Never Forget

Memorial Day – Remembering the USS Cole

It has been almost six years since I updated the NEVER FORGET tribute seen in the right sidebar to memorialize the Islamic terrorist attack on the USS Cole. On this Memorial Day, I am reposting Remembering the USS Cole I posted on the tenth anniversary of the attack. Although the sailors that died that day were not in combat, they most certainly were in enemy territory.


Remembering the USS Cole

cole1.jpgTen long years have gone by and the US Government – Clinton, Bush and Obama – have done nothing to retaliate for the vicious Islamic Terrorism act, the bombing of the USS Cole. The current President even had a Judge drop the charges last year. That’s disgusting behavior, but typical of the invertebrate occupying the Oval Office these days.

About the same time the charges were dropped, we made the modification to the animated “Never Forget” tribute seen in the sidebar to include the USS Cole sequence. I was in contact with Gary Swenchonis, Sr., who provided me with feedback on the Tribute. Gary is the father of Fireman Gary Swenchonis, Jr., who perished in the attack on the USS Cole. Gary Sr. asked if I could provide a tribute to the Cole victims and I was honored to include it.

You can read the ten year anniversary post by Gary Swenchonis, Sr. at his website, Terrorism: Politicians and Victims.

Never Forget Our Freedom Enablers

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Memorial Day is the time for us to stop and remember those brave men and women of the armed services who gave their lives in the ultimate sacrifice for America. Sure, we’ll be grilling up some holiday treats and celebrating the beginning of the patriotic summer season, but we’ll also have our American flag flying at half-staff until noon in accordance with the Memorial Day protocol.

I liked the sentiment in the Ramirez cartoon above with the symbolic spirit of a disabled veteran giving a hand to the next generation of free Americans. Just as we Never Forget the Islamic Terrorism events of 9-11 and other times, we also will Never Forget the honored dead in all the wars from the American Revolution to the War on Terror still raging today. God Bless ’em All!

Wickenburg War Memorial

Wickenburg War Memorial

The Town of Wickenburg dedicated a war memorial in 1976 to those men and women who served in the Armed Forces and Merchant Marine of the United States. In 2013, the Kellis-Draper American Legion Post 12 (so named for the town’s two WW1 heroes killed in action), re-dedicated the memorial in a more prominent place in town on the Post’s property in the center of the old downtown district.

Plaques on the memorial contain the names of our town’s servicemen who perished in the service of the country in honor of their devotion in keeping the United States of America free. Wickenburg people perished in all the big wars since the start of the twentieth century: WW1, WW2, Korean Conflict, South East Asia and the War on Terrorism. The latter, is still in progress today, whether the current political mess in Washington, D.C. admits it or not.

Ninety Million “Never Forget” Tribute Hits

ninetymillion.jpgThis morning, the hit counter for the Never Forget Tribute rolled past ninety million. The hit counter displays an approximation of the number of times that the Tribute has been accessed since August of 2005, the date when it was made available to other websites. Knowing the exact count is virtually impossible, since we only began tracking it after it had been deployed for a couple of years. We used an extrapolation algorithm to establish the approximate count back then, and have incorporated a real-time hit counter since.

The Hits per hour and Hits per day readouts are also approximations. One thing for sure, though, is that the HPD and HPH have diminished from their peak values from about 2009; at that time there were more than 1000 hits per hour. I suppose that a lot of bloggers who previously displayed the Tribute have dropped out of the game. I also suspect that the paradigm shift towards social media had an effect of reducing hits to blogging sites.

At the current rate of hit accumulation, the counter would pass the One Hundred Million mark sometime in the spring of 2017. That is optimistic, however, given the trend toward fewer hits per day.

We thank those sites that continue to display the Never Forget Tribute. Given the current continued Islamic terrorist movements in the World, none of us will ever be able to forget.

UPDATE: (12/09/2014) I revised the hits per hour and hits per day algorithm to estimate the current rates. With the fall-off since the last benchmark of 75 Million hits, the new estimates are closer to reality and seem to be less than half of those reported prior (compare the graphic above to the sidebar counter). The algorithm I use is faulty in that it averages over the longer term rather than doing a running average. I will think about ways to implement a better algorithm if I have the inclination. 😉

We The People

This is an awesome video . . .

Hat tip to my buddy Frank N. who supplied this video via email:

Thank you Oklahoma

I hope 100 million watch this! Oklahoma State University is located at Stillwater , Oklahoma . This is without a doubt the best video that has come out and apparently 6 Million others think so too because there have been 6 million hits in 4 days. Please watch it and send it on to others. I believe the pendulum has started to swing so let’s keep it going. *This is very well done.*

Patriot Day 2012

It has been eleven years since the terrible events inspired by Islamic Terrorists. We continue to remember those events and the evil people who perpetrated them. The current president, his comrades and the major media (but, I repeat myself) have forgotten. That is why patriotic Americans must NEVER FORGET.

The Never Forget Animation has been served up more than 82.5 million times. Since the tenth anniversary of the attacks last year, there have been over 7.5 million hits.

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the Internet and via emails after 9/11. I gathered some of the graphics and produced the prototype of the graphic to display on my personal website. After refinements and improvements suggested by Damsel and others, it appears as it does today.

There are two sizes available for the animation; the one seen here is 118 pixels wide and the one in the sidebar is 150 pixels wide. You can choose which size to use that best fits in your sidebar or other space. Visit the Never Forget Flash Animation page for details.