Thursday, September 30, 2004
Iraqi women try to help Americans see the country through their eyes

These Iraqi women are travelling throughout the U.S. to say “thank you” and to tell Americans what is really happening in Iraq.  It’s sad when the American media seems to have a more defeatist attitude than the people of Iraq when it comes to prospects for the future.

Read this article, and be sure to share it with others - it’s a great first-hand testimonial on Operation Iraqi Freedom that you won’t be seeing on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.

CLICK HERE - Iraqi women try to help Americans see the country through their eyes

Americans Rejecting Liberal Media Bias

AFP Newswire has a report on the explosion of ratings for Fox News Channel fueled by the mass abandonment of left-leaning broadcast networks.

The report contains a little bit of resentment and mockery towards Fox, but nonetheless it is enjoyable to see how those in the old line failed media empire marvel at the fact that Americans have found alternative news sources they can trust - and it’s not the major networks or CNN!

CLICK HERE to read AFP Report on Fox News Channel

Saturday, September 18, 2004
Operation Fuzzy Wuzzy

(SACRAMENTO) – When 11-year old Adam Johns of Roseville, California heard about the awful terrorist attack in Beslan, Russia, he decided to do something to help ease the pain of those children who survived the attacks.

He formed Operation Fuzzy Wuzzy, and partnered with Move America Forward (www.MoveAmericaForward.org) to collect teddy bears and stuffed animals for the children of Beslan, Russia.  Adam wanted to find a way to provide some comfort, ease some of their pain and let them know that the people of the United States were thinking of them and supporting them.

Operation Fuzzy Wuzzy has already collected hundreds of teddy bears, but there are many sad and frightened children in Beslan who need our support, and we need more teddy bears from the people of northern California.

On Tuesday, September 21 at 10:00 AM Russian-American Community Services is coming to pick up the teddy bears we’ve collected.  That means we have these next few days to ask the community of Sacramento and the people of northern California to help us.

Please bring your teddy bear, stuffed animals or dolls to 770 L Street, Suite #950 – that’s in downtown Sacramento at the corner of 8th and L Streets.

Adam Johns will be present for the handover of the bears on Tuesday morning – September 21 at 10:00 AM at 770 L Street, Suite #950.

Monday, September 13, 2004
One of many heroes - Lt. Col. David G. Bellon

Here are some excerpts from a BLOG posting on the website TheGreenSide.com.

The BLOG is maintained by Lt. Col. David G. Bellon who once was a lawyer based out of Oceanside, California - but now fights to keep Americans safe and free.

His accounts are extremely moving and his sacrifices are worthy of our deepest appreciation. 

Email from Dave - Sep 8, 04

Dad,

As you have heard, we lost 7 Marines to a suicide car bomber the other day.  We also lost 3 Iraqi Special Forces Soldiers.  All were exceptionally brave men.  The Marines are from a battalion that has fought as hard or harder than any other here in Iraq.  These were the guys that were knee deep in the hardest fighting in Fallujah back in April and who have been going hard ever since.  Even more tragic is that they were close to getting out of here.

As heart broke as the Marines of the battalion were, last night they really took it to the insurgents inside of Fallujah.  Contrary to what might be in the media, the mission was not “retribution” for the suicide bombing.  It was part of a regular operation that was slightly accelerated in light of what happened.  We had been watching the city for quite a while and killed many, many terrorists last night.  The battle lasted for hours and hours later, we were still getting secondary explosions off of objectives that we destroyed.  You must have faith that the Marines are giving much better that we get. 

...

Having seen the tragedy in Russia this week we cannot help but shake our heads here and wonder when the rest of the civilized world will wake up and realize that we are in the middle of a struggle for civilization.  History will show that the outcome of this struggle will be no less critical to our collective future than WWII.  Islamic Fundamentalism inspired terrorism is mutually exclusive to peaceful coexistence with anyone who does not buy into their twisted view of the world.  For the masses of appeasers who are still blabbering on about “dialogue” and concessions, I would simply offer that what transpired in Russia is not an aberration.  The enemy we face here is the same one that murdered the children in that school, is the same one that flew the airplanes in the towers, and is the same one that bombed the train in Spain.

CLICK HERE to READ ENTIRE REPORT FROM DAVE BELLON

Dave Bellon and his niece, Ali
Here is his mailing address.  I would ask that you please let him know how much all of us at Move America Forward appreciate what he is doing:

Lt. Col. D.G. BELLON, USMC
RCT 1 HQ Co
UIC 40145
FPO AP 96426-0145

Monday, September 06, 2004
Ben Stein “Gets It”

I wanted to share with you a column by Ben Stein, contrasting the “stars” of Hollywood and the true “stars” - those heroic men and women of our armed forces.

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?
As I begin to write this, I “slug” it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it.  This heading is “eonlineFINAL,” and it gives me a shiver to write it.  I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. 

I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.  It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it.

On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to.  It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.  I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.  But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened.  I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important.  They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated.  But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star” we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?  Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.  They can be interesting, nice people but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq.  He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets.

Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad.  He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.  A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S.  soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station.  He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.  He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.  We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.  There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament....the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery, the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children, the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.  Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.  We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important.

God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.  In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters.  This is my highest and best use as a human.

I can put it another way.  Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin....or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald.  Or even remotely close to any of them.  But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me.  This came to be my main task in life.  I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help).  I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years.  I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York.  I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others.  He has placed in my path.  This is my highest and best use as a human.

By Ben Stein

Could Our Troops Be DENIED The Right to Vote?

The heroic men and women of our armed forces risk their lives to protect our nation’s security.  The least we can do is afford them the basic rights of citizenship including the freedom to vote.

Yet, some of our military personnel might not be able to vote in the next election as indicated in this Gannett News Service wire story:

Troops, Pentagon Officials Gearing Up For Election

By Frank Oliveri, Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials are taking steps to fix voting problems with absentee ballots from military and overseas voters, making sure that more than 6.5 million people can cast a ballot — and have them count.

In 2000, many military and overseas voters couldn’t cast their ballots because mail delivery was slow or envelopes were missing postmarks. Also some voters did not get ballots on time, or they sent them in undated or unsigned.

For U.S. combat troops, the stakes in November couldn’t be higher. They’re in the unique position of choosing their commander in chief, while fighting a war that will factor in many voters’ minds when ballots are cast.

CLICK HERE for the full story as it appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser.