Merry Christmas from the Miller's

God bless each of you on this special day and throughout the coming year. Thank you all for your sacrifices. The troops remain in our prayers daily, and particularly during the holidays.

Semper Fi, Marines,

De'on and Greg Miller

Important

I’ve just read an article in our newspaper titled “Suicide Hot Line Got Calls From 22,000 Veterans.” It is an AP writer y the name of Katharine Euphrat who wrote it. The figures are startling and come from the VA and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline evidently.

I just want to take this time to echo a thought and a message I left on Aaron’s message board on May 29, 2006 copied below.

I have to go to Heart’s Desire right now, but this afternoon I’m going to try and get in touch with the VA or the suicide hotline to see if there’s any way I can help from where I sometimes feel stranded. I would be honored to volunteer in this capacity.

If someone knows a connection off-hand that I could speak to, I’d appreciate the info. I called the VA and the nearest regional office near me is in Albuquerque, 5 hours away. But I will check further.

Meanwhile: VETERANS: I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ANY PEOPLE IN THIS WORLD. YOUR SACRIFICE IS FOREVER. THAT IS THE TRUE AND UNSELFISH SACRIFICE.

AND WE STILL NEED YOU. MORE THAN EVER—WE NEED YOU. HANG ON. YOU ARE WORTH SO MUCH—MAYBE YOU ARE THE LIFELINE FOR ONE OTHER, ONE OTHER GENERATION, ONE OTHER SOUL IN TORMENT, ONE OTHER BROTHER!!

Much love,
Aaron’s Mom

--the old message follows—it is still true today!


May 29, 2006

Thank you for your sacrifice, son. Everyone in our country, as well as other countries, owes you and those like you such an enormous amount of gratitude. Some don't realize it at all, and others of us can only speculate, but spending five days in our nation's capital, admiring the portraits and statues of those before you who stood for freedom as well-- and not once was the cost small. Korea-54,000 names (imagine the number of families this sorrow reached out and devastated in the clutches of sorrow). Vietnam-50,000. The white crosses of soldiers and infants killed in the Civil War. Presidents, Lincoln and Kennedy, slain in their prime. Other bodies, unknown, unidentified. Blood, tears, blood, tears, over and over.

The haunting portraits of the Holocaust. The young Jewish boys in the museum with their heads covered by the fabric of their faith. America, at first hesitant to get involved, did involve themselves in Hitler's country and affairs. Thank God we went to save the few, fight for their inch of freedom and discover the atrocities of somebody else’s business. Nosed into a terrorist business and put those on trial for their horrible crimes against the persecuted.

So many cultures filled D.C. to visit the memorials of all that has been given to stroll in the land of the free. Koreans, Pakistani, Panamanians, nearly every race in our free world walked those avenues, snapped digital photos of the cost, and enjoyed the benefit of it all, hopefully a tiny bit more at those solemn moments, perhaps stood still a moment and reflected on something about this country that they were thankful for. That they, with me, were not able to find a precious moment in our history to stop and say, There, there. This is where we should have stopped fighting for our freedom as well as the freedom of those we do not even know. Here is the point where we should have stopped caring for humanity and shouted at Washington, no more...we've had enough. No, there was no point in the tours that I thought to myself: I don't care what all you did before, for us, I just care about me. Damn the future generations.

No, I thought none of these things. In awe, I was thankful and I wanted every tourist there, every free South Korean, every free Panamanian and Pakistani, and especially every American there in D.C. and Virginia to know that, My son has joined those who stood for something.

Thank you, Aaron. From the bottom of my heart, on this third Memorial Day without your laughter to fill our homes, I find it in the wind chimes and birds, and I find it on the streets before my home as young men race in their cars down the street, play their music loud and free, and I look at those kids and I think, you don't know how fortunate you are that so many people cared enough about you to die for you. And then I think that in a way, that too, is a great thing. That so many of us have always lived in freedom.

I will never quit missing you. And I will always be proud of you. Semper Fi, Marine,"Mom" (De'on Miller, Mother of Aaron C. Austin KIA, April, 2004)

Time

Click here for Ecclesiastes 3

Great Conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. - Dead at 82

William F. Buckley, Jr. - 11-24-25 to 2-27-2008. God Bless and Rest in Peace.

CITY
JOURNAL

Myron Magnet

The Unbought Grace of Life: Remembering William F. Buckley, Jr.

27 February 2008

When I saw a headline a few months ago, A WORLD WITHOUT BILL BUCKLEY, my blood ran cold. A smaller, drabber world indeed, I thought. The appropriately adulatory text (a book review, as I recall) calmed me down, but anyone who had seen Bill recently knew that the smaller, drabber world was at hand.

In illness, he became, if possible, even more gallant. At a party he gave a while ago to celebrate the publication of his brother Jim’s memoirs, he spoke with his usual wit, warmth, and eloquence—but seated on the stairs. He apologized for his ridiculous position, as he called it, explaining that he didn’t feel well enough to stand and would now go back to bed. Not so long afterward, he replied to the condolence note I had sent when his vivid and unforgettable wife Pat died. Its whole point was to make me feel good, an act of gracious generosity that, under the circumstances, took my breath away.

When I heard of his death this morning, a phrase of Edmund Burke’s popped unbidden into my mind: “the unbought grace of life.” Many will write, in due course, about Bill’s towering importance in our nation’s political and intellectual life. But beyond that, his whole being provided an answer to that ultimate question, How then should we live? From first hearing him speak at my high school when he was a young man, through watching him in sparkling, imperious, and rather intimidating action as his guest on Firing Line, I saw his character become ever more clearly the unmistakable, irreplaceable Buckley: witty, cultivated, playful, urbane, gracious, brave, zestful, life-affirming, tireless, and gallant—the incarnation of grace. He taught many not only how to think but also how to be.

Myron Magnet is the author of The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties’ Legacy to the Underclass. He is City Journal’s editor-at-large and was its editor from 1994 through 2006.

FINALE

February 28, 2008
11:18 AM

Hey folks,

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going over the decision I’ve ultimately reached. I’m going to quit the blog. It’s been more of a gut-wrenching decision than one would think, but deep in my heart, I know it’s time for a new thing—for me at least.

I will continue writing, as I am working on a book. The first hints of spring have my attention captured already. The reading I’ve left off due to a real lack of concentration fully beckons the need in me for a new story, somebody else’s story—I’m thinking a few belts of Dickens is highly in order. My sister, after thirty years, could be moving to the beautiful state of Texas. I suspect most blog readers are on MySpace and I’m already so sick of politics and all things negative, that I truly don’t know how I’ll make it to November without screaming. (So, Mom, you’ll have to send emails to your comrades! ;)
I’ve started doing just a small bit of volunteer work.

As you can see, I don’t really know the reason, but I do feel like I’m trying to put life into something that I believe has ran its course. Maybe sometimes it really is better to just let things go when their course is finished.

Naturally, I will keep the blog open. I’m always up for any comments from any of Aaron’s brothers or any of my blogger friends, and those will always reach me by my email.

I have so many photos on the blog that it takes a great deal of time for it to load. I’ll keep the photos there as they are a gift from me to any of you who would care to look again or capture some of your own.

I can’t express just yet what this blogging time has meant to me. Just short of two years, it gave me a way out of myself and into the lives of others. So many of those others have become friends that I hope I’ll have forever.

I will always be a Gold Star Mom, and I will always grieve for my son. These things are inseparable from the person I began to grow into nearly four years ago, but even that is changing. Sometimes it’s as hard as it was on that first day (this very moment for example)—I’m not much of one for goodbyes, but still, it is four years later—it becomes more personal, or maybe understood as something that has to be worked out in a multitude of ways.

I’ve reached a stage in my life that I know if I’m to continue healing, then I have to continue growing, searching. Maybe outside of Aaron. I don’t know. It breaks my heart to even think that, and I don’t know what God has in store for me, but somehow, I feel as if I’m going to have to step outside my doors more to find it.

My heart, always,
De’on

Wednesday Hero

Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL) Michael E. Koch
29 years old from State College, Pennsylvania
East Coast-based SEAL team
February 4, 2008


"There are only approximately 2,500 SEALs in the Navy and they really are a brotherhood," said Naval Special Warfare spokesman Lt. David Luckett. "This is another unfortunate reminder of the risks and sacrifices these amazing warriors and their families make on a daily basis."

Koch leaves behind his parents and a fiancee. He enlisted in July 1998 and entered SEAL training in January 1999, according to The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. He received the Bronze Star, Joint Service Commendation Medal and three Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals.

Navy SEAL Michael E. Koch died Feb. 4 after being wounded by small-arms fire during combat operations in Iraq alongside fellow SEAL Nathan Hardy, who was profiled last week.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Title It!--Lisa's Choice

Winning Title Goes Here

Come up with a title you think Lisa will choose as the winning title for this painting.

Winner chooses the next photo and then judges those titles.

One title per player can be left in the comments.

Deadline is Sunday, March 2, 2008 @ 8:00 PM MST

Anyone can play!

Plebis - the People's Dog: Click on Him Now!

Click on Plebis-Snowperson picture, and see that Plebis is doing the People's work. His "work" is a visual metaphor of the Hillary Clinton Presidential campaign. The Snowperson is Hillary..........

Good boy, Plebis! Good boy!

Hillary Clinton: A Dull Version of Bill Richardson, Fast Becoming Duller

Hillary Rodham "Czarina" Clinton - 2007

Hillary Rodham "melancholy-dignity-in-decline" Clinton - 2008

Mark Steyn

National Review Online

http://article.nationalreview.com/q=ZjA4NTk1NTk4Yjg2MDdmNDU5Nzg5Y2MzNWU3ZDViOGQ=
February 23, 2008

Hillary Richardson: The Democratic party has a new star.

By Mark Steyn

On the day that Margaret Thatcher was toppled by her own party, I ran into an old friend, a hardcore leftist playwright, Marxist to the core, who wasn’t as happy as he should have been. He jabbed me in the chest. “You bastards on the right!” he fumed. “You wouldn’t even let us be the ones to drive the stake through her heart.”

I’m sure in America’s Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy there are similar mixed feelings this week. The Clintons have met their Waterloo but it’s not some doughty conservative warrior who gets to play Duke of Wellington, only some freshman pap peddler of liberal boilerplate whom no-one had heard of the day before yesterday.

Such are the vicissitudes of politics. I see from the gay newspaper the Washington Blade that, as the headline writer put it, “Clinton Leads Among Gay Super Delegates.” Only in the Democratic party. I don’t know how many supergays it takes to outvote the non-super primary and caucus voters from Maine to Nevada to Hawaii. They may yet pull Senator Clinton’s chestnuts out of the fire, but they’re looking pretty charred and indigestible right now. Unlike the Fall of Thatcher, it’s nothing so glamorous as an act of matricide, but just the nightly hell of a tired vaudeville act that can no longer find the spark.

Bill Clinton understood a crude rule of show business — that, if you behave like a star, there are plenty of people who’ll treat you like one. The apotheosis of this theory was his interminable ambulatory entrance down mile after mile of corridor at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, when Slick Willie finally out-Elvised Elvis — or, more accurately, out-Smarted the opening sequence of Get Smart. Apparently, no-one had thought to tell him to try to get within four miles of the stage before the introductory video ended. He was, by my calculations, outside the men’s room on Corridor G27, Sub-Basement Level 6 of the Staples Center. As he began the long, long, lo-oo-oo-oong televised walk to the podium the crowd watching the monitors cheered — and, 20 minutes later, after he’d strolled down the first three or four windowless tunnels of attractive luminous drywall, hung a left by the water cooler, taken the emergency stairs, cut across the stationery closet, moved smoothly through the boiler room and had still only reached the Coke machine on Sous-Mezzanine Level 4 and there was at least a mile and a half between him and the stage, and the Democratic activists out in the hall were beginning to figure they could get dinner and a movie and still be back in time for the last third of his walk-on, they were nevertheless still cheering. In effect, President Clinton dared them not to cheer. Tom Jones wouldn’t have risked it. Engelbert Humperdinck would have balked. But, after eight years of talking the talk, Bill walked the walk. In the hall, the delegates’ hands were raw, bleeding stumps, but the Slicker knew that if he started his entrance in Idaho those Dems would cheer him every step of the way.

The Clintons turned the Democratic party into a star vehicle and designated everyone else as extras. But their star quality was strictly comparative. They had industrial-strength audacity and a lot of luck: Bill jumped into the 1992 race when A-listers like Mario Cuomo were too cowed by expert advice that Bush Snr. was unbeatable. Clinton gambled, won the nomination and beat a weak opponent in a three-way race, with Ross Perot siphoning votes from the right. He got even luckier four years later. So did Hillary when she embarked on something patently absurd — a First Lady running for a Senate seat in a state she’s never lived in — only to find Rudy Giuliani going into instant public meltdown. The SAS, Britain’s special forces, have a motto: Who dares wins. The Clintons dared, and they won — even as almost everyone else in their party lost: senators, congressmen, governors, state legislators. Even when they ran into a spot of intern trouble, sheer nerve saw them through. Almost anyone else would have slunk off in shame, but the Clintons understood that the checks and balances don’t add up to much if you’re determined not to go: As at that 2000 convention speech, they dared the Democrats not to cheer.

With hindsight, the oral sex was a master stroke. Bill Clinton likes to tell anyone who’ll listen that he governed as an “Eisenhower Republican,” which is kind of true — NAFTA, welfare reform, etc. If you have to have a Democrat in the Oval Office, he was as good as it gets for Republicans — if you don’t mind the fact that he’s a draft-dodging non-inhaling sex fiend. Republicans did mind, of course, which is why Dems rallied round out of boomer culture-war solidarity. But, if he hadn’t been dropping his pants and appealing to so many of their social pathologies, his party wouldn’t have been half so enthusiastic for another chorus of “I Like Ike.”

Hillary is what the Clintons look like with their pants up. Their much-vaunted political savvy turns out to be a big nothing: The supposed masters of “the politics of personal destruction” can’t turn up anything better on Obama than some ancient essay from his Jakarta grade school, plus a few limp charges of plagiarism. And instead of getting the surrogates to crowbar the enemy every time Hillary opens up on him she looks mean and petty and he gets to do his high-minded Obamessiah routine. Their star quality was also, as noted above, mostly a giant bluff. In his heyday, Bill could channel his narcissism into a famously sure “common touch” — he liked to bask in proof of his awesome empathetic powers. But, in the years since he left the Oval Office, he’s played too many gazillion-dollar-a-plate jet-set dinners in France and Switzerland, and the “common touch” has curdled. That was plain even by the 2002 midterms, when you could more or less correlate Democratic losses by his travel schedule. He’s a bust on the stump.

And, worst of all for Bill and Hill, the Dems found a new star — their first in 16 years. Look at it from Hillary’s point of view: She’d expected to run against the likes of Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd — the usual mediocrities and misfits. Then Barack Obama came along, and did what the Clintons did in 1992 — saw his opportunity and seized it. All of a sudden, she’s the Bill Richardson — worthy but dull, earthbound, and joyless, lead weights round her ankles.

She has a melancholy dignity in decline. She knows she would make the better president, but every time she tries to explain why it sounds prosaic and unromantic. Bill gave the party an appetite for slick lounge acts, and this time round Barack’s the guy delivering it in buckets of gaseous uplift. Can Barbra Streisand and the Supergays get Hillary airborne again? I doubt it. Go back to that Staples Center entrance in 2000, and try to imagine Hill walking that walk. How far would she get before the applause died away and she’d be padding that endless corridor to no audible accompaniment but the clack of her heels?

© 2008 Mark Steyn

How’s your Sunday? Pretty good around here. Lisa and Karen both have been by to see me today. Good sisters!

Greg is out digging my hole next to Aaron’s tree in the front. On this Friday, the 29th, I will bury a bunch of certificates, cards, dried flowers, stuff like that which has accumulated over the nearly four years. I guess it sounds a little crazy to bury it, but that way, Aaron and his stuff will always be a part of this house. I’ve kept the flowers semi-clean for just about as long as I can. These are mostly flowers that were sent to me at the time Aaron was killed. I dried them and have saved them in a large red, white and blue basket. When I received more flowers, I’d later dry them and place them on top of the others. It’s been impossible to throw anything away. I’ve tried—and I just can’t let it go out of my hand, even if it’s just his name or a copy of a copy of a copy of a photo…. So, Greg’s digging and Friday I’ll lay it in there and cover it up. No ceremony. Just me and the dirt and probably Cady. The boys will watch from the back, which is where they’ll all be buried. Yes, I have all this thought out. And you’re thinking: It sucks to be you??? LOL!

I know.

But this is my last first. Leap day of leap year was the last time his foot was on American soil—this is my first leap year without him. There was a time I’d never thought I’d have to last this long without him. And then something like the image I have displayed comes in the mail and I realize that I may have a very long time to go and had better buck up.

Our troops. How do they feel? I'll tell you, Semper Fi Mom's son was great to talk to and I am so happy for how things are in Fallujah right now. We've been doing this sort of thing for a long time, folks. Let's keep on keeping on, huh?

We live in a fantastic country. I love America. I love America. I love her troops, her liberty, her land.

Oddly enough, I feel good. Of course, I’m not the one digging the hole!

Mom still doesn’t have her computer and Lisa still doesn’t have her picture. What good are they?

Talk at you later!
De’on

Lundy, Kayla, and Allie

@ Jake's Sports Bar after the Raider's loss.

February 16, 2008

+ + +

Hey everybody,

Long time, huh?

