A friend of mine recently posted a Facebook status suggesting that people send Christmas cards to "A Recovering American Soldier" in care of the Walter Reed military hospital. Unfortunately, the hospital will not accept such cards. Here is a link to Walter Reed's official statement on the matter.

http://www.wramc.amedd.army.mil/WRResource/SupportRecoveringAmericanSoldier.pdf (requires a PDF reader)

For ideas on how to support our troops at Christmas, they recommend...

www.americasupportsyou.mil
http://www.usocares.org/
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers/

Additionally, the Red Cross is offering a program to deliver holiday cards to our troops and their families, but cards have to be received (not postmarked, but actually in their hands) by Monday, December 7th.

Red Cross Holiday Mail For Heroes

Please feel free to share this info.

So, the traditional Yom Kippur fast is coming up (sundown Sunday through sundown Monday). I'm not the most observant person, but I figured I need all the help I can get. But I'm a diabetic and managing your blood sugar and medications during a fast is a complicated task. Most rabbis agree that diabetics should not fast, because of the health risks, but find another method of spiritual denial to demonstrate their contrition and perform an act of atonement.

So I tried to think what I could give up for 25 hours that would make me feel denied... Computers. No internet, no e-mail, no digital cable, no cribbage or solitaire on my phone, no CDs, no DVDs, no MP3s, and since all my radios have digital tuners, no radio. So, basically, I get to read real paper books and go for walks. Although all my phones have chips in them, I'm making an exception for phone calls because a potential employer may try to contact me or my kids' day care may try to contact me, and I need to take those.

Computers and TV are such a part of my daily routine, it's going to actually be hard. It's not even a matter of addiction so much as force of habit. You have to be on your guard against ingrained behaviors. You want to do these things because they're your ritual, and by not doing them, you have to leave your comfort zone.

Hopefully God will appreciate the sacrifice.

An old college buddy and former roommate of mine sent a chain letter out to a bunch of his friends today. It was the same old BS... "if you pass this on to a bunch of people, you'll have good luck, but if you throw it away, bad luck will get you."

I've blogged on this, so I copied a few bits out of that blog post, edited it a bit, and replied to all with:

Amazing what you'll do for luck, [friend's name].

What kind of good magic threatens you with bad luck? Any magic that does harm is black magic... evil magic.

Basically, you're not sending people good luck. You're sending them bad luck that they must pass on to others to avoid. And if they do what the evil magic tells them, they will be rewarded.

If you pass on chain letters like this, you become a tool of evil. So by sending this to all of us, you proved you're a tool.

He didn't respond, but two people did. His sister e-mailed to agree with me. And the woman who sent the chain letter to him (a conservative whom I've chided in the past for some racist crap disguised as "humor", and who I added to the "reply all") wrote this:

How to tell Greg's a liberal:
Read his manifestations. If he's angry about stupid little chain letters, there's a good chance he's a liberal.
Lighten up, Dude.

Hire [her name] http://www.geocities.com/[rest of URL obscured so no one harrasses her]

So I responded...

Who's upset? Did my suggestion that sending on chain letters is evil make you feel defensive?

How to tell [her name]'s a conservative:

She'll talk conservative values and then engage in petty acts of black magic (i.e. chain letters).

That kind of hypocrisy can only be found among conservatives.

"What the heck" isn't a valid excuse. If you believe it can confer good luck, then you're giving credence to its claims, and the other claim is that it will confer bad luck. So in a selfish act, you send it to all your "friends" so you can get good luck, ignoring the bad luck you're potentially passing on to them, because you got what you wanted.

Also a typically conservative mindset: the "I got what I want, so screw everyone else" philosophy.

And her signature still sports a Geocities URL, despite the fact that Geocities will close in less than 2 months and she was told about it over 3 months ago (by a liberal who put his differences aside to help her).

Just like a conservative, she sees a problem and does nothing. Guess she's hoping magic chain letters will make her so lucky she doesn't need to do something about it.

Kisses,

Greg

P.S.: It's not just me who dislikes chain letters. You sent the chain letter to [friend's name] using your Yahoo! Mail account. Let me quote from the Yahoo! terms of service.

6. MEMBER CONDUCT

... You agree to not use the Yahoo! Services to:

...g. upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation, except in those areas (such as shopping) that are designated for such purpose (please read our complete Spam Policy);

You agreed not to send chain letters. But I guess calling someone on breaking their word is just another liberal trait, seeing as how we had to do it so often during the Bush administration.

Today a friend of mine sent out a joke to his mailing list about GM's new car, the Obama. It was typical Republican hype, like "This car runs on hot air and broken promises." I'm not going to reprint it in its entirety. You can get an idea of how not funny it was.

But for once I wasn't angry about this claptrap polluting my inbox. In fact, I want every Republican I know to keep circulating these jokes and I'll tell you why.

In November:

A month ago:

Since the election, a time when people tend to identify more strongly with a political party, the Democrats have lost 10% of their support. The Republicans have lost a whopping 34% of their support.

Time and time again, the credit for the huge losses in support has gone to the abrasive ideologues who have been taking control of the Republican party. Limbaugh, Cheney, and their ilk have been compared to GOP Neros fiddling while the Republican party burns.

And that's why I encourage the distribution of these unfunny jokes. These ideological rants, thinly disguised as humor, are helping liberals accomplish a lifelong dream: the marginalization of the Republican party. So please keep distributing them guys. Nothing better than watching a political party self-destruct.

I can already envision my Republican friends (you know who you are) responding by posting comments about some sin they believe the liberals have committed.

I'm going to cut you off right now. That doesn't matter. That's a deflection. Nancy Pelosi's statements about the CIA have nothing to do with why over 34% of the people who called themselves Republicans in November have defected from the party, why you're down 16% from just two months ago. Nancy Pelosi's mistakes, Obama's mistakes, and Harry Reid's mistakes can't explain why people don't want to call themselves Republicans.

If anything, mistakes by the liberal side should be increasing your numbers. The more convincing your arguments for why the liberals are screwing everything up, the worse you look. If all your rhetoric about the bad liberals is right, how freakin' lame are you that your numbers are dwindling at a time when potential converts should be flooding your way?

So please, keep sending out these jokes. Please keep drilling the talking points on Fox News. Please keep putting your feet in your mouths with veiled racial slurs. Please keep doing all the obstructionist stuff you accused Democrats of when you held majorities, but doing it more blatantly and obnoxiously so it's really easy for the media to show you doing one thing and then quote your condemnation of the very same thing from a few years ago.

Stay the course, guys. It's working so well for you.