If you ever get the chance to visit Washington D.C and Smithsonian Museum of National Air and Space Museum, you will find Martin B-26 Marauder called “Flak Bait”.

My grandfather was a tail gunner and bombardier on that plane.  Recently looking at old photos of WWII most notably D-day, I started to think about Nose Art and plane painting.

My thoughts quickly were saddened that in a world run amok of “PC” we will not see many of the pictures and could not even think of doing it now.  Sexist would be thrown out!

Please take the time to look at the website I have listed below and some of the pictures of the art and think about our history and where we are going!

I would have posted them, but those who just want to complain and find objectable and offensive things would complain to Mark Maley.

So, I will not post them and my rights of free speech are diminished. 

These same people would love to have the bloody pictures I am sure wiped clean because they might be offensive.  Yes, change the whole history of things!  In the end, those “PC” people will have diminished more than our rights and freedoms!  They will have diminished the sacrifices those that fought and came before us.  They will have diminished our future and that of our children.

My niece told me that in school she is taught, “Practice makes progress not perfection!”  She told me that her teacher said you cannot be perfect, so don’t try! 

Oh yeah remember teachers are not suppose to be political just like Mayors, Alderman and school board members.  All nonpolitical positions!  All non-partisan positions!  Yeah, right!  Ideology is in the core beliefs of all.

Pictures here

C-47 "Lady Luck"

C-47 "Ready 4 Duty"

EC-135 "Nasty Stuff" Avionics Test Bed

EC-135 "Bird of Prey" Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA)

"Widow Maker"

If you said, "President's Day,” you are technically wrong.

The real legal name of the third Monday in February is still "George Washington’s Birthday"

His actual birthday is February 22, 1732 and since Feb 22^nd would move around the calendar on different days, the government wanted it to be celebrate it on the third Monday in February to make it easier and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday February 12, 1809 was added and we pay tribute to all presidents.

Here is the technical explanation:

Until 1971, both February 12 and February 22 were observed as federal public holidays to honor the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and George Washington (February 22).

In 1971, President Richard Nixon proclaimed one single federal public holiday, the Presidents' Day, to be observed on the third Monday of February, honoring all past presidents of the United States of America.

Please Note: The Federal statute designates this day as Washington's Birthday, President Nixon issued a proclamation declaring the holiday as "President's Day" in 1971.  President Nixon erroneously believed that a Presidential proclamation on the matter carried the same weight as an Executive Order.

Since that change in 1971, the common term has been "President's Day".

George Washington, born February 22, 1732 in Virginia, was a natural leader, instrumental in creating a united nation out of a conglomeration of struggling colonies and territories.  The first president of the United States of America is affectionately honored as "the father of his country."

http://www.usemb.se/HOLIDAYS/Celebrate/george.html

While listening to the Jay Weber show Wednesday May 21, 2008, Jay was talking about how the Democrats have changed after the Vietnam War.  When I would hear my dad talk to and about my Grandpa and how he was a Democrat until after the Vietnam War, I never really understood it.  The Democrats, lead by the Liberals, went on a campaign to hate the military, our military, and work to dismantle it.

It is not the Democrats, but the Liberals that are the problem.  The far left people are the ones that give Democrats a bad name.  In a discussion with fellow blogger Greg Kowalski, I was misinformed that he was a Liberal.  You can be a Democrat and be a Liberal or you can be a Democrat and not be a Liberal.  They are not the same!

Here is a letter from Democrat Joseph Lieberman about his party and a youtube video called “In 52 Secs Why Barack Obama Cannot Win A General Election” that shows Obama's disgust and dismantle of American values.

The far left has taken over the Democrats and have earned the title “Liberals - The Loony Left”.

The Greatest American President in my lifetime so far was once a Democrat, until he felt the Democrats were moving to far off course and switched to become a Fiscally Social Conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan was that man.

I have used many of President Ronald Reagan’s quotes and have had some Liberals and Democrats quote their Presidents, but it is the old Democrats that were not far to the left’s quotes.

Please give the letter a read and watch the video even if you are a Democrat or Liberal since they are both from your party.  Give each one the proper thought.

