I don't like to name drop usually. But since I will be gone for a couple of days and ya'll wanted to see more pictures, I thought I would share some pictures below with some of my more important friends.

(yeah, I know I suck at photoshop, you don't have to tell me)

Here I am on the beach with my boys and a special friend.

Here I am on another date. The red carpet does get old.

This is my new Godchild and niece. My date insisted on sitting down for the picture. So rude. But when you look like that, you can get away with anything. (click on pic if you can't tell who my date is)

One more lil thing regarding Michael Yon.

Here is an interview with Michael Yon today on Radio Blogger. Here is the good news from the war that most Americans aren't getting.

HH: Are Americans getting a distorted view about how the war is going?

MY: Absolutely. Clearly, you're getting mostly body counts and bombings and that sort of thing, which are very real. I mean, I see those things here. They absolutely occur. We fight here every day. But what they don't see is that we fight less and less here every day. For instance, Deuce 4 has not been hit with an I.E.D. in about two weeks. We used to get hit like twice a day. Now, it's been like two weeks, and we have not been hit at all. So, you know what I'm saying?

Kickass Reporting.

Michael Yon is getting at least some attention in the msm. Even the NYT gives a slight mention. He got plenty the blogosphere though. One has to wonder why newspapers aren't tripping over themselves to publish what is easily the best reporting ever coming out of the war.

In reading his latest post that I implored y'all to read below, I was glued to the computer screen. I felt like I was right there. The pictures took you into the action as well. It was kickass reporting.

If any newspaper publisher has a brain in their head, they will hire this guy. Let's hope Michael gets the kudos he deserves when he returns.

Why Did We Go Into Iraq?

I notice that the left still keeps bringing up the fact, that they seem to think we on the right don't know, and that is that Saddam Hussein had nothing to with 9-11. So why did we go there? What was this noble cause? I like how a former black hawk helicopter pilot who served in Iraq answers the question.

"Before I went to Iraq, I was 100% sure that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Nobody ever tried to tell me that Saddam was in any way responsible for that terrible day. We weren't going there to avenge 9/11, folks. We went there to help prevent the next 9/11. It was the second step in what is sure to be a long drawn out campaign that is likely to see even more destinations in the mideast. If you can't figure that out, and you're still foaming at the mouth over all those lies that were never told- well, then, that's you're own fault..."

This Should Be A Circus....

This Saturday in additon to Cindy and friends, Freepers and Protest Warriors Join the “You Don’t Speak for Me Cindy Tour” , the Caravan of MoveAmericaForward, and White supremists Against the War - Protesting this war for Israel (the cabal of joooosss!) don't cha know? And I understand the usually low key Al Sharpton will also be on hand with his merry band of men.

Oh man. This will be one for the books.

UPDATE: Ok, not really an update, but I found an interesting article in Rolling Stone where one of their reporters went down to Crawford on Aug. 11th. The guy pretty much makes fun of the left and the right here. But as you read the article there is no doubt he is anti-war. But he does see things as they are in Crawford and speaks to the nuttiness of it all and how it isn't like Vietnam. Here were some interesting tidbits he picked up:

"The ostensible political purpose may be ending the war, but the immediate occupation for a sizable percentage of these people always seemed to be a kind of rolling adult tourist attraction called Hating George Bush. Marches become Hate Bush Cruises; vigils, Hate Bush Resorts."

" If you spend any amount of time involved with peace protests, as I have, you very quickly start to notice that Hating the President just seems like a little too much of a fun thing for too many of your brothers-in-arms."

But here was one... ummm... dare I say...crazy converstation with the anti-war people the reporter had:

"At one point at Camp Casey, an informal poll taken around a campfire revealed that six out of a group of ten protesters, selected at random, believed that the United States government was directly involved in planning the 9/11 bombings. Flabbergasted, I tried to press the issue.

"Do you know how many people would have to be involved in that conspiracy?" I said. "I mean, start with the pilots . . ."

"The planes were flown by remote control," a girl sitting across from me snapped."

