Memorial Day is a federal holiday that honors and mourns American military personnel who died while performing their duties in service to the United States Armed Forces. The USA has been in 79 wars since 1776 .   Click on that to see the details, but in every one of them, military life was lost.  Total casualties ( deaths and wounded ) of the major ones: American Revolutionary  50,000 1812                                     20,000 Mexican-American            17,435 Civil                                 1,129,418 WWI                                 320,518 WWII                             1,076,245 Korean                             128,650 Vietnam                            211,454 Afghanistan                       22,266 Iraq                                     36,710 It is estimated that approximately 2.4% of military combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq were female . For all of the 79 wars, 1,354,664 were killed and 1,498,240 wounded.  As a percent of deaths relative to the nation

Eleven years ago I posted on MEMORIAL DAY AND WARS .  In 2012, WHY MEMORIAL DAY ?  Five years ago the title was WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEMORIAL DAY AND VETERANS DAY ?  This is the day before, but I never let it go by.  Tonight, by the way, PBS has its annual Memorial Day Concert on the Mall, featuring  Colin Powell, Gladys Knight, the Four Tops and Steve Buscemi, of all the people.  I was working in the U.S. Senate when the first mall concert was held.  This was on 4 July 1980 for the initial  Capitol Fourth . Thinking about 42 years ago made me nostalgic.  I'm now into the 14th year of this blog.  This period is equivalent to going from kindergarten through high school and heading off to college.  But this second time was every day.  Back then there were weekends, holidays and summer vacation.  In fact, early in the 14th year, which would be June of 1958, I left Hawaii for the very first time.  I boarded a brand new PanAm 707 for Los Angeles. My brother picked me up at LA

I don't know who James Templer ( journalist and author ) is, but he published a guest commentary in The Daily News of Galveston County, saying what has been on my mind since the evil days of President Donald Trump, which continues.  I should insert here his entire presentation, but will only use two paragraphs ( you should read the rest ): Lurking beneath the surface of American democracy ever since its inception have been potentially disastrous eruptions from anti-democratic factions, militia, underground armies, insurrectionists and domestic terrorists. Just as plate tectonics can set off a volcano, political greed and chicanery can set off an insurrection. Who are these angry, anti-government, anti-authority, hate-filled, mostly white Caucasian Americans? Why are they so full of fear, paranoia, hatred and resentment? Perhaps it’s because there has always been inequality, government inefficiency and corruption and people get fed up with it. The danger is that the future of our D

On 4 May 2021, 25-year old Halima Cisse ( below with her husband Adjudant Kader Arby ) of Mali ( country in red ) went to Morocco ( gree n), thirty weeks ( 40 is the typical length ) into her pregnance to bear nine babies (five girls and four boys )-- nonuplets .   They weighed in from 1.1 to 2.2 pounds.  Not much has been reported since then, except that they all survived and are fragile.  Similar events happened in Sydney, Australia in 1971 and Malaysia in 1999.  However, none survived for more than a few days.  Remember Octomom ?  Nadya Suleman , now 45, celebrated the 12th birthday of her octuplets earlier this year.  She actually already had six children, all by in vitro fertilization.  The first of the six came in 2001 when she was 25-years old and divorced.  The third child is severely autistic. The father has not been named .  All six boys and two girls are doing well in Los Angeles today: How does she support her 14 children? Nadya lives paycheck-to-paycheck and works as a fu