This just popped into my e-mail inbox. It comes from a young friend of mine who lives in Hereford.

What is a Vet?

He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day and making sure the armored personnel carriers didn’t run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed a hundred times by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.
She – or he – is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang. He is the POW who went away one person and came back another – or didn’t come back AT ALL. He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat – but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other’s backs.
He is the parade – riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand. He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean’s sunless deep. He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket – palsied now and aggravatingly slow – who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being – a person who offered some of his life’s most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say Thank You. That’s all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot, “THANK YOU.” Remember November 11th is Veterans Day.
“It is the soldier, not the reporter,
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier,Who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
and whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

Father Denis Edward O’Brien, USMC

My friend sent this note as an expression of thanks for my military service to the country many years ago.

I only can say that we have come a long way — a very long way — from the days when we once scorned our men and women in uniform. I’m grateful that we’ve made this journey.

To all the vets who served, and to their family members who love them: Thank you for your service.

A letter came in the mailbag this morning. It comes from an Amarillo man who said this: “As our President Barack Obama declared in his speech that America is no longer a Christian nation …”

What speech? When did he declare such a thing?

I’ve been getting a good bit of mail lately from folks who keep repeating this alleged statement. I’ve gone back through the record and I cannot find where the president said anything of the kind.

And this takes me to the point of this note: the innuendo and outright lies being kicked around about the president of the United States.

I am struggling to keep my sanity in the wake of all this hate. We’ve heard it said from the so-called “birthers” that Obama wasn’t born in the United States, that he is a closet Muslim (which in a pre-9/11 world might not have mattered as much as it does in this post-9/11 world), that he is a Marxist and heaven knows what else. Do you remember when the sanctimonious wing of the conservative movement clobbered President Clinton over his messing around with the White House intern? Given that no one has discovered even a hint of impropriety in that vein regarding the current president, his right-wing foes have glommed onto made-up stuff dealing with his birth and his faith.

I can understand why many Americans are upset with the president. The deficit he and Congress are running up are giving me the heebie-jeebies. I’m concerned that the president at times appears too reluctant to speak harshly enough to those who threaten this nation.

But I am going nuts having to listen to those who lie, who put words in the president’s mouth and who accuse him of being things he is not.

OK. I exaggerate. I’m not approaching clinical insanity. At least I don’t think so.

Mac Thornberry may be in trouble.

President Obama today declared that flags flying on federal property will be lowered through Veterans Day. Gov. Perry on Thursday issued a flag-lowering declaration for state property through the weekend.

James Williams, president of the Amarillo firefighters union, made an impassioned plea this week to the Amarillo City Commission.

He pitched an idea worth pondering: whether to allow firefighters to run a new city ambulance service to replace the one being abandoned by Northwest Texas Hospital.

But he injected an unfortunate bit of hometown-ism into it. He suggested that a city-run ambulance service would be preferable because it would comprise people who live in Amarillo.

Whoa! The city is considering a proposal from American Medical Response. AMR is an out-of-town company. But it would hire folks who, like the firefighters, live here too. Williams suggested in remarks to the commission that AMR isn’t the kind of company Amarillo should welcome.

Perhaps the firefighters have a better plan than AMR; it might be that AMR’s is better. City commissioners need to examine which is the best buy for the city. They need to examine all aspects of every proposal they get before making this critical decision.

The City Commission shouldn’t base its decision on shallow boosterism.

Health care reform may be worse than a lot of things. But worse than a terrorist attack?

Southwest Airlines had little for which to apologize when a flight crew departing Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport evicted a woman and her screaming child.

The tot began hollering when he and his mom — a native of Dumas — boarded a flight on Oct. 26 at AMA bound for San Jose, Calif. They were here visiting a sick family member. The boy’s screeching became uncontrollable. Imagine flying 1,000 or so miles having to listen to that racket.

The flight crew couldn’t get the tot quiet, so mother and child were ordered off the plane, reportedly to a rousing ovation from grateful passengers.

If the airline owed them an apology, it only was for the failure to fetch the passengers’ luggage so they could take it on a later flight. But that’s as far as it goes.