Democrats and Our Enemies

By JOSEPH LIEBERMAN

May 21, 2008; Page A19

How did the Democratic Party get here?  How did the party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy drift so far from the foreign policy and national security principles and policies that were at the core of its identity and its purpose?

Beginning in the 1940s, the Democratic Party was forced to confront two of the most dangerous enemies our nation has ever faced: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  In response, Democrats under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy forged and conducted a foreign policy that was principled, internationalist, strong and successful.

This was the Democratic Party that I grew up in – a party that was unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American, a party that was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders.  It was a party that understood that either the American people stood united with free nations and freedom fighters against the forces of totalitarianism, or that we would fall divided.

This was the Democratic Party of Harry Truman, who pledged that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."

And this was the Democratic Party of John F. Kennedy, who promised in his inaugural address that the United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of freedom."

This worldview began to come apart in the late 1960s, around the war in Vietnam.  In its place, a very different view of the world took root in the Democratic Party.  Rather than seeing the Cold War as an ideological contest between the free nations of the West and the repressive regimes of the communist world, this rival political philosophy saw America as the aggressor – a morally bankrupt, imperialist power whose militarism and "inordinate fear of communism" represented the real threat to world peace.

It argued that the Soviets and their allies were our enemies not because they were inspired by a totalitarian ideology fundamentally hostile to our way of life, or because they nursed ambitions of global conquest.  Rather, the Soviets were our enemy because we had provoked them, because we threatened them, and because we failed to sit down and accord them the respect they deserved.  In other words, the Cold War was mostly America's fault.

Of course, that leftward lurch by the Democrats did not go unchallenged.  Democratic Cold Warriors like Scoop Jackson fought against the tide.  But despite their principled efforts, the Democratic Party through the 1970s and 1980s became prisoner to a foreign policy philosophy that was, in most respects, the antithesis of what Democrats had stood for under Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy.

Then, beginning in the 1980s, a new effort began on the part of some of us in the Democratic Party to reverse these developments, and reclaim our party's lost tradition of principle and strength in the world.  Our band of so-called New Democrats was successful sooner than we imagined possible when, in 1992, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were elected.  In the Balkans, for example, as President Clinton and his advisers slowly but surely came to recognize that American intervention, and only American intervention, could stop Slobodan Milosevic and his campaign of ethnic slaughter, Democratic attitudes about the use of military force in pursuit of our values and our security began to change.

This happy development continued into the 2000 campaign, when the Democratic candidate – Vice President Gore – championed a freedom-focused foreign policy, confident of America's moral responsibilities in the world, and unafraid to use our military power.  He pledged to increase the defense budget by $50 billion more than his Republican opponent – and, to the dismay of the Democratic left, made sure that the party's platform endorsed a national missile defense.

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a "humble foreign policy" and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.

Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions.  The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001.  The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on.  He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life.  If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead, a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush.  I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own.  But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made.  When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves.  By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

Far too many Democratic leaders have kowtowed to these opinions rather than challenging them.  That unfortunately includes Barack Obama, who, contrary to his rhetorical invocations of bipartisan change, has not been willing to stand up to his party's left wing on a single significant national security or international economic issue in this campaign.

In this, Sen. Obama stands in stark contrast to John McCain, who has shown the political courage throughout his career to do what he thinks is right – regardless of its popularity in his party or outside it.

John also understands something else that too many Democrats seem to have become confused about lately – the difference between America's friends and America's enemies.

There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments.  Yet what Mr. Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet.

Mr. Obama has said that in proposing this, he is following in the footsteps of Reagan and JFK.  But Kennedy never met with Castro, and Reagan never met with Khomeini.  And can anyone imagine Presidents Kennedy or Reagan sitting down unconditionally with Ahmadinejad or Chavez?  I certainly cannot.

If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies.

A great Democratic secretary of state, Dean Acheson, once warned, "no people in history have ever survived, who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”  This is a lesson that today's Democratic Party leaders need to relearn.

