This is an amazing story:

Frank Woodruff Buckles was just 15 years old when he joined the U.S. Army. Soon, he was deployed to war and headed overseas on the Carpathia — the same ship used in the rescue mission of the Titanic.

He drove ambulances in Britain and France for soldiers wounded during World War I.

A few decades later, Buckles was in the Philippines as a civilian, on December 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He was taken as a prisoner of war for 39 months in Manila, eating his meals out of a single tin cup.

More than 60 years later, he still clings to that cup, the one that sustained his life. Weathered with age, the cup has flecks of white paint chipped off. He keeps it as a reminder of his sacrifice for the country he so loves. He also still has his dog tags.

At age 107, there’s not much the war veteran, POW and West Virginia farmer hasn’t seen. But this week, this quietly accomplished man was humbled.

I’ve been in the radio industry since 1996. I’ve seen my fair share of concerts cancelled. Here are the real reasons behind the cancellations:

Reason:
“Due to a scheduling conflict…”

Actual Reason:
“Ticket sales are slow.”

—

Reason:
“Due to Laryngitis…” (or even more telling: “illness”)

Actual Reason:
“Ticket sales are slow.”

—

Reason:
“Due to a miscommunication…”

Actual Reason:
Usually means that there was an argument between the venue and the tour manager. - i.e., the venue won’t pick the blue marshmallows out of the singer’s Lucky Charms.

—

Reason:
“Due to weather…”

Actual Reason:
This one’s usually correct. The band is getting paid either way. Yeah, it sucks, but that’s what insurance is for.

—

Reason:
“Due to security issues…”

Actual Reason:
This usually happens at rap concerts where the venue hasn’t secured ample security for the crowd that the local police department expects. It also shows up when death threats are made against the artist. (sometimes that one is actually written as, “cancelled due to death threat.”)

—

Reason:
“Due to lackluster sales…”

Actual Reason:
Holy shit… they actually told the truth. It’s about the money, not the fans.

—

For the record, the Brooks & Dunn concert that was scheduled for Friday, May 30th at the Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee has been cancelled “due to a scheduling conflict.” Trust me… these guys’ schedules are well accounted for, and they would have known that something else was going on before booking a gig at an amphitheater. George Strait cancelled a show at the Bradley Center due to “laryngitis” a few years ago. This was right after his promotion company called me 20 times the week before the show to convince me to get more people to buy tickets to the show. It’s a business… it’s a game… and the only people who get the shaft are the fans.

Refunds are available. However, Ticketmaster doesn’t refund per-ticket fees - only the face value of the ticket. What a racket.

On of my “business” professors was late to class today because he was busy watching the Brett Favre retirement press conference. Pretty damn professional. We’re now five minutes into when class was supposed to start and we still haven’t gotten down to business. Sheesh!

Okay, CNN must be running out of things to report. President Bush endorsed John McCain for the ‘08 election, today. Really? Is this news? That would be like saying that Randy Moss endorses Tom Brady. Same team, homies. Now there’s speculation as to whether or not the “endorsement” hurts or helps McCain.

President Bush endorsed Sen. John McCain for president on Wednesday, just hours after the Arizona Republican picked up the delegates needed to win the party’s nomination.

CNN.com readers were divided on whether Bush’s support would help or hurt McCain with voters.

Some said it was only natural that Bush would endorse the Republican nominee, and that it would be disrespectful for McCain not to accept it.

Ajit Kapil of Chicago, Illinois, wrote it “will help allay suspicion conservatives have about McCain.”

Other readers said that McCain should distance himself from the president and his policies and called the endorsement an “albatross,” and “the kiss of death.”

The media is really grasping at straws to dirty up McCain. I got news for you, big media conglomerates, McCain is the most boring candidate out there. You’re not going to find a whole lot. That’s good for the Republicans… but scary as hell for the media. They’ve made their living making fun of Bush’s ineptitude. What are they going to pick on McCain for? His war wounds? The fact that he’s not black or a woman?

I’m not saying I’m happy that we have McCain as our choice, but a candidate that doesn’t make a lot of waves is probably what the Republican Party needs right now.

I’m not sure if this video is real or not. If it is, shame on the Marine for being an ass. If it isn’t… well… he’s got a lot of ’splainin’ to do. I’m not big pro-animal nut… but I’m not a pro-tossing-puppies-off-of-cliffs nut, either.

US Soldier throws puppy off cliff - Watch more free videos

In an attempt (I assume) to improve security at schools, CNN has taken it upon themselves to request students fill out a form, send pictures and videos about their school security.  But, realistically, CNN wants to hear about the lack of security, and you can bet they will put together a 30 or 60 minute special on it, showing all of the video clips, pictures and comments from students, along with their specific institutions…pointing out all of the flaws…allowing any would-be-psychopaths to do their research on CNN, instead of having the possibility of someone actually seeing these nutbars doing their own work.

 Way to go CNN.  First “how to sneak a bomb onto a plane” and now this.

I’m switching over to The Guardian or BBC to get any decent news.

I bet Jed is glad that he bought a combo Blu Ray/HD-DVD player. All signs are pointing to Toshiba pulling the plug on its HD-DVD format.

Multiple users have written to tell us that Toshiba is planning to halt production of devices related to HD-DVD. According to Japanese broadcasting network NHK, Toshiba will lose “hundreds of millions of dollars” as the format war finally draws to a close. Regardless, investors are pleased that Toshiba has made the decision to cut its losses. This comes after a last-ditch price cut was unable to prevent Wal-mart from throwing their lot in with Blu-ray, although some sources suggest that Wal-mart was already aware of Toshiba’s plans to withdraw from fight.

Coincidentally, I was just looking at T-Mobile’s WiFi @ Home service yesterday. But, it looks like they have some customer service issues that they need to shore up before anybody considers doing business with them.

From Rachel’s blog:

The following is a post from a DFW-area political blog, and was written by a friend of a friend of mine. I want to pass it along in case anyone reads here has TMobile and is willing to call them to complain. If I had TMobile, I’d cancel my account today.

T Mobile vs. Gymboree
February 10th, 2008
by Doug Miller

Two weeks ago tonight I had visitors from out of town. My daughter, my son-in-law and my 2-year-old granddaughter came to visit. My son-in-law was in the Navy, and they were transferring from Virginia Beach to Ingleside. We were all glad to see that they were going to be living closer to home.

They left my house about 8:30pm and headed north on 377—the “back way” to Lake Dallas, where my ex-wife lives—to spend the night.

They didn’t make it.

They were struck by a car trying to pass in a no passing zone in Roanoke and my son-in-law and granddaughter were killed instantly. My daughter was careflighted to JPS and had emergency surgery. She will make a complete physical recovery.

In the last two weeks, I was tasked with more items to complete than I can even remember. Besides making the funeral arrangements, one of the menial tasks was to replace my daughter’s phone that was destroyed in the accident. I figured, no problem, I’ll run to TMobile, her provider, and get a loaner. I’ve done this multiple times with my employee’s phones, I’d run to AT&T/Cingular and pick up a phone until we could get a replacement off EBay or some other used phone outlet.

The “gentleman” who is the manager of the TMobile store in Southlake told me under no circumstances could he give me a phone. I wasn’t authorized on my son-in-law’s account. I explained to him that my daughter had just gotten out of ICU and was needing a phone to make some phone calls. Not going to happen. I told him that I was willing to give them my credit card to secure the phone, but to no avail.

When I explained that the United States Navy had cut all sorts of red tape to make my task easier, they didn’t care. When I told them the DFW National Cemetery had gone out of their way to make things happen on our schedule, they didn’t care. They wouldn’t budge.

I called TMobile when I got home, got a sympathetic person on the line and was told she would try to get a phone out to my daughter. She also encouraged me to send a letter to the CEO. I did, and was so angry I FedEx’ed it out Monday morning.

Tuesday I got a call from somebody at the company headquarters…but got the same answer. No dice…no phone…no bending of any of the rules. In fact, they had cancelled the order that the customer service agent had placed on my behalf. I explained to the “lady” that I could very easily go get a new account from AT&T and have a lot less stress in my life; she didn’t budge. I told them what I thought of their company, hung up the phone, called my AT&T rep and got my daughter set up with a new account in 5 minutes.

