Drew Dix, CMOH Winner with his and my friend NAGO

Drew Dix
*Awarded The Congressional Medal OF Honor
On January 16, 1969 For Conspicuous Gallantry
And Intrepidity In Action At The Risk Of His Life
Above And Beyond The Call Of Duty In Which
"NAGO" Was A Big Part

........Another words,Drew Dix is not just a hero, but one who unselfishly gives credit to those who were with him at the time. An individual mentioned to me that after reading the book, that it was hard for him to believe that it actually happened. I stated that no, that wasn't my problem, but that I thought it difficult to believe that he wasn't hit once the entire time.

NAGO is the one on the far left in the picture. The book is excellent, but ends with a sad note. One of his warrior's, Bao, went into the hills to continue fighting the Communists after the end. Years later, the Communists told Bao's sister that if he and his men turned themselves in, then they would grant them amnesty. Unfortunately, he believed them, and when he came to Chau Doc to surrender, they immediately took him to the marketplace and promptly executed him.Drew Dix ends his book with the follow words.

"It was a humiliating way for a warrior to go and I often think of him."
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*Citation and more with kind words from Drew about NAGO at the above link.

T jogged my memory.

LA Times! "Yes, SEALs were in on the raid, but aides hail Obama's office bravery."

According to another one of those White House briefings of reporters designed to suck up all available credit for good news, President Obama's homeland security advisor reveals that it was a really tense time in the air-conditioned White House as unidentified U.S. Navy SEALs closed in on the world's most wanted man after midnight a half a world away.

"Minutes passed like days," says John Brennan, who bravely stood with press secretary Jay Carney before reporters and TV cameras today chronicling his boss' weekend heroics.

The heavily-armed commandos flying in a quartet of darkened Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters more than 100 miles into Pakistan were probably listening to their iPods and discussing the NFL draft.

"The concern was that bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation," said Obama's Sherlock Holmes. So U.S. troops were prepared "for all contingencies."

In fact, this weekend was such a tense time in the White House that Obama only got in nine holes of golf. But he still managed to deliver his joke script to the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner Saturday evening. Via

Sunday was, Brennan revealed to his eager audience, "probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of times in the lives of the people assembled here." Poor poor bureaucrats. Extra Tums all around. Did someone order dinner?

Via Weasel Zippers

Ex-ISI Chief Hamid Gul: CIA "Choreographing" Osama Assassination Hoax

This is worthwhile.
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Via Weasel Zippers

Ron Paul downgraded to F on immigration

RON PAUL'S NEW BOOK COMBINES WITH LACKLUSTER RECORD IN CONGRESS TO PLUMMET HIM TO AN 'F' IN IMMIGRATION GRADES

The biggest problem with Rep. Paul's (R-Texas) latest comments on immigration is that they are NOT just some ad hoc thoughts tossed off carelessly at some speaking event. These are engraved in a brand new book.

Until the release of the book, Liberty Defined, Dr. Paul had a mixed record in Congress and the fact that he had taken the NumbersUSA "No Amnesty" pledge at the end of his Presidential campaign in 2008.

That had earned him a C-minus on our 2012 Presidential Hopefuls Immigration Stances Report Card. Not impressive, but the third best (behind Rep. Bachman with a B-minus and Gov. Tim Pawlenty with a C+) of all the Hopefuls.

PAUL NOW 2nd WORST OF ALL HOPEFULS ON IMMIGRATION

In the graphic below, you will see how we have had to rate Dr. Paul on the 12 most important immigration categories.

The ratings add up to an overall stance that just barely misses warranting an F-minus and squeaks through just better than Pres. Obama. It is significantly worse than the grade of former Speaker Gingrich who had previously been the worst of all Republican Hopefuls on immigration.

Osama is Dead, Obama is American-born

"Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle! Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Thomas Paine
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We are told Osama Bin Laden is dead by a “president” who is an infamous liar. If Osama is dead, Obama was the wrong man to announce it.

Osama Bin Laden: buried at sea?

Such an event as the death of Osama Bin Laden might deserve some attention. His name is synonymous with serial mass murder in the name of bigotry and prejudice. It would seem appropriate that all lovers of freedom and human dignity should rejoice. An instant crowd of prepared celebrants outside the White House for Obama’s announcement? That seems orchestrated, like another clown’s chorus for the grand minstrel residing there. It looked like another campaign show. (Mabye Barry was so late in his announcement because he was waiting for the crowd to get full.).......

And is this what America has come too–that we can’t believe our eyes? We can’t trust the most simple gestures? Is this what the lying Democrats and white oedipal liberals have accomplished? Is fraud so ubiquitous that reality seems illusory?

The “Barak Hussein Obama” online birth certificate has just been analyzed by a professional, Ivan Zatkovich of Tampa-based eComp Consultants. The 28-year veteran geek declared “The multiple layers in the PDF document are a result of changes made to the image.”

Could one giant fraud be followed by another, even more colossal? It is possible that Osama Bin Ladin is quite alive, even as Barry is quite alien?

Tickerguy Flips A-A [A-A-K-x-x Board] (Birth Certificate)

One of my first thoughts.

"Now about that forensic analysis we should have done on the alleged document that allegedly is in the files at the Hawaii Registrar's office in order to see if it's really 50ish years old..... This is the only way we are going to get the truth. Will the American people, Congress, or someone (e.g. a judge) demand defensible truth on this topic? We damn well should."
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You knew I had pocket rockets, right? How often have you seen me come up with something on The Ticker without a fairly-decent set of evidence behind what I had to say?

It's time to call the curtain on this game and then go back to economics.

Find me one typewriter in the world, anywhere, that can perform kerning and I will believe this "certificate" is real.

