Remembering Neil Armstrong… When Men Walked on the Moon

Almost everyone in the baby-boomer generation and older knows exactly where they were when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.  I was a junior in high school at the time and my father gathered up the whole family plus any additional kids that were over visiting to watch the event on our black and white TV.  “This is a moment you will remember forever!” he said, “even when we have sent a man to Mars or left our solar system”; both things that people of our generation expected would happen in our lifetime.  Every one of us chanted the phrase: “One Small step for man; One giant step for mankind”

Video: Neil Armstrong One Small Step

Now at Neil Armstrong’s death the United States of America no longer even has a space program and we have to pay for and hitch a ride with the Russians or the Chinese if we want to go out into space.  John F. Kennedy must be spinning in his grave along with my father.  And Neil Armstrong certainly never thought he’d see the day we didn’t have a space program in 1969 as he was the first man to walk on the moon.

Neil Armstrong left us today and travelled farther than the moon… Perhaps he will shine his good graces back onto us?!?  Ask Marion~

Judson Phillips - Tea Party Nation:

Like so many Americans, I took a moment to remember Neil Armstrong today. He was a hero to so many in my generation.

I was ten years old when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Like all of my friends, that July I wanted to be an astronaut. For three years we watched with incredible pride as America put a total of twelve men on the moon.

Then we gave up.

We walked away.

For forty years, the moon has not seen a visitor from earth. In the next few years, man will probably return to the moon. But it will not be an American who returns to the moon.

History might record 1969 as America’s high water mark. We were the undisputed world power. We put men on the moon. We had the highest standard of living. People wanted to be Americans.

America has lost its greatness. Children today are not taught this nation is great. In some areas, it is controversial to have children recite the pledge of allegiance.

When Neil Armstrong returned to the Earth in 1969, he was the most famous man in the world. He could have done anything he wanted to do. He chose to leave the space program and ultimately teach engineering at the University of Cincinnati.

Starting in the 70’s America began its retreat from greatness. Instead of continuing space exploration, politicians decided to take that money and spend it on programs that exist only to assure their reelection.

One of the greatest Americans from the 20^th century passed today. Today we look back at the day Neil Armstrong became the most famous man in the world. Then America was a great nation, committed to being the best in the world.

Today America is fading. We have only a short time left to turn the nation around and try to regain the greatness America once had.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong Dies at 82

First moonwalker Neil Armstrong's death at the age of 82 marks the passing of a "reluctant American hero," as well as the dimming of the Space Age's brightest moment.

His death followed complications from heart-bypass surgery he underwent this month, Armstrong's family said today in a statement released by NASA. The first public report of Armstrong's death came via NBC News' Cape Canaveral correspondent, Jay Barbree, a longtime friend.

Armstrong has been immortalized in human history as the first human to set foot on a celestial body beyond Earth. "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," he radioed back to Earth from the moon on July 20, 1969.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said that "as long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them."

Armstrong's fellow moonwalker on the Apollo 11 mission, Buzz Aldrin, was among the legions mourning his passage. "We are missing a great spokesman and leader in the space program," Aldrin said in a BBC interview. He said he'd remember Armstrong "as being a very capable commander and leader of an achievement that will be recognized until man sets foot on the planet Mars."

Michael Collins, the crewmate who circled the moon in the Apollo 11 command module while Armstrong and Aldrin took that first trip to the lunar surface, also paid tribute to his commander in a NASA statement: "He was the best, and I will miss him terribly."

President Barack Obama said that Armstrong and his crew "carried with them the aspirations of an entire nation," and that the first steps on the moon "delivered a moment of human achievement that will never be forgotten."

"Today, Neil's spirit of discovery lives on in all the men and women who have devoted their lives to exploring the unknown — including those who are ensuring that we reach higher and go further in space," Obama said in a White House statement. "That legacy will endure — sparked by a man who taught us the enormous power of one small step."

The "one small step" served as the climax of a superpower space race with the Soviet Union, and arguably established the United States' primacy in outer space for decades to come. But Apollo 11 also set a precedent for peaceful cooperation in space. "We came in peace for all mankind," the plaque left behind on the moon read. At one point during Armstrong's first moonwalk, he stopped for what he called a "tender moment" and set down a patch to commemorate NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts who died in the course of their duties.

Before and after the moon
The Ohio-born Armstrong began his career in aerospace as a Navy fighter pilot who served with distinction in the Korean War. During the 1950s, he was a test pilot with experience flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft. He was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962, and during his mission as Gemini 8 commander in 1966, he tamed his wildly spinning capsule and brought it in for an emergency landing.

