You Served Transcript – Podcast Episode #24

[Introductory Music]

CJ: All right everybody. Welcome to the You Served Podcast. I am your host, one of two, CJ.

Troy: And I’m your other one, Troy Stewart.

CJ: And we’re winging it. We’re going off the seat of our pants today. It’s the You Served military podcast, brought to you by the vamortgagecenter.com and youserved.com. Troy and I are both active duty soldiers, but by saying that, we must play the following.

Troy: The views and commentary from the boneheads you are listening to are based on personal experiences from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other exotic tropical paradises. The opinions expressed on the You Served radio show are solely those of the hosts and contributors, and not those of any agency of the United States government, expressly including, but not limited to the Department of Defense or any branch of the military.

Neither do the idiotic statements of these rambling buffoons reflect the views of youserved.com or the VA Mortgage Center.com. If they knew what was good for them, they would find real talents as quickly as possible. The site is not designed, authorized, sanctioned or affiliated by or with any agency of the United States Government, expressly including, but not limited to the Department of Defense or any branch of the military.

Listeners accept and agree to this disclaimer, and the use of any information accessed from this podcast. These served to protect your freedom. If you don’t like what they have to say, exercise it, and leave.

CJ: All right, guys. Welcome everybody. I know there are a few people, looks like we’re having some issues there with getting the BTR thing up and running. But I’m going to go ahead and kick things off, because we have got to jump right into it today. We’ve got some last minute additions for those of you that were looking forward to a certain type of program that we had scheduled today.

Those of you that read “A Soldier’s Perspective, ” and that’s my other blog at soldiersperspective.us. You probably read about my piece on the 10th Amendment, and how right now I think we’re up to seven states are finally represented in positions with the United States Congress. What we’re going to have on the show are a couple of the representatives from one of the states, New Hampshire, to be specific, that are going to call in and talk about this very issue.

They’re going to talk about their particular petition and why the states need to send up a resolution to Congress basically saying “We declare our sovereign rights under the Constitution.” We’re going to talk about that.

We’ve also got Michael Rowan is going to be here. He is the co-author of the new book, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the war against America.” Those of you that care much about our country know that this man is not a friend of the United States. Even when his socialist buddy, President Obama came into office, he even had some tough words for him initially. And then he realized, wait a minute. This guy’s one of me, he’s one of us. So he quickly apologized and said, Ah, you know, I’m a little over the edge, there.

Anyway, Michael Rowan’s written a great new book and it basically flushes out that Chavez is probably getting away with more than we should be allowing him to get away with. Now, luckily with gas prices down, he’s not as popular or as strong as he used to be. We’ll talk to Michael Rowan about that.

We’ve also got cartoonist Clayton Murwin coming up. Clayton is coming out. He’s putting together a graphic novel, which for those of you who don’t know what a graphic novel is, a graphic novel is basically comic books. But it’s a big, giant comic book, not just a 20-page comic book. But a graphic novel based on the experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq. So they’re true stories based in a graphic novel format. Troy, I believe you’re submitting something, aren’t you?

Troy: Yeah. I sure am. That was how Clayton and I connected. He found me through the blog, we got to talking. And he asked me if I would submit. And pretty much you named it right. A graphic novel is essentially a comic, but in a book format. And what Clayton has done is he’s gotten a whole bunch of world-renowned cartoonists and comic book artists, and soldiers submit a very large story, 20 pages or more. And these cartoonists then take that story and turn it into images, and turn it, essentially, a mini story comic book. And there’ll be multiples inside the book, I guess.

CJ: Yep.

Troy: And they don’t have to be like war stories or this or that. They could be just funny things that happened or whatever, but all that happened forward deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa or wherever.

CJ: That’s right. And I am also contributing a story to this book. So Troy and I will both be — maybe, maybe not. Maybe our stories will just get canned, who knows. But we’re both submitting stories, anyway, for this graphic novel. So we’re going to talk to cartoonist Clayton Murwin on that.

And then finally we’re going to speak with Trish Forant. Trish Forant is the CEO and President of emailourmilitary.com. So we’ll talk to her.

We’ve got an action-packed show. We had to squeeze in, like I said, our current guests that we’re going to be talking to here in just a minute, to bring in the 10th Amendment thing. So the first hour, we’re just going to have to jump right into it. And I think we have some of those representatives on the phone now. Is that correct, sir?

Dan: If you’re talking to me, yeah.

CJ: Yes, sir. Who am I speaking with?

Dan: This is Dan Itse.

CJ: Oh, OK. So this is Dan Itse. He’s the primary author of the resolution. It’s six, right?

Dan: Yes. House Concurrent Resolution Six. And I have to correct that. I’m not the primary author. The primary author was Thomas Jefferson.

CJ: OK. [laughs] Got yeah. That’s so true. OK. But you’re the primary author of this resolution.

Dan: Yes, I am.

CJ: OK. It’s not necessarily the 10th Amendment or the Constitution or anything.

Dan: Well, no. Actually the vast majority of the language in this resolution is taken from the Kentucky resolution that Jefferson wrote.

CJ: Oh, really?

Dan: Oh, yeah. Only the last three paragraphs are mine.

CJ: OK. I think we might have one of your other representatives on the phone. Area code 305?

Trish: That’s Trish.

CJ: Oh, hey, Trish. Let me put you on standby here for a minute.

Trish: No problem.

CJ: All right.

Dan: We’ll all be 603.

CJ: Oh, OK. Now are you all calling in from different lines?

Dan: We’re all calling in from our houses. We don’t get offices in New Hampshire. I have a drawer.

CJ: Oh, I got you. Do you have at least an in and out box somewhere?

Dan: Not really, no.

CJ: All right. Well, we’re talking with Dan Itse. We’ll go ahead and get started with you, sir. And basically, if you could just tell our audience what it is that the New Hampshire legislature is doing right now with this resolution, House Concurrent Resolution Six.

Dan: Well, right now it has just had its first hearing. So the sponsors and the supporting people from the populace all trouped into the State Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee today, and stated our case as to why New Hampshire ought approve this resolution.

CJ: And what was that case, what case are you all making, basically?

Dan: The case I’m making is that the Federal Government has been encroaching increasingly for the last 150 years, and really reaching critical mass in the last 20 or so. And we’re getting to the point that they are an imminent threat to our most fundamental liberties.

CJ: Right.

Dan: It’s time that we have to draw a line in the sand so that they know they’re not allowed to go any farther and, if they do, they’ll have nullified the Constitution that we set up for them.

CJ: Now, I wrote about this and I’m going to read this to everybody because, basically, New Hampshire’s not the only state that is submitting this basic 10th Amendment paper, which is explaining your sovereignty.

And what the 10th Amendment says and it’s titled “The Powers of the States and the People, ” “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.”

Now, I’m a constitutionalist so that makes sense to me. But can you put that into layman’s terms for those that don’t quite understand the language?

Dan: Well, before I do, I want to read to you what our Article VII says, and we, though our first Constitution this appeared in was 1783. It was then reaffirmed in 1791 because it made some significant modifications, which you’ll note is both before and after the Constitution to the United States.

CJ: Correct.

Dan: And what we say in our Constitution is, “The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign and independent state. And do and forever hereafter, shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction and right pertaining thereto which is not or may not hereafter by them expressly delegated – be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled.”

And that is reflective of what we and several of the other states put into their ratification document, which was a recommendation that the Constitution be amended with the phrase that the general government, the United States, only has the power expressly delegated to it. And those were incorporated in the amendments as the 9th and 10th Amendments.

CJ: Which is key, because there’s a lot that our federal government does that is not expressly laid out in the Constitution. I mean, we’re looking right now at healthcare for targeted groups of the country. We’re looking at multi-trillion dollar bailouts.

What was the thing, is there a single thing that pretty much said, you guys pretty much went, “OK, now is the time we need to stop this. It’s gone too far.”

Dan: No. I put in a resolution asking for the most noxious portions of the Patriot Act to be repealed in 2003, I think. It’s hard to remember that far back.

CJ: Yup, it was in 2003.

Dan: I put in a resolution for…

CJ: It was right before I went to Iraq.

Dan: OK. I put in a resolution last year saying that delegating any of our sovereignty to any super national government, such as a North American Union, would be unconstitutional. So, I mean, they’ve been infringing upon us for quite some time.

And what happened was, I was boning up for a playing James Madison, as I do every year for a Constitution banquet of the National Heritage Center for Constitutional Studies and the chairman said, “Oh, look at the Kentucky resolutions, a conflict with states’ rights.” And the chairman said, “Oh, look at the Kentucky resolutions written by James Madison. And he got Jefferson to submit it to Virginia.”

Well, it was just the reverse, Jefferson who wrote them and Madison who submitted them in Virginia. But when I started reading these articles, it was obvious, you know, intuitively obvious, this is the real deal. This is how these men viewed the relationship between the general government and the state.

And it is clearly with the states in charge. It’s magnificent language and people have said, this is really radical. I didn’t write it, you know? [laughter] Don’t look at me. This isn’t my idea; this was Thomas Jefferson.

CJ: You know, it’s funny the Declaration of Independence was pretty radical, too.

Dan: Ah, yeah, but they were rather radical guys, when it comes right down to it. I mean, I just want to put some of these ideas before you.

“The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government. But that by a compact under the style and title of a “Constitution for the United States and Amendments Thereto.” They constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving to each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self government. And, whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no force.”

CJ: Yup.

Dan: It goes on to say, that it’s the state as the party to this compact that are the rightful interpreters of the Constitution. Guess what Supreme Court? That cuts you out.

CJ: Well, let me ask you this though. One of the things that people may say if you end up having to enact these nullifications because one of the things all these states are pretty much saying, you know, some of these extreme acts by the federal government would constitute a nullification of the Constitution. What do you say to those that say, “Well, that’s illegal, because what about federal preemption?”

Dan: Well, federal preemption is only valid for valid laws.

CJ: OK.

Dan: If the laws are outside their delegated powers, in the words of these gentlemen, they were “unauthoritative, void and of no force.” How can a law of no force be preempted?

CJ: Exactly. And I think when you look at – and I think we’ve got one of your other representatives on the phone. Am I correct?

Paul: Yes you are.

CJ: And who am I speaking with now?

Paul: This is Paul Ingbretson, hi, again.

CJ: This is Paul?

Dan: Paul Ingbretson, a representative from [inaudible], New Hampshire.

CJ: OK. Hodes right?

Paul: Ingbretson.

CJ: Ingbretson, OK, I was having trouble with that on the phone. Now, what we’ve done, Mr. Ingbretson, is pretty much just laid out the groundwork, at least, as far as the fact that the State of New Hampshire is declaring it’s 10th Amendment rights as a state against the federal government’s mingling in the state affairs.

Now how did you come to sign on with Mr. Itsa with this resolution.

Paul: Well, I’ll give you just one example of my background. When I first became a rep, I noticed that the State of New Hampshire had approximately 2500 people in jail. And I went and looked at a recent study and it showed that just in 1982, we had about 280 people in jail. And I thought, what the heck happened between 1982 till now.

Do you know what it was? There’s only one major change in law and it’s the drug war. The federal government has no authority in an area like that but it’s putting 10 times as many people in jail as were in before.

Now, you can say it’s all sorts of other things, but this is the kernel of why they’re in jail. So, why wouldn’t I fight back? You know, that’s not a place where the feds have any authority whatsoever to control drugs in my state.

That’s just a start. OK? And it goes on and on, you know, like drugs and the U.S. Patriot Act is just a disaster.

CJ: Right. Now, what, you guys listed and I’ll throw this out to either of you, sir, gentlemen. You listed basically five or six what you consider grave – what am I looking for here? – grave acts that would constitute a nullification of the Constitution.

Can you explain what those would include?

Dan: Sure, I mean, and first, I want to point out that they are – it’s not conclusive they are typical of what we would consider too much to endure.

The first one is, declaring a state of emergency within one of the – I’m sorry, martial law or a state of emergency within one of the states comprising the United States of America without the consent of that state’s legislature.

CJ: OK. So basically a state would have to request that the federal government declared a state of emergency like we done in Kentucky, Louisiana and California.

Dan: Right. And you noticed, I am not lenient to doing it here in New Hampshire. If they do it anywhere, they have violated the constitution. The constitution requires that they guarantee a republican form of government to every state.

CJ: Exactly.

Dan: If you declare martial law and you basically unseat the legislature of that seat of that state, then, they have violated the constitution blatantly.

CJ: OK.

Dan: Next one is – really the next two – but the next one, is requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war or pursuant to or is an alternative to incarceration after due process of law. And the next one makes it untenable for any person under the age of 18 under any environment.

CJ: OK.

Dan: You know, other than pursuant to due process of law.

CJ: Right. Now, the fourth one is the one that I find the most interesting. Go ahead.

Dan: OK. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government. That means they can’t give away any of our power…we didn’t give them the power to hand our sovereignty over to another government.

CJ: Now how would you interpret our involvement with the UN under that paragraph?

Dan: We are under the UN…we are in the UN by treaty. But we have not actually handed any sovereignty over to them. We have not allowed the UN to make laws operative within the United States.

CJ: OK. That’s what I kind of wanted to clarify. OK, and…

Dan: Go ahead.

CJ: I was letting go ahead for number five and six.

Dan: Number five, any act regarding religion, further limitations on freedom of political speech or further limitations on freedom of the press. Now we already have a lot of limitations on political speech like the McCain-Feingold Act.

CJ: Right.

Dan: But, you know now we are talking the Fairness Doctrine. Limitations on freedom of press, that is a Fairness Doctrine as well. In the first amendment clearly prohibits the government from making basically any law regarding religion. They can’t prohibit the free exercise thereof and they can’t promote any. So it’s clearly hands off.

Hate crime laws that would potentially forbid preaching against certain sexual practices.

CJ: OK. Now, I noticed, one of the things that I saw included in some of the other resolutions, I didn’t quite see in New Hampshire’s. And I am not sure what the political landscape is up there. Was a further reduction or revocation of our second amendment done right? Is that something else that you consider [crosstalk]

Dan: No, no that’s there.

CJ: Did I miss it? Oh there it is. I am sorry. Number six.

Dan: Number six – further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions on the type or quantity or arms or ammunition.

CJ: So this is where it gets kind of important, because anybody that’s been following our Congress lately and has being following our new President commander and chiefs, where they plan on taking this country can see that a lot of these -talking about the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press and especially the right to keep and bear arms.

But they are pushing legislation right now to make it illegal to hold a certain number of ammunition as well as certain types of magazines that carry certain numbers of ammunition. And the state of New Hampshire as well as other states are considering these grave acts what will constitute a nullification of the constitution?

Dan: That’s what I am saying. Yeah.

Paul: I can’t speak for the other states. But for our part, we have always been seriously protective of our right to keep and bear arms. There’s been no limitations imposed. We are a “shall-issue” state for our concealed carry license. Granted we haven’t got ridden of…or we haven’t made the concealed carry license optional yet, but we are trying. But even a large fraction of the…I shouldn’t say “even” – but a large fraction of our democrats are strongly pro second amendment.

CJ: Right. Well, now let me ask you this and then I have got a caller on the line, I like to get a question in. Do you see under any of these acts taking place…I mean are we heading towards the possibility of another civil war with the number of states that are starting to send up these resolutions to Congress?

Dan: Well I guess, I would say that’s up to the United States of America or the general government thereof. I mean, we are the United States. The question is – is this throwing down the gauntlet that we intend to secede. No. I mean, first of all, if they commit those acts, and in our opinion is the rightful judgment of the constitution, they have nullified it. You can’t secede from something that doesn’t exist.

CJ: Got you.

Dan: I mean, look at the tenure of the couple of the last paragraphs there. We don’t want to dissolve the union. We believe we are better off with a properly functioning union, emphasis on a properly functioning union.

CJ: Exactly.

Dan: If the union is functioning in a manner to our detriment, why would we stay? I mean, a wife is crazy to stay in relationship with an abuser.

CJ: That’s a very good analogy. That’s a good way to put it. And we are definitely being abused by the federal government for the last…I will admit, last few years. I wasn’t a big fan of a lot of the things that President Bush did either when it comes to some of our [crosstalk]

Dan: Well I am not a big fan of at least some aspects of the outcome of the civil war.

CJ: yup.

Dan: It was a war fought to preserve the union, and yet, the conclusion of free government – government by consensus seizes to exist from the face of the earth.

CJ: True. Well let me take a caller here. We got a caller from area code 262. You are on the air. You Served podcast with New Hampshire representatives Dan Itsa and Paul Ingberstson. Area code 262. Hello?

Man 3: Hello from Milwaukee.

CJ: And Wisconsin?

Man 3: Yeah. Can you hear me?

CJ: Yes I can.

Man 3: Oh wow! OK, I didn’t realize I hit a button. I was actually just listening in on it. Other than that I am just trying to log in the blog talk here so I can chat with everybody.

CJ: OK. No questions?

Man 3: Since I am on here, I do know that you will be having somebody from our military on a little bit later. That’s actually why I am tuning in is to listen to them. But we also have a program going for our military that is called My Huggy, teddy bears that we donate to the children of soldiers before deployment, because its got a 20 minute recording device in it and it is donate free of charge to the families to help separation anxiety.

CJ: OK. I tell you what let me bring you back on and talk about that, so we can stay on point here at least through this topic.

Man 3: OK, I will mute this because I don’t know what happens.

CJ: OK got you.

Dan: So I will just put the mute and…

CJ: I will mute you. OK, sorry about that guys. That’s one of the joys of the way we do our show here is all we see are area codes. You never know if it is caller or a guest. That’s why we ask area codes.

Troy: Well one of these days we are going to get picked up by a national chain and TJ and I will have a producer and they will screen our calls and then we are going play with big money.

CJ: All right, Troy you want to ask some questions?

Troy: Yeah I did for either of the fine gentlemen. I am kind of curious. What is the feedback? I know, I guess like seven states have signed on to this but have you started to get any feedback from your constituets? Do they think you are wackos? Dothey think you are trying to go against the grain? Has it been very supportive, I guess? What have you heard?

Paul: Yeah, it’s been unbelievably good. You guys, this radio show is just an example. Dan’s been on a number of shows. I always defer to Dan because he actually did the writing on this thing and I’m a co-sponsor. But I’ve received as much mail as he has.

All of it’s positive. I haven’t seen anything negative. It’s all well reasoned and well expressed and usually one or two lines. So it’s not like we’re talking about somebody out there with an opportunity to sort of nail us for something.

But they’re coming from every state in the union. I mean, I think I’ve got them from 16 different states right now. So I assume that will just keep on coming at us in the course of two or three days. So yeah, to me it’s very impressive. I’ve also received at least now five or six from New Hampshire and we haven’t done anything to publicize this.

Dan: We’ve done nothing to publicize it. Representative Mead, one of our frequent compatriots, came in and signed it and spoke. Because he’d gotten calls from his constituents saying, so where are you on this bill? [laughter] Of course we knew he’d be with us anyway, but his constituents motivated him to come in and testify in favor.

Paul: You know, there’s an expression, you’ve all heard it. But you know, the white elephant in the room. It looks like we’ve hit on one of those things. Everybody knows this is a very, very serious problem.

Troy: Well it seems. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Paul: No, no. Go right ahead. That’s enough said on that.

Troy: I was just saying it seems that it’s starting to get picked up by some of the mainstream media. I’m just wondering if you’ve had an avenue to get on or talk to any of the mainstream media outlets about this? Have they shown any interest?

Dan: No, I’ve not gotten any mainstream media. I did hand out a press release to the fellows in the newsroom at the statehouse, the newspaper room. They were interested.

When I mentioned that several other states had similar motions pending in their legislatures and that we… Paul and I have discussed this. Several people from other states, some legislators, have said that they’re going to work on getting our version implemented in their legislatures.

Paul: By the way, Dan, you’re too modest. “WorldNetDaily” did talk to Dan yesterday.

Dan: Oh, that’s true.

Paul: “WorldNetDaily” is pretty big. [laughter]

Troy: All right. Yeah, so has the support for this from other states and within your own state, has it been partisan or has it been across all parties?

Paul: Can’t tell precisely.

Dan: I don’t know. Nobody’s said what party they were with. I’ve not seen one party affiliation so I couldn’t tell you.

Troy: OK. Well, I know you said you’d been contacted by some of the other states or what some of the other states are doing. I’m just wondering if people will take this as oh this is a whole bunch of upset Republicans. Or is it these are just American patriots and they’re doing what they think is the right thing and it really is regardless of who’s in office or what party they are? If you guys have seen…

Paul: One of the odd things about what we’re dealing with now is when Republicans are in office, Republicans tolerate abuse of this kind. But when Democrats are in office, Democrats tolerate the abuse. But when they’re not, when the other party’s in office, we’re all saying the same thing. It’s just a matter of getting our brains back when our party’s in office. Or keeping our wits about us.

I’m one of these people who absolutely opposes undeclared wars. I’ve been frustrated as heck and talked to everybody I know about the abuses just by the Bush administration, as a Republican. And of course he’s the reason we lost the state to the Democrats. There’s no question about his nonsense regarding that. The nonsense about what turns out to be absolutely falsehood in terms of getting us into it.