For the uninitiated, "kerning" is the process of manipulating the spacing of letters to make the appearance more pleasing. Here's an example from this Ticker itself:

This process, of course, requires that you know what the next letter is. With a computer this is pretty easy, since the computer can retroactively go back and adjust, and it also can typeset the current letter with knowledge of what the previous one was.

A typewriter, on the other hand, is a mechanical device. It does not know what the next letter is that you will type, nor does it know what the last letter was that you typed. It thus has a typeface that always leaves physical space between the boundary of each character and the impression. It has to, lest letters run together and look like utter crap.

Typesetters (offset printing machines and similar) perform kerning - in fact, it's part of typesetting. But typewriters do not, cannot, and never have.

This, of course, is why the typed Birth Certificate has kerned text in it.

Review: Atlas Shrugged Part 1 The Movie

Having just returned from seeing Part 1 of Atlas Shrugged my advice to all who haven’t seen it is, pay no attention to the terrible reviews. It is very clear why the movie calls forth such venom. The message is simply unacceptable in today’s dominant political culture.

The movie opens in 2016. We see an America where nothing works, not the machines and not the people. The streets are lined with homeless people and derelict automobiles. The airports are littered with wrecked planes.

The Middle East has imploded and no oil is being shipped. We learn that gasoline is $37 something a gallon. (Not mentioned in the movie is that Washington’s drilling phobia has left the nation vulnerable to just such a scenario.)

The remaining railroad is run by a smug James Taggart who is ruining the company he inherited, but is very good at articulating concern for those “who need our help.” He depends upon his Washington connections to keep the company afloat. He condemns his sister, Dagny, for wanting to save the firm the old fashioned way, by making it profitable.

Henry Reardon, the protagonist, is a steel tycoon who also disdains Washington. Instead, he concentrates on developing high strength steel that will transform the industry, and help put the country back to work.

Two known lies in two days out of the Obama administration

Apparently we are going to have to take the U.S. government's word for bin Laden's death:

After bin Laden was killed in a raid by U.S. forces in Pakistan, senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours, the official said. Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the U.S. decided to bury him at sea.

I'm not saying that Osama bin Laden isn't dead. For all I know, he's been dead since 2001, if not before. But it strikes me that if you wanted to make your own words more look suspiciously incredible, you would be hard-pressed to top the recent actions of the Obama administration.

"Hey, here's an ineptly produced computer file that clearly isn't a simple copy of the document that supposedly no longer existed in the first place!" "Hey, we killed the bad guy, but we had to ditch the body before anyone else could take a look at it and confirm it's actually him. Maybe if we just wave our hands and talk about DNA that nobody else has, someone will buy it."

Army Staff College History Professor On The War

Infantryman71: May 1, 2011 12:05 p.m.

Having taught graduate history for a number of years to mid-level and senior officers at the Army's staff college, I find that those who criticize the Confederacy and Confederates do so not out of reasonable convictions, but total ignorance. Many recent polls (USA Today, Pew, etc.) consistently show that most Americans (not "many" but "most") with a college education have only a nominal understanding of our own history.

This results in emotional arguments based on "sound bytes" of historical knowledge. As an example, one of the surveys asked what caused WWII and a large number of responses cite "the attack on Pearl Harbor". Really? That caused the war? What a simplistic and gross misunderstanding of history. The same can be applied to the Civil War when people claim that "slavery" was "the cause". If that is true, my examination of dozens of Union recruiting posters have yet to find one that encourages enlistment to free the slaves. They mostly state that men should join to "Save the Union" if they give a reason.

It is important to remember that not a single Confederate, including Jefferson Davis, was ever convicted of treason against the U.S. In fact, Chief Justice Taney warned Lincoln not to try the Confederates as the possibility of legal secession might well be validated. Taney was no pro-Confederate. He was a Lincoln appointee.

What I find fascinating is that the foreign officers I teach overwhelmingly consider the Confederates and their cause just and that of the Federal government unjust. They have no bias as we Americans do so their views as disinterested observers adds an interesting perspective to this argument. Consider what the commander of the Union Armies, General Grant, said: * I thought for a single minute that this war is being fought over slavery I would but turn in my sword and join the other side".

Wars are complex. Slavery was a contributing factor to the Civil War. Attributing the war's cause solely to slavery is intellectually dishonest and just plain ignorant. While the war was a terrible event, the people of the South sought remedy for a Federal government that they thought had over-stepped its bounds leaving no other remedy than by force-of-arms. The fact that they lost doesn't necessarily mean they were wrong as I tell my students in our Vietnam classes.

(*I have been unable to document this famous quote. BT)

Like rats deserting a sinking ship........

Hizballah is deserting the Assad regime, or at least hedging their bets. They are pulling all of their heavy missiles from Syrian safekeeping now that they believe he has a serious chance of being deposed. From Debka:

Last year, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to store Hizballah's incoming Iran-made Fatah-110 surface missiles and its Syrian equivalent the M-600 and the mobile SA-8 (Gecko) anti-air battery which holds 18 warheads with a maximum range of 12 kilometers. Tehran paid for the upkeep of the Hizballah hardware on Syrian side of the border after Israel threatened to bomb these potential game-changers if they crossed over.
Deployed at Hizballah bases in Lebanon, the Fatah-110 and M-600 would place almost every corner of Israel within range of bombardment, while the SA-8 would seriously restrict Israeli Air Force operations over southern Lebanon and Galilee.
However, as the uprising against Assad rolls ever closer to Damascus, Hizballah see a very real threat of it infecting the Syrian army and has decided that now might be its last chance to get hold of the core arsenal it has standing by for war with Israel before events get out of hand in Syria.

But as is always the case with all military operations, logistics is a bitch: