t must have been a devastating site for the Rangers to see Pointe du Hoc as it was, just enormous holes and rubble from the heavy bombardments.

TEXT: Ronald Reagan's D-Day Speech at Pointe du Hoc?

 




We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For 4 long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
 
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers -- the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.
When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together.

There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall plan led to the Atlantic alliance -- a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They're still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost 40 years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as 40 years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose -- to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

But we try always to be prepared for peace; prepared to deter aggression; prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms; and, yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It's fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the Earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that some day that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We are bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: ``I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.''

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their value [valor], and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Thank you very much, and God bless you all."

What A liar You Are Michelle Obama:, Michelle Obama: I Wake Up Each Day in House Built By Slaves?

 

Did slaves build the White House?

 The slaves joined a work force that included local white laborers and artisans from Maryland and Virginia, as well as immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other European nations.
  The payroll to slaveowners shows that the government did not own slaves, but that it did hire them from their masters
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/questions/did-slaves-build-the-white-house







Michelle Obama praised the diverse graduates of New York City’s oldest public institution of higher learning as she delivered the last commencement address of her tenure as first lady on Friday.
“I really want you all to know that there is a reason why, of all of the colleges and universities in this country, I chose this particular school in this particular city for this special moment,” Mrs. Obama told the graduates of the City College of New York.

Noting that students at the 169-year-old college come from 150 countries and speak more than 100 languages, she said, “You represent just about every possible background – every color and culture, every faith and walk of life.”

Founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847, City College gained a reputation as the poor man’s Harvard in the 1930s when it educated a generation of Jewish intellectuals who were shut out of elite private colleges.

City College alumni include 10 Nobel Prize winners and many renowned authors, scientists, business leaders and artists.

More than 40 percent of City College’s current students are first-generation college students and half are from low-income households.

Mrs. Obama told the graduates that “with your glorious diversity, with your remarkable accomplishments and your deep commitment to your

And, graduates, it’s the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters –- two beautiful, black young women -– head off to school — (applause) — waving goodbye to their father, the President of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America — to America for the same reasons as many of you: To get an education and improve his prospects in life.

Mrs. Obama also made a thinly veiled reference to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump by saying “some folks” don’t value the diversity that City College embodies. Trump has promised to build a wall at the border between the United States and Mexico and has proposed banning Muslims from entering the U.S.

Michelle Obama: 'I wake up in house built by slaves'? 1814 British troops set fire to the White House?

 in 1814, during the War of 1812 between the United States and England, British troops enter Washington, D.C. and burn the White House in retaliation for the American attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, in June 1812.

When the British arrived at the White House, they found that President James Madison and his first lady Dolley had already fled to safety in Maryland. Soldiers reportedly sat down to eat a meal made of leftover food from the White House scullery using White House dishes and silver before ransacking the presidential mansion and setting it ablaze.

According to the White House Historical Society and Dolley’s personal letters, President James Madison had left the White House on August 22 to meet with his generals on the battlefield, just as British troops threatened to enter the capitol. Before leaving, he asked his wife Dolley if she had the “courage or firmness” to wait for his intended return the next day. He asked her to gather important state papers and be prepared to abandon the White House at any moment.

The next day, Dolley and a few servants scanned the horizon with spyglasses waiting for either Madison or the British army to show up. As British troops gathered in the distance, Dolley decided to abandon the couple’s personal belongings and instead saved a full-length portrait of former president George Washington from desecration. Dolley wrote to her sister on the night of August 23 of the difficulty involved in saving the painting. Since the portrait was screwed to the wall, she ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas pulled out and rolled up. Two unidentified “gentlemen from New York” hustled it away for safe-keeping. (Unbeknownst to Dolley the portrait was actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s original). The task complete, Dolley wrote “and now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take.” Dolley left the White House and found her husband at their predetermined meeting place in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Although President Madison and his wife were able to return to Washington only three days later when British troops had moved on, they never again lived in the White House. Madison served the rest of his term residing at the city’s Octagon House. It was not until 1817 that newly elected president James Monroe moved back into the reconstructed building.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-troops-set-fire-to-the-white-house

Obama's economic boasts go boom — that is, bust!

The late Obama-era economy produces statistics that most people probably find puzzling.
The headline unemployment rate, now at 4.7 percent, might suggest we were back in the dot-com boom of 1999. But no one feels the energy or optimism of that era.

The stock market doesn't look the same either; it's a bit down from where it was 18 months ago. And growth has been dismal — an annualized 0.8 percent in the first quarter, following 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter before that.

Job creation numbers have been mostly respectable, usually approaching or exceeding 200,000 a month. So Friday's report, of only 38,000 new jobs in May, was a gut punch.

That number would leave an average major league baseball stadium with many seats to spare on game day. It was the worst jobs report since the labor market bottomed out in 2010 after the Great Recession.

Just to rub it in, estimates for job creation in March and April were revised down by a combined 59,000. If George W. Bush were president, you'd be hearing about an economic slowdown.
As we've noted here before, the headline unemployment figure is misleading because historically high numbers of people are still dropping out of the workforce even now, eight years after the financial crisis began. This isn't due to the baby-boom generation retiring; people aged 25-54 are also employed at much lower rates than they were before the recession — lower in fact than at any point between January 1987 and the financial crisis.

The number of people working part-time for economic reasons increased by nearly half a million last month. Part-time work remains stuck at the historically high level it hit when the recession started.
What's going on? Politicians don't control the economy, much as many seem to think they can. But policies have a big impact, and when a president has been in office eight years, citizens justifiably pin credit or blame on him. One reason why Donald Trump has proved such a strong candidate for the White House is that vast numbers of people have been made economically precarious by the Obama policies that are throttling job creation.