And in an effort to be objective and fair in my blogging about the looniness on the right as well, he had this conversation with a righty:

"Another group I spoke with asked me why I believed Iraq wasn't connected to 9/11. I answered that Saddam Hussein's secular government was a political enemy of the Islamic fundamentalists.

"Well," said Raymond Smith, 42, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
He laughed, and the group nodded at me triumphantly.

It was like a scene from Spinal Tap.
Three seconds passed.

"But," I said finally, "that doesn't make any sense, does it?"

But in the end, the anti-war reporter feels the same way I have always felt about Cindy Sheehan. (emphasis mine)

"She had been through so much in the past week. In still more proof that red-blue politics often comes before family in this country, her in-laws had released a statement cruelly denouncing her. Her estranged husband, perhaps a coward and perhaps unable to handle the stress, filed for divorce. Revelations about her personal life were spilling into print, and all around the country, heartless creeps like Drudge and Ankarlo were casting themselves as friends and protectors of her fallen son and criticizing her for dishonoring him."

"In return for all that, what Sheehan got was this: her own trailer, a couple of weeks' worth of airtime and a bunch of people who called themselves her friends but were really just humping the latest cause. They would probably be moving on soon, and Sheehan would be left with nothing."

A Must Read!

Remember my post about Michael Yon's recent combat blogging with Commander Kurilla???? Well, he has the whole thing up now WITH PICTURES. It is the most amazing thing to read!!!! Go read it!! NOW!!!

Caption this had this photo with so many good captions that I couldn't pick just one.

"Spank me, comrade! Spank me like a four-year-old at Kmart!"

"Let's call Jimmy Carter and see if he's up for a three way?"

"Aw, Hugo, you arranged to have a dissident tortured just for me?"

"They say the only different between a straight brutal tyrant and a gay brutal tyrant is a six-pack."

Move America forward

MoveAmericaForward.org is an organization that is countering Cindy Sheehan's protest movement. I saw an ad on TV today asking for people to join them in a caravan to Crawford Texas this weekend. The ad included a mother who had also lost a son in Iraq.

From my previous posts, you know that I don't like this. I don't like pitting one grieving mother against another. The whole thing is distasteful to me. But I certainly can't blame those in MoveAmericaForward for what they are doing. They can't very well just let Cindy say things that they, as grieving parents, don't agree with. They feel that Cindy Sheehan's words are hurting our troops and our country.

That is why I was pleading with Cindy and her supporters to go home. This will just be painful and not necessary. We all know that there are two sides to this issue. We all know what those sides believe. It is really necessary to make a spectacle out of grief????

No, it isn't.

Eminent Domain back at cha....

You have to admit, this is a great way to make a point in a way a Supreme Court Judge can understand.

The Highs and Lows of being a Democrat.

The American Spectator describes perfectly the glee and then profound disappointment the left keeps experiencing:

"The feeling you are experiencing, or will soon experience(regarding Sheehan), is a familiar one. It shrouded you when you first accepted in your heart that the infamous CBS News memo "proving" President Bush went AWOL during his service with the National Guard was a fraud. You giggled with glee when the story first broke. We've got him now, you said to your friends. When conservatives immediately expressed skepticism about the documents' authenticity, you called them "liars" and "idiots." But deep inside you knew. Ultimately, you settled into a weird "fake but true" numbness.

You felt it again when the London Times revealed the leaked Downing Street Memo. This was it, you said. Now we have Bush by the short hairs! You blogged about the memo so much, you gave it a shorthand moniker, the "DSM." "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," the memo read. "But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." An open and shut case, right?

Well, no. Even before liberal magazines like Slate and many liberal talking heads in the media wrote the DSM off as no big deal, you started having doubts. "Fixed around" doesn't really mean "fixed." And the memo was written by Britons who, after all, have different idioms than we Yanks.