That quiet cool served him well during Apollo 11, when he had to take manual control of the lunar module, nicknamed Eagle, during the landing. When the craft touched down in the moon's Sea of Tranquility, about 30 seconds' worth of fuel remained.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here," Armstrong reported to Mission Control. "The Eagle has landed."

Armstrong and Aldrin spent more than 21 hours on the lunar surface, including two and a half hours' worth of moonwalking. They were amazed to come back to Earth and see how millions of people across the planet had followed their exploits. "Neil, look up there," Aldrin told him as he pointed at a TV screen. "We missed the whole thing."

After his moon mission, Armstrong took a low profile, becoming what his family called a "reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job." He left NASA in 1971, and took on executive positions in the aerospace industry as well as a teaching position in the University of Cincinnati's engineering department. Armstrong served on several policy commissions, including the presidential panel that investigated the 1986 Challenger explosion.

Concerned about future spaceflight
In his latter years, Armstrong became increasingly concerned about America's continuing leadership in space. He was a strong proponent of efforts to send American astronauts back to the moon, and feared that NASA's cancellation of its return-to-the-moon program would cede America's position as a leader in space exploration to other nations.

"Some question why America should return to the moon," Armstrong told a House committee in 2010. "'After all,' they say, 'we have already been there.' I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th-century monarchs proclaimed that 'we need not go to the New World, we have already been there.'"

When NBC's Jay Barbree asked Armstrong last month to reflect on the future of spaceflight, for the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, the former astronaut pointed to remarks in which he said the lunar environment was "an exceptional location to learn about traveling to more distant places."

"I am persuaded that a return to the moon would be the most productive path to expanding the human presence in the solar system," he wrote.

Armstrong was famous for staying out of fame's spotlight as much as he could. Some outsiders may have faulted him for his reticence, but not his fellow astronauts.

"Most of our group in those days could have accomplished the challenge of the mission," Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham told NBC News' James Oberg in an email, "but I do not know a one that could have handled the resulting notoriety as well as Neil did."

Over the past year, Armstrong was a bit more in the public eye. Last November, he and other space pioneers — including Aldrin, Collins and John Glenn, the first American in orbit — were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

In February, Armstrong spoke at Ohio State University during a February event honoring the 50th anniversary of Glenn's history-making spaceflight. In May, Armstrong joined Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida to support the opening of the National Flight Academy, which aims to teach math and science to kids through an aviation-oriented camp.

On Aug. 7, just two days after his 82nd birthday, Armstrong underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery after flunking a medical stress test. At the time, his wife, Carol, reported that her husband was "doing great" — but today the family said complications from that surgery led to his death.

Concerned about future spaceflight
In his latter years, Armstrong became increasingly concerned about America's continuing leadership in space. He was a strong proponent of efforts to send American astronauts back to the moon, and feared that NASA's cancellation of its return-to-the-moon program would cede America's position as a leader in space exploration to other nations.

"Some question why America should return to the moon," Armstrong told a House committee in 2010. "'After all,' they say, 'we have already been there.' I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th-century monarchs proclaimed that 'we need not go to the New World, we have already been there.'"

When NBC's Jay Barbree asked Armstrong last month to reflect on the future of spaceflight, for the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, the former astronaut pointed to remarks in which he said the lunar environment was "an exceptional location to learn about traveling to more distant places."

"I am persuaded that a return to the moon would be the most productive path to expanding the human presence in the solar system," he wrote.

Armstrong was famous for staying out of fame's spotlight as much as he could. Some outsiders may have faulted him for his reticence, but not his fellow astronauts.

"Most of our group in those days could have accomplished the challenge of the mission," Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham told NBC News' James Oberg in an email, "but I do not know a one that could have handled the resulting notoriety as well as Neil did."

Over the past year, Armstrong was a bit more in the public eye. Last November, he and other space pioneers — including Aldrin, Collins and John Glenn, the first American in orbit — were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

In February, Armstrong spoke at Ohio State University during a February event honoring the 50th anniversary of Glenn's history-making spaceflight. In May, Armstrong joined Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida to support the opening of the National Flight Academy, which aims to teach math and science to kids through an aviation-oriented camp.

On Aug. 7, just two days after his 82nd birthday, Armstrong underwent quadruple-bypass heart surgery after flunking a medical stress test. At the time, his wife, Carol, reported that her husband was "doing great" — but today the family said complications from that surgery led to his death.

