Patriotic nostalgia

I may get in trouble for this, but it’ll be with all the right people.

Today I got a belated Fathers Day present—a flag decal, and I rushed right out and pasted it on the back window of my Ford Ranger truck.  Nothing more patriotic than that.

No, it’s not a U.S. flag decal, there are already enough of those around; but it’s one that Sarah Palin would be proud of nevertheless, and she may even have one of these on a GMC Yukon Denali, right alongside Old Glory.

Daughter Number One moved to Anchorage, Alaska a few weeks ago and sent me this sticker of the Alaska state flag—a simple and elegant design, with the Big Dipper and North Star.  Pasting it on the truck I felt like a kid again, when my parents received their copy of the Readers Digest, probably back in ’68 or so, when the magazines were stuffed with U.S. flag decals and sent to an appreciative public.  Not knowing any of the politics behind this (at the innocent age of 12) I rushed out (as I did today, less innocently, at 57) and pasted their decal on the side window of my dad’s 1961 Peugeot 404, the very car I learned to drive in.  Ah, memories.

This would have been a whole lot more patriotic (in 1968, to support the war effort) if the car had been a Chevy or a Ford (and not a Peugeot), but Dad had got a deal on the Peugeot, and this was decades before the French fell out of grace by not wanting to bomb Iraq with us.  A second time.

Come to think of it, it was the French not wanting to bomb Vietnam anymore that got us into war in the in the first place, back in the ’60s.  Remember?  French Indo-China?

Which leads to my second topic—to prove I’m not rambling—a song about pasting a flag decal (that had fallen out of a Readers Digest) onto the windshield of one’s car (back in 1968 or so, and probably it was a Chevy) along with the patriotism, and a theology, involved in that act.

by John Prine:   “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore”

(They’re already overcrowded from yer dirty little war / Now Jesus don’t like killin’ no matter what the reasons for / and your flag decal won’t get you into Heaven anymore).

If I get in trouble for this it’ll be worth it.  And I got more of this stuff, too.

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Also known as “No Such Agency”

According to The Guardian,

“The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an ‘ongoing, daily basis’ to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.”

Other reports read, not “millions” but “tens of millions” of telephone customers.

Now would be a good time for a refresher course.  The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

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