Here we are circa, 1966. Me in the center, nice shirt, with the new, used, bike I got for my 8th birthday, my little sister Celine, who looks so much like my 6 year-old now it is scary, and brother Don, who apparently just woke up from a nap.  

I haven't changed all THAT much from the photo on the left there have I?   Inside all of us is a former dork. On close inspection you'll notice that was a "girl" bike.  Nice one Mom.  Needless to say I used it for oh, about a day, given the infamous sensitivity, and relentless rafter of shit heaped on me from the rest of the neighborhood eight to ten year-old boys.  That was probably the first time I ever heard the word fagot.  Oh well. Such was the rough and tumble of growing up in the baby boom sixties.   

This post however is about that little girl there, though now well into her 40's, who is going through some rough stuff having been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.  Though the prognosis is promising the next couple of years are gonna be difficult on a number of levels.   

Some friends have been organizing a benefit to help offset medical and living expenses.  On Saturday June 20 there will a poker run where local club bikers and others will cruise a variety of small town pubs among the gentle rolling hills of Southwest Wisconsin.  (A poker run is where everyone chips in,  gets a card at every stop and the best hand wins at the last stop)

Also planned is a benefit auction.  So far we have received an autographed football, (transfers actually) of the entire 2008 Green Bay Packers team and coaches, Milwaukee Brewer tickets, free admission and dinner for 2 at the Harley Davidson Museum here in Milwaukee, a hand made quilt, and various other stuff.
 
I want to offer my reader friends and those who can't make the benefit a chance to help out.  I do so with great sacrifice... so here goes....

IF I CAN GET 100 PEOPLE TO CHIP IN $10 BUCKS A PIECE

 I WILL HAVE MY HEAD SHAVED. 

visit www.frankbyrne.com to donate

I will email or snail mail donors the after picture sometime following the benefit.  IF we raise enough.

Obviously I don't blog for the money and I have never asked for support.  Even though that tip jar over there < has been up for awhile it never has functioned properly.      

As of today the current events and political commentary is suspended, taking a back seat for the fundraiser.  During the hiatus I plan to renovate the site and add some features, some of a commercial nature to help justify the time I put unto it.

I will leave the comment section open and am open to suggestions from readers.  If you see things on other blogs I should add, or products I could promote as an afiliate, please let me know. 
 
The bottom line is I have to spend less time blogging and more time generating income - - until I find a way to make this thing do both.

Peace.

Death
Reasonable people on both sides of the abortion debate are horrified at the mindless murder of late term abortion specialist Dr. Tiller.  That leaves the whackos on both fringes the whole media playground to demonstrate their ignorance. Naturally MSNBC's Keith Uberdouche lays the blame squarely on the doorstep of rival Bill O'Reilly and Fox News.  And then there's someone named Adele Stan who writes in a Huffington post column:

If the murderer was not a follower of Coulter's, he certainly acted from the sort of hateful sentiment she disseminates in popular and right-wing media. (if you want to RTWT google on your own)

Funny, though entirely predictable, how liberals natural instinct is to blame the political opposition for everything.  That right wing anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue are the first to condemn the murder has no bearing when there are political points to be scored.  

I have to say though, taking a life is a pretty pathetic, not to mention counter productive, argument against preserving life.  The logic there is so flawed it's proof enough the dude was a whack job.

On the other hand preserving life was not much of a concern for the newly late Dr Tiller, who personally provided about 60,000 late terms abortions. As O'Reilly indicated last night, if the liberals are so much more compassionate than the rest of us why no anguish for those 60,000 babies?  Dr.Tiller made a career, and loads of cash at $5000 a piece, by systematically eliminating fully formed fetuses with all the emotional involvement of popping a zit.

Not saying his murder was justified, only that in the greater scheme of things it wasn't a tragedy.  

For those of you keeping score at home, the body count in the abortion war that began in January 1973: fetuses 62 million, abortionists 8 - not 8 million, 8.

For the record, I am pro-choice. I just happen to agree with Doctors who advise that there are no medical conditions or combinations of medical conditions that intact dilation and extraction would fix.  So not only is it gruesome it is also unnecessary - -  other than convenience of course.

Death.
No doubt we will soon be hearing how it's all Bush's fault that a recent Muslim convert gunned down an Army recruiter and recruit in Arkansas yesterday.  Now THAT is a tragedy.  I am curious if the two thirds polled against bringing Gitmo detainees to American soil will go even higher.


And more death...
And of course there's the death of GM, or perhaps more accurately pumping the embalming fluid of tax money into a rotting corpse.

Cortez DeRussy offers some famiar insight at Pajamas Media here: General Motors: An Autopsy
a snippet:
...It is part of human nature to seek security from change. Citizens, companies, and other interested groups have regularly sought market, pricing, and/or job protections through the intercession of the one institution that can, through the use of legal force, protect those interests: the government. Such protectionism is simply legalized theft in the form of the transference of wealth from one group (taxpayers, consumers, etc.) to another, more favored one (in this case, organized labor).

