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Happy 4th Of July, Tuskegee Airmen Style
July 4th, 2009
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Oliver Willis
Like Kryptonite To Stupid
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Isn’t it about time you reconsidered leaving the British empire?
Happy Fourth of July to all you US of Aers.
Isn’t it about time you reconsidered leaving the British empire?
Hey, the phone works both ways, you know. You chaps could apply for statehood.
Seriously, consider it. We’d even show you how to play baseball.
Good lord, Bryan, Quaker. Stop that nonsense immediately.
As Sir Winston once said, we are two people divided by a common language.
J.
Quaker. Stop that nonsense
I have so few remaining pleasures. Now you’d deprive me of nonsense?
Cool Eleanor Roosevelt story: When she visited the training Tuskegee pilots she insisted that one of them take her up in one of their planes, against the wishes of her ‘handlers’ who were still suspicious of the Tuskegee pilots’ flying abilities.
Jay, I think that was Oscar Wilde who said that. Still a good quote though.
Jay and Bryan : George Bernard Shaw …
Happy 4th of July from the OTB
Original Tea Baggers !
heh
‘Seriously, consider it. We’d even show you how to play baseball.’
It’s a deal; when you guys learn to play hockey.
Great photo. There was a very good made for tv film starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Laurence Fishbourne among others that’s well worth viewing;
http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie/the-tuskegee-airmen.2/
I am not getting the connection between the Tuskegee Airmen and Independence Day…
Is it too obvious or too subtle for me ?
The equal right to defend ones country is a pretty patriotic thing, no? Yes.
That the Tuskegee Airmen were patriots there can be no doubt. I don’t ordinarily think of “my rights” as patriotic, but I am instead, patriotic because I live in a land where I have my rights, even as they were patriotic in a land where they had few or no rights.
John Adams’ speech about the “right to air, food and clothing” seems dissonant in a space where so many clamor about a “right” to “free” health care, a demand Adams most likely would never have dreamed of, let alone thought of answering.
Thomas Paine, one of the greatest of the forefathers, argued passionately for what might be called a socialized system.
Despite Paine being crucial to the development of our American system of government, he’s largely been eclipsed, coopted, or ignored.
Right winger “Frank DiSalle’s” selective memory to the contrary, our Constitution’s first sentence explicitly encouraged the promotion of “the general Welfare”.
I am not getting the connection between the Tuskegee Airmen and Independence Day…
It is a day when patriotic images, especially those of a martial flavor, abound, Frank. What’s confusing you?
I got, Quaker, I got it… War, patriotism, yeah, yeah, yeah…
Did you not read my comment from 3 and one half hours ago ?
Incidentally, I never viewed the Declaration of Independence as a Declaration of War against the British Empire.
I never thought that the phrase “Promote the General Welfare” in the Preamble to the Constitution meant that everyone in America should be on welfare, either.
The 332nd were among the finest airmen in the entire USAAF.
• NO BOMBERS LOST TO ENEMY AIRCRAFT. Read that again, no bombers lost to enemy aircraft! My dad flew in B-17s he loved the 332nd. (Other fighter squadrons would chase after the Messerschmitts in order to increase their number of kills and leave the bombers unescorted. The 332nd knew their main job was to protect the bombers and after chasing off the Messerschmitts they would return to their escort duties. Countless bomber crews owe their lives to the men of the 332nd.)
• 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses
• 744 Air Medals
• 8 Purple Hearts
• 14 Bronze Stars
• over 15,000 combat sorties (including 6000+ for the 99th prior to July ‘44)
• 111 German airplanes destroyed in the air, another 150 on the ground
• 950 railcars, trucks, and other motor vehicles destroyed
• 1 destroyer sunk by P-47 machine gun fire (Lt. Pierson’s flight)
• sixty-six pilots killed in action or accidents
• thirty-two pilots downed and captured, POWs
Oh, and when they got home…they had to sit in the back of the bus….