I told the people at TMobile that I would tell everybody what a bunch of douchebags they are, and hence the post.

Let me tell you a story about how customer service SHOULD work.

My son in law returned from deployment in November of 2007. My daughter had ordered a little navy outfit for my granddaughter to wear during the homecoming ceremony and her wish was for my granddaughter to be buried in this outifit. Problem is, their household goods are being shipped from Virginia to Corpus, and there is no telling where they are.

My wife and I came home from the hospital and searched Gymboree.com, only to find that it was apparently last year’s outfit and had been discontinued. We searched EBay, and couldn’t find one in the size that was needed and didn’t have any luck on Craigslist either.

I sent a desperation email to Gymboree customer service about 1am on Friday morning, letting them know of the situation and asking for help. They responded Friday with an email stating that they would do everything in their power to try to find one, but they couldn’t promise anything.

Saturday morning the supervisor of Customer Service called my wife crying…telling Shannon they had found the outfit, had pooled their own money and they were FedEx’ing it to us immediately. We offered to reimburse them, but she refused. She had a two-year-old of her own, and the story of what happened to my granddaughter touched her and she wanted to hep.

I have sent the CEO of Gymboree a letter via FedEx telling them what a great bunch of employees they have, and they should be proud. TMobile can rot in hell.

I would also like to take this moment to thank the fine people at the Roanoke Police and Fire Departments, the Keller PD and Fire Department and the fine people at Careflight. Without them, my daughter wouldn’t have made it. I am forever in their debt.

Check out this story from The Guardian about a guy in the UK with an MP3 player who got the full treatment by the police.  Oh yeah, this also plays into the whole Server In The Sky program I mentioned a while back.  Be sure to keep an eye out for that.

 

Also, check out the kind of weaponry the cops carry there. DAMN!  I guess this dispells all of those old Benny Hill skits!

According to CNN.com

A group of four men stole four impressionist paintings today from a collection in Zurich, Switzerland.  The paintings done by Van Gogh, Dega, Cezanne and Monet are valued at $163 Million dollars.  There is a $91,000 reward for information leading to their return.

**Comment:  $91K reward?  The paintings are worth 1791% more than the reward!

An article posted on SportsIllustrated.com tells of a (now removed) YouTube video showing New York Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez and Hall of Famer Juan Marichal participating in a cockfight.

It will be interesting to see if there is any type of fan backlash against these athletes, a la Michael Vick.  Don’t expect any arrests or contract terminations, as the cockfight was held in the Dominican Republic where cockfighting is legal.

US Defense Department officials say that  Al Qaeda is recruiting and training boys as young as 11. 

The video shown on CNN.com shows a group of over 20 young boys clad in black hoods carrying weapons from handguns to rocket propelled grenade launchers.

In the video they are shown taking a grown man captive, searching a car and storming a compound/house while being prompted by the camera man. (You can see in this screen capture, the small boy pushing his gun into the neck of a grown man).

Another shot shows the kids holding weapons and holding their hands up in a #1, like some kind of demented sports team photo. The whole thing is like a summer camp of the worst kind.

As a father of a young child, I was concerned when I heard the opening news blurb “toxic chemicals in your baby’s products“.  So, I waited around for 20 minutes for my local news to show the piece before becoming frustrated and checked out the piece on CNN.com.

Thalates may cause cancer and birth defects…and they aren’t required to be listed on ingredient lists. Even worse, CNN declines to disclose WHICH products MAY have thalates in them. Well, great coverage, real top notch investigative work folks.  Some chemical that may be in some product your baby uses every day MAY cause some problems, but we won’t tell you which products.  (Does anyone have a flashback to the original Batman movie and “Joker Products”?) 

Instead, the reporter goes on to chuckle about how she uses olive oil instead of lotion on her baby.

*hiss*

Yesterday, we all got word that registered sex offender, Eugene Nelson, is out of prison after 20 years, and now he’s attending school at UWM. The problem with the whole situation is that he, uhm, used to sexually assault college women.

