As I saw on a note yesterday, under Obama, a picture no longer is worth "a thousand" words, now just 200.

Mothership, who said the things that you quote?

I'd guess Palestine.

I admire your mastery of American Indian history.  Can you suggest some books that you view as authoritative that one quite ignorant of the subject can begin with?

His world is, literally, unimaginable to me.  When I was his age and in grammar school, WWII was in high gear (we had begun to win on all fronts).  But, aside from the odd air raid drill (my father was a block warden) and having the troops from the local Army installation (a chemical warfare training post) practice their smoke camouflage along my walk home, we had little or no contact with the war and no information about it from our teachers.  The fathers of some of my classmates were overseas in the fighting zones, but we children knew little of that that I recall.

In school, we were busy learning to read, spell, write legible manuscript, and to do our sums, subtraction,  and the multiplication tables.  There was tension and strain, but the concerns that I remember were things like homework, our afternoon pickup ragtag football and baseball games (no Little League in those days), and learning to make and keep friendships.  

This business of heaping upon the heads of children social problems and ills that they cannot possibly affect is a misbegotten idea that is foreign to me.

I concur with those who feel that the federal government ought not to get into this line of work, except, perhaps, for having some agency develop basic course work and standards.  Leave the training to the States, local governments, and organizations like churches and the Boy Scouts.  

And, I think that EMT training is too detailed for most folks.  The basic "stop the bleeding and ensure an oxygen supply" measures ought to be sufficient medical training.  

Other measures, such as identifying danger zones and directing people out of them, assessing the nature of the event and its cause(s). evacuation means and routes, escape methods, how to free trapped people, and transporting fallen and crippled people also need to be taught.  

And, I should encourage people to carry with them at all times a few items of basic equipment  such as whistles (for signaling), sharp pocket knives, bright flashlights, and --in their vehicles-- hammers or other devices for breaking out windows, small crow bars for forcing open doors, larger flashlights, fire extinguishers small shovels (like the old Army entrenching tools), and thirty or forty feet of strong rope. (I omit including firearms because of the ridiculous laws of many States.)

He is a US citizen, arrested in the US on suspicion of having committed a crime under the US Code.  

He is entitled to all of the rights afforded to any criminal suspect by the Constitution, the US statutes, and the common law.

Two slim volumes by E. B. Sledge are superlative accounts of what war was like for a young marine: With the Old Breed (At Peleliu and Okinawa) and China  Marine.  

Another of my favorites is Quartered Safe Out Here, by George MacDonald Fraser, author of the wonderful Flashman series.

Some people have ALL the luck!

For the South, I'd hope Knoxville, although it is nearly too big even now.  I don't like big cities.  Maybe Jackson would be better(Jackson, TENNESSEE,that is).

For the Army uniforms: "pinks and greens", the best I ever wore or saw!

Paul Johnson's Modern Times covers the period well.  You also might introduce them to Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, both in the television film and the books.

The preceding comments all make excellent suggestions.  My own is to reread the last paragraphs of President Washington's "Farewell Address" (here: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp) as general background for considering America's proper stance in facing the world.

I liked it a lot!

The proposition is entirely culturally  related.  Has anyone counted the murders of whole populations by black men in sub-Saharan Africa?  Or the atrocities perpetrated by the Asian  Communists in Cambodia?   There is plenty of guilt to go around.

After the experience of 53 years of a good, but not always comfortable, marriage (crowned by three beautiful and absolutely daughters), I think that you have received some very good advice in the preceding posts.

 My contribution ranges from the banal (separate bathrooms are a great benefit to living together) to the not so ordinary (genuine good humor, such as one demonstrates to one's friends and co-workers, is a wonderful lubricant in the inevitable rough passages and good manners are always the proper standard).  

The rule at our house has been that one's best behavior should be displayed to those closest to us.   And, that implies honesty, forthrightness, willingness to listen without interruption and with sympathetic attention.  It has served us well.

I have been fixed on the 12/12 year term limit for years now, computed any way one wanted to compute: i. e., six in the Senate and three in the House, vice versa, or any other combination, and  cumulative.  But the point raised by Barfly resonates with me: I wonder whether four years (two terms) in the House might not be adequate.  The point is to achieve a continuing influx of fresh, new blood.

What changes in the campaign finance laws, if any do y'all see as accompanying the limitation?

Amen and amen!