A great story!
A great story! Hat tip to Gretchen.
College Football Players Clad in Camouflage Salute Military
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina and Maryland emerged from their locker rooms Saturday wearing camouflage uniforms with military values such as “Duty,” “Honor,” and “Courage” on the back in place of names to honor those who have served.Few understand as well as 26-year-old Gamecocks long snapper Matt Grooms, who served four years in the Marine Corps.
Grooms spent six months in Kuwait outfitting and fixing transport trucks in Iraq. He was nearly killed by a virus and was rattled by an American missile that exploded too close to camp. Still, he said it was “the best four years I’ve had.”
Grooms and his Gamecocks teammates lost to No. 1 Florida, and Maryland, which lost to No. 20 Virginia Tech, also sported different uniforms — desert and black camo. The jerseys and equipment will go up for auction, and some of the money will help The Wounded Warrior Project, which aids wounded service members.
Army wore ACU camouflage helmets and pants and jersey numerals in last year’s Army-Navy game; looked sharp. This season, they’ve worn the traditional gold pants and helmets.
Of course, I might be just a bit prejudiced!
Yorkshire:
UnderArmour from Baltimore supplied the equipment.
15 November 2009, 11:18 amPerry:
Pvt Pico’s really cute, but who’s the bearded one on the Right?
15 November 2009, 11:23 amDana Pico:
Some unknown clown who stepped into the picture.
15 November 2009, 11:46 amGretchen:
You have every right to be more than a tad prejudiced. The very cute and even more impressive, the very skilled Pvt. Pico should be used on recruiting posters!
UnderArmour also deserves high praise for its contributions to the football teams’ tribute to the military.
15 November 2009, 11:58 amJohn Hitchcock:
Perry, you just gave PFC Pico a two-grade bust in rank! And, Gretchen, you followed suit! And… Go Navy! Beat Army!
15 November 2009, 1:21 pmDana Pico:
Well, there is a PVT Pico: the younger Miss Pico, even though she has not been to basic yet, is an E-1, and has been receiving Army mail addressed to PVT Pico. The older Miss Pico is PFC Pico.
By going through the Future Soldier program and participating in her monthly drills, PVT Pico can go into Basic Combat Training as a PV2
or maybe PFC 
(E-2 or E-3) depending upon what she gets done. Going in as a “fuzzy private” would cost her a couple hundred dollars a month!
15 November 2009, 1:55 pmYorkshire:
By going through the Future Soldier program and participating in her monthly drills, PVT Pico can go into Basic Combat Training as a PV2 or maybe PFC (E-2 or E-3) depending upon what she gets done. Going in as a “fuzzy private” would cost her a couple hundred dollars a month!
When I went to BCT, I went as an E-2 since I was in the “system” for 4 months and it was automatic. But that got me an extra $20/month in Basic in 1969.
15 November 2009, 2:14 pmGretchen:
John Hitchcock:
Perry, you just gave PFC Pico a two-grade bust in rank! And, Gretchen, you followed suit!
I should have recalled that PFC Pico is, indeed, a Private First Class.
It’s all Perry’s fault that I messed up, though. I was still so aglow about his visiting Art in the hospital that I unquestioningly followed his lead and addressed Pico the Elder as PVT, instead of PFC.
I should have listened to Mama. She warned me that liberals would lead me astray!
15 November 2009, 2:18 pmJohn Hitchcock:
PFC Pico should be due for a promotion to SPC soon.
But, yeah, the loony left Univ system does need credit when it actually does something right. And those two schools definitely did something right this time around, and for a very worthy cause.
15 November 2009, 2:25 pmDana Pico:
She’s hoping for corporal instead, because that would make her an NCO — and then she could boss her sister around!
I tried to find the Niedermeyer “Drop and give me twenty!” scene from Animal House on YouTube, but couldn’t.
15 November 2009, 2:49 pmJohn Hitchcock:
Heh, SPC can still boss people around. My daughter did it. Kinda longish story and very tangential, so I’ll spare you.
