I saw this headline and my only thought was “Does it really matter”. 

With the Memorial Day approaching and many enjoying the weekend and holiday on Monday, I wanted to break from a post about trading or market related and bring to light the story of a Marine that made the highest sacrifice.  This is a post about Corporal Jason Dunham, Medal of Honor Recipient, and a Marine that I had the privilege of knowing. 

I met Jason while stationed at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base as part of the Marine Corps Security Forces.  It was an overall small unit with many of the Marines there knowing or knwoing of each other.  There are many other Marines that knew him a lot better than me.  My interactions with Jason were simply eating at the same time and the occasional small talk such that began with “Hey how you doing?”; “What’s Up?”; or “Are you using that anymore?” when in the weight room.  But he was that guy that everyone liked and no one ever had anything to say bad about him, just an overall respected Marine. 

Below information about Jason taken from the website Jason L. Dunham Memorial, but it gives a nice insight into his life and what he did.  Corporal Jason L. Dunham was born on 10 November 1981 (coincidentally the Marine Corps Birthday) in Scio, New York and passed away at 22 years old.  He enlisted in the Marine Corps and was stationed at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base under the Security Forces military occupation and was a member of the Close Quarters Battle Team, the highest trained team that’s comparative to SWAT.  Like every other Marine that enlists in Security Forces during their first enlistment, they go to the infantry during the last half of their obligation and Jason reported to 4th Platoon, Kilo Company, Third Battalion Seventh Marine Regiment in Twentynine Palms, CA.  This unit then deployed to Iraq as part of the War on Terror. 

On Jan. 11, 2007, Corproral Dunham was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration of the United States. He is the second serviceman and the first Marine to receive the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror.

Below is the Medal of Honor Citation that details Corporal Dunham’s actions on that fateful day.

Corporal Dunham died of his wounds eight days later at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, at the age of 22 with his family by his side. He was laid to rest in his hometown of Scio at Fairlawn Cemetery.

In reading you the citation you can see how selfless of an act it was and the kind of character that made up Corporal Dunham. On 19 March 2007, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen James T. Conway, concurred with the naming of a barrack’s building in honor of Cpl Dunham on Naval Submarine Base, Kings Bay, and a few days later on 23 March, the Navy announced it’s newest destroyer would also bear his name as the USS Jason Dunham.

A complete list of Cpl Dunham’s awards and decorations includes: Medal of Honor, Purple Heart, Combat Action Ribbon, Meritorious Unit Commendation, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon.  

There is a book written about Jason Dunham’s life from beginning to end and I highly recommend it to everyone.  It is a shorter and easy read that encompasses the events of that day as well as what Jason’s family went through afterward.  The book is titled “The Gift of Valor“.

I end this post with a script below from a friend of Jason’s and Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps (at the time):

Lance Cpl. Dean told those assembled about a trip to Las Vegas the two men and Becky Jo Dean had taken in January, not long before the battalion left for the Persian Gulf. Chatting in a hotel room, [Dunham] told his friends he was planning to extend his enlistment and stay in Iraq for the battalion’s entire tour. “You’re crazy for extending,” Lance Cpl. Dean recalls saying. “Why?”

He says Cpl. Dunham responded: “I want to make sure everyone makes it home alive. I want to be sure you go home to your wife alive.”

Mission accomplished, Corporal Dunham. Semper Fidelis.

 References:

1) http://www.jasonsmemorial.org/about.html

2) http://archive.redstate.com/stories/featured_stories/the_true_meaning_of_hero

3) http://www.tecom.usmc.mil/HD/Whos_Who/Dunham_JL.htm 

One thing that I hate about the the whole trading and investing world is the marketing gimmicks.  Now there are many trading services, newsletters, etc. that are credible and do send out emails.  But like the penny stock newsletters you receive in the mail,I have found that some services are more for the volume and not the quantity.

In this post I wanted to raise a warning one can look for or maybe you have your own story and would like to share.  Like the image to the right, if you think you can purchase a newsletter and start trading with $1000 and quit your job, the odds are highly against you and in fact it would be better to put that money to charity and at least feel a little good about it.

As stated in a previous post titled “An Interesting Trade Indicator & Learn To Think For Yourself” I stated that I have a Hotmail account setup for those “enter your email here” type sites that often share 3rd party information.  I have this account mainly for trading spam as I like to filter through it and use it as a contrarian indicator or an indicator on when sentiment is getting a little giddy.

With this account, one concern that I have seen through the years and really I have no idea  on why it is used in its format is the word FREE.  Now I don’t mean just the word but like the format as shown below.

Looking at many email subject lines like this where the word FREE is formatted with periods such as in this one where the period separates the “f” and the “r” I often wonder what is the purpose.  I have also seen where a period separates the “f” “r” “e” “e” that reads as “f.r.e.e” in the subject line.

So my question is, why do these promoters do this as I have no clue.  Wouldn’t just spelling “free” with no periods be just as well.  I just see it as a marketing gimmick or spam filter bypass.  From some of the senders and doing research on those services I have concluded this is a marketing technique.

This type of technique just pisses me off as this business is hard enough the way it is and lures people with hope and often times blown accounts.  With that being said, I have no hard feelings against services as I subscribe to 3 of them (stock screening, market timing, day/swing trading) to make my life easier ; none have used email to get my business.  But finding these services without spending money on the duds would be a lie.  Its a matter of sifting through the crap to get to the goods and unfortunately that requires some loot.

If you have the answer to this or some horror story please post it as I like to get rid of those leeches that are merely profitable off the service revenue and nothing else.  I plan on posting another technique in the future that upsets me as well and kind of lets me down as it comes from highly reputable traders/services.

I hate talking about politics and I’m that guy that is always left out of the conversation as I have no clue what’s going on with elections or anything.  Maybe its not the best attitude but I truly believe that my vote doesn’t matter.  I am skeptical of the whole process and they will all do what they want to do regardless of the people’s thoughts.  I voted once in 2008, waited in line for 40 minutes, and choose all of the candidates that I never saw a commercial for…none of them won.  I could go on and on about my why I don’t like politics, but I hate politics and don’t even like reading about it.

Anyway, I will say I am directly affected by the Obama Administration and the recent implementation of  HARP II or HARP 2.0

Harp Phase II Q&A’s

Basically the biggest change and how I qualified over the first HARP program was that is there no limit on the loan-to-value ratio as there was in the previous HARP.  Yes I am that much underwater on my mortgage and it sucks, but this isn’t an investment to me but its a place to permanently live. 

So I hate to talk politics as this was a political decision that was granted by the government, but this directly affects the ecoonmy.  I won’t give stats or extreme details as I am economically dumb but know just the basics.  My simplest and easiest to understand reason is that by refinancing I am knocking down about 3.75% off my interest for about $700-800 off of my mortgage payment.  The economy now has $700-800 more dollars going into it instead of the banks pocket based just off of that interest reduction (raw number minus all the detailed percentages). 

How much money comes from tax payers or bailouts or how is the program supported? Short answer is I don’t know.  This is one reason why I don’t talk politics, because is nothing seems believable anyway.  All I see is a direct example of the program implemented and I wish many more people take advantage.  I hate bailouts and never wanted any of them to happen.  All I know is that I bought a house even when the market was coming down, had to go with a Fannie Mae loan, but I paid my mortgage every month and could continue to do so.  But if you could save even $300 a month would you?  The program is there and in my opinion you may as well take advantage of anything you can because than likely you or your generations will get screwed down the line anyway.