What, did everybody on my blogroll start blogging on the same day?
First Chad, now Damian Brooks at Babbling Brooks is enjoying his first blogiversary. I recommend Babbling Brooks for a good look at Canadian politics from a conservative stance, as well as the state of the military of our neighbors to the north.
Congrats, Damian, and thanks for the fine reading.
Feel free to pay a visit to In the Bullpen, where Chad Evans is reflecting on one year of blogging.
In fact, visit often, as In the Bullpen is consistently a fine source for news and opinion on Islamic terrorism. Chad has recently strengthened the site with a re-design and the addition of a second writer to help him carry the load.
Congrats, Chad, and keep up the good work.
I haven’t done a tribute to my blogroll faves in quite some time. Today, I’d like to tip my hat to the top five sites currently on my blogroll whose content focuses exclusively or very heavily on the military. I should note that, while not qualifying for this little personal list, my blogroll is well stocked with veterans and current military personnel, all of which deserve your time.
5. Grim’s Hall
4. Chapomatic
3. Blackfive
2. Argghhh!!!
and, of course, the father of the MilBloggers:
I highly recommend starting each day over at the Gazette, if only for Mrs. Greyhawk’s Dawn Patrol round-up postings.
On a related note, longtime blogroll denizen Joan of Seven Inches of Sense has recently shifted focus to a group blog for a handful of military girlfriends and spouses with her Seven Inches of Service announcement:
I’ve been working on this little project and it’s time to let you all in on it.
For quite some time, a couple of years probably, I’ve belonged to a support group for girlfriends of deployed soldiers. It’s a hard life. And most people don’t understand it. So to surround yourself with a group of ladies who are living through the same purgatory you are is comforting, to say the very least.
Who else is going to understand when you tell them you’re so worried you’ve been checking the obituaries to make sure the man you love isn’t among the latest casualties and his family didn’t tell you? Who else will understand when you tell them that you passed a convoy of tanks on transport trucks and you got so swept up in the emotion of it that you drove ten miles past your exit? Who else will understand when you tell them that after two years of dating you’re nervous because you’re going on a date with your longtime boyfriend?
These are things that it sometimes seems as if people have a hard time wrapping their minds around unless they’ve been there. So, in order to hopefully shed some light on the women behind the men, and give a collective voice to the women themselves, I’m starting a new feature here at Seven Inches of Sense.
I’ve asked six other military girlfriends (one who is a wife now) from my support group, all in various stages of the military relationship (from the ended relationships to marriage), to join me here from time to time as we discuss life and our service in the silent ranks.
As any soldier knows, those in uniform are never the only ones sacrificing.
This blog started with a fire command.
That first post ended as follows:
Well, let’s just see how it goes.
And how has Target Centermass gone? Well, I’ve obviously found it rewarding enough to stick with it past my initial personal goal of a three-month trial. It’s been satisfying enough to leave behind Blogspot and actually fork over some money (twice, actually) for a domain to keep up my little self-indulgence.
Traffic-wise, TCm hasn’t been an overnight success — or even an overyear success, for that matter. Still, I consider it a success to date, if only for the interaction with and attention I’ve enjoyed receiving from other bloggers I respect. It’s been a fun ride that I think I’ll continue for a while; thanks, John, Phil, Eric, JohnL, Chad, Alan, Scott, Raven, GuyS, and Damian (I reserve the right to update this list to catch anybody I’ve overlooked). Seriously, thanks. Y’all have made this a pleasure.
Thanks again to the inspirations that got me blogging:
In summation, happy blogiversary to me. What’s next?
Well, let’s just see how it goes.
Want to strut your opinions? Chad at In the Bullpen is looking for guest bloggers (as well as offering reciprocal links). To help you understand the focus of his site, here’s a great terror round-up Chad put together today.
I’m not in the mood to blog tonight, as should be obvious from my feeble previous post. I don’t know why — it just ain’t there.
I have been in the mood to read and surf, however, so I’ll just poach some goodies off my blogroll.
Let’s open with Kevin Aylward at Wizbang! as he slaps around Congressman Conyers on the Downing Street memo.
Rep. John Conyers, as predicted here 10 days ago, will hold one of his patented “fake hearings” on the Downing Street Memo Thursday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. EST. Pay no attention to the fact that the witnesses list is lead by the same lead witness (John Bonifz) who presented at his Ohio vote-rigging “hearing,” or that Conyers will trot out Valerie Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, who can regale the “hearing” with tales of yellowcake and book sales. Luckily for Wilson no members of the Senate Intelligence Committee will be present to bitch-slap him again. Given the lack of reporting about his cratered credibility, Wilson probably sounded like a great witness to Conyers.
Now let’s turn to the favorite (and deservedly so) target of the day: Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and his pathetic loss of perspective on Gitmo.
Let’s open with Paul at Powerline:
Scott gave me credit for “anticipat[ing] the rabid foaming at the mouth” of Durbin and his partner in defamation Senator Leahy. In fact, however, I never expected that any U.S. Senator would express such absurd sentiments. I didn’t realize that leftist fever swamp extends so profoundly into the Senate.
Just for the record (as if that matters to the left) Rowan Scarborough in the Washington Times reminds us of the following:
Adolf Hitler – About 9 million dead
Soviet gulags – About 2.7 million dead
Pol Pot – About 1.7 million dead
Gitmo – zero dead
Gitmo – five instances of Koran abuse by prison guards
Gitmo-15 instances of Koran abuse by prisoners.
Then we’ll move on to Steve Verdon at Outside the Beltway, whose headline “What a Dick” really says it all:
Apparently Dick Durbin doesn’t think much about the Holocaust, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge and Josef Stalin and its victims. Calling the detention center at Guantanamo Bay a death camp is just stupid.
