The Joe Cook Ad

Many thanks and mega-dittos to Rush Limbaugh for the following story:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is such a great thing. I found it on YouTube yesterday. There is mild controversy surrounding this ad because it is suggested by Democrats that it was paid for by John McCain and his campaign. It has not been. It was not paid for by anybody other than the man who did it. His name is Joe Cook, and Joe Cook is an injured Iraq war vet, lost his lower leg, foot. But you don't know that until the end of the piece. The piece starts with a tight shot of Joe Cook in an outdoor setting, he says what he says, at the end of his remarks, Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA comes up as Joe Cook turns around and walks away, and that's when you learn that he is an injured Iraq war vet. I want you to listen to this, particularly on this, the anniversary of 9/11.

Dear Mr. Obama: Having spent 12 months in the Iraq theater I can promise you, this was not a mistake. I witnessed firsthand the many sacrifices made by the people of Iraq. Those sacrifices were not mistakes. Iraqi people are just like us. They want a chance to live in a secure world, free from tyranny, free from terrorism, free to prosper, free to raise their children and pass on a future. Are they better off today than they were in 2002? You bet. I've seen many men sacrifice their lives for the Iraqi people. They died for a purpose, not a mistake. They died giving hope. They died promoting freedom. Do you rescue a fireman just as he's about to save a child? When you call the Iraqi war a mistake, you disrespect the service and the sacrifice of everyone who has died promoting freedom. Freedom carries with it a price. Because you do not understand nor appreciate these principles, sir, I am supporting Senator John McCain for president. He, too, made a huge sacrifice promoting freedom, because he understands the fundamental truth, freedom is always worth the price. (playing of Lee Greenwood song)

RUSH: That was Army Specialist Joe Cook, an Iraq war veteran, wounded by an IED in Iraq May 2007, lost his left foot and leg six inches below the knee. And you see him walking away after making his remarks here. He's walking on a dirt road in an outdoor setting. And everybody is saying McCain paid for it. McCain did not pay for this. This is not a paid-for by McCain campaign ad.
END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...
• YouTube: Dear Mr. Obama

8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001

8:46 a.m., the first plane crashes into one of the Twin Towers. Most of us remember where we were at the very moment. But, some of us have forgotten what 'they' did to us.

Never forget!

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All That My Father Asked of Me

This article appeared in the Washington Post on Sept. 30th. I received it in an e-mail and was impressed with the writer's strong beliefs in family and country. I, also work for TSA. I had similiar reasons for making my career switch. But, I don't know if my reasons hold as much value as Mr. Lim's or that I could have expressed them as eloquently as he did.

In the least, we are both honoring our fathers and serving our country.

All That My Father Asked of Me
Sunday, September 30, 2007; Page B08

Although our family left South Korea to begin a new life in America over 30 years ago, I didn't know that my North Korea-born father was such an American patriot until the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

While I was growing up, my father was the epitome of the silent type, never raising his voice yet guiding his children by how diligently he worked as the owner-operator of a tiny dry cleaning business in Yonkers, the blue-collar New York City suburb.

He left at 6 in the morning and returned home at 8 at night with the dirt and smell of his work clinging to him. Even in the face of some business or family crisis, he would be silent, offering no excuses and exhibiting no emotion. The next morning, he would go off to face the mounds of clothes as usual.

My father rarely talked about his childhood in Pyongyang. He never mentioned that he had been accepted to medical school in Moscow on a full scholarship before the Korean War obliterated that option. He never talked about escaping alone to the South when he was 16, and he still doesn't know what happened to his mother and baby sister. He never talked about fighting in the Korean War at 17, though when my brother and I were little, he let us play with the scar that a North Korean bullet left across his chest.

These details we got in rare bits and pieces from our Mom, who isn't exactly voluble herself.
I never even knew my father spoke six languages -- Korean, English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Russian -- until I was in college. And there I was, all smug about being able to speak Korean, English and some Spanish.

This was the father I knew -- silent, hardworking and very Korean -- until he called me a few months after Sept. 11 and told me to come home. For the first time in memory, he said he wanted to talk to me.

