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October 31, 2005

30 Day Observance

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The flag here at the Slaughterhouse will fly at half staff for the next 30 days to remember A1C Jacobson and PFC Johnson as well as all other fallen heroes of our U.S. Military!

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lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 12:00 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

Rosa Parks dies at 92

Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92 Long known as the 'mother of the civil rights movement'

(CNN) -- Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience in 1955 inspired the modern civil rights movement, died Monday in Detroit, Michigan. She was 92.

Parks' moment in history began in December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery, but it wasn't until the 1964 Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide were desegregated.

Facing regular threats and having lost her department store job because of her activism, Parks moved from Alabama to Detroit in 1957. She later joined the staff of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

Conyers, who first met Parks during the early days of the civil rights struggle, recalled Monday that she worked on his original congressional staff when he first was elected to the House of Representatives in 1964.

"I think that she, as the mother of the new civil rights movement, has left an impact not just on the nation, but on the world," he told CNN in a telephone interview. "She was a real apostle of the nonviolence movement."

He remembered her as someone who never raised her voice -- an eloquent voice of the civil rights movement.

"You treated her with deference because she was so quiet, so serene -- just a very special person," he said, adding that "there was only one" Rosa Parks.

Gregory Reed, a longtime friend and attorney, said Parks died between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. of natural causes. He called Parks "a lady of great courage."

Parks co-founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development to help young people pursue educational opportunities, get them registered to vote and work toward racial peace.

"As long as there is unemployment, war, crime and all things that go to the infliction of man's inhumanity to man, regardless -- there is much to be done, and people need to work together," she once said.

Even into her 80s, she was active on the lecture circuit, speaking at civil rights groups and accepting awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

"This medal is encouragement for all of us to continue until all have rights," she said at the June 1999 ceremony for the latter medal.

Parks was the subject of the documentary "Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks," which received a 2002 Oscar nomination for best documentary short.

In April, Parks and rap duo OutKast settled a lawsuit over the use of her name on a CD released in 1998. (Full story)

Bus boycott
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama, on February 4, 1913. Her marriage to Raymond Parks lasted from 1932 until his death in 1977.

Parks' father, James McCauley, was a carpenter, and her mother, Leona Edwards McCauley, a teacher.

Before her arrest in 1955, Parks was active in the voter registration movement and with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, where she also worked as a secretary in 1943.

At the time of her arrest, Parks was 42 and on her way home from work as a seamstress.

She took a seat in the front of the black section of a city bus in Montgomery. The bus filled up and the bus driver demanded that she move so a white male passenger could have her seat.

"The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't," she once said.

When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her.

As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?"

The officer's response: "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest."

She added, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind."

Four days later, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $14.

That same day, a group of blacks founded the Montgomery Improvement Association and named King, the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its leader, and the bus boycott began.

For the next 381 days, blacks -- who according to Time magazine had comprised two-thirds of Montgomery bus riders -- boycotted public transportation to protest Parks' arrest and in turn the city's Jim Crow segregation laws.

Black people walked, rode taxis and used carpools in an effort that severely damaged the transit company's finances.

The mass movement marked one of the largest and most successful challenges of segregation and helped catapult King to the forefront of the civil rights movement.

The boycott ended on November 13, 1956, after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Montgomery's segregated bus service was unconstitutional.

Parks' act of defiance came one year after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision that led to the end of racial segregation in public schools. (Full story)

U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, a Democrat, told CNN Monday he watched the 1955-56 Montgomery drama unfold as a teenager and it inspired him to get active in the civil rights movement.

"It was so unbelievable that this woman -- this one woman -- had the courage to take a seat and refuse to get up and give it up to a white gentleman. By sitting down, she was standing up for all Americans," he said.

What more can be said. Millions of people have brave women and men like Rosa to thank for the civil rights and equal rights for all people in the United States.

lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 09:59 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

They Just Can't Help Themselves

Many of you have heard me refer to CNN as the Communist News Network, or the Clinton News Network among other things. They clearly have a penchant for overshadowing the important stories with their own agenda.

Todays coverage is a good example.

The draft resolution for the Iraqi constitution passed with a voter turnout of 63% but instead of focusing on that and writing it as a story of its own they chose to start it this way:

U.S. military death toll in Iraq reaches 2,000

Iraqi draft constitution passes, election officials say

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 12:17 p.m. EDT (16:17 GMT)

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The war in Iraq saw two milestones Tuesday that reflect the country's path to democracy and its human toll as officials said the referendum on a draft constitution passed and the U.S. military's death toll reached 2,000.

CNN's count of U.S. fatalities reflects reports from military sources and includes deaths in Iraq, Kuwait and other units assigned to the Iraq campaign.

Among the latest casualties, an American soldier was killed Saturday by a roadside bomb, and a roadside blast killed two Marines in combat Friday near Amariya in the western Anbar province, according to the U.S. military.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, more than 15,000 American service members have been wounded in the conflict, according to the Defense Department.

