Perfect Valor, a documentary narrated by former Republican senator and 2008 presidential candidate Fred Thompson and produced by David Bossie and his colleagues at Citizens United Productions recounts the stories of a select group of marines and their families during the United States’ successful campaign to wrest control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004.

The film provides an intimate look at the trials and tribulations that these men and women endured during this difficult time, all the way from training on a production lot in San Diego to their re-adjustment to life at home, and illustrates their tremendous courage throughout.

In Perfect Valor, we are introduced to selfless heroes, such as Dr. Richard Jadick, a naval commander and field surgeon who actually had the option not to be deployed to Iraq, but chose to serve his country despite the fact that his wife was about to give birth. Four days after his child was born, Jadick left for Iraq, and after having to endure the difficulties of having to race from the outskirts of Fallujah to troops in need of attention in the field, Jadick decided to set up a med station in the middle of the city. The location was soon more than just a medical facility to our mean and women in uniform as many of them saw it as a place of comfort where they could find respite from the stress of war.

The film also tells the story of Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Workman, a Navy Cross recipient who lost many friends in a battle with insurgent fighters. After his return home, Workman and his wife very candidly discuss his battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and his attempted suicide, which was triggered by his own misplaced guilt over the death of his friends.

Jadick and Workman are just two of the amazing people we meet in Perfect Valor, and their stories and those of the others in the film are presented with an honest insight and a depth of humanity that is rarely appreciated in today’s world. Perfect Valor is deeply moving endeavor. This film provides a perspective that most of aren’t aware of, and of us who have only seen the war on television yet complain of “war fatigue” should set aside 90 minutes and watch it, because it might just give pause to such thoughts.

“When the Senate takes up a jobs bill later this month or early in February, the debate will center on whether it really will create jobs and be worth plunging the government tens of billions of dollars further into debt.

Republicans scoff at the “Jobs for Main Street Act” title that House Democrats put on their $174 billion package last month. They refer to it as “son of the stimulus,” the $787 billion economic recovery plan of nearly a year ago that they say was ineffective at producing jobs.”

How does the old saying go? “Repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity”, or something like that?

Well, that’s exactly what this is. Are there any sane people left in the world? Does anybody remember when they told us that the stimulus package would stop unemployment at eight percent? That didn’t happen, did it? Our government has turned into a remake of the scene from the Steve Martin classic “The Jerk”. You know, the part where he says, “I have this remote control and that’s all I need!”

However, instead of a remote control, our government says that all it needs is just another $174 billion in borrowed/printed money.

Somebody stop the world and let those of us with math skills off, please.

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President Obama declared Wednesday night on ABC News that without healthcare reform the federal government would go bankrupt.

“If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee: the people who are watching tonight, your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you. Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year. “And the federal government will go bankrupt.”

Well, I’ve got news for the president and everybody else out there who hasn’t been paying attention:

The federal government is bankrupt. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have to keep mortgaging our future to China and amassing a debt which has ballooned to an amount in the double-digit trillions. When you couple that with the printing rampage we’ve been on, how is it that anybody can say we will run out of money when we obviously already have? The motto of our government seems to be “Spend all you want, we’ll make more”.
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On her Christmas in Washington special on ABC last night, Oprah Winfrey asked President Obama to grade himself.

“Good, solid B-plus,” the president said.

Explaining, he said, “we have inherited the biggest set of challenges of any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  We stabilized the economy, and prevented possibilities of a Great Depression or a significant financial meltdown. The economy is growing again.”

“We are on our way out of Iraq. I think we’ve got the best possible plan for Afghanistan.

“We have reset our image around the world.”
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Well, who here feels better now? I know I certainly do.

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According to the Politico’s Ben Smith, who is relaying information from Public Policy Polling, it would appear, as per their study, that 44 percent of Americans would prefer having George W. Bush as president for a third term than to have Barack Obama in office.

This is definitely an interesting conversation piece, assuming that the poll is indeed accurate. Ben Smith does not cite any source data for the poll, That will certainly raise the eyebrows of skeptics, but at the same time, President Obama’s approval rating is in fact hovering around 46 percent, so for the sake of argument, let’s examine this based on face value.

In the short time President Obama has been in office, in a matter of speaking, he himself has labeled his term in office as the “Not My Fault” presidency. He has continually discusses situations he has “inherited”, and seems to have no problems pointing fingers, particularly when it comes to matters of spending.

Obama often cites President Bush’s extravagant spending, in turn blaming it for the county’s financial straits; however, he seems to lack the basic math skills to realize that he himself has taken the Bush deficit and more than doubled down on it within his first year in office. Engaged Americans are smarter than this, and they see right through it.

Whether you like him or not, George W. Bush took ownership of his presidency. While he was often quieter than a lot of his supporters had wished, he had no problem stepping up when the chips were down. Remember when Bush took flak for his grammatically incorrect “I’m the decider” comment when he offered his support to then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld? The media had a heyday with that, as it always did, continuing to its never-ending quest to prove that W. was an idiot.

However, poor grammar notwithstanding, people seemed to miss the point. George W. Bush, while he is a man with many faults, had the spine to stand up and say “This is mine. This is all on me.” The only times Obama seems to use the word “ I” is when he is he is so quick to remind us that “I won” or “I inherited this”, in an effort to quickly assert that whatever has befallen the country on a given day certainly wasn’t his fault. President Obama operates in a never-ending “CYA” mode, which makes him more akin to TV’s “Steve Urkel”, who often said, “Did I do that?”

So when you look at it, this poll may have something to it. In all honesty, George W. Bush was far from a conservative president. But at the same time, he took responsibility for his office and the path of his nation, even when his decisions were unpopular. While some of his policies were indeed deeply flawed, Bush carried himself as a leader, and with dignity.