Our vacation time together was great! We didn’t go anywhere (but to Lubbock—Greg actually went three times!) but it was good to be together around here and of course, to visit family and friends. February is always a tough month for me. February 15th is the last time I saw Aaron and February 29, 2004 is the last time he was on American soil. The unit’s plane flew on that day.

Greg and I met Semper Fi Mom and her eldest son, Steven, who has recently returned from Iraq. Steven was a joy to talk to. Everything he shared was positive and the photos he took were fabulous. He spent a great deal of time in some of the same places Richard did. The four of us had lunch at Olive Garden. Gary, the brother-birthday-boy knew we were going and had Greg and I bring him and Karen an order to go! (They live in Brownfield, TX, 36 miles from Lubbock) so when we dropped their order off on the way back home, we got to visit with them. That was a really great day and it felt good inside to set down and listen to a Marine talk. And of course, the Marine’s Lubbock Mom is the cutest thing. She’s always smiling and so busy. She’s the epitome of sweet Motherhood.

On a different trip, Greg and I took Kayla and 2 of her girlfriends to watch the Red Raider (men’s) basketball game against OU. We lost in the last .9 seconds, so bummer, but it was good to be with the girls. They’re all 14—nearly15, so there was a lot of giggling, but I loved it. The photos above were taken at Jake’s Sports Bar in Lubbock. We took them to eat there after the game. I had Greg bring the camera and this is the only photo we ended up with. I really wanted one of the girls standing up so that I could better show-off one of Kayla’s friends. The two blondes and one brunette are all little knock-outs, but it’s Allie I’m talking about today.

Allie is the one sitting in the booth by herself and she’s quite the basketball player herself. She’s scored 30 points in one game of her own. A ninth-grader, her team finished up as the top regional team and now she joins Junior Varsity as they finish up their season.

Allie is important to me for more than one reason. She’s the daughter of Ray and Jody. Ray filmed Aaron’s memorial here for me in Lovington. He was also at the unit’s homecoming party we had here in Lovington when 2/1 made it home in October of 2004. It was there at that party that Ray first began to notice he didn’t feel well at all. After a huge fight for his life, Ray succumbed to lung cancer, leaving behind his wife, Jody, whom I went to school with, and their 4 kids. The two older boys are both college graduates from Las Cruces here; the daughter a little older than Allie is a college student and has been employed throughout her high school and college career. Allie is the baby. She was only in the seventh grade when she lost her dad.

Shortly before Ray (we called him Rapid Ray—an oxymoron for anyone who knew him—he was the most gentle and laid back soul I think I’ve ever known.), but anyway, it was a short time before he left us in that Rapid Ray came to know Jesus. He’d get one of my friends to come to his bedside and he’d tell her, “Say that prayer….” It was the Lord’s Prayer.

What Ray wanted for Allie, she has and is. He wanted her to “dress like a girl” and he wanted her to play basketball. She does both those things and she seeks the Lord in many ways for her life and the life of her friends and family now. She doesn’t talk much about it, but she has told Kayla of how she saw her dad sitting in his chair before his computer one night, and he told her that he was okay—that he was happy and everything was good. It encouraged her greatly and that is when she became interested in this spiritual life that surrounds us all—whether we realize it or not.

It helps to watch her blossom.

I went to Ray’s bedside the day before he died. They had a hospital bed set up in one of the bedrooms. He had his dog in there with him. When I came to the side of the bed, he held out his arm and took my hand. I knew it wouldn’t be long and I held his hand so tight. I thought to myself, this is as close as I’m going to get to heaven and to Aaron for now. I whispered to myself; I didn’t want to startle him, but to myself, I said, “Tell Aaron hello and I love him.”

Mom’s dinosaur computer is finally history. Her new one should arrive today, so, no doubt, she’ll be getting a post in shortly after it’s up. I know she has missed her ranting during these past days.

So, we’re back for whatever that means! And we have missed being here for you. We appreciate you all.

And oh yes, Lisa won Mom’s “Title It” so we’ll get her to get a photo sent to us sometime this weekend.

Happy Friday and I hope you’re wearing RED!

Semper Fi,
De’on

Gary's 46th Birthday Finale

Yes, I've worked my way into Washington's Day as well--so Happy Birthday to you too, George. And Gary, goodnight and we love you. You have always been and will always be the baby.

**Lisa and I warmed his bottle even beyond his third birthday!!

Heroes

We've seen these more than once, but I'll show them again sometime. They are a part of what we have. Our memories in color.Aaron Cole Austin

Gary Glenn Grigsby

July 2003

August 2003

William Harvey Grigsby, Jr.

Gary Glenn Grigsby

**My brother is the last Grigsby in our family. Our dad joined Aaron in Heaven on August 21, 2007. I know you miss your best friend so very badly this first ever birthday without him, Gary, and I am so terribly sorry about that....

He's a Keeper!

Gary Glenn Grigsby

1962

Gary Glenn Grigsby

Christy De'on Grigsby Austin

June 1989

1962! It was a very good year, Gary Glenn...

Click on her name and listen to (one of the many) favorite songs you and I share a love and nostalgia for, Brother Dear!

Patsy Cline "Crazy"

You and your boots... in oil

Painted by your #1 fan: Mom

Birthday Boy Photos

The Grigsby's (bottom right photo is 1964)
This little red rocker is still in our family (a different dress now, but it was mine so, yep, it's an antique!)
How'd you get that big bump on your head?

Some February 21, 1962 Links:

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, February 21, 1962

President's Park (White House) - 1961-1962 National Christmas

Press Conferences of President Kennedy - John F. Kennedy ...

The Perry Como Show: February 21, 1962 - TV.com

Celebrity Link: Birthdays for February 21

FEDERAL FIRE COUNCIL MINUTES OF ANNUAL MEETING, FEBRUARY 21, 1962.
Topics presented: 'Fire prevention and protection within the Department of the Army'; 'The costs, confusion and stultifying effects of building requirements ...

Who can name the years of the Birthday Boy's Pictures?

Isn't there a story behind these drums?
CONOCO-Hottest Brand Going!
Bow ties, blue jeans and big grins.

Punk, punk, we eat food, you eat junk!!

The knot is tied, the garter in place!

The Grigsby's

April 5, 1983

Gary and Long Legs (Karen!)
Guess Who?

October 1988

I was home on PCS leave...

heading for D.C. whoo hoo!

1962...go figure ;)

click here for a Feb. 2004 cnn article about Nat.

and for the lady she played... (I could give you a lot of links here, but we've got to run a clean Marine(?) ship. so, here's her biography, and like Aaron, Gypsy Rose Lee died on April 26th. For more about her, click here...and no, little brother, no one is going to jump out of a cake!!

A little about your name... Gary Glenn Grigsby

Your mother tHE dRamA qUeeN gave your middle name to you because of this man! This cover is from 1962- your year,GG...

P.S. Don't feel bad. My name came from a romance novel her Aunt was reading, and then of course, the first name was dropped from my life... somewhat.

Here's a NASA bio link on John Glenn

46years old!! Whoo hoo!

My

Ro.

Bathing Beauty @ Lake Allen Henry

Back a little later, Bro. Got a few to cut...

Are you with us?

Hillary the *B (for Billary) - She's all about "The Little Guy!"

Hillary the *B (for Billary) - She's all about "The Little Guy!"

Columnist Michelle Malkin is Grateful to be an American. Michelle Obama is not.

Michelle Malkin - NRO - National Review Online

February 20, 2008

2 Michelles, 2 Americas - Shame vs. pride.

By Michelle Malkin

Like Michelle Obama, I am a “woman of color.” Like Michelle Obama, I am a working mother of two young children. Like Michelle Obama, I am a member of the 13th generation of Americans born since the founding of our great nation.

Unlike Michelle Obama, I can’t keep track of the number of times I’ve been proud — really proud — of my country since I was born and privileged to live in it.

At a speech in Milwaukee this week on behalf of her husband’s Democratic presidential campaign, Mrs. Obama remarked, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Mrs. Obama’s statement was met with warm applause from other Barack supporters who have apparently also been devoid of pride in their country for their adult lifetimes. Or maybe it was just a Pavlovian response to the word “change.” What a sad, empty, narcissistic, ungrateful, unthinking lot.

I’m just seven years younger than Mrs. Obama. We’ve grown up and lived in the same era. And yet, her self-absorbed attitude is completely foreign to me. What planet is she living on? Since when was now the only time the American people have ever been “hungry for change”? Michelle, ma belle, Barack is not the center of the universe. Newsflash: The Obamas did not invent “change” any more than Hillary invented “leadership” or John McCain invented “straight talk.”

We were both adults when the Berlin Wall fell, Michelle. That was earth-shattering change.

We’ve lived through two decades’ worth of peaceful, if contentious, election cycles under the rule of law, which have brought about “change” and upheaval, both good and bad.

We were adults through several launches of the space shuttle, in case you were snoozing. And as adults, we’ve witnessed and benefited from dizzyingly rapid advances in technology, communications, science, and medicine pioneered by American entrepreneurs who yearned to change the world and succeeded. You want “change?” Go ask the patients whose lives have been improved and extended by American pharmaceutical companies that have flourished under the best economic system in the world.

If American ingenuity, a robust constitutional republic, and the fall of communism don’t do it for you, hon, then how about American heroism and sacrifice?

How about every Memorial Day? Every Veterans Day? Every Independence Day? Every Medal of Honor ceremony? Has she never attended a welcome-home ceremony for the troops?

For me, there’s the thrill of the Blue Angels roaring over cloudless skies. And the somber awe felt amid the hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona at the Pearl Harbor memorial.

Every naturalization ceremony I’ve attended, where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia — including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors — my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches, and Salvation Army and Red Cross offices to volunteer.

How about American resilience? Does that not make you proud? Only a heart of stone could be unmoved by the strength, valor, and determination displayed in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., on September 11, 2001.

I believe it was Michael Kinsley who quipped that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. In this case, it’s what happens when an elite Democratic politician’s wife says what a significant portion of the party’s base really believes to be the truth: America is more a source of shame than pride.

Michelle Obama has achieved enormous professional success, political influence, and personal acclaim in America. Ivy League-educated, she’s been lauded by Essence magazine as one of the 25 World’s Most Inspiring Women; by Vanity Fair as one of the ten World’s Best-Dressed Women; and named one of “The Harvard 100” most influential alumni. She has had an amazingly blessed life. But you wouldn’t know it from her campaign rhetoric and her griping about her and her husband’s student loans.

For years, we’ve heard liberals get offended at any challenge to their patriotism. And so they are again aggrieved and rising to explain away Mrs. Obama’s remarks.

Like Lady Macbeth, Lady Michelle and her defenders protest too much.

— Michelle Malkin is author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Democrat Presidential Poker

Will Hillary Clinton fold?

THE EAGLE IS READY

THE EAGLE IS READY

Hillary the Movie

The link below will take you to the latest and greatest HORROR movie. Check it out!
http://www.hillarythemovie.com/trailer.html

Ray in Okinawa

Just thinkin'....

Hello everybody!

My hubby is on vacation this week, so I’m going to vacation with him some.

Check back after the 20th of February for further posts from myself or Virgie Bell. Meanwhile, others may or may not post, but anyway, don’t forget to have a wonderful
Sweetheart’s Day and be sure to ply your Valentine with tons of lovely baubles and dark chocolates!

Semper Fi,
De’on

Title It! Virgie Bell's Choice

Another Topper! Scroll down for current posts. (After you've played, of course!) Winning Title Goes Here

***

Come on everybody, play! (And the fold in the photo is not part of the subject to study—I just didn’t want the photo chopped in half!)

Anyway, COME UP WITH A TITLE you think I’ll choose as the best. If you win, you get to pick the next photo and judge the best title.

DEADLINE: Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 10:00 PM MST (It seems a few are missing the 8:00 deadline, so I’m working with you here!)

Winner will be announced within 24 hours of expiration of said deadline. Declared winner has 3 days to email photo to De’on Miller.

Good Luck!

++And Greg, once again, you’ve displayed that even though your titles are well, iffy at best, your judgment is quite sound. I thank you for the honor of winning. And may I further add, it’s about time! ha… -your favorite mother-in-law-

Just another day...

Virgie Bell's View: Rush and (yawn!) naptime

Seems Rush Limbaugh has a problem with the frontrunner of the Republican Party in that he says the candidate is too liberal. Well, I for one, have never worshiped at the shrine of old Rush. He is a big windbag and always has been. He has been vastly overrated as the voice of the Republican Party. The guys in my family listen to him and seem to feel he is right about everything that comes out of his mouth.

One time Jerry came in a few years ago to tell me that I was misinformed because I wasn't being given access to the right reading material. What? If I read anymore and a wider variety, I would have to be fluent in about a dozen languages. But I can match old Rush any day of the week. All he has are his opinions, which are based upon his personal biases just like me and for that matter just like you.

Sure, the economy is a mess right now. By the time the elected president is sworn into office, it will be but a memory. The Great Depression was a terrible time and even though President Roosevelt did his best, he couldn't pull us out of it. World War 2 pulled us out of it. The USA swung into high gear and we pulled together.

The American people are a special breed. We have always had recessions and we always will but that has always been so. I asked my history teacher when I was in high school what a recession is and he explained thusly: When you stand in a line with a bushel basket full of money that will buy a loaf of bread, but by the time your turn comes, you need two bushels of money in order to buy it. I remember when a Ship and Shore blouse cost $4.99 and now it is a bargain at around twenty bucks. I remember paying 25 cents a pound for hamburger meat and now it will run you close to $4.00 per pound and it is not even the same quality as what I could buy in those good old days. Harry Truman said that if you lose your job, that is a recession, if I lose mine, that is a depression. It is not the cost that is hurting the American public; it is buying into the credit fallacy that is killing us. When our children feel that they have to have everything just as good as mom and dad and right this minute, then we are in trouble.

My mom and dad worked to pay off a little house and usually a mobile home at that. The value was in the little bit of land it was on and if the mobile home depreciated out it still kept out the rain and cold and heat. It made a down payment on the next home and lot and then we added on to this. Our kids have a different mind set. Got to have nice cars, in fact, two, because the wife must work also. My great grandson has actually made fun of Jerry's old work car. He bought it new and that was before we married. Truly it is a rusty thing and I am sure the neighbors would love it to not be in this neighborhood, but we live on a silk stocking row and we have improved the house and yard. Something that is called equity. Will Rogers said, buy land because they are not making anymore of it. He was right as it turns out. Jerry’s little rust bucket will take us from one coast to the other and even though we look like the Beverly Hillbillies, it will still get us from point A to point B and doesn’t use much gas. If I want to impress others, and I do sometimes, I just climb into one of my kids cars and can look down at someone else for a change. It is all just a mindset anyway.

When I lived in Sudan, Texas, we mothers took turns carrying our children to school a week at a time, not for the sake of economy, but just so we could enjoy that extra cup of coffee before we started to sort the laundry and go to the laundry and come home and hang them out. I loved to hang out clothes at that time and resisted a dryer for the longest time, because I knew I would take the easy way out. Sure enough I did that. So I will close for now and go put a load in the washer and dryer before I lay down for a little nap.

Feel free to listen to old Rush all you want...me, I will take the simple life over that windbag’s big bank account, but I still will always miss the smell of the fresh sheets that have been on the line and dried in the fresh air. I can then recall how my mother’s sheets smelled every Monday night when I snuggled up to my little sister and when hamburger meat was 25 cents a pound.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Get back van Gogh! ( and other ear surgeries... :)

Hi!

Well, it’s been, shall we say, a little tight around here.

McCain is ahead! Yea! That’s a good thing. Greg will vote for him because he’s the Republican candidate. He, like most Republicans, appreciates McCain’s service but as I’ve said, my husband is super conservative and that comes from the womb, I suppose. It’s like his ears or nose. It would take surgery to change these and I suppose that’s okay.

I’m Republican and conservative, but I’ve not always been that. I changed my registration after the Clinton’s began to humiliate all of us all the further as they moved from the White House; computers crashed, crystal broken or missing. This is when I got off the boat, and conservative values are my values. But even all the stink during the Lewinsky scandals ended up making me feel sorry for Clinton and mad at all the Ken Starr stuff. Yes, I’m wimpy and weak. But I do hope McCain wins.

I think Obama is very charismatic and handsome. I’m not as taken with him as the lady behind him during his speech on Super Tuesday (my gosh, get a grip, lady!) but charisma and handsome and talk of peace and change, change and more change is not the leader for me during the War on Terror. Give me a little bit ugly and a whole lot of Canned Heat, a little bit of anger for our troops and attacks on them. I voted for the war and never voted against it (!) The war has crushed me deeply, but I do support its higher cause and refuse to jump ship on it. We’ve come a long way I think. It breaks my heart for the troops who suffer from this war. So much. And even then, I’m still willing to risk it.

I have several friends with differing views. Even members in my family hold differing views. I receive e-mails from friends who surely must assume I feel exactly the same as they do. I don’t, but I would never risk losing a friend over this election.

The Bible tells us to pray for our leaders and it also says that God Himself puts ALL rulers in place. I do my part as far as voting and praying, and the rest, I’ll leave to the man upstairs.

Well, that’s probably my one big political statement, so, I’ll just take a moment to apologize for my absence from the blog of late. I’m behind on everything. I’ve been working on my book and though I try not to be, I am obsessive about most things. Right now, it’s the book, so forgive me. I’ve been blogging so long, it took a little bit to get back into the format of writing in a more formal way as far as Point of View and tabs and double spaces. Also, it’s been hard for me to keep from inserting links! How easy would that be and boy, would it cut down on the exposition of things, but, I am back into it and thoroughly happy about that!