According to CNN's tally, 2,194 coalition troops have died in the war.

Turnout was 63 percent
Iraqi election officials touted the passage of the draft constitution, voted on October 15 after months of contentious, painstaking negotiations by the 275-member interim National Assembly.

A representative from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq said these are "final provisional figures" that need to be certified. (Full story)

Authorities with the commission said 9.85 million people voted in the referendum, about 63 percent of registered voters. More than 78 percent of voters backed the constitution, officials said.

While passage required a simple majority, there was one obstacle the measure faced -- if two-thirds of the voters in at least three of 18 provinces had rejected it, the draft would have failed.

Supporters of the referendum were concerned about the voting in several provinces with significant populations of Sunni Arabs, who make up about 20 percent of Iraq's population and largely opposed the measure.

But figures show that the tally received a two-thirds "no" vote in only two provinces.

Anbar overwhelmingly voted against the document, with a "no" vote of 97 percent. In Salaheddin province, 82 percent rejected the charter.

On Monday, election officials said the vote count from the northern province of Nineveh would help determine the outcome. There was a "no" vote in Nineveh, but it was 55 percent.

In Diyala province, which has a slight Sunni Arab majority, 51 percent of voters said "yes."

When questioned about extreme results, including the 99 percent "yes" vote in one Kurdish province, electoral officials said U.N. experts and Iraqi teams verified the results.

Sunni Arab leaders actively boycotted the vote in January electing the National Assembly and found themselves with little voice in the interim government.

Government officials said they were gratified that Sunnis got involved in the political process this time, even though there was significant Sunni opposition to the draft. Shiites and Kurds have largely backed the constitution.

New parliamentary elections are set for December 15.

Other developments

Three explosions near two Baghdad hotels rocked Iraq's capital at sunset Monday, killing 10 people and wounding 22, Baghdad emergency police said. Police said suicide bombers used two car bombs and a cement truck, but journalists in one of the hotels said the first two explosions were rockets, followed by a vehicle bomb. A U.S. military statement said no coalition forces were injured. (Full story)

Coalition forces have killed "several" insurgents in the western Iraqi town of Ushsh, the U.S. military said Tuesday. Six insurgents also were detained, according to a military statement. Ushsh is near Qaim, an Anbar town near the Syrian border.

Three Iraqi soldiers were killed Tuesday and one wounded when a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Dora.

Gunmen killed two Iraqi police officers transporting detainees to Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad on Tuesday. Seven officers were wounded in the attack.

Two roadside bombs targeting U.S. military convoys exploded Tuesday in western Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, killing two civilians and wounding five others, police said. No U.S. military personnel were wounded.

What we have here is two distinct stories, and while they occured on the same continent and in the same country they should have been reported seperately, but once again CNN tries to overshadow the importance of this draft resolution by starting the story with the tragedy that is the loss of 2,000 Americans.

Today is yet another giant leap towards a new Iraq and a new landscape in the Middle East.

The Slaughterhouse mourns the loss of our 2,000 American.

I also applaud the Iraqi people for their voter turnout in passing the draft resolution.

lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 09:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Identifying The Iceman...

According to the Communist News Network, or Clinton News Network or CNN whichever you prefer to call it:

Frozen airman flown to Hawaii for identification 'Very good possibility for identification'

Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Posted: 9:53 a.m. EDT (13:53 GMT)

HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii (AP) -- A body believed to be that of a World War II airman, found frozen in the Sierra Nevada, arrived Monday in Hawaii for identification, officials said.

The body in an Army uniform was discovered earlier this month mostly encased in a glacier in Kings Canyon National Park.

It had been thawing since last week at the coroner's office in Fresno County.

The body was flown out of Travis Air Force Base to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu.

The examination, which will take several weeks at least, will be done by the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command.

An identification could solve part of a decades-old mystery -- the disappearance of a navigational training plane that left a Sacramento airfield in November 1942 carrying a crew of four on a routine flight.

I hope this Airman is in fact identified so that his family may finally have some answers and closure.
lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 09:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 16, 2005

Remembering Another Young Warrior

Air Force Mom (a.k.a. Deb) proud mother of one of the Air Forces finest boys in blue has asked for my our help.

From her site:

October 06, 2005 Help Me Honor Pvt LeVena L. Johnson This morning I shared a Legacy link to post a message to honor Army Private First Class LaVena L. Johnson. http://www.legacy.com/Guestbook.asp?Page=Entry&PersonID=14603687

Needing to DO MORE to express to this family the sorrow of so
many in the loss of their daughter, I am putting together a
condolence book.
From a online news source I was able to locate the pastor's name
who spoke at the memorial service for LaVena.
I called the Church in Missouri and spoke to the pastor's
wife, Angela Sanders.
She told me that the family is deeply grieving the loss
of their darling daughter.

Please send me your messages of condolence that I can share
with this family to ease their pain.

Word File Documents would be great, but email messages
are very much appreciated also.