So you lowered your sights. When Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, told the Conservative Party of New York, "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," you just knew this would be the end of "Bush's Brain." The American people wouldn't stand for a politician -- well, a Republican politician anyway -- politicizing 9/11. Sen. Hillary Clinton called for Rove's resignation. So did Sen. Jon Corzine. You had the Big Mo. Then you thought about it for a moment and you realized it was true. You did want to understand the terrorist attackers. You credited poverty, U.S. foreign policy, Israel and anything else you could think of (except the terrorists' evil hearts) for instigating that terrible act. The swarm dissipated over the weekend.

But you had a second bite at the Rove apple when you found out he leaked to a reporter that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative. Yeah! Rove wouldn't merely lose his job for this, he'd lose his head. Only he didn't "name" Valerie Plame. He didn't even know her name, which is actually Valerie Wilson. And she wasn't a "covert" operative. She hadn't been one for six years. She drove to her "secret" CIA office every day -- between Vanity Fair photo shoots apparently -- out in the open where any terrorist spy could tail her.

Again, that old feeling poured over you; a mixture of disappointment, rage, confusion, and whatever the exact opposite of Schadenfreude is."

Heh.

In Case You Have Been Missing My Intelligent Design/Evolution Posts. (I know you have)

Now this is interesting. This is a perspective of someone who believes in an intelligent design, just not the Christian type belief in it.

"It's high time to rescue "intelligent design" from the politics of religion. There are too many riddles not yet answered by either biology or the Bible, and by asking them honestly, without foregone conclusions, science could take a huge leap forward."

More interesting is the questions he poses. Maybe some of my anti-I.D. commenters can answer a few of them.

No. No. NO.

Someone who loves Cindy Sheehan needs to get through to her. Do a leftwing intervention or something. In an article today Cindy explains why she is going back to Crawford, which is fine, but she has to cross the line. She has to insult all those soldiers and parents who have lost a child in the war: (emphasis mine)

"What is the noble cause that he says my son died for? The answer to that question will not bring my son back. But it may stop more meaningless deaths. Because every death is now a meaningless one."

OMG! If I had a child in the military I think I would be making a trip to Crawford myself and have a little talk with Mrs. Sheehan. I understand she is lost in her grief, but that does not mean she gets to insult others who have suffered the same loss, but feel very differently about the meaning of their child's death.

If all I wanted was the left to look bad then I would encourage Cindy in her quest to insult all Americans who support the war. But this is too painful to watch. If Democrats care about their party, then they need to make it clear that they don't agree that our soldier's sacrifices are meaningless.

Because if you don't make your voice heard, then Cindy's painful remarks will be all that is heard.

Gearing Up.

Leftwing groups are gearing up for a fight against John Roberts. You may be aware that they have requested and received 250 trillion notes and opinions from Robert's past work, but you may not know that they have also requested notes that he passed to girls in 7th grade.

Ok, not really. But even that wouldn't surprise me. The attitude now is to keep digging until proper dirt can be found. It is a wonder we get any decent people appointed in government given the witch hunts that occur now.

Who needs it? Roberts can make a very comfortable living in private life. I don't know why any one would want to go through the smear campaign of being appointed to high government positions.

Dear Abby,
My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job three years ago he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does is buy cigars and cruise around and jokes with his pals, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I am a lesbian. What should I do?

Signed,

Clueless

Dear Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. For Pete's sake, you don't need him anymore, you're a United States Senator from New York, act like it.

Stolen from Atlas Shugs (because it was too funny not to)

HAPPY BLOGOVERSARY TO ME!!!! I Y ALL MY COMMENTERS!!!

No! Wait! Stop! Your In The Right Place!

Yes! I changed my look. I got so many comments about the pink and I never thought about the workplace. Anyway, please keep commenting on the "Tell Me About Yourself" post. When I changed, it deleted my comments, but I copied and pasted those on one comment there. I am trying to do the rest. (at least the most recent)

Hope you like it!!

One more thing. I am trying to decide whether to go back to Haloscan comments or not. Tell me which one you like best.

Bizarre.

I don't keep up with Pat Robertson much. I have never seen The 700 Club, but you would have had to have been asleep all day to miss his bizarre statements regarding assassinating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Truly strange.

