James E. Rudder graduated from Texas A&M in 1932 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry. He served in the reserves until June 1941 when he was accepted for active duty.
Major Rudder was selected to command the 2nd Ranger Battalion at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, on 30 June 1943. Leading by example in training, be built morale and esprit before conducting amphibious training at Fort Pierce.
In the first wave on D-Day, 6 June 1944, Rudder, the Provisional Ranger Group Commander (2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions) personally led three 2nd Ranger Battalion companies up the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to seize the German coastal artillery guns. Rudder received the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).
Afterwards, LTC Rudder led ‘Rudder’s Rangers’ in the capture of France’s Atlantic ports. He fought with his Rangers in the Hürtgen Forest, Germany, until 7 December 1944, when he took command of the 109th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division.
Following WWII,Rudder remained in the Army Reserve, retiring as a Major General on 30 June 1967. He was the president of Texas A&M University from 1960 to 1970.
Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944
photo credit: U.S. Army
Memorial Day 2025 Open Commentaries
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43 responses to “Memorial Day 2025 Open Commentaries”
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That was a great speech by Reagan and I’ll have to try to watch it today. Well it’s Memorial Day where we honor those who lost their lives in all wars so what are the Lamestream Lunatics reporting on? The fifth anniversary of that THUG George Floyd’s suicide by Cop, of course! The local news had a clip of a celebration in Minnesota And it was being held at George Floyd Square! George Floyd Square?!?! Will this revisionist history always be out there? The real truth of his death be forever covered up?
~SPITS~
Mornin’ Gang
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I just listened to President Reagan’s address, which likely shall be heard many times more over the coming years as it has been since it was first given.
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Unfortunely, Minnesota has been lost to the yahoo lefties for quite some time, at least those in the biggie universities who seem to think they are somehow the blessed ones who ought to teach leftism to the students who enroll in their classes.
Their gypsies, tramps, and thieves thinking that they hold so dear means they are entitled to get away with it. Somewhere along the line their reasoning ability fled the scene…. But apparently that’s ok because universities are constantly on the lookout for “suitable” faculty with good reputations (from whom?), and winners of awards from somebody.
Fortunately not all advanced-degree schools fall into that trap.
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May God Bless those that gave all, what a debt we owe. I can’t imagine the horrors they faced.
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Well Kyle Larson’s attempt to race 1,100 miles yesterday running the Indy 500 and the NASCAR Cup Coca Cola 600 did not go well, he crashed out just before the halfway point at Indy and late in Charlotte.
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God bless those who have gave all for all of us.
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Grok says it’s fake.
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Hmm…this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else.
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Got a rack of pork ribs prepped to cook today, the hose on my propane smoking oven broke and so far I have not found a replacement with the correct fittings so I’m going to attempt it on the Weber putting a pan of water in the middle with coals on either side with some oak discs soaked in water I cut up from branches. I struggle keeping the temp low on the Weber while sustaining a fire for the duration.
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Great tweet by VP Vance from Saturday:
There is an extraordinary “reproducibility crisis” in the sciences, particularly in biology, where most published papers fail to replicate.
Most universities have massive bureaucracies that inhibit the translation of basic research into commercial adoption.
The voting patterns of university professors are so one-sided that they look like the election results of North Korea.
And on top of all of this, many universities explicitly engage in racial discrimination (mostly against whites and asians) that violates the civil rights laws of this country.
Our universities could see the policies of the Trump administration as a necessary corrective to these problems, change their policies, and work with the administration to reform.
Or, they could yell “fascism” at basic democratic accountability and drift further into irrelevance.
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Did y’all know it was World Redhead Day? Me neither. 😉
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Houston Astros legend Joe Morgan had the honor in 2003 of presenting at the induction of Bob Uecker into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
You do not want to miss Uecker’s speech.
David Manney is a new writer for PJMedia from Milwaukee, Bob Uecker’s hometown and he has a nice tribute to American baseball, what it means to us and the legendary announcer.
For generations of Brewers fans, Uecker was more than a broadcaster. He had been summer itself. He has been the laughter on the lake, the companion on the drive home, the storyteller who made us believe that baseball was not just a sport, but a shared memory unfolding one pitch at a time.