In other news, it’s a little tight here with our Famous Bob Knight, AKA “The General” leaving Texas Tech. Not sure what all has happened there. ESPN had little about it last night, but I know Knight has had problems with some of the big guys there all along, so no doubt, it’s probably time for Knight to move on. He’s a staunch Conservative and even at Texas Tech, those over him are probably a little less so—to say the least. So, good luck Bob Knight! We purchased tickets for me, Greg, Kayla, and two of her friends. That’s where we’ll be just a few days from now, so… don’t know that future tickets will be bought. My husband is sure to fill me in when he gets home.

Mom, Karen and I are married to truck drivers. There is nothing quite like it. 12 hours of Talk Radio. I learn more than I ever cared about. Greg doesn’t read the blog much, so… ha!

And do we think we’ve had a bad day? Well, here’s another link to prove it can get worse and to snuff that “itchy link-me” feeling I’ve had for a few days.

Mom: art lessons are this weekend. Prepare a canvas! I’m ready myself. Let’s see, what artsy-fartsy way am I feeling for this weekend. I’ve done snowmen until I think I am one, but I’ve done a few other things as well. Some will be finished this weekend and then I’ll share them with you. Actually, Semper Fi Mom is the only one who has asked, but I’m not shy! The one you see pictured above is the Christmas card I sent to Zach and Jess. Yes, it’s a Southwest Christmas! I was inspired by abstract that day! The card is so heavy with paint I had to use multiple stamps to mail it and I’m not certain a hunk didn’t end up missing out of it.

Oh well.

Here’s your link! Body found during Open-House

Semper Fi,
De’on

Virgie Bell's View: Presence of Mind

This is a post sent to me at 2:00 PM yesterday. Tardiness is strictly busy editor's fault.

It was just a short sound bite on the news, but it seems dear old Ted Kennedy may have cost Obama some votes. It really comes as no surprise to most of us, and as far as being useful to Hillary, the Come Back Kid is falling by the wayside too.

The turn out for voters on Super Tuesday was remarkable with more turn out than has been shown for years. The voters are really and truly sick to death of the politicians and all of the promises that are made to us and yet never fulfilled. Obama and Clinton are still running neck and neck and I really hate that fact. I wanted Hillary to be the candidate for the simple reason I feel she is beatable at least much more so than Obama.

The thing about Obama is that although he has missed 168 senatorial meetings, the only time he has been led to show an up or down vote, he has used the word present. That is how he has gotten where he is today, with the remarkable achievements of showing up and rendering neither a yes or no vote, except when called upon to cut funding for the troops. He is very much against the War on Terror and wants to pull the troops out of the Middle East. Now I have a big issue with that kind of mindset. Everyone else can swoon over him as if he was the Second Coming, but not me. Fund our military or get off the platform campaigning for their Commander in Chief. You have no right to say either yea or nay as far as I am concerned. The carnage of that September day will forever be stamped on my brain and millions of others just like me. I will never forget and I will never forgive.

There is still much being said about the use of water boarding and I want to make myself clear on that little issue. It scares them. Well big BOO HOO. Scaring someone is now considered cruel and unusual punishment. I think of those three thousand souls caught up in the Twin Towers, I see those poor souls jumping from windows to their death instead of being consumed by fire. Scared the holy hell out of them is all I can say. Read the firsthand accounts of those who survived. How about the blind man coming down the stairway with his Seeing Eye dog? Think he wasn't scared? Think the obedient dog was not scared? Ever watch mans best friend when the fire crackers go off on the July 4th? Multiply that by three thousand. Given a choice, the victims of that horrible day would have begged for water boarding.

McCain is against torture but scaring is not torture. The feeling that you are drowning is scary and if it saves one American life, why do we even care? Perhaps we should just cut off heads as do the terrorists, and on camera. That scares me. The latest recruits for Bin Laden use children as young as 6 years old. They will be sent into the enemies’ camp (into us) as human bombs. It was a favorite trick of the Japanese during World War 2 to take babies and lay them out on the ground for our troops who were dug-in to listen to while they waited for the next attack, knowing these helpless babies were the innocent victims. I talked with an old War Horse Marine who was there and it was his worst nightmare. The thing about war is that it just has two outcomes. Win or lose. Oh, you can surrender in something called ‘peace with honor’ as did old tricky Dick, but really, if you are going to be in war, you need to win the darn thing, and if you are attacked as we were on 9/11 while we were giving Peace A Chance, you are in one before you even know it. Peaceniks make me sick, and really they always have. Our military gives their life’s blood so they can march and scream their heads off and do so unmolested.

I will also voice another complaint about illegal immigration. Once I saw flags from other countries as they demanded rights they are not entitled to they lost me. This is America; we have our own flag and long may it wave. Yesterday I read in the paper where some wise old soul said if we would take the money we will spend on the fence trying to seal the border and send it to Mexico, that the illegals will go flooding back home. Billions of dollars—and send it to old Mexico? We have our own goofy government to pay for. So yeah, I am for McCain. I want to win this war that was declared on us. Just like my parents wanted to win when we were bombed in Pearl Harbor. Yes, the war is costing us no telling how much money. Wars just do. It goes with the very essence of war. We did not start this war and I feel that John McCain has been battle-tested to have his place as the Commander-In-Chief. I love my country and I love my freedom to write this post, so excuse me if I don't get all weepy while someone feels they are drowning. After we lost Aaron, I felt that I was drowning many times, but it was tears. Just to write about it, makes me feel that same thing again. So no, I am not for Obama. I am Virgie Bell...PRESENT. How stupid to use taxpayer money and only vote present. Might as well stay home for all the good you do...present! How silly.

SUPPORT OUT TROOPS!

Wednesday Hero

This week's hero is a good one. Robert Cone is the second Cousin of Wednesday Hero's partner in crime, Greta.


Robert S. Cone
85 years old from Delray Beach, Florida
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division


Surrounded by family, feted by a U.S. congressman and a Veterans of Foreign Wars color guard, one of the few surviving members of the "Filthy Thirteen" was honored on October 8, 2006 in a backyard on Massapoag Avenue.

Robert S. Cone, 85, now of Delray Beach, Fla., finally received the 13 military medals he was due for his service on D-Day during World War II, including the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, POW medal and Presidential Unit Citation.

"To tell you the truth, I never expected it. I'm very honored to get it and really feel good about it," Cone said.

"He's finding it an honor, and he's a little embarrassed, to be honest," said Cone's son, Edward R. Cone, 45, who hosted the family barbecue that included a visit from U.S. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch.

Only a few members remain of the 101st Airborne Division's famed "Filthy Thirteen," an elite parachute and demolition unit that volunteered for a suicide mission on June 5, 1944, the eve of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The Filthy Thirteen, who shared a Quonset Hut in England, were a group of "pretty bad boys," Edward Cone said, renowned for hard-living and fierce fighting. They are believed to be the inspiration for the 1967 movie "The Dirty Dozen," although none of the Filthy Thirteen was a convict.

The unit's mission was to parachute behind enemy lines on the night before D-Day to blow up bridges and impede the Nazis.

Many were killed on the drop. The survivors found it difficult to reunite on the ground because the pilots had panicked when the Germans opened fire.

Cone said he spent two days in a hedgerow battle and was shot in the right arm. When he escaped to a French farmhouse, the owner turned him over to the Nazis and he became a prisoner of war.

His unit and his family thought he was dead. His mother, in Roxbury, received a telegram from the War Department saying he had been killed in action.

Cone spent 11 months in three POW camps in Germany before being liberated by the Russians near the Polish border. He fought alongside the Russians as they made their escape, his son said.

Cone walked to freedom through Poland, Russia and Romania, journeyed by ship to Egypt and was eventually flow to Italy, finally making his way home.

All the medal ceremonies had taken place without him.

Cone married Ida, now his wife of 61 years; became a postal worker and plumber; raised three children in Hull; and spoke very little about the war, Edward Cone said.

About four years ago, Edward Cone decided to find out whether any of his father's Army colleagues were still alive.

He found the Filthy Thirteen's leader, Jake McNiece, in Oklahoma, and put his father in touch by telephone. Their conversation was recorded by the BBC and played on the anniversary of D-Day.

Later, the History Channel filmed its own segment on the pair, which still airs, Edward Cone said.

The group reunited in Taccoa, Ga., the home of their jump school.

"My Dad and I drove from here to Georgia. I heard everything on that trip," Edward Cone said. "Three were alive from the unit. They talked and drank and told stories for days."

Three years ago, McNiece published a book, "The Filthy Thirteen: From the Dustbowl to Hitler's Eagle's Nest: The 101st Airborne's Most Legendary Squad of Combat Paratroopers."

It was McNiece who mentioned that Cone was due a few medals. Edward Cone and his fiance, Kate Guthrie of Leominster, who works at the Statehouse, gathered documentation and contacted Lynch.

The result was the Sunday party, also attended by Cone's daughters, Ronna Townsend of Monroe Township, N.J., and Natalie Gaudet of Hampton, N.H., and most of his seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Cone admits he never talked much about the war before.

"I really didn't," Cone said. "But they insisted I tell the grandchildren and the great grandchildren. So I talk to them. I tell them stories. I tell them true stories. They all enjoy it."

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

'You Shall Know'- God Calling

Walk with Me. I will teach you. Listen to Me and I will speak. Continue to meet Me, in spite of all opposition and every obstacle, in spite of the days when you may hear no voice, and there may come no intimate heart-to-heart telling.

As you persist in this, and make a life-habit of it, in many marvelous ways I will reveal My will to you. You shall have more sure knowing of both the present and the future. But that will be only the reward of the regular coming to meet Me.

Life is a school. There are many teachers. Not to everyone do I come personally. Believe literally that the problems and difficulties of your lives can be explained by Me more clearly and effectually than by any other.

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." John 7:17

blessings to you and yours this day and always ...

Virgie Bell's View: The War, the war, the war!

To make myself perfectly clear on how I stand as far as the Democratic candidates are concerned, let me stress that I hope neither Obama nor Hillary become president of my country. Realistically, I have to deal with the fact that there will be one that is in the final run for the White House and since that is the case I would hope that one would be Bill Clinton's little wife with her vast knowledge of how to stand by your man no matter how much he may abuse the sanctity of marriage. She is a documented cuckold in front of the whole world and these two have shown the world that they have nary a care about the safety of the United States of America.

As I have stated over and over again, my concern is to fight the War on Terror and to win that, doing whatever it takes. It is laughable to me that we still hear talk of diplomacy and dialog as if the Islamic Extremists even care. Whoopi Goldberg said at one time that it would be one on one to talk our way out of this war and that was the only way. I said at the time "Dear Whoopi, you go first." On second thought, perhaps you should send the singer who recently divorced Bobby Brown. Cannot think of her name, but Bin Laden thinks she is the sexiest woman on the planet, which of course no one has ever been under the illusion that Whoopi was ever anything but, well Whoopi. Nuff said.

Barack Obama is a blank sheet of paper as far as anyone can tell. Hidden as it were, in what and who he really is or what he stands for. He hasn't made many mistakes and certainly has not made any advances as far as I can tell. He popped-up on the world stage as the Senator of Illinois and as far as his personal life and beliefs, he has written a couple of tear-jerkers that have been published as non-fiction. I don't pay much attention to those kinds of books. They are slanted to the extreme. They are self-serving and most often full of statements that have nothing to do the reality of that person’s life or real intentions. Check out Ted Kennedy's heroic effort to save the little campaign worker who died at the bottom of Chappaquiddick while he made dive after dive risking his life in order to save her. After the-Kennedy-save-the-Kennedy-machine got in full gear, it was almost to the point that I felt sorry for him to have been put into such a hazardous situation. I even worried about his neck brace. Did him hurt his widdle self, that great big hero. He came out later as a candidate for President and almost had to dodge the tomatoes and heads of lettuce that were thrown at him at this announcement.

King of slap-stick comedy is our Ted Kennedy. Elder statesmen? My hind-leg, as my mother used to say. Old gaseous windbag is more like it. I loved his older brothers, but I detest old Ted. As I said, he would not get elected dog-catcher outside his own state. When Ted Kennedy leads the parade, I stay home. Simple as that. I also do not pay much attention to Rush Limbaugh. Actually, I am pretty much a free thinker. The 'G' man was my first choice ,and now McCain is my choice. Simple, really, to come to this conclusion.

I watched with the rest of the world as Giuliani plowed into saving lives and did so tirelessly after 9/11. He proved his mettle, so to speak, and that is what counts to me. The thing with Obama that I do not like is him claiming to be against the war that was declared on us that September Day. If my country is attacked, my country will not surrender without a mighty effort to save us here in the USA. That has been proven over and over again with the precious blood spilled by our beloved military. The most beautiful boy with the most beautiful smile and a ton of personality gave his life for this cause. My grandson, Lance Corporal Aaron Cole Austin.

I don't care what party, race or gender a candidate may be. I want a warrior who will fight to the finish and give his life for my freedom. John McCain may be a little on the liberal side. He may even be friends and agree with a few of the Democratic numbskulls in DC. He spent seven years in Hanoi as a POW. He was even offered by the Viet Cong a release as a way for them to further propaganda. He refused his freedom in order stay with the other Prisoners of War. A hero...a real Hero. He said he would follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell to track him down. So Whoopi can definitely go first in the one on one dialog. I will vote for the man who survived in the hell holes of Vietnam as a tortured and beaten man and one who did not turn his back on his country or my country. As I said Whoopi...you go first and may I add that when you go; Please stay.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Virgie Bell's View: Uncrossed Lines

Surely everyone remembers Berkeley. You know that city by the bay. The home of the University of California and several preparatory schools. Here in the desert country, our preparatory schools are Future Homemakers and Future Farmers of America. If you are from San Francisco area you may want to get up off the floor and stop your hysterical laughter. I agree in this atmosphere being so far removed from the reality show that is taught at the University of California, or for that matter, many other institutions of higher learning across the country, but if you want to be Way Cool Dude then the city by the bay wherein you left your heart is the place to be. They turned out such luminaries as Taliban Johnny Walker, the Poster Child for Bin Laden. This is the beloved hometown of Prissy Pelosi where she gave birth to her five children. It is headquarters to that sweet little click full of grown men who want to take little boys twelve and over the joy of being a grown man’s little lover.

Taliban Johnny Walker was in his teens when his dad just gave up on having a marriage and took his lover and they jumped out of the closet together holding hands. I have been to this area of California and they have all kinds of religious organizations. I failed to get which denomination one church was but I do recall the name of the Reverend. It was displayed proudly outside in bold letters. The Rev. F--k. You fill in the blanks.

Here in the backward part of the country that just would not go. Might as well be a Nazi and try to be accepted by polite society. Here we have recruiters from every branch of the military, and we welcome them. We know they are all that stands between us and the Islamic Extremists who want us all dead.

Birth place of the true hippy movement. My sister and I were there for a visit and the visit was indeed an eye opener. Dirty, tattered, drug addicts enjoying the free love movement like no other place in the world. Cool...peace...brother. Make Love. Not war. Give Peace A Chance. So we did that. We gave peace a chance with the same candidates in the White House that are doing their best to get back in. Hillary wants to give a million dollars to a Fund for Woodstock. She was refused because some of them in that fair city happened to remember that the FFA and FHA were voters.

We are doing our best to forget this shameful part of history that gave us Charles Manson and the PLO. We pulled out of Vietnam and gave a platform for the John Kerry’s and the Socialist Couple of America Bill and Hillary Clinton, so here we are. Our Marine Recruiters are not allowed at Berkeley but don't get too bent out of shape, Recruiters are not welcome at some of the Ivy Leagues in the eastern part of the USA. No one can out do Warren Churchill. That professor from Colorado. There really is nothing we can do to overcome the one time that we as a nation surrendered to the enemy within. I am so glad my parents were of the generation that would kick someone’s ass over the moon before they would have put up with that stuff. Boundaries are wonderful.

The most wonderful thing to behold is the line you will not cross. The one that separates you from those who know no boundaries and respect no rules. Those like Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mussolini. The list is endless. It stretches back to the beginning of time and it is the infinitely in eternity. The children of those men of old, men of renown. They await you in the depth of hell. The Reverend F--k will welcome you and they will not allow the Marines to try to recruit there. Just the same as there at Berkeley. They are so ignorant and I hate them.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Title It! Greg's Choice!

Ever a light in the darkness shines

###

VB, you are the winner! Think of a picture! And sorry about your post. I will get it up tomorrow. This is the first time I've been on the computer since this morning. I've been with my sister today. She is the one who put her title up late. But that's okay. She's been busy! -dm

Come up with a title you think Greg will recognize as true genius, and place it in the comment section. If you win, you get to select the next photo and winner.

Everyone is invited, encouraged and ramrod-ed into playing if at all possible.

Deadline is Saturday, Feb. 2, 2008 at 8:00 PM MST

ONE Title submission per person only, even if you reside in Japan.

Declared winner has 3 days to submit their choice of photo to the email address listed in De'on Miller's profile.

Good Luck!

Virgie Bell's View: Relics and Wraps

Left-Wing Witch - Ms. Susan Sarandon

My Time magazine arrived yesterday and as usual, I’m almost to the point of requesting the thing be delivered in a plain brown wrapper, however, I’m certainly glad I received this issue which contained the wisdom of the ever wise and powerful Ms. Susan Sarandon. I view her insight into world affairs and politics as the most uninformed woman on the planet. Why is it that our typical Hollywood women want to convey just how really out of touch they seem to be? She is the liberals liberal and she is typical of her fellow actresses. Whoops...I mean actors. Somewhere along the way it became politically incorrect to call a female in the business of make-believe an actress. They are actors. Male, young, old, female, staring in a role or bit player. Actors everyone and don't you forget it. The reason behind this escapes me just as it escapes me why I still keep on keeping on with my very liberal magazine.

