At first the video is blurry and difficult to make out. A bunch of men standing around a python begin slicing its belly down the middle. It soon becomes apparent that something of note is inside the giant snake, but it’s not immediately clear what has drawn so much attention.
Then you see it: An entire grown man, swallowed whole, lies dead inside the python.
According to local news reports, the body found inside the 23-foot-long snake turned out to be 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro, a harvester who worked on a palm oil plantation on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. He was reported missing on March 26 . . .
Similar to Burmese pythons, these huge snakes kill their prey before consuming it, making it unlikely Salubiro was eaten alive.
A 2015 study found that, contrary to popular belief, pythons and other constricting snakes such as boas and anacondas don’t suffocate their victims and instead kill by cutting off their blood flow, a method that ends life much more quickly. (Read more from “How This 23-Foot Python Swallowed a Man Whole” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Heller_Tigerpython_Python_molurus_molurus.jpg19153000Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-31 19:20:492017-04-08 20:59:00How This 23-Foot Python Swallowed a Man Whole
Today the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a new video of their investigation into Planned Parenthood’s sale of baby body parts. This video features former Planned Parenthood of Arizona Medical Director Dr. DeShawn Taylor. Taylor describes in detail how she delivers intact fetuses. She also suggests that she ignores an Arizona law that protects infants born alive.
This video comes a day after California attorney general and Planned Parenthood champion Xavier Becerra charged CMP’s David Daleiden with 15 felony counts. Daleiden promised to release more footage, even though there is a campaign to silence him.
Previous CMP videos showed Planned Parenthood executives negotiating for sales of body parts from aborted babies. The first video featured Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola. In it, she explains how she harvests organs using partial-birth abortions.
This latest video confirms what we knew from earlier videos: Selling baby body parts is a strategy by Planned Parenthood of America to help their affiliates profit.
The new footage shows Nucatola presiding over a boozy reception at a meeting for abortionists. She is happy to connect Daleiden, who poses as a buyer from a biotech company, with Dr. DeShawn Taylor. Nucatola trained Taylor as a former medical director for Planned Parenthood Arizona.
“I get a lot of referrals from Planned Parenthood,” Taylor tells the investigators.
She discusses her “technique” in abortion, and explains that she prefers to deliver fetuses that are dismembered rather than fully intact.
“It’s not a matter of how I feel about it coming out intact, but I gotta worry about my staff and people’s feelings about it coming out looking like a baby,” Taylor said. She agrees with the investigator’s suggestion that this is for her staff’s comfort. She also claims that “Arizona is so conservative, I just don’t even want to send a full fetus for cremation.”
It may be that Taylor herself is not at ease with the intact body of a dead fetus. “We have the people who do our paperwork for the fetal death certificates,” she explains, “they email us calling them ‘babies.’ Baby this, baby that, baby so-and-so, and I’m like, that’s creepy!”
But she knows the law. So, she tells the investigators, “In Arizona, if the fetus comes out with any signs of life, we’re supposed to transport it. To the hospital.” One investigator then asks, “Is there any standard procedure for verifying signs of of life?”
Taylor responds, “Well, the thing is, I mean the key is, you need to pay attention to who’s in the room, right?”
She then laughs. “It’s a mess,” she says as she repeats what the Arizona law requires. “It’s a mess.”
Taylor then describes in grisly detail how she prefers to do abortions. It’s known as dismemberment dilation and evacuation. It requires a drug known as “dig,” for digoxin. The drug kills the fetus before the forceps enter the womb. She says, “My biceps appreciate when the dig works.” Taylor then says that without the drug it takes “a bit more” force to perform the abortion with her forceps.
“I remember when I was a [Family Planning] Fellow and I was training, I was like, Oh, I have to hit the gym for this,” she says.
Taylor’s next admission is the most damning. She explains how delivering an “intact calvarium [head]” requires killing the fetus when most of its body – all but the head – is outside the womb. This is the partial-birth abortion method Nucatola described in the first CMP video.
As the conversation wraps up, Taylor says she’s “definitely interested” in a partnership with the buyer. She assures them that her “market share of the abortion services continues to increase.”