So I was on the next plane to New York. When I arrived, expecting the worst, it was past midnight. My father was waiting in his car. He said he wanted to go for a drive into the city and handed me the keys. He told me to head downtown along Fifth Avenue.

All the way, he was quiet. But as we approached Washington Square Park, I stopped the car without my father having to tell me to. The absence was so striking. The twin towers of the World Trade Center, usually framed by the Washington Square Arch, were gone. There was just an eerie glow where they used to be.

Then, for the first time in my life, my father asked me for a favor. He asked me to quit my job and go to work for the U.S. government, in whatever capacity it would take me.

My initial reaction was to dismiss this as ridiculous. I was chief of staff for the founder of an international consulting firm and the fastest-rising executive in the company's history. I had a guaranteed, financially secure future. This was the American dream for which my parents had sacrificed all their lives. And he wanted me to go back to school and apply to become a government bureaucrat?

Like any other American, I was deeply affected by Sept. 11. Three students from my high school were killed that day. But this was out of the question. I couldn't give up what I had worked so hard for.

Then he said something that stopped my breath. He said: "Please." My father, who, along with my mother, had slaved in a stifling dry cleaners for more than 20 years for his children, felt the need to say please to his son.

He talked about gratitude. His gratitude to America for allowing a North Korean orphan to take care of his family and send his sons to the best schools in the world. His sense of thankfulness at being granted the freedom and privilege to make his life worthwhile for his family. He said that real patriotism came from acting on your sense of gratitude for your country, not just talking about it. Having one of his sons contribute to the protection of America was his only way to pay back what he had received. I hadn't known my father was such an eloquent man.

So, finally, this June, I began my new life as a bureaucrat, working at the Transportation Security Administration. Along with 50,000 proud colleagues, I am responsible for safeguarding America's freedom of movement for both people and goods.

My father is quietly ecstatic and plans, finally, to retire. He is 75. And he is a Korean American patriot.

-- Jason Lim
Arlington
The writer is undergoing orientation as a program analyst at the Transportation Security Administration. His e-mail address isjason@jasonlim.net.

Mark Cuban is a Jerk!!!!

....and, I'm not the only one who thinks that. Read the following from Pat Dollard. I couldn't have said it any better, than he did.

I know that the troops fight for the right of De palma and Cuban to say what they want. But, how dare they, and how can they, smear the young men and women who fight for them.

Cuban and De Palma don't care about the military or even Iraqi civilians. For those two jerks, it's all about making a buck.


The Man Behind The De Palma Smear: Mark Cuban Declares War On The Troops
September 2nd, 2007


Posted By Pat Dollard.

Mark Cuban

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to put all of his weight behind a campaign to smear US troops in Iraq as “monsters’. Cuban has decided that De Palma’s film “Redacted” must be seen as the cornerstone of his and De Palma’s self-declared anti-victory campaign against America and her troops fighing in Iraq. Cuban’s company Magnolia Pictures will be bringing this propganda campaign to a theater near you this winter. According to a source close to Cuban, the decision for Magnolia to develop, finance and distribute the film was personally made by Çuban.

Cuban has a full producer credit on the film, and DePalma shot it on HiDef video at Cuban’s request, in order for it to qualify as fodder for Cuban’s hi-def cable channel. So far neither he or DePalma have explained how they can be “bringing the truth of the Iraq war to the American people”, as Louie DePalma has said, when neither of them have ever been to Iraq, filmed any of “Redacted” in Iraq, or spent one minute with any soldier in Iraq. Clearly they are only bringing you their imagined propagandists’ reality of Iraq. Both had the opportunity to go, both declined.

They have chosen the coward’s path in a quest for legitimacy as spokesmen for the Iraq war, and as such both have failed in that quest. Indeed, they are left standing as laughingstocks. Their reach has exceeded their grasp. Cuban is a jet-set, armchair “Iraq Truther” who made sure not to have his private jet stop anywhere near Iraq. But he and DePalma are more than anxious to bring you the “reality of the Iraq war”. LMFAO.

