I’m not going to say that I was real close to my dad when he came back from WWII. If he were alive today, it’s possible I could be, but he never talked about it, mostly drank too much and died early.
My wonderful mother was the breadwinner in our family and kept an amazingly decent roof over our heads, even though she never had a very good job and it has always been harder for women to succeed. This was the fifties and sixties in America.
My mother was exceptional though. She worked two jobs, and landed us a house on the hill with her skills at shear frugality and hard work.
Compare any of this with Romney’s plight:
#1 by Larry Bergan on September 25, 2012 - 9:51 pm
Probably should have asked mom for permission to post this.
Sorry mom.
I love you.
#2 by Larry Bergan on September 25, 2012 - 10:39 pm
I’m sure my dad cared about me because I went to his house twice after the divorce.
He used to record Laurence Welk every week and listened to his show until we couldn’t stand it, but I wanted his tape recorder so badly, I actually asked if I could have it when I visited him in his one room apartment. I received it at Christmas.
He got a better place later, and I was invited over. I remember that we watched Burt Reynolds on television, but the thing that stands out in my mind is that I had bought a fake hand gun which looked real and sounded real when fired. He didn’t take it from me because nobody was freaked out about being shot in America at the time, but I sensed he was very concerned about my obsession with the thing.
Very different times.
#3 by Larry Bergan on September 25, 2012 - 11:05 pm
This isn’t Laurence Welk, but this was, probably, my dads favorite song because the people of Paris treated him very well when his troops arrived in Paris.
This was the most played song in America when I was a kid, but I may be wrong.
#4 by Larry Bergan on September 25, 2012 - 11:09 pm
Remember all of the grief John Kerry took for liking french mustard.
Remember “freedom fries”
WTF!
#5 by brewski on September 25, 2012 - 11:17 pm
I like Dijon mustard. I even went to the mustard museum in Dijon.
I don’t remember any Dems roasting Kerry every day for being a zillionaire who didn’t earn a penny of it.
#6 by Larry Bergan on September 25, 2012 - 11:52 pm
But Kerry fought in Viet Nam!
Your boy deserted!
What’s a GD Zillionaire? No such thing!
#7 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 12:19 am
I’m an American brewski.
I only speak one language, but – as an American -, I have a sense of humor, no?
In other words:
Did you watch the Seder video?
#8 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 6:27 am
Kerry is a gd zillionaire and didn’t earn one penny of it and the Dems didn’t give him a hard time for that.
#9 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 6:31 am
Teresa Heinz Kerry paid only 12.3 percent of her total income in taxes.
#10 by cav on September 26, 2012 - 7:49 am
Oh my.,,,What brilliant, successful bidnessman picked this douche, anyway?
Though Ryan had already decided to distance himself from the floundering Romney campaign, he now feels totally uninhibited. Reportedly, he has been marching around his campaign bus, saying things like, “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.”
Even before the stench article appeared, there was a strong sign that Ryan was freeing himself from the grips of the Romney campaign. It began after his disastrous appearance on Friday before AARP in New Orleans. Ryan delivered his remarks in the style dictated by his Romney handlers: Stand behind the lectern, read the speech as written and don’t stray from the script.
Ryan brought his 78-year-old mother with him and introduced her to the audience, which is usually a sure crowd pleaser.
But when Ryan began talking about repealing “Obamacare” because he said it would harm seniors, one woman in the crowd shouted, “Lie!” Another shouted “Liar!” and the crowd booed Ryan lustily.
Who boos a guy in front of his 78-year-old mother? Other 78-year-old mothers.
http://www.politico.com/news/s…
Dan Senor, one of Romney’s closest advisers, has kept a tight grip on Ryan, traveling with him everywhere and making sure he hews to the directions of the Romney “brain trust” in Boston. (A brain trust, rumor has it, that refers to Ryan as “Gilligan.”)
#11 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 10:30 am
Larry,
I’d vote for your mom for president over Obama.
#12 by Richard Warnick on September 26, 2012 - 12:42 pm
Sam Seder talked a long time but failed to mention this:
Romney reportedly spent most of 1968 at a Parisian ‘palace for rich people’, which was staffed by a Spanish chef and a houseboy.
#13 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 3:57 pm
cav:
I wanted to see your link, but it doesn’t work.
#14 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 4:02 pm
Richard:
I don’t know how you find this stuff, but thanks for that. Seder seemed to be alluding to Romney’s house boy. I think it’s a very funny video.
#15 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 4:38 pm
Richard,
So what?
