Somebody Please Gag Rosie O'Donnell

So this morning on the radio I heard Rosie wants to impeach President Bush. Now I'm not this administration's biggest fan. But if my choice is between the President and Rosie O'Donnell .... well Rosie better start lookong for work. Maybe the Donald would hire her for PR work. I don't watch the veiw but I see clips from time to time. How long is she going to stay on the show? After all it isn't Rosie and freiends.

"Someone I believe should call for the impeachment of George Bush to let the world know…I’ll tell you why. Listen…I think we should do it so the world knows that the nation is not standing behind this president’s choices, that the nation, a democracy, feels differently than the man who was leading as if it were a dictatorship, and that we represent this country. He does not lead as a monarch .... "

YouTube - Rosie calls for Bush's impeachment

"Democracy Gets It Right"

A very good coloumn by Michael Degolyer in the Hong Kong newspaper The Standard. I was very impressed with it. I have placed an excert below. Follow the link to read the entire column.

As for '08 ..... if I had to vote now I would go with Bill Richardson. Time will tell ....

"A foreign policy dream ticket might be Hillary for president, Obama as vice president and Richardson as secretary of state. With Bill Clinton marshalling Hollywood and joining hands with the likes of former Microsoft chief Bill Gates in pushing American philanthropy abroad, an Asian-American with ties to India or China as secretary of commerce or treasury is the only thing lacking to switch American influence from its absolute nadir under Bush to an all-time peak ..... "

The Standard - Democracy Gets It Right

Albuquerque Journal - High Ambition: Richardson Eyes the White House

Hillary '08

Let the games begin!

From Rolling Stone.com :

"And I want you to join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of our country -- about the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures."
-- Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, last week

"I'm pleased to be able to share this National Conversation, because that is what this election ought to be: not a shouting match, but a conversation with the American people about our ideas, our values and our plan for a stronger America."
-- Presidential candidate John Kerry, to the Democratic Leadership Council, May 7th, 2004

" .... Which brings us to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton announced her run for president last week. Now it was her turn to slip the "national conversation" line four sentences into her first speech as a national presidential candidate. You have to wonder what it says about a political candidate when she runs out of her own ideas less than fifty words into her national sojourn ...."

Read the entire story at Rolling Stone.

THE LOW POST: In It to Spin It
Hillary gets off to a smashing start

Self Worth, "Don't ever forget .... "

I found this in another blog and thought I would post it in mine. I'm at a loss as to whose blog it was .....

Don't ever forget it.....

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?" Hands started going up.
He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this." He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill. He then asked, "Who still wants it?" Still the hands were up in the air.
"Well," he replied, "What if I do this?" And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. "Now, who still wants it?" Still the hands went into the air.
He then explained, "My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20."
"Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those
who DO LOVE you.
The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but
by WHO WE ARE.

You are special-Don't EVER forget it."

From Father To Son

Just read this article by Dana Canedy. Originally it was in the New York Times. It is kind of long but I thought I would pass it on. Wonderful piece about a true hero.

