Arthel Lane “Doc” Watson was born on March 23, 1923 in the hills of North Carolina. Stony Fork and Deep Gap to be more specific, if you know where those places are. Blinded by an infection before he was one year old, Watson earned the money for his first guitar by chopping wood with his brother and selling it to a tannery. It wasn’t his first musical instrument. That had been a hand made string instrument that his father gave him. It featured an animal skin sounding board.

Discovering his musical talent, Watson dropped out of the North Carolina School for the Blind after the sixth grade. He and his brother took to picking and singing on the street for tips. By adulthood he was playing electric guitar for a rockabilly band. But that gave way to his true love, flat picking on acoustic guitars. Fame found him after the 1963 Newport Folk Festival where his down home style and flat picking bluegrass-inspired tunes won over the crowds.

His best years were spent playing and recording with his son, Merle. When Merle died at the age of 36 in a farming accident, Doc considered retiring. Instead he began a new folk and bluegrass festival in Merle’s honor. Merlefest is held annually in Wilksboro, North Carolina.

Watson’s career highlights included seven Grammy’s and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1997 then President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Arts.

Watson is survived by his wife of 65 years, Rosa Lee Carlton and their daughter. Watson was 89, and still living in Deep Gap, when he was taken to the hospital where he died yesterday.

Why is it that people in the United States, the land where ‘all men are created equal,’ the land where ‘constitutional patriotism’ was born, have been pulling their hair out over an issue that appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers? For Spain’s Diario Exterior, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner examines one of the most vexing issues in the U.S. today, and why America’s ‘ethnic neurosis’ is destined to dissipate if people simply wait.

For the Diario Exterior, Carlos Alberto Montaner starts off this way:

The New York Times front page has announced that in the previous year, more than half the children born in the United States (50.4%) were non-White. Of that percentage, 26 percent were Hispanic (mostly Mexican), 15 percent were Black and 4 percent were Asian.

Why was it on the front page? Pure ethnic neurosis. Fear of the other. The same thing happened a few years ago when Samuel Huntington caused such a stir with the publication of his The Hispanic Challenge. This type of information causes a certain anxiety among “Whites.” They think they are losing control over and the direction of America. They fear becoming a minority.

The first bit of nonsense is classification. Hispanics are defined by the language they speak, or by what language they are supposed to speak, regardless of skin color. A Chilean of Basque origin or a Cachiquel Guatemalan are Hispanics, even if the language of the latter isn’t Spanish. Blacks, evidently, are classified by race. Asians, by geography, be they Chinese or Indian.

I have no idea, for example, if an Israeli-American of Sephardic origin is Asian, White or Hispanic. Nor do I know if that brilliant engineer called Rafael Reif, a Venezuelan son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who was recently named President of MIT, is Hispanic, White, or if by chance the census allows it, simply Maracucho. [Maracucho is the Zulian dialect in northwest Venezuela].

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READ ON IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

It might have seemed improbable that a skin-tight all-coverage spandex suit in lurid colors would be a choice of dress for some people. But a recent trend is conquering Europe and proving the opposite. What are we talking about? The Morphsuit.

No, it isn’t about people just hankering after being a real-life Spiderman. There’s a whole concept behind it.

Created by Gregor Lawson and brothers Fraser and Ali Smeaton, the company has already sold over 700,000 morphsuits, according to Scotsman.com. It started in 2009, largely powered by its Facebook page, which now has more than one million fans, all actively posting and sharing their experiences with the Morphsuit. According to Gregor Lawson, as further mentioned on Scotsman.com, looking after social media interaction with fans of the brand is an indispensable part of the success of the Morphsuit. Their Facebook page has to be checked several times a day, responses to comments and messages should be made as quickly as possible, and criticism is welcomed as well. The company underlines the importance of real interaction with consumers, which is a sensible tip. Judging by the general tone of their website, their attitude also seems genuine.

The Morphsuit is made from a specially developed type of spandex material that allows the wearer to breathe freely, talk, even drink through the coverage and kiss people. One ecstatic review on the company website says just that – the wearer has kissed more women since joining the ranks of the Morphs.

The suits can be reusable. The record so far was wearing a morphsuit 22,416 times before it had to be replaced. There’s a special double zip going all the way to the top of the suit head. So it’s like peeling off a second skin. As the website cheekily says, “So if you are heading to a party on your own, you can zip-up yourself up for maximum impact on arrival. And later, if you want the girl you’ve been dancing with for the past 20 minutes to see you, then it’s easy just to unzip, pull the hood down and engage. Perfect….assuming you are mildly attractive.” It’s suggested that cash should be concealed in a shoe, while a phone can be put in to a sock. The website also suggests a fanny pack, or the the bum bag in the adorable British version. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

It’s natural to think about comic book figures and superheroes when you look at pictures of the Morphsuits. But their amazing popularity probably has a lot to do with people just sometimes feeling like they need a disguise. Life is hard and sometimes we need something different to feel more free. The age-old appeal of masks and costumes has been around for a while. The Morphsuit definitely adds an air of mystery to the wearer, but it also implies the person must have a sense of humor. You can’t really wear it otherwise. The founders encourage “Morphs” to be confident and self-loving. You don’t have to look like a model to wear a suit, despite what some might think.