“This footage,” Daleiden says, “shows a longtime Planned Parenthood abortion doctor willing to sell baby parts for profit, use criminal abortion methods to get more intact body parts, and even cover up infanticide.”
He says that Taylor “was trained by Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services and encouraged by her to participate in the fetal body parts market.”
Daleiden vows that this latest video is not the last. It is “just a preview,” he says, “of the damning and incriminating admissions of Planned Parenthood leaders on our further unreleased tapes, being censored by an unconstitutional gag order from a federal judge in San Francisco.” (For more from the author of “Former Planned Parenthood Medical Director: “Pay Attention to Who’s in the Room” When Infants Are Born Alive” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Pink_out_for_Planned_Parenthood_21638969968.jpg24523725Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-29 22:11:052017-03-29 22:11:05Former Planned Parenthood Medical Director: “Pay Attention to Who’s in the Room” When Infants Are Born Alive
Some consider it the most powerful investigative committee in Congress: the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. It has nearly unlimited purview to look into most any matter that has a tie to government.
In the past, that’s meant investigating everything from steroids in sports to the housing crisis. I recently spoke to the current Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz: “The Oversight Man” who’s watchdogging government under Donald Trump’s presidency.
The following is the transcript of our interview:
Attkisson: There’s no better way to understand the business of the House Oversight Committee than to see it in action.
Rep. Chaffetz: Who at the Department of Homeland Security office is holding you back?
Huban Gowadia: So I have to work with the Office of General Counsel.
Rep. Chaffetz: Give me some names. I want to know who to call up here.
Attkisson: Republican Jason Chaffetz is in the chairman’s seat and can usually found taking names or at least trying. Today, he’s grilling a TSA official about why the agency is stonewalling investigations into retaliation against whistleblowers.
Rep. Chaffetz: Tell me the attorneys that are telling you not to provide this information to Congress, tell me the names of the attorneys that are telling you not to provide this to the OSC. I want names.
Huban Gowadia: I will follow up with you.
Rep. Chaffetz: No. I want you right now, you’ve had notice of this hearing. I need specific names. You got staff sitting there, how many staff with the TSA? One, two three, four, five, six, seven. One of these seven people has got to get on the phone, get your butt up out of this committee, and go get that information before this hearing’s done.
Rep. Chaffetz: I think one of the, the big things you have to do as the chairman every day, almost every hour, you have to make decisions about what to investigate, what not to investigate. We get about 15 whistleblowers a day. You have to vet those and figure out what’s real and what’s not real.
Attkisson: What are some of the most famous or infamous instances of investigations this committee’s done over many years?
Rep. Chaffetz: When we have the FBI director, Mr. Comey, come and talk about what was going on and not going on with Hillary Clinton, that was certainly a big, big moment, and nation was captured to it.
James Comey: If I don’t see the evidence in that case that she was acting with criminal intent in her engagement with her lawyers.
Rep. Chaffetz: And I guess like I read criminal intent as the idea that you allow somebody without a security clearance access to classified information. Everybody knows that director. Everybody knows that.
Attkisson: How do you describe for people who don’t pay that much attention to Congress what the job of the Oversight Committee is?
Rep. Chaffetz: Oversight was founded in 1814, its role and responsibility is to look over every government expenditure there is. Abraham Lincoln actually sat on this committee in the two years that he served in the United States Congress.
Committee video: He was concerned that the president wasn’t telling the truth, and so he set off on this quest to find the truth.
Attkisson: More recently, the Oversight Committee issued more than 1,000 subpoenas involving alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration. It dug into Iraq War contract fraud under President George W. Bush. It’s probed the housing crisis, steroids in sports, and the IRS targeting of conservatives. And in 2012, it held an attorney general, Eric Holder, in contempt for the first time in history for withholding subpoenaed documents in the Fast and Furious gunwalking case.
Rep. Chaffetz: There is no one person in this country that’s above the law.
Attkisson: Some people accuse the committee, whether it’s being run by a Democrat or Republican at the time, of being political in nature, of in essence, going after whoever’s in the other party, or if the administration is in the opposite party.
