Dial Up Sucks But You Can Still Read

On dial up tonight and couldn't hardly get around. Took me about two hours just to read four of my favorite blogs.

Since I have to work on a project to make us more profitable, blah, blah, blah, I am just going to leave you some places you should have added to your regular list of things to read regularly.

First, in Iraq, two guys are blogging. I think they are civilian contractors, but I haven't checked out all of their details. I just know that they have some good information on working directly with the Iraqis. They don't hang out in the Green Zone much. The guys from I Should Have Stayed Home:

So, it's this guy in the blue corner. And in the red corner is the Sheikh. Behind him, clad in their flowing dark robes (all of which have at the bottom a trim that repeats in small golden letters the distinctly incongruous words "Yorkshire Wool") sit the sub-Sheikhs of his tribe. They are all right out of central casting, sitting languidly, smoke drifting upwards from impossibly short cigarette stumps. But there was something about the head sheikh that marked him out. He looked like his grandfather, if you see what I mean. Rather than an Arab-looking man, peering out from the robes were a pair of piercing blue eyes and a brushy brown mustache, set against a pasty, slightly chubby, face. The British were in Iraq from the early 1900s until the 1940s, and, within 100 miles either direction of their main base at Habbaniyah, they left a lasting mark. A large percentage of the men from the Ramadi-Habbaniyah-Fallujah corridor have sparkling blue eyes. Sitting before me was a man who, sixty years ago, could have been no one other than Squadron Leader Algernon Fotherington-Smythe, or something like that, except wearing a headdress.

Read the rest. They also have a post on the threats that were posted up around Tikrit warning the Iraqis to stay away. One was from the Ba'athists and on from the Jihadis.

I would also like to introduce you to a member of our diplomatic corps somewhere in the far and abroad The Diplomad. I guarantee that you will like what he rights if you read here. He had a number of posts concerning the US efforts in Aceh Indonesia and the UNefforts of the UN.

He has fellow diplomadic corps officers that blog with links. Check it out. Some of the most interesting writing regarding traveling and politics in the far and abroad.

Last but not least, there is Dr. Saif at Iraqi Humanity. He doesn't post often because he is in the final stages of University to become a doctor. In Iraq, a doctor cannot get his license until he completes a much longer "residency" than we do in the US and other countries. He says that after hospital rotation, he will have to go out to the outlying areas of Iraq for three years and practice in the clinics. He and his fellow students are on Eid holiday or winter break and are volunteering at the local hospital. Not only a good way to get experience, but they wish to go and help the doctors by acting as a sort of triage group that will do basic diagnosis, take vitals, etc, like physician assistants. But they need some basic equipment like stethoscopes, sphygmometers, reflex hammers, etc. They have to buy it themselves due to the condition of the hospital systems and money and he was looking for donations. He says that they are getting a steady number of students volunteering.

He's legit. I verified the info, so, if you're interested in assisting him, please drop over and help them out. Remember $1 dollar = appx 1400 dinar which will go a long way over there.

That's it for tonight.

Oh..except I saw the president speak. Then I saw the Democrats come after.

Jean Garafalo said that the purple fingers of the Republicans was disgusting. I'm sure you could find the rest of the quote at MSNBC because there was some more things about fake elections, staged photo ops, etc. The president was a liar AND she said something rude about the fakeness of the Marine's Mom Moment and the President taking advantage of the woman's pain and that she, the mom, was obviously duped. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the drift.

I don't need to debunk her for you, of course, because, if you are here, you read blogs. If you read blogs, you know who the real people are who are there and you know who and what is real. However, tomorrow I plan to post the transcript and rip it to shreds because it was one of the more disgusting things I had heard from any number of people. Even Barbara Boxer had enough couth to applaud for the Marine's Mom and that's saying something.

For sure, there is hardwork ahead. Nobody is lying to anyone about that. Hammering out a constitution that protects the rights of the minority while insuring that no one can come to power like Saddam again and insuring that the future economic and military strength of Iraq is nothing to sneeze at. Here I add my own BUT that seems so prevelant on the left, Sunday Jan 30 was an important step away from the ugly past of Iraq and a step ON the terrorists.

This is the proper place for a BUT. Good stuff first then a BUT and then the bad stuff means the glass is half empty. Bad stuff first then a BUT and then the Good stuff means the glass is half full.

Too bad People like Boxer and Garafalo are "glass half empty" people. Because that's what they are, empty and that's what they will always be: empty.