But then ultimately you’re there without any declaration of war as required by the Constitution. That to me is one of those great contract breaches that calls for action. And of course, I was a victim, if you want to put it in my sense of it of the Vietnam war. If we were attacked, yes, different story.

CJ: I guess I, this is CJ again. You know, I’ve had this argument quite a few times in my blog about a declaration of war and I guess that’s one area… I completely agree with what you guys are doing with this 10th amendment thing. I completely agree that our country’s out of control and in the hands of people who care more about their party than they do about the American people.

But I tend to argue that the government, that Congress did declare war. I mean, that was what that whole thing was. One of the arguments that people say oh, they never said declare war. But where in the Constitution or anywhere is there a script for how to declare war?

Paul: Well, that’s arguable. I wouldn’t fight that point. But I simply would say to you if we had had the proper… If that was what the action was intended to be that we were going to do a declaration of war, you better believe that the House would have spent a whole lot more time on it. They spent virtually no time analyzing it.

They didn’t’ take responsibility, it was the President who took responsibility. They just rubber stamped it. I don’t consider that the same thing. I don’t know, but maybe it could be on a technicality.

Dan: I have to say, I wouldn’t give them the honor of saying they rubber stamped it because they approved it carte blanche ahead of time. They didn’t do the due diligence of knowing what check they were writing.

CJ: Right.

Paul: That’s fair enough. I understand what you’re saying.

CJ: So what do you think just to kind of close up, and again we appreciate your time. We’re speaking here again everybody with New Hampshire’s representatives Dan Itse and Paul Ingbertson. Who recently submitted a 10th amendment resolution that is working through the state legislature right now, correct?

Dan: Yes.

CJ: Basically declaring your sovereignty if the government takes some egregious act. We put the link to the actual bill in the website or in the chat room there. You can also go to “A Soldier’s Perspective” and read. I’ve got the links to it there as well. But gentlemen, if I could ask real quick as kind of a final question here, what do you think the chances are of this succeeding and actually getting submitted to the Speaker of the House?

Paul: You there, Dan?

Dan: Yeah, I’m here.

CJ: Yep, go ahead.

Dan: I would say from what we observed today it’s got a reasonably good chance. No committee members were aggressively antagonistic. They varied from not saying much of anything at all to expressing support, nodding of heads. So in New Hampshire, every bill gets its hearing and every bill goes to the floor.

CJ: Oh, good.

Dan: What happens is the committees make a recommendation and we vote on their recommendation. So what we’re gunning for is a recommendation of ought to pass. Hopefully not on the consent calendar, actually.

I mean, I’d rather have the opportunity to speak to it because I think it is such an enormous step that it deserves the light of day. Consent calendar, when things go on consent, we approve them in one block voice vote.

Paul: I have a… Did you, Dan, did you actually say what you thought the chances were? You thought they were good?

Dan: I think they’re reasonable. I don’t think they’re… I’m not worrying that it’s not going to pass, let’s put it that way.

CJ: OK.

Paul: I actually feel differently about it. I don’t want to take a lot more of your time if you wanted to leave.

CJ: No, go ahead. How do you feel about it?

Paul: The point I would make is a pretty, you know, I’m considerably more cynical about the nature of the other party. And I say that because for example, what role does the U.S. government have in health for example? You know, the whole health… Everybody’s looking for the health insurance or…

CJ: Right. The handouts.

Paul: Absolutely outside the prerogative of the Federal government. Totally. However, it’s absolutely a number one item on the Democrat’s list. And if that kind of stuff gets into the conversation, my feeling is that we haven’t got a prayer.

Troy: Well, I would say don’t bring it up. I’m not sure they’ll figure it out. [laughter]

Paul: Maybe they won’t. Hopefully you won’t transmit this to any Democrats, right? [laughter]

CJ: Well, you guys, you’ve definitely got my support. One of the reasons I’m in the military is to defend the Constitution. When I see it getting trampled on, I definitely appreciate efforts even if it’s just at the state level. Because there is no Federal government without the states.

So it’s good to see states like yours, Arizona, Missouri, Texas, Washington state, I think I’m missing one. There’s one other somewhere, I think it’s Montana. Go in and explaining to the Federal government hey, we’re tired of being trampled on. So I wish you all good luck with this and I’m definitely going to be following it both on my blog and here on the radio show and I appreciate your time.

Paul: Thank you.

Dan: Thank you very much.

CJ: Again, we were talking with Dan Itse and Paul Ingbertson from New Hampshire. Gentlemen, thank you, and I’ll be in touch with you because we’re going to send you guys some T-shirts.

Dan: [laughs] OK, thank you.

Paul: That sounds good.

CJ: All right, take care of yourself. Thanks again.

Dan: Good bye.

Paul: ‘Bye, ‘bye.

Troy: You know, CJ, people laugh about our shirts, but that’s how we’re going to spread the word.

CJ: You know, that’s how we’re taking over this country, is with the T-shirts.

Troy: With encrypted T-shirts, one T-shirt at a time.

CJ: [laughing] That’s right.

Troy: Thanks to our sponsor and its support: vamortgagecenter.com.

CJ: Yup, vamortgagecenter.com our sponsors, created these great You Served T-shirts, and if you haven’t seen them, go to youserved.com. Check out the logo there, that’s pretty much what the shirt looks like. There’s even a link there, I believe, where you can order a shirt. They are cool shirts and they’re made of high-quality cotton. They’re not that cheap, buy 10 for $2 T-shirts. These are high-quality shirts.

Anyway, I appreciate that. Again, if you want to hear more about these 10th Amendment resolutions that are going through many state legislatures, and I can only imagine that more are going to sign on to this, go to www.soldiersperspective.us, and check out the states that I do have up there with 10th Amendment resolutions out there.

If you don’t see your state on there, call your state representatives. Don’t call your US Representatives or US Senators. Call your state legislature – those representatives; the ones that aren’t in Washington, DC. These are the guys that still live in their own homes and ride a bike to work and things like that. Call your state legislature and explain to them: we’re tired of being trampled on in this state, too; you guys need to do something about it.

Troy: Hey, CJ, I don’t know if you’re seeing the chat room or not, but Clayton, who is going to be coming on, is on there chatting, saying that he will design any shirt that we need. He’s a cartoonist, graphics guy, so… People should be careful what they volunteer to me and you because we will surely take it.

CJ: Absolutely! Now he’s just opened up a can of worms. Any shirt, though, has to have a caricature of my large forehead on it.

Troy: With a high, receding hairline. And with that, we’ll move on to the next guest.

CJ: [laughing] Our next guest is Mr. Michael Rowan. Michael Rowan is the co-author of a new book called, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.” This is something we have railed against. This is a man I can’t personally stand, as a Spanish linguist.

We’ve got on the phone with us now, Michael Rowan. Mr. Rowan, how are you doing today?

Michael: Very good. How are you doing CJ? It’s nice to talk to you.

CJ: Pretty good, I’m doing great. I’ve read through your book and let me tell you, this is actually an eye opener, and I’m a guy that follows people like Chavez quite regularly. I actually learned quite a bit out of this. Tell us a little bit about your book and how you came to write it.

Michael: Well, basically, I went down to Venezuela. I’m a political consultant and I went down there in 1993 and ran a campaign, but met a Venezuelan and got married there and lived there until 2006.

I kind of got chased out of there after running the campaign for Manuel Rosales, who was the governor of Zulia who ran against Chavez. I was involved as a writer, basically, and a columnist in a newspaper and was working as a consultant out of Caracas working in Venezuela in Bolivia, Trinidad, Costa Rica, a little bit in Brazil, and so on.

So I’m familiar with what was going on, I’ll tell you, and lived there and watched it, and had to leave myself, actually, because of threats over the Internet and on the telephone, and being followed and having my phone tapped, and so on, and threatened, which is OK by me, but not for my 14 year old kid. So I got out of there.

CJ: Wow! Yeah, a lot of people, when they think about Hugo Chavez, a lot of things that come to mind are… You know, these liberal Hollywood politicians or actors that like to go down and hang out and rub elbows with him. And he’s kind of a caricature, almost a cartoon, to the American public, like he’s not a big deal. People kind of laugh about him, but your book makes a case that’s quite in opposition to that point of view.

Michael: Well, I think that Chavez is one of the cleverest guys that’s come around the block. He’s a total media phenomenon and really knows how to wrap up American politicians and journalists, and so on.

He went on with Barbara Walters and she doesn’t ask any questions about terrorism, she doesn’t ask any questions about the FARC in Columbia, she knows nothing about Iran, and she takes for granted that he’s solved the poverty and corruption problems in Venezuela. It’s just unbelievable.

And then she introduces him and says, “This man is being denounced as a monster, a crazy man; but he’s charming, he’s wonderful, he’s very sensitive, he’s filled with integrity and passion for the poverty and peace. He sang to me!” So, he’s really good.

Chavez is better than any politician that I have seen in my 35 years of working in political campaigns in 14 countries. I’d put him at the top, over Obama, in terms of being able to communicate to people. This guy is way beyond Reagan or anybody that we’ve experienced in our lives. He can change the subject on anything. He can steal your shirt in like 30 seconds.

CJ: [laughs] Well, the guy’s been in office for 10 years. He says he wants to be in office for decades. He’s overcome a coup, there was a national strike against him, a recall; all of these things he’s been able to overcome. The guy’s a great speaker. You’ve got to give him that, right?

Michael: Well, basically there wasn’t a coup. It was a self-coup. The recall, he brought upon himself. The confrontation he’s had with Venezuelans and the strikes against him have to do with his polarization of the Venezuelan society. People are just fighting for their rights in Venezuela, and they’re losing it all. The democracy is shot.

The country is in a huge arms race down there against Columbia. There’s a nuclear proliferation problem with Iran and Venezuela is producing uranium. We have no idea what is going on with the Iran Air weekly flights to Tehran from Caracas. We know Hezbollah is in Venezuela and has taken over little villages of Venezuela in the north east corner, next to Columbia. And we know Hamas is there. We know the FARC is being funded with military and money and oil and so on, by Chavez.

And we know that he has done nothing about poverty and he destroyed democracy in his own country, yet we’re kind of like looking the other way, because the way he comes here… Bush just backed off, as far as I’m concerned. I’m a democrat. I’ve worked with democrats in this country and…

CJ: Oh! And I talked about liberal Hollywood. [laughs]

Michael: Yeah. You know, Doug Schoen and I are both democrats. We come at this recognizing that liberals in this country believe that the only fascists you can get in the world come from the right, and they’ve forgotten the Soviet Union. They haven’t looked at China. There’s no ideological distinction for fascism. The people who want power, and absolute power, come from the left and the right, and they exercise repression over the freedoms of people from the left and from the right, and the rich and the poor alike.