Rep. Chaffetz: Our job is not to be a cheerleader for the president, and I think that’s over the long term one of the things we’ll be judged by is, did you call balls and strikes that are coming over the plate, to use a baseball metaphor, did you call the same on Democrats as you did on Republicans?
Attkisson: Now with President Donald Trump in the White House, that philosophy is already being put to the test. What issues has the Trump administration, if any, already put before you?
Rep. Chaffetz: Well we have five different things that we’re looking at as it relates to mishandling classified information. General Flynn going to Russia, taking money for a speech. The president in Mar-a-Lago, I’m glad he likes it there, I want him to enjoy life and get out and away from the White House from time to time but you still have to deal with classified information in a moment’s notice, and you have questions about how he is handling that. Another thing that we have done is when Kellyanne Conway went on national television and touted Ivanka Trump’s brand.
Kellyanne Conway: It’s a wonderful line, I own some of it, a free commercial, go buy it today, everybody, you can find it online.
Rep. Chaffetz: As an executive branch employee you can’t do that. At any level of government. You can’t endorse or support or use the bully pulpit or the assets of certainly the White House or any department or agency.
Attkisson: Chaffetz and the committee’s lead Democrat, Elijah Cummings, signed a letter asking the Office of Government Ethics to recommend possible disciplinary action.
Rep. Chaffetz: You have to call it out and refer to it what it is, which is wrong, wrong, wrong. And she can’t do that again.
Attkisson: What about the hottest topic in the media, the question of Russia’s interference in the U.S. election?
Attkisson: What is your understanding of the evidence as you know it?
Rep. Chaffetz: Well we rely heavily on Devin Nunes as the chairman of the intel committee, as well as Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat. You can’t just rely on The New York Times, but even The New York Times said there was no direct evidence that tied any of this together. So, let’s be vigilant, let’s understand that some of these bigger nation states; they’re not necessarily our friends, they’re not trying to do us a favor. The Russians, the Chinese, others are constantly trying to probe us, trying to affect our nation, they’re constantly spying on us. This is not breaking news. How you deal with it is interesting. So, to suggest that this was somehow Donald Trump’s fault or problem, it really does kind of mystify me.
Attkisson: How do you explain when you watch TV news and you see politicians talk about it, it seems like everything’s about Russia, almost disproportionately so?
Rep. Chaffetz: Where were they when Mitt Romney said that our biggest geopolitical threat was Russia and Barack Obama mocked him? Where were they at that point? And where were they when Barack Obama, as the president, stood up and said, even if you wanted to affect the election, you couldn’t.
President Obama: There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections. I’d invite Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.
Attkisson: But Russia and the election is one topic the Oversight Committee doesn’t plan to tackle under Chaffetz. He says that’s being done by the House Intelligence Committee, which has the necessary clearance to look into classified matters. A recent hearing got heated when Democrat Stephen Lynch argued the Oversight Committee should be investigating, too.
Rep. Lynch: They hacked the American election. That is their …
Rep. Chaffetz: There’s no evidence of that and President Obama said that that wasn’t even possible.
Rep. Lynch: This is high confidence, this is our own FBI! High confidence that they hacked the election. They interfered with our elections and if we’re turning a blind eye to that that’s a shame. That’s a shame. That corner of our democracy and we’re just gonna say, ‘Oh, that’s somebody else’s work.’ That’s not anybody else’s work. That’s our work.
Attkisson: Chaffetz says the committee is also taking a pass at voter fraud allegations from President Trump.
President Trump: We also need to keep the ballot box safe from illegal voting.
Rep. Chaffetz: I don’t see any evidence of that, so I didn’t pursue that investigation even though the president of the United States was saying there’s evidence. I haven’t seen any.
Attkisson: Sometimes the leader of this committee in particular becomes a target of whoever’s in the other party, or whoever is feeling attacked. Has that happened to you, or do you expect that to happen?
Rep. Chaffetz: It happens on a daily basis.
Attkisson: How do you handle it?
Rep. Chaffetz: Just let it fly right past. No matter what issue, I can say that the sun is going to rise tomorrow and people on either side of the parties will disagree about that. You could say that that flower is beautiful, and you still get disagreements. That’s just the nature of it and you don’t take it personally. Remember that you’ve got a wife and kids that love you and that’s what’s really important). (For more from the author of “Meet ‘the Oversight Man’ in Congress” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/2906819234_770f49ab0f_b-1.jpg6851024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-28 20:13:242017-03-28 20:13:24Meet ‘the Oversight Man’ in Congress
In an exclusive interview seen by millions across the United States, Dr. Phil exposed the deadly secretive, and the highly organized world of elite pedophilia — with a former child sex slave going by the name of “Kendall” describing being literally born into, and growing up in, the world of elite sexual slavery.
Kendall explains that she was born to be a sex slave, as her parents intentionally had her for the trafficker she calls her “owner.” Kendall says that her parents sold her at birth to an elite pedophile ring that serviced some of the world’s power elite, describing her first memories as being passed around groups of rich and prominent men and women for them to “take turns” with her for sadistic sexual pleasure.
Making her first public appearance after escaping from the man she calls her “owner,” Kendall describes being forced to participate in actions that shock the conscience. She explains that she was forced to rape children as young as 5- years-old, and even admits to having been forced to kill a baby by the human trafficker she describes as her “owner”. . .
She says she doesn’t even know her actual age, as she has been a sex slave her entire life, being trafficked around the globe to be molested and raped by the societal elites – including high ranking law enforcement official, major sports franchise owners and even high level U.S. politicians.
She describes having birthed 3 children while in captivity, all of which have been taken from her by her owner/trafficker, and are believed by Kendall to now be child sex slaves themselves. . .
She recalls one of her most fearful memories was that of the pedophiles hosting a “hunting party” on one of their large private plots of lands, making numerous children run and hide in fear, as they were the “prey” to be hunted. The pedophiles would then hunt the children as they ran and hid in fear – raping and torturing them when they were captured. . .
She claims that she was trafficked to pedophile politicians, and taken to political parties attended by high-level politicians who used her for their personal pleasure. The politicians always took great care to hide what they were doing, according to Kendall, who confirmed that there are many elite U.S. politicians that have been engaged in raping children for many years — a reality that has consistently been covered up and completely hidden from voters.
Perhaps the reason these crimes have been so steadfastly hidden from public view, is that high-level law enforcement officials have also been implicated as being part of the elite pedophile network.
(Read more from the “Mainstream TV Show Watched by Millions Exposes Elite Government-Linked Pedophile Ring” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Young-Face-Child-Boy-Abuse-Fear-Depression-Kid-72194.jpg636960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-24 01:23:372017-03-26 00:42:13Mainstream TV Show Watched by Millions Exposes Elite Government-Linked Pedophile Ring
Sean Spicer revealed during Wednesday’s press briefing that they were caught off guard by Congressman Devin Nunes’ Wednesday press conference, in which he stated President Trump’s personal communications may actually have been collected by the Obama administration during the 2016 election.
Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters that significant development in the committee’s investigation revealed “that on numerous occasions the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”
Reporters asked Spicer if the White House was “concerned” about the optics of Nunes’ meeting with the president on the findings, a meeting which might be construed as White House interference in an ongoing investigation.
Spicer responded in the negative — clarifying that it was Nunes not President Trump who requested the meeting — before blasting a double standard in the media.
“Let me get this straight,” Spicer continued. “Number one, two weeks ago, we said this is the appropriate venue. Number two, you have asked over and over again why aren’t we meeting with certain individuals.” (Read more from “When Asked About Latest Wiretapping Claims, Spicer Drops a Big League Bombshell” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Sean_Spicer.jpg480486Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-23 05:32:372017-03-23 05:32:37When Asked About Latest Wiretapping Claims, Spicer Drops a Big League Bombshell
President Trump signed a bipartisan bill Tuesday that funds NASA programs and maps out a plan to send a manned mission to Mars.
The NASA Transition Authorization Act, which was co-authored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., distributes $19.5 billion for the space agency’s 2018 fiscal year (beginning Oct. 1). The bill also calls for NASA to draft a plan for a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s. The bill closely aligns with Trump’s $19.1 billion budget proposal for the agency.
Money will be delegated for deep space exploration, refining the International Space Station, commercial partnerships, and planning for the mission to Mars. The bill also “authorizes a space technology program” the White House said in a statement.