Mr. Lieberman is an Independent Democratic senator from Connecticut.  This article is adapted from a speech he gave May 18 at a dinner hosted by Commentary magazine.

In 52 Secs Why Barack Obama Cannot Win A General Election

Obama Claims He's Visited 57 States 5-9-08

Day 5 – Still No response from the Mayor

Amazing, the leader (in name only) votes something down, is silent, and will probably gets away with it.  Hey, only in Cudahy!

It was requested that I do a monthly review of the most looked at topics I wrote.  I will run down the top 10 and give a small overview of each. 

Some of these have an unfair advantage because they are older and have had the chance to be looked at longer.  By far, the shorter time Wal-Mart articles have more people view them quicker.  Many people still want to hear about Wal-Mart from both sides of the issue.

People keep emailing me offline in private and that is good.  I would like people to start making comments.  The South Shore viewers don’t seem to want to publicly comment, by how many private emails I get vs. the comments feature used.

1. Turf War – What to Build? –Yes it is a Wal-Mart post and I talked about TIFs and how the Mayor doesn’t want the Wal-Mart and how this chance may not come again. I also included a letter from a reader that they sent to the Mayor and my responses to what the Mayor replied.

2. Real Voter Intimidation – I talked about how during the 2006 election my neighbor was intimidated and took down his sign in fear of retribution from his union steward.

3. ** Adults Only **  – The title maybe misleading to a few, but the subject matter was how adult content is on the web and we must watch what our children do on the web.

4. One Must Look Back To See The Future  – Here I wrote about that sometimes one must look back to see the future and how Mayor McCue had some foreshadowing in his campaign pledge about Wal-Mart.  Cudahy, as is the nation, is in a recession and how in a downturn we should not pass up the opportunity of this Wal-Mart.

5. History Repeating Page Two  –I wrote about the info a reader emailed me about a Cudahy School closing and Wal-Mart spin.

6. Plan Commission   – I wrote about what happen at the last Plan Commission meeting about Cudahy Station.  How some members didn’t even understand what they were to be voting on that night.

7. Proposal On The Table  – I wrote about what is the Wal-Mart proposal, TIF, and the Plan Commission.

8. Teen’s Common Sense Sometimes Lacking  – I wrote about a report I came across on how Florida legislators are encouraging a review of their "abstinence only" sex education programs after a recent survey completed by Florida teens returned some curious results of not understanding things like drinking bleach prevents HIV.  By now way am I attacking "abstinence only", just bring to light what they found.

9. Flamethrower  –I wrote about what a person said to me about how I deal with the Mayor and if I hate him.  I may be ruffling feathers and again once you write it, and sign it, you can’t hide from it something I wish the city would do.

10. Keeping Us In The “Noir”  – Keeping Us In The "Noir" is about how we are in the dark (Noir) on may things in government and how with open records laws, the information should be public and easily obtainable.  I wrote about how many of these very things should be on the web at a mouse click away from you and I to read and know.

I hope everyone enjoys reading my posts.  You may not agree with me, but maybe what I have to say will shed some new light on matters and make you pause.  I am not a reporter, but a commentator.  I do not get paid, work for the city, or have a secret agenda.  I gain nothing personally from doing this blog other than the satisfaction of being able to put “The Way I See It” out for others to read.  I do it because I think it needs to be said.  I try to be fair and when I see something I don’t agree with, I let it be known.

Many people have said I am hard on the Mayor in his first year and I write blogs that don’t show his job performance in a good light.  When I see something that he does great, I will blog on it.

Hey, I am not the only one blogging on the Cudahy Now website, Greg Janisch was McCue’s campaign Treasurer and he can blog.  Just because I am critical of the Mayor’s job performance, does not make me a person who is attacking Ryan McCue personally nor am I character assassinating him!  This is about his job performance period!  We all have freedom of speech and a voice; I just choose to use mine.

Here is what a reader, Dave Taylor, said in a comment:

“Randy, there's a lot of people in Cudahy who back you up, even if they are too scared to admit it.  We should all be thankful that someone is willing to take a stand for what is right for our city; like you said, "...just want Cudahy to be better", too bad there are egos that get in the way of the good the city could do.  There isn't any reason to be shameful of an opinion, that's what makes us human (not robots) and why our country is a great one!

Sometimes you may feel your comments fall of deaf ears, but the truth is that people ARE reading and they ARE listening.  We rally behind you and hopefully, you are stronger in your plight for a better Cudahy because of it.  You are a voice that matters!  You are looking out for the betterment of Cudahy!  You are taking a stand, unafraid of whose feathers you ruffle!  Those of us who stand behind will continue to support you, even if the “powers that be” wish we weren’t listening!

Keep up the good work…your supporters need your voice!”

Someone has talked to my superiors at mycommunitynow.com to have my work censored or shutdown.  The claim was I lie, spread rumors, and have false and inaccurate information.  I try to source my work and some comes from people in government that do not like the direction we are headed or people close to a situation that feel some injudicious is being done.  I have always believed in correct information and not disinformation.  If something is truly wrong let me know and I will correct it, but don’t be all that upset and try and shut me down because you don’t LIKE what I am saying!  People if what I am hearing from those inside is true, some scary things are coming or happening.  Hypothetically, it might even be something like a change of salary ordinances for health insurances that is not fair and done evenly.  Should it not be changed for all and not leave out anyone?  Fair is fair.  That is a hypothetical, but watch it might just come true.

I will not stop until the misinformation, disinformation and no information are brought to light.  More and more people are emailing me with things.  These are very reliable people and trustworthy people.  Together we can all make a difference.  I will NEVER sell you out and I have been asked who is telling me things.  The wheel of information doesn’t need to stop spinning just because it might ruffle some feathers.

History will show that we won the war, but lost control in Iraq.  When President Bush declared that we had won in Iraq, he was not lying.  We won the military war!  It was the ensuing civil unrest that we lost in the public eye.  Iraq became a police state and our troops have not been equipped to deal with this.  The problem with Iraq is Iraq.  This country has been at war with itself and its neighbors for over a thousand years.  The Shiites and Sunnis have thus far been unable to put their ancient hatreds aside in order to work together to create a rule-of-law constitutional democracy.  We would not and could not just swoop in and fix this state of affairs.

The United States, under the direction of President Bush, vowed that we would help rebuild this war torn nation.  I am a Republican and support President Bush, but we did not learn from history.  Rather than of the U.S. taxpayers footing the bill, we need a “Marshall Plan” like the one used after World War II.  Here is a case where history did not repeat.  Too bad we did not learn from our history.

For those that may have forgotten or don’t know what the “Marshall Plan” plan is I will give the short version from “Rise of the American Nation Textbook”.

After World War II, Europe and Japan where devastated.  The United States was asked to help rebuild the nation that was devastated by poverty, disease and hunger stricken war torn nations.  The U.S. pledged its support to help in the rebuilding process.  General George C. Marshall, outlined his plan in an address at Harvard University on June 5, 1947 to the graduating class.  In surveying from the air and ground the ruined economies of Europe, Marshall noted the "possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned.”  Marshall stated that there could be "no political stability and no assured peace" without economic security, and that U.S. policy was "directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”  He called on America to "do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace." 

Full Speech

As the war began, President Bush and his staff needed to have recognition of the scales of the sectarian problems and the lack of infrastructure.  It wasn’t the war, but the aftermath that will do us in.  The American taxpayers should not have been asked to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq.  The Democrats backed President Bush into a corner by accusing him of going to war for oil.  Therefore, asking the Iraqi government to pay us back in oil for the rebuilding was out of the question.     

The rising hatred and extremists to the West way of thinking, values and ideas is now in the forefront.  The Middle East is rich in oil and should help in trying to stabilize its own region and not rely on money from the U.S.  The World nations need to put an end to terrorism and bring world peace.  More nations need to standup like the U.S. and be a leader instead of empty talk.  The U.S. can do it allow, but it should not have to.  The U.S. is the last “Super Power” left, however if we keep writing the blank checks for nations attempting to help themselves we will go broke!