June 16, 2013
Happy 49th Father's Day, Dad! -- And 1st Grandfather's Day, too!
A look at the best Dad a guy could have, from the 1930s through the 2000s.
Dad in Golden Gate Park with my Grandmother and his younger sister, my Aunt Lee, circa 1937.
This shot is probably from 1950 -- in Brooklyn -- before Dad joined the Navy.
Dad aboard ship during the Korean War. My father is proud to have served; I'm glad I could carry on the family tradition.
Working at a pharmacy in downtown Los Angeles, circa 1965.
The Lief Family, circa 1965, with Dad's parents. If I haven't mentioned it, it's a scientific fact that they were the best grandparents known to mankind.
Disco Dad. Polyester leisure suit and a redonkulous moustache. Oy.
I snapped these shots during our cross-country train ride in 2004, when Dad and I celebrated his 70th and my 40th birthday by indulging our dislike of flying by riding the rails to Florida, returning to California via the Panama Canal aboard a cruise ship.
My stepmother casts an affectionate-yet-skeptical glance at Dad in our booth at Wolf Creek Restaurant & Brewery, April 2012. I think this captures the essence of their relationship.
Dad enjoys a quiet moment with his grandson, and I enjoy watching him -- watching them, together.
Happy Father's Day to you and me, Dad.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
June 06, 2013
Remembering the Fallen: Normandy American Military Cemetery (BUMPED)
UPDATE: I just clicked on the link for the live feed and saw American flags presented to the families of the fallen. Taps, the saddest sound known to Mankind, drifted across the rows of crosses and Stars of David. Then the military band played Le Marseillaise and the Star Spangled Banner.
Chills. Tears. May God bless and keep these men.
Take a moment on this, the 69th anniversary of the day these men stormed the beaches of Hitler's Festung Europa, turn on your speakers, and drink in the sights and sounds of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where 9,387 Americans slumber beneath 172 acres of verdant French turf, with more than 1,500 names of those men whose bodies were never found listed on a memorial wall in the gardens.
The live stream, featuring audio and
video, is available from 2 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Remembering D-Day
Looking back across the 69 years since Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, it's easy to forget just how precarious, what a tremendous gamble the ambitious amphibious landing really was. General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, sat at his desk during the long, stormy night before the invasion and wrote a letter conceding failure -- just in case things went badly -- taking responsibility for the defeat. The following hours would be critical: Would the soldiers of the Third Reich throw the Americans, Brits and Canadians back into the sea?
Eisenhower's pencilled draft was found in a pocket by an aide some days after the Allies had broken through the German defenses and made their way off the beaches. Ike wrote:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops
have been withdrawn.My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
General Eisenhower issued this proclamation to the men before they set sail for France across the stormy Channel, reminding them of what was at stake during the coming desperate hours.
GIs from Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, are amongst the first Americans to set foot on Hitler's Festung Europa in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. The waiting German troops greeted them with a hail of steel, MG-42 machine guns mowing down men with their distinctive "ripping-cloth" buzz.
Robert Edlin, fighting with the 2d Ranger Battalion, remembered the invasion getting off to a bad start:
"Our assault boat hit a sandbar. I looked over the ramp and we were at least seventy-five yards from the shore, and we had hoped for a dry landing. I told the coxswain, "Try to get in further." He screamed he couldn't. That British seaman had all the guts in the world but couldn't get off the sandbar. I told him to drop the ramp or we were going to die right there.
We had been trained for years not to go off the front of the ramp, because the boat might get rocked by a wave and run over you. So we went off the sides. I looked to my right and saw a B Company boat next to us with Lt. Bob Fitzsimmons, a good friend, take a direct hit on the ramp from a mortar or mine. I thought, there goes half of B Company.
It was cold, miserably cold, even though it was June. The water temperature was probably forty-five or fifty degrees. It was up to my shoulders when I went in, and I saw men sinking all about me. I tried to grab a couple, but my job was to get on in and get to the guns. There were bodies from the I I6th floating everywhere. They were facedown in the water with packs still on their backs. They had inflated their life jackets. Fortunately, most of the Rangers did not inflate theirs or they also might have turned over and drowned.
Having left the relative -- and illusory --safety of the landing craft, GIs from the 16th Infantry Regiment begin the maddeningly slow slog toward the beach, as the German defenders hit them with mortars and machine gun fire.
I began to run with my rifle in front of me. I went directly across the beach to try to get to the seaway. In front of me was part of the II6th Infantry, pinned down and lying behind beach obstacles. They hadn't made it to the seaway. I kept screaming at them, 'You have to get up and go! You gotta get up and go!' But they didn't. They were worn out and defeated completely. There wasn't any time to help them.
I continued across the beach. There were mines and obstacles all up and down the beach. The air corps had missed it entirely. There were no shell holes in which to take cover. The mines had not been detonated. Absolutely nothing that had been planned for that part of the beach had worked. I knew that Vierville-sur-Mer was going to be a hellhole, and it was.
When I was about twenty yards from the seaway I was hit by what I assume was a sniper bullet. It shattered and broke my right leg. I thought, well, I've got a Purple Heart. I fell, and as I did, it was like a searing hot poker rammed into my leg. My rifle fell ten feet or so in front of me. I crawled forward to get to it, picked it up, and as I rose on my left leg, another burst of I think machine gun fire tore the muscles out of that leg, knocking me down again.
I lay there for seconds, looked ahead, and saw several Rangers lying there. One was Butch Bladorn from Wisconsin. I screamed at Butch, 'Get up and run!' Butch, a big, powerful man, just looked back and said, 'I can't.' I got up and hobbled towards him. I was going to kick him in the ass and get him off the beach. He was lying on his stomach, his face in the sand. Then I saw the blood coming out of his back. I realized he had been hit in the stomach and the bullet had come out his spine and he was completely immobilized. Even then I was sorry for screaming at him but I didn't have time to stop and help him. I thought, well, that's the end of Butch. Fortunately, it wasn't. He became a farmer in Wisconsin.
Men from the 16th Infantry Regiment try to find protection from the German machine gunners, hiding for a few moments behind anti-tank obstacles placed on Omaha Beach as part of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's plan to keep the Allies from establishing a beachhead on the Normandy coast.
As I moved forward, I hobbled. After you've been hit by gunfire, your legs stiffen up, not all at once but slowly. The pain was indescribable. I fell to my hands and knees and tried to crawl forwards. I managed a few yards, then blacked out for several minutes. When I came to, I saw Sgt. Bill Klaus. He was up to the seaway. When he saw my predicament, he crawled back to me under heavy rifle and mortar fire and dragged me up to the cover of the wall.
Klaus had also been wounded in one leg, and a medic gave him a shot of morphine. The medic did the same for me. My mental state was such that I told him to shoot it directly into my left leg, as that was the one hurting the most. He reminded me that if I took it in the ass or the arm it would get to the leg. I told him to give me a second shot because I was hit in the other leg. He didn't.
There were some Rangers gathered at the seaway - Sgt. William Courtney, Pvt. William Dreher, Garfield Ray, Gabby Hart, Sgt. Charles Berg. I yelled at them, 'You have to get off of here! You have to get up and get the guns!' They were gone immediately.
My platoon sergeant, Bill White, an ex-jockey whom we called Whitey, took charge. He was small, very active, and very courageous. He led what few men were left of the first platoon and started up the cliffs. I crawled and staggered forward as far as I could to some cover in the bushes behind a villa. There was a round stone well with a bucket and handle that turned the rope. It was so inviting. I was alone and I wanted that water so bad. But years of training told me it was booby-trapped.
Photographer Frank Capa lay in the surf of the Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach, snapping pictures from the furthest edge of the American assault, capturing the frenzied rush to get ashore and stop being a sitting duck in the surf. Capa's photos were rushed back to London, where the majority were destroyed in an accident in the lab. Only a few survived, comprising the most compelling images of the D-Day landings taken on the American beaches.
I looked up at the top of the cliffs and thought, I can't make it on this leg. Where was everyone? Had they all quit? Then I heard Dreher yelling, 'Come on up. These trenches are empty.' Then Kraut burp guns cut loose. I thought, oh God, I can't get there! I heard an American tommy gun, and Courtney shouted, 'Damn it, Dreher! They're empty now.'
There was more German small-arms fire and German grenades popping. I could hear Whitey yelling, 'Cover me!' I heard Garfield Ray's BAR [Browning automatic rifle] talking American. Then there was silence.
Now, I thought, where are the 5th Rangers? I turned and I couldn't walk or even hobble anymore. I crawled back to the beach. I saw 5th Rangers coming through the smoke of a burning LST that had been hit by artillery fire. Co!. Schneider had seen the slaughter on the beaches and used his experience with the Rangers in Africa, Sicily, and Anzio. He used the smoke as a screen and moved in behind it, saving the 5th Ranger Battalion many casualties.
A wounded GI is helped ashore at Omaha Beach my some of his fellow soldiers. Note the still-inflated life preserver on the soldier to his left.
My years of training told me there would be a counterattack. I gathered the wounded by the seaway and told them to arm themselves as well as possible. I said if the Germans come we are either going to be captured or die on the beach, but we might as well take the Germans with us. I know it sounds ridiculous, but ten or fifteen Rangers lay there, facing up to the cliffs, praying that Sgt. White, Courtney, Dreher, and the 5th Ranger Battalion would get to the guns. Our fight was over unless the Germans counterattacked.
