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The Culture of a National Service Plan: Cultural Crossover

2008-01-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

For public Release:

critical analysis in preservation of Nation. Remembering who is being spent on these missions.

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Service is our standard

2008-01-28T20:41:00.000-07:00

In approaching tomorrow, approach it with humility America has within its population those who still rise each day to bare our standard for us. Though we may disagree on that task.

Service is our standard. Awake this morning knowing while you and I slept, one of our kind – America as a world citizen in the pursuit of peace and freedoms - will never awake, never returns to that which filled their collective being with love, with purpose, with joy.

The President elect announces re-launching The National Service Plan in creating a vested, true diverse ownership in the American Society. Service removes race from racism - becoming the only color whose stars and stripes run true.

Demand no less for the future. Those disavowing service are impostering lurkers among us grabbing at the mantle of power – blindly robbing the future of our collective promise. Service is our standard.

"Someone waved a flag today. Others on our behalf are being laid beneath one".

Copyright 2008: Skinny T. @ The Network

House Committees Senate Committees Find my Representative Find my SenatorVeterans and their family members who wish to contact the Department regarding a claim, benefits, or services, may call VA Toll-Free at 1 (800) 827-1000 or 1 (800) 829-4833 [TDD], or Contact the VA via the web.

Batting 1500

2008-01-15T16:50:00.000-07:00

For so many veterans – they survived the war to end up broken and homeless back on our own streets – hulkering shadows of the past who just won’t go away – no matter how many hail Mary’s or some favor called charity; a 'gift' rumored not from the people, but to those they prayed with - food doled out as some token of thier service?

The 1,500:

"For as long as the United States has sent its young men - and later its young women - off to war, it has watched as a segment of them come home and lose the battle with their own memories, their own scars, and wind up without homes.

The Civil War produced thousands of wandering veterans. Frequently addicted to morphine, they were known as "tramps," searching for jobs and, in many cases, literally still tending their wounds.
More than a decade after the end of World War I, the "Bonus Army" descended on Washington - demanding immediate payment on benefits that had been promised to them, but payable years later - and were routed by the U.S. military.

And, most publicly and perhaps most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens.

Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers. For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 400 of them have taken part in VA programs designed to target homelessness.

The 1,500 are a small, young segment of an estimated 336,000 veterans in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006"[1] - Erin McClam, AP National Writer

The Network

We are America, world citizen

2008-01-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

"As a soldier, I have a duty to obey the orders of the President of the United States as long as they are Constitutional. I can no more opt out of missions I disagree with than I can ignore laws I think are improper.

I do not consider it a violation of my individual rights to have gone to Iraq on orders because I raised my right hand and volunteered to join the army. Whether or not this mission was a good one, my participation in it was an affirmation of something I consider quite necessary to society.

So if nothing else, I gave my life for a pretty important principle; I can (if you'll pardon the pun) live with that".[2] - Major Andrew Olmsted (1970 - 2008)

Nam Duex Bien Phu (way more broken)

2008-01-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

Who is this apologetic crowd defining for veterans their place in contract access, lining them up like the ‘money in the bank health-care doping scheme concentration camp survivors’ - under a banner of private health care?

Is there no end to the a lineup of corporate panoplies wanting to perform "Help" contracting on the medication and convalescent side of things?

Where is the wholesale arm of support back to those who went, those who return and most critically – the fact these PRIMES require economics over pills and doping regiments preparing them for the mean streets of the US where they will be, historically, Conveniently Forgotten - to join with the 400,000 homeless vets 'convelescing' on the streets from America's shallow memory?

Where is the economic impetus as payment for the deeds rendered on your behalf while fortunes were made and the value of life depreciated? Vic, after much pause, entreats this audience today: 'Will the real We the People please stand up?'

Thank god it’s at least you Casey & Olmsted. You look larger in death than ever in life before this? Why are you so much larger now, brighter, a better focus on the cost of service to humanity in the face of the shenanigans and foolery? How is it so aptly in life as in death - you defined how humans should comport themselves each day - people who exemplar something singing service out loud -- not as duty - but as routine!

What’s that you say...? Serve to make this idea of peace and freedom for humankind – something reflected in what we do, each and every day? Roger that, Captain. I read about you and what you lived for. It makes me long for that place you call Dellens - to find at once such place made on earth - so it is no longer the dream we speak, but the life each one of us may live. It should be ever more common among our kind.

Isn't this what you made your life about - what you lived for, Sir...? You are a world citizen, and Babylon 5 rocks.

VLOG ME

WTF-over. Victor Echo Tango: Olmsted, Casey.

2008-01-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

Olmsted, 38, dies in Iraqi ambush; 1st casualty of '08 see - David Montero, Rocky Mountain News: [1]

As I wrote the last lines in the Christmas Eve Vlog, never would I believe one of our own – both an officer and a blogger, Maj. Andrew Olmsted, 38, and Cpt. Thomas J. Casey, 32, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to become the first casualties - by ambush - in '08?

Ironically, the Major enjoyed the distinction of being named one of the militaries TOP bloggers. He also wrote a parting piece found here: FInal Post

"I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn't a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don't drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq," he wrote. "If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don't cite my name as an example of someone's life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. – Major Olmsted.[1]

"And maybe now it's your turn to die kicking some ass." Freedom Isn't Free: Team America

So who are we as a people – all of us? I hope for the Majors sake, he finds that which he spoke in his last letter to his loved one. Casey and Olmsted – both Loadstars, perhaps referenced as G'kar and his Captain? Both now loaded and Sirius bound to where the scroll of our deeds on this place - are now again presented by those who lived among us as loadestars - true citizens of comportment on our field. They are found acceptable: Major Andrew Olmsted. Captain Thomas Casey. Earlier I had wondered about the ones we lose, as a part of what is this idea of ‘the rest of us’ in us all.

When we think ill of our country? When we think ill of each other? When the next time we feel we may yell as scream to hear out the scrolls of the names of our dead - speak the Name Major Olmsted or Captain Casey in its stead.

You speak Peace? It is still brought only by service within us all - by those truly as Olmsted and Casey whom served - especially those whose wings are Phobos and Deimos chasing Mars.

Today – the Network is the fabric of those who carry hope for us still - each one of us. In all of us – pressed and folded further into the service of humankind – serving an ability to record history – to keep our record alive. Our victory is not that we know the end. When we see ourselves lining up with the long cast shadows of our lifelong struggles – how we met face to face in the times of great struggle defines us.

As if those who die in this conflict journey there not having known the cliche' of life as not always fair? Sell Smeltown Pie town somewhere else.

"We're all going to die of something. I died doing a job I loved. When your time comes, I hope you are as fortunate as I was.." - Andrew Olmsted, World Citizen.

That is what defines these I write - being as beings, above the crowd – marking those whom serve the exemplar citizen are shadows cast brighter, further, longer still. So go now remembering words that had lived in this world citizen.

Vlog's prayer for these this day:

Be still my heart this night - Phobos and Deimos with wings upon your feet come to claim these souls who no longer look nor wait for sleep. We now wait for the hand of hope. Even crooked hope -- to shine beyond the loss of these now gone.

Amen.

Vets Punked in Federal Contracting

2008-01-05T17:25:00.000-07:00

And too, are vets again the ‘chits’ gathered in state and federal places of legislative grunk churned out in favor of whom: in many instances, veterans appear to be at the back-a-da-bus. Even in federal contracting, veterans are pitted against other veterans based upon race and gender – as if all that is served for in this great republic is again reduced to the feel-good bubble-gum lottery breakdown of division by race and gender – whose game is it anyway? Being a Veteran takes the race out of racism, becoming the only color that runs true...

