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The Trigger Maru I'm the Galloping Ghost of the Japanese Coast by Constantine Guinness, Motor Machinist's Mate First Class (MOMM 1/c), United States Navy I'm the galloping ghost of the Japanese coast. You don't hear of me and my crew But just ask any man off the coast of Japan. If he knows of the Trigger Maru. I look sleek and slender alongside my tender. With others like me at my side, But we'll tell you a story of battle and glory, As enemy waters we ride. I've been stuck on a rock, felt the depth charge's shock, Been north...

"folks faint all the time at my events." - President Obama at recent campaign rally Fake fanaticism or real rapture? Either way would be kind of disturbing. During 2008, Michael Medved on his radio program brought to my attention a strange phenomenon of people fainting at Barack Obama campaign rallies. It was still happening in 2009, 2010; and, well, it is happening again in 2012: For President Obama, the fainting spells are back. A woman listening to the president discuss his energy policy in Maryland on Thursday fainted among the standing-room-only crowd. At a rally at Prince George’s Community College...

CALLS NEEDED NOW! You are receiving this email because you signed up for Santorum Call from Home   CALLS NEEDED NOW! ALABAMA, MISSISSIPPI, HAWAII PRIMARIES TOMORROW   CallFromHome.RickSantorum.com ALABAMA, MISSISSIPPI, & HAWAII GO TO THE POLLS IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS! With tight races in Alabama, Mississippi and Hawaii tomorrow, every vote will make a difference.  Personal calls from volunteers are one of the most effective ways to reach undecided voters. 20 calls today may be the deciding factor tomorrow. Thank you for being a key part of the grassroots effort to help Rick Santorum become our next president! ...

I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and—famously—I enjoy making enemies. Three years ago, I was mostly a behind-the-scenes guy who linked to stuff on a very popular website. I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I’ve lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I’ve gained hundreds, thousands—who knows?—of allies. At the end of the day, I can...

Our offspring and culture is the most successful feature of the History of Mankind. Ancient Rome and Greece have nothing on Scandinavia of today, nor what we did some centuries after Rome came down. No, I'm not a Racist - and I furthermore am more than a true friend of Italy and Greece. But I do not believe there's a point in denying the fact that Viking Culture has played a major role in shaping the World of today. Have a look at it. Britain, North America, Scandinavia, Germany, etc. in one way or another, all were formed by the...

Bring Spoken Word to CPAC Conservatives constantly clamor that they need to find a way to approach more demographics – particularly minorities and the youth. Yet, when events like the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) come around, you see mainly old, rich, white men speaking on stage for hours and hours. Sometimes, they spice it up with my girl Phyllis Schlafly. Don’t get me wrong, I love listening to speakers as much as the next conservative. However, why not try a tactic that the left uses so well? The arts.Hear me out before you write me off as a right-brained...

Outdoors advocate & defender, Judge Bob Moon, 60 Popular Hamilton County (Chattanooga, Tenn.) General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon, known for his outdoors advocacy and strict dealings with game law violators, died Wednesday from an apparent heart attack. He was 60. In 2008, Judge Moon made national headlines when he advised a woman who had been pulled from her car and beaten in the head to "purchase a weapon, obtain a gun permit and learn to protect yourself." He will be missed. Richard Simms at Nooga.com.

In 2005, my husband and I started the process to adopt a little girl from China. It was a brand new scary process that we knew nothing about. All we knew was that we wanted a child. When I am passionate about something, I want to know everything I can about it. So, I did a lot of reading about China and adoption. One of the people I read about was a woman named Gladys Aylward. She was a poor woman from London who wanted to go to China in the 1930's to be a missionary. but she had no...

Earlier this week, a Virginia-based organization came under fire for leading 3rd grade students at Woodbrook Elementary in Charlottesville to write a song titled “We Are Part of the 99.” The song, with its reference to the 1 percent and 99 percent was obviously talking about the Occupy protests that occurred around the country. According to the school district’s story, the students wrote: I used to be part of the 1 percent I worked all the time Never saw my family Couldn’t make life rhyme Then the bubble burst When I was in 3rd grade, I knew about bubbles in...