15 November 2009, 3:10 pmblubonnet:
I sure hope she stays safe and doesn’t have to participate in the horrors, many soldiers had to participate in. She is obviously a beautiful spirit, and a beautiful girl. Her smile is gorgeous too.
This is one of the things that a fine human being likeyour lovely daughter should NOT have to be associated with, but our wars against the people of the middle-east have resulted in….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects
15 November 2009, 5:17 pmblubonnet:
I’m sorry, I know my last post was disturbing, but don’t we all agree that we all want the best for humanity? Knowing what is best and/or worst for humanity is a responsibility we all have, in our participation in this world. Unfortunately, common MSM won’t tell us these kinds of uncomfortable realities.
15 November 2009, 5:25 pmJohn Hitchcock:
Blu, you are a loon even by leftist standards. And I’ll have you know my daughter is planning on a return to Iraq in September next year. It is people of integrity like my daughter and Mr Pico’s daughters that provide you with the right to spew your insanity all over the Algore-invented intarwebs. You should thank those three women personally for allowing you to speak your mind.
15 November 2009, 5:36 pmblubonnet:
Video documentation isn’t insanity, it’s video documentation.
Another thing, Iraqis and Afghanis are not trying to limit my free speech. The Republican government does try to control speech about such things. Since policies of Bush have not been reversed, these horrors are Obama’s responsibility. I’m not holding my breath for reversal of it.
Defense industry owned media omits these kinds of things from news, limiting our awareness, so support for the war, by those like yourself still exist.
15 November 2009, 6:01 pmblubonnet:
As expected, your concern for the unborn supercedes concern for those born. Actually, your concern for those already born is bypassed altogether. Denial is your stance.
15 November 2009, 6:03 pmblubonnet:
Another thing, the source for the information you deny is the source that was one of the ONLY publications that stated before the war in Iraq that, NO WMDs existed. So, NO, my sources are honest, and reliable.
15 November 2009, 6:08 pmJohn Hitchcock:
So you admit that everyone else believed Iraq had WMDs? That would mean GWB didn’t in fact lie about that. (But that self-proclaimed liberal who made SGT in the Army (Love My Rifle More Than You) states categorically that Iraq had chem/bio labs on wheels that she personally saw after GWB invasion.)
You’re not doing too well in keeping your conspiracies straight.
15 November 2009, 6:15 pmDana Pico:
Blu wrote:
You’ve got to tell me how your free speech has been curtailed. You’ve posted comments on several conservative sites (Patterico, Constitution Club and here, that I know of), things which have been very much at odds with the site hosts, yet no one stops you, and you haven’t been thrown in jail.
With your links to 9/11 Truther sites, you have basically accused the last President of the United States of mass murder, and you did so while he was in office. I happen to know your real name, and certainly have your e-mail and IP addresses, yet, for some reason, the Geheime Staatspolizei have never contacted me for such information. Clearly, you’re here and able to comment now, and you aren’t in jail.
If you wanted, you could even start your own blog, free of charge! I pay a nominal fee (less than $200 a year) for mine, because I want control of the url, but Sharon, John, the Phoenician, and Al Gort all have absolutely free-to-them websites, free providers. You can say anything you want as long as you have internet access, or even make free public speeches if that’s what you want to do.
So, I’ve got to ask: How has your free speech been curtailed?
15 November 2009, 6:16 pmJohn Hitchcock:
But let me state for the record that I believe SPC Hitchcock, PFC Pico, PVT Pico have more honor and integrity than a brigade of fake butters.
15 November 2009, 6:18 pmJohn Hitchcock:
Mr Pico, she has commented on my blog and I had the audacity of letting her comments stay there!
15 November 2009, 6:20 pmblubonnet:
The Bush administration has done many things to curtail speech. I could make a list, or you could just google it up. I’m going to let you google it right now, because I’m not ready to take on such a LARGE task of listing the MANY violations GWB put upon us. I will gladly however, later, after I’ve done the many chores I have to do around my house. For starters, when protesters under the GWB presidency protested, after getting permits, they then were fenced in so people wouldn’t be able to get the full messages. Another thing, many relevant pieces of information have been omitted from the more prominent financially successful search engine people, like Google.
