Great Americans

[Baserunner]

Don't know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers who have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the United States , especially burn victims. There are some buildings there called Fisher Houses.

The Fisher House is a Hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the Hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base, but as you can imagine, they are almost filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his checkbook out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

The question is -why do:
Brad Pitt
Madonna,
Tom Cruise and
other Hollywood fluff
make front page news with their ridiculous antics and Denzel Washington's Patriotism doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the Local newspaper in San Antonio .

[Baserunner]

I copied the above post from a thread in Texas, where some LD'ed, Baby Blue, Girlie Man got his red silk mini briefs in a bunch and, said it was a lie.
Mr. Washington did not pull out his checkbook on the spot, but before leaving the BAMC, he did make an undertimined amount, but sizeable donation for an additional Fisher House to be built. Google it if you must.

[Lesson Learned FL]

Baserunner wrote:

I copied the above post from a thread in Texas, where some LD'ed, Baby Blue, Girlie Man got his red silk mini briefs in a bunch and, said it was a lie.
Mr. Washington did not pull out his checkbook on the spot, but before leaving the BAMC, he did make an undertimined amount, but sizeable donation for an additional Fisher House to be built. Google it if you must.

It's always a good idea to check out this type of story at Snopes before posting or emailing it because you can be sure that someone will and let you know if it's not true. I've been caught like that. Regardless, I think Denzil Washington is a good actor and is probably a very nice person. And according to Snopes he did make a sizeable donation.

[Shootist]

Baserunner wrote:

Don't know whether you heard about this but Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center, in San Antonio, Texas (BAMC) the other day. This is where soldiers who have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the United States , especially burn victims. There are some buildings there called Fisher Houses.
The Fisher House is a Hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the Hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base, but as you can imagine, they are almost filled most of the time.
While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his checkbook out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.
The question is -why do:
Brad Pitt
Madonna,
Tom Cruise and
other Hollywood fluff
make front page news with their ridiculous antics and Denzel Washington's Patriotism doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the Local newspaper in San Antonio .

Outstanding behavior on Mr. Washington's part... We need more like him for sure!

[Baserunner]

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.'(Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe..) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life.Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
==========
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again..
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world..
A real star is the U..S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad

To be continued

[Baserunner]

Continued

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin....or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

[Baserunner]

Over the years, Ben Stien has been a wishy washy personality going from far left to half right, glad to see he has finally taken off the rose colored glasses, and let the harsh light of common sense into his writing.
we need more of his type to get it togeather and become Real Americans.

[Baserunner]

Michael Jackson dies and it’s 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news. The media has no honor…

Ed Freeman

You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.

He's coming anyway.

And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.

Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

[Shootist]

Baserunner wrote:

Michael Jackson dies and it’s 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news. The media has no honor…
Ed Freeman
You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.
You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter and you look up to see an unarmed Huey, but it doesn't seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.
Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway.
And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire as they load 2 or 3 of you on board.
Then he flies you up and out, through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.
And he kept coming back, 13 more times, and took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.
Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on Wednesday, June 25th, 2009, at the age of 80, in Boise , ID. May God rest his soul.

AMEN!

[Baserunner]

As you might know, I'm working on the book WAR HEROES: Voices from Afghanistan. One of the stories is about PVT Channing Moss, who was impaled by a live RPG during a Taliban ambush while on patrol. Army protocol says that medevac choppers are never to carry anyone with a live round in him. Even though they feared it could explode, the flight crew said damn the protocol and flew him to the nearest aid station. Again, protocol said that in such a case the patient is to be put in a sandbagged area away from the surgical unit, given a shot of morphine and left to wait (and die) until others are treated. Again, the medical team ignored the protocol. Here's a seven-minute video put together by the Military Times, which includes actual footage of the surgery where Dr. John Oh, a Korean immigrant who became a naturalized citizen and went to West Point , removed the live round with the help of volunteers and a member of the EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) team. I've interviewed several of the people involved. Moss has undergone six operations but is doing well at home in Gainesville , GA. To me, this is one of the most amazing stories I've ever worked on. I think you'll find the video pretty remarkable.

http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/video...


the Soldier, and the Surgeon are both, Great Americans.

[Baserunner]

Cozad Marine Honored For Valor
Omaha World-Herald, by Henry J. Cordes

In the heat of an ambush in Afghanistan's most lawless province, a 19-year-old Nebraskan jumped in front of a grenade to shield other Marines in his platoon. Richard Weinmaster was critically wounded by the blast. But the bloodied Cozad native stayed in the fight, firing his machine gun at the enemy position until he collapsed from his wounds. Looking back at the July 8, 2008, engagement, Weinmaster says he was “just doing my job.''

[Shootist]

Baserunner wrote:

Cozad Marine Honored For Valor
Omaha World-Herald, by Henry J. Cordes
In the heat of an ambush in Afghanistan's most lawless province, a 19-year-old Nebraskan jumped in front of a grenade to shield other Marines in his platoon. Richard Weinmaster was critically wounded by the blast. But the bloodied Cozad native stayed in the fight, firing his machine gun at the enemy position until he collapsed from his wounds. Looking back at the July 8, 2008, engagement, Weinmaster says he was “just doing my job.''

There is NO Greater American... than this young man...Those of his ilk are the reason we are free!

[vanished]

Baserunner, Who is that Nice looking couple in your profile picture? Hope you won't mind me askin?
By the way, great post. That boggles the mind. I would love to thank Richard Weinmaster personally for...as he put it.."just doing his job" God bless the young fella! Amazing!

[Baserunner]

vanished wrote:

Baserunner, Who is that Nice looking couple in your profile picture? Hope you won't mind me askin?
By the way, great post. That boggles the mind. I would love to thank Richard Weinmaster personally for...as he put it.."just doing his job" God bless the young fella! Amazing!

That would be Mr. and Mrs. Baserunner, their 45 Aniversary will be 26 Feb 10.

[vanished]

Baserunner wrote:

<quoted text>
That would be Mr. and Mrs. Baserunner, their 45 Aniversary will be 26 Feb 10.

Way to go...Marriages these day are lucky to last 45 min...much less forty five years. Congrats to you both.:)

[Baserunner]

Jeremiah Denton: War hero, cultural crusader
Classic book resurrected with 'rest of the story' of man who defied communists

Posted: November 10, 2009
9:49 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Jeremiah Denton in 1966 interview with Japanese TV

Adm. Jeremiah Denton was introduced to the nation in an extraordinary TV interview in 1966 in which he blinked in Morse code the word "torture" to alert military intelligence to his plight at the infamous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.

Denton, whose Navy A-6E Intruder jet was shot down over the North Vietnamese stronghold of Thanh Hoa, recounted his remarkable struggle to survive eight years of brutal captivity in a classic book that WND Books is reissuing today with a new epilogue.

In the new "When Hell was in Session," the former U.S. senator tells the rest of the story, picking up with the shock he experienced upon his return in 1973 to find his beloved nation had drastically changed since his capture in 1965.

"I saw the appearance of X-rated movies, adult magazines, massage parlors, the proliferation of drugs, promiscuity, pre-marital sex, and unwed mothers."

That scenario, he writes, was coupled with "the tumultuous post-war Vietnam political events, starting with Congress forfeiting our military victory, thus betraying our victorious American and allied servicemen and women, who had won the war at great cost of blood and sacrifice."

Told the worldwhat was going on, and the North Veits didn't know.

[Baserunner]

Clint Eastwood made Legion of Honour commander in France

The Telegraph [UK], by Staff

French President Nicolas Sarkozy presented the 79-year-old actor and director with the decoration, honouring his body of work, his longevity and his ability to delight audiences around the globe, according to the award citation. It is unusual for a foreigner to be elevated to the rank of commander of the French Legion of Honour but Eastwood, who went from playing tough guy roles like Dirty Harry to directing critically acclaimed films.

The French are A OK on this one.

[Shogun]

Baserunner wrote:

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.'(Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe..) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life.Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.
Ben Stein's Last Column...
==========
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end..
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again..
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world..
A real star is the U..S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad . He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad
To be continued

Who ever said movie stars were anything other than movie stars? If they entertain me they have done their job. I don't consult the views of John Wayne for my political views anymore than I do those of Spike Lee.
When one of them does something particularly admirable, as Denzil Washington did, I say "kudos" to them and hope they keep up the good work. When one of them gets caught in some scandal it merely reminds me of how nice it is to have anonymity in my own life, but I don't stop going to their movies if it is something I think will entertain me for two hours.
Art is art, and life is life. They do imitate each other, but don't forget the operative word is "imitate".
;)

[Baserunner]

Certain movie stars are the ones saying they are more than they obviously are. If G W Bush is elected President, i'm leaving the country, how many said that, how many left.
Certain movie stars, and other entertainers in music, sports try to push their personal agenda on the population.
They should be required to, at the end of their statement, be required to state, that the information sthey provide, is their opinion only, just like the statement, This has been a paid political advertisement.

[Lesson Learned FL]

Baserunner wrote:

Certain movie stars are the ones saying they are more than they obviously are. If G W Bush is elected President, i'm leaving the country, how many said that, how many left.
Certain movie stars, and other entertainers in music, sports try to push their personal agenda on the population.
They should be required to, at the end of their statement, be required to state, that the information sthey provide, is their opinion only, just like the statement, This has been a paid political advertisement.

Why would anyone think it was other than the the speaker's own opinion? Should Hannity and Beck be required to say on their programs "this is my opinion only". That's an absurd idea.