Bravo Billy

As I just got through paying bills and balancing my checkbook I know that there are still other bills to be paid.  I stopped to cook the chicken in the fridge.  I have been battling a flu and eating only  chicken soup  for lunch and frozen Chinese food. I finally got some of appetite back.

I got my mail out of the mail box and started to read some of the "junk" mail.  Always they want me to donate a minimum of $25 or $35.  Sometimes I put it aside when I think I may actually do so.  But what happens is since I am on Social Security and Unemployment my finances begin to run out rather quickly and I am unable to donate to anyone.

I begin to wonder if you have to be poor to be a Democrat.  I believe in the things that those whose want me to donate, but since I am barely able to make it from one month to the next and not sure if I will be able to even have the Internet the next month or not, I really frustrated.

I sometimes think that I should just give up let those who are in control really do not know what they are doing.  We took are reserve troops and rebuild an country in Iraq. 

When the Democratic President who would not stand up to anybody and been cutting back military left office, the budget was balanced.  When the Republican President who stood up to everybody, the budget was in shambles. 

Yet, all financial programs that were put into motion in the when the Democratic President was in office were done by the same team that is in office now.  And we are blaming the man who lead the nation while programs were in motion.

No one stops to look at the fact that the same people were there setting up the situation to start in motion.  The Democrats went about on the Internet and gained the younger vote but they did not know what they were voting for.  Everybody wanted change.

But, it was the same political group talking about change that had set up the financial mess that we are now in.  Now we have all these stimulus packages beginning.  Each State is grabbing as much as they possibly can. 

What will happen is taxes will be raised supposed on those who on the rich.  And there will be redistribution of wealth.  That sounds more and more like Socialism and Marxism.

These are just of few of my view while WWE Smackdown is ranting in the background.

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Talking about YouTube - Would YOU put THIS in YOUR living room?
  

The Department of Homeland Security in Action by Michael Yon
04 January 2009

A Thai friend with whom I have traveled in Europe and Asia took time off from her job to meet me in Florida over the holidays.  This was a good time for me, as it was between reporting stints in the war. My friend, Aew, had volunteered to work with me in Afghanistan or Iraq, but I declined because many people around me get shot or blown up.  So we were looking forward to spending some vacation time together.  She comes from a good family; and one that is wealthier than most American families.  She didn’t come here for a job.  Well-educated, she has a master's degree and works as a bank officer in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Aew was excited about the prospect of visiting America for the first time, though she had traveled to many other countries and had the passport stamps to prove it.  She had no problem getting a U.S. visa, and she was paying her own way to fly.

Problems began when she entered the airport in Bangkok.  Aew had a one-way ticket to America, because we would travel back in the direction of the war before she would go home, but we did not know our exact itinerary, so she hadn't bought a round-trip ticket back to Thailand.  Before boarding the flight from Thailand to America, Northwest Airlines required Aew to buy a return ticket for 53,905 Thai bhat, or about $1,200 for a return ticket, else they would not let her board the flight.  Aew paid by her credit card and pushed on.  Understandably, it raises suspicions when a foreign national doesn't have a round-trip ticket in an age of massive illegal immigration -- even if that person is an educated professional with a home and career, and even though Aew has a ten-year visa to the United States.  Nevertheless, Aew paid approximately $1,200 for the return ticket, and so now had a return ticket.

 
That is how it began.  She boarded the jet, eventually landed in Japan and then Minneapolis, before the final leg to Orlando.  While thousands of people have canceled trips to Orlando due to the failing economy, Aew was coming with cash to spend in Florida.  We would go to Disney, Kennedy Space Center and many other places; she'd be seeing the sights while I was meeting with military and other people in preparation for my upcoming return to Afghanistan for the long year ahead.