So this is something that we just have to come to learn in this country: that we’re only four percent of the world’s people, but we’re 25% of the world’s economy, and we’re 28% of the energy users. We put this big footprint on the Earth, and the rest of the Earth is kind of looking at us.

A lot of them are very, very jealous about what we’re doing, and we’ve got to learn how to share the tools of wealth creation – not the wealth distribution, but the wealth tools – the education, the technology, the finance. Making globalization work for poor people, you know? And we’ve really got to get that together regardless of whether it’s Obama or Bush or whatever.

We don’t have that together, we didn’t have that together with Bush or with Clinton quite frankly. This country hasn’t really gotten it right about how to relate to Latin America. The big threat as we point out in our book is, the long term threat is 200 million people are living on $2 per day or less in Latin America. That’s 200 million out of 550 total people.

CJ: Right. Yeah, but one of the things you write about is Chavez himself comes from a very poor part of Venezuela. Rose to power on the promises that he was going to end this kind of poverty, and yet you still find over 50% of the country living with like you said, $2 a day.

Michael: Yeah, and this is after one trillion dollars has gone through his hands in 10 years, you know? Look, the guy is a soldier. He’s not educated, but he’s a street smart guy. He doesn’t know how to manage anything, OK? The oil company is just absolutely shot. He took one of the best oil companies if not the best oil companies in the world, certainly the biggest, PDVSA, you know?

CJ: Right.

Michael: And he’s just completely destroyed it. It should be producing five and a half million barrels a day today, and it’s producing just a little over two million barrels a day. He fired all the knowledge workers there because they weren’t loyal to him. That’s what the strike was about and that’s what the so called coup was about too.

He’s been shooting the goose that lays the golden egg in Venezuela. Venezuelans know a lot about oil. It’s an oil state. They depend, in my view too much, on oil and they should get off that track and diversify their economy, make some sense out of the globalization.

CJ: Now did you find it surprising when Hugo Chavez tried to invite some of these oil companies he kicked out back into his country?

Michael: It’s really amazing, because I’ve worked with the oil companies since I lived in Alaska 30 years ago. I’ve worked with them in Africa, Latin America and Asia and all over the world.

The oil companies are really amazing. Not just ours but the Shells and BPs and all of them. They’ll go anywhere to get oil. They’ll got to Angola, they’ll go to the middle of China, they’ll go to Zimbabwe. They don’t care what the risk is. Those guys are, well they’re Texans, you know?

CJ: Right. [laughter]

Michael: They’re like the guys that fly the plane, you know, into the river here, in the Hudson river. So well, it’s just amazing that some of them are going to go back in. They get invited in by, I work with the PDVSA guys that opened up the oil industry in 1996. So the oil companies paid like $3 billion of bonuses to initially come into that thing. That was a huge, that was a very profitable thing for Venezuela, for the oil companies, for everybody.

But Chavez wanted to shut that down, take total control over all of that. So he basically confiscated or expropriated all of those oil companies and forced them into totally ridiculous national deals. Where he was running their companies and he doesn’t know how to run anything.

So they got out. Now he’s running out of money and he wants them to come back in. And I don’t know. It’s just unbelievable. There’s just no investment whatsoever in Venezuela other than what the government is putting into the economy. Whether he gets in the investment is…

It would be kind of like investing with Mao Tse-tung or with Fidel. Handing Fidel your McDonald’s franchises and saying help me make some money with this, Fidel. I don’t know.

CJ: Now in your book you talk about the fact that Hugo Chavez has basically declared an asymmetric war on the United States. Can you explain that?

Michael: Yes. In conventional terms Chavez presents no more of a threat than Saddam Hussein. You know, if we lined up the technology and so on you could take him over with a very, very small force. Way less than we used in Iraq in either 1990 or 2003.

But in an unconventional threat he’s way more harmful than Bin Laden. Bin Laden was out to knock over the symbols of trade, but Chavez is out to knock over trade itself.

CJ: Right.

Michael: Bin Laden was going after some buildings. Chavez is going against our whole system. Chavez’s asymmetric weapons first of all are oil and then terror. He uses these, he’s a cutout artist. So he’s always one step away from like what bad thing happens, so you can’t just pin it on him. And he’s always got kind of an excuse that he was forced to do that. Or no, he’s doing it because you’re doing it to him and so he’s retaliating in advance. That kind of thing.

CJ: Right.

Michael: But he’s part of the push from, the oil was at $10 when he took over and it went up to $147. He’s a big reason why. As you know in our book we lay out how he did that. It’s not a small accomplishment.

He just didn’t take supply out from Venezuela, a couple million barrels a day, but he did that in OPEC. He took over OPEC. And he also got Ahmadinejad, his partner from Iran, just scaring the hell out of the market about the Gulf of Hormuz or invasion of Colombia, or invasion of Bolivia, or nuclear war with Israel, et cetera et cetera.

And you know, if you Google Ahmadinejad plus Chavez plus war plus oil, you come up with a quarter of a million stories in like the last year. The guy’s all over the place in terms of affecting markets.

The markets were looking for what’s driving up the oil price. We can’t figure it out from supply and demand. Must be speculators. Then the commodities trading corporation did a study and no it wasn’t speculators. It was Chavez and Ahmadinejad chasing that price up.

That contributed to the recession. That’s the idea. He wants to bring down the evil empire, destroy capitalism, and create a new economic order in which there are three profiteers here.

One, Chavez gets hegemony over the Americas. Two, Iran gets hegemony over the Middle East. And three, Russia gets the hegemony back from all the satellite states and maybe Asia. All right? That’s the little game they’re playing. But look, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, those are three technically failed states.

CJ: Yeah, and one of the things that Chavez has said, one of his quotes, he says, “I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell.” And he’s definitely done as much as he possibly can to completely destroy capitalism along with the American so called empire.

Michael: Yeah. You know, but these words really get us into a lot of problems. Capitalism, socialism, none of them mean anything, you know? The fact of the matter is that with commerce since 1800, the GDP per capita of the world has increased like 12 times. And it was flat for about a thousand years according to World Bank studies.

So what we have had, what we’ve experienced in the last seven or eight generations of human beings on Earth is we’ve gone from one billion people to 6.8 billion people and we’re making it. You know? I mean, that’s a huge footprint, a huge problem and creates global warming and all kinds of globalization and so on.

But if you look at what we’ve done since World War two in terms of the IMF, the U.N., the World Trade Organization and so on, we’re stumbling towards maintaining 200 sovereign nations which are free. At the same time as we’re starting to consider the Earth. So this is a balancing act, between freedom of the … Well, it’s the way we think in the States of the 50 states and the Federal Government.

We don’t have a planetary government, but we have a planetary system, we have a planetary economic system, we have a planetary climate, we have a planetary transportation system, we have a planetary communication system, and we have like a talking thing going on in relationship to policy and planning, and this is very, very crude and very, very difficult to deal with.

Chavez wants to take all of that and throw it out and start over with his ideas. His ideas come from a very, very bad reading of Karl Marx when he was in prison in 1993, and he hadn’t read any of it before. And he’s been tutored by this guy, Ceresole, who’s an Argentine fascist, and basically all he’s learned is: get power, keep power, and somehow it will all be OK, and all I have to do is announce my intentions and go on television for eight hours at a time, and everything will be fine. That’s the way he governs.

CJ: It’s definitely an eye opening book, and I recommend it to anybody that actually cares about our national security and cares about the state of politics in the world, and where we fit into it with Hugo Chavez. This is not a caricature, this is not a cartoon, it’s a real threat.

We are speaking with Michael Rowan. The book is called, “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.” We’ll put up a link to the book. There’s also a link to it on the main page of our website. You can check it out.

Michael, I appreciate it. Very insightful. I learned a lot from reading this, and I thought I was an expert in all things Hugo Chavez. And as a soldier, it kind of scares me, because the last thing you think of is a threat coming from your own, basically, sub-continent area or hemisphere.

Michael: Absolutely. Very good. Thank you, very much, CJ. I’m glad you enjoyed it and maybe we can talk again.

CJ: Absolutely! Thank you, very much, Michael. Take care and we’ll talk to you again, and I’ll get with your publicist about sending you one of our T-shirts.

Michael: Great! I’d love it.

CJ: [laughs] All right. Take care of yourself, Mike. I appreciate it.

Michael: OK. ‘Bye, ‘bye.

CJ: All right, everybody, that was Michael Rowan, again, the author of “The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.” And the great thing is, Troy, the book wasn’t written just to scare people, but really just to kind of open our eyes that just because Cindy Sheehan goes down there, and what’s his nuts…

Troy: [laughs] Ahmadinejad and…

CJ: No, no. The actor. The psycho guy that also went and talked to Ahmadinejad.

Troy: Yeah.

CJ: Anyway, he was married to Madonna. That’s all I know about him.

Troy: [laughs] Yeah. Didn’t Alec Baldwin go down there, too, and Sean Penn and…

CJ: Sean Penn! That’s who I’m thinking of, Sean Penn. Yeah.

But anyway, it’s really a great book and I highly recommend you pick it up. I did get them to send a signed copy, so pay attention because we’re going to be giving one of those away once we get things established, and all that.

Troy: Nice. Nice. Of course, I haven’t read it, CJ. Is it more of just a history lesson or is it an in-depth analysis of Chavez?

CJ: It’s basically an in-depth analysis of everything that he’s done, everything he’s said, where he’s coming from, and what he… Michael Rowan lived in Venezuela for the longest time. He began to get targeted by Hugo Chavez because he supported the guy that was running against him and worked on that campaign. And his family began getting threatened so he had to move out of the country.

Troy: OK. You know, it’s crazy, I don’t know if it’s the blog or the show or what, but I’ve got like four or five books on that to read, that publishers are sending me asking me to read and if I would review for them. Where is the time in the day? I need audio tapes or something. I need a podcast of these things. [laughs]

CJ: That’s not a bad deal. I kind of tend to skim through them. I used to read them, literally cover to cover, word by word, and what I do now is just kind of skim through them.

I’ve got a book that I’ve reviewed that I really don’t want to review, because I hate writing bad reviews. And I don’t even know why it was sent to me, because usually I only get national security or military related books, but this one was a graphic novel of black history. I reluctantly took it, thinking, well, it’s black history month, I can write something about that. But the book is just so glaringly anti-white, and you know how I feel about the whole…

Troy: Well, there’s no way. There’s no way. We heard it from the gentleman a couple weeks ago: there’s no such thing as reverse racism. Right?

CJ: Yeah.

Troy: We won’t go into that one again.

CJ: That’s right. That’s right. You’ll have to listen to that last show.

Troy: Are you going to bring Trish on? We have her here.

CJ: Let’s go ahead and bring Trish on.

Troy: She’s waiting so patiently.

CJ: Well, let me ask you this, first. I’ll tell you what, if you will take this interview, I need to upload the next American Storyteller. I forgot.