SPIEGEL ONLINE - January 2, 2007, 10:17 AM
Der Spiegel International

FROM FATHER TO SON
Last Words to Live By
By Dana Canedy
First Sgt. Charles M. King is remembered by his fiancée, Dana Canedy, an editor at The New York Times.
He drew pictures of himself with angel wings. He left a set of his dog tags on a nightstand in my Manhattan apartment. He bought a tiny blue sweat suit for our baby to wear home from the hospital.
Then he began to write what would become a 200-page journal for our son, in case he did not make it back from the desert in Iraq.
He boarded a plane in December 2005 with two missions, really - to lead his young soldiers in combat and to prepare our boy for a life without him.
Dear son, Charles wrote on the last page of the journal, "I hope this book is somewhat helpful to you. Please forgive me for the poor handwriting and grammar. I tried to finish this book before I was deployed to Iraq. It has to be something special to you. I've been writing it in the states, Kuwait and Iraq.
The journal will have to speak for Charles now. He was killed Oct. 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his armored vehicle in Baghdad. Charles, 48, had been assigned to the Army's First Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, based in Fort Hood, Tex. He was a month from completing his tour of duty.
For our son's first Christmas, Charles had hoped to take him on a carriage ride through Central Park. Instead, Jordan, now 9 months old, and I snuggled under a blanket in a horse-drawn buggy. The driver seemed puzzled about why I was riding alone with a baby and crying on Christmas Day. I told him.
"No charge," he said at the end of the ride, an act of kindness in a city that can magnify loneliness.
On paper, Charles revealed himself in a way he rarely did in person. He thought hard about what to say to a son who would have no memory of him. Even if Jordan will never hear the cadence of his father's voice, he will know the wisdom of his words.
Never be ashamed to cry. No man is too good to get on his knee and humble himself to God. Follow your heart and look for the strength of a woman.
Charles tried to anticipate questions in the years to come. Favorite team? I am a diehard Cleveland Browns fan. Favorite meal? Chicken, fried or baked, candied yams, collard greens and cornbread. Childhood chores? Shoveling snow and cutting grass. First kiss? Eighth grade.
In neat block letters, he wrote about faith and failure, heartache and hope. He offered tips on how to behave on a date and where to hide money on vacation. Rainy days have their pleasures, he noted: Every now and then you get lucky and catch a rainbow.
Charles mailed the book to me in July, after one of his soldiers was killed and he had recovered the body from a tank. The journal was incomplete, but the horror of the young man's death shook Charles so deeply that he wanted to send it even though he had more to say. He finished it when he came home on a two-week leave in August to meet Jordan, then 5 months old. He was so intoxicated by love for his son that he barely slept, instead keeping vigil over the baby.
I can fill in some of the blanks left for Jordan about his father. When we met in my hometown of Radcliff, Ky., near Fort Knox, I did not consider Charles my type at first. He was bashful, a homebody and got his news from television rather than newspapers (heresy, since I'm a New York Times editor).
But he won me over. One day a couple of years ago, I pulled out a list of the traits I wanted in a husband and realized that Charles had almost all of them. He rose early to begin each day with prayers and a list of goals that he ticked off as he accomplished them. He was meticulous, even insisting on doing my ironing because he deemed my wrinkle-removing skills deficient. His rock-hard warrior's body made him appear tough, but he had a tender heart.
He doted on Christina, now 16, his daughter from a marriage that ended in divorce. He made her blush when he showed her a tattoo with her name on his arm. Toward women, he displayed an old-fashioned chivalry, something he expected of our son. Remember who taught you to speak, to walk and to be a gentleman, he wrote to Jordan in his journal. These are your first teachers, my little prince. Protect them, embrace them and always treat them like a queen.
Though as a black man he sometimes felt the sting of discrimination, Charles betrayed no bitterness. It's not fair to judge someone by the color of their skin, where they're raised or their religious beliefs, he wrote. Appreciate people for who they are and learn from their differences.
He had his faults, of course. Charles could be moody, easily wounded and infuriatingly quiet, especially during an argument. And at times, I felt, he put the military ahead of family.
He had enlisted in 1987, drawn by the discipline and challenges. Charles had other options - he was a gifted artist who had trained at the Art Institute of Chicago - but felt fulfilled as a soldier, something I respected but never really understood. He had a chest full of medals and a fierce devotion to his men.
He taught the youngest, barely out of high school, to balance their checkbooks, counseled them about girlfriends and sometimes bailed them out of jail. When he was home in August, I had a baby shower for him. One guest recently reminded me that he had spent much of the evening worrying about his troops back in Iraq.
Charles knew the perils of war. During the months before he went away and the days he returned on leave, we talked often about what might happen. In his journal, he wrote about the loss of fellow soldiers. Still, I could not bear to answer when Charles turned to me one day and asked, "You don't think I'm coming back, do you?" We never said aloud that the fear that he might not return was why we decided to have a child before we planned a wedding, rather than risk never having the chance.
But Charles missed Jordan's birth because he refused to take a leave from Iraq until all of his soldiers had gone home first, a decision that hurt me at first. And he volunteered for the mission on which he died, a military official told his sister, Gail T. King. Although he was not required to join the resupply convoy in Baghdad, he believed that his soldiers needed someone experienced with them. "He would say, 'My boys are out there, I've got to go check on my boys,' " said First Sgt. Arenteanis A. Jenkins, Charles's roommate in Iraq.
In my grief, that decision haunts me. Charles's father faults himself for not begging his son to avoid taking unnecessary risks. But he acknowledges that it would not have made a difference. "He was a born leader," said his father, Charlie J. King. "And he believed what he was doing was right."
Back in April, after a roadside bombing remarkably similar to that which would claim him, Charles wrote about death and duty.
The 18th was a long, solemn night, he wrote in Jordan's journal. We had a memorial for two soldiers who were killed by an improvised explosive device. None of my soldiers went to the memorial. Their excuse was that they didn't want to go because it was depressing. I told them it was selfish of them not to pay their respects to two men who were selfless in giving their lives for their country.
Things may not always be easy or pleasant for you, that's life, but always pay your respects for the way people lived and what they stood for. It's the honorable thing to do.
When Jordan is old enough to ask how his father died, I will tell him of Charles's courage and assure him of Charles's love. And I will try to comfort him with his father's words.
God blessed me above all I could imagine, Charles wrote in the journal. I have no regrets, serving your country is great.
He had tucked a message to me in the front of Jordan's journal. This is the letter every soldier should write, he said. For us, life will move on through Jordan. He will be an extension of us and hopefully everything that we stand for. ... I would like to see him grow up to be a man, but only God knows what the future holds.