 
I first met Aew in Indonesia during a break from the Iraq war.  I had gone to visit the site of the murder of my friend Beata Pawlak, who, along with about two hundred other people, was killed in a terrorist attack on the island of Bali.
After meeting in Indonesia, Aew and I stayed in touch.  We traveled at different times to Singapore, Great Britain, Thailand and Nepal.  Yet when Aew landed in Minneapolis, she was hustled away by an immigration officer.  After approximately 24 hours of exhausting travel, Aew was detained for about 90 minutes without cause, and as a result, she missed her connecting flight to Orlando.  She was brought into a small room where she saw a camera peering down.  The officer conducting the shakedown wore a name tag: "Knapp."  Five times she had traveled to China with zero problems, but Knapp grilled Aew with a long series of questions, rifling through her wallet, handling her credit cards and reading them carefully, questioning her piece by piece.  Her passport, thick with extra pages, showed stamps from countries around the world.  It contained the valid U.S. visa, and stamps and visas from countries she had traveled to, such as Great Britain, Japan, China, Nepal, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei, New Zealand and Cambodia.  She had traveled to some of these countries on multiple occasions, always paying her own way.  She never had problems.  Not even in China.  We had toured Parliament together in London, on a private expedition led by Member of Parliament Adam Holloway.  Aew was very interested to see the Royal Family, and was beside herself when I met Lady Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who at that time read this website.  The British, including military officers, had treated her very well and she left with positive memories of Great Britian.

But that was Great Britain.  The American shakedown was just starting.  Her sister, Puk, was sending me SMS messages from Thailand, worried that Aew seemed to have disappeared.  I had bought Puk's daughters, North and Nurse, who are 8 and 9, a "talking globe" so they could track the travels of their Aunt Aew.  The last time I saw North and Nurse, we had taken them to the Chiang Mai zoo, and also to an elephant camp where the elephants paint.  Puk's husband, Bey, is a high-ranking Thai police officer who, as part of his duties, helps organize security for the Thai Royal Family. 

While the U.S. Immigration officer named Knapp rifled through all her belongings, Aew sat quietly.  She was afraid of this man, who eventually pushed a keyboard to Aew and coerced her into giving up the password to her e-mail address.  Officer Knapp read through Aew's e-mails that were addressed to me, and mine to her.  Aew would tell me later that she sat quietly, but “Inside I was crying.”  She had been so excited to finally visit America.  America, the only country ever to coerce her at the border.  This is against everything I know about winning and losing the subtle wars.   This is against everything I love about the United States.  We are not supposed to behave like this.  Aew would tell me later that she thought she would be arrested if she did not give the password.
The Government of the United States was reading the private e-mails of a U.S. citizen (me).  The Department of “Homeland Security” was at work, intimidating visitors with legitimate visas.  They had at least 24 hours to check her out before she landed in the United States.  What kind of security is this?  The Department of Homeland Security was at this moment more like the Department of Intimidation.

Officer Knapp called my phone as I was driving to the Orlando airport.  I was going to be there two hours early to make sure I would be on time, so that she had a warm welcome to my country.  But instead, Knapp was busy detaining Aew in Minneapolis and was on my cell phone asking all types of personal questions that he had no business asking.  Sensing that Aew was in trouble, I answered his questions.  Mr. Knapp was a rude smart aleck.  The call is likely recorded and that recording would bear out my claims.  This officer of the United States government, a grown man, had coerced personal information from a Thai woman who weighs 90 pounds.  I asked Aew later why she gave him the e-mail password, and she answered simply, "I was afraid," and “I thought I would be arrested.”
What could I say to alleviate any of this?  Could I say, "This is the U.S., nothing to be afraid of."?  The world already sees us as senseless bullies.  Aew might have been detained indefinitely; even I was concerned that the Department of Homeland Security might detain Aew for no reason.  Essentially, she had no rights.  They had already coerced her e-mail password out of her head through intimidation.

This does not make me feel safe: Our Homeland Security was focusing on a 40-year-old Thai bank officer while there are real bad guys out there. Thailand and the United States have had good relations for 175 years, and Thailand is one of the few countries in the world that is proud to say they are friends of the United States.  There are no threats to Americans from Thai people -- who, among other relevant things, are mostly not Muslims.  The King of Thailand was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard.  I have never seen the King with a gun; only a camera.  His 2009 New Year’s speech was also a call for peace.  The King and his family helped bring widespread education to Thailand, which created a special problem.  Today there are large numbers of highly educated, successful women looking for highly educated men.  I remember General (ret.) McCaffrey, our former drug Czar, telling me a couple of years ago that the King of Thailand was incredibly important in wiping out opium poppies in Thailand.  The King of Thailand is highly respected by the government of the United States.  He is a very good man.