Rather than tell him that he’s not allowed to attend college, taxpayers/tuition payers are paying for, well, I’ll let the news spell it out for you:

Nelson is not allowed to wander around and a police officer is with him at all times.

That’s right. Instead of saying, “no, you can’t go here. Go to an online school if you want an education.” He is getting a tax-funded police officer as an escort.

Does the ridiculousness ever cease? I’ll be contacting the school with my disgust, shortly.

Photo courtesy of a great site: FamilyWatchdog.us.

UPDATE:

From the UWM Chief of Police:

Dear students, faculty, staff and other members of the UWM campus community:

Eugene Nelson, a registered sex offender, is no longer attending classes on the UWM campus.

Apparently, either Hillary Clinton doesn’t know how to properly salute/pledge allegiance to the flag, or she has some extremely incompetent web designers. (*Claude pointed it out to me… I wasn’t actively searching Clinton’s website )

Hillary, your RIGHT hand goes over your heart. Or… are you THAT liberal?

You heard it here first… Synergy Health and Aurora’s deal didn’t go through, but now it looks like Synergy is possibly going to team up with Froedtert & Community Health.

My main main, Mark Morris, will have all the details on WBWI in an interview with Synergy’s Greg Banasyznski at 8:45 this morning.

Okay, maybe you didn’t hear it “here” first… but it should be interesting.

The proposed smoking ban is dead for now and the reason is that Democrats wanted to put in an exemption for taverns until 2011. This would mean that taverns could allow smoking until their ban went into effect in 2011. Senate democrat, Roger Breske, said that without the exemption, taverns would go out of business.

If the ban went into effect for ALL public places, then how would taverns “go out of business?” Wouldn’t allowing taverns to permit smoking while not allowing restaurants that same privilege make restaurant-&-bar establishments go out of business? It clearly gives one the upper hand over the other.

I’m normally not for government bans, simply because less government = good government, but I do not like walking into a restaurant only to breathe in a cloud of nicotine and tar. Certainly the government wouldn’t allow you to blow some other cancer-causing gas around an environment with other citizens, so why does smoking get the free pass?

Oh… I know why… tax dollars. That’s why public smoking is still legal. Gotta get that $3 per pack or whatever the tax rate is at now. At least the citizens are funding their own population control?

I’m not all about bans, but seriously, if they’re going to pass a smoking ban, pass it across the board.

I have always been empathic towards animals…but continue to eat meat.  After watching the video in this CNN.com report on the abuse of weakend/injured cows at a California slaughterhouse, I am about ready to jump the fence.  (I know Fuzz went veggie for a different reason…but I’m just throwing in with him).  

Ok, looks like CNN.com and the govt. are clearing up the mystique around the falling satellite…

…and I have to admit, we’re not ALL going to die, but this falling US spy satellite could really mess up someone people’s afternoon commutes.

I think the funniest comment of the whole story is…

“I’m not aware that we have a security issue,” he said. “It’s really just a big thing falling on the ground that we want to make sure we’re prepared for.”

Right…just a BIG THING FALLING TO THE GROUND…FROM SPACE!  Nothing to worry about.

According to the CNN.com article…

The U.S. military is developing contingency plans to deal with the possibility that a large spy satellite expected to fall to Earth in late February or early March could hit North America.

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads of U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the size of the satellite suggests that some number of pieces will not burn up as the orbiting vehicle re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere and will hit the ground.

“We’re aware that this satellite is out there,” Renuart said. “We’re aware it is a fairly substantial size. And we know there is at least some percentage that it could land on ground as opposed to in the water.”

Renuart added that, “As it looks like it might re-enter into the North American area,” then the U.S. military, with the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, will either have to deal with the impact or assist Canadian or Mexican authorities.

Well, maybe not…but I am sure you haven’t heard that a large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March.

According to a CNN.com story (that was buried behind their report of how to sneak bombs past TSA guards, The State of the Union Address and anything dealing with Britney Spears) goes on to say the satellite can no longer be controlled, could contain hazardous materials, and it is unknown where on the planet it might come down.

Be sure to wear your helmet on the way to work today.