It is straight out of Michael Moore’s movie – Fahenheit 911, so it is old news. That was years ago already, but then Shell/Petronas awarded, just a few days ago, a deal to U.S. service giant Halliburton Co and the state-run Iraqi Drilling Co. to drill 15 wells

I’m Rocky’s Daddy, and I’m making this the second script
for a bite to be recently posted at journal joint.   I need to do more
at journaljoint.com;  I am ever laboring for  speech bites

So, I’m writing though sometimes I ad lib, and those
times are much more difficult to edit the audio for.

The form I wish to take is an open letter to  … , well, to someone you
might not know or even know of.  I know him only from his presence on the web,
and that might well be the only way you know me.   Penn Jillete, a Las Vegas performer,
is to whom my open letter, spoken, is intended.  Politically, he would like to be thought of
as a LIBERTARIAN.  With a lower case a “L,” that should seem quite noble, but with
an upper case “L,” that is a very UNsuccessful political party whose last
presidential candidate was Bob Barr from my home state of Georgia.
Cheers for anyone from down home.

Dear PENN,

As you can find people with whom you can’t always agree interesting
and respectable, so I find you.   I am here about the Penn Point where in
you said that someone felt the President had changed after getting into office
and lending his ear to people we might not expect or might find suspect.

No, no, you didn’t say it that way.  You did say that some un-named friend
was against Bush and his two invasions while the same person imagined that
Obama was becoming the war president 2.0 for good reasons that ordinary
folk cannot know.  Michael Moore from his web site had an open letter
to President Obama at the time of the president’s decision to go
from we must get out of Afghanistan to let’s get
deeper in before getting out.

Michael Moore supported the president more than any other public person
and then withdrew said support quicker than any other public person.
There is Michael telling the president that he cannot become
the next human-ware update of the application
known as the war president.

There is you saying yes, he is our best and brightest,
but he is still stealing our liberties.

Here is me:  The lady said we (the United States) are always into
some kind of war.  There is always war; there is no war ever declared anymore.
You cannot fight the idea of war.   We who oppose must fight against
the industrial/military complex that IKE warned us of.
That warning was at the head of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK and was
the part that made the most sense.  Rage against the industry
behind the military not so much the military.

Rage Against the Machine is the name of a musical group. Don’t know if
the Pentagon was the machine that that group had in mind.   At any rate,
the Pentagon can look transparent even though few really look.  I mean
Pentagon contracts are published daily at the DoD web site, and
they add up to close to a billion dollars a day, and they go
to companies that, I think, can easily find ways to
funnel money to and influence the campaigns
of any politician, ANY.

I can say much more about the contracts page
at the Department of Defense web site, but for the moment,
I don’t want to waste too much more of Penn Jillete’s time.
I am so hoping that he can find the time to listen to me
on speech bites since I sometimes listen to
and watch his Penn Point which is
obviously strictly ad lib.

Making this an open letter has kept me much more focused than usual.
I usually skip around on topics and tie them together when they really should
not be tied together. The only other topic I wish to touch upon at this time
is the World Cup.  I have no problem with Spain taking it, and I have
no problem with that last match being just a little dirty.
Hope no one has a problem with me having opinions about
this big thing on the world stage without having watched more
than 6 or 8 minutes of total video playback.  Got most of my
information about it through words rather than images
on the web and from eMAIL.

If you see the Penn & Teller Show in Las Vegas, don’t be too scared.

I’m Rocky’s Daddy, but I am really
Patrick A. Boggs, and I don’t mind repeating that I am
an American living in Japan

Pointing out that I am American is important because
we are all but upon American Independence DAY which is
the proper way to say it. So many of my fellow
Americans say do they have the 4th of July in Japan
as if there should be a hole in the calendar if
another country fails to celebrate the U.S.A.