Troy: Yeah, I know. I just hit you on that.

[laughter]

Troy: Yeah, I’ll be glad to. I’ll chat with Trish a little bit. You talked with Michael.

CJ: I’ll be here.

Troy: OK. I know you will be. All right.

Hey, Trish, how are you doing?

Trish: I’m doing great. How are you?

CJ: Hi, Trish!

Trish: Hi.

CJ: You’re going to be the unfortunate soul. I know I set everything up with you, but I was deficient in uploading our segment, so I’ve got to do that real quick, but hopefully I’ll still be able to talk to you.

Trish: That’s OK. I’m not scared.

[laughter]

Troy: I kind of have a connection with Trish myself. She emailed me, I think a week or so ago. And I’m not blowing you off, Trish. I’ve just been buried at work and I have so many things in my queue to write a blog about, I just haven’t gotten to them, and yours is one of them. But it’s good that we’ve got you on tonight. We can chat about what you’re doing.

Trish: Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally understand. There are just not enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do.

Troy: You know, if I could get paid to do all the blogging stuff, and actually make a living off of it, it would be awesome. I would be one blogging Muldoon, but I just…

Trish: [laughs] Let me tell you, when you find that gig, you let me know.

Troy: I sure will. I think that’s when you go from blogger to professional mainstream journalist, when you start getting paid where you can make a living.

Trish: Is that why they’re called professional journalists? OK.

Troy: Yeah, we’re amateurs.

CJ: I didn’t think there was such a thing as an American journalist anymore.

Troy: So, Trish, let’s talk about what you’ve got going on and what you’re doing to support our troops. Why don’t you describe what you have happening?

Trish: Absolutely. Well, first of all, just to give people an idea of who I am and what I do, my name is Trish, and I basically am the founder of eMailOurMilitary.com. What we do is support the troops, safely, through email and written correspondence. Of course, we also do care packages and some other fun things, and now with the popularity of social media, we’ve been using social media to get people involved in supporting our troops.

Troy: OK. So eMailOurMilitary: is it just to set up the addresses and connection for them to do it, or do you have a site that people post the messages to and you send it forward to the troops, or do you put them in direct contact with each other?

Trish: We actually work directly with the command, directly with public affairs officers, and the service members, themselves, come to our site. They register, and then we also have civilians who come to our site and register. What we do is match the civilians up with service members so that they can correspond and send them all support.

Troy: OK. All right.

CJ: Awesome.

Trish: So, in essence, I know there are a lot of websites out there that do just public posting of messages, but what we’re actually doing is encouraging folks to make that connection – kind of walk a mile in their boots, so to speak – because I think when people get to know someone who is serving, they have a completely different perspective of what it takes to be in the military.

And there is a lot of judgment sometimes, from people who maybe don’t know anyone who is in the military, so we hope that in addition to supporting the troops, we’re kind of educating people about the lifestyle – what the military community is about.

CJ: Well I can tell you, from my experience – and this is CJ – if you’re going to come into the military the first thing you need to do right away, because these things take time, is schedule your lobotomy, right up front.

[laughter]

CJ: You just don’t understand how long those appointments are.

Trish: Yeah, I hear you.

CJ: Sorry, Troy, I had to throw that in.

Troy: That’s OK. I know, that’s why I got out of active duty at 10 years. Because I just couldn’t wait in that line anymore. I figured I’d go be a civilian where I wouldn’t need one maybe as much. But so Trish, so you kind of started. This is kind of like a modern age pen pal program, right?

Trish: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We kind of stepped in where any service member mail left off. After 9/11 when the department of defense canceled the ability for civilians just to send a letter and address it to any service member, we kind of said, “You know, this is what we need to do. We need to keep the support going in a safe way.”

With the security concerns after 9/11 this seemed like the best option to allow civilians to continue to provide moral support to folks that really, really needed it and wanted it.

Troy: Yeah, that’s what it sounds… And I don’t know why they did that law. Who knows? In the first gulf war when I was there we lived off, back then there were no emails, it was letters. But any soldier mail was a huge hit out in the desert.

When they stopped it this time, I know this had major effects at Walter Reed and down range. So your site kind of, not circumvents that, but that’s what the implemented so you came up with a way to get around that. What gave you this idea to start this?

Trish: Well, I knew from my background, my father… Of course, when my father served there wasn’t anything such as email, but I had a fiance that was in the military. So I knew that pretty much everybody in the military had email and was using email.

So after 9/11 I wanted to do something to help. But I didn’t really know what I could do. I couldn’t exactly run to New York and start digging out rubble. I had a full time job. So I had to do something that I felt was helpful and was going to be beneficial, but I still had to work full time. So I wanted to do something that was going to help make a difference.

So when I heard that the DOD had canceled the any service member mail program, I thought this is exactly what I can do. I have an IT background, that’s where I come from. So I thought this is perfect.

Especially for folks today that are so busy that they don’t really have the money to spend to do something. They can’t fly somewhere to do something. Maybe they don’t have countless hours in the day to volunteer. This is perfect, this is such an easy project. And you can do it from your home in the comfort of your computer chair.

CJ: Yeah, that was such a travesty when they got rid of any soldier mail. I still don’t like that decision.

Trish: No. I don’t know if it’s going to come back. I mean, I think it would be a great thing. I think it’s a travesty that they went ahead and canceled that. I’m not sure what that was all about. I don’t really know or understand if it was directly related to… I mean, they say that it was directly related to the anthrax issues of 9/11. But I don’t know, I really don’t know.

Troy: Yeah, I mean, I guess that was a risk and I can understand that. Trish, real quick we have a caller coming in that wants to say something and I am going to, I think un-mute her. Go ahead there 905 area code.

CJ: It’s Sandy.

Troy: Yes it is. I didn’t want to say her name. I didn’t know if she wanted to be incognito or not.

Sandy: No, no, no. That’s fine with me. I just wanted to say that I am just amazed. Absolutely amazed. As soon as I found eMom, I just thought what a fantastic service that she is offering.

To me, America’s greatest asset and treasure is her people. When I came across eMail Our Military, I saw that she stepped up to the plate when the troops really, really needed the support. And I think that what she does is absolutely amazing and fantastic and thank you. Thank you for being there.

Trish: Wow, thank you. What we do in comparison to what the troops do is so minute. I mean, it’s the least we can do. And it was something that we could do that anyone could participate in, so why not, right?

Sandy: Oh, yeah. I agree 100%. But I feel what the troops do is just astounding, absolutely astounding. But what I really like to see is people supporting the troops. I don’t care if you’re for the war, I don’t care if you’re against the war. Support the troops, because they’re the ones paying the price out there. Any form of support that can get to them, I’m behind it 100%. So I am just thrilled.

Trish: Absolutely. You’ve made an excellent point. So many people look at this from a political point of view. We hear that a lot. Like well I don’t really approve of the war or I don’t really approve of the president or I’m a Democrat or I’m a Republican. What we say is look, we don’t care about your politics.

Do you support the troops? That’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the left. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle. The bottom line is this has nothing to do with politics. This is about supporting the people who allow us to live here and enjoy the freedoms that we enjoy. Bottom line, that’s it.

Sandy: Yeah. Very true, very true. Well thank God you’re out there. That’s all I can say.

CJ: And I just want everyone to know that troops like me especially like Tootsie Rolls. So…

Troy: Do you really, CJ?

CJ: Don’t tell me you don’t like Tootsie Rolls, Troy. I’ll have to find a new co-host.

Troy: I throw those things away. I give them to every little child. I can’t stand them. They are the cheapest, nastiest candy out there.

CJ: Oh, I’m so upset. I’m so depressed.

Troy: Oh my Lord, man. I got tired. That was like the first candy they ever put in MREs. For a long time that’s all there was.

CJ: Oh, chewy, chocolaty yumminess.

Troy: All right. Sandy, thank you very much for calling and saying that. It’s good to hear other reads on this. And I don’t know if you like Tootsie Rolls either up north. If you do, I’ll send you what I’ve got. [laughter]

Sandy: I don’t but my husband’s crazy about them.

CJ: I like your husband.

Sandy: Thank you very much. Goodnight.

Troy: Thank you. All right. So Trish, let me ask you, have you had any people get into your system, register, and then find out that they just did it just to send hate mail. Send hate messages and fool you and you’ve had to cut them off? Anything like that happen yet?

Trish: No, no. Thank God. We’ve been doing this for eight years and we haven’t had any problems, knock on wood. What I have found which is extremely interesting, although I’m not sure why I’m surprised when I hear this, is that I hear a lot of people making love connections. We have a lot of single service members and a lot of single civilians and there have been a couple of marriages, actually. So it’s been interesting.

Troy: Wow. You know, you’ve kind of become the Match.com of the forward deployed maybe?

Trish: I don’t know if I want all that, but… [laughter]

Troy: Well, you know, I can tell you in the first gulf war all we had were letters. We would get those packets, the platoon sergeant would come out with a rubber banded stack of any soldier mail.

And I’m not ashamed, I’ll be the first to admit it, we get that we just looked at how the handwriting on the outside of envelope. If it looked like it was female writing, if it looked like it was nice, it was like OK, I’ll look at this one. If it looked like some dude wrote it we’re like yeah, we’ll look at that one later when I’ve got nothing else to read. It’s just the way it was.

Trish: I hear you, I hear you. What’s interesting though is that there are so, but it’s not just single people. I mean, there’s a lot of, of course we have more women supporting the troops than men. I’m not sure why that is but it is what it is.

But we have a lot of men too, and the men are always the cutest because they always say can you find me a cute, single female service member. And you know we always do our best to match people up in the same age group or with the same interests, or maybe from the same hometown or something like that.

But for the most part people are happy to support whoever they get. And a lot of times they make friends for life. It’s not something where they only keep in touch during a deployment, it’s friends for life.

CJ: Now do you Trish, this is CJ here again, I’m the distractor today. Do you find that when you do these, do you guys try and maybe hook up married soldiers with married supporters? And single soldiers with single supporters? Or does it not get that in detail?

Trish: We try, if people request it. It’s not a strict rule. We do have our own code of ethics. Which is when people are members, they have to agree to our code of ethics. And we do have some strict guidelines that kind of lay it out on what we expect, and we expect people to behave appropriately and we explain exactly what it is that we want people to do and not do.

We explain that it’s not a dating service, for one, and that people have to take responsibility for what they send, and in essence, they also have to understand that they are not allowed to send anything that is sexually explicit or things of that nature, because, really, the service member does not own that military email address. So we have guidelines, and for the most part people stick to them.

We haven’t heard of anyone veering off-course there. [laughs] We haven’t had any problems, and there are times that people will say, “I’m single and I prefer to be with someone single so we have something that we can talk about, ” or “I’m married and I don’t want to deal with someone that’s single. I’d rather have someone that’s married, ” because of whatever reason, and we do our best to always match.

