Wednesday, December 7, 2011

A Day of Remembrance

My heart warmed today actually seeing an American Flag at half-staff in remembrance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 70 years ago. Recently, there is a move to erase the memory of that horrific event, lest we promote “racism.” Let's not forget the militarization of Japan during the early 1900's. The Japanese naval victory over the Russian fleet in 1905. The treaties in 1921 and 1922 with Japan, as the world slowly acknowledged the growing military monster. The Rape of Nanking in the 1930's would be forgotten if it had not been filmed by Germans. The government of Japan still denies it happened. Let's not forget that Japanese naval forces were already launched and steaming towards Pearl Harbor, while their diplomatic delegation in Washington DC was assuring our President, to the last hour, that they would not attack. Throughout the war they were an excessively cruel enemy, and required the nuclear equivalent of a silver bullet to end the carnage. After spending 20 years defending our nation and living in Japan for a year, it galls me to hear on the news today that our President's children ate Japanese food at their school today. Somebody in the school should be fired. Any other day is fine. Let's remember history as it actually happened and make common sense decisions to deal with it. We have a growing militaristic menace in Asia right now, called China. As a people can we not even stand up to the passive-aggressive misfits in our midst that get their jollies by feeding school kids Japanese food on Pearl Harbor Day? With that kind of thinking, the American Dream will be erased from our memory also, as we sit in our Japanese cars, obeying Shariah Law, and paying taxes to the Chinese Communist government.  Are there any men left in our society?  --Ben Kuykendall

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Homeless Families in Florida

With foreclosures still climbing and jobs still shrinking, more families are finding themselves homeless.  A recent  14-minute video documentary by CBS looked at the growing problem of homeless families forced to live in their cars.  Interesting is the fact that one third of the homeless families in America live in Florida.  Day-to-day it is hard to notice because so many of the families work hard to hide their situation to prevent the State from taking away their kids.  The video is posted at:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7389750n&tag=pop;videos

Friday, December 2, 2011

The Saddest Place

Why would St. Petersburg, Florida, top the list of saddest places to live?  It has beautiful beaches and holds the record for once having 768 straight days of sunshine.  Three days ago, Men's Health magazine posted an article named "Frown Towns" that lists St. Petersburg as the saddest place to live in America.  They calculated suicide rates and unemployment rates, along with statistics on the percentage of households that use antidepressants and the number of people who report feeling blue.  Sounds like good science, but the result is crazy.  This place is surrounded by warm water, plenty of vegetation, miles of white sand beaches, sunshine almost everyday, and many of the people were successful enough to allow them retirement here.  To go one step further, the article listed Fargo, North Dakota, as the third happiest place to live.  Definitely, common sense was lacking.  Right now I am sitting in shorts and a t-shirt, with the heat off and the windows open, feeling the fresh breeze, and looking at sunshine on green vegetation and blue water.  People in Fargo are worrying about the coming winter, occasionally thinking that it would be nice to escape and sit on a beach in Florida.  But people here are not sitting around wishing they were in Fargo.  The article is at:  http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/frown-towns  In the meantime, I will be reporting live from the saddest place in America.