#16 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 4:47 pm
Where was Richard when:
http://yachtpals.com/kerry-yacht-9119
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rct828/59230952/
http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/homes.asp
#17 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 5:47 pm
Brewski:
As soon as you can find that article about John Kerry’s house boy in Viet Nam, I’ll take back everything. Also remember that Al Gore was in Viet Nam and most likely didn’t have a house boy either.
Both men were in actual danger and not being made to look like they were in danger by corporate media shills.
There IS a difference, you know.
Admit it! You laughed at Sam Seder’s video.
#18 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 7:48 pm
Why does it matter? Was Clinton is Vietnam? No, he was smoking pot in Oxford.
#19 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 8:30 pm
And where was Cheney?
Personally, I was smoking pot in Salt Lake, but I was too naive and powerless to try and get out of serving the rich. I would have gone, but I wouldn’t have liked it.
They would have told me I was fighting for freedom, but by then I probably would have enjoyed enough of a free press to know what I was actually doing – thanks to people like Daniel Ellsberg, Walter Cronkite and Mitt Romney’s dad.
#20 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 8:42 pm
My dad once said that he thought animals were kinder then humans. As a tank driver in WWII, he watched as hundreds of his fellow soldiers were slaughtered before his eyes.
If he hadn’t been ashamed of what he was forced to do, he probably would have been more open about what happened in that terrible war.
I have no idea what happened “over there”, but if he were still alive, I would ask him.
#21 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 8:59 pm
Did anybody see that wonderful concert that Walter Cronkite did with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, where he recited the inspiring story of how both sides of the WWII conflict stopped fighting on the battlefield and sang together in peace.
I had no idea he and his family would gather together to listen to the choir until then.
#22 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 9:41 pm
“That terrible war” was better than the alternative. I suppose we could have all pulled an Austria and just let ourselves be annexed. That would have saved a lot of lives, well, except for the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, intellectuals, leftists, artists, deviants,………..
I’m sorry your dad had to do what he had to do. But I am glad he did.
The Cold War was a funny thing. It explains pretty much all the dumb stuff the US did for 50 years. Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, and the ones we know less about. It all seems so silly in hindsight.
But I went to Berlin in 1985 and I went into East Berlin. It seemed a lot less silly after seeing that. The crosses of the dead on the Berlin Wall of people killed just trying to get out.
Some had names. Others were just “unbekannt”.
I watched Ken Burns’ “The War”. It gets into some pretty graphic details. The one that sticks out in my mind was a description of the early fighting against the Japanese in the South Pacific Islands. The new and very green Americans were fight against seasoned Japanese who had been conquering much of Asia for the previous 10 years. The GI’s didn’t really know what war was like. They assumed both sides try to kill each other as much as possible but that there were still some basic rules of conduct.
After a battle when the GI’s recovered thousands of American bodies which had all been tortured and mutilated, their penises cut off and stuffed in their mouths, the green Americans realized what this was really going to be like. All bets were off. Time for total war.
I don’t know how much Richard learned in his military science classes about the cutting off of penises and stuffing them in the mouths of dead Americans. But that’s what it was like.
So when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no one, and I mean no one, according to “The War”, didn’t celebrate it as being anything other than a wonderful thing.
So when I read these posts about how we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb on the Japanese I laugh at their ignorance. They have no idea what they are talking about. Ask the people who were there and saw what they saw and survived what they survived, if ending the war quickly as it did, was in any way a bad thing. I would bet your dad if he were around would agree.
#23 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 10:37 pm
My dad got to come home to a few good days, but their war made him an anathema; not a hero.
The story gets played out again and again for the soldiers who are unlucky enough to come home alive.
You type as if you were alive and fighting in WWII. You weren’t, and I wasn’t either. Both of us have no idea and neither does Mitt or even his dad. At least his dad saw the complete folly of the Viet Nam War and reported it to the American people.
Obama tried to make a bridge with his speech in Cairo, and you try to make a mockery out of it.
Shame on you!
#24 by Larry Bergan on September 26, 2012 - 10:57 pm
My dad WAS around when they dropped the bomb on Japan, and I never heard him say a thing about it.
It was the, single, most barbaric act in human history.
The best thing about that horrible tragedy was that we didn’t subjugate the beautiful Japanese people afterwards. Well, we didn’t let them have a military that was comparable to ours, but we DID allow them to thrive to the point that they kicked our asses in technology. Almost everything I bought was produced in Japan. I still have my Toyota Corolla – which is the best car I have ever owned – HANDS DOWN!
#25 by brewski on September 26, 2012 - 11:57 pm
Shame on me for what? For listening to the people who were there? That is my shame?