“It is the first time in seven years we’ve had a NASA authorization bill,” Sen. Cruz said, joking with President Trump that he could now “send Congress to space.”
“We could. What a great idea that could be,” Trump responded.
“This means a great deal for the nation’s space exploration, and it means a great deal for the state of Texas, and it continues America’s leadership in space,” Cruz added.
The president said NASA would continue to focus on space exploration while also working on transitioning more space activities to private companies.
“It’s been a long time since a bill like this has been signed, reaffirming our national commitment to the core mission of NASA, human space exploration, space science and technology,” the president said. “With this legislation, we support NASA’s scientists, engineers and astronauts and their pursuit of discovery.”
The bill appears to move the space agency back to its core duties. Former President Obama famously turned NASA into an agency that prioritized climate change, along with reaching out to the Islamic world. (For more from the author of “Shoot for Mars! Trump Signs Cruz-Rubio $19.5 Billion NASA Bill” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/MARS-Viking.jpg10241024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-21 22:40:242017-03-21 22:40:24Shoot for Mars! Trump Signs Cruz-Rubio $19.5 Billion NASA Bill
The defense partnership between the United States and Israel is set to reap the benefits of perhaps its greatest combined innovation to date.
Israel will soon add a revolutionary new missile defense system to its defense arsenal, a senior Israeli Air Force official said Monday. Known as “David’s Sling,” or “Magic Wand,” the joint U.S.-Israel creation will become fully operational at the beginning of April.
David’s Sling will protect Israel from medium-range missiles, as part of its three-tier defense system that also guards the country’s citizens from smaller short-range rockets and long-range ballistic threats.
Iron Dome, which achieved incredible success (with a 90 percent interception rate) in Israel’s latest flare-up with the Hamas terrorist group in 2014, guards the country against short-range threats. Multiple Iron Dome batteries are often activated amid conflict so Israel can deter threats aiming to overwhelm the systems.
Its Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 systems protect against long-range ballistic threats. The newly deployed Arrow was used for the first time on Friday to intercept a 440-pound missile fired from Syria. According to the Associated Press, the Syrian missile targeted Israeli jets returning from a strike on a Hezbollah weapons convoy.
David’s Sling, Iron Dome and Arrow have all been developed jointly by Israel and the United States, highlighting the successes and innovation produced by the defense partnership.
“In the next two weeks we will declare operational the David’s Sling and at that time we will have completed our multi-tier (defence capability),” an Israeli official said. “I’m sure that together with the Iron Dome and the Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 it will enhance our ability to deal with threats.”
David’s Sling has been jointly developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and the American defense company Raytheon. It is promoted as a more advanced version of the U.S.-made Patriot surface-to-air missile.
Much of the $3.1 billion in annual aid Israel receives from the United States goes toward bolstering the aforementioned missile defense projects. The defense shield can fire upon and target both enemy aircraft and incoming cruise missiles. David’s Sling has a range three times that of the Iron Dome, and the integrated system can undergo constant upgrades.
Israel faces a variety of threats from several local terrorist groups and enemy states, which include Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and ISIS, to name a handful. (For more from the author of “US-Israel Partnership Just Added Something Revolutionary” please click HERE)
Reflecting her incredible arrogance – and stupidity – Lisa Murkowski practically assaults a reporter this week for daring to question her about whether she would support House efforts against Obamacare.
Watch the incredible exchange here:
Of course, virtually all Alaskans know this is how their Senator acts both in public and private. So how the heck does she keep getting reelected? Perhaps that’s a question for the state’s corrupt Division of Elections…
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Murkowski-up-look.jpg26582225Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-17 23:23:512017-03-19 00:49:31VIDEO: Lisa Murkowski Practically Assaults Reporter For Daring to Question Her on Obamacare
Ever since Trump took the White House, the establishment has been dredging up old Russophobic fears to attack anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. It seems like anyone in power who offers a different opinion is immediately labeled a Russian agent and accused of having ties to Putin. These accusations are now being thrown around so flippantly that they are losing their power and meaning.