Air travel isn’t much fun in this post-9/11 era. Those who have flown much since then know what I’m talking about. Passengers need not have to endure screamers at 35,000 feet.

Good going, flight crew.

High Plains Public Radio has just concluded its latest fund drive. It did so with a fascinating tribute to the late Teel Bivins.

It had received a pledge in Bivins’ memory from someone who noted that two of his brothers were instrumental in bringing HPPR to Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. Why is that so fascinating?

Well, consider that the Bivins family has long been associated with conservative Republican politics. Consider, too, that HPPR and its parent company — National Public Radio — have become favorite targets of those who accuse the “mainstream media” of tilting too far to the left; Paul Greenberg, the great editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, refers to NPR as “National Propaganda Radio.”

The late Levi Bivins started the effort to bring NPR to the Panhandle. Levi died in the 1990s and brother Mark took the effort forward. So, it became something of a family affair. Teel, the one-time state senator and ambassador to Sweden, wasn’t so much out front on the NPR campaign.

But the tribute given in Teel Bivins’ memory speaks to the quality of a family that would seek to enlighten the Panhandle with the news and information that National Public Radio can bring.

Good job, Bivins Brothers — and thank you.

“Could you list the mistakes she made other than being a conservative woman? Or is it being a member of a church you don’t like? Maybe having too many children or having imperfect children? Or was it being an outspoken conservative? Maybe you could blog about the mistakes Sarah Palin made… I would love some of the “facts” that give you the right to state so overtly the charge that she made “plenty of mistakes”.Was that you who blogged last week about Fox News being biased?”

The above is a comment to an item I posted on my blog this week. OK, I’ve been called out.

Mistakes?

Let’s see. Sarah Palin quit her job as Alaska’s governor halfway through her first term, declaring she didn’t want to be a “lame duck.” That was something of an admission that she is incapable of governing for the remainder of her term after declaring her intention not to seek re-election. I consider that to be a mistake.

Hmm. What else? Oh, she said she refused federal earmark money for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” Oops. Not true. She accepted it at first, then turned it down when the stuff hit the fan over the earmark and former Sen. Ted Stevens’ role in obtaining it for Alaska. Yep, that’s a mistake.

Anything else? Oh yeah. In a TV interview, she said she couldn’t name a single newspaper or news periodical she read. The question seemed to catch her off guard and off balance. Another mistake.

OK, one more. In another TV interview, Gov. Palin couldn’t define the “Bush Doctrine” as it relates to the nation’s foreign policy. (My understanding of the doctrine is that President Bush felt it imperative to put our national interests first when deciding critical foreign policy matters; he didn’t believe it was altogether critical that the United States be held in high esteem in foreign capitals.)

Palin bristled at John McCain’s aides who tried to control her speeches and public utterances; she demonstrated a lack of knowledge on economic matters and on critical foreign-policy issues.

So, there you have it — for what it’s worth.

Gov. Palin has made plenty of errors on her meteoric rise to political superstardom.

And I’ll say it again: Fox News is every bit as biased as the other networks.

Levi Johnston has done the impossible: He’s made me feel moderately sorry for Sarah Palin.

Johnston is the guy who got Palin’s daughter pregnant. He and Bristol Palin then broke up shortly after the 2008 election, which featured the former Alaska governor’s bid to become vice president on a Republican ticket led by Sen. John McCain.

Palin then quit the governor’s office for reasons that few of us in the Lower 48 can understand. Meanwhile, Johnston — an inarticulate rube — has gone on the attack against the Palin clan. Now he’s set to pose for Playgirl magazine. He is making a name for himself merely because he fathered a child out of wedlock with the daughter of a public figure who made a name for herself by becoming the darling of the morally righteous wing of the Republican Party.

But ex-Gov. Palin doesn’t deserve to be trashed by this clown, Levi Johnston.

She’s made plenty of mistakes on her own. That she’s being raked over the coals by a loser such as Johnston is insulting on its face.

I’m feeling just a tad sorry for her.