What Do I Know?

What do I know?

I mean, I’m a college dropout. I dropped out while carrying a 3.67 on the dean’s list, so I must not be that bright. I lack the effete Ivy-League liberal education of B-Hussein-Obama (Blessed Be His Name) mmmm mmmm mmmm. I was an enlisted soldier, not an officer. I was a Military Policeman, not a member of Military Intelligence. I work a blue collar job. I live in a small town in South Carolina.


What do I know?

One would think that in order to be the alleged Commander in Chief, one of the myriad hats worn by the President of the United States, one would be a rational, intelligent person, surrounded by capable, smart, well-informed advisors.

What do I know?

I know that it’s a complete and utter farce that’s being perpetrated upon the good people of this great nation this evening when that smug Liberal Socialist ass clown dares to place his TelePrompters amongst the Long Gray Line at West Point, as if the United States Military Academy is just a cool backdrop for a photo op, to lie to me and tell me that he’s agonized over sending additional troops to Afghanistan.
He never agonized. He didn’t take his time to mull it over & weigh the options. He slid the troop requests of his appointed in-theater commander onto the back burner in order to spend his time instead on this Socialized Healthcare folly, or jetting to and fro on our dime to bow to foreign heads of state, or to piss more money away on bullshittery.

What do I know?

I know that you just told our enemies when we’re coming, where we’ll be operating, how many we’re bringing, and then you told them when we’re coming home. So now the people who are trying to kill us know the timeline for our deployments, and they can adjust their plans accordingly. They can move about and either prepare hostile welcomes, or they can go further underground and wait us out, since they now know when we’re going to pull the plug and come home.

What do I know?

I know that the kids of America would have been better off watching a Charlie Brown Christmas than watching the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization courtesy of The Obamessiah.

Book Review: Historic Photos of West Point

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a history buff, almost at times to the point of geekdom. Military history was my personal addiction. Normal kids in the fourth grade can’t give you a run-down of the Battle of Midway or talk to you about the group of American aces known as “Zemke’s Wolfpack”. Of course, I was never a normal kid.

I recently was given a copy of a great book of pictures chronicling the history of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. With text and captions by Eugene J. Palka and Jon C. Malinowski, “Historic Photos of West Point” is a great coffee table book and a must-have for any former or current member of “the long gray line”. The book is a labor of love of sorts; Colonel Palka is a 1978 graduate of the Academy and is the department head for the school’s Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, and both he and Malinowski are geography professors at the school.

Some of the pictures contained in the nearly 200 pages date back to the pre-Civil War era, and many of the buildings in the pictures throughout the photographs exist only in the pictures, though some indeed still exist today. It was fascinating to look at these oldest of photos and think that at the time the pictures were taken that very same ground was being trod upon by the likes of General Robert E. Lee (Class of 1829), General and President Ulysses S. Grant (Class of 1843), Confederate President Jefferson Davis (Class of 1828), General William T. Sherman (Class of 1840), General George McClellan (Class of 1846), General Philip Sheridan (Class of 1853), General “Stonewall” Jackson (Class of 1846), and General George Armstrong Custer (Class of 1861).

Various aspects of cadet life are shown, from training in horsemanship, artillery, and engineering, to fencing, boxing, football, baseball and lacrosse. One photo shows cadets at a meal, and at the far right of the table is a plebe, or freshman, with his chin tucked to his chest, sitting at attention with his eyes on his plate, a tradition that has passed to the wayside in modern times. In another photo one can see the rather Spartan conditions of the rooms the cadets lived in circa 1917.

I was especially fascinated with the pictures of various famous people shown interacting with students and faculty of the school. One shot showed President Warren G. Harding visiting in 1921, and another pair of pictures showed a visit from industrialist Charles M. Schwab in 1927. In that same year, the New York Yankees traveled to the Academy to play a game against the West Point squad, and a photographer captured no less than Babe Ruth giving autographed balls to the players before the game. And, swagger stick in hand and a scowl on his face, there’s a picture of the Academy’s Superintendent from 1919 to 1923; without his trademark sunglasses and pipe you’d almost not recognize Douglas MacArthur, who graduated first in his class from West Point in 1903 and ended up with four more stars on his shoulders than he had in this picture.

I strongly recommend this book for history enthusiasts, military veterans, and photography buffs alike. With the holidays approaching, it’ll make a perfect gift for that hard-to-buy-for person on your list.

You can get the book directly from Turner Publishing itself (www.turnerpublishing.com) or Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, and Borders.

I'm not sure Doug ever smiled in his life...