A part of me is so outraged that I am only hearing of
LaVena's death just now, after her passing in July of this year.
I know that I can channel that emotion into something good
by creating this book to send to her family.

Thank you kindly,
Debra Estep - Twinsburg Ohio
Proud Air Force Mom
afmomdeb@gmail.com

Private Johnson was posthumously promoted to the Rank of Private First Class. While this promotion is probably of small significance to those who've lost a loved one it is merely a symbolic gesture of the respect our military has for this brave young woman.

Follow the links to Deb's site and show your support for PFC Johnson.

lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 11:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 12, 2005

Another Legend Has Passed

Original Blue Angel pilot dies at age 86

It appears that some of us in the MilBlogs community missed the passing of a legend.

Back on August 10, 2005 the first Blue Angel, the original demonstration demon, hand picked by the legend, Admiral Chester Nimitz, passed away at his home in Monterey, CA.

According to CNN.com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A man whose pioneering flying career with the U.S. Navy began in the age of biplanes and ended in the jet age has died. Retired Navy Capt. Roy "Butch" Voris, an original Blue Angel, died at his home in Monterey, California. He was 86.

Voris began his naval aviation career flying biplanes, and by the end of World War II, he had shot down at least eight Japanese fighter planes, earning himself the status of an "ace," as well as three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Purple Heart and more than a dozen other medals.

In 1946, Adm. Chester Nimitz hand-picked Voris to organize a flight demonstration team to showcase naval aviation. He led the newly named "Blue Angels" in their first public performance that year in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1952, he once again was asked to lead the Blue Angels after they returned from combat duty in the Korean War.

He retired from the Navy as a captain and went to work with Grumman Aircraft Corporation, where he was instrumental in the early development of the F-14 Tomcat, which is still a key part of naval aviation.

His last career was as a spokesman for NASA during the historic 1970 Apollo moon missions.

Voris died on Wednesday.

He is survived by two daughters, their husbands and three grandsons. He is also survived by two brothers. His wife, Thea, passed away in 2003 after more than 50 years of marriage.

A legend like this deserves more than a mention and I apologize that it went unnoticed until being pointed out to me by one of my readers.

Readers 'Ten Hut, Present Arms, Order Arms

Capt. Voris we salute you, may you rest in peace.

lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 01:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 01, 2005

First Female Airman Casualty In The War On Terror In Iraq

According to the Air Force homepage:

Defensor Fortis - Defender of the Force

Female Airman killed in Iraq
Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Jacobson, 21, was providing convoy security Sept. 28 near Camp Bucca, Iraq, when the vehicle she was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device. (Courtesy photo)

Airman killed in Iraq

9/30/2005 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- An improvised explosive device killed a female Airman during a convoy mission supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Jacobson, 21, was providing convoy security Sept. 28 near Camp Bucca, Iraq, when the vehicle she was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device.

The Riviera Beach, Fla., native was assigned to the 17th Security Forces Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas. Airman Jacobson had been in the Air Force for two years and had been deployed to Iraq for more than three months.

She is the first female Airman killed in the line of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“She was an outstanding Airman who embraced life and took on all the challenges and responsibilities with extraordinary commitment to her country, her comrades and her family,” said Col. Scott Bethel, 17th Training Wing commander at Goodfellow.

“Her dedication to the U.S. Air Force and serving her country was evident in all aspects of who this young lady was,” he said.

“Team Goodfellow and the San Angelo community are deeply saddened by this tragic loss of one of our cherished family members,” Colonel Bethel said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family during this difficult time. We ask that all Americans keep Airman Jacobson, her family and the men and women serving in the military, overseas and in the United States in their thoughts and prayers as they continue to keep America free.”

For those of us in blue it is always painful to hear about the loss of an Airman, the loss of one of our own, one of the blue beret's is especially difficult to deal with.

I did not know Airmen First Class (A1C) Jacobson but I know many defenders like her. Dedicated to their country and the Air Force and their unit. It hurts every time we lose one of our brave men and women.

My heart goes out to the friends and family of A1C Jacobson.

The flag here at the Slaughterhouse will fly at half staff for the next 30 days to remember the brave defender!

I respectfully request that other bloggers link to this post and show respect and support for the family of this brave young woman lost in combat. To my readers who do not have sites of their own, please feel free to leave words of encouragement for those she left behind in the comments section.

Never forget that these brave men and women do this for all of us, for our friends, our families our nation.

Every day in my profession I train people in Combat Weapons, I teach them the tools they need to defend themselves. I see thousands of faces each year, all of whom could be thrown in harms way at a moments notice, and in many cases with little to no notice at all. I have been sent to the most remote areas of our planet and survived in terrible conditions. Each time I return home I know I must be blessed. Regardless of your politics, remember these brave people and respect them as they respect you each and every day by putting their lives on the line for you and your family.

**UPDATE** The Palm Beach Post has a nice article on A1C Jacobson. H/T to Linda for the link.

lagleRock Out!

Posted by SlagleRock at 01:27 PM | Comments (42) | TrackBack