Got a few days to read? Well, it doesn't get more fascinating than this. These are the interviews with the firefighters that survived 9-11 after the fact. Here is a gripping one I picked at random to read. I am sure they are all riveting. I'm reading them now and I can't stop. Now I can't remember where I got this link from. Sorry.

God. I just get so emotional reading or hearing about 9-11.

Waaaay past time for a caption contest!!! Go for it!

Tell me a little about yourself.

Comments From Left Field had this survey on his blog and I thought it was a great idea. If I can know a bit more about you and why you read this blog, maybe I can do better here. Feel free to post with a different name if you don't want even your online identity known. No need for an e-mail either.

Some suggested questions:

What is your gender?
What is your age?
What is your ethnicity?
Where are you located (eg. Pittsburgh, PA)?
What is your political affiliation if any?
What issues are most important to you?
Why do you read this blog?
Where did you find out about this blog?
What would you like to see more of? Less of?
Do you have a blog? URL?

Never Again.

I was surprised at how emotional I got watching the last half of "Inside 9-11" last night on the Discovery Channel. I can only imagine the memories it brought back for those who lived in NYC and Washington D.C. I truly do not see how anyone watching this documentary can be against this war.

One can argue all day about specifically going into Iraq. Fine. But it important to remember that a country didn't attack us, a belief did. And that belief is blowing itself up almost daily in Iraq. Whether those are men from Iraq or other Arab nations, they are the terrorists and we are killing them by the thousands over there. In February, an unnamed senior military official told CNN that the US military believes it killed between 10,000 and 15,000 guerrillas in combat last year. Dead terrorists. Lots and lots of them. Sounds good to me.

In my comments section there is a soldier who served with Casey Sheehan. He says that 5 other servicemen where killed the day Casey died, but for every one of them, they killed anywhere from 100-200 terrorists. And that was just one day. No one has convinced me yet that killing those monsters that seek to destroy our way of life is making this world a more dangerous place. No one can convince me that these men were just average citizens until we came along and then decided to blow themselves up along with fellow Arabs, including children. No. This mindset was made long ago.

Say what you will about the reasons we went into Iraq, but the fact is that our Special Ops discovered and destroyed a international terrorist camp in Iraq the first week of our invasion. Radical Muslims, such as the ones who flew those planes into our buildings, are spread throughout the region. Right now they are going into Iraq so they can be "martyrs." So I will ask you this. Where else would we have gone to fight the terrorists? We had destroyed and killed them in Afghanistan. Should we have let them stew and plot against our nation again????

"Inside 9-11" convinced me more than ever that we are doing what has to be done. It isn't pretty and I hate it, but terrorism cannot be ignored, it must be destroyed.

We ignored it before and paid the price.

Never again.

No One Wins This One.

Yahoo News has this:

CRAWFORD, Texas - A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch.

The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall.

Now isn't this special? The war of the dead children. That is just great, isn't it?? Is this what Cindy Sheehan wants? Parents of fallen soldiers fighting with each other?? One infuriating the other? Adding to an uspeakable grief?

Let's stop this now. For God's sake, everyone pack up and go home. We don't need vigils , we know your against the war and we know why. We don't need "Support Our Troop" rallies to turn into yelling fests between parents of soldiers and those who oppose the war.

This isn't changing anyone's mind. This isn't helping. This isn't going to bring the troops home any sooner. This isn't going to get your guy elected. This is only going to cause hurt and pain, not the least of which will be on Cindy herself. This hurts our troops. This hurts the parents. This hurts our country.

Put down your signs, your candles, and your banners and go home. This isn't Vietnam. The people who support our troops are going to be out there too. It will always be one opinion against another. No one is going to win this.

No one.

chickenhawk, chickenhawk, chickenhawk....oh shutup.

You know that "chickenhawk" argument the left is spewing all over the blogs? Well one commenter over at Protein Wisdom got a wee bit ticked off. He was exactly the right guy to put it the way we would all like too (except I don't allow that kind of language here) So enjoy.

The Right Meets The Left.

