I know that nobody has heard from the Dixie Chicks in a long time. We’d probably just move on from the sedition and treason they committed in order to increase sales on their albums.

The thing is … Cpl. David Thibodeaux was deployed in service to his country at the time so it took him a little longer to respond. He was busy with other things and the chicks were probably not really high on his list of things to handle at the time. Thibodeaux says much of what I’ve heard expressed from other men and women who have and are serving in the Global War on Terrorism.

Marine sings answer to Dixie Chicks hit

Cpl. David Thibodeaux was in Iraq with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, when the Dixie Chicks partnered with anti-war group MoveOn.org in 2004. Despite the band making headlines with anti-war views, he didn’t know much about them, he says.

Nevertheless, Thibodeaux now sings “Not Ready to End the Fight,” an “answer song” to the Dixie Chicks’ 2006 anti-war hit, “Not Ready to Make Nice.”

“I’ve seen so many good things happen in Iraq, and I don’t think it’s time for the war to end,” said Thibodeaux, a member of the Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force. “Anybody who doesn’t think there are terrorists out there should open their eyes.”

Featuring backing music from members of Toby Keith’s Easy Money Band, the song has been played on radio stations across the country. A music video will be released soon.

How did a Louisiana native stationed in Indian Head, Md., find himself recording music in Nashville? It began when another Marine, Maj. Deryl Michael, and Tim Hernandez, a friend who had worked in the music business, watched the Dixie Chicks accept their Grammy on TV in 2007. They decided that night to write a response song and find an active-duty serviceman to sing it.

“It didn’t have to be a Marine, but it had to be someone in the military who had already been to Iraq or Afghanistan to lend credibility to the song,” said Michael, a staff secretary at Marine Forces Reserve in New Orleans.

Thanks in part to a 2004 Associated Press photograph taken of Thibodeaux holding a guitar in Iraq, they eventually found him in Maryland.

“I was a little intimidated when I found out who I’d be playing with,” Thibodeaux said. “But they were really great to me and even thanked me for my service. It was a great experience.”

See the video here!

UPDATE: someone put the video on YouTube - so here it is

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I just thought this video was really cool. Enjoy ….

Oh, and this is an open trackback post

I know that I’ve made fun of Hollywood stars who have come out and said a lot of really stupid things. Of course they have as much a right to their opinions as anyone else. But since they are in the public eye and choose to make their opinions known publicly, they are subject to public ridicule. That’s how it works.

Every once in a while one shows some maturity when they speak out and actually make sense. Angelina Jolie has been no stranger to controversy and since she grew up in the public eye has had every misadventure of her life splattered all over the tabloids. It appears now that she’s grown up a little bit and is exhibiting a sense of responsibility to give something back to the country that gave her the opportunities she’s had and to the world at large. Good for her.

As I’ve written before, she’s shown signs of supporting our Troops. She’s also visited our Troops in Iraq as part of her role as a figure head for humanitarian efforts of the U.N. I have to give her credit where credit is due.

Now she’s written an opinion piece about why we need to stay in Iraq until the job is done. She bases her opinions from her trips to the region and her talks with our Troops and both American and Iraqi officials.

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

and ….

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do.

Read her article here.

You are probably thinking this is just fluff - but it seriously takes some guts to back a Republican candidate in Hollywood. I figured I’d give Angie Harmon her due for coming out publicly and supporting John McCain.

“There are a lot more people in L.A. voting for McCain than you think,” Harmon said in the newest issue of Us Weekly, on newsstands now. “We have an underground Republican Party!”

Join us in blogging for Victory!

Jessica Simpson is getting ready to go to Kuwait to entertain the troops. I was looking for a link because I thought I had written about that before, maybe I just read it some where and meant to post it cause I couldn’t find the link. Anyway, she’s been there before, I’m pretty sure. She wrote about her upcoming trip on her website Sweet Kisses ….

“Hey ya’ll, I just wanted to say hi, and let you know that I am hard at work on my country record, and I can’t wait to share it will all of you.”

“I am heading to Kuwait to do a show for the troops, then back in the studio.”

“I love you all and am so blessed by the support and love you show me everyday!! xoxo jess.”

She may very well be a complete airhead and as shallow as they come, but at least she does do something for our Troops. I understand she gives back to our country in several ways (ie: charitable donations, etc). So good for her. I’m sure that’ll cheer the guys up just fine! I imagine my son would have been thrilled if any of these stars had made it over there while he was there.

Sharon Stone, the actress best known for flashing Michael Douglas in the movie Basic Instincts, has spoken to middle eastern newspapers about her disdain for American policies and most things American. BTW, she’s pictured here in an outfit, including elaborate fur, that probably cost more than I make in a year. I’m just saying …. America has been pretty good to the old girl.

Mz. Stone went to the Dubai International Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates and bad-mouthed the United States to the Arab press. Needless to say, the Arab newspapers have taken her words and run with them, terrorist organizations are applauding her and she’d be real popular there if she’d just put on a burka and keep her legs closed for more than a minute at a time.

CAIRO, Egypt - Hollywood icon Sharon Stone believes the Sept. 11, 2001 bombings of the United States should not have been used as a pretext to launch the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to comments published Monday in a Saudi-owned newspaper.

The actress said in an interview with the Al Hayat daily that she fails to understand how the American public supported those wars to start with, only to denounce their fallout later. She also bemoaned what she called America’s decision to ignore the deaths of so many Iraqis.

“When we choose war, we should understand that we choose murder, bloodletting and torture,” Stone told the newspaper.

“I feel at great pain when the spotlight is on the death of 4,000 American soldiers, while 600,000 Iraqi deaths are ignored . . . War is not a movie, it is a tragedy of dead bodies, victims, the disabled, orphans, widows and the displaced.”

Stone spoke in English and her comments were translated and published in Arabic. An English transcript of the interview was not available.

Al Hayat published only excerpts of the interview, done in December when Stone attended the fourth Dubai International Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates. The paper’s sister publication, Leha, was to publish the entire interview Wednesday.

Stone said she came to the region seeking answers for herself because the U.S. media have failed to provide Americans with the truth and have distorted it instead.

“I feel sad when I realize how much truth is being changed or obscured in the American media,” she said.

This statement is particularly ironic considering that she is so accustomed to being free to say whatever she wants without consequence that she has no idea that she doesn’t have those same freedoms in other countries. She criticizes America for obscuring the truth, yet her words have been cut and edited so that when they are translated in to Arabic she gives encouragement to our enemies.

Stone added she opposes any military conflict with Iran, saying the West should instead negotiate and use other means of pressure on Tehran, such as a trade boycott and sanctions.

The star of “Basic Instinct” and other movies also criticized both Arab countries and Israel for failing to resolve the decades-long key Middle East conflict.

The region is now “addicted” to the status quo and whenever a solution is close, hysteria prevails instead, Stone was quoted as saying. “People sometimes get used to their choices and they fear change.”

In Dubai, Stone also campaigned to raise over US$1 million for AIDS research and awareness about the disease which remains taboo in the Arab world.

What an idiot.

Sharon Stone Without Make-up

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The Stranger helps us get a clearer picture of what celebrities are endorsing which candidates for president. As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton face-off for the democratic nomination, their celebrity endorsers also face-off. Who gets the most valuable endorsements? Who is endorsing who? The chart below should help clarify everything.

click to enlarge

via Outside the Beltway

Angelina Jolie showed up to have lunch with our Troops in the Green Zone in Baghdad today. She was there in her role as U.N. Ambassador to assess the humanitarian issues there.

Of her mission, Angelina has said: “There’s lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment, and a lot of pieces that need to be put together.

“I’m trying to figure out what they are.”

“What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going to affect the entire Middle East.

“It’s in our best interest to address a humanitarian crisis on this scale because displacement can lead to a lot of instability and aggression.”

It should come as no surprise that there’s more talk than action - that’s the way it always is. Let’s have another meeting and discuss it more. I don’t see that changing any time soon. I certainly don’t see United Nations doing anything effective for anything other than sending celebrities around as spokespersons and raising them more money.

Still, all in all, I have to give Angelina credit for having lunch with our Troops. I’m sure she had more security than the President has when he goes there and I’m also sure she didn’t step foot out of the Green Zone. Undoubtedly she cheered the troops. I have no idea what her politics are or how she feels about our military. I’ve seen her do things with the Troops before so I give her the benefit of the doubt.

Even General Petraeus made time to meet with her! I’m so sure he did! LOL

BAGHDAD (AP) — Note to world leaders: Next time you need instant access to foreign dignitaries and top military brass, forget the usual protocols. Just send in Angelina Jolie.

Hollywood’s globe-trotting leading lady swooped into Baghdad on Thursday to highlight the plight of Iraqi refugees, gaining an audience with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the American Embassy said.

On her mission as a U.N. goodwill ambassador, Jolie also met with Iraqi migration officials to stress that there needs to be a coherent plan for the more than 2 million internally displaced Iraqis who are beginning to trickle back to their homes amid a recent lull in violence.

“There’s lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment,” Jolie said in excerpts of an interview aired on CNN.

Jolie mingled with American troops during lunch at a dining facility in the heavily guarded Green Zone, which houses the embassy and Iraqi government offices. She grabbed a red plastic tray at the mess hall, collected her lunch and sat at a long banquet table to eat — her fork tines down, of course — as flashbulbs from soldiers’ digital cameras lit up the wall behind her.

During the CNN interview, Jolie said the fate of Iraq will have an impact on the Middle East for years to come.

“And a big part of what it’s going to affect,” she said, “is how these people are returned and settled into their homes and their community and brought back together and whether they can live together and what their communities look like.”

You can participate here in the American Idol chat. Come on - we’ll have fun!

We’ll be live blogging American Idol again Wednesday night. Grab and coke and some popcorn and join in the fun.

Just show up - we’ll be right here making fun of the contestants, the judges and the whole show. Come on over!

I’m sure everyone has heard about the death of actor Heath Ledger at this point and don’t need me to rehash the whole situation. There are plenty of places to find the details. But in connection to this I heard someone on television this morning disclosing that the Phelps Family Hate Cult plans to picket his funeral. The announcer then said, ‘This is the problem with organized religion ….’ and was then interrupted and never finished that thought - fortunately.

Here’s the thing. That group is NOT ‘organized religion’ so to speak. It is a hate cult that has been picketing the funerals of Soldiers and making similar statements about Soldiers from the get-go. The old media has not been as interested in their abuse of Soldiers as they seem to be of their abuse of the memory of Heath Ledger. As tragic as the death of this young man is, maybe it will at least bring some attention to this horrific group of people and what they have been doing to Soldier’s families. I also hope that people don’t associate them with a legitimate church!

From Fox News

A radical Baptist church in Kansas known for picketing the funerals of soldiers who perished in Iraq said it intends to protest Heath Ledger’s memorial service with signs claiming the actor died and is in Hell because he played a gay character in “Brokeback Mountain.”

Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka said that she and other members will picket Ledger’s United States memorial services, not those held in his native Australia.

“You cannot live in defiance of God,” she said. “He got on that big screen with a big, fat message: God is a liar and it’s OK to be gay.”

A press release circulated by the church references Leviticus 18:22 in the Bible, which states that “thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.”

“Heath Ledger is now in Hell, and has begun serving his eternal sentence there,” the Westboro Baptist announcement says.

This horrible group of people are NOT a church and its really embarrassing that they call themselves a church. The statements they are currently making about Heath Ledger are similar to the statements they make about our fallen Soldiers.

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Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise: Scientologist. You’ve probably heard of and/or seen this video - still I had to post it. Its just too hilarious. Consider it an object lesson in why actors need script writers. In fact, the writers who are having their writer’s strike right now could use this as a hammer over the heads of the big hollywood production companies. ‘See what happens when we don’t tell them what to say?’ The producers would get out their check books while wiping away their sweat. Really, its that bad.

Even better, Jerry O’Connell did a parody of the Tom Cruise recruitment video. He’s one of the few who have had the nerve to make fun of Tom because Tom is so powerful. He’s not only powerful because he’s ridiculously wealthy - but he’s powerful because he’s, you know, whew, like, wow, got the power, you know, man, wow, a Scientologist.

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I posted some still photos in my previous post about Scarlett Johansson visiting the Troops. Here is a video of the visit. It looks like a good time was had by all!

Footage of actress Scarlett Johansson visiting troops in Kuwait as part of the USO Tour. Provided by 50th Public Affairs Detachment.

video via: Michelle Malkin

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