 
During World War II, when the Japanese encouraged the Thai people to fight us, the Thai government actually declared war on the United States and Great Britain.  But the Thai Ambassador in Washington refused to deliver the declaration of war.  The upshot was that the United States refused to declare war on Thailand, and the Thai people formed a resistance against the Japanese.
Thai people refused to fight Americans.  Instead, they attacked the Japanese.  Has our government had problems recently with 90-pound, 40-year-old Thai women?  Do they blow things up?  Aew doesn’t even know how to light a match.  She doesn’t smoke or drink, and is more upright than your average southern Baptist.  She can’t even curse and gets upset if she hears me say a bad word about someone.  “Michael!” she says, “Don’t say that!” 

When I discovered that she had missed her flight, after about 24 hours of travel thus far, I called immigration at Minneapolis and asked to speak with Officer Knapp.  Knapp got on the phone, but this time it was me questioning him.  Knapp told me it was legal to read e-mails.  I asked for his first name, but he was afraid to give his first name, which was rather strange for someone working within the confines of an airport where everyone has been searched for weapons.  Where I work, in a war zone, soldiers give their first and last names and face Taliban and al Qaeda heads up, man to man.  I write about al Qaeda, Taliban and other terrorist groups who kill thousands of people.  My name is Michael Yon.  My first name is Michael.  Mr. Knapp hides behind a badge bullying a woman whose only activities are Yoga, reading, travel, and telling me what is healthy and unhealthy to eat.  Knapp is a face of Homeland Security.  How many other officers at Homeland Security bully 90-pound women, but are afraid to give their own names? 

Knowing that Homeland Security officers are creating animosity and anxiety at our borders does not make me feel safer.  How many truly bad guys slip by while U.S. officers stand in small rooms and pick on little women?

I have just returned from Afghanistan and Iraq on a trip with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and I can assure you that we can do better.  We do not have to violate human rights and insult our closest allies to maintain our security. 

Meanwhile, Aew had missed two flights; standby seats were full on the second flight, and I was considering flying from Florida to Minneapolis to get her myself.  I did not want Aew to have to sleep in the airport overnight.

I had intended to show Aew a bit of my country.  But it's taking a little while for her to get over her discomfort at being in America.  She was treated better in China.  So was I.

I put off doing laundry yesterday after my meeting which I normally do on a Friday and was going to do it on Saturday.  But I was committed to go to the meeting by my sponsor.  So I came home and decided to wake up and work on the Jeep and never did fix the turn signals.  I wound up taking a late nap after dinner, surfing TV and the Web back and forth.

I planned to wash all of my laundry.  I live only 3 short blocks away from the laundromat, which I normally drive,  keeping all of my laundry supplies in my Jeep.  Well, I went out to my Jeep and there was a ominous, "Click!" as I tried to start it.  It looks like the lights light up, but it will not start.  It did yesterday.  I am out of orange juice, vitamin C and planned to go to the bank and borrow enough money until payday so I can get vitamins and orange juice.

I wound up walking to the laundry mat.  I really need the exercise, but not like this.  After my laundry I will call AAA.  And I was planning to call my dentist, but unless I can get my Jeep going, that will have to be postponed as will everything else in my life.  It seems like every time I mention out loud being thankful about my Jeep running it breaks down.  So, I am learning to keep quiet about my being thankful out loud.

I am waiting now for the laundry to get done and my cell phone alarm to go off so I can walk back up there.  I need to get a 3 wheel bike and then I can take my laundry down there.  Better yet,  I should fix the machines here....

Learning not to procrastinate....and maybe I will have more "Freedom!" LOL

I spent the movie watching the Movie Braveheart about William Wallace.  I think tomorrow I will play the Age of Empires game about William Wallace or at least be the Celts in the game.  At the end of the game I found myself in tears after he had died and Robert Bruce had taken over and become King.  My background is Scot-Irish.  It was the English that finally took a group of the Scots and relocated them to Ireland in an attempt of political control.  The Scots-Irish have been battling the British ever since.  We relocate to the Americas  and people like Andrew Jackson on the forefront. 

Much of the past records were burned in the War of 1812 by the British.  My great great grandfather had come over here in 1808 but there does not seem be any record of him.  My own father was in the US Army and spent time fighting for the United States of America.

I wound up in the US Navy and am a Viet Nam veteran.  So in the movie when the character, William Wallace, cried out, "Freedom," that is what stirred up the emotion inside me.  I have always been ready to fight and die for freedom.  Now I see my country taking away the freedom, bit by bit, under the guise of protecting the the little man, I want to cry out as William Wallace did in the movie, "Freedom."  I feel like that my freedom is being taking away.

I see those who supposed represent me not caring about the religious freedoms that this country was based upon. 

I want to cry out, "Freedom."

To friends of Bill W., hang in there at this time of year.  I probably will go to a meeting tomorrow, then head to a dinner somewhere.  My kids are in Illinois, one sister in New York, a brother in New Orleans, and a sister in Colorado after Katrina.  So here I am in Florida after my life has gone from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Georgia to Germany, 3 different places, back to Georgia, then to New Orleans, La.  I lived in Washington, DC for a short time right around the corner when Richard Nixon was President and men looking for food on the corner right up the street.  I would go to work after dodging them and then help Eric Severide buy 100 shares of various different stock.  That was before the days of computers and I was the teletype operator to the stock floor.  I went back to New Orleans with my young wife and then had a chance to move to Danville, Illinois with Western Union.  I wound up quitting the job and moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and stayed there for 25 years after someone had told me I should move back where I came from.

It took me all the way until I was after 60 years old that I realized that I was responsible for myself.  I guess that is why I did not last through 4 marriages.  Normally Christmas time is bad time of year for me, now I out of work and not stressed out by all the people coming and going with all their garbage.  I am having a relaxed time and not really worried what is going on with the country's economy that I can't do anything about.  I have learned how to let go of things that I cannot control.  Now I just like battle the traffic with my 5 speed, 6 cylinder 310,000 mile Jeep. 

So as I sit down to eat my Polish sausage and rice dinner,  Merry Christmas to all.

I just finished watching a Las Vegas episode in which Danny went off as a Marine and came back from combat. He was unable to sleep or wouldn't sleep when he had come back.  It turned out that all of his unit had been killed and there was no one to watch his back.  When he asked his mentor if he had had to do what he did, then he fell asleep when he heard yes.

Sometimes,   I feel like I really don't have anyone to watch my back.  And I don't sleep well.

It started out with wanting to get caught up reading my unread e-mails that had been stacked up like crazy.  Recently, I have had teeth pulled and new dental work done, so all I could do is make soup, watch TV and sleep.  Plus, it has been cold here in Florida and my air condition is now a heater blowing hot air over my head.  I finally read one of my e-mails “Black Five” who referred me to the E-Harmony Shakedown by Michelle Malkin.  Since I put her, here on this blog I was immediately on alert and had to read it.

Not only that I had applied to  e-Harmony before.  When I applied to e-Harmony for dating, I was graciously turned away.  That’s probably because I have been married 4 times.  Since they are a Christian organization, I had respect for that.  My first marriage had ended in an annulment after 13 years, LOL.  Amazing what can be done with money and power.  The second one was the parent of my two sons.  More later.

The third one started to divorce me, and I had to finish it.  She wound up dying in a fire in Maryland.  I found out about it from one of my sons, ironically as he had become friends with her first ex-husband.   The fourth one became friends with my second son but, we wound up going through a divorce.

So, when I heard that a gay organization had filed a lawsuit against them, I was really angry, because I personally have had gay friends in my life time but I don’t see any point in forcing anything on anyone.  When people start to force things one anyone that’s when my Scots-Irish dander gets really riled up.

So I wanted to write Michele Malkin a letter.  I thought I would go to my Blog site and find the milblogs and look her up and write to her and tell here what I thought and thanks for the article.  When I got to the blog site, I could not find the milblogs…It took all morning to revamp my blog site and here I am writing another blog and getting ready to eat some lunch before I go visit a buddy of mine. 

Next we will have the Gestapo coming to tell us we need to listen to whatever needs to be said….   Had enough.

When I did my Fourth and Fifth Step of AA, I stopped obsessing on my life.  Up until that point,  I had spent the time obsessing on my life and walking backwards in life.

Now, I am able to life one day at a time in the present.  Once in a while I get upset about certain things.  Like tonight there was a show on NCIS about a Marine being drugged with steroids.  I was upset, because I remember it was not until I stopped drinking that I started having memories of combat that are not on my records.  It is that part of my life that I can get really upset if I spent any time on it.