I looked back to the sea. There was nothing. There were no reinforcements. I thought the invasion had been abandoned. We would be dead or prisoners soon. Everyone had withdrawn and left us. Well, we had tried. Some guy crawled over and told me he was a colonel from the 29th Infantry Division. He said for us to relax, we were going to be okay. D, E, and F Companies were on the Pointe. The guns had been destroyed. A and B Companies and the 5th Rangers were inland. The 29th and Ist Divisions were getting off the beaches.
This colonel looked at me and said, 'You've done your job." I answered, 'How? By using up two rounds of German ammo on my legs?" Despite the awful pain, I hoped to catch up with the platoon the next day."
An Army medic moves down the beach providing aid to the wounded, as exhausted troops huddle against the base of chalk cliffs, protected for the moment from the barrage of incoming German fire.
Less than 24 hours earlier the same GIs had marched through the streets of seaside English towns, on the way to the docks where they'd board the troop transports for the ride across the English Channel to the Normandy coast. It's impossible not to wonder how many of these men made it off the beach the next morning.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 27, 2013
Memorial Day 2013: Taps
There is no sadder sound, and no moment when I'm more proud of those who served and gave their all in defense of this nation, than during the 24 notes of taps.
Take a minute-twenty out of your day and remember them.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Memorial Day 2013: Remembering those who gave their all
This is the first Memorial Day I can remember without Charles Durning; he passed last December after a long and storied career on stage and screen, an actor you've seen in countless movies over the last 50 years, including The Sting, The Front Page, Dog Day Afternoon, Tootsie and The Muppet Movie. I especially enjoyed his performance as Gov. Pappy Daniels in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. But you've never seen him like this, speaking at the 2007 Memorial Day Concert.
Durning was a decorated war veteran who fought his way across Europe, receiving numerous wounds in the fight against the Third Reich. He remained silent about his wartime experiences until late in his life, but, as the number of WWII vets dwindled, Durning decided to speak out, to bear witness to the heroism of those who never came home.
His portion of the video begins with a picture of him as a young GI at the 1:12 mark. Listen to his memories of D-Day, the raw emotion in his voice as he recalls the terror of those hours spent on the beaches of Normandy, and then think of how he and his fellow soldiers fought their way off the sand and continued on, mile after mile, month after month, through France and Belgium, the bitter cold of Bastogne, over the Rhine, until the enemy -- bled dry by the constant slaughter -- was defeated.
Durning came home and recovered from his wounds. Taking to the theater, the lean combat veteran soon disappearing into the role of corpulent character actor, often snagging comedic roles -- with a glimmer of barely-controlled rage occasionally peeking through, the twinkling eyes going cold and flat.
I'm grateful he decided to end the decades-long silence about the war, and the heroes with whom be fought.
On this memorial day weekend, be sure to thank a veteran for his service, and make sure to tell him you remember his buddies, too, the ones who never made it home.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Memorial Day 2013: Battle Hymn of the Republic, World War II edition
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February 27, 2013
A video rebuttal to Biden's firearms expertise
Joe Biden's not a liar (contra the title of this video); he is, however, wrong, as this video demonstrates. He's also condescending and astoundingly ignorant. And a heartbeat away from the presidency. Fear not for the Republic -- our future is in the hands of the best and brightest the nation has to offer.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
December 28, 2012
"Assault weapon" ban advocates miss the point of the Second Amendment
The anti-gun zealots continue their assault on the Bill of Rights with renewed vigor; California's execrable Sen. Diane Feinstein leading the charge, releasing the outlines of her new weapons ban, expanded to cover most pistols and requiring all gun owners to be fingerprinted and entered into a massive government database.
Perhaps nothing sets a Second Amendment Civil Libertarian's teeth on edge like the pronouncements of various politicians that, "no one's talking about interfering with your right to own hunting rifles or other weapons with legitimate sporting purposes," followed up with the non-sensical (and profoundly un-American question, "Why does anyone need a large-capacity magazine? Why does anyone need an assault weapon? Why does anyone need a military-grade rifle?"
National Review's Kevin Williamson penned an article (posted today) that reminds us what the Second Amendment is really about:
The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person ... believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.
There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to oppose enemies foreign and domestic, a guarantee against disorder and tyranny. Consider the words of Supreme Court justice Joseph Story — who was, it bears noting, appointed to the Court by the guy who wrote the Constitution:
The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers.
It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people.
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
“Usurpation and arbitrary power of the rulers” — not Bambi, not burglars. While your granddad’s .30-06 is a good deal more powerful than the .223 rifles that give blue-state types the howling fantods, that is not what we have a constitutional provision to protect.
[...]
The right to keep and bear arms is a civil right. If you doubt that, consider the history of arms control in England, where members of the Catholic minority (and non-Protestants generally) were prohibited from bearing arms as part of the campaign of general political oppression against them. The Act of Disenfranchisement was still in effect when our Constitution was being written, a fact that surely was on the mind of such Founding Fathers as Daniel Carroll, to say nothing of his brother, Archbishop John Carroll.
The Second Amendment speaks to the nature of the relationship between citizen and state. [Anti-gun zealots] may think that such a notion is an antiquated relic of the 18th century, but then [they] should be arguing for wholesale repeal of the Second Amendment rather than presenting — what’s the word? — disingenuous arguments about what it means and the purpose behind it.
[...]
Power corrupts. Madison knew that, and the other Founders did, too, which is why we have a Second Amendment.
None of what Williamson wrote should come as a surprise to any American well-versed in our own history and the contemporaneous writings of the Republic's founders, but it can't hurt to repeat Justice Story's point one more time: "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
And, though it may be unpopular with supporters of the all-powerful, You'll-Do-As-We-Decree-Because-We-Know-Better-Than-You Nanny State, Williamson's answer to the anti-gun zealot's question gets to the very core of the Second Amendment's meaning and purpose: “Why would anybody need a gun like that? [B]ecause we are not serfs. We are a free people living under a republic of our own construction. We may consent to be governed, but we will not be ruled."
Now that's speaking truth to power.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
December 08, 2012
A date which will live in infamy ....
As Americans scoured the papers for information and listened to the radio for the latest news from Hawaii, Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a blockbuster speech to Congress -- and the nation.
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 -- a date which will live in infamy -- the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph -- so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
You can listen to the speech here
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
December 07, 2012
Day of Infamy
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAMMING! (click to listen)
We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin!
The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.
The attack also was made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu.
On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. sailors, airmen and Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing Americans into a war most opposed fighting.
That opposition changed in the aftermath of the attack, and the Japanese guaranteed not victory, but their own eventual destruction. In another blunder, Hitler declared war on the U.S., ensuring that Germany would be forced to fight a war on two fronts.
As the few remaining survivors of the attack gather today to remember their fallen comrades, here is a visual record of the attack, made possible in part by the large number of Japanese pilots and crew who brought cameras with them and managed to take pictures during the attack.
The Japanese fleet steams toward the unsuspecting Americans, hiding behind stormy seas. Luck was on their side; they avoided American patrols and escaped detection.
Japanese planes on deck, waiting for the right time to begin the attack. Months of intensive training was about to pay off.
The pilots throttle up, waiting for the order to launch, their planes straining at the brakes, Mitsubishi radial engines screaming.
As one of the first torpedo bombers races down the deck, Japanese crewmen cry, "Banzai!" and lift their arms in tribute.
The planes lift off slowly, weighed down by the bombs and torpedoes destined for the American fleet, and the fuel needed to carry them to Pearl Harbor. They struggle into the air and move into formation for the journey to Hawaii.
The Japanese arrive and begin their attack. It had been a quiet Sunday morning, the Americans expecting a lazy day aboard ship, or liberty on the beach.
They target the battleships, lined up neatly, unsuspecting giants awaiting their fates. The harbor appeared remarkably similar to the model the Japanese used for practice.
Flak bursts fill the air as the American sailors begin to fight back, targetting the Japanese planes. While some were downed by the U.S. guns, far too often the planes clawed their way back into the sky for another run at the burning ships below.
Japanese bombs pierce the forward magazine of the USS Arizona, triggering an enormous explosion. Witnesses said the entire ship appeared to momentarily rise out of the water. These color images are frames taken from a 16mm motion picture of the attack.
The aftermath is devastating to behold; the Pacific Fleet in ruins, the American West Coast undefended. Fires rage and thousands of sailors remain trapped below decks in the blazing, capsized hulks.
But the Japanese have made two mistakes that will prove fatal to their dream of Empire. The admiral in charge of the attack has cancelled the third wave of planes, leaving intact the oil tanks holding the fuel the Americans will need for their fleet in its defense of the Mainland.
And they've left the American carriers -- out at sea -- untouched.
In a few short months, these carriers will launch dive bombers and torpedo bombers at the Battle of Midway, handing the Imperial Japanese Navy a devastating defeat, dooming their plans for an empire spanning the Pacific.
Dauntless dive bombers, like these pictured above, will make full use of the American torpedo bombers' sacrifice; wiped out by the Japanese as they flew low and slow, they lured the fighters down to sea level, leaving an opening for the high-flying U.S. dive bombers to hurtle down at the enemy fleet, delivering their weapons with incredible accuracy, sending the Jap carriers to the bottom.
And American aces depleted the ranks of experienced Japanese aircrews; by the end of the war, inexperienced cadets were flying their planes on one-way Kamikaze suicide missions, never having had to learn how to land their aircraft.
December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in infamy, marked the beginning. The beginning of a titanic struggle for the American people, and the beginning of the end for the Japanese.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
November 11, 2012
Every day is a bonus
This is the perfect Veterans Day video; it's five minutes that perfectly capture the dignity and grace of the now-aged men who once fought and bled alongside their friends -- fallen comrades forever young in their memories -- in the battle to defeat tyranny.