No, it wasn’t the most barbaric act in history. Japan invading and occupying a quarter of the globe and murdering and imprisoning women and children was the most barbaric act in history.
http://americanforeignpolicy.pbworks.com/w/page/12563721/Sanctions%20on%20Japan%20in%20WWII
The Japanse made Hitler look like a wimp. (Richard, insert your billionth Godwin reference here). The comparison is both contemporaneous and valid.
What would you least like to be? A Japanese solider in a US POW camp. A German soldier in a US POW camp. A US solider in a German POW camp. Or a US soldier in a Japanese POW camp?
The Japanese were by far the most barbaric actors in WWII. Their war conduct, the treatment of POWs and their treatment of civilians make everyone else look like boy scouts.
http://resources.cyberspacewarrior.org/Japanese-Slave-Labor/Allied%20POW%20Camps/us-pow.jpg
http://prisonphotography.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/santotomas4.jpg
http://www.amazon.com/REAL-TENKO-Extraordinary-Prisoners-Japanese/dp/1848840489
Nevermind the forced sexual slavery of Korean women and other atrocities against humanity.
Your flaw in looking at history is that you have a deeply imbedded “blame America first” instinct. Sure, there is a lot the US has done which is awful (slavery, Indians, etc), but WWII is not one of them. Japan was consumed by a racist sadist culture and we did what we could to stop them. That is not barbaric. It is heroic.
This is barbaric:
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1873&catid=2&subcatid=5
#26 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 12:09 am
Brewski/noname:
Settle the fuck down, dude!
I have to work and I don’t have the time to read any of your links, dude.
If I could, I would!
Time to go sleepy…
#27 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 12:13 am
Let me wake for a minute here:
brewski/noname is a racist Fuck!
#28 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 12:44 am
brewski/whoever you are:
If I may wake for another moment:
Japan is not innocent, and neither are we.
Can we agree on that?
#29 by brewski on September 27, 2012 - 8:04 am
How on earth did you come up with the R-bomb here? There is not one letter of anything I have said which is the slightest bit racist. Period.
Read those links.
We did not try to take over a quarter of the globe. They did.
#30 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 5:35 pm
brewski:
The Japanese were pretty brutal in those days, but I still call the Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the single most barbaric acts in history because a single blow killed hundreds of thousands.
America can no longer say anything about what other nations do, because we are causing so much trouble everywhere and don’t honor our commitments to others when it suits our aims. I wish it weren’t so.
#31 by brewski on September 27, 2012 - 6:38 pm
So what is you alternative to Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time given the facts then?
#32 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 7:40 pm
The story that used to go around was that the Japanese government refused to back down even after the first atom bomb was detonated because they didn’t believe could do it again.
Why couldn’t we have demonstrated our power by detonating both bombs in areas that were unpopulated?
I have heard that general MacArthur was confident he could defeat the Japanese without the bomb and I believe Einstein was having second thoughts about his participation in unleashing such a danger.
Hitler was weakened by the Soviet Union and then finished off before the bomb was dropped.
What would Jesus have done?
#33 by cav on September 27, 2012 - 8:22 pm
Reality is always complicated – and has a liberal bias, as well.
#34 by brewski on September 27, 2012 - 9:30 pm
Larry, you are speculating about circumstances and situations that didn’t exist at the time.
The US dropped the bomb and the Japanese had a meeting and surrender wasn’t even discussed. So what is a demonstration going to do?
So the second bomb was dropped and the council voted NOT to surrender. What was another demonstration going to do?
Only the personal intercession by the Emperor caused the surrender.
We didn’t have any other bombs left after those two, so none left to do any demonstrations.
MacArthur could have defeated Japan, IF he had been willing to kill millions MORE Japanese and Americans in the process than were killed by the bombs. So the bombs SAVED hundreds of thousands of lives.
Your speculation 70 years after the fact assuming facts that didn’t exist at the time only reveal your “blame America first” instinct and not your knowledge of the circumstances then.
#35 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 9:58 pm
Apparently the Emperor cared more about his people then “the council”. If his intercession caused the surrender, what makes you think he wouldn’t have surrendered if we hadn’t killed all those innocent people by only demonstrating our new toy.
As it turned out, it was a really good decision to surrender, because an unlikely friendship took hold almost overnight. The reason that happened is because America didn’t subjugate our former enemy.
Take your “blame America first” bumper sticker and stick it! Stick your racism while you’re at it. People are people and we all want the same things.
#36 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 10:05 pm
I only blame America when it’s wrong. I will never support America “right or wrong”.
#37 by brewski on September 27, 2012 - 10:10 pm
What racism are you talking about?
The racism of the Japanese who thought they were superior to everyone especially us?
You’re making shit up that isn’t there.