My comment:

Since blamethrowing seems to the sport of choice here I guess I’ll weigh in too; Plenty enough to go around. Unions 40% management 60%, the latter, after all, agreed to those unsustainable compensation packages right? Thinking Old Soldier above is definitely onto something there. (i.e. mamagement and UAW bosses worked hand in hand at the expense of both rank and file union and customers)

And Mike, you have legitimate concerns and questions about favortism and choices in who we bail out. The difference betweeen banks and GM/Chrysler is fundamental and should be easy to grasp. The geography argument, i.e. Wall St against Detroit, smacks of class warfare and is irrelevent. The entire economy, that would be all of us, everyone, requires a healthy banking system. That same economy can survive perfectly well, and arguably better, without a couple of domestic manufacturers who have proven they have neither the capacity or propensity to compete on a fair palying field.

Sometimes we have to face the hard truth that crushing the skull of mortally wounded roadkill is the only, and most merciful, course of action. GM and Chrysler are wounded roadkill. Boycott them and get it over with.

cartoon courtesy Erin Bonsteel,    Visit Erin Bonsteel's Website


Ahem, Ms, Sotomayor, that blindfold is supposed to stay in place for you to keep your oath, just sayin...

Some choice comments by folks who follow this stuff a lot more closely than I, though I suppose we are fast approaching the point where we can summarily dismiss their opinions out of hand, since they are all white males and all ...

Jonah Goldberg cuts to the quick:
Why make this complicated?

President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job.

George Will adds...
Democrats compounded confusion by thinking of the court as a representative institution. Such personalization of the judicial function subverts the rule of law.

Quinn Hillyer - American Prospect blogs...
"He nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day. Obama's emphasis today, in introducing Sotomayor, on biography over all else was absolutely sickening. And despicable."

And this quote has been included in literally every column or article I have seen:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,”
- Sonia Sotomayor

WTF?  Could you imagine the outrage if a white male juxtaposed the highlighted nouns and said the exact same thing?  Seems to me Trent Lott said something considerably less incendiary a few years back and lost his job the same week.  Not for the comment apparently, but because he was a white male.

Call me goofy but it seems to me anyone with a room temp IQ who reads that and doesn't see flat out bigotry has a very serious reading comprehension problem. 

The only possible chance of Sotomayor failing to get confirmation, which is slim to none at best, will require the relentless repetition of that fateful quote.  Well that and the off chance she comes out as pro-life.  

Rich Lowry from the National review Online comments thusly..
This stunning statement of race and gender determinism perhaps explains Sotomayor's decision in the New Haven firefighter case now before the Supreme Court. A white firefighter studied for an exam to get a promotion. He bought $1,000 worth of books and had someone read them onto audiotapes because he's dyslexic. He passed, but the city declined to promote him because no blacks had qualified for promotion.

Sotomayor thought this blatantly race-conscious action passed constitutional muster. Does her 2001 speech mean that she would have ruled differently if she were white, dyslexic, or a working-class firefighter struggling to get ahead? If so, she is manifestly unfit for the highest court in a country that puts the law above tribal loyalties.

Mr Lowry nails it, but the question is, with a filibuster proof majority, what can be done?  Well, to be honest, not much.  We can't win.  She will be confirmed, but that doesn't mean the GOP Senate should lay down.  Just because you know you can't win is no excuse to not join the battle. 

They need to avoid the personal attack methodology employed by Democrats on Clarence Thomas, keep the argument above board, strictly limited to principle, and repeat that horrendous quote again and again and again - -  to the point where for the rest of her career she will be known as the Associate Justice who discarded the rule of law for favortism but was confirmed anyway - - because of it.

The personal struggle story is also being so overplayed it is becoming nauseating.  It's as though liberals have no awareness beyond the moment.  Let me put it this way, if you happen to abide by Obama's notion that ones struggles, upbringing, and life story are more or equally qualifying attributes to serve on the Supreme Court then consider this:  there is a current Associate Justice, of color, who grew up in rural poverty considerably worse off than did Sotomayor, and who had not lost just his father but both parents and was raised by his Grandparents.

So then, according to Obama's standards Clarence Thomas is obviously the most qualified member of the Supreme Court ever!    

As promised, the annual posting of my Memorial Day essay below, only a day late.  Overstayed the family gathering a bit and got home later than we had hoped...

Also, Rick Moran at Pajamas Media has an ode to the heartland of sorts, the place not the website, that has a similar tenor.  A taste:
America’s small-town culture has been ridiculed, criticized, and dismissed — especially over the last few decades — by an elite that cannot fathom why anyone would wish to live more than a couple of miles from a world class opera house or art museum. Nor can they understand why someone would choose country quiet over the babble and cacophony of the big city.

It truly catches the flavor of flyover country so by all means check it out.
RTWT: Small-Town Heroes from the Heartland 


                                                Memorial Day

We used the hilly back roads of beautiful Southwest Wisconsin on that mild spring day.  There were three or four cars and a van, for the guns, ammo, and colors.  By day’s end we will have visited a half dozen or more cemeteries.  I was 9, close to my son’s age now, and the worst of Viet Nam was yet to happen.