True, it’s an instant eye-catcher. One should be prepared for a lot of attention. Apparently people wearing the suit have been seen everywhere. At parties, concerts, festivals, football matches, at work, in shops, on the subway. In short, the suit seems perfect for almost any occasion.

The Morphsuits were originally geared at men, though now the company is planning to expand with a womenswear line. Currently they are operating in the UK from their flats, though a new office should be opened soon.

The suit has been redesigned since the beginning. Visibility through the material has been improved: you can see out, but no one can see in. Of course, while providing a quirky way to disguise your identitiy, at the same time the Morphsuit does leave very little to the imagination. The website recommends wearing “very tight underwear”. “Baggy boxers just make you look like you’ve got a lumpy arse”, is the succint tip.

Stephanie Kopf writes for the blog www.trenditionist.com
She has lived in Siberia, New York City and Germany. Her subject areas include anything related to the human psyche, European news, education, communication in all its forms, as well as the interaction of all of these with each other.

Image: Peter Mackinnon, Kerry Calder, and Stef Moir/First Photographics / Flickr/ Wikimedia/ CC

Doug Mataconis objected to the timing but really never condemded the message.  Doug’s post generated a really great comments thread which is worth checking out.

I am a veteran and was not at all offended  by Hayes’ comments.  Here is my reality based comment:

I am a veteran – a Vietnam veteran and for most of that war there was a draft. But I don’t think that the draft is really relevant. When you are in combat you are fighting for one thing and one thing alone – to keep you and your buddies alive. Are you a hero when you throw yourself on a grenade? Of course you are, but you didn’t do it for country, freedom or Democracy – you did it to save the lives of your buddies. You will never form a stronger bond than you do with your fellow soldiers – that includes marriage.
Should we recognize those heroes? Of course we should but we shouldn’t forget what was on their minds as they were fighting – survival.

Radely Balko commented:

Hayes’ point is that the word “hero” connotes a noble mission. I guess I just don’t see how this is even debatable. It’s precisely the reason why we don’t call Nazi soldiers or Iraqi insurgents heroes. They too were willing to fight, kill, and die for a cause. But because we find their cause objectionable, we’d never consider calling them heroes.

IT may be the message is right but was the timing inappropriate? Emptywheel:

But move beyond the patina of insensitivity, and Chris Hayes was quite right. We need desperately to unhinge the valor of our troops from the moral squalor of our leaders. Memorial Day may be a touchy time to hear that, but it needs to be said.

It may be insensitive to say this on Memorial Day what a better time to get people’s attention. Balko talks about a “noble mission”.  When was the last time we had one of those?  Certainly not in my lifetime and I’m 66 years old .  Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly not wars I would consider “noble missions”.

What better time to question war but the day that we remember those who died at war.  I lost friends and relatives in Vietnam.  They died for nothing and the administration of Lyndon Johnson knew they were going to die for nothing in 1965 but the war went on and 10s of thousands died.  Is there a better day to discuss the “moral squalor of our leaders” – I think not,

Bravo Chris Hayes for going where few would dare to go.  I am a veteran – a Vietnam veteran. and I was not the least bit offended .

In honor of our fallen troops, CNN.com has created an amazing interactive “Home & Away map” which includes information about all of the men and women who have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars since 2001.

It is a stunning, interactive map where you can learn where our heroes lived and how and where they died on the battlefields, in the deserts, in the mountains and in the streets of towns and cities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, the distribution according to age (note how young most of them were), home states and when they died.

For example, point and click to Monroe, MI, and the names of the two service members from that town who died in Iraq will pop up. Click on one of the names, and you’ll see where and how he died. You can also leave a message or memory about them for their families.

Amazing and sad.

Please take a moment during the final hours on this Memorial Day to visit the site and honor our fallen soldiers here and here.

President Obama Commemorates Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

In an unusual “op-ed” published today in Military.com, Military Times and Stars and Stripes, President Barack Obama paid tribute to all “our men and women in uniform who gave their lives so that we could live free” in all our wars, but singled out the Vietnam War (This Memorial Day marks the beginning of the 50th anniversary of that War), those who died in that war and its veterans.

Indicating that he would join Vietnam veterans and their families for a ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the President writes:

I’ll join Vietnam veterans and their families for a ceremony to begin this 50th anniversary. It will be an occasion to honor the 58,282 names on The Wall—men and women who gave their lives in that war. We’ll stand with their families, who have borne that loss ever since. And we’ll reaffirm our commitment to never stop searching for the 1,666 service members who are still missing from that war.

The President expresses sorrow — and shame — that the Vietnam War veterans “didn’t always receive the respect and thanks they deserved, [that][a]t times they were neglected and even shunned,” and makes it clear that this 50th anniversary is America’s “opportunity to do it right,” to give our Vietnam veterans the respect and honor they deserve.

He concludes:

This Memorial Day, let’s remember all those who’ve put on the uniform, served far from home, and laid down their lives so we can live ours in security and freedom. And let’s take this opportunity to truly honor and support all those who served and sacrificed in Vietnam. That’s what we’ll be doing when we gather today at The Wall, and that’s what we can all do together in the months and years ahead.