When I was in high school English class there in Amherst, Texas, I was taught there was a key word which identified the marriage state of a female person. Miss: unmarried. Mrs. was married. I did not know a thing about Ms. and I don't think anyone else did either. I will say this for the lessons we all learn in this education called life. You never can get it right. One little thing I learned is the saying" Ain't, ain't in the dictionary". Well now it is. No matter hard we try to keep up, knowledge can still outrun the best of us. Who decides these things is another little thing I seem to miss (no pun intended).

At any rate, I now hold on my lap one-half of my World Book Dictionary. This is from somewhere in the 60's or so. It has no mention of Ms. ms (no period) means millisecond, whereas MS Ms or ms (no period) means manuscript. My American Century dictionary does contain the title Ms. which has the correct usage as either married or unmarried. So the most I learned from Ms. Sarandon is that she and Tim Robbins are married. This is news to me also. Last I heard, they were afraid that the marriage on paper would ruin the relationship that was written on the wind and destined for greatness. Is this confusing or what?

When I was a child at school in Fieldton, Texas, when I needed to look up a word, I had to go to a bookstand that held the gigantic dictionary. It was too large for a little girl to be able to haul around. Do not throw those old reference books away. You can now carry the corrected dictionary in your backpack right along with your notebook, English book, geography book and an apple for the teacher. one may also substitute the apple for a gun or a switch-blade knife. This dear reader is progress. It absolutely amazes me. I was at one time acknowledged as being far above my grade level in English and Literature. Now I run to and fro, trying to find out if Ms. is a real word or title. I think maybe that old hero, John Kerry, is the one who updates these things. I was for it before I was against it. Close enough I guess. Duh! But the real wonder of the week was not in the Time Magazine. It was Kate Hudson.

I think Kate lives in NM. She is the daughter of Goldie Hawn and came into her own a few years ago. Her new movie with Matthew McConahay is something that she feels (shudder, shudder) will be a part of history for her children to remember (she in a string bikini while Matthew was fully clothed). Dear little Kate was on the cover of some major magazine a few years ago completely nude. I read the article wherein she said they all went around the house naked all the time. They were taught not to be ashamed of their bodies. I used to play rough and tumble with my brothers back when girls wore dresses and my dad would say to me, “Get your dress down Sis, I can see your panties.” The moral of this post is that like my computer, I am a dinosaur and to tell the truth, more than a little ashamed of my body. I I still do not use the word ain't and as far as Ms. Sarandon and Ms. Hudson are concerned they both sound like twiddle-dee and twiddle-dum. Blah.

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Meanwhile....

'God's Basic Training' site is down. Click here for the article on Military.com

Virgie Bell's View: Puzzles

What an inhumane thing to do to use two mentally retarded girls fitted out with bombs as the latest suicide bombers. The fact that it was a pet store makes it even more horrible. Customers looking for pets are the targets. What on earth is the matter with these monsters? Who among the victims was the threat? This, folks, is just about as bad as it gets.

There was a mother here in the USA who put her baby in a micro-wave oven, turned it on and walked out the door. A man here in my country kills his baby and dumps it beside the road. The face of evil is too good for them. How puzzling is the Leviathan that God mentions in the book of Job. It is the one thing in the Bible that has been kept a secret all though out the ages. But here it is, right before our eyes. Give it a name. I challenge you. You can't because it is unspeakable. We can see it and read of it but can't lay a name to it.

One of the reasons that I believe in heaven is that I do so fully believe in hell. I cannot believe that my dust will become a part of their dust. Regardless of what you believe about God, Jesus is an historical fact that cannot be dismissed. A fact is something that agrees with the evidences. The crucifixion really did happen. His blood poured out on the dust below the cross. Don't tell me his blood is mixed with that of the Leviathan. His blood contained DNA. That is his earthly presence and it is left here forever. Right here is the chemical equation that will stand forever unsolved, yet we all know the answer. When the atom was split, the negative power and the positive power were separated. The result or the summary, the answer if you will, is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You cannot connect the dots, but you certainly can see the answer. You know what it is going to take to win the War on Terror. That is the power of God.

Leviathan is expressed in the cyclopedic index of my Bible as unknown god. Within scripture it is referred to as THE UNKNOWN GOD. The same, yet vastly different. I looked it up in the Greek and it is just that...god or God. Spell Check cannot find the error but you can see the error on this post. You can see it with your eyes. I think sometimes we really do come as a child and that is the only way we can. I know that the Bible is numerically correct but I cannot do the math. I do know that if it is the written word I can read it and understand it as a child. King of the Jews or KING OF THE JEWS. Spell check will correct the word jew to the correct Jew. Something written on the air and I can look at it today. For lack of a better term call it the truth or the facts, that which agrees with the evidence.

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Others called Home

My dearest in the world readers,

Last night we learned that Flag Gazer as well as others have recently lost warriors in the battle we fight for our lives to be free from terror. It is a forever battle, I fear, but with brave men and women to answer the call, others of us can relax, blog, read, write, discuss or argue politics. They give us so much that we may never even take the time to think about. Please click here to visit the tribute Flag Gazer has up for someone she held very close to her heart. You will be able to look and read about another brave and spiritual warrior that God has called home to be near our own and others like them. This family will desperately need our prayers (as you all know) and it's important to put faces with the names if at all possible. GOD BLESS AMERICA. KEEP HER STRONG AND KEEP HER GOLD STAR FAMILIES!

Late Night Losers

uuummmhhh

mmmhhh........

Please tell me there's not anyone at Berkeley we really want for the CORPS, is there?

Let CODE PINK keep them and their little parking spot.

Click on the pink above if you feel the need for stomach cramps.

Mach 5 by 2020!

U.S. Navy

Jan. 28: A slug hits a target after being fired from an electromagnetic railgun at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va.

DAHLGREN, Va. — A futuristic weapon getting a trial run by the Navy demonstrated its destructive power at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren.

In the demonstration Thursday, engineers fired the electromagnetic railgun at what they said was a record power level: 10 megajoules.

The previous railgun power-use record was about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy.

• Click here to watch video of a railgun being fired.

Railguns use electromagnetic energy to launch projectiles long distances — more than 200 nautical miles.

Because the railgun uses electricity and not gunpowder to fire projectiles, it eliminates the possibility of explosions on ships.

The Navy hopes the railgun will eventually replace the standard 5-inch gun on its ships. The weapon isn't expected to be deployed until at least 2020.

[A joule is defined as the energy needed to produce one watt of electricity for one second.

The railgun tested Thursday actually has a capacity of 32 megajoules, but the Navy is slowly building up the energy level in a series of tests.

That's a lot of power, but with a new series of electrically-powered ships coming on line, the Navy figures generating capacity will not be a problem.

According to the Navy, the railgun, when fully developed, will be able to launch solid projectiles at Mach 5, or about 3,700 mph.]

• Click here for FOXNews.com's Patents and Innovation Center.

One-Stop Shop!

A 5-part movie from Dianne!

Click on the title below!

Charlie Wilson's War

Want to shop for hearts and candy for our troops? Click below!

Treats for Troops Valentine's Shop

God Calling

The Soul At War

"I will never give you a load greater than you can bear."

No evil can befall you, if I am with you. "Ill that He blesses is our good." Every time of being laid aside is a time of retreat into the quiet place with Me. Never fear but in that place you shall find restoration and power and joy and healing.

Plan both of your retreat days now and then - days when you live apart with Me, and arise rested and refreshed - physically, mentally, and spiritually, to carry on the work I have given to you. I will never give you a load greater than you can bear.

Love, Joy, Peace, welcome these. Let no personal feelings, no thoughts of self banish these. Singly, they are miracle-producing in a life, but together, they can command all that is needed on the physical, mental, and spiritual planes.

It is in these wonder-realm attributes all success lies. You have to see your inner lives are all they should be, and then the work is accomplished. Not in rushing and striving on the material plane, but on the battlefield of the Soul are these things won.

"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." - 1 Corinthians 10:13

blessings to you and yours this day and always ...
www.twolisteners.org

Monica Crowley gets inside the Clinton Campaign Meltdown Process

Hillary Clinton, following loss in South Carolina and Kennedy-clan endorsement of Obama

Monica Crowley, Ph.D., is a nationally syndicated radio host and television commentator. She has also written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun and The New York Post. http://www.monicamemo.com/

Fly On The Wall

January 28, 2008

Something tells me that the conversations over the last day or so at Chez Clinton went something like this (expletives cleaned up):

Sunday morning, Hillary in Tennessee, calling Bill who was Lord-knows-where. HER: "Bill, wake up you (horse's butt.) Get whoever you've got with you the (heck) outta there and listen up. We've got a huge (freakin') crisis here." HIM: "(Gosh dang it), Hillree. Do you know how (freakin') early it is?" HER: "Listen, (horse's butt). Ted Kennedy is about to endorse Obama. I cannot believe what an ungrateful (horse's butt) he is. After all of the (gosh-dang) (stuff) we've done for him! That washed-up (freakin') (horse's butt) is pulling himself out of the (freakin') bar long enough to endorse somebody ELSE?!" HIM (whispering to someone else): "I'll be right with you, baby....Don't go." HER: "BILL! Who the (freak) are you talking to?? We've got an emergency here, and all you can think about is Mr. Happy? You are unbelievable." HIM: "I'm sorry, honey. What were you saying?" HER: "Oh shut up. Just get on the horn with Kennedy and hold a (freakin') gun to his head. Show me that you're good for something besides (sleeping with) half of America."

Sunday afternoon, Bill Lord-knows-where, calling the Senior Senator from Massachusetts, the Honorable Edward M. Kennedy. BILL: "Teddy! Great to hear your voice." TED: "Mr. President." BILL: "Rootin' for the Patriots, eh? That Brady is somethin' else." TED: "Yes, he is." BILL: "Goin' to the Big Game?" TED: "No, Mr. President." BILL: "I hear ya. I'd rather watch on the big screen at home with a coupla beers myself." SILENCE. BILL: "So listen. I heard this crazy rumor that you were thinkin' about endorsing Obama. Surely you're too smart a man to fall for his BS. I know I can go back to Hillree and tell her you're on board, right?" TED: "Actually, Mr. President, I am going to announce my support for Senator Obama tomorrow." BILL: "Oh, Ted. You crack me up. Have you thought about pitching a show to Comedy Central? Seriously, how can you go for a guy who doesn't have the first clue about anything? Hillree has been around the block. She knows how Washington and the world work. There's no learning curve with her. Besides, did you know that Obama is black?" TED: "With all due respect, Mr. President, I have been deeply offended by the way you and Senator Clinton have injected race into this campaign. You have smeared a good man, a decent man, a man who reminds me a lot of my brothers---" BILL: "Oh, please. You're not falling for that old claptrap, are you?" TED: "Mr. President, I have found your treatment of Senator Obama---dismissing him as a "fairy tale," as "Jesse Jackson"---despicable." BILL: "That's rich, coming from you. You should be in prison for murder rather than kingmaking in the 2008 election." TED: "Mr. President. I'm supporting Senator Obama. End of story. And if I could offer you some advice, tone it down. Stop with the racial (stuff). And go be a semi-dignified ex-president." BILL: "I'm very disappointed in you, Ted. You'd better hope Hillree doesn't get elected. You won't know what hit you." TED: "Is that a threat?" BILL: "No, it's a promise." TED: "Is there anything else, Mr. President?" BILL: "Could you at least endorse Edwards instead?"

Monday afternoon, Hillary on the campaign trail, calling Bill, who is Lord-knows-where. HER: "Did you SEE that?! Did you just see those turncoat, son-of-a-(female dog) Kennedys endorse Obama? It looked like a (freakin') ticker tape parade." HIM: "Ted cleans up well." HER: "All of their "he's the new Camelot" (stuff) makes me want to puke. And you, you (horse's butt)! You couldn't stop it. What good are you to me? I should dump your (butt) right now." HIM: "Go ahead. Do me the favor, honey. Let's see how well you do out there without me. My guess is you'd last five minutes." HER: "Oh really? All of your (freakin') "brilliant" strategies have screwed this up beyond belief!" HIM: "I only have so much to work with, sweetheart." HER: "Now you've got Al Sharpton telling you to "shut up"---and on "The View" of all places! FIX THIS!" HIM: "I'm on it, baby. I'm on it."

Wednesday Hero

SSgt. Justing R. Whiting
27 years old from Hancock, New York
3rd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne)
January 19, 2008


Staff Sgt. Justin R. Whiting, a Special Forces medical sergeant sustained fatal wounds when his vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive devise 16 kilometers south of Mosul, Iraq.

He is survived by his mother, Estelline, of Colorado Springs, Colo., father, Randall, of Hancock, N.Y., sister, Amanda, of DuPont, Wash., and brother Nathan of Dover, Tenn.

For more information on SSgt. Justin Whiting, you can download this PDF file.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

NEWSFLASH: Hillary Clinton Bothered by "Circle Flies" in Texas

Hillary Clinton greatly bothered by "circle flies" in Texas

A Republican cowboy from Texas goes to a social function where Hillary Clinton is trying to gather more support for her nomination. Once she discovers the cowboy is a Republican, she starts to belittle him by talking in a southern drawl and single syllable words.

As she was doing that, she kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around her head. The cowboy says, "Y'all havin' some problem with them circle flies?"

She stopped talking and said, "Well yes, if that's what they're called. But I've never heard of circle flies."

"Well ma'am," the cowboy replies, "circle flies hang around ranches. They're called circle flies because they're almost always found circling around the back end of a horse."

"Oh," Hillary replies as she goes back to rambling. But, a moment later she stops and bluntly asks, "Are you calling me a horse's ass?"

"No, ma'am," the cowboy replies, "I have too much respect for citizens of New York to call their Senator a horse's ass."

"That's a good thing," she responds and begins rambling on once more.

After a long pause, the cowboy, in his best Texas drawl says, "Hard to fool them flies though!”

CoWboY uP!

Congratulations,

Senator John McCain

Virgie Bell's View: The Afternoon After

Of course I watched and listened to the last State of the Union speech by President Bush last night. I will say this for him: he has done his best to fight the fight on terror. That’s the main consideration that weighs most on me and my family. Our military has always been my hero and will always be. I think that was the reason we were all Democratic Party members to begin with. FDR influenced us and without him behind our forces, who knows what would have happened. JFK only increased my loyalty, but after that it seems to have spiraled downward and did so at an alarming rate. When Desert Storm and Desert Shield happened, I was solidly behind Bush the elder, but it was Bill Clinton who finished me off on the Democratic Party. He was such a fake and such a liar, but it was not until his final hours that I gave up on the party and decided that my loyalty to my country would be first.

I know it looks bad for Giuliani, and I have regret for that now. He was a proven leader during 9/11 and if Clinton had been taking care of business, I feel the attack would never have occurred to start with. He did nothing with the first attack on the World Trade Center and ignored the USS Cole. The only effort he expended was to send a Scud Missile to an unpopulated place which destroyed some sand dunes and scared some camels. He turned down Bin Laden when he was offered to us on a silver platter by the Saudi Government. I am just about sick to death of the Clintons.

I do not want Obama because he said he was against this war to begin with. That is an absolutely insane remark, and after 9/11!! By all accounts, he looks to be the Democratic contender we’ll be stuck with, especially with Iran’s leader stating that the goal of that country was to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and all Christians along with it. So now we are sitting ducks for this insane man and someone had better take care to do something first or we will be looking at a nuclear holocaust and the world will be changed forever. Civilization will be destroyed forever and I do wish my fellow countrymen would wake up to that fact. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was just a fire cracker compared to what we are facing. I think it will eventually happen no matter what but I hope it won’t be in my lifetime or in the lifetime of my family.

Bin Laden was betting that we would not strike back after 9/11 and told all the terrorists that we would not. He counted on someone like Bill Clinton and why not? Bill Clinton was a proven failure as far as defending us. I am a Texan by birth and I can tell you that is not something any Texan would sit still for. People made fun of our President because he said something to the effect of the old saying "Wanted Dead or Alive" and if ever anything was truth, that was it. Instead, we had someone like John Kerry who could not do anything but run our military down and Goofy-Ass Gore who had his own paid protector as he took pictures in Vietnam, and called that active duty. I am sick of that kind of stuff. So it does look like we might have John McCain as the Republican candidate. He said he would follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell, and that, dear reader is the number one issue. Otherwise, nothing else will count.

As far as the economy is concerned, it is the fault of the lenders and the borrowers. The Bible says to be neither one. At one time, as a single woman, making my own living, I had no credit cards and just a couple of charge accounts and those nearly did me in. Be careful, very careful what you charge. Credit is something that has doomed too many for us to ignore the swift downfall that it can cause. Jerry and I have nothing new to our name including cars, televisions, etc. We also do not owe one dime to anyone anywhere. This, dear reader is true happiness.

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Virgie Bell's View: Serving up heads....

I thought my life had gone into a nose dive once again. I had been reading a book that was not holding the usual fascination for me. Perhaps because it is a story revolving around Venice and Denmark, and it could be that I don't know enough about that part of the world to relate. It turns out that De'on bought me a paperback for a "sick present"—a tradition in this family. You might skip Christmas or birthdays with this group, but hell hath no fury like if you miss a sick present. My Mom was always right there with a sick present. Then just the other day De'on brought me a used book by Michael Creighton and I zipped through both of these giftys. One concerned World War 2 and the other was about the medical establishment. I loved the subjects and loved the books. Finished the Creighton book last night. Thank you, De'on.