For some reason, luck in retrospect, I, of all nine siblings, was left in my Father’s charge that Memorial Day.  As commander of the local VFW he was among the volunteer members assembled to participate in services for nearby cemeteries, driven by largely unnoticed most of the year.  Today was different though.  Today not only did we stop, but we also remembered, and we made a grand show of it.  We memorialized, with uniforms, with flags, with guns, with taps, with ceremony. Today, one of 365, we make a point of visiting the final resting place of the men and women who died for our country.  Today we say you are not forgotten, and we say we do not take your sacrifice for granted.    

The members ranged in age and included veterans from the worst conflicts of the deadliest century in the history of mankind.  World War 2, the war to end all wars, Korea, the war that changed the definition of war, and Viet Nam, that confused venture that forced our nation to question the validity of war itself, a question persisting today.  The names are those from another time; Ernie, Leo, Guerdon, Myron, Louie.  They were an otherwise typical crew that served in all branches but today were resplendent, smart and sharp, in their uniforms; dark shirts, white ties, helmets, belts, and spats, which were almost as cool as the guns.

The ceremony never varied, a prayer, a sermon, thankfully short, gunfire, taps, and onto the next cemetery.  I never covered my ears for the shooting.  I didn’t want to embarrass Dad by appearing a coward; an act, which my young mind had determined, had absolutely no place in these circumstances.  I thought if the people we are honoring actually gave their lives for our country the least I could do is endure the peal and concussion of three blank rounds.  Besides, I was with the guys in uniform, and I wanted to be like them.

As the morning gave way the heat increased and with it the need for liquid refreshment as provided by whichever VFW club was nearest, since every town had it’s own back then.  I recall Schlitz Shorties or “Lil Joe’s” as being the beverage of choice.  Remember those?  I could think of no better way to spend a holiday than with my Dad and a bunch of gregarious war Vets tousling my hair and buying me all the pop I could drink.

I remember hoping for war stories and, more telling than I knew at the time, I remember that hope going unfulfilled.  There were no grand tales of heroism, no recounting of life and death scenarios in far off lands, no lurid descriptions of killing the bad guys.  Even more curious was the silence of the younger vets who had just served in Viet Nam.  Surely they couldn’t have forgotten so soon.

As I reflected on that disappointment it occurred to me I was at perfect odds with these old soldiers; I wanted them to remember out loud the stories they were struggling mightily to forget.  I wanted to be enthralled by tales from homegrown versions of Pappy Boyington and Audi Murphy while completely oblivious to the mental scars these stories might have inflicted. These men, the source of my hopes for tales of triumph and victory, were instead perfect profiles in dignity, somberness and sobriety, even with beer.

Wanting first hand glorification of war from the guys who fought them is typical selfishness for a nine-year old.  The contrast to the incomparable unselfishness of those we memorialize this weekend is as vast and profound as can be.     

Their surviving comrades, as in this fondest of childhood memories, will be visiting countless cemeteries across the country this weekend.  Memorial Day is about remembering and every Memorial Day I remember that day.  Like me then, my kids now have little understanding of why I insist on dragging them to Memorial Day services.  Like me now, one day they too will understand why this is not just another excuse for a three-day weekend.  Hopefully they’ll also come to appreciate the ultimate irony; that the same guys who would most benefit from forgetting wars are the ones in charge of memorializing those who died fighting them.

In our continuing endeavor to achieve a war free world, doing so without remembering the price paid would be a travesty.  The least we civilians can do is remember that, and them, on Memorial Day.



Richard P. "Dick" Byrne 1926-2008

In my assessment of Obama's first 100 days I rather flippantly commented something to the effect that wherever he followed Bush's lead he did OK but everywhere else he is pretty much making Rush Limbaugh look like a prescient genius.

Dr. Krauthammer, while quoting Victor David Hansen no less, elaborates those policies devastatingly here: Obama's Deeds Vindicate Bush 

Funny, the Townhall headline for the same column was Obama In Bush Clothing, or somesuch, but the Real Clear Politics headline above is a better description.  

Anyway, Dr. K's bottom line:
The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

In other words, ignore what they say, if you want the true measure of apolitician, watch what they do.  A good rule of thumb on all public figures BTW.  This is precisely what confounds the left so much about Cheney, his walk and talk match up, and it is a trait with which they are not familiar.   

I would put the intellectual horsepower of Krauthammer and Hansen alone against the top 10 counterparts from the left and it wouldn't even be close.  Seriously, can anyone offer the name of a single liberal commentator as well reasoned and articulate as either of these guys? Anyone?

Have a nice Memorial Day everybody.  And don't forget who the "memorial" part is for.

The annual posting of my Memorial Day essay will be Monday. 

Over five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel  

"pick up your shovel,
mount your asses and camels,
I will lead you to the promised land".

Nearly 75 years ago, Roosevelt said,
"Lay down your shovels,
sit on your asses,
light up a camel,
this is the promised land".

Now Obama is going to
steal your shovel,
kick your asses,
raise the price of camels,
and mortgage the promised land.

h/t Ken

 

H/T  Bob O