Most of my fellow Americans would think me liberal as
that word has become nasty like a curse word, but I think I am
conservative politically especially in regard to the American flag.
From Wikipedia research, I am a wee bit disappointed because
It says that Betsy Ross stitching the very first American
flag might not be exactly true. Their source must
be credible since it is the Smithsonian. I quote …

“The story of Betsy Ross making the first American flag
for General George Washington entered into American consciousness
about the time of the 1876 Centennial celebration. In 1870 Ross’s grandson,
William J. Canby, presented a paper to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
in which he claimed that his grandmother had “made with her hands
the first flag”of the United States. Canby said he first obtained
this information from his aunt Clarissa Wilson in 1857,
twenty years after Betsy Ross’s death.”

Neither the Smithsonian nor Wikipedia can offer the name
of a person who should get the credit that I have always given to Betsy Ross.
I like her grandson’s story even if it ain’t the truth, the whole truth
and nothin’ but.

Now if you want to follow the spirit of the flag code without bothering
to read the flag code, just remember that Betsy or someone like her stitched
the first ONE and then remember that the U.S. flag, unlike those of other nations,
should be thought of as a living thing. And, I think that the stitching
plays into the idea of a living thing.

If you have miniature flags that have the colors printed on something
like cloth similar to a handkerchief OR even worse plastic, those may well have been made
in Communist China, and if I am a liberal that’s not so bad. But, if you really want
to feel patriotic it should be easy enough to make sure that the standard
that represents YOUR country is MADE IN the U.S.A.

If that simple thing has become too difficult then you may as well
follow the example set by Hank Deerfield. Do you know Hank?
He was the daddy in the movie Valley of Elam, and the part
was played by actor Tommy Lee Jones. I admire Mr. Jones
more for the things he is doing recently which
means late in his career.

What Hank does with the flag sort of bookends the movie.
Near the beginning he instructs a school custodian on how to raise
the flag properly. The custodian doesn’t know just because
he is an immigrant. Back in the days when I was in
Peeples Street School, students were taught the proper
treatment of the flag and then were charged with
the responsibility of raising it in the morning and lowering it
at the end of the school day and properly folding it into a triangle.
Later at Brown High, it was the ROTC, if I recalled correctly,
who were charged with the responsibility.

Hank, Tommy Lee’s character, at the end of the movie took the flag
from the custodian and raised it upsidedown. When the custodian asked
why Hank said international distress signal. He was distressed
because his son had been killed not in IRAQ but after returning from Iraq
by his fellow soldiers. One of the most basic principles of the U.S. military as
reveled by the movie and the actor, if we didn’t already know, is that soldiers fight
for those serving by their sides as much as the cause that sent them to fight.

Has that principle been abandoned? If so the U.S. flag
does not stand for abandoning it.

The United States of America stands for correcting OR growing out
of mistakes made by the United States of America much, much MORE
than attempting to correct the errors of other nations.

The American Civil War was about walking away from the idea that
slavery could be reasonable. I am from the SOUTH, God bless it, which was
the last part of the U.S. to be forced to give up slavery which college history
teachers can tell us would have died anyway. I like to remind Americans
from other parts of the country that the majority of our founding
fathers had slaves. America made the mistake;
the South held on to it too long.

Now what what kind of mistakes have been made more recently, and how long will
the U.S.A. hold on to them. How about the idea that a bank robber is a bad guy, but
the CEO of an investment bank that takes billions from taxpayers
is some kind of decent fellow.

… quote …

( Marcy Gordon wrote for the Associated Press, and it was published in USA TODAY )

12.9 billion to went Goldman Sachs because they were good(?) enough

to bet against the American housing market

Rocky’s Daddy says, in spite it all, I remain American
feeling quite proud when Rocky applied for his second passport.
Kids need to get them every 5 years rather than 10.

Earlier I used the expression if I recall correctly
We all trick up our memories not just older guys like me bordering on senility,
so I was thinking that displaying the flag should be singular rather than overkill
with a whole multitude of them. I had remembered a really large American flag
really flying over the U.S. embassy in Tokyo and how grand that seemed.

But, like Betsy Ross, it was not the whole truth. When we went there last Monday
and then again on Thursday, I noticed that the flag pole was really next to rather than
on top of the building, and there was no wind, and no one rushed to take
the flag in when the rains started.

YES, I am American and a little touchy about the flag.

all of that and more of the quote were my special speech bite Hope ya heard it