Sadly, caught up in all the debate over gun violence, one of the very best senators we have passed away today. For as long as I've lived, heck, as long as Hawai'i has been a state, we have been represented by Senator Inouye. He was a true hero of this country, volunteering for the all-2nd-generation Japanese-American 442nd during World War II, losing his right arm in combat while earning the Medal of Honor. For over 50 years he has served in Washington, being a supremely respected voice that has served on the Watergate Committee, and chaired an Iran-Contra special committee, while blazing trails as the first Japanese-American in both the House and the Senate. He was immensely popular in Hawai'i, only once ever winning less than 69% of the vote, and by the time his career came to an end, he stood 3rd in line to the presidency. Whatever your politics, we lost a true American hero today. In his last words, Aloha. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/u...ence-in-senate-dies-at-88.html?pagewanted=all
He is all that, but should we have 88 year senator that die while he is serving his term? I think term limit and age limit should enforced in congress.
Here's a bit more "colorful" profile of Senator Inouye: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/inouye.html [RQUOTER]After this side quest in France, Inouye went back to Italy, where he performed what is now his most famous act of totally badass ****. Inouye's platoon had been ordered to capture a German strong point along the Colle Musatello Ridge, so naturally this guy decided to go in guns blazing. He led his team through intense fire to capture an observation post, a mortar team, and an artillery position (no bigs), and then moved his troops within 40 yards of a heavily-fortified defensive line, where they immediately came under heavy suppressing fire from three different heavy machine gun positions. Inouye didn't give a ****. He started chucking grenades like a madman, trying to blast the bunkers apart. This was fun for a while, but as he stood up to lob yet another explosive he was suddenly shot through the abdomen by a German MG bullet that passed all the way through his torso and came mere inches from severing his spine. Naturally, this only pissed him off. So, with the rest of his men pinned down by heavy weapons, the wounded Lieutenant grabbed a backpack of frags and started army-crawling up the ridge towards the enemy guns. As soon as he was close enough, he assaulted the first machine gun nest on his own, taking it out with a grenade from just five yards away and then clearing the rest of it out Al Capone-style with a spray of .45-caliber ammunition from his badass Tommy gun. When that one was taken care of, Inouye sprinted to a second position, dual-chucking two grenades that redecorated the walls of the bunker with Fascist parts. Unfortunately, the time Inouye was headed for the third position, the Germans were ready for him – the dudes in this nest had just watched this insane-as-**** little Japanese dude flying around bombing the **** out of their buddies, and these mother****ers weren't about to sit back and let Inouye just hand-deliver a fragmentation explosive into their rectums without a fight. So when Inouye was sprinting across open ground a mere 10 yards the machine gun nest, suddenly he saw a German dude pop up from behind a sandbag, aim a rifle-mounted grenade at him, and blast him at point-blank range with the WWII version of an RPG. The blast covered Inouye with shrapnel and shredded his right arm to the point where it was barely still attached. This, however, failed to stop him. Inouye simply looked down at his useless arm (which was still clutching a hand grenade), pried the grenade out of it with his left hand, and lobbed it underhand right into the dumbfounded German's face from about 15 feet away. The results weren't pretty. From this point on in the battle, Lieutenant Daniel Inouye of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team went into Total ****ing Berserker Meltdown Mode. He doesn't even remember what happened next – but his awestruck platoon members sure as **** do. While still bleeding profusely from the mangled stump that used to be his right arm, Daniel Inouye ditched the grenades, unslung the Tommy Gun, and started firing it one-handed while running all over the goddamned battlefield like a ****ing maniac, blasting the holy living **** out of anything with a gray helmet. He cleared out the third machine gun position with the Tommy Gun, changed the magazine, and then started running towards the main body of the enemy position, by himself, shooting the machine gun with his off-hand, wasting Nazis left and right in a hail of gigantic bullets. Finally, after rampaging like a madman, Inouye was shot in the leg, lost his footing, and fell down a hill. Unable to move, but unwilling to back down, Inouye propped himself up against the nearest tree, kept firing, and refused to be evauated until his Sergeants had moved the unit into position and prepared defenses for the inevitable German counterattack. All told, he had killed 25 Germans and wounded 8 more, and he'd literally done it all single-handedly. When the men in his unit came to the hospital and recounted the events to Inouye, his exact words were, "No, that can't be... you'd have to be insane to do all that."[/RQUOTER]
RIP A great American. I remember seeing the piece about Inouye on Ken Burns World War II documentary. He said that when he got shot he just thought someone was punching him. Later after the battle was over a white officer who had made racist remarks about the Japanese American soldiers ordered the Germans prisoners to carry Inouye down the hill and threatened to kill them if they stumbled. And all of that was before a historic senate career including being an important figure on Watergate and Iran Contra.