Take a few minutes to watch these men -- and the Americans who recognize and honor the heroes who still walk amongst us.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Remembering the Defenders of Freedom
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the guns fell silent, ending the greatest slaughter the world had ever known. For 21 years it was known as "The Great War" and "The War to End All Wars," until new tyrants forced us to begin numbering our global conflicts. Today, the second war might have been called The Great War Ver. 1.2, but our forefathers settled on World War II.
Today is the day we remember the Americans who sacrificed everything for us. It used to be called Armistice Day, to commemorate the end of the First World War, but somewhere along the way someone decided to go generic.
I like the old name better, because it reminds us of a specific conflict, and of the men who fought and died in one war. It's why I prefer Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday to the plainwrap Presidents' Day.
There's nothing wrong with having a generic Veterans' Day -- Hell, no! -- but let's not diminish the opportunity to remember each and every war, so that we may remind ourselves of the lessons to be learned from each conflict.
For those inclined to decorate their Volvos and Priuses with "War Is Never the Answer" and "Coexist" bumperstickers, a reminder: it is because of brave men, buried in cemeteries from Normandy to Arlington, that you enjoy the right to spout such nonsense. Had your philosophy prevailed, the Confederacy would still exist (as would slavery); and Hitler's Reich would be celebrating it's seventy-ninth anniversary in a Jew-free empire. Sometimes war is the answer, and coexistence with evil can prove impossible; that's when the soldier picks up his club, sword, bow, musket, or rifle and wearily marches into battle.
I salute the fallen, and the troops who answered the call, as well as my own personal trio of heroes: my father,
Petty Officer Second Class Gerald Lief, who served at sea in the Korean War; his father,
Cpl. Harry Wiener Lief, Troop E, 3rd Cavalry, USA, who went to France and fought in the War to End All Wars; and my uncle,
Sgt. Bernard Solomon, USMC, who fought at the Frozen Chosin and never forgot his pals who didn't come home. Semper Fi, Mac!
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
November 06, 2012
Getting it good and hard
It's difficult for conservatives to understand just how this president managed to get reelected, given his performance over the last four years. Perhaps H.L. Mencken had it right nearly 100 years ago: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." I don't think the next four years are going to go well for this nation -- but we'll be getting what the voters wanted.
Enjoy.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
November 04, 2012
A principled argument for conservatives considering not voting for Romney
I've been quiet this election season, but this video from Bill Whittle is a must see. This is a concise -- and compelling -- argument aimed at all those conservatives or libertarians considering a protest vote, or not voting at all.
Whittle calmly explains why this election is so important, and why it's imperative that we understand that only one of two men will be elected president: Romney or Obama. Keeping that reality in mind, will your vote advance or hurt the values that we cherish as conservatives?
If limited government, personal freedom, and personal responsibility are important to you, only one candidate deserves your vote.
Whittle lays out what a gift we have, paid for with the blood of patriots who never returned from battlefields near and far, the gift of the ballot, and of the responsibility we have to ensure that each vote counts.
Whittle's impassioned plea gave me chills (it's that good), and I encourage you to watch it, forward it to friends and family (Just copy and paste this link: http://youtu.be/wPjBXufufUU), and remember that our future depends on us choosing to act.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
September 11, 2012
Remember
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September 10, 2012
An unimaginable future
The view from Liberty Island, circa 1991. Don't let the bright sunshine fool you; it was a cold winter's day, a biting arctic wind blowing from the north, the air clean and crisp, the twin towers of the World Trade Center looming over my shoulder. If you'd have told me they'd be gone in little more than ten years, I'd have said you were insane.
It seemed like they were always there, in the background. I never really liked them; too sterile, too modern, lacking any of the lush style and flair of the older buildings that made Manhattan such an architectural delight.
Rockefeller Center; the Empire State Building; the Chrysler Building. Man, they're beautiful.
But the behemoths that claimed lower Manhattan for themselves were so cold, devoid of human warmth or scale. The plaza between them was always a windy, barren patch of concrete, too cold and desolate for even the bums and pigeons. One hurried through the space as the wind howled, anxious to get inside, blind to the hidden charms of the twins.
But now, paging through a stack of old vacation photos, I spy a shot taken from Brooklyn, and there, in the background, they stand, beneath an oddly dark cloud.
And now they're gone, with their thousands of occupants and the brave firefighters and policemen who perished with them, too.
Only now do I realize that I miss them, never mind their ugliness or their ever-so-sophisticated design. They were a part of Manhattan, and if they were going to be stay or go, well, that was our decision.
And every time I look at the skyline, I think that it just looks wrong.
The appropriate response isn't sadness or sorrow or mournful contemplation.
The proper response is rage. White-hot fury. The need for vengeance, what the perfidious act of war inflicted upon our fellow citizens requires, and what our war dead demand.
Our enemies sneer, laugh and mock those who talk of healing, forgiveness and moving on. The jihad doesn't require our consent; only our necks stretched bare for the blade.
And what of those ugly Twin Towers, laid low by our enemies? I miss the skyline I knew and took for granted, and all the New Yorkers I had yet to know -- and never will after 9/11.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 05, 2012
This is not my grandfather's Democratic Party
Drudge leads with the moment when the Democratic Convention went off the rails today. The DNC had adopted a party platform that omitted past support for Israel's claim of Jerusalem as its capital, as well as any mention of a Supreme Being playing a part in our "God-given rights" as Americans.
As you may have guessed, these omissions proved problematic to Israel-supporting Americans (i.e., Jewish voters) and other bitter-clingers living in Flyover Country, and the Dems moved to swiftly correct this situation.
Unfortunately, things didn't go smoothly in the convention hall.
Let me quote from the reliably-lefty Huffington Post:
After they took heat for omitting any reference to "God" in their platform, and for eliminating language from the 2008 platform that identified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Democrats tried to add the language back into their party platform with a voice vote.
A source informed on the deliberations told The Huffington Post that President Obama personally intervened to strengthen the language. Speaking with HuffPost, a senior Obama administration official also confirmed the president's involvement.
But when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention chairman, came to the podium to ask for the approval of the delegates, those who shouted opposition to the language change were as loud, if not louder, than those who voiced their support.
Villaraigosa, in what quickly became an awkward moment, asked for the voice vote three times in all. After the second time, he paused for several seconds and looked behind him for guidance from a convention staffer -- possibly a parliamentarian -- before turning back and asking for a third vote.
Even though the no's were again as loud if not louder than the aye's on the third vote, Villaraigosa said he had determined that two thirds of those present had voted in favor. Boos filled the arena in response.
Within minutes, Republican National Committee staffers had uploaded the video to YouTube and were circulating it on Twitter.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one would have to have a heart of stone to watch the discomfiture of Tony Villar without dissolving into tears ... of laughter. To top it all off, how delicious that Villar applies Chicago Rules and deems the ayes to have a two-thirds majority when they clearly do not.
Rules? Dem's for suckers and da little people.
What a quintessential Democratic Machine moment.
That having been said, really? Booing "God" in the party platform? Booing an affirmation of support for Israel's claim to Jerusalem, the very heart of the Jewish faith? This from the party whose president (Truman) went against the advice of his own State Department and backed the birth of the modern Jewish State?
This is not the Democratic Party of my grandparents. Harry Truman -- and Harry Lief -- would be ashamed.
Posted by Mike Lief at 04:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Smart diplomacy
The Jerusalem Post's lead story this morning keyed in on a not-so-trivial revelation from the Democratic National Convention: The Donks -- following Obama's lead -- have thrown Israel under the bus, stripping support for the nation from the party's national platform.
The changes are significant, and the Republican Jewish Committee quickly whipped up a response comparing and contrasting this year's DNC platform from the one featured at the 2008 convention:
These changes are deeply troubling, and notwithstanding claims by Obama supporters to the contrary, they will be perceived by Israel's enemies as a reduction in U.S. support for the Jewish nation.
It was just last month that a spokeswoman for the Obama administration refused to answer a question at a press briefing about whether or not the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It now seems that Obama has decided that he doesn't need to worry about Jewish voters defecting to Romney -- even as Israel's fate becomes ever-more tenuous, thanks to Iran's relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Bad times for Israel. I wonder if those American Jews who support her are paying attention.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
August 05, 2012
Touchdown!
Just finished watching live coverage of the Mars rover setting down on the Martian surface.
Suddenly I'm 10 years old again, reading Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein for the first time, goggle-eyed at the adventures that await us as we leave our terrestrial home, fulfilling our destiny amongst the stars.
Simply amazing. Now let's kick our space program into gear and get boots on the Martian ground!
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 21, 2012
Some thoughts on the Aurora movie massacre
A friend said today that "it seems that the only way to prevent these mass shootings is to never allow someone to be a 'loner.' "
The reality is that there simply isn't any way to prevent someone from committing murder; be it the murder of one or the murder of many, the best we can hope for is vigilance and damage control.
Anyone working in law enforcement (if they're willing to level with you) will concede that the police aren't tasked with preventing crime; they're there to clean up the mess afterwards and try and catch the perpetrators.
In fact courts have ruled that the police cannot be held responsible for failing to protect the public, cannot be sued for keeping the crime from happening.
Politicians, being craven, reactionary creatures, react by rushing towards the microphones: "This must never happen again! And I have the legislation to ensure your safety!" New Jersey's execrable Sen. Frank Lautenberg is a prime example, saying:
“We have to face the reality that these types of tragedies will continue to occur unless we do something about our nation’s lax gun laws.”
