TheWiseOldFart

Our nation’s leadership at all levels is dominated by hypocrisy. One issue I have addressed multiple times involves our nation’s military who serve in war zones at the will of Congress and the Pentagon. It’s been the same old story all of my life, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon tells Congress that they need more troops to win the war, and they say how many. With each increase in the number of soldiers ready to give their lives for who knows what, the number of body bags is doubled. The fat asses who sit in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill will not be risking their lives or the lives of their children in battle. The irony is that our military leaders have lost every illegal and immoral war since WWII. The sad truth is that none of the young men I knew who were forced to fight in Vietnam knew what they were fighting for. I make an admission here about my negative personal feelings for the military. However, it has no influence in this story. In the mid 1960’s the war ...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart The word is “corruption.” If you enjoyed the CBS television series, “The Good Fight,” you might remember stories about “Memo 618.” In the show it was intended to reveal government corruption related to our federal court system. It was a metaphor. MEMO 618 BASED ON REALITY On February 19, 1942, FDR signed executive order 9066. It established Japanese interment camps within the United States. In 2002 George W. Bush created an internment camp for “suspected terrorists” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It remains open today. Thousands of American citizens, with Japanese heritage, were placed in internment camps without legal process. Sites included Tule Lake, California; Minidoka, Idaho; Manzanar, California; Topaz, Utah; Jerome, Arkansas; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Poston, Arizona; Granada, Colorado; and Rohwer, Arkansas. Young, male family members were frequently removed from the camps to work in other parts of our country. This remains one of our nation’s...

  Op-ed by TheWiseOldFart   My wife and I refuse to fly on any commercial airline. The last time we flew together was in 1998. We traveled to Florida to celebrate our daughter’s 21 st birthday. On the way home we stopped in Denver to visit my brother. This experience, a combination of very bad weather, and the complete lack of customer service, combined with blatant lies from employees of United Airlines, was painful and unforgivable. We vowed never to fly on a commercial airline again. I wrote a letter to United’s vice-president of customer relations, explaining that I had been an employee of an airline between 1967 and 1976 and informed them that I would never again fly on their airline. I received a return letter containing an apology and two $100 vouchers for future air travel. I returned the vouchers with a short note informing them that I meant what I said and would never patronize their company again. In 2009 and 2010, I was employed by the 2010 Decennial Censu...