Take for instance what recently happened on the Senate floor between Rand Paul and John McCain. While McCain was arguing in favor of letting the nation of Montenegro join NATO, which obviously would stoke more tensions between the US and Russia, he criticized Senator Paul for not backing the bill by saying that “You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin,” and that if anyone opposes the bill, “they are now carrying out the desires and ambitions of Vladimir Putin and I do not say that lightly.”
Rand Paul responded by raising an objection, and leaving the room without saying a word. McCain then doubled down on his hysterical rhetoric. “The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is he has no argument to be made. He has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”
Methinks this doddering old warmonger needs to be put out to pasture. (For more from the author of “Warmonger John McCain Says This Huge Politician Is Working for Putin” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/John_McCain_-_Guard_Association_of_the_United_States_General_Conference.jpg6811024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-17 00:09:442017-03-19 00:58:03Warmonger John McCain Says This Huge Politician Is Working for Putin
Less than a month after U.S. Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Ryan Owens made the ultimate sacrifice, a joint session of U.S. Congress stood to applaud his wife.
What millions saw on Feb. 28 – the raw, heartbreaking grief on Gold Star widow Carryn Owens’ face as Republicans, Democrats, military leaders, judges and dignitaries clapped for more than two minutes – is already part of American history.
“For as the Bible teaches us, there is no greater act of love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” President Trump said while introducing Chief Owens and his wife to the nation. “Ryan laid down his life for his friends, for his country and for our freedom – we will never forget him.”
As our collective memory shortens in the social media age, however, how many of us will ultimately remember the story of Carryn and Ryan Owens? After all, as Gold Star wife Nikki Altmann told me after her husband was killed in Afghanistan, “six months from now, people won’t be calling to see how I’m doing.”
In addition to embracing Gold Star wives like Nikki and Carryn, we should be praying for the entire military community. The risks our country’s brave men and women in uniform face in global hotspots like Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Korean peninsula are very real.
Supporting our troops and sharing the stories of our country’s fallen warriors and their families is as non-political as the Fourth of July. Yet as is often the case in this hyper-partisan era, a misguided few chose to besmirch the importance of honoring a Gold Star widow’s tenacity and her husband’s distinguished service.
“Actually, it was the worst moment (of the speech), and that’s saying a lot for Donald Trump,” liberal comedian Bill Maher said on the March 3 episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. The rest of his ill-advised rant is too vulgar to quote on The Stream.
Slate writer Katy Waldman started the final paragraph of this piece with a truly head-scratching sentence: “But what, exactly, did Trump hope to accomplish by illuminating Carryn Owens’ sorrow?”
How about telling the story of a heroic Navy SEAL and his courageous wife, Ms. Waldman?
Every day, I read heartfelt Facebook posts from Gold Star family members with whom I’ve been privileged to become acquainted. In recent weeks, one widow asked for prayers while her young son struggles with only being able to see his departed dad through videos and pictures. Another post was from a mother who carried pride and a heavy heart as a local park was named in honor of her fallen son.
Gold Star family members are real people dealing with extraordinary challenges. After spending the last eight years speaking with hundreds of these remarkable Americans, I can say with certainty that each grieves and copes differently. All are nevertheless joined by the memories of their heroes, who I hope – spurred by two stirring minutes of applause for Carryn and Ryan Owens – will become ours.
“All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters,” legendary Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot wrote in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Carryn Owens didn’t ask to become the face or the name of America’s Gold Star community. If given the chance, she would undoubtedly trade those unforgettable two minutes of applause for two more minutes with her husband, who was only 36 years old when he was killed in Yemen.
As Carryn mourns Ryan, let us mourn with her. As a little boy cries out for his dad, let us weep with him. As Nikki Altmann worries that we won’t remember, let us ease her mind by remembering. As a mother celebrates her son’s life, let us also rejoice. As military families pray for the safety of their loved ones, let us pray, too.
Now is our moment to unite in applause of the selfless men and women who step forward every single day to protect us. I, for one, won’t ever stop clapping. (For more from the author of “We Should Never Stop Applauding Our Nation’s Military Families” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Defense.gov_photo_essay_110917-M-CS947-044.jpg16002400Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-03-15 18:50:172017-03-15 18:50:17We Should Never Stop Applauding Our Nation’s Military Families