Wasting no time, the 88-year-old senator is reportedly working on -- drumroll, please! -- legislation!
[H]e plans to reintroduce legislation that would curtail the ability of a shooter to fire at length without reloading.
"If reports are correct and a high-capacity gun magazine was used to commit these awful murders, Senator Lautenberg will absolutely renew his effort to limit the availability of this dangerous firearm attachment," Lautenberg's communications director Caley Gray told The Huffington Post.
The truth is that even more laws simply aren't the answer. Those willing to violate existing laws -- whether inspired by madness or malevolence -- will not be deterred by yet another legislative "Thou Shalt Not," especially when they're about to contravene Thou Shalt Nots regarding rape, robbery and murder. Which is why trying to prevent violence by passing new prohibitions on the possession of objects is a fool's errand.
In California we have "enhancements," stiffer penalties for people who use guns when they commit crimes: 10-20-Life. To sum it up, use a gun during the commission of certain crimes, add ten years to the sentence; fire a gun and it adds 20 years; and if the bullet hits someone, well, 25 to life is the result. Gun crime's non-existant in California as a result, right?
Not exactly.
If passing laws were all it took to prevent crime, we'd have eliminated crime, but clearly the criminals haven't been deterred. That's why they're "criminals."
I was listening to former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton bloviating about what can be done in the aftermath of the Colorado massacre; he mentioned metal detectors, which made me guffaw. The Aurora killer reportedly reentered the theater through an emergency exit -- bypassing any theoretical metal detectors -- and violating the theater chain's corporate policies against sneaking into the cinema, not to mention the policy against bringing weapons into the theater.
Someone determined to kill will do so, and will continue doing so, until he decides to stop, his bloodlust sated, or someone stops him through the application of counterforce. The lessons of September 11th were quickly assimilated by the American public, within hours by the passengers on United Flight 93: You can't wait for the cavalry to ride to the rescue.
Whether dealing with a lone gunman in a Colorado theater or a group of terrorists on an airliner, the only people we can definitely rely upon are our fellow citizens.
And we'll always have to keep an eye out for those loners, my friend.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 20, 2012
Inexplicable acts of cruelty and violence can be explained: Evil exists
I've been listening to the national media coverage of the slaughter in Aurora, Colorado; I'm troubled by how easily people characterize the murders as a "tragedy," rather than a cold-blooded massacre.
Thirteen years ago, in the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, I penned an op/ed piece that ran in the L.A. Daily News. My opinion remains the same after today's Colorado massacre.
THE echoes of gunfire have barely faded in the high-school hallways and already the punditocracy is hard at work. Grief "experts" and school administrators offer platitudes and reassurances.
Surf the television channels and you find: "It couldn't happen here in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Mayberry, Ventura, wherever"; "We need to look for the warning signs"; "This is the result of our kids growing up in a violent society"; and of course, the biggie, "Why?"
The real problem is that we live in a messy, violent, unpredictable world.
Let me confess my biases. I am by profession a deputy district attorney. Every day I deal with defendants who want to "get on with my life, man." People who are looking for "closure, y'know?" Criminals who are willing to accept responsibility for their actions, "But only if I can plead 'no contest' instead of 'guilty.' "
There are no easy answers and no solutions, no measures we can take to prevent certain crimes.
An administrator from the Los Angeles Unified School District spoke of how our kids are safer in one of the Southland's schools, equipped as they are with metal detectors.
Yeah, right.
Doesn't it stand to reason that those same teens who at latest count had slaughtered 15 of their classmates and teachers, when confronted with a metal detector, would not say "The jig is up, for if we attempt to enter the school these confounded machines will reveal the presence of our weapons and clue everyone in to the mayhem we seek to sow 30 seconds before we planned to begin, so maybe we'd better go home and watch 'Celebrity Death Match' on MTV.''
Wouldn't they say instead, "Let's shoot the rent-a-cop working at the metal detector, too."
Americans are without question among the most ahistorical of people; we don't know the names of current members of the president's Cabinet, much less any of the important figures of past decades.
Our collective attention-deficit disorder enables us to quickly forget yet another important lesson of history: Since the beginning of time, people have committed the most monstrous acts for the most unfathomable reasons.
If we look back, say to this evening's news, we saw images of terrified Albanian Kosovar refugees, Nike-clad teens and wide-eyed tots who look just like your neighbors. Why are they on the move? Because their neighbors, people they see every day at work, the market, the cafe, have decided to kill their neighbors, classmates, former friends.
Does the "why" really matter?
Why did the Nazis decide to continue slaughtering Jews in the final days of the war, when the military resources could have been used to delay the Russian advance?
Why is it that for every Oskar Schindler who fights evil (a man who also acted for reasons known only to himself), there were millions of ordinary citizens who did nothing, and thousands who whole-heartedly joined in the slaughter.
Closer to home, why would someone kidnap a mother and two teen-age girls, murder them and leave their incinerated bodies in a car trunk?
Why would an elderly woman's next-door neighbor, a man she likes and trusts, help her put her Christmas tree in the trash and then return later to rob her, stuff her in the trunk of her car and beat her to death?
It is not an easy answer but the answer is that evil exists.
Americans claim to be a God-fearing, churchgoing people, but why, oh, why are they so willing to accept angels but so resistant to the concept of evil, real evil?
This isn't the evil of a demon; we're talking Hannah Arendt's banality of evil, the kind of evil that lets bitter little men put on uniforms and oversee the bureaucracy of genocide, the Hitlers and Himmlers and Milosevics of the world, the kind of men perhaps these Colorado killers might have grown into had they had the patience.
Americans are suckers for the easy answer; the painful truths that the rest of the world lives with are best left to others. Turn on the television. Observe this truth: If you change channels fast enough, it's almost impossible to tell which shocked, grief-stricken woman is looking to see if her child survived the hell of Kosovo or the hell of homeroom.
My heartfelt condolences and prayers to the victims and their families.
Requiescat in pace.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 11, 2012
Scientific proof that dogs are better than cats
Roscoe is perplexed that it took a scientist to figure out that dogs are better for kids than cats -- and even more puzzled that anyone would think that cats were even in the running -- notwithstanding the angry gaze from Mean Kitty. Bogie, on the other hand, is quite blase about the news, given his live-and-let-live attitude about felines.
Finally, a definitive answer to the age-old question: Are dogs truly Man's best friend? As it turns out, they're your kids' best friends, too.
(CBS News) New parents with dogs and cats sometimes consider giving pets away when a baby arrives, but a new study finds keeping the furry family members in tow may boost a child's health benefits.
A Finnish study finds babies who grow up with pets - especially dogs - are less likely to develop colds and other respiratory infections by the time they're toddlers.
The study, published online July 9 in Pediatrics, tracked 397 kids in Finland from before they were born until they turned 1-year-old. Weekly questionnaires were given to parents that asked about their child's health and whether they owned a pet.
The researchers determined that 245 of the babies had a dog in the home (62 percent) and 136 babies (34 percent) had cat contact. By study's end, 65 percent of children lived in homes without a dog and almost 76 percent lived in a cat-free home, so not everyone with a pet had it throughout the entire study.
While respiratory infections and symptoms such as colds and wheezing are common in infants, an analysis revealed that babies who had early contact with dogs or cats were significantly healthier during the study and were 30 percent less likely to experience coughs, ear infections and symptoms such as stuffiness, runny nose, sneezing and congestion (rhinitis).
Babies born in homes with dogs were also 44 percent less likely to develop another common ailment in kids: ear infections. Kids with dogs were also 29 percent less likely to have used antibiotics in the past year than children without pets. More contact with the dog was associated with fewer health problems in general, which led the researchers to believe that early contact with an animal may mature the immune system in infancy, helping toddlers better ward off disease.
Owning a cat was also tied to protective health benefits, but the effect was much weaker.
"Our findings support the theory that during the first year of life, animal contacts are important, possibly leading to better resistance to infectious respiratory illnesses during childhood," wrote the authors, led by Dr. Eija Bergroth, a pediatrician at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland.
The strongest benefits were seen in children who had a dog inside at home for six hours a day or fewer, rather than at home all day, which might suggest what dogs track in may help boost early immunity.
"It might have something to do with dirt brought inside by the dogs, especially since the strongest protective effect was seen with children living in houses where dogs spent a lot of time outside," Bergroth told WebMD.
Dogs. Is there anything they can't do?
Rhetorical question, of course. The answer is "No!"
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Global warming believers like Pauline Kael in '72
An old classmate emailed to ask if I was still in denial about anthropogenic global warming, especially given the record-breaking temperatures across the nation over the past week, the past year's temps, and the past decade's trend.
He added that he was checking in with me because he "literally" doesn't know one person who denies the reality of AGW, and that he was particularly amused by my past statements that (1) not only doesn't it exist, and (2) that it's definitely not caused by human activity.
To which I replied:
Hi ____, hope all is well with you and yours.
As to your question, it reminds me of film critic Pauline Kael's lament after Nixon's landslide reelection in '72, that she "couldn't believe Nixon had won", since no one she knew had voted for him.
In your case, I guess I am the one percent.
I've provided you links in the past to the growing number of scientists that reject the science behind AGW, so I needn't repeat myself.
The recent weather is known as "summer," and yes, it's hot. However, the problem with statements like "hottest summer on record" is that the record goes back little more than a century.