Well, Ted Kennedy just endorsed Obama for President and the crowd is going wild. Caroline Kennedy is joining in the endorsement. Well big Whoo Whee! It has about the same effect that Bill lends to Hillary's, the buddies of Hugo Chavez, and those Hollywood loons. I would like to caution all those who read this post to very carefully keep in mind our vital interest in the Middle East. Let no one fool you; they are the number one issue. The War on Terror is the most important issue we have. It always has been and has never ceased to be. I am pretty much in the know of World War 2; I know little about World War 1, a little bit about the Civil War, Korea, Vietnam and the list goes on.

The Bible states clearly that there will be wars and rumors of wars until the very end of time. We are really to pay no attention to those who shout peace, peace when there is no peace. Well the Democratic candidates are all shouting peace and I sure don't see any of that anywhere in this old world. Here is another little tidbit to ponder about the Middle East: its vast supply of oil. An oil rich area is and has always been a target area for the rest of the world. It is now and it will be in the future. For us to believe that we can farm our way out of it is an illusion and nothing more. In the first place, we are facing a crisis with the water situation the world over. Of course there is no infinite supply of fossil fuels.

China and Russia have joined with Iran in helping to establish that country as a nuclear power. Now Greg sees McCain as too much of a liberal for his taste. I did not like McCain’s take on illegal immigration, but then I was completely put-out with the President on it too. A grassroots movement with 80% of the American population coming against them on this put a stop, or rather slowed down, this political suicide movement. We want closed, sealed, and secure borders and we want the flow of immigration to be where those that obey the laws of our immigration system become legal citizens.

A Suburban vehicle was pulled over because of missing lights and low and behold, there were 14 illegal immigrants on their way to the East Coast. One was wanted for murder here in the USA. How many of the 500 trucks from Old Mexico hold Illegals and are traveling our highways and byways with government approval? We are the voters and our vote is the life’s blood of the politician. We need to understand also that there truly is a block of voters comprised of whites, blacks, and Latino’s. None of these hold a majority in numbers anymore. Those who are the concerned will be right in the voting booth and nothing will stop them. Those who are concerned but would rather find fault with the people’s choice will ever be too busy to vote. Each person needs to decide just what issue is the most important to them and it really should not be a race-based or gender based decision. It should be an absolute priority vote for those who wish to keep us safe from our many enemies. China and Russia were our allies in World War 2. They now want our heads on a platter. The Islamic Extremist wants to serve that same head on that platter. I will support the Republican candidate that is finally chosen for that ticket for I cannot with a clear conscious support the contenders of the Democratic Party. I want to remain a free nation under God with life, liberty, and justice for all. That means keeping our country safe from enemies both foreign and domestic. Sounds familiar doesn't it?

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If I Die Before You Wake

CLICK HERE AND TURN UP YOUR SPEAKERS (and your hearing aids) FOR AN AWESOME VIDEO AND RECORDING BY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER.

Call your radio stations and get in touch with American Idol. This soldier should have a contract!

Fallujah Pride

Iraq Journal: The Final Mission: Part One

Click here for this article on FOXNews.com





Michael J. Totten

Iraq Journal: A skeleton crew of a mere 250 Marines is all that remains as the United States wraps up its final mission in what was once Iraq's most violent city.

from today's 'God Calling'

Have you ever read the Story of the Book God Calling which is edited by A. J. Russell? If not, you really should. I've read this book almost daily since it was first given to me in 1987. The words written by these Two Listeners, so long ago, continue to have new meaning for me, but better yet, their pages still hold the delights and seeming failures of old. This little quick read was something I held to in Basic Training in 1988, as well as all the training since. I don't replace the Bible with it, but I do look to these thoughtful words many times for encouragement. Life changes, but God's Word will never change. I believe God used these past two elderly and stricken women to minister to a hurting world just as he uses people now. True or not, it's good for me and hopefully someone else out there. If you're interested in the story behind this book of old, click here. --dm

Height of the Storm

"It is a part of My method to wait till the storm is at its full violence."

"Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life." - John 6:68

I am with you both. Go forward unafraid. Health and strength, peace and happiness and joy - they are all My gifts. Yours for the asking. In the spiritual (as in the material) world there is no empty space, and as self and fears and worries depart out of your lives, it follows that the things of the Spirit, that you crave so, rush in to take their places. All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's. What a wonderful cycle, because ye are God's.

Be not afraid. Fear not. It is to the drowning man the Rescuer comes. To the brave swimmer who can fare well alone He comes not. And no rush of Joy can be like that of a man towards his Rescuer.

It is a part of My method to wait till the storm is at its full violence. So did I with My disciples on the Lake. I could have bidden the first angry wave be calm, the first gust of wind be still, but what a lesson unlearned? What a sense of tender nearness of refuge and safety would have been lost.

Remember this - My disciples thought that in sleep I had forgotten them. Remember how mistaken they were. Gain strength and confidence and joyful dependence and anticipation from that.

Never fear. Joy is yours, and the radiant joy of the rescued shall be yours.

"Shew me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths." - Psalm 25:4

Virgie Bell's View: PORK, corn, and Peanut Heads

So Obama won in South Carolina with heavy voting done for him by the Black Voter. Like Karen, I am very leery of this man. He said that he was against the war in Iraq from the very beginning and I wonder just what he can do to prove that. He has absolutely no record on anything whatsoever. We have a record of him only of being “Present” at every meeting when the Senate convenes and that’s it…really a shame. After all, that's the reason they hold that office and are in the nations Capitol to start with. That is what they receive pay and the golden opportunity for Pork and yet Barack Obama has no record as far as what he even believes. Talk the talk yet refuse to walk the walk doesn't sound like good strategy to me. Then again, you can also look at it another way. How can you really find fault with nothing? He is arrogant beyond words. Truly, he is the most arrogant candidate that has run in my lifetime. Rumor had it that he finally attended a church with a mostly white congregation this Sunday, so it would seem that he does know this race does indeed exist, but he has not shown one little interest in us.

As far as the Latin Block of votes, forget it. That particular little problem could be accomplished with a Vice President with Hispanic origins. I know one raring to go. Anyway, it is something to think about. Then of course, there is the Bill Factor. Bubba is showing his rear by flying off the handle so much with the press. He has a mean streak he was able to hide for only so long. I heard him declare hotly that he did not care a rip about what might be said about him, but when it comes to those he loves, blah, blah, blah. At this point, all I can say is, the Clintons deserve each other.

Then we must deal with the poor in spirit, those who feel your pain. I lived in poverty too, John Edwards. The favorite son from South Carolina even lost his home state. When you do that, it’s usually a death knoll in politics. There is always the other prize though. You can always go to Hollywood and get an Oscar. As I said before, Politics and Hollywood have ruined my life. I joined a DVD club this week. Jerry and I will be watching Winds of War with that hunk Robert Mitchum. We will watch War and Remembrance and after that Exodus, Mila 18, The Caine Mutiny, and Dr. Zhivago, and the beauty of it all is that I don't know which Party they embraced. What a blasted relief.

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She bears Repeating!

Greg is the winner of "Title It! Ray's Choice!"

Bone Appetite

Because of his magnificent multi-lingual pun, Greg Miller wins this round. - says Ray :)

(We need some more players!-says De'on ;0

***

"Winning Title Goes Here"


Thanks Semper Fi Mom for picking my Title! God Bless the TROOPS!
Ray in Okinawa


***
Come up with a title you think Ray will recognize as true genius, and place it in the comment section. If you win, you get to select the next photo and winner.


Everyone is invited, encouraged and ramrod-ed into playing if at all possible.


Deadline is Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 at 8:00 PM CST



ONE Title submission per person only, even if you are from TEXAS!



Declared winner has 3 days to submit their choice of photo to the email address listed in De'on Miller's profile.


Good luck!
***

Movie Version of Bing West's book, "No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah"

USMC General James N. Mattis

I was not able to find much about the planned movie version of No True Glory.
The movie is planned for release in 2009, but has not yet been made. The screenwriters are former Marines Bing West and his son Owen West. The film will be made by Universal Studios. The scuttlebutt is that the film will be told from the point of view of General James N. Mattis, and Harrison Ford will play the General.

General Mattis played a key role in the April 2004 battle of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant Resolve, by negotiating with the insurgent command inside of the city, as well as playing an important part in the November 2004 battle of Fallujah, Operation Phantom Fury.

Bing and Owen West have the following website: http://www.westwrite.com

E-mail address for Bing West: bing@westwrite.com

E-mail address for Owen West owen.west@gs.com

Ray in Okinawa

Remembering the Holocaust: from the Rabbi

In November 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as a day to honor victims of the Holocaust. This date was chosen for a reason - on January 27, 1945, Russian troops liberated the notorious Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. More than one million people were murdered here during World War II, part of Hitler's evil plan to exterminate the Jewish people.

Stories of the death camps offer evidence of brutality that almost defies description. Survivors and liberators alike tell of dead bodies stacked like cordwood, and of others desperately clinging to their last spark of life, too weary to even express happiness at their liberation.

Dwight Eisenhower, commander of U.S. forces in Europe during World War II, wasn’t present at the liberation of Auschwitz, but he did visit a forced labor camp. He never forgot what he saw there. Several years after the war, he wrote of the experience:

"The same day I saw my first horror camp. It was near the town of Gotha. I have never felt able to describe my emotional reaction when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency."

"I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at firsthand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that ‘the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda.' Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton’s headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt."

Eisenhower deserves great credit for helping bring to light these atrocities. Incredibly, even today, there are those who claim that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda." Eisenhower knew that the events he was witnessing were so terrible that some would deny they ever occurred - and that this lack of historical memory would make it that much easier for those responsible to escape justice, and for such horrors to happen again. He was determined that the world would never forget what happened in the camps, just as he could not forget it.

This Sunday on U.N. Holocaust Remembrance Day, take a moment to visit the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Here you will find an amazing number of resources to help you understand the impact and scope of the defining event in 20th century world history. And please, take a moment as well to pray for the surviving victims of the Holocaust, and to ask for God's protection for Israel - a state that was formed, we must never forget, in part to provide a haven for European Jews fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust. As we pray, let us take comfort in the biblical assurance that God, who watches over Israel, "neither slumbers nor sleeps."

With prayers for shalom, peace
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein

Saturday Stuff

Ray let me know about the book, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War which is by Ashley Gilbertson.

Other reads concerning Fallujah that may be of interest to our Marines and readers are

Three Block War II: Snipers in the Sky (which I have just now accidentally deleted the photo of) by Matt Ziegler

and
Fighting For Fallujah: A New Dawn for Iraq by John Ballard

And something Ray told me about a long time ago that I’ve failed to check out (I know you're surprised that I'm behind--yes, on even the things I care so much about) but I think some of you may already know is that Bing West and his son (I think it’s his son) are planning on making a movie out of No True Glory.

Ray has shared some of the details with me before (that are filed away in a file that is quite long!!) so please, Ray, for our readers and the little editor here, can you share those details with us again as well as the link? Or anyone else that may have info. I think quite a nice line-up of actors are already picked to star in this movie!

Hope everyone is having a great Saturday and it’s good that it’s a little warmer here. I’m just kicking around on a lot of this and that. How ‘bout you?

There are still some blogs I plan on visiting before this weekend is out. It was good to do that last night. What an awesome bunch of bloggers we’re linked to!

Semper Fi,

De’on

Me again. Running to and fro. Douglas V. Gibbs is always good to read and I bring you his predictions on The Sunshine State. That is what it is, isn't it?
True or False. Florida is The Sunshine State --for five points, De'on.

I'm going to say True, State Slogan Namer. Florida is The Sunshine State.

So don't forget to keep a check on Gibbs at Political Pistachio in the (several different) links section) and click here for the posted predictions of Hardcore Conservatism. Greg will love it. They don't come much more hardcorer, but then, who is to say? ;)

Later!

Back in the Saddle

Remembering where you came from is what I have slowly been coming back around to since the many months ago, last fall, when I posted my last entry. As you can see to the left.....That was a little more than eight years ago. The World Trade Centers I grew up with were still standing....The Cole hadn't even been bombed, but soon would. It was just a different time for me, but relatively recent in the grander scheme of things.

I do not wish to dwell on why I have been absent so let's sum it up. The boy started crawling....and that's a handful by itself. The wife found out she's pregnant again around New Year's so that's a new adventure. I lost my grandfather at 85 years of age, a man who fought in North Africa under Patton in WWII and still the toughest, most noble man I've ever met. Finally, I started my path toward my Master's Degree in Education.

Now.....On to the Important Stuff----

We all know by now that every time I post I attempt to either tell some amazing Machine Gunner tale, a story of fierce brotherhood, or try to give you a glimpse into the raging inferno that is the mind of a Marine Combat Machine Gunner.

My story tonight is simple, yet a sad and altogether amazing occurrence. My best friend growing up was named Mikey. Mikey's Uncle Jerry was a grunt in the First Marine Division in the Korean War. Uncle Jerry was part of that amazing 78 mile seaward march back down from the Chosin reservoir. Of Uncle Jerry's company, he was one of nine men that walked out under their own power. Another 20 or so were wounded in the trucks and jeeps. The rest, sadly did not make it home.

Some months ago, Uncle Jerry had become very ill with cancer. Sadly but expected, he passed last Sunday. When Mikey wrote me an e-mail to talk about the funeral, he filled in the amazing part of this story.......

Of the nine that walked out of the Chosin more than 57 years ago....6 were in attendance to see their brother off on his final mission. That, my friends, is BROTHERHOOD FORGED IN FIRE!....and it can simply never be undone.

I hope you all enjoyed my short tale. Thank You for your time.

Continue to Push!

-Billy

Support and News on No-Shows!

Thought I'd get out and visit tonight. It's been a century since I've been out running around you know and since I'm doing it here in town more, thought I'd leave the perimeters of my own little gUnZ uP and get out to shoot the breeze somewhere else. Semper Fi Mom was on my mind. I owe her money on Tonya's test. By the way, CONGRATULATIONS, READERS OF MINE (hAVE i ANy?)!! ALL OF YOU WERE 100% IN NoT ShOWInG Up FOr ThE tEST!

Even my own special student has failed me.

jUST JoKING! Tonya (and I know others like Karen, etc) are really pressed right now to get out all the tax stuff for 2007 so last night I took the liberty of filling in as best I could.

But back to the original thought and yes, there was one. Here are two important posts I want you to check out, so just click below on each of their titles. One group needs help and the other is giving help. They are both for our wounded, so please, please see if there is a way you can help or pass on the info to those who may be able to. Here they are.

Lap Blankets (Semper Fi Mom helps with this one and needs our help if we can knit or crochet or know someone who does!)

Wounded Marines Focus on Film Careers

Thanks. I'll probably be back. Have a few more places to jet to. ;)

Semper Fi Mom's happy!

Semper Fi Mom tells me that Steven, Marine son # 1, is back on U.S. soil. Marine son #2 is stationed in North Carolina as well and so was able to meet his brother upon arrival. The Semper Fi Family in Lubbock now awaits #1 Son’s arrival for sweet, sweet leave. It’s my hope that I’ll get to meet Steven, even if briefly, during his short time home.


SFM said that he was “happy to be back and wanting Mexican food and that it was weird to see Marines in green cammies, evergreen trees, and working intersections.”

Thank you, SFM and much thanks to Steven for his service in Iraq, and to Father God for bringing him home! I know the party in Lubbock will be a big one! BELOW IS AN ARTICLE CONCERNING THE COMMAND'S RETURN.

After you read what Marine son #1 has been up to, then check out the article on the Ospreys. Marine son #2 spends his time with these creatures!

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RCT-2 command element returns to Lejeune

Staff report
Posted : Wednesday Jan 23, 2008 12:32:03 EST

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — The command element of Regimental Combat Team 2 is expected to arrive here today after a 13-month deployment in Iraq.

Throughout its third combat deployment, RCT-2 conducted counterinsurgency operations in western Anbar province. The roughly 350-man regimental headquarters initially directed operations in an area of more than 30,000 square miles; it later burgeoned to 50,000 square miles, including a 210-mile border with Syria, according to a II Marine Expeditionary Force press release.

Nearly 15,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers and 11 infantry battalions rotated through western Anbar under RCT-2.

The remainder of the regiment is expected to return later this month.

Camp Pendleton, Calif.-based RCT-5 took over from RCT-2 during a transfer of authority ceremony Tuesday.

During the ceremony, Col. Patrick Malay, commanding officer of RCT-5, assumed control from Col. Stacy Clardy, commanding officer of RCT-2. Malay is returning to Anbar after commanding 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, during the Battle of Fallujah in 2004.

RCT-5 will continue the training and mentoring of the Iraqi Security Forces and provide assistance to local governments and citizens. The regiment will also oversee the military, police and border transition teams in western Anbar, officials said.

Click here to read “Higher, Farther, Faster: Ospreys in Iraq" featured in Military.com

Semper Fi!
De’on

Virgie Bell's View: Bag Lady

I wonder if everyone gets as tired of the absolute bull that goes on in politics as I do. I realize that I keep up with that kind of stuff more than most people. This also proves I need to get a life, as the saying goes. It is absolutely the hardest thing to find a subject that does not involve these same old wind-bags.