From back-deal rooms in federal contracting favoring race and gender above service as the pretext of equality – especially within the DOD’s own facilities (see December ’08 Vetrepreneur stats “2027 – The Year of the Service Disabled Veteran Business”) – to the non-compliant VA HCA’s and their contracting subordinate – it is again the expiration of a contract made with those who serve, those who return?

Victory Now. Victory Tommorrow. Victory kiss the hand of peace.

Vic.

Silent Night. Holy Night - Josef Mohr

2007-12-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

In the meantime while America divides over the ultimate responsibility and outcome of this theatre of Operation, people like Mrs. Humes speak to the ordinary things we do with our spouses: the serenading in the shower, the playing of guitars, the good times and the warmth of having the one u love close by to hold, to cherish, to love.

Somewhere in the cross-hairs between honoring a commitment to serve your Country, your Commander in Chief and being with those we love – falls today’s men and women living up to deeply vested commitments despite the rest of the world who divide around you like a marathon runner coming into the final stretch while the crowd throngs the runner.

This engagement has been a war like no others: each operation becoming tactically more involved, demanding more, extracting more, requiring more from individuals who are the backbone of every operation. Every operation brings us closer to the brink of having more at stake as a nation.

For the Troops, their risk is infinitely more tied to the reality we only talk about in the speak-easy, the coffee-shop or in heated debate. On the micro-scale – having to patiently await what seems a small eternity for a loved one to return again into your waiting arms - if at all; waiting to hold your child asking to grow up in a world of peace and protection. From every side and within every possible imaginable family situation – it touches us all.

In approaching this Christmas Season, approach it with humility that America has within its population those who still rise each day to bare our standard for us – though we may disagree. Awake on Christmas morning knowing while you and I slept, one of our kind in the Gulf Region will never awake, never return home to that which filled their collective being with joy, with happiness, with love.

"Someone waved a flag today. Others on your behalf are being laid beneath one".

Vic

Born on the National Day of Prayer...

2007-09-14T11:26:00.000-06:00

Three days earlier:

America had its wake up call – a call being answered by whom? Really, no f.bomb kidding!

It is my duty to report to you - unless you’re the one taking your absolute last look and thoughts on all you knew, all that you have loved and longed for… Is that one you?

Shall we raise a flag for such an idea - to waive good bye to those who are gone and go? Good bye neighbor. Good by relative, or lover, or friend. Some waived a flag today; others on your behalf are being laid beneath one. That is the wake up call we heard.

Our child: Hope?

Hope – as the child was aptly named was born on this, the national day of prayer. Where did this hope come from – this ephemeral, this fondness – this longing for hope even in the absence of itself?

Call life what you may – the child Hope, so names life a main event. Some say something to the effect of: “Save pie-town liquored-up speeches for circus folk.” Another school of thought blasted back: "If anything be blessed – hope may have had something to do with it.”

Whose right? Who’s wrong? A constitution let’s both sides forget about some impasse to continue on. Hope’s first thought: a national day of prayer? Or a realm of growth and knowledge taken into our minds to cohere, too adapt, to do what even our own imaginations are fueled by: those before us whose works served humankind?

The child Hope…, born on the National Day of Prayer. Who would have thought? The difference between just 3 days in what was otherwise an ordinary onset of autumnal lunar shift tides and leaf-laden car rides on the way through an extraordinary September morning?

It is rumored 'hope spans sorrow in the humanrace'. Today, Hope turns 6.

Haven't you seen that kind of hope in someone’s eyes? Isn’t that where you were re-granted a feeling of such hope - a glance of hope - holding it closer, longer still?

As all parents do, Hope’s parents loved her as the most precious of gifts. They nurtured Hope, seeing Hope grow from an almost alien-esque state of something we may not know enough about to confirm or deny. All the while – calling life something we do bow down before in some unique way of our own while thinking it be someone else’s way; even thinking it to be our own– then casting a name upon it like some sort of belief system you get on podcast or cable: The works and deeds and service of those today and before are so much bigger. Hope is bigger, fuller, and stronger still.