CJ: OK. Well, I do think you should encourage… I think one of the favorite things that I got over there was a song. Oh, wait! That came from my wife, though. Never mind.

Trish: [laughing] Oh, yeah, that might…

Troy: CMI, three letters, CMI, CJ.

CJ: All right. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Trish: I would like, if I could, to tell folks a little bit about something that’s become really popular lately that we’ve been doing. We’ve been working with a lot of music artists. We’ve been working with comedians and with book authors to get their talent to the troops. So, that’s something new that has come about that’s really become popular. Obviously, if you’re serving and you’re deployed, it’s great to get music, great to get comedy DVDs, or a new book to read, so it’s neat to get these autographed and sent out.

CJ: Now, tell us – I was busy doing something a little while ago, so you may have already mentioned this – but, eMOM is working with ProFlowers on something. Correct?

Trish: Correct.

CJ: Tell us about that.

Trish: This is something that we do from time to time. We have organizations approach us, and ProFlowers is a perfect example of that. We’ll have a company come to us and say: look, here’s what we’ve got going on, or, we’ve got a special product or a special service that we’d like to get to our military service members as a way to say thank you.

So, for Valentine’s Day, ProFlowers approached us and said they would like to give away five $70 gift certificates to the military community. So, we’re holding a contest right now, on our website, on our blog, for people who have a connection to the military. We’ve set it up so they have different ways that they can enter this contest to win flowers for themselves or for someone that they love, for Valentine’s Day.

CJ: And, YouServed has taken up that call as well. You can go to YouServed.com, and we are taking stories. You can email me cj@soldiersperspective.us, and we are taking stories. If you’ve got a soldier or a soldier’s spouse that you would like to send flowers to, just send us a comment or an email telling us why you think that soldier deserves flowers.

And here’s the thing: ProFlowers.com isn’t just flowers. It’s candy, flowers, bears, and all kinds of great things that you can send, and we are giving them away thanks to eMailOurMilitary and ProFlowers.com. Five $70 gift certificates to purchase whatever you want, just in time for Valentine’s Day, and we’re going to give those away and announce those Sunday night.

Trish: I know, it’s great, because between YouServed and eMailOurMilitary, that’s 10 opportunities that they have. There are 10 spots, I should say, to get free flowers. Man, who doesn’t want $70 worth of free goodies for Valentine’s Day?

CJ: Yeah! And I went on the website the other day and started looking around trying to see what a person can buy for $70, and there’s a lot of good… Unfortunately, Emily caught me and thought I was buying her something, so I have to break it to her. Sorry!

Trish: [laughing] Yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff.

CJ: You can buy a lot of good stuff there.

Trish: Yeah, I saw candles, and…

Troy: It sounds like you may need to go ahead and shop there. You may need to spend a little more than $70 to make up for it, too.

CJ: Yeah, I already asked her. I said I need $250 to make up for all the crap I give her, but she won’t give it to me. I just work for the money, I don’t get to spend it.

Trish: That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

CJ: [laughing] Yeah! Oh, all right. Well, Trish, are there any other projects that you’ve got coming up, before we let you go?

Trish: We’re working on a big one now to encourage people to register with us to support a service member for Valentine’s Day. It’s called Valentines from the Heart, and it’s on our website, eMailOurMilitary.com, and of course, there’s a link on the website to our blog. And people can register, it’s free, to sign up in time for Valentine’s Day to shoot off an email to a service member or send a card. So, that’s what we’ve got going on right now, and nothing too big planned over the next couple of months.

But you know, it’s always a surprise. We never know what’s going on, because someone always approaches us to say, hey, this is what we want to do; want to team up with us? So, you’ve just got to tune in and keep checking the blog.

CJ: Excellent: Well, Trish, thank you. We’ve been talking with Trish Forant. She’s the president and founder of eMailOurMilitary, and as she said, you can go to www.emailourmilitary.com. It’s also in the chat room here. We put a link up for you. Don’t forget to check out her stuff. Sign up for the Valentines from the Heart.

Trish, thank you, very much, for coming on, and you’re always welcome if you have something else coming, just send us an email and let me know and we’ll always bring you back on.

Trish: Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

CJ: You’re welcome. And thanks for all that you do for our troops.

Trish: Thank you! Have a good one.

Troy: Thank you, Trish.

CJ: All right, we’re going to take a quick break here. We’re a little late on our American Storyteller, and once we get back we’ve got a great guy that we’ve been putting on hold here, Clayton Merwin is coming, and he is the overall creator – the brain behind this project, to tell the soldier’s in Iraq and Afghanistan stories through a graphic novel. We’re going to do that right on the other side of The American Storyteller.

Announcer: YouServed is proud to feature The American Storyteller. This break in our show is made possible by the contributions of the employees of vamortgagecenter.com.

And now, The American Storyteller.

[music]

Lisa Quintilly: Hi, this is Lisa Quintilly, and I’m a waitress at Papa Phil’s Italian Restaurant in Juinata county, and you’re listening to The American Storyteller.

Clayton: There was no doubt about it, he was the funniest man in McAlisterville. As a matter of fact, it was pretty much agreed on that he was the funniest man in all of Juniata county, never at anyone else’s expense and not the kind of humor that you can practice, either. The funniest man in McAlisterville was just naturally funny. Perfect timing. His eyes twinkled. His voice was deep, and that big, rich laugh made everybody else laugh.

You know, to be that funny you have to be smart, you have to be quick, and the funniest man in McAlisterville was certainly that. He was quietly alert. His senses were keen.

The greats like Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope could have never held a candle to the funniest man in our little village.

The funniest man in McAlisterville was married to the nicest lady in McAlisterville. When I was a boy, she once just up and gave me a big old hug, right there in Paul Seller’s store in front of all of my friends. I acted like I was a little embarrassed, but I secretly kind of like being hugged by the nicest lady in McAlisterville.

The funniest man and the nicest lady lived right up the road from us. And you know, at Halloween we would sneak around and soap everybody’s windows as a prank. The nicest lady in McAlisterville saw us coming one night and actually invited us to soap her windows. We never soaped her windows again because, well, we were allowed to and it just somehow took the adventure out of it. I guess you could say she was the smartest lady in McAlisterville, too.

The funniest man and the nicest lady never had any children of their own, but all of us kids in that little village were sort of like their kids. We all liked our parents, don’t get me wrong, but it was kind of cool to wonder what it would be like to have the funniest man and the nicest lady as a mom and dad.

Folks now know that the funniest man in McAlisterville had a secret. He never told any of us. He and my dad were pals for fifty years, and he never even told him. I wonder if that secret kept the funniest man in McAlisterville awake some nights. Maybe he just chose to forget it, or maybe he was just too busy being the funniest man in McAlisterville to think about it. You know what? Maybe he didn’t even think of it as a secret.

We never knew anything about it until a couple of years ago when we read it in his obituary in the Juniata Sentinel. Living amongst us all those years, no one seemed to know. The funniest man in McAlisterville was the genuine article. A bona fide, certified, American hero, the newspaper said the recipient of five bronze stars for bravery.

We found out that, back when he was just a young man, before his face was so weathered, tanned, and covered with the crinkly lines of years and years of laughter, he was there. Normandy, Rhineland, The Ardennes Forest: the worst of the scariest places during the Second World War. Normandy was later depicted in the unforgettable opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

I asked a friend, a retired army colonel, just what would have a young man had to do to get five, not one or two mind you, which would have been a feat in itself, but five bronze stars for bravery? That old colonel raised an eyebrow as he looked at me and said, “That young man would’ve had to have loved the people back home very much.”

The funniest man in McAlisterville was the bravest man in McAlisterville.

[music]

CJ: [laughs] OK. That wasn’t funny, but just the fact that I put Super Mom to sleep.

Troy: That was bad timing with the laughter there.

CJ: Yeah, it was. [laughs] That was a great story, though. I know a lot of people probably were wondering, “What’s this got to do with the military?” A lot of these things from the American storytellers that we’ve got typically all have a military theme to them.

I love how he tells these stories and at the end wraps it up with this guy who no one knew anything about. It goes to our heroes. The true heroes are the guys that don’t go out there and let everyone know, “Hey look at me. I’ve got five bronze stars. I’ve got a silver star, and I’ve got this.” So you just never know.

Make sure that when you’re talking to the people out there on the streets, these older gentlemen or the younger gentlemen doing You Served podcasts, you never know who it is you’re talking to. You just may end up being the funniest man on PTR. Who knows?

[laughter]

CJ: Our next guest is creating what is called The Untold Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a graphic novel. The graphic novel is basically going to be a long story about our soldiers and the heroism that they’ve done in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the great things about this, it’s not so great actually because I don’t know what kind of storyteller I am, but Troy and I are going to be submitting stories to this that may or may not get nixed. But either way, we’re still supporting the project. [laughs] We’ve got Clayton Murwin on. Clayton, how are you doing? Welcome to You Served podcast.

Clayton: I’m fine, sir. How are you?

CJ: Pretty good. It’s great to have you on. I’m going to turn you over to Troy.

Clayton: All right.

Troy: I’m going to start with you, Clayton. Clayton said he was nervous about being on. I told him he’s just got to think about it like CJ and me and him just talking on the phone. Nobody else is even listening.

CJ: I say try to picture us naked, but that would probably make you more nervous.

Clayton: Just a bit. [laughs]

Troy: Especially on a Thursday night. If anyone’s ever been to Afghanistan, they would know what I’m talking about on Thursday nights. That’s a whole ‘nother story for a whole ‘nother episode.

CJ: Is that Gay Pride Night in Afghanistan?

Troy: Pretty much. They call it the Virgin Night/Man Love Night. That’s what it’s referred to all across Afghanistan. Anyways, again that’s for another one. Maybe we’d crank that up on another Don’t ask, Don’t tell show or something.

Clayton, welcome to the show. We’ve been excited about having you on. You and I talked a couple of weeks ago, and I think you got in contact with CJ, too. Let’s talk about this book you’re helping create. Can you give us some background on what led you to start this project and how it has progressed so far?

Clayton: All right. Well, first of all let me start off by saying, thank you. God bless you for serving this country. You guys are true heroes. I call myself The Hero Maker because I create comics and superheroes, but you guys are true heroes. We need more people like you all in this country to understand that you guys are heroes.

You’re the kind of guys that we need to have our kids look up to. I support you, and every American should support you, period. You guys are heroes. Thank you for having me on.

Back in June, a couple friends of mine and I were talking online. I was trying to come up with something to really put something out there to let people know because I’ve been hearing all this stuff about the war. Everybody’s been down on the Afghanistan and Iraq War, especially the Iraq war.

