Trey Gowdy , South Carolina Congressman, recently responded to a reporter about the military in response to a question from a CNN reporter about the DOD ban of trans genders from joining the U.S. armed forces. As Trey typically does so very well, he nailed it.
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Question: How can President Trump claim to represent all U.S citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, when he banned trans genders from joining the military? Isn’t that discrimination?
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Trey Gowdy’s Response: ” Nobody has a right to serve in the Military. Nobody! What makes you people think the Military is an equal opportunity employer? It is very far from it – and for good reasons – let me cite a few.”
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“The Military uses prejudice regularly and consistently to deny citizens from joining for being too old or too young, too fat or too skinny, too tall or too short. Citizens are denied for having flat feet, or for missing or additional fingers.” he went on to explain: “By the way, poor eyesight will disqualify you, as well as bad teeth. Malnourished? Drug addiction? Bad back? Criminal history? Low IQ? Anxiety? Phobias? Hearing damage? Six arms? Hear voices in your head? Self-identification as a Unicorn? Need a special access ramp for your wheelchair?”
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“Can’t run the required course in the required time? Can’t do the required number of push-ups? Not really a morning person and refuse to get out of bed before noon? All can be legitimate reasons for denial”
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“The Military has one job: Winning War. Anything else is a distraction and a liability. Did someone just scream? That isn’t Fair? War is VERY unfair, there are no exceptions made for being special or challenged or socially wonderful.”
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“YOU must change yourself to meet Military standards and not the other way around.”
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“I say again: You don’t change the Military – you must change yourself. The Military is not about being fair, it is about taking advantage of others and about winning.
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The Military doesn’t need to accommodate anyone with special issues. The Military needs to Win Wars and keep our Country safe – PERIOD!”
“If any of your personal issues are a liability that detract from readiness or legality… Thank you for applying and good luck in future endeavors.”
Bill Bowser, my Pen Pal and contributor to Tolley’s Topics, is a an ardent fan of covered bridges. He has just returned from a 3,200 mile road trip. This particular trip took him through the states of WV, VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, & AL. He visited 41 traditional covered bridges in those states.
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The Euharlee Creek covered Bridge was built in 1886 by Washington W. King (son of former slave and noted bridge builder Horace King) and Jonathan H. Burke. It is a 138 ft. long, single span Town lattice truss bridge located in Cartersville, Bartow County Georgia. It has been closed to vehicular traffic since 1980.
Ithiel Town a Connecticut architect and civil engineer patented this type of truss in 1820. It is fastened together with what were called treenails (or trunnels), which are no more than large dowels.
In a graveyard in Liverpool lies a headstone bearing the name Eleanor Rigby. Its deeds are being auctioned later as part of a sale of Beatles memorabilia, but what is the real story behind the Fab Four’s famous hit?
It was at a church fete in 1957 that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met. Just yards away lay the grave of scullery maid Eleanor Rigby, who had died, aged 44, in 1939.
Nine years later, McCartney would pen the lyrics for what became one of the band’s most celebrated songs.
Often described as a lament for the lonely, or a commentary on life in post-war Britain, it tells the story of a woman who “died in the church and was buried along with her name”.
It is tempting to picture the teenage Lennon and McCartney sombrely contemplating the headstone, imagining the life of Eleanor and later dreaming up the lyrics.
But the reality is few knew of the grave’s existence until the early 1980s, and McCartney himself has denied it was the inspiration behind the song.
This hasn’t stopped the deeds to the grave being listed for auction with a guide price of £4,000. They are part of a sale which also features other Beatles items and concludes on Thursday.
David Bedford, who has written several books about the band, said he thought it was “weird” there was such interest in a woman seemingly unconnected to the song.
“The score of the song you can understand but a grave, I find it really unusual,” he said.
“I’m not quite sure who would want to buy the deeds to a grave, and I’ll be interested to see who does buy them, and for how much money.”
Auction update: ( Poor old Eleanor Rigby. Nobody came to her funeral and now nobody wants to pay enough for her grave, after the deeds to her Liverpool burial plot failed to sell at a Beatles auction.) Update written by: Helen Pidd, North of England, editor.
But Mr Bedford said he believed it would be “too much of a coincidence” if the grave had never figured in McCartney’s mind, at least at some subliminal level.
“The mythology of the grave grows every year,” he said.
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Factfile: Eleanor Rigby
Written primarily by McCartney, Eleanor Rigby was released in 1966 as part of a double A-side single which also featured Yellow Submarine.
The song also formed part of The Beatles’ album, Revolver, and the single was released on the same day as the LP.
The single spent four weeks at number one in the UK charts.
In the US it reached number 11 and was nominated for three Grammys.
The song seems to have gone through several stages of development.
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McCartney said when he first sat down at the piano he had the name Daisy Hawkins in his mind. He later changed this to Eleanor, after the actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with The Beatles in the film Help!
The character’s surname at one stage was Bygraves, according to Spencer Leigh, author of The Beatles book Love Me Do to Love Me Don’t.
But McCartney later changed this to Rigby, from the name of a store he had spotted in Bristol – Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers.
“I just liked the name,” he said in 1984. “I was looking for a name that sounded natural. Eleanor Rigby sounded natural.”
In 2008, a birth certificate for the woman buried in the graveyard of St Peter’s Church, Woolton, was put up for auction.
“Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictitious character that I made up,” McCartney said in response.
“If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that’s fine with me.”
However, he has conceded in the past the headstone may have influenced him in a subconscious way.
Mr Leigh said it was easy to see how McCartney’s childhood visits to the churchyard would have been very memorable for him.
“John Lennon had connections in that church and had even been in the choir there,” he said.
“[Lennon’s] uncle died in 1955 when he was quite young. His name was George Toogood Smith. John loved the name and quite often he would take his friends into the graveyard to show them.
“It’s quite possible McCartney saw the Rigby grave and just stored it away in his head. It’s just possible that he kept that in his mind. But we actually don’t know, and I think McCartney himself doesn’t know.”
Karen Fairweather, from Omega Auctions, conceded the connection between the real Eleanor Rigby and the song was a matter of “folklore”, none of which was rooted in “concrete fact”.
“There is of course the gravestone, and the Rigbys lived on the road that backed on to the road where John Lennon lived,” she added.
Yet, whatever the origin of the name, Eleanor Rigby remains an integral part of the band’s story and Liverpool’s Beatles industry. The gravestone itself is regularly visited by guided tours and an Eleanor Rigby sculpture can be found in Stanley Street.
Mr Leigh describes the song as “perfect”, both in its melodies and its representation of a typical Liverpudlian woman of the time.
“The real Eleanor Rigby worked as a sort of scullery maid,” Mr Leigh said. “It just fits so perfectly.”
He said the jazz singer George Melly put it best when he said: “Eleanor Rigby seemed to be written out of their experiences in Liverpool.
“Liverpool was always in their songs but this was about the kind of old woman that I remembered from my childhood and later: very respectable Liverpool women, living in two-up, two-down streets with the doorsteps meticulously holystoned (scoured) and the church the one solid thing in their lives.
“There’s the loneliness of it and it struck me as a poem from the start.
“If you read Love Me Do without the music, it doesn’t mean much but if you read Eleanor Rigby, it is a poem about someone, which [was] something unprecedented in popular song.”