Chad at In the Bullpen chimes in with “Another Day, Another Nazi Comparison“:
Over 13 million people died in the above mentioned camps throughout the years. The majority of those held in those camps were innocent whereas the vast majority of detainees in Guantanamo were found on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Can Senator Durbin not tell the difference?
In an update, Chad turns his aim to liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas ‘Kos’ Zunigas and his site The Daily Kos (lack of link intentional). Dr. Rusty Shackleford of the Jawa Report comes out guns a-blazin’ at Kos (emphasis in original, and you should consider yourself warned that he really means it).
You, Kos, are a certifiable idiot whose blind partisanship is disgusting and unethical.
Warning: Graphic images follow.
Speaking of Gitmo, Ace explains at length the justifiability and reasoning behind the detentions there. I particularly liked this nugget (emphasis again in the original):
Okay. Let’s take you at your word.
Given the fact that by your own admission that not only is the Global War on Terrorism not over, but we are actually losing this war, why the f*** are you constantly agitating to release enemy combatants so that they may rejoin their allies and kill more of our soldiers and citizens?
Leaving Gitmo, over at Eric’s Grumbles Before the Grave (great banners, by the way), our caped crusader Eric has apparently found an arch-nemesis and has been waging a one–man war. For a moment, he almost seems to lose his edge, but not quite:
I realize that I have gotten a bit personal with some on the left lately and have attacked them directly. If that offends anyone, I’m sorry you’re offended. But I’m not sorry for what I’ve said.
In fact, Eric decides to adapt to the enemy’s tactics (EDIT: I doubt Eric will actually change course; he seems quite happy having actual facts on his side):
Yep, just like the Left, I’m just going to make crap up out of thin air, allege that I have evidence to prove it, promise to tell you at some undetermined date in the future what my evidence is and insist that it’s worth “checking out”.
Fight the good fight, Eric.
Above all these important issues, you can never beat Scott at The Fat Guy for some good ol’ Texas-style common sense.
Man, I do love my Blogroll so.
Michael James Reed, known in the blogosphere as Bunker Mulligan, has been laid to rest.
Bunker’s family has been extremely kind to us, blessing us with photos even as they deal with their own great personal loss. Yesterday, they showed us the honors that the United States Air Force paid to one of their own.
Even more important, the family also has graciously shared a great many pictures that portray how Bunker lived.
It is obvious from the devotion of his family, from the service of Bunker, and the many remembrances of others who knew him either in person or only from the internet that we have lost a good man. Indeed, the very willingness by his family to share a look at cherished personal moments, even in the midst of their own time of sorrow, with complete strangers on the internet stands as an incredible testament to the character of Mike Reed and his legacy. Thank you, sir, and thank you to your loved ones.
Michael James Reed
1953-2005
As I blogged earlier, Mike Reed, known to the blogosphere as Bunker Mulligan, has breathed his last.
For the most touching tributes, I leave it to his children. They look at him as he lived as a father and a husband. Go read — I can only hope my family remembers me with such love and respect.
Bunker was a member of the Homespun Bloggers, and Major Dad eulogizes him there:
Homespun Bloggers and the blogosphere lost a great blogger, a leader, and a friend on Friday. Bunker Mulligan passed away on Friday morning of a very sudden and unexpected heart attack.
Mike Reed, will certainly be missed here…but I know that he’ll continue to do well where he is now. He’ll crank out posts several times a day, in between his time on the real “championship” golf courses “up there.”
Hit them long and straight my friend! Save me a seat at the 19th hole! While I hope I can put off our first face to face meeting for another 50 years, since we didn’t get that done here on earth, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you then.
Bunker was also the founder of Texas Bloggers. Fellow Texas blogger Eric Siegmund remembers Bunker in much the same spirit that I do:
The blogging community and Texas bloggers in particular have lost a friend as we learned that Mike Reed died of an apparent heart attack last Friday.
I didn’t know Mike except through his blogging, and that’s my loss. He seemed to be the “real deal,” unfailingly polite, kind, generous, wise and witty. His primary blog, Bunker Mulligan, was also his nom de blog, but he was also the founder of Texas Bloggers, a “community blog” for those of us residing in this great state.
Finally, Bunker was a MilBlogger. The Mudville Gazette‘s Greyhawk, father of the MilBloggers, pays tribute:
Bunker was a voice of reason in the all too often noisy blogosphere, and it’s obvious he touched quite a few lives – all over the world – via his blog and in person. I always appreciated his commentary, the thoughts he chose to share with us all were both kind and wise.
I’d like to note that Bunker went down as a MilBlogger, as his last post recalled his proud service.
As my last tribute to the man, I will add the fine charity Homes for Our Troops to my links section. I will also think of Bunker as I make a contribution, per his family’s wishes.
Michael Jones at The Armageddon Project reports that Mike Reed, a.k.a. Bunker Mulligan, one of my blogroll members and the founder of Texas Bloggers, died today.
I just received a call from Curtis Rock informing me that Mike Reed, the author of Bunker Mulligan and founder of Corpus Christi Bay News and Texas Bloggers, died at work today. The details are rather sketchy at the moment, but I’m waiting to hear back about funeral arrangements and such.
I don’t know what to say. Even though Mike and I spoke many times over the phone and email and even collaborated on a local news blog (Corpus Christi Bay News), I never had the opportunity to meet him in person. I can say that he was an honorable, stand-up guy that I would have been honored to play a round of golf with. My prayers go with his family in their time of grief.
To Mike: may God welcome you into His loving arms.
If true, I find it ironic but heartening that the current quote at the top of Bunker’s blog is the following:
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
—Mark Twain.
UPDATE: Alas! It is confirmed. My best wishes to his family and friends.
The grilling has commenced, war movies play on the television, and the fine folk on my blogroll keep honoring the day.