I am just inundated with this every day because I’m a hugely political individual anyway. I listen to a lot of talk radio. I am forever hearing this, this, and this: “You guys are terrible. You kill. You sneak in the middle of the night and raid villages, ” and all this stuff, which is bull.

You guys have a job to do. People don’t understand that. You’re given a job just like I have a job, and everybody else has a job. I just got sick of hearing about all the bad stuff. So I came up with this idea about doing a graphic novel. A graphic novel basically is an oversized comic book. It’s illustrated. It’s just like a comic except…

CJ: Like Maus.

Clayton: Yeah. A comic book is basically 24 pages maximum, unless you do an oversized issue. Then it can go up to about 30 pages. A graphic novel is anywhere from 60 to 150 to 200 pages. I came up with this idea that I was going to take and do something to help support the soldiers who have been injured and fallen from the Iraq and Afghanistan War.

A friend of mine in Canada, actually whose name is Roger Focall [sp], has been real supportive with me over this. I wanted to give something back to the men and women who’ve given so much. Some of them have given their lives. They’ve lost families. They’ve lost homes. They’ve lost so much. We can’t even begin to repay you guys back for what you’ve done to protect us here at home.

I came up with this idea to basically take untold stories, the kind of stories you don’t ever hear about on NBC, CBS, or ABC, to be able to tell from a soldier’s perspective the good, the bad, the ugly, or whatever. Different stories. It could be a funny story, a heroic story, a tragic story, a story of loss, healing, or whatever type of story a soldier would want to share.

I know it’s been hard getting them because a lot of military men and women don’t want to share stories. I can understand that because war is tragic, but then again there are a lot of people that it’s therapeutic for them to do that. They don’t mind talking to you. It’s been hard getting the stories.

Then I got this bright idea: “Let me start checking out the mail blogs and see if I can get some people that already do talk about their time in Iraq or Afghanistan and see what I can do. That’s how I came across you guys. That’s basically how this came about.

I wanted to give something back to the men and women who have protected me and my family and every American in this country. That’s what I’ve been trying to do as far as giving something back to them.

All the money that I make from the sale of this graphic novel will be going to three charities: the IAVA, which is the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the USO, and the Wounded Warriors Project. I’m going to split whatever money I make from the sale of this graphic novel to go to those three charities.

I’ve got mainstream artists, independent artists, writers, and colorists. I’ve got people in the comic book industry, such as David Mack, who does Kabuki, and Bill Tucci who’s actually working on Sergeant Rocket right now with DC. He’s going to be doing a pinup for the book. I’ve got a Golden Age comic book artist from the Golden Age Era, the 1940’s and stuff. His name is Fran Matera. He’s going to be doing a pinup.

I’ve got Michael Netzer. He was a huge, popular artist in I believe it was the late seventies all the way through the late eighties. He’s living in Israel right now, but he’s agreed to do a pinup for the book. I’ve got a lot of mainstream talent that have said they would work on it.

Writers. I’ve got an animation guy. His name’s Elliot Blake. He’s a writer for the animated series Tomb Raider: Lara Croft, Legend of Tomb Raider or whatever. I think that’s it, but his name’s Elliot Blake. Hugely, he’s actually working on a story right now about camel spiders. [laughs]

Troy: Wow!

Clayton: The camel spiders are those huge spiders over in Iraq. I found out about these things from some people that were telling me that they used to put these things in the recruits. The recruits would be going to get in their bed and the next thing you know, boom! They see this gigantic spider. It scared the heck out of them. They just didn’t know what to do with it. I’ve got him working on a funny story from that.

So that’s basically it. I’m trying to do this to help the soldiers and all the proceeds. Nobody’s making any money on it. I’m not making any money on it. Everyone that’s agreed to work on the book knows it’s for what I’m trying to do, that no one’s getting paid. I’ve even tried to find a printer who would be willing to print the book for virtually nothing.

That has proved to be a little bit more difficult, but I have actually found someone: Dimestore Productions. The guy that owns that is named Ean. He said he would print the books for me at cost. Basically, he would not make any money, but whatever it costs to print the books is what I’ll pay.

So we’re looking at it. From that point of view, it looks like it’s going to be pretty good. The book is tentatively set that I’m hoping to have everything published by November 20th. November 20th will be the publication date. All the artwork, stories, and everything have to be in to me no later than October 10th. That’s basically where I’m at as far as that.

The stories have started coming in. I’ve got pinups that actually started coming in from some of the artists. The site’s a long one, but if you bear with me it’s www.freewebs.com/herosfallen/. That’s the website actually where it has all the people that are involved with the creation of the graphic novel and have agreed to work on it.

CJ: I think we got delayed up in the chat room.

Troy: Yeah, we sure did. Clayton, you’re an awesome guest. You’re my favorite kind of guest on here. We ask one question and [laughs] you’ve got so much stuff to put out that we don’t need to fight to get information out. This is good. You have a lot of stuff going on. It’s real quiet in the chat rooms. I think a lot of people are just listening to you.

Earlier we had Trish on. We have a lot of people that try to do stuff to support troops, benefit troops, or whatever. I’ve been involved with quite a few different projects: the Sandbox book and a lot of different stuff. This is really unique. I’ve got to say, you’ve come up with a very unique idea from anything that I’ve ever seen before. What do you think, CJ?

CJ: Absolutely. Also, I’ve been involved with a few things: Matt’s Blog of War, then the Photo Album, and things like that. But to be able to tell these stories in a manner that all ages will get a kick out of because one, it’s nonfiction. It’s true stuff. And it’s in a format that’s not going to be difficult to stick to. A lot of the senses are looking at things and pictures.

So being able to tell these stories through art is definitely going to be a big plus, especially to the troops who have lived this stuff. Hopefully, the artists do a really good job about conveying not only what’s going on but the emotion behind it.

Troy: Hey, Clayton. Have you ever seen GX Magazine?

Clayton: Seen what?

Troy: GX Magazine.

Clayton: No.

Troy: It’s a Guard magazine. It’s made for National Guard and military. All National Guard members get it. They just started a year or so ago, but they have something like this. I guess it is like this. It’s at the end. They usually take a story. There are have been different stories that have come out of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mostly. They’ve done Civil War, too, though.

They do it just on one page. They do the same thing. They take a story that’s been public out there, maybe a story where someone got a Silver Star in it or something like that. They do just a one-page comic strip of the same kind of thing. When you first I talked to you a couple weeks ago, I thought of it that way, but like I say, much bigger.

It’s pretty much a story that if you were to read a narrative of an award or read something, they took that and turned it into about an eight-panel strip or something like that. That’s what you’re doing, but as you say it’s larger than a comic book. It’s more of a hardbound book, right? Is that the envision of what it would be? A hardbound book or would it be paperback or…

Clayton: Actually, it’s going to be a saddle stitch. More than likely it’s going to be a soft cover saddle stitch. It’s going to be approximately anywhere from 62 to 150 pages, depending on the total amount of stories. Basically, what I’m doing as well is I don’t want this just to be a one-issue type thing. I’m hoping that I get enough stories from the soldiers. That’s something I’d like as well.

If anyone knows a soldier, or has a friend that’s in the military that’s a soldier, and if you think they wouldn’t mind telling a story, I would love for them to send me an email. They can contact me cmerwin6@Gmail.com if you’re interested in doing a story for the book, if you’re a soldier, the wife of a soldier, or the son of a soldier that’s presently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’m going to be hopefully turning this thing into an ongoing process so that it will be able to continue to make money for the soldiers who’ve been injured, fallen, come back, and found it difficult to come back into the American society due to their injuries or what have you.

I’ve got a great love for soldiers. I tried to go in the military. I don’t have a thyroid gland. I lost my thyroid gland when I was 25, so they wouldn’t accept me into the military. Basically, I’ve got a great deal of love and respect for the soldiers in our military. Like I said, you guys are real heroes.

I just want to do something to give back to everything that you guys have sacrificed and everyone that has sacrificed before us and give something back. It might not be much, but I want to try to give something back to the military community and the soldiers who give…excuse me. [laughs] [clears throat] But anyway…

Troy: Clayton, I know you’ve put a lot of effort into this already. You lined up a lot of graphic artists, cartoonists, or whatever their right title is. You’ve got a lot of those guys lined up. You worked to get them signed on. You’re getting some stories in. I know you’ve been hitting me. I know I owe you a story.

Clayton: [laughs]

Troy: Work has just been swamping me. You and I’ve got some college kids out of some schools up north that want to interview me on stuff they’re doing a paper for. It’s a lot, but are you starting to get stories in? I know you had to push back your deadline once. I remember you telling me you originally wanted to have it ready in June and you’ve had to push it back some. But you say you’re starting to get stories in? Are you getting enough in that you think you’re going to hit your November time frame?

Clayton: Yeah, I’m starting to get the stories in now. I’ve got Sergeant Brian Duclose just submitted a story to me about a situation he had when he was over in Iraq. They had just came into Kirkuk, and basically there was a bit of an air raid. I don’t want to give too much, but he had just landed, and it turned out to be not too good of a situation. So he just submitted his story to me. That’s going to be in the book.

I’ve got a soldier that’s presently serving in Iraq right now. He called me just before Christmas, unfortunately, his wife called me right at Christmas and told me to tell me that he couldn’t get through to me – and he’s in Iraq – he wanted her to tell me that he’s still going to submit his story and that he hasn’t forgotten me, but he’s in Iraq so he’s kind of busy.

Troy: Right. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Clayton: That’s the kind of situation that really touches you. Through a friend of mine, his name is Louis J. Small, he’s also the comic book artist and he’s also a fine artist. He served in the military for 25 years and it’s actually one of his friends. He just emailed his friends in Iraq and he came back with me on that and he said he wanted to be involved in it.

So when you get a call on your cell phone at 10:00 o’clock at night and I think it’s 3:00 o’clock in the morning, and it’s a soldier in Iraq and he’s calling you from Iraq and telling you: “Hey, I want to be a part of this.” It gives you a little bit more purpose to really push to get – it started out as an idea and I’m doing everything I can to bring it to fruition. It will come to pass. By November we’re going to have a graphic novel called: “Untold Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan.” I’m going to be putting it out there on the market.

I also spoke with Captain Dana Rhoden. She’s the public affairs officer with the National Guard here in Virginia. She’s actually forwarded what I’m trying to do up to her superiors to see if they could help me as far as getting stories from soldiers, and maybe even help me with some ideas about possibly putting the book in certain areas within the military.

I also spoke with Amanda Malloy with the USO, and they’re very interested in what I’m doing. They said: once I have an actual book to show them, they would actually consider helping to market the book and using the USO logo on it. If that does happen, then naturally we’ll have to go into contract agreements and stuff like that with the USO in order to use their logo.