Please read the entire op-ed here.

Image: White House.gov

Also, we often run Hartford Courant cartoonist Bob Englehart’s work here on TMV via Cagle Cartoons. Here is the short, touching post he has on The Cagle Post which we’ll run here in full since it is Memorial Day:

My father served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II. The OSS was the forerunner to the CIA. When I was a kid, I’d ask the inevitable question, “What’d you do in the war, daddy.”

He’d say “Dodged bombs in London for three years,” and then he’d change the subject. I didn’t find out about the brutality he witnessed and friends he lost until the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1995. He went into detail, to a point, and then his eyes welled up with tears and he stopped talking. But he was one of the lucky ones. He survived in one piece to play 18 holes of golf at 90 years old and to begin to forget about the war.

As long as there are human beings living on the planet Earth, we’ll have war. So many good people have died in wars designed to save the world from a megalomaniac like Hitler, or for unclear wars like Iraq and Vietnam, or nation building in Afghanistan, or to hold this country together like in the Civil War. Good people die in bad wars too. I know so many veterans, good people, who say that they simply did what their country asked.

Take a moment this weekend and say a thank you to the good people who died so that we may choose whatever we want to do on Memorial Day because in the end, it’s about freedom.

NOTE: My father Richard Gandelman also served in World War II. His years in the military seemed to him to be among the most harrowing but rewarding of his life. You could tell when he talked about it.

He was proud of his service, but he said he would never ever see Saving Private Ryan because he would never talk about some of the scenes he witnessed in wartime. When 9/11 took place I always felt as if it was a special horror to my father, as if his reaction inside was I thought we got rid of this kind of monster back in World War II and now the world is facing this kind of being again.

His Army uniform always hung proudly in his closet. So did his helmet. He spent some of his time serving in Australia and seemed forever smitten with that country. Except for all the lamb. He had been stationed where he could smell food cooking from the kitchen which was often lamb. Old lamb. And my mother never made it when he was home. He was part of the Greatest Generation who saw their duty and did it, no complaints and never looking back — except, perhaps, with a bit of pride that his generation put everything aside to unite and make the world safer. He died on May 27, 2007 — Memorial Day…a day before my mother Helen Gandelman’s birthday. She turns 91 on May 28th.

Here’s Bob Englehart’s latest Memorial Day cartoon:

It’s pretty clear to me, however, that money isn’t the only Big M explanation for Walker’s apparent current lead in the polls. Perhaps not even the most important one. The more important M Factor at work here is Mean-spiritedness.

Why have so many people in Wisconsin bought into the Walker way of political thinking? Why have public service unions proven such a popular target? Are members of the public service unions Walker has been bashing so successfully wallowing in luxury at the public’s expense?

Of course not. These union members have simply enjoyed, through the process of collective bargaining, a traditional American standard of living no longer accessible to so many others.

A growing number of these others in Wisconsin have lost many of the rights and perks that make up our traditional standard of living. The job security. Wages that grow faster than inflation every year. Benefits like health insurance paid for by employers.

The Walker mean-spirited pitch? These union people are getting something you don’t have. I won’t make your own lives better, but you’ll at least feel better if state employers can be brought down, that the unions protecting rights and perks you no longer have protected can be undermined.

Similar billionaire underwritten mean-spirited politics is at work in other realms like with food stamps and Medicaid. Why should others get free food when you work so hard to buy food for your your own family, just because these others are so poor? Why should others get free health care with Medicaid when your own health care costs are so high, just because these others are so poor?

You can govern in difficult times by bringing people together, by appealing to their better angels. Or you can take the 50-percent-plus-1 approach to governance, turn a tad more than half the voters into a nasty-minded mini-majority conned into identifying their own interests with those of their financial betters, while also turning them hostile towards anyone less well-off than themselves.

A line from a famous poem by W.H. Auden runs: “We must love one another or die.” The State of Wisconsin has died a little since Scott Walker took office. The cruel mean-spiritedness of many Republic Party nostrums these days is driving the whole country further and further away from communion with our better angels.

Memorial Day 2012: A Lesson Not Yet Learned
byWALTER BRASCH

Today is Memorial Day, the last day of the three-day weekend. Veterans and community groups will remember those who died in battle and, as they have done for more than a century, will place small flags on graves.

But, for most of America, Memorial Day is a three-day picnic-filled weekend that heralds the start of Summer, just as Labor Day has become a three-day picnic-filled weekend that laments the end of Summer.

There will be memorial concerts and parades. The media, shoving aside political and celebrity news, will all have stories. Among those who will be the first to patriotically salute those who died in battle are those who enthusiastically pushed for them to go to war.

Each of the extended weekends also provides forums for politicians to stand in front of red-white-and-blue bunting to deliver political speeches they hope will make the voters think they care about veterans and the working class—and if it helps their election or re-election campaigns, so much the better.

The first Memorial Day was May 1, 1865, when hundreds of freed slaves, missionaries, and teachers held a solemn ceremony to honor the Union soldiers who died in a Confederate prison camp in Charleston, S.C. That memorial evolved into Decoration Day and then in 1882 to Memorial Day. The last Monday in May now honors all soldiers killed in all wars.