Could it be that President Obama’s ego is finally beginning to wear on the American public? One wonders how long America will tolerate a man who demands to be adored, yet can’t deliver, and then refuses to take responsibility for his ineffectiveness.

RICHMOND, Va. — A 90-year-old Medal of Honor recipient can keep his 21-foot flagpole in his front yard after a homeowner’s association dropped its request to remove it, a spokesman for Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said Tuesday.

Thank goodness. It’s nice to know that some order of sanity can still be maintained out there. What have we come to when homeowners associations are even entertaining the notion of American flags being code violations, let alone actually petitioning to have one removed from a decorated veteran’s home?

It boggles the mind to think that some people actually find one of the greatest symbols of freedom in the history of the human race to be an eyesore. How can this be when the flag is an icon of the one place on Earth where you actually have the right to complain about anything you want without fear of retribution? Wanting to see it removed is rather self-defeating, and well, stupid, isn’t it?

Why is it considered “patriotic” by some to show dissent or to burn a flag, yet to display a flag is interpreted as “offensive” ? Those two things just don’t add up, and one would most likely be hard-hard pressed to find an instance where the display of an American flag actually lowered property values, would they not?

We could spend countless hours debating the usefulness and the true nature of homeowners associations, but that’s not really the point, here. The greater point is that we’ve lost our collective minds. Men like Colonel Van T. Barfoot should be eternally celebrated, not hassled with such trifling things. This man served his country with honor and distinction. He should not be treated as a vandal. It is shameful, and disrespectful to the United States Armed Forces as a whole, and freedom-loving Americans everywhere.

The fact that something like this escalates to the point where White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is forced to comment on it, saying the whole thing was “silly”, once again aids credibility to the argument that common sense in America is in fact dead. Yet, at the same time, Robert Gibbs should be praised for actually getting something right for a change.

Maybe there is “hope” after all.

Just when you think it’s safe to read the news, people are already talking about the 2012 presidential campaign. Not that this is really news in itself, because as we all know, the 2008 campaign seemed to start about 16 years too early, and by the time we got to the ballot boxes, it’s safe to assume that a lot of us felt like we had just gone the distance with Rocky Balboa.

Now, of course we all know about Mitt, Huck, Pawlenty, and possibly Newt. That crew comes with the territory. However, it seems that some people may have really lost their minds. How, you might ask?

Well, from the looks of things, it would appear that former Vice President Dick Cheney has been christened as the GOP’s last great hope, or some such thing. Sure. Why doesn’t somebody stop the world so the sane people can get off now, Okay?

It started off as nothing more than a flippant “Cheney 2012” comment made by his daughter Liz on Fox News a few weeks ago, and for some reason there was another outbreak of speculation over the weekend.
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Two uninvited guests inexplicably “crashed” President Barack Obama’s first state dinner on Wednesday night, and the incident has left many scratching their heads as to how this could have happened.

The couple, Michaela and Tareq Salahi, who are reportedly auditioning for a Washington D.C. based reality show were able to gain access to the party when protocol was not maintained at the Secret service checkpoint.

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At this point, it is easy to imagine the sheer volume of comedy this will produce for late night television hosts, and conservative pundits such as this one. The “we were a second away from Joe Biden being the leader of the free world” jokes are too numerous to even fathom. And yes, the First family’s penchant for partying is well documented. We can go on and on about the stream of protocol blunders ranging from DVD’s and iPods, to bowing indiscriminately and buzzing New York City in Air Force One. While those incidents are certainly perceived as bad by a good portion of the public, in most cases the most damage that is done is that the president and his country gets a bit of a red face, and somebody gets fired because of said incident’s possible impact on future electoral maps.

This, however, is much more serious than any of that.

No matter which side of the political ideological spectrum we fall on, the President of the United States is in fact the most powerful man in the world. Whomever holds that office, whether you had a stake in electing the person or not, and political policies notwithstanding, the president should be protected at all costs.

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So, here we are on the verge of a national health care system. It’s the subject that has dominated the news cycle and been at the heart of nearly every political debate in America since Barack Obama decided to make it the centerpiece of his 2008 presidential campaign.

We’ve been preoccupied with the indications of rationing, not to mention the unsustainable budgetary numbers of it all. Honestly, with all this data being thrown about, one can be certain that it’s nearly impossible for everyday Americans to even begin to take the time to grasp it all.

However, that notwithstanding, from what Americans have been able to grasp just enough of what’s going on as congress attempts to slip this under our collective noses, and the consensus seems to be pretty clear:

Americans do not want socialized medicine.

Now, there is no point in going on and on at this point about congress not listening to us or some such thing. There is no lesson to be learned there, as it is fairly obvious at this point. Truth be told, we should be pointing the finger at ourselves.

Think back to the 2006 midterms, where the rallying cry across the conservative voting landscape was, “Throw the Republicans out! Teach them a lesson!”

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President Obama recently bowed to Emperor Akihito in Japan. At this point, one might wonder exactly who is advising Barack Obama, if any one at all. If you will recall, this is the latest in what seems to be a string of inappropriate greetings in international settings by our Commander-in-Chief.

So far to date, Barack Obama has bowed to Saudi King Abdullah, given an exaggerated nod to Queen Elizabeth II, and there has been speculation as to whether or not he has offered a similar gesture to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

This is troublesome, and embarrassing. Common sense would indicate that it would more than likely be difficult for international leaders to take our president seriously if he is constantly subordinating himself to them. Perception goes a long way on the international stage, and at this juncture, an honest observer of the situation would be hard pressed to find an incident where Obama has projected himself as leader of the free world when he travels abroad, let alone an equal.

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