Troy: Right.

Clayton: I’ve also spoken with Paul Rieckhoff from the IAVA, and he’s actually put – and Victor Castro who is also a good friend of mine. He was working on the book with me, but he’s had some stuff come up and he hasn’t been able to work on it lately. But Paul Rieckhoff has put on the IAVA site for the actual military individuals, through Victor, links to the site and what I’m trying to do and this, that, and the other.

So I’ve even spoke to my Congressman, Bob Goodlatte here in Virginia and he spoke with his representative and he took and said that he would see what he could do to help. I’ve even written to our Governor Kaine. So I’m pulling out no stops. I’m trying to get everybody and anybody put involved with this to get it out there and let people know what I’m doing – to get this thing and do something to help these men and women that have given so much for us.

Troy: Right. Now you’re also on Face Book so if anyone gets on there they could probably find you. If they’re a friend of me they can find you through me, you’re on there.

Also, for people who are listening Clayton, anyone who is listening or anyone that knows anyone that they may tell about this, let me just say you do have some requirements. One of them is it needs to be about 20 pages long to provide enough material. Is that right?

Clayton: It could anywhere – small story could be at least 10 pages long, 10 pages is the minimum size for the book, up to 20 – 22 pages. That’s for one of the longer stories.

CJ: OK, and you want as much description as possible.

Clayton: Yes, as much detail and then naturally for my pencil and pen writers and stuff, there’s certain terminology, I know that soldiers use that average, everyday people do not use. So if you use a certain type of word or breakdown in something, kind of make a side note.

Troy: Yeah, we have no shortage of acronyms in the military.

[Clayton laughing]

Troy: What the military didn’t come up with, we make up others just to talk that way.

Clayton: Yeah.

Troy: Just to calm everyone’s fears, you also have a person reviewing all the stories for operational security, I think is out of West Point, right? So another person is partnering with you on this just to make sure that somebody doesn’t say anything that they shouldn’t.

Clayton: Yes, that’s Victor Castro. Victor Castro is actually the guy – he’s my soldier correspondence officer. Basically the stories come in, I send him a copy of the story. He overlooks it and checks it out and makes sure there’s nothing that would be threatening the homeland security or anything like that. Then if there’s something he’s not sure of, then he passes it on to his superiors. That way I’m not going to be doing anything to get my back-side in trouble or let out some big secrets or anything like that.

That’s one of the main requirements that I have. So basically the stories I’m looking for are just soldiers things, but if it’s sensitive as far as homeland security or anything, I’d prefer anything like that not be sent. If it’s something that could be easily put out there – an experience or something like that, and there’s no secrecy involved in it then great, that’s what I’m looking for.

I’ve also got on the website, photographs of the type of things – like a female soldier holding a flower that she received. So any type of thing like that – a male soldier holding up his child’s picture that he had had drew that he had just received from his son or daughter. You know, those are the types of things that we’re looking for.

Also, heroic stories. I’m trying to keep it as real as possible, and the stuff that you normally do not hear. Say for instance, a soldier saved a young Iraqi child’s’ life. You see loads of photos with American military men carrying young children who have been injured, but you don’t really hear the stories behind them. That’s something that I’m trying to bring forth so that people realize: “Yes, they’re soldiers and yes war is bad, and war is never a good thing, but war is a necessity sometimes in life, and there is good that comes out of war. Even though you might not think so, there are good things that happen in a war. There are good things that happen during war-time.” Those are the stories that I’m looking for.

Troy: OK. Well, Clayton, I thank you so much for being on. I think you have probably – you’ve definitely explained it a lot better than we could; what your project is doing, what its focus is, how it started, and kind of what the vision is you have of it.

I hope our listeners will spread the word to anyone they know. Of course CJ and I both being deployed and being senior NCO’s, we know a lot of people in the military. I’ve spread some to some of the [indecipherable] community, and I will keep spreading the word to see if we can get you some more stories. It’s therapeutic for the soldiers to tell it, and it provides good material so people can feel what’s really happening down range.

Clayton: I appreciate it so much, and again let me say thank you so much for your service to this country. God bless you and God bless America.

CJ: Thanks.

Troy: Thanks Clayton, I appreciate it.

Troy: Everybody, that was Clayton Merlin.

CJ: Yep, thank you.

Clayton: Bye, bye.

Troy: That was Clayton Merlin. He calls himself: “The Hero Maker, ” and not because he thinks he is one. He does it because he’s trying to spread the word. He writes comic books and comic book heroes, and he is doing a phenomenal thing.

Troy: What an interesting guy, huh CJ?

CJ: Oh yeah, very. I think it’s great that they’re doing these kinds of things. I don’t know.

Troy: I was listening when we were talking, I’m thinking: “Man, look at the people we’ve had on this show!” We’ve had musicians like Michael Darwin and folks like that. We’ve had AI we had all these different people. We had Trish, we’ve had, you know, just so many people that are doing cards for troops and doing this, and just amazingly the real, every day Americans you find out there that are using whatever talent and gift they have to try to just give back. You know?

CJ: Yeah. Well, really-

Troy: And even at an unfortunate time of the year.

CJ: Absolutely. And I don’t know how we got so lucky to be able to be approached by such people but I’m glad we could bring out those kind of projects and I really hope the best for them. We got on the phone real quick, we have a couple minutes here left and I want to bring on John. You remember at the beginning of the program, we brought him on and kind of held him off a little bit. We have John from the My Huggy Bears and we want to give him a couple minutes to explain his project as well, since it’s of course geared towards military. Well, John, how you doing? Welcome to the you serve podcast.

John: Hey! Sort of good. Sorry about that earlier, I didn’t realize that it was sowed up on your end of the caller waiting. Also, there was no way I could listen to the show.

CJ: Oh, no problem. No problem. So tell us about Huggy Bears.

John: Well, My Huggy Bear originally, I’ll start at the beginning of the story; our founder, Lee Cotchers, she was hit by a drunk driver 30 plus years ago when they lived out in California. She was pregnant and she had two children in the car. One of her children was critically injured and she had to spend a year and a half at the hospital away from her other two sons at home.

So she hand sowed a teddy bear, put a tape recorder in it, and attached turkey baster, because she figured if she couldn’t physically be with them she would at least be with them in voice, and they would remember her to help the separation of anxiety. So, she created a teddy bear, years went by and it became, you know, it got forgotten. Her youngest son Steve Cotcher joined the Marine Corps and was deployed for 27 months.

He left a son back home. During his deployment when he came home his son had forgotten who he was. As he looked down the flight deck he thought, how can I fix this for the next deploying troop that goes? So a parent does not have to go through the separation anxiety, or a child. And then he remembered what his mother did for him and his brother and thought with todays technology, I could do it.

So, thus they created the My Huggy Bear with a 20 minute recording device inside of it that we now donate to the families of deploying soldiers to help their children and loved ones left behind on the home front with separation anxiety issues.

CJ: Yeah, and that’s awesome because all too often there’s so many people out there that are geared towards the actual deployed soldier and I think sometimes we tend to forget about, at least when it comes to non-profit organizations and things of its nature. We kind of forget about those that are left behind; our wives, our husbands, and especially our kids. And it’s so true that when you find a way to make that separation so much better, it’s always definitely welcome.

John: And, you know, that’s one of the goals. Now we do have teddy bears that are in country right now with soldiers that have been recorded and sent over the appeals and stuff like that. But our goal is to remind the every day person that, you know, might not think of a military every day or deployments that the families at home are fighting the same fight but on a different front.

CJ: Right.

John: You know, this lady, it was several deployments that just a total lump as one long 27 month. Sorry.

CJ: Let me… Where can people go to learn more about this program?

John: Well, they can go to myhuggy, myhuggy.com, and it’s got the background of the teddy bear on it and then some testimonials as well. We are a 501C3 non-profit. I donate my time to the company, I have distributed over 7, 000 teddy bears to children of soldiers. And later on as we move up I’m starting to work with a family group working as coordinators and I’m starting to plan family days to keep the families more involved with each other so they can all kind of use each other’s shoulders during the plaintiffs.

And it all goes back to the teddy bear of the core support for the troop, is their family left behind. You know, they’re the ones who are waiting on the letters, and the phone calls, and the emails. So we want to make sure there’s something for them.

CJ: Absolutely.

Troy: OK. No, I just wanted to say that I think this is awesome. There were some, you know, my wife had found some bears that recorded you, what like a 15 or 20 second message. When I’m deployed, we record, I record my voice on that. Then when my son deployed last year after I did, we did the same thing again. But 20 minutes? This is awesome!

I mean, it’s a book, it’s a prayer, it’s a hand, anything you can think of you can put on a teddy bear. And you can rerecord, you know? And the device will clear it and it will actually record over the phone. And it sound like the soldier was holding that with them. You know, and one of our sponsors, TriWest, I don’t know how many people have TRICARE, but TRICARE West has jumped on board and donated thousands of teddy bears and TRICARE for life.

You know, so if anybody knows TRICARE South, or TRICARE North, hit us up because those companies are there for the military. And they just have got to be aware of the project.

CJ: Well, John, appreciate it. Again, it’s myhuggy.com, we are down to the final couple of minutes and definitely appreciate you coming on. And any time you’ve got more news you’d like to tell us, you know, by all means; come on by, drop by, send us an email, and we’ll help spread the word.

John: I’ll most definitely do that. Thanks to Trish, I didn’t know about you guys except for Twitter.

CJ: OK.

John: So Trish kind of clued me in on this.

CJ: I’m a Twitter nerd. I have no idea, anything about Twitter but Troy’s the man.

[laughs]

John: Alright.

Troy: I even have a Twitter update, so yeah, it’s ready to go.

CJ: Troy’s the master of it. Have a good night.

John: Thanks, guys.

CJ: Appreciate it.

Troy: Alright, bye John.

CJ: Well, Troy, great show. I don’t know what to say. We should start closing up. I wanted to end with the army song.

Troy: What a great song. And we’ve got about a minute left to do that, so.

CJ: Alright.

Troy: We were going to bring the rights on that thing, but there’s so many guests that we had.

Lisa: Hi, this is Lisa Quintili, and I’m a waitress Papa Phil’s Italian restaurant.

Troy: Well, not the song.

CJ: That is obviously not the army song.

[laughs]

Troy: That’s our whatever, our story out in Athens.

CJ: Yeah.

Troy: We’re just going to take this out. Thanks everyone for listening tonight, this has been a you serve radio show sponsored by Media Monetary, we’ll see you soon.

CJ: That’s right, I want to thank our the representative Jan Espa, and Paul Anderson from New Hampshire. Michael Rollins, the author of The Split.

Troy: And Trish from NIMA!

CJ: And Trish from NIMA. Guys, see you later. See you next week.

[music outro]

[audio ends]

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