Slideshow: Neil Armstrong: 1930 - 2012

Technorati Tags: US Space Program,NASA,obituary,moon,astronauts,outer space,American greatness,Neil Armstrong,first man to walk on the moon,One Small step for man,One giant step for mankind,Gene Cernan,Obamaland,Congressional Gold Medal winner,John Glenn,Buzz Aldrin,JFK,John F. Kennedy,American heros,American pioneers,baby-boomers,space,remembering,history,the Final Frontier,Camelot

Obama “Fixed” Medicare…With Rationing

A Shovel Ready Project

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Guest Writer  John Goodman

While charges and counter-charges about Medicare are flying back and forth in Washington, hardly anyone seems to have noticed that Medicare’s financial problems have already been solved. They were solved by the health reform bill enacted last year, what some people call ObamaCare.

So why isn’t this front page news? Why aren’t people dancing in the street? Why isn’t the Obama administration boasting about this accomplishment far and wide? Probably because Medicare’s financial problems are slated to be solved by the unconscionable

rationing of health care for the elderly and the disabled, which will lead to the equivalent of death panels for senior Boomers and some disabled persons! Please stop laughing at Sarah Palin, she’s telling you the truth, and stop listening to the mainstream media and AARP, they aren’t!!

The most recent Medicare Trustees report conveys the same message as the last one: On the day that Barack Obama signed the health reform bill, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion. That sum is about three times the size of the entire U.S. economy. And, it gets better. Once the Baby Boomers work their way through the system, Medicare spending will grow no faster than the payroll taxes, premiums and general revenue transfers that pay for that spending.

So what does this mean for senior citizens who rely on Medicare? No one knows for sure. But it almost certainly means they will get less health care.

Last August, the Office of the Medicare Actuary predicted that within nine years Medicare will be paying doctors less than what Medicaid pays. Think about that. In most places around the country Medicaid patients have extreme difficulty finding doctors who will see them. As a result, they end up seeking care at community health centers and in the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals. In a few more years seniors will be in that same position — with this difference. From a financial point of view, the seniors will be perceived as less desirable customers than welfare mothers. Also, by that point one in seven hospitals will have to leave the Medicare system.

As Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster (page 282) said in the 2010 Medicare Trustees’ report, “Well before that point, Congress would have to intervene to prevent the withdrawal of providers from the Medicare market and the severe problems with beneficiary access to care that would result.”

But suppose Congress didn’t intervene. Suppose that the law continues on the books exactly as it is written.

Consider people reaching the age of 65 this year. Under ObamaCare, the average amount spent on these enrollees over the remainder of their lives will fall by about $36,000 at today’s prices. That sum of money is equivalent to about three years of benefits. For 55-year-olds, the spending decrease is about $62,000 — or the equivalent of six years of benefits. For 45-year-olds, the loss is more than $105,000, or nine years of benefits.

In terms of the sheer dollars involved, the planned reduction in future Medicare payments is the equivalent of raising the eligibility age for Medicare to age 68 for today’s 65-year-olds, to age 71 for 55-year-olds and to age 74 for 45-year-olds. But rather than keep the system as is and raise the age of eligibility, the reform law instead tries to achieve equivalent savings by paying less to the providers of care.

What does this mean in terms of access to health care? It almost certainly means that seniors will have extreme difficulty finding doctors who will see them and hospitals who will admit them. Once admitted, they will certainly enjoy fewer amenities (no private room, no gourmet meal choices, and no cable TV perhaps) as well as a lower quality of care. We will have a two-tiered health care system, with the elderly getting second class care.

All these problems will be exacerbated by what ObamaCare does in the rest of the health care system. In just two years, 32 million people will become newly insured. If economic studies are correct, they will try to double the amount of health care they have been consuming. In addition, almost everyone else (including most above-average income families) will be forced to obtain more generous insurance than they have today. With more coverage for more services these people will also try to greatly expand their consumption of care. Yet the health reform act did not create one new doctor or nurse or other paramedical personnel to meet this increased demand.

We are about to experience a system wide rationing problem, which will be reflected in longer waits at doctors’ offices, emergency rooms and clinics and delays in getting almost every kind of care.

In such an environment you will be at a real disadvantage if you are in a health plan that pays doctors less than what private plans are paying. The disadvantaged patients will be the elderly and the disabled on Medicare, poor families on Medicaid, and (if Massachusetts is any guide) people who are newly enrolled in government subsidized health plans.