15 November 2009, 7:09 pmblubonnet:
Here’s an example of free speech being squelched during Bush:
By Glen Yeadon, Author of The Nazi Hydra in America
May 4, 2006
For anyone alive the last six years it is obvious that the national media are being censored by the Bush regime and only serves as his mouth organ. Those seeking the truth have relied on foreign news media and a small army of internet authors. Many of these internet sites have reported problems stemming from the Bush regime concerning their content. In the past my web log has revealed that I’ve received numerous visits from just about every intelligence organization in the government.
For more than five years this author’s web page has enjoyed the top two positions in a Google search using the keywords Nazi Hydra. I was surprised when my web traffic abruptly dropped to a fourth of the average daily traffic. Today I found the cause for the sudden drop in traffic: Google purged my main page from their search engine. A search using the two keywords brought up numerous sites that had referenced my work, as well as a couple of the chapters from the book. Retrying the search adding my name and then my ISP yielded the same results. Not only is this censorship, it’s a violation of my free speech rights.
Since my book Nazi Hydra has enjoyed top positions in most of the major search engines, using the title as keywords, I retried the search in several search engines. The search failed in only three of the twenty searches. The failures were Google, plus Google clients AOL and Netscape. All the other search engines had the main page listed in a top position.
Ever since Google went public it seems as if they are more concerned with being politically correct for the Bush fascist regime than in producing a quality search engine. The top positions in the other search engines confirm the validity of the link and its ranking, leaving no other conclusion than the decision by Google to remove my top position was politically motivated by the Bush regime.
For nearly ten years I have made the pages of the Nazi Hydra in America freely available on the internet, adding chapters as they were completed, until the book now totals about 700 pages. As long as I’m alive and free to do so I will continue to make the pages available until the book is available in print form later this year. Once the book is published, I will continue to make portions of the pages available, and provide a link to the publisher. The pages will disappear only if the Bush regime shuts down my website.
Google’s purge of the URL makes it obvious that this is a book the Bush regime does not want you to see. The reader should be asking why this is. While the book does cover some members of the Bush family in an adverse manner, the overall focus is on American fascism, and not the Bush family. Yes, the President’s grandfather was essentially Hitler’s bagman in North America, and had 23 companies seized from him for trading with the Nazis after the United States entered the war. If the government, especially a rogue government like the Bush regime is trying to hide something from the public, one can be assured its not for our benefit.
Given this administration’s repeated demands for the power to declare martial law and the emergency funding for FEMA to upgrade and build concentration camps, it is vital for everyone to understand the imminent threat and danger of fascism. If you wait until the Gestapo is pounding at the door, your children and grandchildren will curse the ground you walked on.
Perhaps Bush was right when he screamed that the constitution was just a damn piece of paper. The only freedoms you enjoy are those that you are willing to fight for. Whether you read the freely available material on the internet or buy the book once it is in print, the first step in fighting fascism is arming yourself with knowledge. Use the remaining time you have wisely.
You can read The Nazi Hydra in America by clicking this link: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy521 50/nazihydra.html
————
(Note: Republicans dubbed Portland “Little Beirut” for the big protests that met the first President Bush. — The Portland Tribune.)
Update: Google Gags on its own Gag.
Around May 10th, Google reinstated Nazi Hydra to the top spot in its search results.
By John Leonard, May 15th.
15 November 2009, 7:14 pmIt appears Google will censor as long as they can get away with it, and when they are caught out, they pretend nothing happened. Never available for comment.
blubonnet:
Gag orders were put upon the NYC firefighters by James Wolsey, former CIA director. Gag orders were put upon Sibel Edmonds, and FBI translator, regarding many criminal activities of Ds and Rs during the Bush reign. I’m sure I could find many more examples of free speech being hindered under Bush, but like I said, I’ve other things to do right now.
15 November 2009, 7:17 pmJohn Hitchcock:
blu, do you have free speech here? Do you have free speech on my blog? My blog? Where you know I consider you an absolute loon not worthy of listening to? I gots me some power in some places. Have I used it to cut off your idiocy?