DePalma chilling in five star luxury while debuting his film to Europeans, nowhere near Iraq

( In case you haven’t heard of him, billionaire Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks and supports the campaign against Global Warming by travelling in his private Gulf Stream V jet. He also decided to distribute the 9-11 paranoid conspiracy “Truther” film, “Loose Change”.)

DePalma said that going in it was his intention to make a film that would nauseate the American people, and thereby lead to a US withdrawal from Iraq. Well the only way for him to pull that off is if his film makes the case that the anomolous rape it fictionalizes is not actually an anomoly, but a “typical” snapshot of the US military’s behavior. In short, he would have to make his “troops-as-monsters” conceit appear to be typical of the troops, not atypical. This reveals a desire to create something that is nothing short of a willful and intentional smear built upon a lie.

It also means that he decided not to look at Iraq for what it was, but to find something - anything - in it that would allow him to advance his propaganda campaign. Well Louie DePalma gave the game away when he confessed his excitement at his initial discovery of the rape story: “I knew I had a story!”. Now if that doesn’t mean “A story to suit my propaganda interests!”, then what does it mean?

The best defense DePalma has been able to muster about the lack of direct military reality in his film is “I had plenty of real stuff to put in but I didn’t put it in, and can’t show it to you to prove it, because my lawyers won’t let me”. That kind of bullshit pr spin may fly in Hollywood, but it isn’t flying here on earth. If you’ve got the goods, Louie, show them. It would appear quite clear why you haven’t already.

None of the troops in Mr. DePalma’s film are real. They are as imaginary as he and Mr. Cuban’s balls.

Close to a year ago, Daily Kos ran a featured post declaring that it was time to attack the troops if the anti-victory movement was to succeed. Clearly DePalma and Cuban took the cue.
More to follow…

UPDATE: Debbie Schlussel caught this early.:
… Billionaire NBA Owner/Producer Mark Cuban can’t take the heat from Schlussel readers with complaints over this anti-American troops film. Read the comments section on this post, in which Cuban writes that he’s setting his filter to delete all complaints about this movie. Hey, Mark, you know what they say about your promiximity to the kitchen when you can’t take the heat . . . .

Read Schlussel’s February Post

Remembering D-Day

Military Reflects on D-Day Heroism


Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was among hundreds of people who walked today above the windswept cliffs and paused among fog-shrouded headstones here to honor those who died during the D-Day invasion.
Full Story


MORE D-DAY CONTENT
The Leaders of D-Day
Eisenhower's D-Day Message
Soldiers' First-Hand Accounts of D-Day
D-Day Battlefield Maps
Good, Better, Best D-Day Movies
D-Day Veteran Recalls Historic Day
How D-Day Unfolded on June 6, 1944


THIS WEEK IN MILITARY NEWSREEL HISTORY

D-Day Invasion at Normandy
This vintage newsreel documents history's greatest invasion. D-Day: June 6, 1944. This archival footage was provided by The Military Network. To learn more, go to the Lou Reda Productions website.
FEATURED D-DAY SLIDESHOW

D-Day: June 6, 1944
More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day's end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy.
Watch Slideshow Slideshow Gallery

My Butterfly Effect

I took this picture a few days ago. I had come to a stop, on the drive home from work, and I noticed this butterfly, a Monarch.

Every Spring, I watch for them, as they travel back to the North, just as I do every Fall, when they make their way through Texas on the way to Mexico for the Winter.

I am a cancer survivor and they remind me of the brevity and beauty of life.

The average life span of a butterfly is 20 t0 40 days. I believe that the Monarch butterfly may live as long as six months. I'm not sure. I once thought that my own life might not last anymore time than that.

After my radiation and chemo treatments were over, I had new hope and a new appreciation for life. That first spring, after my treatments, was remarkable for it's beauty. The trees were budding in beautiful shades of green against a deep azure sky. The fields were blanketed with spring flowers and, visiting the flowers, were the butterflies. New life was everywhere.

I have seen things, in nature, in finer detail and more vivid hues, ever since.

Monarch butterflies effect me that way.