We're remarkably self-centered as a species; the timeframe being analyzed is anecdotal in geologic terms, a blip. Any meaningful analysis requires a broader sample, and stories like this one below, covering a 2,000 year span, provide a more-meaningful data-set, one that reveals something quite the opposite of what this summer might lead one to believe.
As before, I do not think the science supports the AGW theory.
So, we continue to respectfully disagree.
Best regards,
Mike
The story I referenced was in today's Daily Mail, detailing some rather interesting findings about a more meaningful -- albeit still geologically brief -- data set:
Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought - and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years.
Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming.
It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia.
Over that time, the world has been getting cooler - and previous estimates, used as the basis for current climate science, are wrong.
Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.
‘This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant,’ says Esper, ‘however, it is also not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1°C.
'Our results suggest that the large-scale climate reconstruction shown by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) likely underestimate this long-term cooling trend over the past few millennia.’
The finding was based on semi-fossilised tree rings found in Finnish lapland.
Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC.
In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling.
‘We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low,’ says Esper. ‘Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods.’
The annual growth rings in trees are the most important witnesses over the past 1,000 to 2,000 years as they indicate how warm and cool past climate conditions were.
Researchers from Germany, Finland, Scotland, and Switzerland examined tree-ring density profiles in trees from Finnish Lapland. In this cold environment, trees often collapse into one of the numerous lakes, where they remain well preserved for thousands of years.
The density measurements correlate closely with the summer temperatures in this area on the edge of the Nordic taiga; the researchers were thus able to create a temperature reconstruction of unprecedented quality.
The need to believe that humanity is causing global warming -- presupposing that it even exists -- reminds me of nothing so much as the flea on the elephant's rump, who believes that it's driving the beast, controlling the massive creature through it's virtually unfelt attentions to the pachyderm's dermis.
To the extent that the planet gets hotter or cooler over millennia -- and millions of years, too -- it's more a function of our proximity to the star about which Earth orbits, and the degree to which the flame turns up or down.
Whether there's a hand on the solar thermostat I leave to the theologians.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 05, 2012
They're not all cheese eating surrender monkeys: Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, 1923-2012
Courtesy of the U.K.'s Telegraph, home of the best obits to be found on the web, comes the incredible story of Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, a 20th century version of Dumas' D'Artagnan, a modern Musketeer.
A child of privilege, La Rochefoucauld met Hitler as a teenager, who patted the awe-struck teenager on the cheek; the German dictator was being lauded in the world press as a man with a plan, reinvigorating an economically devastated nation and someone to be admired -- Time named him Man of the Year. The teen's opinion soon changed; two years later Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded France and the occupation began.
La Rochefourcald joined the Resistance, helped Allied fliers escape to neutral Spain, was captured and later repatriated to England, where he was was trained by the Brits to be a secret agent.
Parachuted back into France, he took part in his first mission, blowing up the target, but things went badly after:
La Rochefoucauld was awaiting exfiltration by the RAF when he was denounced and arrested. After a series of interrogations, he was condemned to death.
En route to his execution in Auxerre, La Rochefoucauld made a break, leaping from the back of the truck carrying him to his doom, and dodging the bullets fired by his two guards. Sprinting through the empty streets, he found himself in front of the Gestapo’s headquarters, where a chauffeur was pacing near a limousine bearing the swastika flag. Spotting the key in the ignition, La Rochefoucauld jumped in and roared off, following the Route Nationale past the prison he had left an hour earlier.
He smashed through a roadblock before dumping the car and circling back towards Auxerre on foot under cover of night. He sheltered with an epicier. From Auxerre, friends in the Resistance helped him on to a train for Paris, where he evaded German soldiers hunting him by curling up underneath the sink in the lavatory. “When we arrived in Paris I felt drunk with freedom,” he recalled.
After hiding from the Nazis for a month, La Rochefoucauld rendezvoused with a British submarine lurking off the French coast; during his three days aboard the vessel he endured a depth charge attack, an event he said was the most frightening of his life.
Back in London, La Rochefoucauld was soon ready for his next mission, returning to France in May 1944, under orders to infiltrate a munitions factory and blow it up before D-Day. Disguised as a worker, he smuggled 40 kilos of explosives into the plant over four days, concealed in hollowed-out loaves of bread and special shoes, then set the timer and escaped over a wall. The May 20th blast could be heard for miles, and La Rochefoucauld celebrated with a local Resistance leader, awaking the next morning with a hangover worthy of a Musketeer.
Things thereafter went rather poorly.
Cycling to Bordeaux to meet a contact who was to arrange his return to England, however, he ran into a roadblock, taken prisoner, and imprisoned at the 16th-century Fort du Hâ. His explanations that he had been out after dark on a romantic assignation were not believed and, in his cell, La Rochefoucauld considered swallowing the cyanide pill concealed in the heel of his shoe.
Instead he faked an epileptic fit and, when the guard opened the door to his cell, hit him over the head with a table leg before breaking his neck. (“Thank Goodness for that pitilessly efficient training,” he noted). After putting on the German’s uniform, La Rochefoucauld walked into the guardroom and shot the two other German jailers. He then simply walked out of the fort, through the deserted town, and to the address of an underground contact.
Once there, however, he found that joining the rest of his escape line was impossible, as checks and patrols had been stepped up. Then the man harbouring him, whose sister was a nun, suggested that La Rochefoucauld slip into her habit. Thus dressed, he slowly walked through the city, eventually knocking on the door of Roger Landes, code-named Aristide, a bilingual Briton whom he hoped would take care of his return to England. In fact, Aristide’s orders were to hide La Rochefoucauld. D-Day was days away, and he was, by his own admission, “the last of their worries in London”.
Poison pill in a shoe. Faked a seizure, killed a guard with his bare hands, stole his uniform, shot the other Germans and walked out of the prison, dressed as a nun and strolled to freedom.
Folks, now this was The Most Interesting Man in the World.
La Rouchefoucauld continued fighting the Boche until the end of the war, then went looking for more trouble, fighting the Vietnamese -- until his unorthodox methods got him in hot water with the brass. He then parachuted into the midst of the Suez Crisis in '56, his last military action (that we know of).
Of course there was that business of loaning his passport to an accused war criminal later on, but, as his wife cautioned the authorities, “Don’t try to lock him up. He escapes, you know.”
Requiescat in pace.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 04, 2012
Reflecting upon Independence Day
This clip, from HBO's miniseries, "John Adams," recreates the moment when George Washington took the oath of office, becoming the nation's first president. An almost unrecognizable David Morse portrays the former general, capturing the man's humility, but it's Paul Giamatti as Adams who's unforgettable; his eyes burn with emotion and revolutionary zeal as he watches the former colonies gain their first chief executive.
It's hard for us today to realize the passions that moved our nation's founding fathers to rebellion -- treachery and treason in the eyes of those loyal to the English monarch -- risking their lives and the lives of their families for independence.
In this scene, the delegates rise, one by one, to cast their votes for -- or against -- independence. Imagine standing in the crowd on that sweltering July day and hearing the Declaration of Independence read for the very first time.
This clip, from the 1972 film version of the hit Broadway musical, "1776," has John Adams (played by the wonderful William Daniels), expressing his frustration with and contempt for Congress -- a feeling well deserved and little changed amongst Congress watchers past and present.
It opens with one of the best lines ever, as Adams storms into Congress:
ADAMS: I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more become a Congress! And, by God, I have had this Congress! For ten years, King George and his Parliament have gulled, cullied and diddled these Colonies with their illegal taxes! Stamp Acts, Townshend Acts, Sugar Acts, Tea Acts! And when we dared stand up like men, they have stopped our trade, seized our ships, blockaded our ports, burned our towns and spilled our blood! And still this Congress refuses to grant any of my proposals on independence, even so much as the courtesy of open debate. Good God, what in Hell are you waiting for?
And in this, the final scene from the 1972 film, the delegates listen to a dispatch from Gen. Washington on the eve of battle, 5,000 would-be Americans facing 25,000 Red Coats, before rising to sign -- as the mordant Benjamin Franklin puts it -- "their passport to the gallows."
If you're in the mood to be both entertained and informed, start with "John Adams" and finish with "1776."
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Independence Day: We hold these truths to be self-evident ...
Click on this image and take a close look at the Declaration of Independence, note the impeccable penmanship, the occasional correction, and the signatures of the men who risked the gallows to declare that King George III was no longer their sovereign.
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
You can view high-resolution versions of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of RIghts here.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 17, 2012
Happy 48th Father's Day, Dad!
A look at the best Dad a guy could have, from the 1930s through the 2000s.
Dad in Golden Gate Park with my Grandmother and his younger sister, my Aunt Lee, circa 1937.
This shot is probably from 1950 -- in Brooklyn -- before Dad joined the Navy.
Dad aboard ship during the Korean War. My father is proud to have served; I'm glad I could carry on the family tradition.
Working at a pharmacy in downtown Los Angeles, circa 1965.
The Lief Family, circa 1965, with Dad's parents. If I haven't mentioned it, it's a scientific fact that they were the best grandparents known to mankind.
Disco Dad. Polyester leisure suit and a redonkulous moustache. Oy.
I snapped these shots during our cross-country train ride in 2004, when Dad and I celebrated his 70th and my 40th birthday by indulging our dislike of flying by riding the rails to Florida, returning to California via the Panama Canal aboard a cruise ship.
My stepmother casts an affectionate-yet-skeptical glance at Dad in our booth at Wolf Creek Restaurant & Brewery, April 2012. I think this captures the essence of their relationship.
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
June 06, 2012
Remembering D-Day
Looking back across the 68 years since Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, it's easy to forget just how precarious, what a tremendous gamble the ambitious amphibious landing really was. General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, sat at his desk during the long, stormy night before the invasion and wrote a letter conceding failure -- just in case things went badly -- taking responsibility for the defeat. The following hours would be critical: Would the soldiers of the Third Reich throw the Americans, Brits and Canadians back into the sea?
Eisenhower's pencilled draft was found in a pocket by an aide some days after the Allies had broken through the German defenses and made their way off the beaches. Ike wrote:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops
have been withdrawn.My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.
General Eisenhower issued this proclamation to the men before they set sail for France across the stormy Channel, reminding them of what was at stake during the coming desperate hours.
The sounds of German machine guns and artillery echoed across the water as GIs huddled in their landing craft, heading towards Omaha Beach, waiting for the moment when the ramp dropped and their mad dash towards the waiting enemy began. Something catches the attention of these soldiers, and they peer over the side of their boat, steeling themselves, ready.
GIs from Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, are amongst the first Americans to set foot on Hitler's Festung Europa in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. The waiting German troops greeted them with a hail of steel, MG-42 machine guns mowing down men with their distinctive "ripping-cloth" buzz.
Robert Edlin, fighting with the 2d Ranger Battalion, remembered the invasion getting off to a bad start:
"Our assault boat hit a sandbar. I looked over the ramp and we were at least seventy-five yards from the shore, and we had hoped for a dry landing. I told the coxswain, "Try to get in further." He screamed he couldn't. That British seaman had all the guts in the world but couldn't get off the sandbar. I told him to drop the ramp or we were going to die right there.
We had been trained for years not to go off the front of the ramp, because the boat might get rocked by a wave and run over you. So we went off the sides. I looked to my right and saw a B Company boat next to us with Lt. Bob Fitzsimmons, a good friend, take a direct hit on the ramp from a mortar or mine. I thought, there goes half of B Company.
It was cold, miserably cold, even though it was June. The water temperature was probably forty-five or fifty degrees. It was up to my shoulders when I went in, and I saw men sinking all about me. I tried to grab a couple, but my job was to get on in and get to the guns. There were bodies from the I I6th floating everywhere. They were facedown in the water with packs still on their backs. They had inflated their life jackets. Fortunately, most of the Rangers did not inflate theirs or they also might have turned over and drowned.
Having left the relative -- and illusory --safety of the landing craft, GIs from the 16th Infantry Regiment begin the maddeningly slow slog toward the beach, as the German defenders hit them with mortars and machine gun fire.
I began to run with my rifle in front of me. I went directly across the beach to try to get to the seaway. In front of me was part of the II6th Infantry, pinned down and lying behind beach obstacles. They hadn't made it to the seaway. I kept screaming at them, 'You have to get up and go! You gotta get up and go!' But they didn't. They were worn out and defeated completely. There wasn't any time to help them.
I continued across the beach. There were mines and obstacles all up and down the beach. The air corps had missed it entirely. There were no shell holes in which to take cover. The mines had not been detonated. Absolutely nothing that had been planned for that part of the beach had worked. I knew that Vierville-sur-Mer was going to be a hellhole, and it was.
When I was about twenty yards from the seaway I was hit by what I assume was a sniper bullet. It shattered and broke my right leg. I thought, well, I've got a Purple Heart. I fell, and as I did, it was like a searing hot poker rammed into my leg. My rifle fell ten feet or so in front of me. I crawled forward to get to it, picked it up, and as I rose on my left leg, another burst of I think machine gun fire tore the muscles out of that leg, knocking me down again.
I lay there for seconds, looked ahead, and saw several Rangers lying there. One was Butch Bladorn from Wisconsin. I screamed at Butch, 'Get up and run!' Butch, a big, powerful man, just looked back and said, 'I can't.' I got up and hobbled towards him. I was going to kick him in the ass and get him off the beach. He was lying on his stomach, his face in the sand. Then I saw the blood coming out of his back. I realized he had been hit in the stomach and the bullet had come out his spine and he was completely immobilized. Even then I was sorry for screaming at him but I didn't have time to stop and help him. I thought, well, that's the end of Butch. Fortunately, it wasn't. He became a farmer in Wisconsin.
Men from the 16th Infantry Regiment try to find protection from the German machine gunners, hiding for a few moments behind anti-tank obstacles placed on Omaha Beach as part of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's plan to keep the Allies from establishing a beachhead on the Normandy coast.
As I moved forward, I hobbled. After you've been hit by gunfire, your legs stiffen up, not all at once but slowly. The pain was indescribable. I fell to my hands and knees and tried to crawl forwards. I managed a few yards, then blacked out for several minutes. When I came to, I saw Sgt. Bill Klaus. He was up to the seaway. When he saw my predicament, he crawled back to me under heavy rifle and mortar fire and dragged me up to the cover of the wall.
Klaus had also been wounded in one leg, and a medic gave him a shot of morphine. The medic did the same for me. My mental state was such that I told him to shoot it directly into my left leg, as that was the one hurting the most. He reminded me that if I took it in the ass or the arm it would get to the leg. I told him to give me a second shot because I was hit in the other leg. He didn't.
There were some Rangers gathered at the seaway - Sgt. William Courtney, Pvt. William Dreher, Garfield Ray, Gabby Hart, Sgt. Charles Berg. I yelled at them, 'You have to get off of here! You have to get up and get the guns!' They were gone immediately.
My platoon sergeant, Bill White, an ex-jockey whom we called Whitey, took charge. He was small, very active, and very courageous. He led what few men were left of the first platoon and started up the cliffs. I crawled and staggered forward as far as I could to some cover in the bushes behind a villa. There was a round stone well with a bucket and handle that turned the rope. It was so inviting. I was alone and I wanted that water so bad. But years of training told me it was booby-trapped.
Photographer Frank Capa lay in the surf of the Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach, snapping pictures from the furthest edge of the American assault, capturing the frenzied rush to get ashore and stop being a sitting duck in the surf. Capa's photos were rushed back to London, where the majority were destroyed in an accident in the lab. Only a few survived, comprising the most compelling images of the D-Day landings taken on the American beaches.
I looked up at the top of the cliffs and thought, I can't make it on this leg. Where was everyone? Had they all quit? Then I heard Dreher yelling, 'Come on up. These trenches are empty.' Then Kraut burp guns cut loose. I thought, oh God, I can't get there! I heard an American tommy gun, and Courtney shouted, 'Damn it, Dreher! They're empty now.'
There was more German small-arms fire and German grenades popping. I could hear Whitey yelling, 'Cover me!' I heard Garfield Ray's BAR [Browning automatic rifle] talking American. Then there was silence.
Now, I thought, where are the 5th Rangers? I turned and I couldn't walk or even hobble anymore. I crawled back to the beach. I saw 5th Rangers coming through the smoke of a burning LST that had been hit by artillery fire. Co!. Schneider had seen the slaughter on the beaches and used his experience with the Rangers in Africa, Sicily, and Anzio. He used the smoke as a screen and moved in behind it, saving the 5th Ranger Battalion many casualties.
A wounded GI is helped ashore at Omaha Beach my some of his fellow soldiers. Note the still-inflated life preserver on the soldier to his left.
My years of training told me there would be a counterattack. I gathered the wounded by the seaway and told them to arm themselves as well as possible. I said if the Germans come we are either going to be captured or die on the beach, but we might as well take the Germans with us. I know it sounds ridiculous, but ten or fifteen Rangers lay there, facing up to the cliffs, praying that Sgt. White, Courtney, Dreher, and the 5th Ranger Battalion would get to the guns. Our fight was over unless the Germans counterattacked.
I looked back to the sea. There was nothing. There were no reinforcements. I thought the invasion had been abandoned. We would be dead or prisoners soon. Everyone had withdrawn and left us. Well, we had tried. Some guy crawled over and told me he was a colonel from the 29th Infantry Division. He said for us to relax, we were going to be okay. D, E, and F Companies were on the Pointe. The guns had been destroyed. A and B Companies and the 5th Rangers were inland. The 29th and Ist Divisions were getting off the beaches.
This colonel looked at me and said, 'You've done your job." I answered, 'How? By using up two rounds of German ammo on my legs?" Despite the awful pain, I hoped to catch up with the platoon the next day."
An Army medic moves down the beach providing aid to the wounded, as exhausted troops huddle against the base of chalk cliffs, protected for the moment from the barrage of incoming German fire.
Less than 24 hours earlier the same GIs had marched through the streets of seaside English towns, on the way to the docks where they'd board the troop transports for the ride across the English Channel to the Normandy coast. It's impossible not to wonder how many of these men made it off the beach the next morning.
For some GIs, their war ended on the cold Normandy sand; their friends marked their deaths with impromptu markers, like these crossed rifles, then fought their way off the beaches. Ahead lay the battle of the hedgerows, the liberation of Paris, the Operation Market Garden debacle, and the bone-chilling despair -- and victory -- of the Battle of the Bulge.
A long 11 months lay ahead for D-Day's survivors.
Posted by Mike Lief at 12:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 31, 2012
Automotive Dreams: Mercedes 300SL
The Mercedes 300SL has long been one of my favorite classic cars, not just because of the gullwing doors that gave it its nickname, but also thanks to its timeless, sensuous lines.
I've seen them at high-end auctions, where they sell in the million-dollar range, but I've never heard the sound of one being driven hard, it's direct-injection inline-six cylinder engine screaming. Until now.
Glorious.
Classic cars deserve to be driven; warbirds should be flown. They're at the apex of engineering and art, and simply can't be appreciated as static displays in a museum.
