On Twitter:
Some units in the first wave that hit Omaha Beach on D-Day suffered a casualty rate north of 90%. We asked young men with their whole lives ahead of them to pay the ultimate price.
— David Hookstead (@dhookstead) May 30, 2022
Next time you want to complain about how tough you have it, read a history book. #MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/2O5oNPNtZo
I first actually read the news of the passing of "His Royal Highness" at the New York Times, on the app on my iPhone.
And it did still include this headline, which has now been changed by the disgusting "Old Gray Lady, embedded at left, though I tried to "center it," but it messed up all the formatting of the rest...
...And you know, it's no surprise at all, as the New York Times, as much as I do enjoy reading the country's "newspaper of record" (as I do learn a lot there, and sometimes the editors "hit the mark" with real, good, and actual journalistic reporting), it's truly a trash site most of the times these days, with literally no "balance" of views, unless you consider columnists Ross Douthat and David Brooks actual "conservatives"; and don't get me going about the hack, hit piece "journalism" routinely published at that rag (here's looking at you, Taylor Lorenz); and I actually feel bad for longtime N.Y.T. science reporter, Donald McNeil, who was fired by the newspaper, after profusely apologizing, more than once, for simply having a discussion of the "N-Word," which he uttered himself during said discussion with a young person he was responsible for during a field trip to Peru a few years back.
Here's the piece, with the changed title, though I'm not going to read it all again to see if the editors "fixed" their asinine and stupid editorializing about this truly great and candid Duke of Edinburgh: "Prince Philip, Husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Is Dead at 99."The Los Angeles Times has a much, much better obituary, which I read in hard-copy yesterday morning, by Kim Murphy, a veteran foreign affairs correspondent, who started her career at the paper, and returned to it recently. And Ms. Murphy, who discusses Prince Philip's notable public and "gaffe-tastic" quips and rejoinders, puts up an overall balanced and well-meaning commemoration to the man, who, one might argue, literally save the British monarchy.It was an enduring alliance that outlasted the Cold War, 15 prime ministers, war and peace in Northern Ireland and Britain’s union with Europe — followed by the country’s shattering decision, 43 years later, to leave. Side by side for as long as most Britons could possibly remember, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II stood as a reassuring constant even during the most trying or turbulent times, an epic love story that seemed unshakable. But the longest marriage of a reigning monarch in British history came to an end Friday when the prince — two months shy of his 100th birthday — died at Windsor Castle in England. The flag above Buckingham Palace was immediately lowered to half-staff, and the official announcement of Philip Mountbatten’s death was posted on the palace gates. “It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Friday, just after noon in Britain. “His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.” Standing outside No. 10 Downing St., Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised Philip for a life of service and endurance. “Like the expert carriage driver that he was, he helped to steer the royal family and the monarchy so that it remains an institution indisputably vital to the balance and happiness of our national life,” Johnson said. “Over the course of his 99-year life, he saw our world change dramatically and repeatedly,” President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden said in a statement. “From his service during World War II, to his 73 years alongside the Queen, and his entire life in the public eye — Prince Philip gladly dedicated himself to the people of the U.K., the Commonwealth, and to his family.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philip and the queen had been staying at Windsor Castle, west of London. Though he enjoyed robust health for most of his life, he was hospitalized for a month this year, from Feb. 16 to March 16, during which he underwent a heart procedure. He was treated for chest pains in 2011, was hospitalized for two days in 2017 and was hospitalized again for 10 days in 2018 for a hip replacement. He was forced to give up driving in 2019 — at the age of 97 — after smashing into another car while driving his Land Rover. Prince Philip never held the official title of prince consort, as did Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert, but he nonetheless was Queen Elizabeth II’s closest confidant, most reliable political advisor and the undisputed master of the royal household for more than seven decades. Philip was known equally as a curmudgeon and a charmer who could quickly put nervous guests at ease with an easy (and sometimes outrageous) one-liner. Courtiers, his own children and the queen herself backed down under the quick flash of his temper, and guests at Buckingham Palace were expected to stay up to speed with his lively intellect and encyclopedic command of facts or were hastily dismissed as being not worthy of the duke’s time. While