Your blather is full of conspiracy theory and fully lacking truth.
15 November 2009, 7:42 pmDana Pico:
Well, Blu, Glen Yeadon complained that he had been delisted by Google — a private company, I’d note, not the government — but when I googled “Glen Yeadon,” Google returned 18,200 hits. His book, The Nazi Hydra in ASmerica, was the first return, and the whole book is available on-line at the embedded address. Just to check, I picked a chapter at random, to see if it would really open, and it did.
Just why am I supposed to believe a man who claims that he has been censored when I can find his published work available, for free, on line, with the first Google hit under his name?
You quoted Mr Yeadon:
Yet, at least today, the url has not been purged, and the fact that it is the first hit out of 18,200 indicates that it has received more hits under a search of the author’s name than any other.
Now, since I can easily find the work Mr Yeadon has claimed was suppressed, am I supposed to believe that it really was suppressed, or might I suspect that he claimed it was suppressed, to try to increase sales?
Oh, but wait! Mr Yeadon claimed that his book was reinstated by Google; how careless of me to have missed that! That would certainly explain why the suppressed book is no longer suppressed, right? The url was unavailable from 4 May to 10 May 2006, according to Mr Yeadon. What I’d like to see is his proof. Not his statements, but his proof, proof that the url was delisted, followed by proof that if it was delisted that the Bush Administration somehow ordered it.
Perhaps you have information I couldn’t find concerning the concentration camp in which Mr Yeadon is incarcerated.
You keep telling us that we’ve been lied to by the Bush Administration and its willing dupes in the media. Clearly, you know that it is possible for people to tell lies.
Well, given the evidence of Mr Yeadon, perhaps you ought to consider the possibility that the person lying to you was Mr Yeadon! He has an obvious motive: to try to increase sales. And if really was the evil old Bush Administration, then there was nothing about which to worry: if they couldn’t suppress the work of one pipsqueak author, then they really weren’t very efficient fascists, were they?
15 November 2009, 8:22 pmJohn Hitchcock:
That’s gonna leave a mark!
15 November 2009, 8:33 pmPerry:
Dana: Please apologize to PFC Pico for my getting her rank wrong. I should have seen her rank on the front of her uniform. I suppose it is your younger daughter who currently is correctly identified as Pvt Pico.
15 November 2009, 9:54 pmJeromy:
Dana: Nice to finally see a pic. Didn’t peg you for a grizzly bear:)
Hope your daughters stay safe. My brother-in-law is in Guantanamo, taking scuba lessons in his spare time. He made it through two tours in Iraq without a scratch.
15 November 2009, 10:30 pmblubonnet:
You really think that the MSM and the government are independent entities? I do not believe that. There are those in the gvernment that work for the media, and vice versa. It’s where free speech exists, who has the microphone.
Example. Most Liberals that I spoke with in 2008 were for Kuccinich, for having the guts to expose the ugliest aspects of intertwining government and business, and in some cases, one and the same. Well, the MSM did not allow him, Kuccinich into the Democratic debates. So, he faded into the background, so as most of us, scared as Hell, of another Republican, with its piles of bodies in the wake, most of us picked the lesser of two evils, Obama ultimately. Kuccinich lost his standing, by way of the MSM.
16 November 2009, 1:50 amDana Pico:
Blu wrote:
OK, this says something. Representative Kucinich was left out of some of the early Democratic debates because the pollsters — from several different organizations — found only slight support for him, always less than 5%. Some of it was the effort of the supposed big three candidates to not have to worry about the riff-daff candidates, but there really was a desire to have debates that were uncluttered, not the cacophony that so many early debates, with a dozen candidates, have been in the past.
If most liberals with whom you spoke supported Dennis Kucinich, then you were clearly moving amongst a group that was very unrepresentative of the Democratic Party.
16 November 2009, 6:05 amEric:
Losers always whine that they were kept out of debates. Perot did it in 1996 and Nader did it in 2000. Problem was, neither was polling well enough to be included in them. There was no conspiracy involved, no censorship.
16 November 2009, 12:30 pmblubonnet:
Dana, the polls you spoke of, I would bet were AFTER he was omitted from the debates. Do you have a link, which would clarify the date of that study?
16 November 2009, 2:30 pmblubonnet:
Incidentally, I will again drop this in from the author. You will see the link, within this text. Then, when you click onto it, it will lead to NOTHING.
Incidentally, Dana, why not have each post numbered so that I can simply refer to post #23, instead of doing this? Thank you. You think it is worth considering? Well, bac to subject matter…
Here’s an example of free speech being squelched during Bush:
By Glen Yeadon, Author of The Nazi Hydra in America
May 4, 2006
For anyone alive the last six years it is obvious that the national media are being censored by the Bush regime and only serves as his mouth organ. Those seeking the truth have relied on foreign news media and a small army of internet authors. Many of these internet sites have reported problems stemming from the Bush regime concerning their content. In the past my web log has revealed that I’ve received numerous visits from just about every intelligence organization in the government.
For more than five years this author’s web page has enjoyed the top two positions in a Google search using the keywords Nazi Hydra. I was surprised when my web traffic abruptly dropped to a fourth of the average daily traffic. Today I found the cause for the sudden drop in traffic: Google purged my main page from their search engine. A search using the two keywords brought up numerous sites that had referenced my work, as well as a couple of the chapters from the book. Retrying the search adding my name and then my ISP yielded the same results. Not only is this censorship, it’s a violation of my free speech rights.
Since my book Nazi Hydra has enjoyed top positions in most of the major search engines, using the title as keywords, I retried the search in several search engines. The search failed in only three of the twenty searches. The failures were Google, plus Google clients AOL and Netscape. All the other search engines had the main page listed in a top position.
Ever since Google went public it seems as if they are more concerned with being politically correct for the Bush fascist regime than in producing a quality search engine. The top positions in the other search engines confirm the validity of the link and its ranking, leaving no other conclusion than the decision by Google to remove my top position was politically motivated by the Bush regime.
For nearly ten years I have made the pages of the Nazi Hydra in America freely available on the internet, adding chapters as they were completed, until the book now totals about 700 pages. As long as I’m alive and free to do so I will continue to make the pages available until the book is available in print form later this year. Once the book is published, I will continue to make portions of the pages available, and provide a link to the publisher. The pages will disappear only if the Bush regime shuts down my website.
Google’s purge of the URL makes it obvious that this is a book the Bush regime does not want you to see. The reader should be asking why this is. While the book does cover some members of the Bush family in an adverse manner, the overall focus is on American fascism, and not the Bush family. Yes, the President’s grandfather was essentially Hitler’s bagman in North America, and had 23 companies seized from him for trading with the Nazis after the United States entered the war. If the government, especially a rogue government like the Bush regime is trying to hide something from the public, one can be assured its not for our benefit.
Given this administration’s repeated demands for the power to declare martial law and the emergency funding for FEMA to upgrade and build concentration camps, it is vital for everyone to understand the imminent threat and danger of fascism. If you wait until the Gestapo is pounding at the door, your children and grandchildren will curse the ground you walked on.
Perhaps Bush was right when he screamed that the constitution was just a damn piece of paper. The only freedoms you enjoy are those that you are willing to fight for. Whether you read the freely available material on the internet or buy the book once it is in print, the first step in fighting fascism is arming yourself with knowledge. Use the remaining time you have wisely.
You can read The Nazi Hydra in America by clicking this link: http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy521 50/nazihydra.html
16 November 2009, 3:20 pmblubonnet:
Basically political motivation controls much more than you would think.
I think this thread has gotten off course, and I would just like to, again, applaude the beautiful in spirit, and smile, PFC Pico. No matter what one thinks of the war, the courage and selflessness of soldiers should be celebrated. The football players did a wonderful thing honoring those well deserving honoring. Dana, you and your wife, did a fine job raising her.
16 November 2009, 3:25 pmRovin:
Hope the daughter doesn’t have the “loss of hair” genes…..
Thank you PFC Pico for protecting this nation–we are all (well, most of us) honored for your service.
17 November 2009, 7:28 am