There haven’t been many years when the U.S. wasn’t engaged in some war. Some were fought for noble purposes, such as the Revolutionary War and World War II; some were fought for ignoble purposes, such as the Mexican-American and Spanish-American wars.

The U.S. is currently engaged in winding down the longest war in our history. The war in Afghanistan had begun with the pretense of a noble purpose—to capture the leaders of al-Qaeda who created 9/11. But, that war was nearly forgotten while the U.S. skip-jumped into Iraq, which had no connection to al-Qaeda, 9/11, or any weapons of mass destruction. It did have a dictator who allowed torture against its dissidents— but so did North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and dozens of other countries that the Bush–Cheney war machine didn’t consider.

No, it was Iraq that became the focus of the White House Warriors. It wasn’t long before the U.S. commitment in Iraq was more than 10 times the personnel and equipment than in Afghanistan. It was a commitment that had left the U.S. vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters, as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita within a month of each other proved. The Bush–Cheney administration had diverted funds from numerous public works projects, including reinforcement of the levees in New Orleans, to increase the U.S. presence in Iraq. By the time Katrina had hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, National Guard troops and their equipment, including deep water vehicles, were in Iraq.

Also in Iraq was now al-Qaeda, which Saddam Hussein had managed to keep out of his country; and a civil war, as Iraqi political and religious groups fought for control.
Barack Obama, as promised in his campaign, did end the war in Iraq, and reasserted American presence in Afghanistan, sought out and killed Osama bin Laden, and then created a way for complete U.S. withdrawal from combat.

The Bush–Cheney Administration had figured a maximum cost of $100 billion for what they believed would be no more than a two year war. The financial cost of the wars has been almost $4 trillion, according to an investigative study by researchers at Brown University. The $4 trillion includes rampant corruption and no-bid contracts to numerous companies, including Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s home for several years.

But the real cost is not in dollars but in lives. The war is being figured not by names and their lives but by numbers. The war in Afghanistan as of Memorial Day has cost 3,016 American and allied lives. The American wounded, some of whom will have permanent disabilities or may die lingering deaths from those wounds, is now at 15,322. In Iraq, 4,486 Americans died; 32,233 were wounded. There are no accurate estimates of the number of civilian and enemy deaths and wounded, but the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands.

“War represents a failure of diplomacy,” said Tony Benn, one of the most popular politicians, who served in the British parliament for more than 50 years, including several years as leader of various cabinet departments.

In wars throughout the world, there will be more deaths today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that and every day thereafter. And once a year, Americans will honor the deaths of young men and women sent into battle by intractable politicians, supported by media pundits and a horde of civilians with the wisdom of asphalt who have not learned the lessons of Tony Benn.

[Walter Brasch’s latest book is the critically-acclaimed journalistic novel, Before the First Snow, which looks at the anti-war movement and the cost of war.]

It’s that time of year again: The U.S. State Department has issued its annual report on human rights around the world. And, as has become the custom, states like North Korea and China, which disapprove of America’s rendering, issue denunciations of the report.

We have posted three articles, two from China and one from North Korea, that encompass the latest counter-criticisms of the United States by the two one-party states.

First, in an article headlined America ‘Disqualified’ as Global Human Rights Judge, China’s state-run Global Times, informs that Beijing has issued its own report on human rights in the United States that highlights America’s ‘dismal human rights record,’ which renders it ineligible to judge others:

“The cases highlighted in this report are tiny but illustrative reflection of America’s dismal record on human rights … America’s tarnished human rights record renders it a morally, politically and legally feeble judge of global human rights.”

Also from the Global Times, although this and most Chinese editorials and op-eds are published almost simultaneously in all of its media, in an editorial headlined Human Rights Criticism of China a Fig Leaf for Diminishing U.S. Influence, Beijing argues that given America’s loss of financial and military influence, the human rights issue is Washington’s last remaining ‘ace in the hole.’ :

“While China’s improving human rights situation brings no benefit to the United States, discrediting China by finding fault with its rights record pays important dividends. In an age when Washington is losing its economic advantage and cannot use its military might at will, America has no ace in the hole left other than the human rights issue.”

Finally, one of Pyongyang’s state-mouthpieces, the Rodong Sinmun, quotes a commentary from another state-run media outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, which cites U.S. abuses that the Kim Jong-un regime asserts disqualifies Washington from criticizing anyone else. Say what one will about young despot Kim Jong-un, the quality of commentary coming out of Pyongyang since he came to power at least sounds more sane that its former Stalinist drivel:

“The right to food, clothing and housing – the most elementary of all human rights, are mercilessly suppressed in a society where the law of the jungle reigns and money is everything. … Furthermore, the consequences of America’s deeply-rooted racial discrimination regularly manifest in the fabric of everyday life. … The unending violence against women fully betrays how a barbaric U.S. society is facing the end of an era.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

Always remember.

They have been — and are — part of the blessings of America.

(This post will remain on the top of TMV all day.)

UPDATE:

The Huffington Post has published a piece on the Associated Press report that Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are filing for disability benefits at a historic rate.

As of this writing, there are already 618 comments (with 34 more pending).