I'm a bit envious of the owner, but more than that I admire him for his ability to shrug off the dents and dings and road damage that comes with driving his Gullwing to carshows, so that he can simply enjoy the damn thing the way God -- and Mercedes -- intended.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 28, 2012
Memorial Day 2012: Taps
There is no sadder sound, and no moment when I'm more proud of those who served and gave their all in defense of this nation, than during the 24 notes of taps.
Take a minute-twenty out of your day and remember them.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Remembering the Fallen: Normandy American Military Cemetery
Take a moment, turn on your speakers, and drink in the sights and sounds of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where 9,387 Americans slumber beneath 172 acres of verdant French turf, with more than 1,500 names of those men whose bodies were never found listed on a memorial wall in the gardens.
The live stream, featuring audio and
video, is available from 2 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
May 27, 2012
Memorial Day 2012: Battle Hymn of the Republic, World War II edition
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Memorial Day 2012: Remembering those who gave their all
Charles Durning is an actor you've seen in countless movies over the last 50 years, including The Sting, The Front Page, Dog Day Afternoon, Tootsie and The Muppet Movie; I especially enjoyed his performance as Gov. Pappy Daniels in O Brother, Where Art Thou?. But you've never seen him like this, speaking at the 2007 Memorial Day Concert. Durning is a decorated war veteran who fought his way across Europe, receiving numerous wounds in the fight against the Third Reich. Until recently, he remained silent about his wartime experiences, but, as the number of WWII vets dwindles, Durning decided to speak out, to bear witness to the heroism of those who never came home.
His portion of the video begins with a picture of him as a young GI at the 1:12 mark. Listen to his memories of D-Day, the raw emotion in his voice as he recalls the terror of those hours spent on the beaches of Normandy, and then think of how he and his fellow soldiers fought their way off the sand and continued on, mile after mile, month after month, through France and Belgium, the bitter cold of Bastogne, over the Rhine, until the enemy -- bled dry by the constant slaughter -- was defeated.
Durning came home and recovered from his wounds. Taking to the theater, the lean combat veteran soon disappearing into the role of corpulent character actor, often snagging comedic roles -- with a glimmer of barely-controlled rage occasionally peeking through, the twinkling eyes going cold and flat.
I'm grateful he's decided to end the decades-long silence about the war, and the heroes with whom be fought.
On this memorial day weekend, be sure to thank a veteran for his service, and make sure to tell him you remember his buddies, too, the ones who never made it home.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:15 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
April 14, 2012
A word on the United Nations, its anti-Israel jihad, and the gullibility of the West
Brit Pat Condell offers a bracing dose of straight talk on the festering chancre of anti-semitism that is the United Nations. That the United States continues to host this collection of lunatics -- and pay the lion's share of its budget, too! -- is a disgrace. Whatever illusions I had of the useful role the U.N. could play -- burnished during my time studying there 25 years ago -- vanished long ago, along with the last vestiges of the organization's moral compass.
Here's Condell on the charge that Israel is an "apartheid state":
[T]he only apartheid you'll find in the Middle East is in Arab countries who won't allow their Palestinians to integrate, denying them the most basic of human rights and condemning them to generations of misery and resentment because they need the refugee camps to remain permanently, festering like open sores, to gain sympathy from the gullible West, and to con millions of good-hearted people here into supporting their religious war of hatred against Jews, all Jews. Indeed, the Hamas Charter specifically calls for the killing of all Jews, just in case anyone was in any doubt.
It's remarkable that pro-Palestinian Western liberals insist that Israel negotiate with Hamas and simply ignore the terrorist organization's explicitly-stated goal (the extermination of Jews) as nothing more than a rhetorical flourish.
Condell then turns to charges that Israel is an outlaw nation, refusing to abide by the United Nations' democratically-generated decrees:
Why would the Israelis ignore dozens of resolutions forced through by a cartel of anti-semitic Bronze Age barbarians who would destroy their country and everyone in it, including women and children, given half a chance? Beats me. I guess they must be fascists.
Well, who are those nations that dominate the debate, that hold Israel up before the international community, to be pilloried for its moral failings, whilst the United States and the West mutter and mumble with downcast eyes?
Among its many failings, the United Nations encourages Islamic religious hatred and racism to dress itself up in the language of human rights, repeatedly allowing its human rights council to be steamrollered in this regard by a cartel of 57 mainly dictatorships and theocracies known as the Organization of of Islamic ... something or other. They keep changing it, and I can't be bothered to keep up.
I don't really care what they call themselves; it's enough to know what they are, and that's brutal barbaric Islamic hell holes, that nobody in their right mind would choose to live in, and whose own human rights records are not only worse than Israel's, but immeasurably worse.
Countries like Iran, where they execute children; Sudan, where they practice slavery and casual genocide; Pakistan, which is supposed to be a democracy, but which is actually a dictatorship of religious ignorance, violence and fear, and where every year a thousand women are murdered by members of their own family. And of course Saudi Arabia, the black hole of Islamic barbarism, the world's leading source of terrorist funding, and the absolute moral anus of the universe.
These are some of the countries behind the blizzard of resolutions directed at Israel, countries that belong on the high moral ground the way that a rattlesnake belongs in a lunch box, countries united by a virulent religious hatred of Jews for being Jews.
These are the loudest voices at the United Nations, so of course the Israelis ignore them; it would be suicidal not to.
When it comes to Israel, the United Nations is a crooked court with a jury full of hanging judges, and it doesn't get any more corrupt than that.
[...]
In attacking Israel over and over, while ignoring the real human rights violators, not only the Islamic barbarians, but the North Korean and the Burmas of this world, the United Nations has shown itself to be nakedly partisan and to be effectively an enemy of Israel, and as I see it, unless youre an idiot or a Western liberal, you don't take orders from your enemies.
Here's where Condell touches on an issue that most Americans would find just as mysterious:
[F]rankly, I'm baffled as to why the Americans still tolerate this disgusting travesty on their soil, and pay all its bills. They should kick it out of the country and tell it to relocate to Tehran or Islamabad, where the Organization of Islamic Fascists can go ahead and pass all the fancy resolutions they like.
What do we gain from hosting the United Nation? Prestige? Honor? Influence?
If anything, by continuing to allow the U.N. to make a mockery of human rights and democracy on our own soil, thanks to a structure that gives dictatorships and rogue regimes the same number of votes in the General Assembly as those nations that don't hang homosexuals, stone rape victims, execute political opponents or condone terrorism, the United States lends an air of legitimacy to the organization that it clearly no longer warrants, and does not deserve.
And we damn well ought not pay for the privilege.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
April 08, 2012
Remembering Mike Wallace: Compelling TV -- and an unsettling glimpse of amorality
Col. George Connell, USMC, gives Mike Wallace a look of complete and utter contempt during an episode of Ethics in America.
Mike Wallace passed away this weekend, best known for his five decades of pugnacious interviews on CBS' 60 Minutes. Characterized by one of his fellow hosts as an avuncular interviewer, someone who could get away with asking the kinds of questions that would earn anyone else a punch in the mouth, I'm afraid that the most indelible memory I have of Wallace is quite different, ironically courtesy of PBS, in a show I first saw back in the mid-to-late '80s.
James Fallows wrote a piece for The Atlantic Monthly on why the public hates the media, and later expanded it into a book on the same topic. The piece recounted how Wallace believed himself a journalist first, an American second, if at all.
In the late 1980s, public television stations aired a talking head series called Ethics in America. For each show, more than a dozen prominent thinkers sat around a horseshoe-shaped table and tried to answer troubling ethical questions posed by a moderator.
From the respectability of the panelists to the super-seriousness of the topics, the series might have seemed a good bet to be paralyzingly dull. But the drama and tension of at least one show made that episode absolutely riveting.
This episode was sponsored by Montclair State College in the fall of 1987. Its title was "Under Orders, Under Fire," and most of the panelists were former soldiers talking about the ethical dilemmas of their work. The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from expert to expert asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style.
During the first half of the show Ogletree made the soldiers squirm about ethical tangles on the battlefield.
[...]
Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would -- and in real wars reporters from his network often had.
But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one.
What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans?
Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn't," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked. Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That's purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction."
Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. "I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," he said, obviously referring to himself. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover."
"I am astonished, really," at Jennings's answer, Wallace said moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: "You're a reporter. Granted you're an American"-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I'm a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you're an American, you would not have covered that story."
Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot?
"No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!" Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. "I chickened out." Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached.
As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror.
Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft gestures as he tells Wallace it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. "What's it worth?" he asks Wallace bitterly. "It's worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon."
Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford's national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. "What's it worth?" he asked Wallace bitterly. "It's worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon."Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn't the reporter have said something? Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a "Don't ask me!" gesture, and said, "I don't know." He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh-the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd's reaction.
"I feel utter contempt. Two days later, they're both walking off my hilltop -- they're 200 yards away -- and they get ambushed and they're lying there wounded, and they're gonna expect I'm gonna send Marines up there to get them. They're just journalists. They're not Americans. Is that a fair reaction? Can't have it both ways. But I'll do it. And that's what makes me so contemptuous of them. And Marines will die, going to get a couple of journalists."
A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter . . . contempt. " Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces--and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. "We'll do it!" Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists."The last few words dripped with disgust. Not even Ogletree knew what to say. There was dead silence for several seconds.
Then a square-jawed man with neat gray hair and aviator glasses spoke up. It was Newt Gingrich, looking a generation younger and trimmer than when he became Speaker of the House in 1995. One thing was clear from this exercise, he said: "The military has done a vastly better job of systematically thinking through the ethics of behavior in a violent environment than the journalists have."
