Memorial Day comes

A while back I posted this:

http://tallcotton-ppjakajim.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/p-8s-p3s-p5s-and-others.html

about the Navy's new patrol aircraft. One of the links was of a

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGPW4NeWFAU

 P5M-1 taking off whi h lead me to this

The last night of November, 65 years ago Monday, was wet with rain and fog. A big Navy reconnaissance plane bound from Alameda to Hawaii developed engine trouble over the Golden Gate. The pilot made a sweeping right turn, fighting to keep the plane in the air.



He failed. The plane crashed into the south face of Mount Tamalpais, above Mill Valley. Everyone aboard - eight young Navy fliers - was killed. It was Nov. 30, 1944.

snip

Sixty-five years later, almost to the day, Cerkel stood in the ruins of what is left - pieces of the aluminum fuselage, part of some kind of electrical device, even a corner of what was a bunk bed, rusted and lying under a small manzanita.



From the site, the hills of Marin roll down toward San Francisco Bay. The city itself on this day was invisible under a light mist. In the distance, the San Mateo County coast could be seen, curving away to the south. It was hard to see a single house and there was not a sound.


"You know," Cerkel said, "the plane crashed with such impact there may still be remains here. This is likely a grave site."


On an earlier visit last weekend, Cerkel put up a small marker with pictures of the dead crewmen. Underneath that he'd copied a sentence from the unit record of Navy Patrol Bombing Squadron 208:


"The squadron has no heroes, just individuals and crews who did their duty to the limit of their ability."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/29/MNFT1AQHAA.DTL

I guess that almost all, if not all, of the friends and relatives of the crewmen are dead. I would also guess that few, if anyone, remembers them or thinks of them.

Wouldn't hurt us to remember them in our prayers, would it?



"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine

Ten things possible only in America!

1) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $35,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.


2) Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black President, a black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black, but only 12% of the population is black.


3) Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee,
BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.


4) Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens.

6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7) Only in America could you need to present a driver's license to cash a check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.

8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).

9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year for total spending of $7 million PER
MINUTE, and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money.

10) Only in America could the rich people who pay 86% of all (FEDERAL) income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who don't pay any (FEDERAL) income taxes at all.

Hat tip to Larry P!



"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine