Blue Star Chronicles

Here is another response to the moveon.org ad that tries to use a baby to further their political agenda. See the video here.

Spree at Wake Up America sent me this video today and I think its great. Ania Egland is married to Major Eric Egland. Her husband has served our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. She has two sons and is expecting another child next month. She has filmed the above video as a response to the moveon.org ad that says, ‘Not Alex’. Its wonderful that we still have people in this country who understand that their role as parents is to help their children grow up to be adults, rather than keep them as children their whole lives.

I’ve also noticed that people who grew up without freedom, as Ania did, appreciate the freedoms we have in this country much more than many Americans do who take it for granted.

“Hello Senator McCain, these are my precious boys Noah and Daniel. Their daddy served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I grew up under communism. So, when you say we have to protect freedom in Iraq, I understand. And, someday, I would be proud if they volunteered to serve this great country. Senator, thank you for your leadership.”

This ad is SO much more realistic and sincere than the $500,000 production put on by the moveon.org people. Really, slick presentation and expensive production and distribution costs just can’t get the message across as well as people who feel the message with their hearts.

Rock on Ania!!!

Thursday, June 26th there is a web event that is sweeping through the blogs and is in support of our Soldiers. Its called From the Front Lines. Read about it below, see a video and participate right here on Thursday!

From the Front Lines

This is the place to be on Thursday, June 26th beginning at 4 pm(ET)/1pm(PT) to 12midnight (ET)/9pm (PT). ‘From the Front Lines’ will be livestreamed over an 8-hour long fund-raising web-a-thon’. The goal is to raise $500,000 that will be used to send care packages to every U.S. military man and woman currently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in time for the 4th of July!

The hosts of the event are Melanie Morgan of Move America Forward, blogger Michelle Malkin, and UStream. The web-a-thon will feature talk radio personalities and others in support of this effort on behalf of our military. Some of the featured guest will be Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Oliver North, Monica Crowley, Ann Coulter, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, actor Kelsey Grammer, and Five for the Fighting’s John Ondrasik.

Interviews will include NBC’s ‘America’s Favorite Mom’, Patti Patton-Bader, a Soldier’s Angel and Blue Star mother who has two sons in the military with one currently deployed in Iraq. There will also be a variety of military bloggers and interviews with troops down range and their families stateside. Also included will be Marcus Luttrell, former Navy SEAL and author of ‘Lone Survivor. There will be a special report from the office of General David Petraeus.

Wow - what a line up!

You can watch the whole event unfold right here at Blue Star Chronicles or at Right Pundits and any number of other blogs that will be carrying it from all around the web. You can purchase a care package right now, both in advance and during the web-a-thon. Purchase as many as you like!

This Weeks Hero Was Suggested by Mary Ann

Staff Sgt. Jude Voss
1st Battalion, 3d Special Forces Group (Airborne)

His courage illustrates a combat truth to these veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam: Soldiers aren’t thinking about glory or ideals in the midst of a battle. They fight for the men to the left and right of them.

And that’s just what SSgt. Jude Voss did in September of 2006 when, without consideration to his safety, SSgt. Voss ran through enemy fire and the burning, smoking debris of a truck to rescue Sgt. 1st Class Greg Stube. Sgt. Stube was in a bad way. Uniform burning and legs busted, but because of the actions of SSgt. Voss he is alive today.

Because of his actions that day, SSgt. Voss was nominated for and received the Silver Star Medal for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action. “I did what everybody out there would do” Voss said. “I was just the closest guy.”

You can read SSgt. Voss’s story here.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Have Every Right To Dream Heroic Dreams. Those Who Say That We’re In A Time When There Are No Heroes, They Just Don’t Know Where To Look

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was launched 50 years ago earlier this month. There are photos and a video of the freighter below.

Edmund Fitzgerald

I just realized that earlier this month was the 50th anniversary of the launching of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yes, I know I’m a day late and a dollar short, but I still thought I’d write a few thoughts about the ships of the Great Lakes.

I never had any sort of appreciation for those grand ships and freighters until I lived on the shore of the St. Lawrence Seaway for about six years. Until then, the most I knew about the Great Lakes and the ships and freighters that make their way through those great waters was Gordon Lightfoot’s song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. In my time living in Michigan and seeing those ships and freighters go past the front of our house every day, I learned how to identify where the ships were based, whether they were riding light or heavy, estimate their size and more. There were several that I had seen so often that I recognized them by name from a distance.

When the Edmund Fitzgerald was launched on June 6, 1958 she was the largest freighter in use at the time. At 729 feet, she was called the Queen of the Lakes. By the time I lived in that enchanting land, there were 1,000-footers passing each other day and night along the way. But at the time, The Edmund Fitzgerald was a magnificent sight to see, so for those who knew much more than me about the ships of the Great Lakes, she was famous long before the song by Gordon Lightfoot.

All in all, like with most things, people who don’t live in the area don’t necessarily appreciate the history and the significance of the things around them. For the people who saw the Edmund Fitzgerald travel the St. Lawrence Seaway for years and whose own lives were touched daily by the Lakes and the lifestyle of Lakes, the wreck had a much deeper meaning than a legend made famous by a popular song.

As an aside, our neighbor up there was a Captain of one of the smaller freighters on the Lakes. I rarely saw him because he was usually at sea, but I got to know his wife fairly well. He was fairly typical of the rough men who spend their lives navigating the dangers and uncertainty mother nature tossed at them. One night, in the dead of winter, a storm came up. There is nothing unusual about that for that area. What was usual was that our neighbor apparently happened to be passing by in his freighter as the ice in the river was thickening from the storm to the point that it was difficult to cut through. He parked his freighter in front of his house, and in so doing, he took out about a dozen docks lining the river in front of the houses of his neighbors. Everyone was outraged and furious that he had docked a freighter in a place that destroyed all the docks they used for their pleasure boats. He seemed unmoved. His contempt for their soft lives and concern for pleasure boats was barely contained. His only reply to his stomping an snorting neighbors was, ‘Any port in a storm’. And that is my most interesting story of the time I lived on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Edmund Fitzgerald - Photos

Just yesterday I wrote about the political attack ad put out by moveon.org. You know the one, ‘Not Alex’. The ad is blatant scare tactics and implies that there is something intrinsically wrong with our military. Worse, it implies there is something wrong with someone serving the country.

The video is nothing but fear mongering. It implies there is a draft. It implies that John McCain will swoop into your homes and take babes from mothers’ arms and send them off to foreign lands to make them do bad things. It also implies that little Alex is more special than the sons of mothers who have to sit at home while their sons fight for our country.

It undermines the military and its disrespectful to those who serve. It is a slap in the face to all mothers who spend months and years having to consciously live their lives with a constant aching in their hearts and terror in their souls while their sons are deployed.

Little Alex is no more special than my son, or any of the other sons and daughters who were raised to feel a sense of duty to country.

Predictably, bloggers are having a great time responding to this lunacy. Don Surber wonders how Alex feels about all this. Fausta reflects on the emotional appeal of the ad. Jim Geraghty points out that by the end of a hypothetical second John McCain term, little Alex will be nine-years-old and not likely to be drafted at that age. Ed Morrissey gives a reasoned response by pointing out that John McCain, of all people, understands the nature of the sacrifice required of those who go to war as well as those who watch and wait as their precious children go to war.

And the parodies begin. Allahpundit posted a parody. But my favorite so far was posted by Josh Schroeder, who calls himself ‘one private citizen‘ and says ‘Not My Wallet’ … enjoy that video below.

Capt. Jamie Riddle(Left) and an Iraqi Flight Instructor School student walk to the flightline before a recent mission at Kirkuk Air Base, Iraq. The Iraqi air force recently established the school for Iraqi pilots. Captain Riddle is an instructor pilot with the 52nd Flying Training Squadron.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Moveon.org wants you to raise your sons to be wimps. Check out their attack ad on John McCain below.

This ad really got under my skin. I don’t know if that’s the reason moveon.org made the ad, to irritate people like me. I think they probably made the commercial to pull on the heart strings of all mothers out there and make it appear that John McCain wants to take their sons. These commercials that try to use emotion rather than reality to sway votes are just irritating.

I wonder about the actress (I doubt she’s really the mother of the baby because she’s obviously acting) saying that John McCain can’t have her son. Does that mean she’d rather her son live in a terrorist state or under the constant threat of acts of terrorism? Does that mean that she wants other people’s sons to keep the wolves at bay so that her son can live a life of complete narcissism? What is it she thinks happens in the world?

Actually, I can relate to what she’s saying. I can’t imagine my son being off in a foreign land being shot at by people who are trying to kill him. Its horrific to even contemplate. Its a reality that many of us have to live with day in and day out as our sons do their duty for the country. Its an unimaginable and untenable thing … to have your son ‘over there’ and to know that at any moment something horrible can happen. You don’t go for a second not knowing that. Not for a second for the entire time he’s deployed.

But what would this little actress, or moveon.org, have us do? As a mother, I have learned that I have to let my children grow up and make their choices in life, just as I made mine. I respect the choices my children have made and I support them 100%. I am proud of my son. His deployment changed him, but mostly in good ways. He is definitely a man now. He has a self-confidence and personal strength he never had before. That doesn’t mean I wanted him to go to Iraq. It just means that I understand that at some point a mother has to stand aside and allow her son to become a man.

I would rather do it than send my son to do it, but that’s not how it works. People like moveon.org would rather we surrender and appease than stand up to danger. By doing that, they put our sons in more danger.

Someone has to stand between our society and danger. If not my son, then who? If not little Alex then someone else will have to stand and deliver. Someone’s son, somewhere. This commercial makes me angry. What she is saying is that she is not willing to do her part. She’ll put us all in more danger to hide herself and her child in a corner. I love my son as much as she loves hers. I held him in my lap when he was a baby. I watched him take his first steps and go to school for the first time. I sat with him when he was sick and listened to him when he was confused. I waited in terror the first time he took the car out for a drive by himself.

The hardest thing I have ever done is spend 15 months knowing that he was in imminent danger half-way around the world and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

This woman should get used to it. That’s what its like to raise kids.

See another view at Southern Sass on Crime.

As everyone knows by now, Tim Russert died at work earlier this afternoon. His death was sudden and unexpected. He apparently collapsed, probably from sudden heart failure, and was unable to be revived. He was 58-years-old.

Aside from the obvious sadness at any death, it is always something that takes me aback that someone can be here one minute and gone the next. I know that obviously, but we don’t think of it very often. When something like this happens, its a reminder that nothing is guaranteed. I take it as a reminder to be thankful for the blessings we have today as opposed to looking for something tomorrow.

The Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, was not home when the Governor’s mansion burned over the weekend. Fortunately, no one was at home as the 152-year-old mansion was destroyed by fire. Today he spoke for the first time about the fire. He vows that the mansion will be rebuilt to its landmark status once again.

The cause of the fire is being investigated and thought to have been arson.

There is a lot of debate going on about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Read about it and see photos below.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama doesn’t want you to see his birth certificate which, of course, makes everyone want to see his birth certificate. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever seen a President’s birth certificate, much less a Presidential candidate’s birth certificate. I don’t think any one cares … or cared …. until He said he didn’t want people to see it.

The very fact that he wants his birth certificate kept from view is enough reason for a lot of people to start speculating about what could be on the document that he would want to hide. I have my own ideas about why he doesn’t want it out there. It doesn’t really matter, because we may not ever get to know these things about The One who has been selected to be the democratic nominee for the presidency. After all, the elite should not have to answer to the masses.

Obama addressed this issue one time. Raising his face to the skies and speaking to the people, he chastised them:

Lo, tho you seek to cast me down unto the minions, I shall not be moved. I shall strike fear and loathing in your hearts. Thou wilt despise your own heart for your heart has not embraced the world, but has put labels and borders creating nations that have no meaning. I wilt continue to talk in this irritating manner until thou forgetist that thou hath not seen a certificate of mine birth.

As he finished his speech women fainted at his feet, the crowd was hushed and grown men wiped tears from their cheeks. Obama raised his arms up and blessed the people:

Now, go in Peace and ask of me no further questions for I shall give unto you HOPE and CHANGE.

And everyone was ashamed for having selfishly asked questions of The One.

Barack Obama - Photos

Army Spc. Jeffrey A. Williams
20 years old from Warrenville, Illinois
Support Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment
September 5, 2005

SPC. Jeffery A. Williams was killed in action when an IED was detonated near his combat patrol in Tal Afar, Iraq.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.

We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Magnets are great for promoting your business. You can get car magnets and put them on the side of your car and promote your business everywhere you go!

I think everyone knows that they can get all sorts of printing done online with VistaPrint, but I wonder if you know that you can get magnets as well. I’ve heard really good things about them. I have heard that people are quite pleased with the quality of the products VistaPrint offers. They not only do custom postcards, but they also do business cards, address labels, notepads, oversized cards, car magnets and more. Their printing is reliable and can be custom made to fit your needs.

For instance, if you are promoting your business you can upload your brand and whatever wording your want to have magnets made just the way you want them. Its not just for business, they can be used for personal needs as well, such as birth announcements or pride in your favorite little league player. The prices at VistaPrint are very good and offer faithful customers some really good deals or freebies along with their orders. They take good care of their customers which is part of the reason they have such a good reputation.

Marketing and branding are very important for the success of any business and VistaPrint is a great help in doing just that.