And here is the final tragic irony: The most vulnerable population are the ones whose access to care is likely to decrease the most under a health care act that was widely touted at the time of its passage as a humanitarian measure~

John Goodman is President and CEO/Kellye Wright Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

This article originally appeared on Conservative Battleline Online and is reprinted with permission.

h/t to A at  Sovereignty in Colorado  -  re-posted at Floyd Reports and at True Health Is True Wealth

And the items covered in this article are only the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong about ObamaCare!

There is only one solution to this and that is to repeal and replace ObamaCare in its entirety and well as the people who engineered and passed it!!

Foundations of Crisis, Part II: Generations

Generational conflict has been recognized since ancient times. The twist here is the discovery of several things that have previously eluded observers. One is that the well- known conflict between fathers and sons is only half the story; there aren’t just two generational types that alternate (e.g., liberal and conservative), but four. The reason for looking at it this way is that a human life can be conveniently divided into four stages: Childhood, Young Adulthood, Midlife, and Elderhood. Throughout all of history, a long life might be considered to be 80 to 100 years, with each of the four stages equaling a quarter of it.

Just as each person’s life holds four stages of about 20 years each, each generation comprehends a group of people born over about 20 years. Members of a particular generation tend to share values and ways of looking at the world not only because their parents also shared a set of views (which the kids are reacting to), but because every new generation experiences a new set of events in a way unique to them. They hear the same music, see the same events, are exposed to the same books. Members of a generation share a collective persona. There appear to be four distinct archetypal personae that recur throughout American history. And throughout world history as well, although that’s a bit beyond what I hope to explore here.

It also seems, throughout history, that there are periodic crises. About once every century, or about when each of the four generational types has run its course, a cataclysmic event occurs. It generally takes the form of a major war, and it generally catalyzes a whole new epoch for society.

The four mature generations alive today each represent an archetype. Let’s review them from the oldest now living, to the youngest.

Hero Archetype

The “GI” generation, born between 1901 and 1924, includes basically all living people in their mid-70s and older. They grew up and came of age in the midst of the most traumatic years in human history: the 1930s and ‘40s. This was a time of catastrophic financial and economic collapse, world war, political dictatorship, genocide, and virulent ideology, among other unpleasant things; a period of intense turmoil. The times required them to be civic minded, optimistic, regular guys who could be counted on to do the right thing, fit in, and see that everybody got a square deal. As a consequence of what they’ve been through, they tend to be indulgent parents. As kids they’re “good”; as adults they’re selfless, constructive, and communitarian. Hero archetypes encounter a Crisis environment in Young Adulthood; assuming they survive it, the odds are the rest of their lives will be lived in growing economic prosperity, leading to a leisurely retirement.

Artist Archetype

Meanwhile, another generation was being born at the height of the Crisis – something that seems to occur roughly every 80-100 years — from 1925-42. This generation, the “Silent,” watched these titanic events happen but were too young to take part in them. They were relegated to being protected, while trying to be helpful in the limited ways available to them. They’re overprotected as children, when they might be characterized as “placid”; they tend to underprotect their own children as a reaction. As adults they’re sensitive, well-liked, sentimental, and caring.

Prophet Archetype

Next came the group we call the “Boomers,” born from 1943 to 1960. This was the first generation born after the Crisis was over, and they grew up in an environment where their parents (mostly GIs and early cohort Silents) felt obligated to protect them from all the trauma of the preceding years and were desirous of giving them all the things they never had. As kids they’re seen as “spirited.” Later in life, they tend to be narcissistic, presumptuous, self-righteous, and ruthless. Born after a Crisis, their Childhood years coincide with a rebirth of society, and their Elderhood coincides with another Crisis. More on them below.

Nomad Archetype

The fourth generational type is represented by today’s “Generation X,” born 1961-81, during what might be called an Awakening period when the Boomers were in the limelight. As a consequence, they were overlooked and a bit abandoned. Their reputation as kids can be summed up as “bad.” They’re oriented toward survival, which is partially a result of their being underprotected as children. When they become parents, they react and become overprotective. They tend to be savvy, practical, tough, and amoral.

The kids born between 1982 and perhaps 2002 should be another Hero archetype. My own experience with them is that they’re shaping up that way. Represented by clean-cut, straight-arrow Power Rangers. Quite a reaction to the sewer-dwelling Mutant Ninja Turtles that were analogs for the previous generation. They’re “can do” kids, programmed to do the right thing in a smoke-free, drug-free, eco-sensitive, politically correct world. Like all Hero types, they respect their elders, do what they’re told without much questioning authority. That’s just the type of person you want to have fighting a war for you, and that’s probably just what they’ll wind up doing. Just like the last Hero types, the GIs. (Iraq was first. Iran next? Or will it be Saudi Arabia?)

It’s risky to characterize everyone born in a certain time frame as sharing a persona; after all, people are individuals, not ants or atoms, each like the other. But it’s really no different than characterizing people by the country they’re from. There’s no question in my mind that people share characteristics by virtue of the milieu in which they live, and that’s true of time as well as geography. Take a look at the people you know by age groups, and see if they don’t roughly fit the brief descriptions.

The interesting thing is that through about 400 years of American history, it’s possible to see these generational types repeating themselves. It’s not an accident. The characteristics of each type shape the next generation, as well as current events. And events leave a further imprint on all of them.

Making an Example of the Boomers

Just as every generation has its own persona, the character of each generation evolves as it moves through life. The Boomers are perhaps the most relevant example of this. First they were Mouseketeers and Beaver Cleaver clones. Who could have guessed they would mutate into Hippies and even Yippies as they reached Young Adulthood, reacting against everything they’d grown up with, everything their parents worked so hard to give them.

They came of age during a period that might be called an Awakening, and it’s recurred on schedule five times so far in American history. Awakenings are times of religious and moral ferment, when the youth tend to challenge prevailing cultural values pretty much across the board. Young adults were into New Age things this time around, in the 1960s and ‘70s. At the time it seemed utterly shocking and completely new, but that was only because nobody then alive had seen the previous Utopian Awakening in the 1830s and ‘40s, the Pietist Awakening of the 1740s and ‘50s, the Puritan Awakening of the 1630s and ‘40s, or the Protestant Reformation of the 1530s and ‘40s.

Like all the generations before them that grew up in similar times, they eventually put away the things of their youth. But who guessed that their next mutation would be into Yuppies, whose motto was not “Peace and Love” or “Revolution for the Hell of It,” but “Shop Till You Drop” and “He Who Dies with the Most Toys Wins” as they moved into midlife.

But even now the acquisitive mania that characterized the ‘80s is ebbing, now that the first cohorts of Boomers are crossing over 50. You can already see the signs of their next stage of evolution, in the judgmental behavior of people like William Bennett (George Bush) and Dan Quayle (Ann Coulter) on the “right,” and Al Gore and Hillary Clinton on the “left.” They did sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in the ‘60s. They believe they’ve fought the war of good against evil in both Vietnam and the segregated lunch counters of the South. They know they were the first generation to have traveled widely thanks to the jet, to have been brought up by television, and had the telephone as a given. They’ve been there, done that, and now that they’re getting older, they’re going to make sure that everyone else benefits from their wisdom — like it or not.

The Boomers are an archetypal Prophet generation, a type born after a secular crisis, just in time to create another one. Get the image of a grim elder, with a well-defined vision of what’s right and wrong, calling down wrath, and laying down the law for a troubled nation in chaotic times. That’s the type of person who tends to lead countries into wars, as well as through them. Interestingly, the Boomers in America have their counterparts abroad today, especially in China, where they grew up during the Cultural Revolution. Two ideologically driven, righteous groups running two such powerful and alien cultures is almost a guaranteed formula for a millennial-sized crisis. Which should appear, coincidentally, sometime shortly after the millennium. (We’re right on schedule.)

Regards,
Doug Casey, The Casey Report

P.S.: Hope to see you tomorrow for the final installment. ‘Til then…

Source:  Whiskey and Gunpowder

One of the things I found most interesting about this article and in the reporting of the news is the changing or sliding (the re-writing) of history... again and already!!  The accepted and set years designated and for the Baby-boomer generation has always been 1946 to 1964...  Yet already, because the powers that be want to make President Obama a post-boomer president, a president of the young... representing change, they have already manipulated and changed the boomer generation years to 1943 to 1960... Obama having been born in 1961, how convenient!   HMMMM... here it goes.  President Obama is a boomer president... a young boomer, but nevertheless a boomer, that has garnished the support of the young... the next generation... but no matter what the sale or pitch, President Barack Hussain Obama is the 3rd Baby-Boomer President, and hope and change are very much boomer beliefs and characteristics!

The greatest crisis in our lifetime has been 911 (7-years ago)... but perhaps the the present financial crisis and continued war, if the author's  theory is correct, was needed to awaken the present young voting generation and scare them into involvement. And Boomer Obama and his promises of hope and change, however undefined, came at just the right time...

Marion Algier, Baby-Boomer~