May all of you here on OPP have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.
What difference does it make? How many are they in Congress that are truly honest? Just look back and see how honest was your OBUMA . There is not one person that writes a comment would be able to pass the test for being the President You say that he lies with no proof, he is a sick person you have no proof. Just imagine what could be done if everyone just got together and worked at getting things done that need be. All this grade school mentality should just stop and start working as grown men and women as you were voted do.
A Different Christmas Poem
The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn't loud, and it wasn't too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn't quite know, Then the
sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
"What are you doing?" I asked without fear,
"Come in this moment, it's freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!"
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts…
To the window that danced with a warm fire's light
Then he sighed and he said, "Its really all right,
I'm out here by choice. I'm here every night.
"It's my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I'm proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ' Pearl on a day in December,"
Then he sighed, "That's a Christmas 'Gram always remembers."
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ' Nam ',
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I've not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he's sure got her smile."
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white, and blue... an American flag.
"I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another,
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother..
Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall."
"So go back inside," he said, "harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I'll be all right."
"But isn't there something I can do, at the least,
"Give you money," I asked, "or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you've done,
For being away from your wife and your son."
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
"Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we're gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us."
PLEASE, would you do me the kind favor of sending this to as many people as you can? Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due to our U.S service men and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let's try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.
LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq
Badboy,
I am not open for a debate, however, this is what I've told by some of my friends. Most who are females,
I just don't like Trump. Did I ask them why? You know that Hilary is a crook and so on. Yes but!!That most male
friends did so because their wives did not. I call them my friends because we don' talk politics, and we live in an apartment complex for Seniors.
I total agree with you on this. If it is stopped then we loose, they win.
The owners such wimps.
Myself, I gave up along time ago. College is much better to watch.
Pafret.
A very good post.
I would like to add this.
Growing old is hard to do, we were not taught in the class room about growing old. This is not taught in
college, there is no special subject or class room discussions. We must learn by trial and error.
Some make it, some don't
As we grow older, we seem to forget.
"We're not who we were.
We're not who we're supposed to be"
An old man told you this.
Trump lies you say, where is your proof, or maybe you don't want to know the truth. If this man lies so much how did he ever
get to where he is today? Don't it is because he lies.
Note the date...
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
Let me begin on a personal note. I am a 56-year-old, third-generation,
African American Washingtonian who is a graduate of the D.C. public
schools and who happens also to be a great admirer of Robert E. Lee's.
Today, Lee, who surrendered his troops to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at
Appomattox Court House 134 years ago, is under attack by people --
black and white -- who have incorrectly characterized him as a
traitorous, slaveholding racist. He was recently besieged in Richmond
by those opposed to having his portrait displayed prominently in a new
park.
My first visit to Lee's former home, now Arlington National Cemetery,
came when I was 12 years old, and it had a profound and lasting effect
on me. Since then I have visited the cemetery hundreds of times
searching for grave sites and conducting study tours for the
Smithsonian Institution and various other groups interested in
learning more about Lee and his family as well as many others buried
at Arlington.
Lee's life story is in some ways the story of early America. He was
born in 1807 to a loving mother, whom he adored. His relationship with
his father, Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, (who was George
Washington's chief of staff during the Revolutionary War) was strained
at best. Thus, as he matured in years, Lee adopted Washington (who had
died in 1799) as a father figure and patterned his life after him. Two
of Lee's ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence, and his
wife, Mary Custis, was George Washington's foster great-granddaughter.
Lee was a top-of-the-class graduate of West Point, a Mexican War hero
and superintendent of West Point. I can think of no family for which
the Union meant as much as it did for his.
But it is important to remember that the 13 colonies that became 13
states reserved for themselves a tremendous amount of political
autonomy. In pre-Civil War America, most citizens' first loyalty went
to their state and the local community in which they lived. Referring
to the United States of America in the singular is a purely post-Civil
War phenomenon.
All this should help explain why Lee declined command of the Union
forces -- by Abraham Lincoln -- after the firing on Fort Sumter. After
much agonizing, he resigned his commission in the Union army and
became a Confederate commander, fighting in defense of Virginia, which
at the outbreak of the war possessed the largest population of free
blacks (more than 60,000) of any Southern state.
Lee never owned a single slave, because he felt that slavery was
morally reprehensible. He even opposed secession. (His slaveholding
was confined to the period when he managed the estate of his late
father-in-law, who had willed eventual freedom for all of his slaves.)
Regarding the institution, it's useful to remember that slavery was
not abolished in the nation's capital until April 1862, when the
country was in the second year of the war. The final draft of the
Emancipation Proclamation was not written until September 1862, to
take effect the following Jan. 1, and it was intended to apply only to
those slave states that had left the Union.
Lincoln's preeminent ally, Frederick Douglass, was deeply disturbed by
these limitations but determined that it was necessary to suppress his
disappointment and "take what we can get now and go for the rest
later." The "rest" came after the war.
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the few civil rights leaders who
clearly understood that the era of the 1960s was a distant echo of the
1860s, and thus he read deeply into Civil War literature. He came to
admire and respect Lee, and to this day, no member of his family,
former associate or fellow activist that I know of has protested the
fact that in Virginia Dr. King's birthday -- a federal holiday -- is
officially celebrated as "Robert E. Lee-Stonewall Jackson-Martin
Luther King Day."
Lee is memorialized with a statue in the U.S. Capitol and in stained
glass in the Washington Cathedral.
It is indeed ironic that he has long been embraced by the city he
fought against and yet has now encountered some degree of rejection in
the city he fought for.
In any event, his most fitting memorial is in Lexington, Va.: a living
institution where he spent his final five years. There the
much-esteemed general metamorphosed into a teacher, becoming the
president of small, debt-ridden Washington College, which now stands
as the well-endowed Washington and Lee University.
It was in Lexington that he made a most poignant remark a few months
before his death. "Before and during the War Between the States I was
a Virginian," he said. "After the war I became an American."
I have been teaching college students for 30 years, and learned early
in my career that the twin maladies of ignorance and misinformation
are not incurable diseases. The antidote for them is simply to make a
lifelong commitment to reading widely and deeply. I recommend it for
anyone who would make judgment on figures from the past, including
Robert E. Lee.
[Dr. Smith is co-director of the Civil War Institute at American
University in Washington, D.C.]
This was very interesting, I have learned something today. Too bad others can't say this.
Thank you for sharing this. I agree back in the 50's things were different. As a white boy growing in the middle of this country
I played with, went to school with, partied with many of Blacks. Back then there were no hyphenated names. To me, this means that we were all Americans.
I got a big laugh from it. Very well said, May you have a second dip.
Louie27. I totally agree with you. As soon as he says something, anything. The media, the others that do not support our president will jump on his words and spin them whatever each way. I too support our president 100% may god help him get through this mess.
This is another reason that I gave up driving. Insurance premiums kept going up. Gas prices the same, maintenance was getting too costly. Now, when I need to somewhere I get a free ride and I sit in the backseat seeing things that I missed when driving. Love it.
I am not too sure if he has a Facebook account or not if so it could there. If doesn't see it there are plenty of other
who will see and read the letter? More the better.
I plan on sending it to some of my email buddies who are strong supporters of the president.