) Author Unknown: One of the "Band of Brothers" soldiers died on June 17, 2009. ∴ We're hearing a lot today about big splashy memorial services. ∴ I want a nationwide memorial service for Darrell "Shifty" Powers.

Shifty volunteered for the airborne in WWII and served with Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Infantry. If you’ve seen Band of Brothers on HBO or the History Channel, you know Shifty. His character appears in all 10 episodes, and Shifty himself is interviewed in several of them.

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the “Screaming Eagle”, the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he’d been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said “Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945 . . . ” at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said “I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . . do you know where Normandy is?” At this point my heart stopped.

I told him yes, I know exactly where Normandy was, and I know what D-Day was. At that point he said “I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem.” I was standing with a genuine war hero . . . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day.

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said “Yes. And it’s real sad because these days so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can’t make the trip.” My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach, while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I’d take his in coach.

He said “No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy.” His eyes were filling up as he said it. And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Shifty died on June 17 after fighting cancer.

There was no parade.

No big event in Staples Center.

No wall to wall back to back 24x7 news coverage.

No weeping fans on television.

And that's not right.

Let's give Shifty his own Memorial Service, online, in our own quiet
way. Please forward this email to everyone you know. Especially to the
veterans.

Rest in peace, Shifty.

---

"A nation without heroes is nothing." --Roberto Clemente

Photo: From Wikipedia Read More......

Medal of Honor awarded one year ago

April 2008, MA2 Michael A. Monsoor, USN was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor



On 29 September 2006, 25-year old Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor (MA2) was killed during operations in enemy-held territory at Ar Ramadi, Iraq, when he threw himself on top of a grenade in order to save the lives of his fellow SEALs. As described in the final two paragraphs of a Summary of Action (SOA) regarding the circumstances of his death:

While vigilantly watching for enemy activity, an enemy fighter hurled a hand grenade onto the roof from an unseen location. The grenade hit him in the chest and bounced onto the deck. He immediately leapt to his feet and yelled “grenade” to alert is teammates of impending danger, but they could not evacuate the sniper hide-sight in time to escape harm. Without hesitation and showing no regard for his own life, he threw himself onto the grenade, smothering it to protect his teammates who were lying in close proximity. The grenade detonated as he came down on top of it, mortally wounding him.

Petty Officer Monsoor’s action could not have been more selfless or clearly intentional. Of the three SEALSs on that rooftop corner, he had the only avenue of escape away from the blast, and if he had so chosen, he could have easily escaped. Instead, Monsoor chose to protect his comrades by the sacrifice of his own life. By his courageous and selfless action, he save the lives of his two fellow SEALs and he is the most deserving of the special recognition afforded by awarding the Medal of Honor.

On 8 April 2008, Michael Monsoor (who had already been posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his actions in a 9 May 2006 incident, when he and another SEAL pulled a wounded team member to safety amidst gunfire) was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. His funeral, attended (in the words of President Bush) by “nearly every SEAL on the West Coast,” was held on 12 October 2006 at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. As shown at the end of the tribute video (above), during Monsoor’s funeral service, as the casket was taken from the hearse to the gravesite, fellow SEALs lined up in two columns to slap and embed the gold Tridents (a pin awarded for successful completion of Seal Qualification Training) from their uniforms onto the top of Monsoor’s coffin. As President George W. Bush said of the event during the Medal of Honor ceremony, “The procession went on nearly half an hour, and when it was over, the simple wooden coffin had become a gold-plated memorial to a hero who will never be forgotten.”

Michael A. Monsoor, Navy SEAL
Rest in peace young warrior

Trident

For lack of a photograph of the Trident studded casket of Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor, the studded casket shown is that of another fallen SEAL, Petty Officer James E. Suh.

Sources: U.S. Navy/MOH
Snopes
Full White House Video of Medal of Honor Ceremony
(H/t: Linda Weimer) Read More......

An Act of Bravery... Not Told

Blackfive, May 9, 2007

Milblogger, Blackfive, is disgruntled that no media attention was given to a very special event which took place eight weeks ago recognizing a soldiers' incredible act of bravery while serving in Mosul, Iraq in November of 2005. "On February 26th, 2007, Army PFC Stephen C. Sanford received the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor, for his courage and valor." We should have been made aware of this. Please read the account of this man's astounding act and pass it on.

Army PFC Stephen C. Sanford - Someone You Should Know

Thank you Blackfive. Read More......

We Need More Heroes

Spiderman is not going to save us. Liviu Librescu may.

National Review, April 18, 2007 - By James Bowman
Reacting to what many in Britain and elsewhere are regarding as the disgraceful behavior while in captivity of the British sailors and marines kidnapped by the Iranians, Simon Heffer recently wrote in the London Daily Telegraph: “Why are some so weak-minded compared with those 18- year-olds who, within living memory, went over the top on the Somme, or splashed through machine-gun fire onto the Normandy beaches?” Heffer himself belongs to the “I-blame-the-parents” school of thought on this matter — though he also thinks that the responsibility of the older generation for bringing up kids like the young sailor who was unashamed to confess that he had cried himself to sleep at night because his iPod had been confiscated and his Iranian captors had called him “Mr Bean” extends beyond his parents. Presumably neither they nor any teachers or culture-bearers ever taught Mr. Bean that any considerations of honor or morality ought to take precedence over his own feelings.

Heffer’s question could also be asked, I think, about the Virginia Tech students who fled as the Korean gunman, Cho Seung Hui, went on his homicidal rampage on their campus Monday — or who, like Jamal Albarghouti, instead of fleeing, took out their cell phones to record the sights and sounds of the massacre. “This is what this YouTube-Facebook-instant messaging generation does,” reported the Washington Post of Albarghouti’s exploit as if it were a matter for pride: “Witness. Record. Share.” And, as the Post might have added, not fight back. It appears to have occurred to no one to do that. Or even to wonder whether or not it might have been desirable to do that. “You are one brave guy Jamal,” wrote someone on his Facebook site after his video had run on CNN.com. But the idea that any greater bravery than his might have been possible — the kind of bravery that could have saved lives by taking down the gunman earlier in his murderous career — is one that seems not to have been picked up on the LCDs of the YouTube-Facebook-instant-messaging generation.One clear hero of the day seems to have been someone from quite another generation, a 76-year-old Romanian-Jewish immigrant and Holocaust survivor named Liviu Librescu who taught engineering science and mathematics at the university and who barricaded the door of his classroom with his body long enough to allow a number of his students to escape out the windows. When the shooter eventually burst into the room, he shot Librescu and the two students who had not yet managed to get out. “My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” said the hero’s son, Joe Librescu, from Israel where he lives. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.” Someone posted on the God Bless Virginia Tech blog that was set up as an early student response to the shootings: “What a wonderful man, a survivor, and a hero. He will be missed!”That detail, by the way, comes from a story in the Times of London headed, “Virginia Tech professor hailed as a hero.” Back in the U.S.A., however, there was not nearly so much hailing going on as you (or the Times) might think. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times on Tuesday mentioned Professor Librescu’s act of courage and self-sacrifice in passing, but neither made a point of distinguishing him from the other victims who were apparently killed without resisting. Perhaps like Paul Greengrass’s film, United 93, the American media is rather embarrassed by heroism and thinks it insulting to the other victims of such atrocities to single out the heroes for special attention. Instead of showing any interest in Librescu’s brave act, the American media were concentrating to the point of obsession on the feelings of the victims and the psychology of the killer. “Evil, that's what some call it,” wrote Neely Tucker in the Style section of the Post, handsomely acknowledging millennia of religious tradition before going on to note that psychology would prefer to use terms like “depressed, angry and humiliated” to describe the perpetrator of mass murder. How much more interesting are the feelings even of a monster than the deeds of a hero! Do you suppose that this could have anything to do with the paucity of heroes among the younger generation? Simon Heffer suggests later in his article that the British ministry of defense should provide members of the armed forces with DVDs of old movies like The Colditz Story, The Cruel Sea, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, or Carve Her Name with Pride before sending them into action. It’s a reminder that the culture once paid more attention to heroes and acts of heroism than to either suffering victims or psychotic killers. Not coincidentally, I think, acts of heroism were a lot more frequent in those days. Nowadays all we have are superheroes — either the acknowledged kind, like Spider-Man, the third installment of whose celluloid history is due in cinemas next month, or the unacknowledged kind like James Bond, the DVD of whose umpteenth outing went on sale last month. But superheroes are immortal and nearly invulnerable, which makes them very watchable — like Albarghouti’s video — but worthless as a model for young men to emulate. Maybe no one could have stopped the madman from getting his full budget of murders, but it seems to me a lot more likely that someone would have done so if the media and the movies of today ever offered us any examples of real heroism untinged by ambiguity, doubt, or moral compromise. And is it too far-fetched to wonder whether there might not also be fewer delusional killers in the first place if we lived in a culture less devoted to fantasy, a culture of more heroes and fewer superheroes? Oh, and lest you think I exaggerate the malign influence of the superhero, just look at the page following Tucker’s article on the psychology of mass murder. There you will find a little item in the Post’s gossip column, “The Reliable Source,” about the departure from Washington of the actor, Nicolas Cage, who had been filming a movie there. It reminds us that Cage and his wife, Alice, have named their small son Kal-El, after the name of Superman’s Kryptonian father. What do you suppose are the chances of that poor child’s turning into a real hero?

--James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of Honor: A History. Read More......