Today – Hope celebrates a birthday; a birthday in time essentially between the start of the first geophysical year 50 years ago last June 2007 and…, groups of people still fighting and making war over words in books clung to like stray dogs lapping the bile of cart animals gone crazy in a desert bazaar.
Is hope older than the bizarre? Does it matter? Who cares? Good. Good ideas abound.

Hope spans sorrow – the sorrow of broken faith placed in mere mortals as the emissaries of some creation maker spraying sanitizer and freshener over everything in some Houdini-like re-do of our civilization touted to crashed the gates too reportedly squeezed out too much booty on simulator TV. Does hope stand above this all – above the complexity and intricacy of where all the blocks fit?

Hope looks onto life from star-lit eyes – the eyes of first sight, first knowledge and child like. Each lash laden blink re-affirms the span of beauty to hilarity of our kind. Even the mean, the bad, the grossly distempered ill-spoken – holding onto hope. Imagine that? Was it hopes crooked hand revealing hope still, like forest mirth, or side-eye glances of Pan’s lost boys looking for Ca’tain Hook? Who says hope doesn’t have a crooked hand at times?

Fresh! Exuberant! All smiles…, wide eyed. Hope sets off – to school. Universally, we do that among our kind – the kind who seeks out hope. The look of endless expanse in every window Hope looked in on her way – Hope’s way - the what we do too somehow manage a policy among ourselves setting forth how we interact – our intercourse – the process of process. All these things within each of us - each hope within.

Oh yes, something about a story. Not so much a story, as it did happen this day. HOPE turning 6 today: Well it happened. I remember it - and you were there. It happened for every good reason, a story of those who do the deeds.

Hope beats for everyone – some would characterize that as messed up; others - how it brings new ideas, even fresh vistas and blank slates where impossibility and confusion stood before. Hope is indiscriminant. Hope may even favor the prepared? Today, Hope turned six somewhere this day.

In dozens of other places, in streets a google-click away - Hope died in remote places as a matter of inconvenient truth - those who also hoped for life - a hope within us all.

Hope was presented to the front of her classroom to be asked: what is your hope, Hope?

Smiling, she looked over her peers, classmates, those assembled around in the classroom - in the hallways. Her mind raced to the windows and out through the blinds and beyond.

Outside, a breeze pushed swings on a playground; sun rays glanced off steel bars worn by the hands of those like stars, like Hope. like you and me. it is too – a hope beyond all other disagreements. Outside, Liberty-lady a lookin’ over the Hudson onto the school where Hope has stood. Where Hope stands and plays.

With a torch as light built onto a nearby rock reaching up from the vast swallow of the Hudson, beneath the halo cast as nimbus on her head rests the story behind the construction of that ‘La liberté éclairant le monde’ as a milestone. Hope holds a tablet whose inscription bears these words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776).

The real story of sweat and waiting and changes and delay – the building of this edifice – this thing jutting out of the Harbor of Upper New York Bay. Today, as then, a milestone. Hope turning Six, and a day older than the next. It was work and it was toil to build this representation thrusting up from the Harbor, off the shrore in tempest wind and pitching seas- one of many Hudson cool jewels of a story behind an edifice which bares our name.

Hope stands to tell you a story of that statute, outside. Hope’s harbor, where she stands this day – in each of us, is a way harder at work.

“a hope for tomorrow.” — Hope

Pieces of Idaho and Texas, last seen in Baghdad…

2007-08-27T12:39:00.000-06:00

see: [2] http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=11275

Lost is someone to perform calculus, or water treatment, or mechanical, or parenting, or elder care, an EMT, a Fireman, a Police officer. Lost is this one who is to one - all that is cherished.

We did not expire on that field of heat – bleeding to death - gasping a last breath far from home - a suffocating smugness of mindless wholesale slaughter of what we loose every day – all of us - scooping up parts of soldiers we have enough evac and emergency tech to save – what is coming back to us, blasted up, caught in explosions.