I realize that many of our readers would not “be caught dead” visiting the HuffPost.

However, I would recommend that you take a chance this Memorial Day and venture to that site and browse through those comments.

Skip the ones that blame Bush for the Iraq disaster and that blame Obama for the continuing carnage in Afghanistan.

Skip the ones that reflect a twisted political or anti-war agenda.

And especially skip the callous and cynical comments such as “Great—-just what the USA needs—-more entitlements!!!” and ”Those are the things you need to think about before you sign up to go to foreign countries to kill the local inhabitants.”

Some will say, “That doesn’t leave many.” Perhaps, but those that “are left” are the heart wrenching accounts by widows, wives, sons and daughters of our veterans from our many wars, that tell us that these wounds and injuries — physical and mental — are real, are horrendous and debilitating and must be adequately addressed by the nation and the people who sent these brave men and women into battle.

And while our readers are at it, perhaps they may also want to read an opinion piece in the New York Times, written by a former U.S. Marine who, in 2001, was part of the initial force of Marines who landed in Afghanistan and who, in 2003, took part in the heavy fighting of the first wave of the invasion of Iraq, and who writes about the hell he has been through since coming home.

==

Original Post:

As we remember and honor those who have fought and died in all our wars, let us not forget the hundreds of thousands who have been injured and continue to be injured — physically and mentally — in our two most recent wars.

This sad reality is poignantly brought home this Memorial Day weekend by an Associated Press report, published in the Stars and Stripes which tells us that an astounding “45 percent of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related.”

According to the Stars and Stripes:

That is more than double the estimated 21 percent who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the AP.

These new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea, just two.”

In its report, the Associated Press postulates that there may be many factors that drive up these figures: “[T]he weak economy, more troops surviving wounds, and more awareness of problems such as concussions and PTSD.”

Other factors and circumstances pointed out by the Associated Press which “spent three months reviewing records and talking with doctors, government officials and former troops to take stock of the new veterans” :

More — 28 percent of those filing disability claims — are from the Reserves and National Guard rather than career military.

“More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA… Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma…”

The different types of injuries incurred by the new veterans, such as those caused by improvised bombs and the fact that improved body armor and improved battlefield care has “allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.”

Please read more about these somber statistics and the horrific injuries adding up to some staggering numbers here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

It was a scene as creepy as a Hannibal Lecter movie.

One man was shot to death by Miami police, and another man is fighting for his life after he was attacked, and his face allegedly half eaten, by a naked man on the MacArthur Causeway off ramp Saturday, police said.

The horror began about 2 p.m. when a series of gunshots were heard on the ramp, which is along NE 13th Street, just south of The Miami Herald building.

According to police sources, a road ranger saw a naked man chewing on another man’s face and shouted on his loud speaker for him to back away.Meanwhile, a woman also saw the incident and flagged down a police officer who was in the area.

The officer, who has not been identified, approached and, seeing what was happening, also ordered the naked man to back away. When he continued the assault, the officer shot him, police sources said. The attacker failed to stop after being shot, forcing the officer to continue firing. Witnesses said they heard at least a half dozen shots.

Miami police were on the scene, which was just south of The Miami Herald building on Biscayne Boulevard. The naked man who was killed lay face down on the pedestrian walkway just below the newspaper’s two-story parking garage. Police have requested The Herald’s video surveillance tapes.

The other man was transported to the hospital with critical injuries, according to police. Their identities were not released.

This shows that right when you think you’ve seen every kind of news story, every crime story that oozes evil, you realize there are more variations out there.

I dread the next variation.

His video was supposed to be just for his friends, shot shortly after receiving devastating news. But, instead, it went viral. By the time he died yesterday, his final days would also serve as a role models for how to appreciate the the present and how to leave it for eternity. And due to You Tube which carried his words, emotions and wise perspective to millions, Australia teenager Shaun Wilson-Miller passed away having won millions of friends all over the world due to what they saw when they watched — and learned — in his emotional, heart and spirit felt “My Final Goodbye” video.

In the 17-year-old’s video, intended for family and friends but seen by 1.9 million people by Sunday morning, the Melbourne schoolboy revealed he was suffering chronic heart rejection after his second transplant and that there could not be a third.

“I won’t be here for as long as I thought,” he said in the video.

“This has been an awesome ride. I have no regrets,” he said. “Live life to the fullest because you never know what’s going to happen.”

Dad Cameron Miller said his son’s positive outlook had never faltered, with Shaun giving him constant hugs in recent days, the Herald Sun reported Sunday.

“He passed peacefully with me holding his hand; that is something the family will hold with us,” he told the Herald Sun.

Tributes immediately began flowing in from around the world and from his beloved Essendon Football Club, the newspaper said.

A bit more on his video – which is likely to be seen and thought about for many years to come:

Shaun Wilson-Miller, 17, recorded his message in his bedroom and intended to share it with his Facebook friends.

But now more than 1.3 million people have seen his heartbreaking home movie after a technical problem meant he had to upload it to YouTube.

Shaun, from Melbourne, Australia, suffers from a chronic heart condition that means his body has rejected two transplants.

Doctors said he cannot undergo a third operation – and it is believed Shaun has just months to live.