Elizabeth presided over affairs of state, Philip championed dozens of charities, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which has promoted self-reliance, physical development and other personal accomplishments for more than 6 million youths around the world. [EMBEDDED TWEET HERE.] He also set down the ground rules for rearing of the royal children, wrote books about horses and equestrian sports, oversaw the palaces and handled hundreds of official engagements every year until he retired from his official public schedule in August 2017. (“Unveil your own damn plaque,” read a cartoon drawn specially for the occasion, to Philip’s delight.) He was nearly always at the queen’s side during more than 73 years of marriage. “Prince Philip is simply my rock. He is my foundation stone,” the monarch said at a lunch in 1997 honoring their 50th wedding anniversary. “He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I and his whole family … owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know.” Philip, for his part, seldom talked about his contributions to the royal enterprise, though he was known on rare occasions to reflect on what he had given up to be the man who walks two paces behind the queen, the husband of one monarch and the father of presumably the next, with no historic role of his own. “It was not my ambition to be president of the Mint Advisory Committee,” he told the Independent on Sunday newspaper in 1992. “I didn’t want to be president of [the World Wide Fund for Nature]. I was asked to do it. I’d much rather have stayed in the navy, frankly.” His chief contribution in the end was simply to have been there for the queen: a man of keen rationality and wide reading who in some ways intimidated her, who was not legally answerable to anyone and who was available as a voice of reason and dissent when all around had a habit of agreeing with her. He had a slight reputation for pushiness and being opinionated … and he is as right-wing as ever, but there’s never been the slightest suggestion that he influenced the queen in that way,” said Robert Lacey, the British historian best known for his work on the award-winning drama “The Crown.” “We can now see he was free to state his own opinions because he had no constitutional responsibilities,” he said. “So that made him a particularly strong and useful pillar for the queen.” A former government secretary told the Daily Telegraph in 2001 how the Duke of Edinburgh had once quizzed him about a policy issue in his department. “‘What’s the object of the exercise?’ he asked me. I stumbled through the answer and tried to explain that the aim was a bit of A and a bit of B. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but which is it — A or B?’ I replied, probably rather incoherently, that it really was a mixture of both. ‘I’d always thought that what was wrong with this country was that all the best brains went into the civil service,’ said Prince Philip, ‘but that was before I met you!’ — and walked away.” He also had a knack for the painfully politically incorrect remark. Amid the recession of 1981, as more Britons sought public assistance, he observed: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.” When the royal couple were introduced in 2002 to a teenage army cadet who had been blinded in an Irish Republican Army bombing, the queen asked the 15-year-old boy how much sight he had left. “Not a lot, judging by the tie he’s wearing,” Philip quipped, as the crowd fell silent. But Philip was also the ultimate salt-of-the-earth English country gentleman. Royal hunting weekends would not be complete without the sight of Philip, his head wreathed in smoke, barbecuing the day’s take of pheasants. He was an enthusiastic sailor, polo player and carriage driver who went bolting with his horses around the royal estates until well into old age, when Elizabeth begged him to give it up. (The Daily Mail carried photos of the prince once again at the reins of his carriage in November 2017, prodding his horses around Windsor Castle at the age of 96.)
There's still more at the link.
And Fox News' report from Friday:
I'll try to put up some more entries tonight or tomorrow.
Thanks for reading. (I'm watching Sunday Night Baseball, and I'm looking forward to a "normal" season, hopefully, and I plan to take my family to as many Angels games as possible, as that's, really, the best kind of "family therapy" I can think of.)
Following-up from last night, "Trey Gowdy Has the Clear Lead in Viewership for Fox News' 'Rotating' Fox News Primetime, Which Airs Daily, at 4:00pm Pacific Time (VIDEO)."
I will very pleased if Mr. Gowdy scores the 4:00pm broadcast, because then I might be able to have two straight hours of news programming that I actually would enjoy watching, and I won't get all the "woke" bullcrap from CNN, and, of course, I rarely, if ever, flip over to the clowns at MSNBC.
So, fingers crossed, because Tucker's "Da Man!"
The news is at Outkick, "MARK STEYN TO RETURN TO HOST FOX NEWS PRIMETIME AS NETWORK SETS NEXT 3 WEEKS DURING SEARCH."
And Steyn is a worthy host, and he's even more hilarious than Tucker is at the 5:00pm show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight" (which, right now is the highest rated cable program out of all the cable networks, and it's no surprise, because he's just been killin' it).
