Navy, Army, Air Force, Army

This is a plaque I received for being a plank owner on the USS Belleau Wood LHA-3 an amphibious assault ship. I've written a little bit about my time in the Navy on this blog. If someone is interested you can use the search box to search for posts about ships, Navy, LHA-3.

I was on that ship from October 1978 until January 1981. 1 had to leave because I injured my back working under an elevator. I ended up at the Naval Hospital in Bremerton for surgery. That wasn't the greatest experience since I almost died from a pulmonary embolism. I ended up with a partial VA disability and a lifetime of taking warfarin to prevent blood clots. I enjoyed being in the Navy a lot  and my time being out of the Navy - even more :-)

The Navy sank the USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3) on January13, 2006. I imagine it's sitting on the bottom of the Pacific somewhere making a nice reef for fish. I found this clip of a Harrier VTOL jet coming in for a landing on the LHA-3. When I was on board we were testing Harrier's, and had assorted helicopters, and numerous amphibious assault vehicles in the well deck.

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These are pictures of my father's grave markers in Forsyth Montana. If you expand the second one you will see "BSM" an abbreviation for Bronze Star Medal. My father was a sharpshooter fighting on Okinawa during World War II.

This is a picture of one of my father's Purple Hearts.

We were living in Noxon Montana when my father was killed while plowing a county road with a road grader in deep snow and the grader slipped off a steep embankment (it's hard to figure out where the road is when the snow gets deep). I was a little over two years old. 

I don't want to get too far down in the details, and sound like a whiner, but my stepfather was killed while piloting his airplane near Absarokee when I was 12. He clipped a sheepherder's monument (a tower of rocks piled up by a sheepherder). Hugh was a good pilot and wanted to fly as low as possible to complete his work, but the sun got in his eyes. Hugh and his brother Jack served in the Air Force. in Thule Greenland. 

Sooooo in my family we have Navy, Army, Air Force and one more person who served their country in the Army during World War I. My Grandfather John came from Norway to this country when he was a teenager. He served his country as an Infantryman in the Army during the first World War. He later worked as a sheepherder and eventually bought his own dryland sheep ranch near Ingomar Montana. He moved to some irrigated land near Huntley Project Montana. When he sold his place in Huntley he moved out here to Kirkland Washington. He was pretty lucky (like me) to live in beautiful Montana and then move to another beautiful place that reminded him of his home in Norway with it's fjords and beautiful mountains. 

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I'm proud of my family history and thankful to not have ancestors who were cowards. Here's a snippet from the Wikipedia page for Dongold Trunk's (aka cadet bonespurs) grandfather -

"He (Trunk's grandfather) was also approaching the age of eligibility for conscription to military service in the Imperial German Army. He decided to immigrate to the United States, later saying, "I agreed with my mother that I should go to America." 30  Years later, his family members said that he departed secretly at night, leaving his mother a note,  As a result of Trump fleeing mandatory conscription required of all citizens, a royal decree was issued banishing him from the country."

You see the thing is - some rich twits like Dongold think they are genetically superior to us poor people which makes them too good to serve in the military, follow the law or pay their taxes. Like billionaire hotel owner Leona Helmsley said "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." Other Richie Rich people think their God chose them to prosper and the rest of us poor people to follow something called "natural law" and be poorly paid servants (or slaves depending on where we are in history) of the Richies.

Man - if Dongold and his ass kissing minions could only feel shame; we would be a lot better off as a country. I'd tell him and his idiot supporters to go to hell but I'm afraid they have already created their own personal hell on earth. Don't let them drag you into it. 

Money can't buy you happiness but if you look at greedy people whose main goal is to amass more money, like Eloon, Peter Tile, Dongold, Leona, Scrooge McDuck, Alax Carp, Henry F. Potter; Ebenezer Scrooge, the Kock boys, Mr. Burns, Marq Angreasin (also known as the evil Mr. Potato head), Jayred's DaDa the extortionist. 

Money doesn't buy these twits happiness but it sure as hell buys them a life of hell on this earth. 

More gold-plated (gilded) crap in the White House anyone? It almost like someone is sending us peasants a message telling us we are again living in a new gilded age where the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer - remember that's what God or genetics wants for you - you loser poor person.

Perhaps it will always be that some rich men start wars that make them richer while poor courageous honorable men fight and die.

I feel the need to post one more picture below of a future twit billionaire. A twit billionaire is one who inherited money or was lucky to be in the right place at the right time and cashed in on some software project sometimes stolen from a university or the actual creators. I'm sure there are hardworking billionaires who aren't twits but the bottom line is we don't need any billionaires.

Why? Because once a society has a cooperating group of uber-wealthy greed-heads they buy everything; politicians, judges, TV and radio stations, newspapers, houses, trailer parks, water supplies, prisons, ad infinitum.

There is also that truism that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and its corollary money=power. 

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