Today’s posting is a reminder of Pearl Harbor Day with my observations and opinions on my selected news of the day.
REMEMBERING PEARL HARBOR – Amid all of the coverage of former President George H. W. Bush’s celebration of life, concern over Chinese tariff talks, immigration and border security, it is important that we not forget those brave souls who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
While I was just four years old on that day, as I grew up, I recall hearing a recording on an old 78 rpm record my father had of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s December 8, 1941 address to a joint session of Congress. It became known as his “day of infamy” speech. Unfortunately, that recording was lost after the passing my father.
That’s me in ’89 with one of the anchors from the USS Arizona.
In 1989, Mrs. Kramer and I had the opportunity to visit the memorial in the harbor recognizing the sinking of the USS Arizona. A memory of which we are often reminded and will not forget.
Since 9/11, we are often reminded that more lives were lost in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania that day than in Pearl Harbor.
While that serves as a convenient comparison of lives lost, I often wonder how that dastardly attack by the Japanese is covered in school history classes. In this day of so much revisionist history, in which historical statues are being removed, I regret it is most likely glossed over. I would imagine it depends on the teachers, who in most cases develop their own lesson plans.
Please … remember Pearl Harbor, and be sure that young people in your lives know about it.
IN MY EARLIER POSTS on the celebration of life of former President George H.W. Bush, I referred to the media talking heads who chose not to properly remember him, but to use his kinder and gentler persona to criticize our current president.
“Bush and Trump: A contrast impossible to miss,” was the headline of Susan Page’s USA Today column, in which she found it necessary to report that “the contrast and the contradictions between the two were impossible to miss inside the Washington National Cathedral.” Baloney.
Media hypocrisy was on full display. The same media that was critical of the elder Bush for his down-home family values with strong religious beliefs, now took joy in painting him as true American, while they compared him to the man they hate, Donald Trump.
New York Times reporter Peter Baker, appearing on MSNBC, saw the memorial as an implicit rebuke of President Trump, even saying that “he (Trump) seemed to be a little defiant.” Any wonder why the president dismisses the media as initiators of fake news?
Interestingly, Daniel Henninger, writing in The Wall Street Journal, recalled the media belittling of the Bush image while he covered the 1992 GOP convention: “As I stood among the media, it couldn’t have been clearer that most of them were largely appalled by these very traditional people and their politics.”
Unlike in the McCain funeral, where President Trump was asked not to attend there was anti-Trump inuendo in speeches, especially not-so-subtly by the senator’s daughter Meghan.
The Bush family invited President and Mrs. Trump to attend the memorial in Washington and instructed eulogists to avoid critical comments about the current president. George W. and Laura invited the Trumps to visit them while they stayed in Blair House while in Washington.
The Trumps properly arrived in the Cathedral without any pomp, politely greeted by the Obama’s, who were seated next to them. Former president Bill Clinton glanced over to them, but Hillary remained stone-faced staring straight ahead.
AND IN OTHER NEWS
NO PLAN B FOR MACRON – In a previous post, I referred to the thousands of French protestors who were letting their president Emmanuel Macron know in no uncertain terms that they won’t stand for the carbon tax designed to cut fossil fuel emissions.
“There’s no Plan B” for Macron, according the Wall Street Journal, who reminds its readers, as I have, that President Trump warned Macron of the high cost of the goals set forth in the Paris Accord.
“Donald Trump’s warning to the Frenchman is looking prescient.” – The Wall Street Journal
MEANWHILE ON THE LEFT COAST, the state of California, at its December 5, 2018 Building Standards Commission meeting, voted to require solar panels on all new homes, including condos and low-rise apartments from January 1, 2020 onward.
GERALDO RIVERA, the bleeding-heart liberal on Fox News Channel, appearing on the Hannity show on Wednesday, was again taking the side of the migrants at our southern border with his usual “they just want to work here and have a better life.”
He went too far. While referring to some immigrants who have successfully started businesses in California, he ridiculously cited the names of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi in his effort to persuade viewers of name individuals who migrated here. Fermi has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Certainly, Rivera knows that both Einstein and Fermi were already accomplished physicists when they escaped Jewish persecution in Austria and Italy to come to America, a far cry from the Central American refugees camped at our border.
HAVE YOU HEARD what Hawaii’s lightweight Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono had to say on Thursday? Democrats have a hard time connecting with voters because they “know too much” and need to tell the people “how smart” they are. All one needs to do to understand what she’s saying is to look back over the past statements of two arrogant Dems, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
May God bless the United States of America.