Andi's world gives us a detailed report of a "Support Our Troops" rally to counter the "Cindy Sheehan candlelight vigil" in front of the White House Wednesday night. Along with this Freep account, you get a big picture idea of how each looks at this war and our troops. Both links have great photos too. It is, as they say, a must read.
via Mudville

More incredible reporting from Michael Yon.

If you have been reading the incredible blog of Michael Yon in Iraq, Lone Star Times has this horrifying post of his from yesterday:

"The operation has begun. The Commander of Deuce Four, LTC Erik Kurilla, was shot three times in combat yesterday in front of my eyes. Despite being seriously wounded, LTC Kurilla immediately rejoined the intense and close-quarter fight that ended in hand-to-hand combat. LTC Kurilla continued to direct his men until a medic gave him morphine and the men took him away. I was right there. When I returned to base, I was actually "ordered" not to write about the fighting until given clearance, and was told that my phones could be confiscated. I will ignore such "orders" at my own discretion. I am preparing a dispatch now."

Kurilla is a well known soldier in Michael's blog. His bravery is well documented.

Say a prayer for him today if you can.

Powerline has this "must read" piece. So go read it.

Now this is energy from a natural source.

Watching TV.

Wow. That is my main reaction to the first part "Inside 9-11" on the Discovery Channel tonight. It was fascinating to see the path Osama and the rest took to 9-11. Thank goodness the Discovery Channel took pains to not get political with it. I think they tried to stick with just the facts as they happened.

It seems clear that the Clinton administration dropped the ball many many times in not catching Osama or taking the threat seriously. But the early Bush administration didn't take it seriously enough either. The thing is, I'm not sure that taking it seriously could have prevented 9-11. The elaborate scheme was so far beyond anyone's imagination.

The only comfort I can take from it is that we now know how real and dangerous this threat is. We now know how easily it is to recruit Muslim fanatics to do the unspeakable. Not knowing this was our greatest weakness.

After watching "Inside 9-11," I watched another episode of "Over There." I have read the reviews from soldiers on other milblogs and they weren't happy with it overall. But I have to say (and I am speaking as a BIG supporter of the military as anyone who reads this blog knows) that I kind of like the show. It has a lot of soap opera drama, but it doesn't seem to make the soldiers look bad in my opinion. They just seem human and venerable. I am no military expert though, so I can't speak to the details that seem to be bothering the milblogs.

In watching the show, I felt a great tenderness for those who serve so far away from those they love. I also felt a great appreciation for the sacrifice they make and the bravery it takes to make it. I am under no illusion that all soldiers are some kind super hero. Soldiers make mistakes. Some bad people become soldiers. Nothing is perfect. Certainly not in war. But it is my heartfelt belief that most soldiers believe in the same values that I do. And they feel those values are worth fighting for.

I am looking forward to seeing next Sunday's episode. It is about an inbred reporter that the soldiers get pretty ticked at. The only thing that concerns me is having a drama on TV about a war that is happening in real time. Could terrorists watch the show and get ideas or learn something about our military they didn't know before?

I hear that the ratings aren't too good for the show. So it may not last long. But if the goal of the producers were to somehow show our military in a bad light, it just doesn't come off that way. If anything, it should generate sympathy for the families of the soldiers at home and the needs that they have.

At least I hope so.

Iraq Unplugged

Mudville tells us about "Iraq Unplugged" Songs written and recorded by American soldiers in Iraq. They actually recorded it there.

Click on "I am a Patriot." It is awesome. It will give you goosebumps. I heard Luke Stricklin sing "An American By God's Amazing Grace" on Fox and Friends about 2 weeks ago. It is awesome. You can buy the CD straight from their website.

I just saw on Fox News a video of Cindy Sheehan at a rally for a lawyer that defended terrorists awhile back. Cindy was wondering why Bush didn't send his "two little party animals" to Iraq.

I think the left is going to regret pushing Mrs. Sheehan as the anti war face of their movement.

John Roberts obviously hates it when celebrities get accolades they don't deserve. I love it.
via Dean's World