Shaun recorded the message in his bedroom late at night soon after hearing the devastating diagnosis.

He urged his loved ones to live their lives to the fullest and look after his dad when he is gone.

Here is his video:

It sparked reports such as this one on NBC:

Some were so moved they felt they should do videos to express their views and share their own experiences:

Some felt moved enough to write music in support. Here’s Shaun Miller’s song – B-mike ( stay strong ) which also has a gallery of photos of Shaun.

Australia’s Herald Sunh as this must-read-in-full-story which has some details about his post-video life:

In his final weeks, Sean filmed a role on Neighbours and met his footy hero Essendon captain Jobe Watson.

He had also found love with a fellow heart patient.

Shaun sighed: “The hardest thing for me is leaving her, knowing that I won’t get to marry her. To have kids together. To grow old together. That is what makes me sad.”

Friends and family wrote their condolences on the Facebook page of Shaun’s father, Cameron Miller.

“You showed so much courage for so long,” said one message. “Fly high sweet angel.”

He did in his video.

And I’m sure he will now.

As they were no doubt intended to be by White House aides, symbolism lovers may be wrenched by the distance between that early image of the breakthrough significance of Obama’s election and the bitter racially tinged battle for reelection now.

Yet the subtext is clearly there as the President and his supporters try to get their footing in these early days of the campaign, and the unspoken question is how far white-bread appeal will take Romney with voters who never accepted the idea of a black president and have compounded their racism by blaming him for the ills of the economy ever since.

The coming months will see a complex tangle of demographic struggles, as evidenced by early signs that Obama’s aggressive foreign policy has won him unlikely support among veterans and the military.

Some voters will believe anything in an election year…

MORE.

It’s Time for a National World War I Memorial
by Julian Saltman
History News Service

On Monday Americans will gather to celebrate Memorial Day, a holiday on which we honor those who have served, and fallen, in our country’s armed forces. Veterans and their descendants will participate in ceremonies and parades across the country, and many will be in Washington, D.C., to visit the national memorials dedicated to the wars in which they fought.

But there is one glaring exception: the First World War.

Despite nearing the centenary of the First World War’s outbreak, the United States still lacks a national memorial to the 4.7 million Americans who served during the conflict. Of those servicemen, nearly 117,000 perished during the war — 53, 402 in combat — and another 204,000 were wounded. Many believe that the last man to die in the war was an American soldier, 23-year-old Henry Gunther of Baltimore. He was killed one minute before the 11 a.m. armistice of Nov. 11, 1918. In comparison, roughly 34,000 Americans died in combat during the Korean War, and some 47,000 died in combat in Vietnam.

The American casualties of the First World War are all the more striking because of the short time in which they occurred. The United States did not declare war on Germany until April 6, 1917, and most American combat troops did not see action until the late spring of 1918. By many standards of evaluation, the First World War was the third bloodiest conflict in American history, trailing only the Civil War and the Second World War.

Yet despite these appalling numbers, there is no nationally consecrated location in the United States where Americans can honor these sacrifices.

In the war’s initial aftermath, Americans memorialized the war in two major ways: the creation of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the celebration of Armistice Day on Nov. 11. But with the passage of time these forms of memorialization grew to encompass other American wars, and that has left the First World War without a clearly focused “site of memory.”

There is, however, an opportunity to make things right.

Congress has considered several pieces of legislation that attempt to create a national World War I memorial. But they have languished. Before being recently fused into a “compromise bill,” separate bills had been introduced by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and by Rep. Ted Poe of Texas. Cleaver wanted to designate the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, which adjoins the National World War I Museum and is already a National Historic Landmark, as America’s national World War I memorial. But Poe argued that national war memorials belong on Washington’s National Mall and proposed building the national World War I memorial around a small, preexisting World War I memorial on the Mall to veterans from the District of Columbia.

The eventual creation of a “compromise bill” allowed for a dual designation of national memorials in both Kansas City and D.C. But that compromise was stalled in Congress by the District of Columbia’s congressional delegate, Eleanor Norton. For several reasons, Norton refused to allow any modifications to the D.C. World War I memorial, effectively putting the bill into legislative purgatory. Additionally, the sponsors learned that the modification of the D.C. World War I memorial would violate the Commemorative Works Act, adding yet another complication to the process.

I do not question the convictions of Cleaver, Poe, or Norton. Rather, I ask that they put aside their differences and reach a compromise in the most expedient way. The location of the national World War I memorial is ultimately less important than its existence. (Edwin Lutyen’s famed Cenotaph to Britain’s war dead sits in the middle of a busy street in London.) Whether our country’s memorial is located in Kansas City, on the National Mall, in Washington’s Pershing Park, or somewhere else, the important thing is that we as a country have a National World War I Memorial.

Americans have recently had a front-row seat to the rancor of Beltway politics. On this issue, though, Congress should be able to skip the rhetoric and political posturing, work around legislative hurdles, and show the citizens of this country that the United States will honor its veterans no matter how long ago they may have fought.

On this Memorial Day, the 94th anniversary of the first major American offensive in the Great War, let’s remember the American soldiers of the First World War — and demand that they be honored.

Julian Saltman, a Ph.D. candidate in European history at the University of California-Berkeley, is the great-grandson of a First World War veteran. Follow him on Twitter @juliansaltman This column is run in full with the author’s permission.

If you ask the typical hyper-political gun owner (and I have … at Thanksgiving dinner), why it’s important to own a gun, they’ll bark about the Constitution. Yes, the Second Amendment: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed!”

This of course is the slogan the National Rifle Association adopted in the 1970′s. It was then that owning a gun became an absolute right endowed by God and the Constitution. A blessing passed down by our forefathers to obliterate game and protect our property. The NRA was founded in 1870 and for its first hundred years it was for gun control and didn’t mention the Second Amendment as their cause.

Adam Winkler points out in his delicious book, “Gun Fight,” what we call the “wild west” had some of the strictest gun control laws we’ve seen as a nation. The shoot out at the OK Corral took place, after all, because Wyatt Earp was trying to disarm the outlaw Cowboys in accordance with a Tombstone ordinance. The KKK was among other things, a gun control organization. They were trying to keep guns out of the hands of newly freed slaves … but still gun control.

The part of the Second Amendment omitted from the NRA’s slogan is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…” Yes, well regulated—it’s in the Constitution!

Now, to some, guns are as sacred as scripture. If you ask, again, this typical hyper-political gun owner why they need to stockpile assault rifles, you will get an answer much like Pat Flynn’s, a recent candidate for a Senate seat in Nebraska. “Really, we have our guns to protect ourselves against the government, number one,” Flynn said in a debate right before the primary. “Hunting’s number two. But protecting us against our government is number one.” Remember, Flynn was trying to land a job in the government (he didn’t win his party’s nomination, by the way).

The idea is that we have to be just as armed as our government in order to be safer or have more liberty (or something). The U.S. government has unmanned drones armed with supersonic laser-guided anti-armor Hellfire missiles, “bunker busters,” and nuclear weapons. Are far-right politicians saying we need civilians to have shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles “for protection?” Of course they’re not. They actually do want limits on ownership.

And if you ask the most vehement gun rights advocate why gun owners shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, I’d bet you’d get the same answer as to why we don’t want every country to have the capability: “Because they could get into the wrong hands.”

So weapons-grade plutonium should be limited. But the ever-handy semi-auto Glock pistol with a 30-round high-capacity magazine is an absolute right?

A recent gun buyback drive in Los Angeles resulted in someone turning in a rocket launcher. Comforting.

So we’re not actually talking about limited vs. unlimited. We are talking about degrees of weapon ownership.

Guns fall into the wrong hands all the time. More guns and fewer requirements for ownership doesn’t curb this. George Zimmerman was the wrong hands. Zimmerman, a Florida man now infamous for shooting an unarmed black teenager at close range after a 911 operator told him not to engage the alleged suspect and wait for police to arrive, is now being defended by said hyper-political gun owners. There’s no reason a Neighborhood Watch captain should be patrolling his block with a criminal record and a pistol. Zimmerman was a catastrophe realized. Even in the wake of new evidence about this case, the fact remains if Zimmerman didn’t have a gun, 16-year-old Trayvon Martin would be alive.

The United States is number one in the world in civilian gun ownership. And since we’re not last in gun violence (we’re the 14th highest in deaths—way higher in just injuries) it’s safe to assume that increasing the number of guns doesn’t decrease the number of gun deaths. Just like cutting taxes doesn’t increase revenue—making gun ownership unlimited doesn’t make us safer. It’s a lie. A fairy tale of the gun lobby. Completely unsupported by data or logic. A falsehood.

So unless you think all Americans should get Daisy Cutters this Christmas—you believe in regulations as to who gets a weapon, what kind and where they can have it.

Gun control laws are not tyranny—as the family of Trayvon Martin can testify to—a de-regulated militia is.

© Copyright 2012 TinaDupuy.com, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Tina Dupuy is an award-winning writer and the managing editor of Crooks and Liars. Tina can be reached at tinadupuy@yahoo.com. Her column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

This column has been edited by the author. Representations of fact and opinions are solely those of the author.

Back in September 2009, when the Navy was seriously considering allowing women to serve aboard its nuclear submarines, I posted an article titled, “Should Women Serve on Submarines?” and, at the end, asked, “What do you think?”

With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines.

One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost (in dollars and in space) to separate the men and women and the “sexual tension” factor, she suggested, perhaps playfully:

As a woman I know it is very hard for women to get along. Women are catty. Women get jealous. This would be ten times worse if they were on cramped close quarters unable to get away from each other. No work would get done.

One of the main reasons men go submarines is to get away from women. How are they going to do that if we let women on them? That is just a random point that may not make a lot of sense to the argument but it is valid for those who really make it a point is choosing where to go with their Navy Career.

There was one reader — no longer with us — who not only strongly opposed women serving on submarines (“Suck it up folks, war is serious. Who really gives a darn if 500 or so women get to tell their grand kids they rode around in a submarine in the Navy? So we do this just for the sake of equality?”), but who also took the opportunity to launch into one of his tirades against gays in the military: “We have no homosexuals in the military what-so-ever. If you know one, post his name here please. He has lied to the military upon joining and that is a crime and must be reported.”