Our casualty’s would be triple or more without the MEDEVAC system – the line of support – the network – the other 4/5ths, the backbone of what is a truer support than any stickers, flag waiving and the such.

While the 5/5ths are now caught in a senseless, relentless slaughter of the future Fireman, Police officers – the teachers and professors – mothers and fathers – all that is us in community in the good times and the bad – what happens?

Iraq is a story of Loss – the loss of sanity. The loss of borders only established since the 50s – most no older than the boozed-out sick man of Europe - an Ottoman Empire re-animated and on the move in remote places as remote as even passing satellites wont capture the dark in full daylight. Death is what happens – getting scope creep.

The sickness in Iraq should creep you out. On bearing this burden – who today are those whose shoes we are not in – we don’t feel the twinge of disbelief – a disconnect in the what, the whys and the who you donnit for. We waived a flag today. Someone else was laid beneath one. What kind of a victor are we – if what we loose are bits and pieces of our future – the infrastructure of how things get done in our society while we are entertained with the ‘Presidentials’ mouthing plans like paper mache dummies.

So much moutha-mencia - and the rest getting’ to party-it-down in the most circus-esque self staining squalor. Service from the people is the sacred trust – not the leaders request to be trusted. Rocket Platinum Steelers Bleier would say - ‘It’s to be Trustworthy’. Our Troops have carried the water, lit the torch, carried on and on beyond the scope of what lay before them.

And last, though it be true, - These Troops who did and died and became dismembered or returned home whole to love and to have a life again far form where they left many of those who stood beside them - the troops did so for the President, too!. They did so for us because in some way - service is what broadens us, strengthens us, makes us taller, widens our scope.

“…lost today - stars from Marshall Texas. Boise Idaho.” - Vic Vlog

Vic’s Prayer for those who pass this day and the next: Be still my heart this night - oh Phobos and Demos with wings upon your feet come to claim these souls this day - those who no longer wait for sleep. We now wait for the hand of hope, even crooked hope to shine beyond the loss of these now gone. Amen.

In inking the line which flows from Congressional Halls neatly in black type -It flows out of staffers and books and bills to foreign lands. The ink before it has dried, already became the rivulets of blood and back. This is the line of service as it is still written – the ’so let it be written - so let it be done part of Humanities Army - still on the march after all these years with what left to overcome or to conquer.

Can we plan to be victorious without valor : death has gotten scope creep in Baghdad – a putrid gassy green of the Nile who slew all the babies – our babies only in their twenties, without so much as having lavished on this life with all that is their promise to be, to be alive.

Where are the parades welcoming back the soldiers? Where is their thanks and praise that we mistake support as a street sign given in honor to the fallen, a sticker, some talk over coffee while blasting the government.

Where is our support of those who toe this shifting line of sand on our behalf and on command? Rights are given by those who die and are dead - by those who return to their cities and have those cities doling out jobs to special interests whose idea of democracy is jumping up and down in a public square with a megaphone - far from the blood letting fields where Morris & Willey took their last look, their last breath, their last thought on the loved ones.

Arise with hope for our troops to return safely. Retire each night with the troops in your thoughts or prayers. Do things for those who serve - do them-in private - do them in public - yet do those acts which are still as if in a shadow cast from those who serve.

Vic

Unprecedented Role for the National Guard

2007-08-23T12:37:00.000-06:00

([1] MSNBC) [2] View article]

“The Pentagon is asking National Guard troops and their families to make sacrifices like never before in Iraq and other hot spots … Gen. George Casey … acknowledged that the Guard’s wider role puts unprecedented pressure on the lives, careers and relationships for troops once considered mostly weekend warriors.… Casey told The Associated Press on Sunday that the military will push ahead with a plan announced in January for National Guard deployments of no more than a year, with troops spending five years at home before redeployment. Currently, Guard members are returning to the battlefield after only 3½ years at home.”