"There are many good reasons to watch 'The Vietnam War.' Unless you are very well informed, it will teach you things you do not know and correct things you thought you knew. It may be, if you are of those generations for whom the words 'the war' call to mind only Iraq or Afghanistan, that you know nothing of Vietnam at all. But there are lessons in this misadventure worth learning regarding the crooked course of human events and the collision of national interests and individual lives. Its multiplicity of voices, from both sides of the war and the war at home, might make you a more thoughtful, less judgmental person in the end if you pay attention. And you should pay attention."
- Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times (September 22, 2017)

... on PBS is breaking for a couple of nights before resuming on Sunday evening. It's superior filmmaking, easily the best made-for-television documentary since Ken Burns' "The Civil War" first graced our screens 27 years ago.

But I almost hate to admit that its sheer intensity and relentlessness has also been taking its toll on me mentally, to the point where I've started to wonder whether I can sustain myself during the entire run, night after night. Wednesday night's episode in particular, "Resolve," was particularly hard to watch. If nothing else, I've learned that I'm actually a lot closer to the subject emotionally than I've heretofore acknowledged to myself.

Listening to 94-year-old Jean-Marie Crocker and her 67-year-old daughter Carol talk about the wartime experiences conveyed to them in 19-year-old Denton Crocker's letters home, which culminated in his death in combat 50 years ago, was just heartbreaking. Upon seeing that single tear run down Carol's cheek as she recalled the day the U.S. Army officers came to their door to inform them that Denton was gone, I had to walk out of the room and regain my own composure.

Maybe it's so raw to me because so few of us who are members of Gold Star families were ever really given the opportunity to talk about our losses. That's because nobody ever really wanted to discuss a war that we ultimately lost, never mind the inherent divisiveness of the subject matter itself. Once the war was over, we all hastened to put it out of our minds as best we could.

But I think that because of our own failure to not reconcile our feelings with our leaders' betrayal of our national confidence, our collective Vietnam experience has instead been haunting the entire country ever since.

In that regard, filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick may be doing us a favor by compelling us to finally confront our demons, both real and imagined, and thus offering to us that much-needed opportunity to finally talk about the Vietnam War in very human and consequential terms, something which we've willfully denied to ourselves for far too long.

Are sports teams government-sponsored?  I don't think so.  Given the vast amounts of cash generated and paid, it would make more sense to play songs about money - and there are plenty of them to choose from.

I'm waiting for violence to break out at games, when "patriotic" folks who've been tailgating for hours decide to teach a lesson to anyone who doesn't stand for the anthem.  

Donald Trump doesn't give a rat's a$$ about patriotism - he's too busy cultivating all the other "isms" to which he subscribes.

Anne seemed to care a great deal when she said the fact in my post were wrong.  Now that it seems my facts are right saying "who cares" seems like a cop out.

if you just let the pile up they would be waist to chest deep over about a half acre. and i couldnt just blow them off the yard, like here.

this is in the middle of  a forest but i can ust blow them in any direction because no neighbors.

really good.  nothing you expect.  subtle and layered performances.  

Link

A family drama that morphed into a massive scandal over about a ten-year period, dealing with the estrangement of Mme Bettencourt's only daughter, Francois Bettencourt Meyer, L'Oreal's shadowy corporate history during WW II (Vichy), and the curious relationship she had with the handsome and debonair,  Francois-Marie Banier, the gay man, 25 years her junior, to whom she lavished cash, gifts and real estate to the tune of $1 billion euros.

 MIss Bettencourt-Meyers lawsuit involved the mental capacity of her mother and the intrigue of politicians, such as Sarkozy, and  upstairs/downstairs conniving.

WASHINGTON -- Director Rob Reiner is joining a new group called the Committee to Investigate Russia, to highlight what is known about the Russian threat to interfere with American elections and other institutions.

The committee was scheduled to go live with a website on Tuesday at InvestigateRussia.org, as well as a video featuring Morgan Freeman. Reiner and David Frum of The Atlantic were expected to announce the launch of the group.

The committee's advisory board members include Reiner; James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence; Charlie Sykes, the conservative political commentator; Max Boot, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Seems like a switch went on in both my late older dog and my current one, when they hit 10 yrs they just want to go outside and bark every 10 minutes.  

Funny thing with this one though is that she is so obsessed with her current squeaky rubber ball that now I just have to squeak it from inside the house to get her to come back in, instead of going out and yelling at her.

 I like King James shot.

LeBron James called out the president for his swipe at Curry.

"U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!"