Former American Soldier Wins Prize for Book Based on Blog

US soldier's Iraq frontline blog wins prize

(from Breitbart.com)

May 14 09:51 AM US/Eastern

An American soldier's graphic account of his deployment in Iraq, detailing the firefights and frustrations of frontline life, has won a prize for books based on blogs, organisers said Monday.

Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time In Iraq", the winner of this year's Lulu Blooker Prize, grew out of an online journal which he started in 2004 while serving as a machine-gunner based in Mosul, northern Iraq.

The blog ran for just eight weeks before being shut down by the US military, but by then it had been widely picked up by the media and publishers offered Buzzell a book deal when he left the army in 2005.

His uncompromising style, peppered with profanities and misspellings and inspired by authors such as Hunter S. Thompson and Kurt Vonnegut, gives readers glimpses of military life that rarely emerge from official sources.

One entry, entitled "Men In Black", related a street battle as US soldiers were hunting down those responsible for firing mortars at their base.

Buzzell, 31, described being ambushed by a man "dressed in all black, with a terrorist beard" shooting an AK47 machine gun at him.

"I heard and felt the bullets whizz literally inches from my head, hitting all around my hatch and making a ping, ping, ping sound," he wrote.

Just afterwards, "all hell came down around us" as "everywhere started unloading on us," he added.

"I kind of lost it and was yelling and screaming all sorts of things, mostly cuss words. I fired and fired and fired and fired at everything," he wrote.

After the battle, Buzzell confided his fears of having inadvertently shot innocent people to a senior, who told him to "put all the things that bother you and keep you awake at night and clog your head up into a shoebox, put the lid on it and deal with it later."

"I pretty much started blogging just out of boredom," Buzzell told AFP.

"I was bored in between missions but over time I realised it was therapeutic, it helped me to live out a lot of feelings."

He added that the US military was getting tougher with bloggers as levels of discontent with the Iraq war were increasing.

"A lot of soldiers over there don't want to be there, they want to get home, so if you have soldiers saying it's not going well, they will get a sense of that and I think the military is kind of scared," he said.

His book, which has been translated into seven languages, beat 109 other entries from 15 countries to win the 10,000 dollar (7,383 euro) prize.

Other frontrunners included "My Secret: A PostSecret Book" by Frank Warren, which features a collection of postcards on which people confess their most closely-guarded thoughts.

Here is a link to Buzzell's 'Men in Black' video. It is an outstanding, very well done video and worth seeing:

http://cbftw.blogspot.com/2004/08/men-in-black.html

A Religion of Peace?

I have tried to avoid commenting on Muslim radicals, not wanting to appear predjudiced against Islam. I firmly believe that every human being has the right to practice their individual belief. I'm sure that every religion has it's fundalmentalist radicals. But, I can think of no religion, other than Islam, that urges it's children to behead or kill. as in these two stories:

Jihadist Video Shows Boy Beheading Man

KILI FAQIRAN, Pakistan (AP) - The boy with the knife looks barely 12. In a high-pitched voice, he denounces the bound, blindfolded man before him as an American spy. Then he hacks off the captive's head to cries of "God is great!" and hoists it in triumph by the hair.

Hamas 'Mickey Mouse' Wants Islam Takeover

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas militants have enlisted the iconic Mickey Mouse to broadcast their message of Islamic dominion and armed resistance to their most impressionable audience—little kids.

How can anyone say that this is our fault, that we are creating terrorists? Do you hate anyone else so much that you would turn your sons and daughters into killers?

Global Incident Map.com

A friend of mine, alerted me to GlobalIncidentMap.com, a website that posts "A Global Display of Terrorism and Other Suspicious Incidents" on a map. The site is updated every 420 seconds. Highlighting an icon give you the information on that incident. It is a very intriguing site and worth a visit.

Another reason why I don't vote Democrat.

Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, has decided to piss on the honor and pride of the United States military and given more hope to our country's enemies, with this statement:

"I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week."

The Story:

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070419184534.ileoeb47&show_article=1

Oh, and one more thing Harry,

Same to you!!!

Early Spring, 2007 in Flower Mound, Texas