He could make you laugh until your ribs ached. He could call a walk-off as if he were ten years old again. He made losing seasons bearable and winning seasons unforgettable.
And in between the innings and the jokes, he showed us what joy sounded like. What loyalty looked like. What it meant to love the game deeply, no matter where you sat in the standings.
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Don Surber on Memorial Day.
Let the lesson of Memorial Day reflect Lincoln’s words: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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Good grief ! Bob Dylan turned 84 years old on Saturday.
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All those swell, beautiful people in Cannes, France are sweltering in their $5,000 a night hotel suites. Poor things.
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Headcrusher just made a batch of meatballs. Yum!
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E.J. Miller has nailed it. This happened late Friday afternoon. You get no second chances for disloyalty in this second Trump administration.
Ultimately, almost all the gnashing of teeth can be boiled down to Trump 2.0 being the first GOP admin in 40 years to actually ensure the electorate is represented throughout executive branch. Everything else is noise.
The White House today placed over 100 staff members at the National Security Council on administrative leave, as part of a restructuring of the council being led by National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. NSC Chief-of-Staff Brian McCormack is reported to have sent out an email to the affected staffers at 4:20pm today, informing them that they would have 30 minutes to clean out their desks. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices. This apparent “restructuring” of the council follows the firing earlier this month of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and several other officials, after a number of far-right influencers and senior advisors who have President Trump’s ear suggested that they were either “disloyal” or did not support his agenda of “America First.”
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I don’t know how many here remember Michael Ledeen, but he was one of the smarter ones. When everyone else in DC and America was focused on Iraq and Afghanistan (including me), Michael never stopped telling anyone who would listen Iran was the real problem.
This all happened via an old friend and colleague from the early days of Pajamas (now PJ) Media, Michael Ledeen. Michael, an extraordinary friend of the Iranian people (as opposed to the mullahs and their allies), passed away from multiple strokes on May 17.
Michael was a lifetime freedom fighter and a warm and loving person. I salute him and his wonderful wife Barbara on this Memorial Day.
Journalist Eli Lake who knew him as well as I did—I recall the three of us having lunch together—wrote this stirring obituary for the NY Sun. Eli writes:
“In our many meetings, lunches, and dinners, he carried himself like a professor. He made sure to recommend books I hadn’t read and then would help me better understand them a few weeks later. He was also a great source, connecting me to his friends in Europe, to the Bush administration, and later to the dissidents he knew in Iran. As a young journalist trying to understand how Washington worked, I treasured Michael as a guide to navigating the Washington swamp.”
Michael Ledeen was probably the greatest friend the horribly oppressed people of Iran ever had.
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This is disgusting.
Shabbos Kestenbaum (Harvard 2025) via Marina Medvin:
In the official Harvard 2025 Yearbook, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is simply labeled: “October 2023: War Breaks Out in Gaza.” As Harvard Chabad notes, this would be the equivalent of describing 9/11 as “War breaks out in Afghanistan.”
I urge all employers: if you are going to hire Harvard graduates from 2024-2028, please ask them what they were doing on campus the last two years.
Go through their social media. If they celebrated the abduction of 12 American citizens and the murder of more than 45, perhaps look elsewhere for employees.
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Where duh white wimmins at?
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Finally settling down. It was one of those “4:00 a.m. finally asleep nights,” so I’m late getting going. The day is slipping away from me. Again. I tweaked my back last night while laying in bed, so I’m moving a little carefully today. Anybody else hurt themselves just laying down?
Also, I’m trying to replenish my rosary stash, since I gave away so many on Saturday. I usually keep 20-30 at the house, so that when my purse stash is depleted I have a variety to choose from; or if I’m asked for a certain color, I usually have one ready. Six yesterday, three today. Getting there!
Gonna go see if Mr. Childers took the day off or not…
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Childers has a Memorial Day column. Excerpts:
Long before it was formally recognized as a federal holiday in 1967, Memorial Day’s first tender shoots poked through the ashes of the Civil War in the ruins of Charleston, South Carolina. You may not know its inconvenient history. On May 1, 1865, only weeks after the Confederacy had surrendered, freed black Americans and Union troops held a public funeral and tribute ceremony for Union soldiers who’d died in a nearby Confederate POW camp.
Black workmen tenderly exhumed the bodies of 260 slain Union POWs from their inglorious mass grave, and gave each of the fallen soldiers proper individual burials. Nearly 10,000 people —mostly black freedmen and their children— marched around the site, singing hymns, giving readings, and laying flowers on the fresh graves. Union troops joined in, including the famed (black) 54th Massachusetts, and a tradition was born.
By 1866, the practice of honoring the memories of fallen Civil War dead by strewing flowers on their graves expanded to include both sides of the conflict, Union and Confederate. As the years and wars marched along, even more Americans who’d sacrificed the last full measure of devotion assembled in Heaven for their final duty — becoming part of we the living’s special day of remembrance.
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My grandfather, Cmdr. William “Bill” Lewis Coon, survived World War II, having endured a harrowing, nightmarish ordeal after a Japanese submarine sank the Cape San Juan in the South Pacific. Bill and the rest of the mixed complement spent the next four days bobbing and swimming in the high seas while awaiting rescue. Around 1,000 men went into the water in 15-foot swells. Around 800 came out. Sharks, dehydration, exposure, and injuries got the rest.
/snip
Bill died at home, when I was still in single digits. I’ve only a few memories of him. In one particularly vivid recollection, he showed me around his amateur machine shop, … I probably remember it so vividly thanks to the cognitive shock of hearing his highly-edited, cautionary tale about some seamen he knew who, fooling around, connected the ship’s shop-vac to an unfortunate sailor’s rectum and his small intestine got hoovered out.
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On December 22, the Germans famously demanded surrender, prompting Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe’s iconic reply: “NUTS!” It was Hitler’s last big gamble, and the Germans devoted the cream of their most fanatical and experienced troops to the effort. Patton, defying the laws of physics themselves, somehow scraped together a 3-division relief command in only three days, cementing his reputation as one of history’s greatest battlefield generals.
On the same day, December 22, after enthusiastically accepting that impossible assignment, Patton ordered 250,000 printed copies of this prayer sent to troops under his command:
“Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish Thy justice among men and nations.”
/snip
Many soldiers spent multiple nights sleeping on frozen ground, with no shelter, or napping in foxholes or under trees in subzero temperatures….many hadn’t even been equipped with winter gear. Frostbite was rampant; fingers and toes were considered expendable. Rations were frozen solid, and even matches wouldn’t light;…They often pushed forward, inch by bloody inch, through waist-deep snow, under relentless attack by mortars, snipers, and entrenched German soldiers.
Today, in 2025, my kids consider it a terrible trial when the Internet is out for a few hours.
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Today, I hope you all enjoy a joyful and meaningful Memorial Day. While you’re flipping burgers, waving flags, and trying not to strangle your liberal relatives during pointless political conversations, take a moment to recall Roland and his brothers (and sisters). They never asked for our thanks, but we offer them our undying gratitude and respect anyway.
May we never forget the cost of freedom. And may we, who do not fight, never stop being the kind of people who are worth fighting for.
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Amen to that.
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It’s never just about the Jews.
Last week, when Elias Rodrigues gunned down Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., he thought he was killing Jews.
It was clearly a targeted assassination of Jewish participants at an American Jewish Committee’s event for young professionals
Tough guy Rodrigues fired 21 slugs into the unarmed a couple. A wounded Sarah reportedly tried to crawl away from him, but he continued to shoot her until she was lifeless.
As he was being led away from the museum, he proudly chanted, “Free, Free Palestine.”
But what Rodrigues didn’t know is that for most of last year, his targets were regular Sunday attendees at the Episcopal and Anglican Ascension and Saint Agnes Church in downtown Washington.
Before he came to the United States, Lischinsky also attended the Anglican Christ Church in Jerusalem.
Footnote: Sarah Lynn Milgrim came from a Jewish family in Overland Park, KS. She will be buried in a Jewish cemetery during a funeral service at her synagogue there. Whether her attendance at the Anglican church with Yaron meant she was converting to Christianity is an open question.
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A van ran down folks in a crowded street in Liverpool. Guess where a lot of “migrants” are now living?
I don’t know the dead/injured count, but the driver intentionally changed directions to hit the most people he could, and hit the gas at least twice before stopping.
UPDATE:
Police are reporting that they have arrested a “white British man of 53 years” for the incident.I’m withholding further comment until I see a picture and/or get a report on his religious preferences. The way the authorities try to hide reality, “white” could still mean a Middle Easterner (though I believe they call them “Asian” to hide the facts). Or it could be a radicalized Britisher. Or it could just be a crazy loon who’s lived in Liverpool his whole life.
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Carl Higbie’s opening monologue today was very special. He ended it by telling us not say ‘Happy Memorial Day’ or “thank you”. He said that if we want to honor those who laid down their lives for us, to be someone worth dying for.
Dang onions.
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Likes beans with his chili
Screenshot[/caption]-
It figures. Anybody who would drink that nasty stuff…
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Maybe some of these SOBs won’t be lynched when they get back to their districts this year.
The Texas House on Sunday passed a Parental Bill of Rights that includes a ban on social transitioning of children.
The bill, SB 12, filed by state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, already passed the Senate in March along party lines by a vote of 20-11
In the House, the bill was carried by state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, The Center Square reported. It passed the House by a vote of 88-47 with three voting present, not voting, according to the unofficial tally.
The bill affirms that parents are the primary decision-makers in their child’s education, bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology in K-12 public schools, restricts teachings of sexual orientation and gender identity, simplifies public school transfers, and reforms the parental-ISD complaint process, among other measures.
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We like these two members of our problematic Mexican neighbors. Isaac and Priscilla are nice folk, trying to fix up the place, and we can relate via our shared experience with bats**t carazy family.
But they had a party on Sunday, for select family that have been supportive. For some reason, two big trucks thought it was okay to come up our driveway and park on our property. I asked Priscilla to ask them to move, and the party got real quiet soon after.
Today, I see Isaac’s truck, parked barely inside his property line. He had to come up our driveway and cross our strip of grass to park his truck there, due to a pile of dirt blocking the other side of where he’s parked.
They have plenty of room in their front yard if they have no problem parking their vehicles on their lawn. I’ll take my own dang shovel and move their dirt if they can’t handle it themselves. Hubby and I have talked and we’re going to put up a rinky dink cable “fence” – just to let them know it’s an issue and their guests will know, too.
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Sunshine is at her first sleepaway camp, a Catholic camp that is actually just down the road from where Hubby and I had our recent getaway. I’m excited for her.
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I’m not sure why that glitch happened, but I finally restored today.
Last weekend, by the way, was my 2,000th front page headline post here over 15 years.
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2000 thousandth headline? Dang.
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Well That didn’t work. If this don’t put a smile on your face……
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For free on Amazon Prime is a Rolling Stones documentary.
They kicked off their 2015 American stadium tour in the more intimate Fonda Theater in Hollywood, playing the entire Sticky Fingers album.
So nice to have accurate captions throughout.
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Wild Horses was originally recorded at Muscle Shoals.
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Can’t You Hear Knockin’ will bring a tear to the eye.
🙂
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That old rooster may have been in his best voice ever.
At 72 years old. Unreal.
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Well it started raining pretty good about 20 minutes ago,…Finally! We’re hoping for a good-un.
FWIW; I grilled some burgers and fixed a pot of beans this afternoon and Sister brought over her world famous tater salad and some Jalapeno Poppers so we had a fine supper.
My boy and SIL both smoked some fine briskets, perfect smoke rings on both of them. Of course the boy had Snake River Farms Wagyu and SIL had a HEB Prime brisket.
Yup Life is good.
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An American soldier from George S. Patton’s Third Army takes a nap on a bed belonging to German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring after the capture of his lodge on May 3, 1945.
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Looks like we’re up for some bad weather. Battening down hatches.
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