#38 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 11:24 pm
brewski:
If you want to refute your racism, stop wearing it around you damned neck. I can’t understand why you keep running from the label. You espouse it constantly.
You mean the people we used to call “Japs” or “slant eyes”. Stop being jerked around.
#39 by Larry Bergan on September 27, 2012 - 11:33 pm
Directly after the war, there was an extremely popular movie musical called “South Pacific”. Americans LOVED it. There was a theme that ran though it which rejected racism and a song which said you had to be taught to hate.
That is the kind of message that resonates with the American people; not the kind of shit that comes from Limbaugh.
#40 by brewski on September 28, 2012 - 7:35 am
I have asked you numerous times to show me just once what I have said that was racist and all I hear are crickets. Why do you run from your own assertions? You do nothing cut throw around insults and then run from ever supporting it.
My dad loves South Pacific.
#41 by Richard Warnick on September 28, 2012 - 9:08 am
Ouch!
Mitt Romney Favorability Lower Than George W. Bush, Poll Finds
Of course, part of this is due to collective amnesia. Bush left office with 37 percent approval.
#42 by Richard Warnick on September 28, 2012 - 1:52 pm
For brewski’s consideration:
Just How Racist Is the ‘Obama Phone’ Video?
He approved Romney’s speech about the so-called 47 Percent. So what about this?
#43 by brewski on September 28, 2012 - 2:15 pm
Who is “he”?
The phone piece is just audio, so I don’t know what race they are. Besides, races don’t actually exist. It is a fictional way to divide people. My ancestors are from Africa, my culture is Latino, I was born in America. So that makes me an Afro-Latino-Native American. So what?
#44 by brewski on September 28, 2012 - 3:10 pm
MSNBC caught doctoring video and lying again:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/greghengler/2012/09/28/msnbc_caught_doctoring_clip_from_romneyryan_rally
#45 by Richard Warnick on September 28, 2012 - 3:15 pm
You are “he.” You approved Romney’s “47 Percent” remarks.
“Obama phone” video is here.
#46 by brewski on September 28, 2012 - 4:22 pm
I approved them? I didn’t know I was in Romney’s inner circle.
What do you think of that video?
#47 by Larry Bergan on September 28, 2012 - 6:40 pm
It’s the republican noise machine in full gear. Drudge and Rush grunt nonsense and pretty soon, it’s everywhere.
Wait for the new republican chant:
Obama phone, Obama phone, Obama phone…
That poor woman doesn’t know how she got the phone, or the history of the program. I just learned about it here because Richard linked to the history. It’s the Ronald Reagan phone. Dirty, liberal, Reagan.
Cigarette packs must have a warning and I see no reason why radio liars and fake news organizations shouldn’t have a warning also.
#48 by cav on September 28, 2012 - 8:46 pm
If any one is interested the Third Party Debates will be on Democracy Now live stream:
Wednesday, October 3, 2012 — 9:00 -10:30 pm ET
Rocky Anderson is joining Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman with Jill Stein for a third-party debate streaming live and running concurrently with the Obama-Romney debate.
#49 by Larry Bergan on September 28, 2012 - 11:41 pm
I’ll be watching the Obama/Romney debate because Amy Goodman always keeps an archive.
If Romney makes a mistake, it will be purged from Google and everywhere else.
Obama never makes mistakes. It’s a lot easier to do that when you’re not lying about everything you say.
#50 by Richard Warnick on September 29, 2012 - 10:28 am
brewski, 12 days ago, commenting on Romney’s “47 Percent” remarks:
#51 by brewski on September 29, 2012 - 3:20 pm
Asking a question is not approving them.
Saying that rain is wet isn’t approving either.
#52 by Richard Warnick on September 29, 2012 - 4:58 pm
OK, let me ask a question. What did Romney say that WAS accurate?
#53 by brewski on September 29, 2012 - 5:07 pm
Thank you for not answering my question. Your refusal speaks volumes.
#54 by Richard Warnick on September 29, 2012 - 5:16 pm
You never answered MY question, so we’re even.
#55 by brewski on September 29, 2012 - 5:53 pm
You’ve never answered ANY question I asked nor addressed any authoritative I’ve offered, but yet you lie about what I have said, misstated my positions, and generally taken the immoral position on every issue. We’re not even.
#56 by Richard Warnick on September 29, 2012 - 5:57 pm
Good rant. Feel better now?
#57 by brewski on September 29, 2012 - 5:59 pm
Wasn’t a rant. Was a statement of truth. The fact that people like you can vote does not make me feel better.
#58 by cav on September 29, 2012 - 7:00 pm
Romney Inc. will fix THAT!