Here's the list of ratings leaders for the 4:00pm "Primetime" program:
In order of viewership:3/8, Trey Gowdy: 2,057,0002/1, Trey Gowdy: 1,988,000
1/1, Brian Kilmeade: 1,960,000
1/25, Maria Bartiromo: 1,877,000
3/22 (Mon-Wed), Brian Kilmeade: 1,777,000
3/15, Maria Bartiromo: 1,767,000
2/8, Mark Steyn: 1,759,000
2/15, Rachel Campos-Duffy: 1,728,000
3/1, Lawrence Jones: 1,713,000
2/22, Katie Pavlich: 1,647,000
Now, I'm a little surprised that Rachel Campus-Duffy beat out Katie Pavlich, who, I think, is 100 times smarter than Ms. Campus-Duffy, but who knows? Ms. Katie did look a little "green" in the role as "host" of an hour-long show, and, I don't recall, but perhaps Ms. Campos-Duffy is just more experienced. And Ms. Bartiromo's a freakin' pro, in any case, and I wish I saw her on T.V. more often, because I'm rarely up at 3:00am (Pacific) to watch her "Wall Street" program, although I do remember reading she got into a little "hot water" with her aggressive promotion of the "voter fraud" allegations being pushed by Team Trump. (And while there was fraud, and probably monumental fraud, I just wanted personally to "move on," and just gear up for the Georgia special elections, which Republicans lost, not just because of the hypocritical idiot Kelly Loeffler, but because all of those invovled, in the Washington G.OP. [the RNC], and folks down in the "Peach State," just refused to coordinate a wining electoral strategy down there).
I was busy yesterday, but I did catch this opening segment with the fabulous, and most beautiful, Italian-American, Maria Bartiromo.
Just great stuff, and I hope more and more folks hear, and heed, her message, and shout about these very threatened notions of "liberty" and "opportunity" in the U.S. today, "from the rooftops."
Watch:
His farewell speech in the U.S. Senate is here.
He wasn't the greatest presidential candidate, obviously, but he's a true patriot, serving his country in WWII, where in the Italian campaign he took German machine gun fire in the Apennine mountains near Castel d'Aiano, southwest of Bologna. His personal recovery from his injuries was apparently miraculous, and his physician was a Holocaust survivor who helped him develop an outlook on loss and recovery after such great personal sacrifice.
He's got stage 4 lung cancer, which is what killed Rush Limbaugh yesterday, so it's pretty clear that Dole, who is 97-years-old, has got a tough battle ahead.
Prayers up.
More at MSNBC:
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) July 4, 2019
Wow. Read this. pic.twitter.com/gg4pkFL23Y
— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) October 23, 2017
From the Archives: First Wave at Omaha Beach #DDay71
http://t.co/oee3ebPfzJ pic.twitter.com/HivpRM1W81
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) June 6, 2015U.S. Army Rangers after landing at Pointe Du Hoc. In the end they would suffer 70% casualties. #WW2 #DDay71 pic.twitter.com/Yx3UfvxIUH
— WWII Pictures (@WWIIpix) June 6, 2015The five ships of the Carl Vinson carrier strike group returned home Thursday after a marathon deployment, including six months of dropping bombs on Islamic jihadists in Iraq and Syria.More.
At piers around San Diego Bay, there were kisses, tears and long sighs of relief.
“I’m immensely proud of the 6,000 men and women of the Carl Vinson carrier strike group,” said Rear Adm. Christopher Grady, the group’s commander. “I hope you are, too.”
He was speaking from a pier at North Island Naval Air Station, where the Vinson had just docked to the cheers of waiting family members.
Signs in the crowd spoke of feelings pent up during the nearly 10-month odyssey — the longest scheduled deployment since the Vietnam era.
One said, “#300 Days Without You.” Another read, “We Made It.”
“It was really hard,” said Keila Bennekin, 29, who was five months pregnant when her sailor husband, Anthony, departed with the Vinson on Aug. 22.
Multi-generational military families like the Graveses form the heart of the all-volunteer Army, which increasingly is drawing its ranks from the relatively small pool of Americans with historic family, cultural or geographic connections to military service.More.
While the U.S. waged a war in Vietnam 50 years ago with 2.7 million men conscripted from every segment of society, less than one-half of 1% of the U.S. population is in the armed services today — the lowest rate since World War II. America's recent wars are authorized by a U.S. Congress whose members have the lowest rate of military service in history, led by three successive commanders in chief who never served on active duty.
Surveys suggest that as many as 80% of those who serve come from a family in which a parent or sibling is also in the military. They often live in relative isolation — behind the gates of military installations such as Ft. Bragg or in the deeply military communities like Fayetteville, N.C., that surround them.
