oh, hello: pictures senator james webb could have pulled out from the background props that would have been better and more impressive (to me)

hi people.

now if you're even a little like me, and you planted yourself in front of CNN to watch the state of the union address (with a can of cider and a bowl of popcorn) ... good for you. if you stayed for the democratic response, i really don't know what to say. what the hell were they thinking? seriously. democrats? who is writing your speeches? it was a whole, long rant of: "the president said this–we look forward to working with him on it; the president said that–we hope that is the case" so on and so forth. there's a snap at the end, but that's buried under the mountain of protocol-speech... a polite little dooty-dooty-doo speech that sounds like it was written by their 5th grade daughters.

seriously.

if you noticed how the speech was interrupted with this little gem of a "what i did over my summer vacation"...

I want to share with all of you a picture that I have carried with me for more than 50 years.

[sure enough, he reaches off-camera and pulls out a big, honking framed picture...i snearly spit cider everywhere.]

This is my father,

[i die inside...]

when he was a young Air Force captain, flying cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift. He sent us the picture from Germany, as we waited for him, back here at home. When I was a small boy,

[oh god...seriously?]

I used to take the picture to bed with me every night,

[...seriously?]

because for more than three years my father was deployed, unable to live with us full-time, serving overseas or in bases where there was no family housing. I still keep it, to remind me of the sacrifices that my mother and others had to make, over and over again, as my father gladly served our country. I was proud to follow in his footsteps, serving as a Marine in Vietnam. My brother did as well, serving as a Marine helicopter pilot. My son has joined the tradition, now serving as an infantry Marine in Iraq.