Another reader declared: ‘Suck it up, folks. We have women – and homosexuals – who serve with honor in our military. The ignorance of holding people back from reflexive objections needs to stop.”

In a related event, in April 2010, the Navy announced that a smoking ban would go into effect on submarines no later than December 31, 2010.

The reason why I bring up “gays in the military” and smoking aboard submarines should become obvious shortly.

But back to the present.

Today, May 2012, Navy women are serving successfully on our fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Just as with gays serving openly in the military, the sky has not fallen because of this.

According to Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of submarine forces, the integration process has been “very successful.” The Stars and Stripes adds:

Twenty-four women have already reported to guided missile and fleet ballistic missile submarines and about 20 more will report each year. Fast-attack submarines, which are smaller and would require more modifications to allow women aboard, are still men-only.

The Navy is moving very deliberately with the integration process and will gather information from the first gender-integrated submarines before determining whether to modify submarines to allow enlisted female sailors to serve aboard, or to allow women on fast-attack submarines.

“We want to open this opportunity as widely as we can, but we want to make sure it’s sustainable,” Richardson said.

As a matter of fact, one of the first women to serve on U.S. submarines — delicious irony — is Lt. Rebecca Dremann, who is an openly gay naval officer and a smoker.

The Stars and Stripes:

As an openly gay naval officer, a smoker and one of the first women to serve on a submarine, Lt. Rebecca Dremann joked she was “the triple trifecta coming onto the submarine.”

“I’m a total culture shock to the submarine force and they handled me just fine,” Dremann said Thursday after a roundtable hosted by the Navy to discuss the integration of women into the submarine force.

Other women — and men — who are completing their qualifications and have already spent time underway aboard submarines echoed Dremann’s sentiments, saying the biggest “problem” they’ve faced is sibling-like squabbles over the bathroom.

If this is one of the bigger problems we have in our “gender-integrated submarines,” I say that we are doing pretty good.

Now, let me ask again: What do you think?

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Photo credit: Courtesy ssp.navy.mil

Recent Time and Newsweek covers constitute last gasps in the dying newsweekly business. Of greater concern, however, is that while these magazines are already in media’s rearview mirror, their turn toward tabloid-style sensationalism reflects what is happening all along the information highway.

You saw or heard about the covers that caused the fuss: Time with a 26-year-old mother breast feeding her unusually mature 3-year-old son; Newsweek with a rainbow halo over Barack Obama’s head and the line, “America’s first gay president.” Selling magazines and tabloid newspapers with shock and schlock isn’t new, but the fact that the techniques have gone viral — to use new media’s favorite term — is troubling.

One day’s front-page headlines on AOL: “Grandma Goes to Walmart, Vanishes” and “I Ate to Scare Classmates Away.” That same day CNN.com’s top items were flesh-eating bugs and “Horse bolts into ocean, swims 2 miles.” On the conservative Drudge Report: “Rocks Found at Beach Ignite in Woman’s Pocket.”

This is now the standard stuff of top Internet sites as well as cable-TV, broadcast TV morning shows and, of course, local TV newscasts. Even many of the most reputable news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times, play it straight on their printed front pages but turn frisky on the Web. The flesh-eating bugs and burning rocks — plus several celebrity items — were front-page news on the Times’ site.

One major reason for this condition involves the difference between serving a stable, subscription-based audience versus non-paid, transient customers. News organizations that charge for content, especially via ongoing subscriptions, face less pressure to woo readers with the most eye-opening developments of the moment. Free media, and publications largely reliant on single-copy sales, are in a constant struggle for attention.

Time and Newsweek are goosing up covers in a desperate effort to stimulate newsstand sales and media buzz. The most popular Websites, almost all offering content for free, play the grabber game minute-to-minute, knowing that readers are just a click away from disappearing. As long as the “free model” persists in new media, the trend toward sensationalism will continue.

Another factor is the 24/7 pace of modern communication. “Breaking News” is the mantra of cable coverage — even if much of it is hardly newsworthy and is barely breaking. A truck in flames on a Midwest Interstate might qualify as breaking news on national cable — especially if there’s video — but would never appear in a summary of the day’s most important developments.

Then, too, there is the popularity of “reality” and celebrity-driven programming across the TV spectrum. These shows came along at just the right time to synergize with other media. Contestants perform at night and show up the next morning on competing networks to talk about it. Not since Charles Van Doren captivated the nation on the NBC quiz program “Twenty One” has media paid so much attention to TV-created competition — and it should be remembered that Van Doren’s appeal was his intellect and not, to cite a current NBC show, how much weight he could lose from one week to the next. The fact that “Twenty One” was rigged only made for better tabloid headlines.

Finally, and sadly, increased competition among media often brings out the worst in news judgment. Consumers are blessed to have so many digital options from which to choose, and cursed that so many of them vie for attention by seeking the lowest content denominator.

While industry observers tend to view the market as divided between “paid” and “free,” the distinction is also increasingly between “serious” and “superficial.” There are notable exceptions, but that’s the trend.

Much of what we get as news these days isn’t worth the pixels it’s displayed with.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker and can be reached at www.CandidCamera.com. ©2012 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. His column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

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