The segregation is so pronounced that it can be traced on a map: Some 49% of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the U.S. are concentrated in just five states — California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia.
The U.S. military today is gradually becoming a separate warrior class, many analysts say, that is becoming increasingly distinct from the public it is charged with protecting.
As the size of the military shrinks, the connections between military personnel and the broad civilian population appear to be growing more distant, the Pew Research Center concluded after a broad 2012 study of both service members and civilians.
Most of the country has experienced little, if any, personal impact from the longest era of war in U.S. history. But those in uniform have seen their lives upended by repeated deployments to war zones, felt the pain of seeing family members and comrades killed and maimed, and endured psychological trauma that many will carry forever, often invisible to their civilian neighbors....
Jerstin Crosby, a former graduate student at the University of North Carolina who now works as a computer artist, said the only direct encounter with the military he can remember was when he taught a Middle Eastern art course to airmen at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C.
He respected the airmen's knowledge of Iraq — some seemed to know it better than he did, for all his education — but was also sometimes baffled by them. Why, he wondered, did everyone on base stop their cars at 5 p.m. and stand at attention? Only later did he learn it was a daily show of respect as the nation's flag was lowered.
"I thought it was some kind of prank they were playing on me," he said.
George Baroff, enjoying an outdoor lunch at an organic food co-op in Carrboro one recent afternoon, said he understood the military quite well: He served three years as a draftee during World War II before eventually becoming a psychology professor in nearby Chapel Hill.
Baroff, 90, finds himself startled when people learn of his war record and say, as Americans often do to soldiers these days, "Thank you for your service."
"You never, ever heard that in World War II. And the reason is, everybody served," he said.
In Baroff's view, today's all-volunteer military has been robbed of the sense of shared sacrifice and national purpose that his generation enjoyed six decades ago. Today's soldiers carry a heavier burden, he said, because the public has been disconnected from the universal responsibility and personal commitment required to fight and win wars.
"For us, the war was over in a few years. The enemy surrendered and were no longer a threat," he said. "For soldiers today, the war is never over; the enemy is never defeated." The result, he added, is "a state of perpetual anxiety that the rest of the country doesn't experience." ...
For decades, young cadets in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, or ROTC, were able to rub shoulders with civilians on America's college campuses. During the height of the defense buildup under President Reagan, there were 420 Army ROTC units. Today, there are only 275 ROTC programs.
At Stanford University, Kaitlyn Benitez-Strine, a 21-year-old senior, was scribbling notes in the back row of her modern Japanese history class recently, listening as her professor cataloged the misdeeds of the American military in occupied postwar Japan.
"People became increasingly resentful of the U.S. military presence," the professor said. "There were crimes by U.S. Army personnel — rapes and murders."
For Benitez-Strine, due to be commissioned as a U.S. Army lieutenant this summer, it was an uncomfortable moment. Her sister, a Marine, is stationed in Okinawa. Her parents were Army officers, as were many other relatives. She grew up in a military community near West Point. But she rarely discusses her background with other students.
Stanford, one of the nation's elite universities, has more than 6,000 undergraduates. Benitez-Strine is one of only 11 in ROTC.
She sometimes feels uncomfortable wearing her uniform on campus, as ROTC requires two days a week. Students "might think I'm a cop or something," she said. "Or they see me as a badass who can kill them at any time."
A 2013 survey by three West Point professors found that the estrangement between the military and civilian worlds is especially pronounced among young people. Many civilians born between 1980 and 2000 "want no part of military life and want it separate from civilian life," according to sociologist Morten G. Ender, one of the study's authors.
On the other side, military recruits in that age range had become "anti-civilian in some ways," the survey found.
"I am irritated by the apathy, lack of patriotic fervor, and generally anti-military and anti-American sentiment" of other students, an unidentified 20-year-old ROTC cadet told the authors. "I often wonder if my forefathers were as filled with disgust and anger when they thought of the people they were fighting to protect as I am."
Benitez-Strine is not as critical of her fellow students. Indeed, the more time she spends in ROTC, the less certain she is about a career in the military.
On Saturday, flags flew at half-staff throughout Franklin County in honor of a newly fallen soldier -- Army Spc. Joseph "Joey" Riley of Grove City, Ohio. The death of the paratrooper and grandson of a World War II veteran -- who had been a popular local football player before he joined the Army 2 1/2 years ago, -- was a reminder that on this 73rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, brave U.S. service members are still putting their lives in jeopardy overseas...More.