Michele Bachmann’s husband Marcus played an active role during day one of the Minnesota congresswoman’s 99-county tour of Iowa. During each of the campaign’s seven stops in northwest Iowa, Mr. Bachmann chatted with attendees and advocated on his wife’s behalf. He went even further during the last event of the day, telling an Iowa voter he should not support Rick Santorum for president because he is not viable. “Santorum can’t win,” Marcus Bachmann said to Andy Wobbema of Storm Lake. Wobbema had just finished grilling Michele Bachmann about an interview she did three months ago with Jay Leno. During that...

Forget the books. This semester, Georgetown students might need to bring woofers and turntables to class instead. According to USA Today, the university is offering a sociology class focusing on the career of one of rap music’s biggest stars: WASHINGTON – Michael Eric Dyson parses Jay-Z’s lyrics as if analyzing fine literature. The rapper’s riffs on luxury cars and tailored clothes and boasts of being the “Mike Jordan of recording” may make for catchy rhymes, but to Dyson, they also reflect incisive social commentary. Dyson, a professor, author, radio host and television personality, has offered at Georgetown University this semester...

Its the Christmas Season. A recession has long been on. And if those humbugs on PBS get their way, Your money will soon be gone. It is for you that they the all knowing claim, They make these droll shows of glory and shame. The News Hour will debrief you each day, One look at Gwen Ifil will scare any man away. Sesame Street has been on forty plus years, And Elmo that little fluffy tard will reduce all to tears.

Twas the night before Christmas, and he lived in a crowd, In a 40 man tent, with warriors so loud. I had come into the tent with presents to give, And to see just who in this rack did live. I looked all about, and a strange sight I did see, No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree. No stockings were hung, just boots close at hand, on the locker hung pictures of far distant lands. He had medals and badges and awards of all kind, And a sobering thought came into my mind. For this place was different,...

Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry Relax. This won't last long. Or if it does, or if the lines make you sleepy or bored, give in to sleep, turn on the T.V., deal the cards. This poem is built to withstand such things. Its feelings cannot be hurt. They exist somewhere in the poet, and I am far away. Pick it up anytime. Start it in the middle if you wish. It is as approachable as melodrama, and can offer you violence if it is violence you like. Look, there's a man on a sidewalk;...

I am putting together a photo album. One consisting of my own photographs taken by the DSLR camera I own. I've already created one album, paying ~ $42 for a book of 26 pages (13 sheets) of my color photographs. Expensive, but worth it. (The service, which I selected after thorough online investigation, was Adoramapix. I am not associated with them, and seeing the results I do recommend them, but if you know of a service that is less costly and as good, please do let us know.) The theme and title of my second photo album is to be...

A musing about life.

“A la tarde de la vida te examinarán en el amor. At the end of your life, you will be judged on love.” St. John of the Cross “Love is the fundamental relation of God to the world. … In a chain of acts of love, man strives for the highest end.” St. Thomas Aquinas Both St. John of the Cross and St. Thomas Aquinas teach that each human being is created to love; that the perfection of man’s intellect, will, and emotions is in direct proportion to the deliberate direction of these powers by the human soul to the...

Even President Barack Obama's senior advisor Valerie Jarrett admits the so-called American Jobs Act has not been fully written yet. That fact would have been impossible to ascertain by listening to the president's recent address to a joint session of Congress. His rhetoric delivered before an actual plan even exists and, of course, Edgar Alln Poe have inspired the verses below. Once upon a summer evening, while the Congress was convening Hoping they would get to witness oratory skill In strode a familiar fellow, who before had seemed so mellow, Now began to speak in tones bordering on shrill Perhaps...

Just a little poem, from the heart, on what is a somber weekend for me personally, and for my country...

On Tuesday, Google celebrated the birthday of Nazik al-Malaika, a wonderful female poet, by honoring her with a “Google Doodle.” Al-Malaika was widely known in the Arab world. She passed away in June 2007. Her obituary in the NY Times described her as “one of the Arab world’s most famous poets” and “one of a small group of Iraqi poets who broke away from classical Arab poetry, with its rigid metric and rhyme schemes.” It also illustrated how her poetry often dealt with women’s issues in brave and incredibly compelling ways, quoting from “To Wash Disgrace,” a poem about an...