Thinking back, politics has ruined what little life I had. I used to love to go to the movies, and politics has ruined that. I was a great admirer of Barbra Streisand. Incredible voice, wonderful actress, yet she can't keep her mouth shut about her political ideas and telling mere mortals how we should vote. Now, admittedly, she has much more inside information than poor little me. I never got to sleep in The Lincoln Bedroom (with or without the Pres is still to be determined). Sleeping with the Pres for Barbra types was more or less like S&H Green Stamps back then; they came with the purchase. I loved those stamps. I drooled over all the stuff in those catalogs. De'on and I used to go to the redemption center in Littlefield. In fact my hard sided Samsonite Luggage came from there. Big pieces, little pieces, hat boxes and shoe toters. Thing is, I never got to take a trip to use them. S&H Green Stamps did not give trips.

I saved those stamps for years and when I saw that Marlboro gave trips as well as luggage, I felt things were looking up for me. Jerry and I filled an entire closet full of empty packages in order to try to look healthy and wealthy a la Marlboro Man. Of course, hard Samsonite luggage was a joke by then. Here I stood at the baggage claim and everyone else had these soft very used luggage things and slung them over their shoulder and took off lickity-split to the busy lives they rushed to. Here I stood in high heels and pantyhose, dressed to the nines and I actually heard snickers about that. When I stepped forward to claim that new hard-shell Samsonite, the crowd openly jeered. I even caught some Japanese tourists taking pictures. I was never so embarrassed in my life. You can see then, dear reader, why I felt Marlboro Luggage was a life saver for me. No more pale blue suitcases, but bright red, and so here I go with the in-bunch...those hardies that wouldn't be caught dead in pantyhose. It was denim for me and the smoking crowd...we really are more fun anyway. Then wouldn't you know we became the slugs and worms of the proper crowd. Well, by now, I did realize what I should do as far as luggage in Baggage Claim. Things like massive beat-up tote bags and hearty backpacks with ratty looking jeans and T-Shirts which proclaimed some message to someone somewhere and in effect saying, “Up your nose with a rubber hose." and “ I quit smoking." and there I stood in clean Levis and polished Ropers. Might as well have had on a tee shirt that said “I shoot whales and kick puppies and I smoke cigarettes.” It was the same thing. The entire same thing.

A one-time First Lady of New Mexico declared the Capitol Building a No Smoking area. She said, “I am a mother and this is about children.” This means, I suppose, that I kick babies as well as puppies. She was younger than me but died a few years ago. This, after the governor broke up with her for a squeeze who didn't give two hoots and a holler about anything on two legs that didn't climb some summit somewhere. The ex-Governor cried in public and proclaimed, “I have lost my best friend.” Best friend. Huh!

Finally, I give it all up and get a motor home. Then I find out Ms. Streisand tools around town in her motor home in order to avoid a public restroom while our motor home can be seen in the free parking area at the Hospital of the Week. We are almost the latest craze. Smokers who have out lasted everyone else are despised for the very fact that we did not embrace trees but supported tobacco farmers. This is a political world and the movies offer no escape. You know what. I really hate Barbra Streisand for contributing to my misery. I hate Oprah for telling us how to vote. I just hate this season, don't you?

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Unfinished Business

One year and one day old. The postmark on the large manila envelope is Jan 23, 2007. It is still taped shut. There is a small tear alongside the heavy envelope. It sat out for quite a while. I really had the best intentions of opening it. True, I already knew what was in the envelope, but still, it’s beyond me as to why I have not torn into it already, but the metal clasp is untouched. I notice just now how well my cousin tapes. We are further removed! LOL!

The package represents a great deal of Unfinished Business for me. This is a side of my family that I know so little about. While Dad had quite a few stories to share, they were not of the military service members in our family. I want to know more about them and I think it would be cool if I knew them somewhat when I “get up there.” My Dad’s sister, his only sibling, died in her fifties,when I was first pregnant with Aaron, and PaPa, my paternal grandfather, died at age 62. Both suffered from heart problems and PaPa also had emphysema.

I’ve been in touch with this side of my family to a small degree since Dad became so ill, however, due to age and distance, it is doubtful that I will meet them in person again and I was six months old the last time I was around many of them. That would have been the Grigsby Family Reunion of 1955.

Just quickly I want to add that I don’t feel real bad even if I don’t feel real good, you know? For many of you, this “Unfinished Business” may seem a little weird; then again, I’ve never claimed to be exactly normal! I am interested in wrapping up little details of my life—no matter if I’m here three months or three years. None of us know the day, but at least I know it’s time to begin to get my affairs in order. When I write to you this way, it is without fear or depression. Actually, in a strange way, it is quite exciting. So, maybe I’ll be here five more years, well then, let’s keep it interesting and eventful!

Undoubtedly, some of you will be interested and many others may not, but there is much in the way of not only memories I want to capture on this blog, but also history, and most especially our family’s military history, so either just bear with me or use that tiny arrow back button to take you away, but for this post, it’s about the package.

The package I am referring to is a large record of birth and death certificates of the paternal side of my family. These, along with papers I should have already added to them trace my ancestry back to prove that I am eligible for DAR or Daughters of the American Revolution. While it is believed the Grigsby side of my paternal side had a patriot in the American Revolution that has not yet been proven, however one on my grandmother’s side has been proven. According to my cousin (who is very passionate in her genealogy studies) “It is much much more difficult for women of southern ancestry, such as ourselves, to prove a line to a Revolutionary Patriot than for women of northern ancestry. For some reason the Redcoats were more brutal and destructive in the south than in the north. Perhaps because there were more Tories in the south.”

Really interesting (from a recent e-mail) is where she writes: "This is all Grigsby family history. This is not the line of our family that has a proven Patriot. Virginia, who is probably the living authority on our line of the Grigsby family, thinks that Solomon Grigsby, to whom I will refer, was the grandson of the patriot James Grigsby. She has researched for over thirty years trying to prove this and thus far has been unable to do so.

Solomon Grigsby was born in Edgefield County, SC in 1801. He married Margaret ? in 1820 probably. They had their first child in 1821. They had three children in SC. Then they moved to Alabama where their son, Ira, was born in 1828. He is your GGGgrandfather. I believe another child was born in Alabama. (I am trying to remember these dates from memory.) I am too lazy to walk into the den and get out my files. But this is just for a historical time line to get you up to the time of Solomon's sons' military service.)

Then they moved just across the state line into Mississippi where three (I think) more children were born. Then in 1841 they moved to Texas. Solomon, your GGGGgrandfather was Justice of the Peace in Rusk County. Your GGGgrandfather Ira was 14 at the time. In 1845 he signed up for the War with Mexico. He was injured just a few months later (three, I think) at Monterrey. He was sent home. He had a crippled right arm the remainder of his life. I imagine he had a very hard life because he was a farmer. It would be difficult to farm with a crippled arm. It was after he returned home that he married your GGGgrandmother.

Approximately 15 years later The War Between the States began. Our Ira was unable to participate because of his crippled arm. Three of his brothers did. From this point on is what Daddy told me. Then, precious Virginia verified everything for me with Civil War Documents. Two of Solomon's sons joined the Confederate forces. My memory of their names is just blank. One was George Washington Grigsby and one was?

The third brother joined the Union Army. His name was Mark Grigsby.

Mark signed up with the Union Army in New Orleans in the summer. He was captured just a month or so later back in Texas in July, I believe. He was imprisoned near Austin in a Confederate prison named Hempstead. I believe he died in September. I have a copy of his death certificate. The cause of death was maltreatment and starvation. That was just a horrible horrible time in our nation's history. Daddy had always told me about that. I just could not believe it was true, but it was.

I do not know why your GGGGgrandfather Solomon left SC. The wills and other things I have show the family to be financially well off. There is no mention of Solomon in any of the documents. Virginia does not think he had done anything bad. But remember, so many southern courthouses were burned during the Revolutionary War and then about 85 years later during The War Between the States. General Sherman saw to that. So, much Southern history has been burned up.

It is much much more difficult for women of southern ancestry, such as ourselves, to prove a line to a Revolutionary Patriot than for women of northern ancestry. For some reason the Redcoats were more brutal and destructive in the south than in the north. Perhaps because there were more Tories in the south."

She later writes (after I apologize for taking so long to get to it:

I know you must be the most precious person! I also think you are probably headstrong. I am. Actually, people sometimes think that is a bad thing. I don't. I am telling you we would not be living as citizens of the United States if our ancestors had not been headstrong.

The ancestors that you and I share were from North and South Carolina, an area heavily populated with Tories. To be a Revolutionary was a dangerous decision. Their identities were revealed to the British forces by the Tories. You probably know the following from American history - When the citizen-soldiers, who in many cases were armed only with pitchforks, would prepare to meet the Redcoats out in the field, they would wait hiding in the trees or crops. They could hear the Redcoats approaching and then the time everyone dreaded - the marching stopped and they would hear the sound of the eleven inch knives being strapped onto the Redcoats' rifles. They knew what the Redcoats intended to do with those knives. One book I read said that not even a chicken was left alive when the Redcoats left the farms, and certainly no humans.

So, little cousin, your headstrong determination has been handed down to you from generation to generation. Let me hear from you through group emails when you have nothing else to do. Also, do not even think about the genealogy things I sent to you. The lack of a membership certificate to hang on the wall does not keep you from being descended from Patriots. You are also the mother of a Patriot of the modern times!

Lovingly,
Paula
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I’ll share more as I open, flip and read! Take care and
Semper Fi,
De’on

Virgie Bell's View: Fashion and other failures

Hillary Rodham Clinton's "Fashion Statement" if elected President

Are they completely insane or what? Joe Kennedy is praising Hugo Chavez for giving poor people in the US cheaper gas and oil. I don't remember which Kennedy this one belongs to, but I know one thing, the Democratic Party will have to turn their back on this one. Yoo-Hoo Joe. Hugo has a hero and that hero is Fidel Castro. You remember him. He’s the one who allowed a missile launch pad in his country in order to blow the USA off the face of the earth by the Soviet Union. I think we are going to have to admit that the Kennedy's time has come and gone. I used to just love them, but what a joke that turned out to be, what with the children of JFK and RFK and the rest turning into clones of Uncle Edward, who shares the name and that is all.

As I remember, Edward Kennedy never was anything but a stage prop in the distant background, and now he is Papa to the whole misguided bunch. I noticed Caroline doing an article or two every now and then and admittedly John-John was the dream boat of the entire world. The rest of them seem to share a funny jawbone and a great lack of practical sense. If it was me, I would try to hide under the radar rather than associate myself with such a bunch of losers. If anyone really believes that any of them lose any sleep over the plight of the poor anywhere in the whole entire world, then all I can say is, grow up. All the children of the Kennedy's turned out to be misfits, druggies, rapists and alcoholics, with the exception of JFK's children. Not that I fool myself one bit about the beginning of this clan. Papa Joe made his fortune in booze when prohibition was on and had some little squeeze from Hollywood for creature comforts. He was a tough, mean old bird, but even now, the younger generation puts him to shame. Children of Legends do not usually do too well and after one got away with the rape deal, I decided I was no longer going to fall prostrate at the Kennedy alter.

I will always admire JFK. As I have said before, if those walls in the Oval Office could talk, what a story they could tell. Marilyn Monroe would beat Lewinsky by a long slide. Then again, Jackie O oozed class while Hillary just oozes out from the waist on down. If Hillary gets into the White House, I wonder if the woman of the world will find anything to copy from her style as we did Jackie’s. If so, then say good-bye to dresses, jeans and shorts. Pantsuits, pantsuits, pantsuits. Come on Hillary, give us a break.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

God Calling-How Power Comes

Learn to shut yourself away in My Presence.

Lord, Thou art our Refuge. Our God, in Thee do we trust. O Master, come and talk with us.

All power is given unto Me. It is Mine to give, Mine to withhold, but even I have to acknowledge that I cannot withhold it from the soul that dwells near Me, because it is then not a gift, but passes insensibly from Me to My disciples.

It is breathed in by the soul who lives in My Presence.

Learn to shut yourself away in My Presence - and then, without speaking, you have those things you desire of Me, Strength - Power - Joy - Riches.

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty." - Psalm 91:1

blessings to you and yours this day and always ...
www.twolisteners.org

Virgie Bell's View: THE Family Feud

Hollywood Great Thinker Hilary Swank: "After all even if we believe in a different God, inside, we all just want to be loved and to love."

I really wish I knew more and could come to some understanding of the crisis that exists in the Middle East. Anyone can go back to the very beginning of civilization and the same thing was always going on. The one thing most of us have learned is to not get embroiled in a family feud and make no mistake; this is exactly what this really is. These different countries have been at it for years and if the Bible is to be believed, it will remain so until the very end of time. I believe the books written by Herman Wouk are an absolute requirement to getting at least a little light shed on the whole situation. Many people refuse to read fiction at all. I have an aunt who feels it a waste of time and I disagree with her assessment.

All things written are just someone else's view and that view belongs to the writer of non-fiction as well. History is just a personal opinion which is recorded. Had the USA lost in World War 2, trust me; English would not be the official language in my country. I would not have been reading books by a Jewish author and I certainly would not be recommending them to others. I would be joining the rest of the world in Jew-bashing. If however, one maintains that the Bible is truly the Word of God, one might be more than a little hesitant to engage in such a practice. Israel is the Promised Land, and as such, it comes complete with a destiny, a beginning, an end.

I can't keep from hitting on my Hollywood Knuckle Heads and the instant wisdom gained with receiving an Academy Award. Hilary Swank is the latest bubble head to be popping-off on something she knows absolutely nothing about, but this does not keep her from becoming an expert on the Middle East dilemma. In a few words, she solves the whole situation, one that has not had any solution in the recorded past or foreseeable future. I refer to her quote: "After all even if we believe in a different God, inside, we all just want to be loved and to love." I think it would be a really good idea for these Hollywood Pin Heads to stay far away from such a statement. How quaint, how incredibly stupid, and why am I even wasting time reviewing anything Ms. Swank has to say about any subject whatsoever. Perhaps it is because I can now relate to ditsy dames who love attention. Dames like Nancy Pelosi. I would like to set the record straight to all of the rest of the world: Ms. Swank, Ms. Pelosi, Ms. Streisand, and even Mr. Streisand, do not represent the view of the American Woman, much less the fact that there is no Different God. If she really believes that little statement, she needs to take it to that tall bearded Taliban Leader hiding in a cave somewhere along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Convince him.... If you come away with your head intact, then I will listen. Until then, I will forever be amazed that all of mankind though out history has failed to grasp this little concept, but then, what else is new? Different Gods? Bite your tongue.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Important Survey for VFW!

Dear De'on and gUnZ uP readers:

America’s newest combat veterans are returning home in record numbers …
We want to know what you think about the way our newest veterans are treated.

Share your opinion about the critical issues facing returning heroes. Please complete the VFW’s 2008 Help Our Heroes Survey.

Begin by simply answering the first question below.

1. What do you think is the most important issue facing America’s newest veterans?

Battle Injuries
Emotional Trauma
Jobs/Employment/Education
Transitioning Back Into Family Life
Timely Receipt of Benefits

Your immediate reply is urgently needed! As you read this, Congress is debating the Federal Budget. We have to make sure our newest veterans get the benefits and respect they deserve!

Your responses will help us prioritize the key issues facing our newest veterans.

Your support will help us demand better treatment of our veterans!

Please don’t wait - now is the time to let your opinions be heard. Help the VFW and America’s defenders by completing our brief 2008 Help Our Heroes Survey today!

Unite with the VFW to demand proper treatment and respect for America’s newest veterans.

Thank you for your continued support of the men and women who fight to keep us free.

Wednesday Hero

Airmen from the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at an air base in Southwest Asia prepare a C-17 Globemaster III for an airdrop mission Jan. 14 to deliver humanitarian supplies to coalition forces in Afghanistan

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.


--
Indian Chris
http://rightwingrightminded.blogspot.com
http://hooahwife.com
Wednesday Hero - Google It

Why Hillary Clinton has wider appeal in 2008 than John "coward" Kerry did in 2004

Michael Ramirez - Investor's Business Daily (IBD)

1994 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning

'The Wall' (with 50,000 names)

A really nice lady I know through e-mail has sent me this link that I think you’ll appreciate. She has also graciously agreed to share a poem of hers with the readers of gUnZ uP.

Click here for the link and Pamy’s info is listed at the end of her poem (which does have a copyright).


+ + +

I've been to The Wall. There is something about it that I can't explain. Maybe partly because it happened in my generation and I knew and loved some of those who served but the moment I saw it even from a distance my soul cried and touching The Wall was a moment set apart in time for me.

Pam

I wrote this poem one time:

The Wall

I walked the path alone,
Drawn there one spring day
Searching for an answer
Looking for a way

I sought to know your heart
But a wall has barred my sight
Where have you gone from me
That your eyes have lost their light

Then I touched the wall and felt you there
And I shall ne’er forget
For I sensed your presence in my heart
Though we had never met

Not just the name my hand did trace
For others still I see
Most of them not quite the same
Nor evermore will be

Across this verdant land of ours
I see their wounded eyes
Scarred by evil they have seen
‘Til something inside dies

Heroes here upon the wall
So much the heart it maims
I felt the letters graven there
I cried for all the names

Then a shadow stood beside me
You were there so strong and tall
I asked if you had been there
You said, “Yes Ma’am, weren’t we all?”

By Pamela R. Blaine
© December, 2002
) ¸.·´ ¸.·´¨) ¸.·*¨)( ¸.·´ (¸.·´ ¸.·´ `
·-»Pam
"Security is not the absence of danger, but the presence of God"
My Website:http://www.blaines.us/PamyPlace.htm
e-mail: pamyblaine@blaines.us

God Calling-Gray Days

You must say 'Thank You' on the grayest days.