Obama has made traditional employment more and more expensive and, therefore, less and less sustainable. He's a job killer. This includes his push for higher minimum wages, the employer mandate in Obamacare, and various regulatory rulings intended to tilt the playing field in favor of dying labor unions. It includes his avalanche of green regulations (which have hurt jobs without helping the environment) that businesses have warned would increase costs and stanch growth. It also includes a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board to make it harder for businesses to survive strikes.

These and other Obama policies ensured that the recovery never really happened, or was so mild that no one noticed. The great roar of dissatisfaction you're hearing this election year is an expression of his ideologically driven and abject failure.

After eight years of dabbling in side projects with harmful effects, the nation needs economic leadership that puts employment first and helps bring people of working age back into the workforce.

Top Story

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-economic-boasts-go-bust/article/2593005

Obama's New Problem It's Still The Same Old Problem Flacks, Lies And Wdeotape

 



The State Department was forced to admit on Wednesday that it altered a press briefing video to hide an exchange in which a spokeswoman seemed to indicate officials lied about when the Iran nuclear talks began.

And late Friday, a report came out that a White House transcript was altered, in another discussion about Iran. That transcript omitted a comment from Josh Earnest in which he said "No, Kevin" when asked if he could categorically state that no one ever lied about the Iran deal.

That report came out just a day after Earnest said that what happened at State could never happen at the White House.

By the end of the week, the State Department was already facing pressure from Congress about who altered the tape, and why. The report about the White House will only lead to more questions when Congress returns next week.

Questions on the mind of lawmakers are likely to include: who is altering these videos and transcripts, and why should we trust anything the administration says at this point?
But it's not just lawmakers who are angry. Secretary of State John Kerry said that even he wasn't happy with the answers from his own department.

Kerry said the whole affair was "stupid and clumsy and inappropriate." And while department spokesmen have indicated they're in no rush to figure out who ordered the edit, Kerry said he'd like to know.

"I would like to find out exactly what happened and why," he said.


House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, has already asked Kerry for the names of employees who edited the video, and who directed the edit. On Friday, Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., said those involved need to testify before Congress.

The press is also helping Republicans keep the pressure on the State Department. CNN's Jake Tapper talked about the scandal for several minutes on Thursday, and openly declared that State told several lies to reporters and the public in an effort to hide the truth.

One of these lies was when Victoria Nuland said in 2013 that there were no secret talks between the U.S. and Iran before that time. Then State deleted a discussion with then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki in which she indicated sometimes lies are necessary.

March for Marriage

Great news — we've received official word that our permit application for the 2016 March for Marriage has been approved, and we are moving forward! The March is set for Saturday, June 25th, from 11:30am until 2:00pm. Please mark your calendar to attend and spread the word to everyone that you know.

This year's March will protest the outrageous, anti-constitutional and illegitimate decision of the US Supreme Court redefining marriage. This was a decision wholly unsupported by the law and lacking any legal foundation. The majority simply legislated from the bench, imposing their own values on the country. In the process, they stripped over 50 million voters and countless legislators in states across America of their sovereign right to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

We have a lot to do to get ready for this year's March for Marriage, and we're asking for your help. Your tax deductible contribution of $25, $50, $75, $100 or $250 or more will help us cover the substantial costs involved in putting on an event like this. We need money for security, promotion, signs, staging, sound engineering, etc. Your financial gift will be put to immediate use to help us prepare for this critical event.

Donate Today to Support the March for Marriage

We are also marching to protest the imposition of a dangerous gender ideology by LGBT extremists and the Obama administration. They want to risk the privacy and safety of girls and women by allowing men who claim a female "gender identity" to force their way into bathrooms, showers, changing areas and locker rooms. These extremists mock God's admonition that He made us male and female, and they want our children and grandchildren to believe that they can simply "choose" their gender. And worse, our children and grandchildren will be taught that there are multiple genders — several dozen, the extremists claim — and anyone who does not accept their bizarre ideology will be guilty of discrimination and open themselves to lawsuits, fines and reputational ruin. They even want to severely punish anyone who does not address a transgender person by their preferred pronoun — which includes some bizarre, nonsensical words like ze and hir — subjecting people to potential fines up to $250,000 in some jurisdictions.

Finally, we will march to demand that Congress and our elected representatives do something to stop the Obama madness and protect us from the Supreme Court's anti-constitutional redefinition of marriage while we work to undo it. In the short run, we demand that Congress pass the First Amendment Defense Act to provide legal protections for supporters of traditional marriage from being persecuted by the government. It's also critical that the next president be committed to appointing strict constitutionalists to the US Supreme Court: judges who will implement the law, not make it up to satisfy politically influential groups like the LGBT lobby.

I realize time is short to pull off a successful 2016 March for Marriage, which is why we need your immediate help. First, please mark your calendar and make every effort to attend this year's March and invite all your friends and family to join you.

Support the March for Marriage Today

And second, please make an immediate financial contribution to help us undertake all the activities that are required to make the March successful. Your tax deductible donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or $500 or more will go a long way toward organizing a successful March.

The 2016 March for Marriage is a critically important milestone that will send a powerful message to the elite, including those in Congress and on the federal judiciary, that the American people continue to believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and that we reject the dangerous gender-bending ideology that has been the inevitable aftermath of redefining marriage. We must focus our elected officials and the American people on reversing these developments, and the March is a tremendous opportunity to do so.

Please do everything you can to make the 2016 March for Marriage a success, including attending, asking your friends and family to attend, and making an urgently-needed financial contribution to help us defray the costs of organizing the March.

Faithfully,