Hero

A month away from his 23rd birthday, James (J.D.) Riekena was killed this past weekend in Baghdad by a roadside bomb. His mom got the news early Sunday morning. His mother wants you to know about James the soldier, and James the son. "He was a young man who had a lot of wild dreams and plans and hopes and ideas." James had volunteered for a second tour in Iraq to help pay for college. His mom says the Eagle Scout talked about becoming an English teacher. "His brothers and sister are gonna miss him," his mom said, "and it's gonna hurt forever." "He said 'you know mom, I signed on the dotted line,' " Pat said, "so, he said 'when they tell me to go I'll go cause that's what I swore I'd do.' " "Be proud of what they did cause I'm proud of what JD did," she said. A memorial service for James is being planned for next month. He was assigned to the 145th Brigade Support Battalion based in Post Falls, Idaho. LINK - KOMOTV.COM

Tick Tock

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists plans to move the hands of the symbolic "Doomsday Clock" ahead on January 17th. Their decision is based on scary changes in the world's threat level caused by the nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, and a bunch of other things that tend to keep scientists up a night. The clock was last pushed forward (by two minutes) to seven minutes to midnight in 2002 amid concerns about the proliferation of nuclear, biological and other weapons, as well as the growing threat of terrorism. When it was created by the magazine's staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then. It was as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 following U.S. and Soviet hydrogen bomb tests, and as far away as 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 after the superpowers reached agreement on a nuclear arms reductions.- Link Trivia - Bush 41 was the President in 1991. I find it interesting that these Scientists have waited until now, when the Democrats have come to power in America, to determine that we are so much closer to Doomsday. I wouldn't be surprised if the Dems asked for the addition of a "snooze" button.

Heros and Traitors

Yesterday there was a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in honor of Medal of Honor winner Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham. Dunham was killed when he jumped on a grenade to save fellow members of his Marine patrol while serving in Iraq. - More Here This is a photo of President Bush as he attended the ceremony for Cpl. Dunham. This is the guy that many refer to as BusHitler or Chimpy. They love to say that he lied to the world about Weapons of Mass Destruction just so he could send brave soldiers like Cpl. Dunham to die for nothing. The Democrats would love to rewrite history and have the world forget that they were all calling for this war in Iraq long ago, because they too thought that Saddam had weapons of mass Destruction. But now they want us all to believe that the whole thing was the fault of this one man. And they have done everything in their power to undermine the efforts of the President and the troops. This week, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy unveiled a bill to block the use of funds for Bush's plans to increase the size of the force in the war zone. The Dems hope is to leave the public focus on Bush as steward of a war that has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 U.S. troops. Yet back in 2005 the Democrats were hammering Bush because he didn't have enough troops. Sen. John Kerry, Bush's Democratic opponent in last year's presidential election, told NBC's "Today" show that the borders of Iraq "are porous" and said "we don't have enough troops" there. Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," disputed Bush's notion that sufficient troops are in place. "I'm going to send him the phone numbers of the very generals and flag officers that I met on Memorial Day when I was in Iraq," the Delaware Democrat said. "There's not enough force on the ground now to mount a real counterinsurgency." - Link Less than a month ago on Dec. 17, Democratic leader Harry Reid said on ABC's ``This Week'' program that he would support a surge of American forces for two or three months as part of a larger plan to withdraw combat troops by 2008. - Link But now he's changed his mind. But here we are in 2007, four years into this war with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, And they STILL have offered no alternative plan of their own to win. Just like Tokyo Rose, the media and the liberal bloggers and those left wing celebrities continue their non-stop negative spin on the war. Only this time the people are buying it hook line and sinker.

Just Say NO!

There may yet be some hope for our future. The School Board of Federal Way, Washington has decided that they will not allow their students to be brainwashed about "Global Warming". In a 3 - 0 vote last night, the board ruled that the showing of Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" to the students will not be allowed unless an opposing view is also presented. - Story In a related story, tonights evening commute for most of western Washington was completely screwed due to... SNOW! That's frozen rain, Al. My wife and I just finished shoveling snow and chipping the ice from our local community hall steps this afternoon. I have to admit I found myself wishing for a bit of Al's global warming when I could no longer feel my fingers.

Testing

The news has reported some rather strange events lately. There was the report of the "Flying Imams" who acted oddly and were removed from a flight. Yesterday some middle eastern looking guys were found hiding in the cab of a truck entering the Port of Miami. Of course neither of these events turned out to be anything more than paranoid officials overreacting, better known as "Islamophobia". We all know it's perfectly normal to be hiding in a truck cab or acting all wierd on a plane if you're a white guy, right? Now today we have reports of dozens of dead birds found near the capital building in Austin, Texas, and the strange smell of natural gas in New York City. I'm sure these reports will also be dismissed as nothing important, so we can all go about our business as usual. Nothing to see here, These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along. The people trying to protect us are having their reputations eroded by the media and made to look like bumbling idiots. How long before we begin to ignore them completely? And can we blame them if they choose to think twice before reporting the next security breach? Saddam had small strips of white paper dropped over the Kurdish villages to see which way the wind was blowing before they dropped the poison gas.

TA - DA!

"Grey skies are gonna clear up... Put on a happy face..." That's right folks, it's 2007 and both houses of Congress are now controlled by the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi is now Speaker of the House and they have begun to implement their "New direction for America". Let the spin begin! 167,000 jobs added to payrolls in Dec. WASHINGTON - Employers stepped up hiring last month, boosting payrolls by a brisk 167,000 and keeping the unemployment rate steady at a still historically low 4.5 percent. For all of 2006, the nation's unemployment rate dropped to a six-year low of 4.6 percent. No mention of the fact that President Bush and the Republican controlled Congress were in charge up until the day before yesterday. Oh, NO!... The economy sucked until now, as did everything else. I expect that even the reports on Iraq will be all sunshine and roses before the end of the month.