Be not afraid. I am your God, your Deliverer. From all evil, I will deliver you. Trust Me. Fear not.

Never forget your "Thank you." Do you not see it is a lesson? You MUST say "Thank You" on the grayest days. You MUST do it. All cannot be light unless you do. There is gray-day practice. It is absolutely necessary.

My death upon the Cross was not only necessary to save a world, it was necessary if only to train My disciples. It was all a part of their training: My entering Jerusalem in triumph; My washing the disciples' feet; My sorrow-time in Gethsemane; My being despised, judged, crucified, buried. Every step was necessary to their development - and so with you.

If a gray day is not one of thankfulness, the lesson has to be repeated until it is. Not to everyone is it so. But only to those who ask to serve Me well, and to do much for Me. A great work requires a great and careful training.

"Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." - Isaiah 41:10


blessings to you and yours this day and always ...
http://www.twolisteners.org/

Virgie Bell's View: Finger Foods

Oh My Gosh! Hillary Clinton has gained weight!

If Hillary Clinton were a cat, this cat would look like that!

Well gag and double gag. Just got through reading an article in some magazine that my friend Peggy brought me. It was Ladies Home Journal with Elizabeth Edwards doing a little something about “What I have learned About Life, Love and Happiness.” If "KEN DOLL" Edwards really acted this way in public then I am glad he will soon be out of the running. "He took my hand from across the table and kissed each finger tip as he has always done...it was if we were the only people in the room." Puke, puke. If Jerry were to take my hand and kiss each finger tip, I would think he had completely lost all sense and sensibility and would rush to get him out of the room before he flashed his u-know-what. Now John Edwards is cute, no argument there, but of all the phonies running, he is far and away the cutest which begs the question why did he marry such an Ugly Betty type. Same question to Bill about Hill. Go figure. Oh from the neck up, they are Hotties, from there down, forget it. There are certain women that are neither fat nor thin. Otto called them just funny-shaped, meaning some just have no pattern to go by to start with. No, of course they cannot help it, but still, I would have about as much fantasy of them in a setting of romance as say...well, Rosie. A dog is a dog, you know?

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

Ray Wins!! "Title It! Semper Fi Mom's Choice!"

THIS WILL BE A TOPPER FOR A BIT SO SCROLL DOWN FOR CURRENT POSTS THAT MAY BY CHANCE BE AVAILABLE!

AND

According to the latest newsflash and I quote:

"I've looked them all over again and it was VERY hard to choose! You have some very creative readers. I think I have to go with Ray's Title. It really is genious and fits the picture so well."

Old Glory opens the door to Freedom in Iraq

Congratulations Ray!

and please keep in mind the limitation on all acceptance speeches. We do have other things to talk about around here, like our health and birthdays and such! :)

YEA RAY!

EVERYBODY HAVE A 'NOT FROM TEXAS' RAY DAY!

***

Come up with a title you think SEMPER FI MOM will recognize as true genius (you can play too, SFM, you just can't win!) and place it in the comment section. If you win, you get to select the next photo and winner.

Everyone is invited, encouraged and ramrod-ed into playing if at all possible.

Deadline is Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2008 at 8:00 PM CST

ONE Title submission only.

Declared winner has 3 days to submit their choice of photo to the email address listed in my profile.

Good luck!

***

Current "Title It" Photos and Winners will remain on top. sCROLL dOWN FOR CURRENT CURRENTS.

Postscripts

Ooopsieees, nearly forgot our framed family. Greg took pictures of these pictures for you at 5:30 AM. We've both been working hard today and have to run now! Jerry's cooking!! Whooo Hooo!

BIRTHDAY BASH FINALE

Cousins, First

Tonya and De'on in church lobby right before Aaron's funeral

May 3, 2004

ROCK ON!

Happy, happy birthday and we love ya, Ya Ya!

Birthday Bash and the man who helped cause it all. I know this guy was really, really smiling 53 years ago today....

He was the funniest man I ever knew. He was also the funnest. The kind of guy that the neighborhood kids come up to the door and ask if "Mickey can come out and play?!"

Uncle Mickey fought a brave and long fight against cancer. He finished his earthly battle while I was in Panama. I missed his funeral as I did my stepdad's, my grandmother's, and my stepmother's. There was a time I thought work must be finished no matter what. A smart man clued me in later that the Army's work would never be finished and no one was indispensable. I eventually learned that but not because of the wise and caring Captain Donovan, but because life has a way of teaching even the most typical TYPE A's.

Not many years later, Tonya, his daughter, his only living child, would be diagnosed with breast cancer and wake up out of surgery bearing her first mastectomy shortly before the age of 40.

She is a warrior, and I hope she'll share some of her war stories with our readers sometime, but mostly, I just hope she'll be her cute and patriotic self. She is America's cheerleader and no one in this world can help from falling in love with her because as much, no, MORE than anyone I know, Tonya loves LIFE! Needless to say, Aaron and Tonya were tight and usually on the same wave length.

Anyway, there's so much more to learn and that's what this is about today. I want my family and friends and stories and history and photos and funnies up! up! Up! here on gUnZ uP, you guys, so welcome to Tonya's Birthday-Bash-Slash Marathon. Well, actually I welcomed you all hours ago, but now you're up here instead of down there.

The Birthday Bash consists of test questions worth a penny a point. The sum total will go to Semper Fi Mom's bunch who are linked later on. When I say sum total, I'm thinking of the cost that it would take to stuff a stocking in 2007. Do you remember I told you I have about $89.45 saved? Well, I'm willing to give up $35.00 of it to send a care package overseas, but I don't want to do it alone, so help me stack some of it up, okay.

Most of the questions are family stuff, but easy and just for fun, guess! I may even take the test later, but Good Lord, no, not right now, so there's no real deadline. It's a for fun thing.

Images are cut size LARGE, but if you are real Seniorly and on your 4th or 5th pair of bifocals like I am, then just click on the images and some of them will be very easy to see!

Tonya's Birthday Bash and Blog Invitation, along with photos from the Pechanga in 2004

401.Who talks with their hands and from which McCurry woman did they inherit this trait?-- 2 questions 2 points

a. Tonya. MeMa
b. The Princess. Her paternal grandmother, my maternal.
c. The charming young woman who turns 53 today.
d. The woman who said she'd love to blog with us but didn't know that comments were not counted as authorship. Now she can blog at random like all of us here and use as many squares as she wants. (if she decides to check her email and doesn't forget to accept her Blogger Invitation. She is 53. I said that. Right.
e. The woman who runs out of room in her little squares.
f. And forgot her password
g. Is probably out at some game and dinner right now whilst elder cousin slaves over numbers and alphabets.
h. All of the above.

Isn't she cute? She's my favorite cousin!

About 12-16 of us met in California during the Marine's 229th Birthday, 2004. It was a time that will always be cherished and turned out to be just a great 2, 3, 4 hour luncheon for many of us the day after the Marine Ball. This photo was taken the night of the Ball.

Tonya's Birthday Bash and forever Internet photo/memory album

301. Who is holding whose purse?

Tonya, you and Allie saw Aaron for the last time one day after Lisa, Kayla, Greg and I did. You, Eric, Juanita, Tiffany and Allie visited this museum in Canyon, Texas. 302. What holiday weekend was it? And

303. What is your family's link to Canyon, Texas? This is just a friendly little getting to know you question but you can still have one penny from heaven for a little FYI here!



304. No real words for all the links here in these few photos....

Birthday Bash: Fluidity, except for test numbers. Their series has changed to 200.

201. Name those who enjoy red. -2
202. Beige. -2
203. Name those whose favored-color trend remains fluid. -2
204. Name 2 Marines- 2
205. Name their Uncle who fought in WW 2 -1

And Aaron picked out his own clothes at even age 3. I wonder if Uncle Bennie did at such an early age as well?

206. Which cousin of yours, Tonya, did my Dad claim to favor Uncle Bennie's mannerisms and personality? one lucky shot and one point!

Birthday Bash and Pennies from Heaven

Well, this brief intermission has caused a bit of brain dullness as it were, so I can't remember what number we were on so no problem we will just begin with
Marine Ball Preparedness 101.

101. Who is night night?

102. Who is getting the wax job? Has the man no shame?

two questions two answers. That's the way it works. And it's a penny a point for the winner. Each penny will go to support, yep, you guessed it LUBBOCKMARINEPARENTS, after all, it was the Birthday Girl who claimed my last cookbook put together by some great people and one great Semper Fi Mom.

I haven't thought of the Birthday Girl's gift yet. Any help from any? 103. Which person seated at the table was Aaron's gunner?
name and description (2 pts.).

104. The two other Brothers pictured here were with us again at the luncheon given for all of us at Oscar's after the Marine Ball 2004--True or False.

105. Fill in the blanks
Pictured Marines are: Brandt ____ and Jamie ____.

106. Which person in either black or blue borrowed their mother's black socks to wear to the Ball and never returned them?

107. Which person in either black or blue was late to the hotel because he was best man at a wedding?

108. Who got married on that night? 1 couple, 1 point, 1 tardy Marine, still, one point.

109. Who was right on time and the most handsome Escort Service in San Diego?

Birthday Bash: Back to the test...

July 1, 2004. It would have been Aaron's 22nd birthday. You've always been like this. Thank you. Now, back to your test.

19. What color looks good on VB?

20. Who truly is the toughest lady?
a. my mom or
b. the lady she sits with

21. Is the yellow ribbon I am wearing in this photo of Aaron's arrival into Lubbock now torn and tattered, or is it still without wrinkle?

22. Who is the blonde and who is the brunette? Is one of them still out running all around town? :) 3 questions=3 points!
23. Name the dancer. Come on now, no one should miss this one!
a. Kayla De'on
b. Elfin Magic
c. Tiny Dancer in my hand

24. Name the state and the restaurant
a. Texas and Cagle's
b. Texas and County Line
c. Texas and 50-Yard Line
d. Texas and Stella's
e. Texas and Abuello's
f. Hungry?
g. Am I still mean?

Birthday Bash! "She's my friend, he's my friend, she likes me, he does, uuummhh, I need to work on her a little," said the Princess as she mulled over

her high school year book, or De'on and Tonya begin to come unto their own sweet little selves! Selves! That's right! I didn't say elves and the word is pepper not paper, you know, black, duh, I'm at a fast food joint, not shopping for school supplies!" "Tonya looks sad. Maybe it's coz I have all the friends."
"Be happy, Tonya, here's some friends! (Pppsss... your parents paid them to play with you. Yes, I know Mama Curry is your great grandmother, but they paid her extra! :)"
"Wake up over there! Look at me! When you grow up I'm going to make you stay awake all night at my self-appointed slumber party or I will threaten to cut off that little pinky fingernail you're so proud of!"

Birthday Bash and the oldies just keep coming....

We like a little potatoes with our meat. And really, I'm not entirely opposed to a little animal hair with mine from time to time, though racoon wouldn't be my pick!
Cool family. Our dads were best friends and then brothers-in-law. Oh, dear. But how many fight songs did the 4 of us listen to at the Amherst Bulldog Football Field? For 5 easy points Tonya, sing us the Bulldogs Alma Mater!


And who is this handsome young Marine?

***I had a lamp just like that not too long ago. I loved it but we got worried it was dangerous (or Greg didn't want to fix it), so it's gone, but it once shined right under Aaron's Silver Star Medal.

Birthday Girl, Lisa's going to hate you over these "oldies" posts. Your pictures way out-number hers!

Just for fun? Name all the "Dora's (and Happy Birthday my elder by a few hours), then name the De'on's, then the Tonya's and last but not least, sort of, depending entirely upon how you look at it!! Forget middle child syndrome and name the little Lisa's! Grow up, good grief!

Birthday Bash- A Pin Up, just for you, Ton.... It's always hard to beat a black and white from back in the day!

18. Who was most likely the best looking man in this world in 1955?

a. Duh.
b. You mean right after Mickey Pickrell and Harvey Grigsby?

19. Who kept a poster of James Dean up in her utility room in the early 90's?
a. De'on, until Greg made her take it down.
b. Lisa, until De'on made her take it down.
c. De'on, until they moved. And she is still just sick inside that she no longer has that poster. You know, it was the one of him leaning back in that old chair in that old house. Thinking. Just thinking. Deep, deep thinking. De'on likes a real Thinking Man and that's why she married Greg.

Birthday Bash: "Say one could remember...."

... Ya Ya, this is your teninytiny birthday scrapbook....

4. The photo of Tonya (in the flag shirt-bottom right) and Eric Austin has
a. been ripped down the middle
b. has a bad tape-job
c. was used in 2004 as a Christmas decoration on the small tree that Aaron once decorated his bedroom with
d. has a hook
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
g. b, c, d
h. xyz
i. a, b, c, d

5. Which Aunt gave us the three bottles of perfume pictured in the eeansy scrapbook?
a. Linda Gay
b. Linda Dale
c. Virgie Bell
d. Shirley
e. You're crazy, I don't see any perfume .

6. And who would be crazy enough to put perfume bottles on a scanner?
a. De'on

7. So yes, we've established the perfume bottles are indeed there. Trust me. On what birthday did we receive said three perfume bottles? You didn't get more than three did you?
a. the number of testing
b. 40th
c. You may have a hard time remembering this one, Ton.
d. You wore a turban
e. Many were there but the party was for you, me and Dora.
f. all of the above.

8. On what date was the photo taken of you and Allie looking all sleepy-eyed?
December 11, 2004, 2005, or 2006?

9. Who took the photo?
Mitch or Tiffany?

10. Where did we go to eat the night before? Cattle Baron, 50-Yard Line or the geriatric Furr's across from the apartments?

11. Notice the teeny-tiny Tootsie Roll. Why has the editor not yet devoured it along with the other 10 mil she's downed since? Could it be because of the note next to it? Huh? Could it be?

12. So it must be the note. The note most likely concerns the title of which work?
a. Short End of the Libman
b. Joy Comes in the Mourning
c. The Ticket Stub
d. Dollops

13. The beautiful picture in the far right corner was taken on what date?
a. December 11, 2004
b. April 26, 2004
c. May 3, 2004
d. July 1, 2004

14. The photo was taken by which Aunt?
a. Linda Gay
b. Linda Dale
c. Shirley
d. Virgie Bell

BONUSes!!!!
15. and you're thinking does this woman save everything?
No comment.

16. The pink wand was given to you as a birthday gift, True or False?

17. Two twisted ties of dirtied, tattered yellow ribbon are found in this photo. TRUE. From whence did they tatter?
a. a tree off of South Loop 289
b. near Apt. # B106
c. 2003
d. Yellow ribbons were everywhere there.

Yep, pretty close to it and the yellow ribbon that is not tattered is the one I wore when Aaron joined us to pick him up at the airport. For 20 points Tonya, tell us a little bit about Aaron joining us to pick him up after OIF 1.... :)

Birthday Bash-Test 1

What? I didn't tell you we take tests at gUnZ uP?
Tonya, here is your birthday test. Others may join in the fun and frolic of it all. As my brain begins to thaw I will think of a prize for the winner and of course, one for the Birthday Girl! Each answer is worth 1 point except for bonus questions. Leave correct answers in comment section and wrong answers too. While I've cut most of the prints to Senior Size, feel free to CLICK ON IMAGE IF YOU NEED IT MORE SENIORY.

Begin.
1. What number is most likely missing on this photo (195-)?
5, 8, 0
2. True or False: The 1955 World Series matched the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees.

3. Specialist Austin and Specialist Miller earned the National Defense Ribbon because of their service in Panama during this war.

Just Miller?

Just Austin?

No, this couldn't be?

YES.

Glory Be! Who's 53 Beside and Besides Me?

YA YA!

and I'll be bock after I've finished cutting and wrapping your gifties!

America's Marines

Check it out! This just in from one of my favorite Marines, SgtMaj. Ploskonka.

All,
This is the newest Marine Corps Commercial. It is pretty awesome. I just got done orking with a bunch of these Marines. You can look up on this blog page and see all the towns they went and what the people had to say there. This is why Marines are and have always been the best. Yeah we have our bad apples too but, damn we are good!

The link will take you to the latest and greatest Corps' Commercial. It is now airing in our sidebar (isn't it great?) and you can learn more about it by clicking here.

Thanks so much SgtMaj. Ploskonka and thank you USMC!

Boot Camp Graduation-Jan 18, 2002
E-mail from USS Rushmore-Jan. 18, 2003

+ + +

God Calling-January 18
Faith - Works

Pray daily for Faith. It is My Gift.

It is your only requisite for the accomplishment of mighty deeds. Certainly you have to work, you have to pray, but upon Faith alone depends the answer to your prayers - your works.

I give it you in response to your prayer, because it is the necessary weapon for you to possess for the dispersion of evil - the overcoming of all adverse conditions, and the accomplishment of all good in your lives, and then you having Faith, give it back to Me. It is the envelope in which every request to Me should be placed.

And yet "Faith without works is dead." So you need works, too, to feed your Faith in Me. As you seek to do, you feel your helplessness. You then turn to Me. In knowing Me, your faith grows - and that faith is all you need for My Power to work.

"Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith." - Habakkuk 2:4

"Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us." Ephesians 3:20

blessings to you and yours this day and always ...
www.twolisteners.org

Thursdays and Fridays

I thought this article I'm about to post was cool. It came in my mailbox from the Two Listeners (where the God Calling posts come from). It was especially cool to me at this time because as some, if not all of you now know; I have been diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis and emphysema. I had told you of the possibility of this in an earlier post and we learned on Tuesday that this is indeed the case.

We are all fine as frog-hair around here and will just take life as it comes. Anyway, this Thursday Treasures is long but thought some of you might like it. It does give a new twist.

Since I have discovered I’m ill, I have made it a point to push harder mentally and physically. Spiritually, hey, I love it. While I was tested only a little over a month ago, I knew something was wrong a couple of months earlier. It was so weird. I can almost pinpoint the day. Not exact day, but I do remember it was a day or so before painting class, the first Saturday in November. I remember because I woke up and did not want to go, but made myself. Even after I got there, I couldn’t paint. It was like my head would tell my hand to move, but my arm was just too tired to make that happen. And then every day was like that. By and by, I thought it might be horrible depression, everything gets put on that easy enough, and Dad had just passed, holidays, etc. and it would have been easy enough to believe, so I went to check about the possibility of a possible change in medication. Everything changed after she (the NP OB/GYN) listened to my lungs. So here we are. Both lungs are scarred and that will be debilitating and irreversible and fatal. But guess what? Something always is… for a while.

I’m going Home, folks, but to keep it real and Texan like, ‘You aren’t shed of me yet!’

Semper Fi and read on if you care to. We’ll try to pull everything back out of the Geriatric Ward what with me and Mom, but I think most of the young ones are on My Space anyway ;)

And now it’s not even Thursday. Oh well. Put on your WEAR RED ON FRIDAY shirt and read yesterday’s news today!

De’on
+++


Losing Your Health Doesn't Mean That You've Lost Everything ...
by Marc Gellman

Thursday Treasures-Reprinted with permission

Sept. 28, 2006 - This week's popular but untrue saying is, "If you have your health, you have everything." Because if this saying is true, then it also true that if you lose your health, you have nothing. This is not only false, it is spiritually corrosive. Placing upon people the double burden of both their illness and the despairing conclusion that their illness has taken away from them everything important is much more than false. It is deeply cruel.

I know that the saying intends to be positive. It intends to say something like, "We should never want more than just our health because nothing we have is more important." Of course I agree that we should strive to live healthful lives and avoid the transfatty parts of the universe, but health is a fleeting thing, affected by environmental and genetic and even purely random factors. The fixation on health as the only important thing is what is behind this saying, and what is behind the unnecessary and often debilitating despair of sick people.

In my life so far, the two people I knew who best refuted the if-you-have-your-health-you-have-everything saying were Henry Viscardi and Pam Rothman, may their memories be blessed.

Born with severely short, twisted legs, rejected by his parents and forced to grow up in a sanatorium, Henry Viscardi was the Martin Luther King Jr. of the disabled. He was a driving force behind the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the founder of the Henry Viscardi School for the disabled in Albertson, N.Y. One day when my friend Msgr. Tom Hartman and I were visiting Henry, he said to us, "I never think of the people in this center as disabled. I think of you guys as just temporarily abled." Henry taught us that day that we are all part of the same continuum of gradually decreasing ableness that moves from the time we are children flying across lawns to the time when we wake up, get out of bed and say, "Oy, that hurts!" Nobody is disabled. We are all just temporarily abled until that day when we are no longer quite so abled.

When Moses broke the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments because of his anger at the people for worshiping the golden calf, God gave him a new unbroken copy, but God also commanded Moses to place all the broken pieces of the first tablets together in the same golden ark of the covenant that held the new unbroken tablets. The broken and the whole were together in the same ark. As it was so it is with us now. Those of us who happen to be disabled and those of us who happen to be temporarily abled are together in the covenant of God's love and must be together in the bonds of love and support we extend to each other. The broken and the whole are together in the same ark.

In the Jewish laws concerning the treatment of dying people, the rabbis taught this same lesson. In Shulchan Aruch Yoreh Deah, the first line we read is, "A dying person is like a living person in all essential respects." We are commanded to view dying people the way we would view any other temporarily abled people. They are living and we are living. In that essential respect we are the same. When we coddle them, infantilize them, hide the truth from them or treat them as if they were already dead, we have separated them from the community of people made in the image of God. My father, Sol Gellman, has Alzheimer's disease. My father does not know my name, but when I hugged him and kissed him goodbye on my last visit, he grabbed me and said to me, "I know that I belong to you, and I know that you belong to me." Even now, in the midst of his deepening fog, my father still knows everything that is important to know.

Pam Rothman died of cancer after a long struggle, and although she eventually lost her life, she never lost her smile. One day sitting in her hospital room, Pam said to me, "Rabbi, I can't be the best of the best any longer, but I can still be the best of the worst." And she was the best of the worst, the very best of the very worst. She helped other cancer patients cling to hope, she held her family together by her embracing love and she read and wrote to the end. In the end Pam was taken, but she was never defeated.

Like Pam, many people find that their greatest artistic, spiritual and personal achievements come after they are sick. The greatest theoretical physicist in the world is Stephen Hawking. He has the motor neuron disease ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), and he cannot move from his wheelchair. He speaks through a speech synthesizer. He has the best mind trapped in the worst body and this fact has not dimmed but brightened his brilliant light. Christopher Reeve was a good actor and a great Superman but he became a great inspirational force only after his injury. The greatest modern Jewish theologian was Franz Rosenzweig, and though he died in 1929, also from the predations of ALS, his illness did not diminish his brilliant translation of the Bible into German with his friend Martin Buber nor his philosophical masterwork, "The Star of Redemption," which he wrote by holding a pencil in his mouth and pointing to the keys on the typewriter.

Henry and Pam, Stephen and Chris, Franz and Helen Keller, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Soren Kierkegaard, FDR, Beethoven and a thousand brave and wise and creative people whose bodies were broken or who suffered disabilities or ill health have given everything to the world—while millions of people who have their health have given nothing. And how else can we understand God's decision to pick Moses, a disabled man with a cleft palate to be the leader of the Exodus from Egypt? God picks the soul, not the body. Through an endless list of wounded genius we are taught and must finally learn that losing your health does not mean that you have lost your genius or your destiny.

Much of my counseling is devoted to helping people cope with newly broken lives. Perhaps their life has been broken by injury or illness or perhaps by the death or illness of someone they loved more than life itself. In all these cases the people who come to see me know that they have lost a substantial part of their physical or mental health, and because they secretly believe this damn saying, they think they have lost everything. My job is to convince them that the saying is wrong. I must try to urge them, cajole them, teach them and remind them that even in their weakened state they still have everything they need to lead a spiritually, morally and even physically happy life. They may not have what they had but they have what they have, and as long as they are still alive, what they have is enough. They may not be able to do what they once did. They may have to adjust the expectations of their life, but they do not have to surrender their life or their hope or their resolve to be the best they can be with what they have left. This is not a counsel of despair and resignation. It is a counsel of hope and faith.

The reason health is not everything is your health is about you, and everything really important in your life is about others: serving others, loving others and teaching others reveals our true purpose and ultimate destiny. The rabbis wrote, "Give me community or give me death." Losing your health is a terrible thing but losing a community of love and purpose is fatal. Our only chance to find everything is to get out of ourselves.

So I wish you a year of health, and I wish you a year of knowing that having your health is not even close to having everything.

+ + +

About the Author:
Marc Gellman
The Spiritual State

Gellman holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Northwestern University. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and is the senior rabbi of Temple Beth Torah in Melville, New York. Gellman is a past President of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Gellman was a contributing editor of Moment Magazine where his collection of modern interpretations of Bible stories for children first appeared. Does God Have a Big Toe? was selected by The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and People Magazine, as one of the best children's books of 1989. His second volume of modern midrashim for children, God's Mailbox was published in 1996. In 1997 he published, Always wear Clean Underwear and other ways parents say they love you.

With his friend Monsignor Thomas Hartman, he published Where Does God Live? which received a Christopher Award; How Do You Spell God? (with a forward by the Dalai Lama) which was made into an HBO animated special and received a Peabody Award. They also co-authored Lost and Found: A Kid's Book of Living Through Loss; Bad Stuff in the News; and Religion for Dummies. Gellman and Hartman host a cable television program called, The God Squad, and write a nationally syndicated spiritual advice column in newspapers across the country. They also appear on many news programs and are regulars on Imus in the Morning.

Gellman and his wife Betty raise guide dogs for the blind. They have two married children, Mara, married to Ilan are parents of Ezekiel, and Max who is married to Phoebe.

The Princess Reports

A few of our readers and most certainly my family will know who Tonya is. I’m sure several of the Marines remember her from the Marine Ball 2003 and 2004. For those of you who don’t know her, I’ll tell you more about her as time goes on and more than one picture of her was shown on Aaron’s scrapbook. There will be a few more on her birthday I’ll share which is coming up soon!

Tonya is my first cousin, surviving daughter of Mickey, my mom’s elder brother. She is the mother of Shanda and also Allie (who Aaron took to the Marine Ball in 2003 as many of you will remember that bit of disaster); the wife of Mitch, and also Tonya is a 13-year breast cancer survivor. (She was doing chemo during our 40th birthday; I am five days her senior.) She is also a staunch Texan, conservative, Texas Tech Red Raider (and even a former cheerleader there!) She is also fondly known as “The Princess” and has even bonged me with her own little pink wand a couple of times.

She gave me an apartment and job in Lubbock so that I could finish what I’d started at Tech and she was the hostess of Aaron’s Homecoming Party in 2003. The two of them were extremely close.

Tonya is the keeper of the coin President Bush sent me, the heroine of a work I’m quite proud of and it was while I resided at her apartments that I came up with “Short End of the Libman.”

We are Ya Ya’s and she is most assuredly the most patriotic person I know. Truly. Maybe I can talk her into emailing me the photos of her latest displays of such. Tonya has collected flags and memorabilia of the United States for years and has recently added a beautiful interior touch to the walls in her home.

Tonya started a new weight loss and energy program recently and has asked her family to act as a part of her accountability group. After another friend and reader (most of you know Diane) mentioned on the blog that she was after the same thing (and I think a lot of people are!), I thought “family” would go a step further and hold Tonya accountable. So, dear young and lofty cousin, you are now before the world or at least a few of us gUnZ uP readers ;)

Hard and heavy drum roll please…

Ya Ya and others (fluffy or not) welcome to the first edition of The Princess Reports.

UPDATE-DAY 4

Hey everybody, I just wanted to let you know the good news....As of 8:00 a.m. today, I have lost a total of 8 pounds!! Even better than that - Mitch has lost 12!!! This has been the easiest thing I have done so far, and I feel better than I have felt in a long time.

Thanks for all of your encouragement and prayers. I'll email you again in a couple of days.

Love ya, Tonya

+ + +

TODAY’S UPDATE

Hello my A.G.,

Today has been 1 week and 1 day and I guess 1 is my number because as of this morning I have lost 11 pounds! I am feeling great and have more energy. Dora and I have even signed up at a workout place and are going to start exercising today. As far as how hard or easy it has been...it honestly hasn't been that bad. I'm so busy during the day and I don't get hungry so I don't think about it much. I have gotten a little hungry at night when I am on my cleanse days, but they have these delicious snacks that you can have (up to six a day) and that has helped. I did really well all week, but since you are my accountability group, I will be totally honest and tell you that I "slipped" on Saturday night. My friend Jouana was in town and several of our friends all went out to dinner at 50 Yard Line. Obviously, there is a lot of temptation there. Anyway, I have done GOOD so far...I am going to hang in there!!

Thanks for prayers and encouragement.
Love to you all,
Your chubby (but not quite as chubby)
friend, niece, cousin, mom, and wife.

P.S. Mitch is still doing well too, however he has been traveling all week so he hasn't had a chance to weigh.

If anyone wants more info about this program you can visit the website, http://www.abbotttonya.isagenix.com/

or email Tonya at abbotttonya@yahoo.com

Editors Note: The “Dora” she speaks of is her nickname for another cousin! “Dora” was born the same day as me. Yes. Earlier. She’s the eldest, but only by a few hours!!--dm

The Use and Abuse of Reagan by Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson - Kenyon College

The Use and Abuse of Reagan

by Victor Davis Hanson

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Ronald Reagan’s presidency was a great success. He rebuilt a chaotic U.S. military and helped end the Cold War. Reagan’s radical tax cuts in 1981 spurred economic growth and redefined the relationship between U.S. citizens and their government. And he appointed conservative federal judges and bureaucrats who tried to roll back the half-century trend of expanded governmental control over our lives.

Reagan’s nice-guy charm made it difficult for even his critics to stay angry with him for long. But he was no mere smiling dunce, as liberal intellectuals used to snicker. His private papers and diaries instead reveal that he was widely informed, read voraciously, drew on a powerful intellect and was an effective writer.

It is no wonder that conservative leaders — especially the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls — now constantly evoke Ronald Reagan’s successful presidency. In contrast, they rarely hearken back to the uprightness of the one-term Gerald Ford, or praise the foreign-policy accomplishments of the two Bush Republican presidencies.

Instead, the candidates try to “out-Reagan” each other by claiming they alone are the true Reaganites while their rivals in the primaries are too liberal, flip-floppers or without consistent conservative principles.

In short, Ronald Reagan has been beatified into some sort of saint, as if he were above the petty lapses and contradictions of today’s candidates. The result is that conservatives are losing sight of Reagan the man while placing unrealistic requirements of perfection on his would-be successors.

They have forgotten that Reagan — facing spiraling deficits, sinking poll ratings and a hostile Congress — reluctantly signed legislation raising payroll, income and gasoline taxes, some of them among the largest in our history. He promised to limit government and eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. Instead, when faced with congressional and popular opposition, he relented and even grew government by adding a secretary of veteran affairs to the Cabinet.

Two of his Supreme Court appointments, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, were far more liberal than George W. Bush’s selections, the diehard constructionists, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Reagan’s 1986 comprehensive immigration bill turned out to be the most liberal amnesty for illegal aliens in our nation’s history, and set the stage for the present problem of 12 million aliens here unlawfully.

Republicans forget all this — but so do Democrats, who for their own reasons want to perpetuate an unflattering myth of Ronald Reagan as an extremist right-wing reactionary.

In foreign affairs, Reagan was not always sober and judicious. He shocked Cold Warriors by advocating complete nuclear disarmament at his Reykjavik summit with Michel Gorbachev.

In the middle of Lebanon’s civil war, he first put American troops into a crossfire. Then, when 241 marines were blown up, he withdrew them. That about-face, and the failure to retaliate in serious fashion, helped to embolden Hezbollah’s anti-American terrorism for decades.

The Iran-Contra scandal exploded when a few rogue administration officials sold state-of-the-art missiles under the table to Iran’s terrorist-sponsoring theocracy, and prompted opposition talk of impeachment.

In other words, a great president like Ronald Reagan made mistakes. He sometimes reversed positions, played politics and baffled his conservative base — some of the very charges now leveled against Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
When a candidate today says, “Reagan would have done this or that,” he apparently has a poor memory of what Reagan — the often lonely, flesh-and-blood conservative in the 1980s — was forced to do to get elected, govern and be re-elected. While in office, he proved more often the pragmatic leader than the purist knight slaying ideological dragons on the campaign trail.

So what is the real Reagan legacy? It is mostly the Great Communicator’s uncanny ability to distill complex problems, offer a more conservative solution than America was used to or ready for, and then inspire and enact difficult change through a brilliant “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” turn of phrase.

But 2008 is a different world from a quarter-century ago, when Reagan began his presidency. Amnesiac candidates need to separate the myth of Reagan — the perfect conservative — from the real man when stridently chastising their rivals for their past fudging on taxes, illegal immigration or the size of government.

The current pack of five serious Republican candidates should call on the spirit and principled inspiration of Ronald Reagan for guidance about new problems in the way they evoke Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt.

But these candidates only do his memory — and their own careers — a disservice by claiming sainthood for Ronald Reagan, and thereby demanding a standard of immaculate conservative conduct that neither Reagan nor they could ever attain.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

Virgie Bell's View: Ties That Bind

O. J. Simpson. Go to Jail. Stay in Jail.......Forever.

Staples are out...Yea! I am so glad. De'on took me to the Dr. and of course I did everything wrong. I could not...COULD NOT...wear the corset thingamajig and the doctor did not like it one bit. Tell me why it is that hearing people think you can hear if they give you important information? For instance, he said “Raise your gown." I thought he said drop your panties and I did. De'on comes out of the chair like a shot "No Mom, raise your dress.” See. He called the very best dress that I had to wear a gown. I should have known that no one in their right mind would say drop your panties to me. Back to the corset thing. He said "Don't you have any biker shorts?" When is the last time you saw a 72 year old woman with a reserve set of biker shorts? So anyway, biker shorts are now part of my get well instructions. Biker shorts...

I didn't even know my computer was a dinosaur until De'on called it one. It still does much more than I know how to do, or for that matter even care to learn. Dear reader, I am so far behind on what is going on in the world. My major accomplishment was to turn from the left side to the right side. I see that O.J. is back on the tube. I do wish they would throw the key away after locking him in with some dude looking for a new squeeze. Justice my man...justice. His present girlfriend is a clone for the wife he murdered and I loved the fact his watch turned out to be a $100 look-alike for a Rolex. When you are not in that league anymore, get a Timex or go without, but don't try to keep up with the Rolex crowd. Speaking of which, have you noticed those who are, quote: "O.J.'s friends?" Goons, real goons. Makes the Heisman Trophy about in the same league as Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize. People will be stepping back and saying no, thanks, but no thanks. Anyway I am up a little more today and will tell my niece to go ahead and send presents or even male strippers as it is never too late. All they have to do is say "Raise your gown" and it's a go. Ha!

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Editor’s note: Click here for the post VB is referencing when she speaks of her niece. The comments section is where you’ll find my crazy cousin (and Diane, her weight/energy plan is there too!) -dn