Fallows summarized the moral failure, the abyss at the professional (and I'd argue, personal) core of the two newsmen, in as devastating a critique as I've ever read.
Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace are just two individuals, but their reactions spoke volumes about the values of their craft. Jennings was made to feel embarrassed about his natural, decent human impulse. Wallace was completely unembarrassed about feeling no connection to the soldiers in his country's army considering their deaths before his eyes as "simply a story."
In other important occupations people sometimes need to do the horrible [and a soldier on the panel] had thought through all the consequences and alternatives, and he knew he would live with the horror for the rest of his days.
When Mike Wallace said he would do something horrible, he didn't bother to argue a rationale. He did not try to explain the reasons a reporter might feel obliged to remain silent as the attack began -- for instance, that in combat reporters must be beyond country, or that they have a duty to bear impartial witness to deaths on either side, or that Jennings had implicitly made a promise not to betray the North Kosanese when he agreed to accompany them on the hypothetical patrol ... He relied on charm and star power to win acceptance from the crowd.
Mike Wallace on patrol with the North Kosanese, cameras rolling while his countrymen are gunned down, recognizing no "higher duty" to interfere in any way and offering no rationale beyond "I'm with the press" -- this is a nice symbol for what Americans hate about their media establishment in our age.
That's not the epitaph I'd wish for myself, but it's one that Wallace seemed comfortable earning.
My condolences to his family.
Requiescat in pace.
Posted by Mike Lief at 01:28 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
February 26, 2012
The Key to Freedom
"The key to freedom is the ability to be able to defend ourselves."
What's depressing is that it takes a Swiss citizen to provide the perfect rationale for the American Second Amendment -- and that so many Americans scoff at it.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
February 20, 2012
The glory that was Hollywood: Soundtracks
I'm Hollywood's worst nightmare, which is ironic, given that I'm a lifelong film buff, a lover of film, someone who grew up in and surrounded by the movie business. Neighbors, classmates' parents, Dad's golf buddies; they were all part of the Biz, and going to the movies was a thrill from my earliest childhood days.
That having been said, I can't remember the last time I went to see a film in a theater; it's coming up on two years -- at least. If there's anything that captures my interest, I'll wait until it's available for a .99 cent rental at the Red Box machine outside my local supermarket.
There are countless reasons for this, including the abominable behavior of audiences, who treat the experience as if they're sitting at home on the couch, talking, texting, crinkling wrappers, seemingly incapable of just sitting still and shutting the hell up.
But that's ignoring the elephant in the room: The movies themselves are often lacking: poorly written, badly acted, unoriginal, uninteresting, seemingly hell bent on political reeducation for us misguided, misanthropic bitter clingers.
Let's focus for now on one aspect of the movie experience: The soundtrack. There's nothing like a stirring soundtrack, the composer able to perfectly compliment the onscreen action, ears and eyes working together to draw the viewer into the story. We respond viscerally to things aural, and I suspect that we've all gotten goosebumps far more often from a thing heard than seen.
Big Hollywood columnist Ben Shapiro shared his Top Ten Best Film Composers of All Time this weekend; I disagree with some of his choices, but there are several that are simply magnificent, beginning with his pick for Number 2: Elmer Bernstein.
Bernstein was a prolific composer; his IMDB profile lists 242 titles over 53 years, and some of his work is so good it's become part of the American collective consciousness.
There's no better place to begin than his score for the 1960 blockbuster The Magnificent Seven, starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Eli Wallach and Robert Vaughn.
This is perhaps my favorite theme in the entire canon of cinema soundtracks, a sweeping orchestral piece, so evocative of the West that it stands separate and apart from its film. Give it a listen and then we'll continue.
There are people who've never seen The Magnificent Seven, but instantly recognize the theme; it's truly iconic, reminiscent of Aaron Copland, at least to my untrained ears, not surprising, as Bernstein was Copland's protégé.
Three years later, Bernstein provided the score to another star-studded blockbuster, The Great Escape, also directed by John Sturges, with some of the same cast: Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, along with James Garner, Richard Attenborough and Donald Pleasance.
Based on a real-life mass escape of Allied POWs from German captivity -- and the aftermath -- the movie was lauded by survivors and remains popular for its casting and attention to detail.
Bernstein's score is used to great effect, and stays with the viewer long after the lights come up.
I find myself often whistling the melody, and did so whilst marching in boot camp, albeit very quietly. It's been nearly 40 years since I first heard this, and it instantly evokes scenes from the film in my mind's eye, especially Steve McQueen being escorted back to "The Cooler," and the sound of his baseball thumping off the cell walls and into his glove.
Topping Shapiro's list is Jerry Goldsmith, who scored 250 titles over 53 years. I first heard his work in 1970, when Dad took me and Grandpa to see Patton at the Studio City Theater, now a bookstore, on Ventura Boulevard, just west of Laurel Canyon. The film is most famous for George C. Scott's virtuosic portrayal of the brilliant and troubled general (he won an Oscar, which he refused), especially in the opening scene, with it's iconic monologue delivered against a gigantic American flag hanging behind the beribboned and bemedalled Patton.
But it's the score that's stayed with me over the years, the haunting, plaintive wail of trumpets, martial, echoing, like half-forgotten memories of past lives, past victories, past defeats; fitting, given Patton's belief in reincarnation -- and his belief that he'd walked ancient battlegrounds when the battles were still fresh.
The discordant notes figure prominently when we first view the aftermath of the Allied defeat by the Germans at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, buzzards feasting on the corpses of GIs, and later when Patton stands amidst the ruins of Carthage, telling Omar Bradley:
It was here. The battlefield was here.
The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman Legions. The Carthaginians were proud and brave, but they couldn't hold and were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances.
The soldiers lay naked in the sun ... 2,000 years ago.
I was here.
And Goldsmith's horns softly wail and moan, fading, fleeting ... like all glory.
Chilling. And marvelous.
Goldsmith made effective use of horns again in perhaps my favorite relatively-recent score, L.A. Confidential (1997), starring Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, Guy Pearce and James Cromwell in director Curtis Hanson's marvelous, gritty, neo-noir adaption of James Ellroy's novel.
There's corruption galore festering just beneath the glittering and glamorous surface of post-war Hollywood and Los Angeles, and Goldsmith's horns capture for me the yearning for lost innocence, the dreams turned to ash and sackcloth, of the cold reality that awaited those who came so eagerly to the City of Angels, and the faint hint of perfume and romance still to be found amongst the ruins of dreams.
Goldsmith and Bernstein are gone, and so too are the kind of scores they wrote. One less reason to buy a ticket at the box office, and why the best films are often playing at home.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:21 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 19, 2012
Never bring a head filled with feathers to a battle of wits
Alec Baldwin probably regrets picking a fight with the famously pugnacious conservative Andrew Breitbart.
Baldwin tweeted yesterday -- without apparent provocation -- "andrewbreitbart is a festering boil on the anus of public discourse."
Breitbart's response: "There's NO REASON you should talk to me like I'm your daughter!"
That's gotta sting.
Here's the background for those who don't follow the twists and turns of Baldwin's family life.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Han Solo, the Viet Cong, and everything that's wrong with Hollywood
What's wrong with Hollywood? Bill Whittle thinks George Lucas' rewriting of Star Wars history offers some insight into the disconnect between moviemakers and audiences. Agree or disagree with his big-picture analysis (I think Whittle's right), of this there can be no doubt: Han shot first -- and George Lucas thinks we're fools.
Listen for the revelation about the Ewoks and the Imperial Storm Troopers -- really, George? REALLY?
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:12 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
January 05, 2012
Jerry Brown in charge: California is doomed
Want proof that Gov. Jerry Brown is insane? That California's doomed? That Sacramento is filled with nothing but tax-and-spend lunatics? Check out his plans for California's buggered-beyond-belief taxpayers. Bloomberg reports:
Brown proposed $92.6 billion in spending for the year starting in July, an increase of about 7 percent, which will count on voters approving $7 billion of higher taxes in November.
The spending plan foresees a deficit of $9.2 billion through the next 18 months. Almost half of that is in the current fiscal year, he said. He called for $4.2 billion in cuts, mostly to welfare and programs for the poor. If the tax increase isn’t passed, Brown’s plan would cut another $4.8 billion in support for public schools and community colleges.
“The state of California is a very generous, compassionate political jurisdiction,” Brown said. “When we have to cut spending, that spending is going to come from programs that are doing a lot of good. It’s not nice. We don’t like it. But the economy and tax statutes of California make just so much money available.”
Brown, a 73-year-old Democrat, wants to raise income taxes on individuals making at least $250,000 a year to 10.3 percent from 9.3 percent, and would boost sales levies to 7.75 percent from 7.25 percent.
Yes, you heard that right, folks. Californians don't pay enough taxes.
Income tax?
Too damn low!
Sales tax?
Dammit! Too damn low!
Cut spending?
Only if you force us to, you selfish bastards -- and we'll target children, puppies and baby seals, first!
Honestly, it's as if Brown and his fellow travelers haven't the slightest clue how to encourage economic growth.
What does the financial world think about Gov. Moonbeam's fiscal sanity?
California is Standard & Poor’s lowest-rated state, at A-, six levels below AAA.
Moody’s Investment Service grades it A1, four steps below the top rating, tied with Illinois for the worst credit rating among states.
And my friends wonder why I tell them that there's no hope for this state. We are well and truly doomed.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:21 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
