I wanted to make this article about using your common sense... about making good choices, but the stories of the people involved here are so much richer fodder for subject material.  Yes, drunk driving is an issue that cannot be covered enough.  Yes, we have to keep pushing the message to not drink and drive.  Yes, yes, yes... but there is a story here that has so much to loose in the cliche' this the message has become that I have redirected my focus for this article to the people involved in this story.

Jacqui Saburio has been featured in Oprah's daytime talk show and is often featured in such venues because of her incredible story of survival.  She is a native born Venezuelan and moved to Texas in 1999 to go to school majoring in engineering.  She was a beautiful 20 year old woman full of promise and hope for the future.  One Saturday morning all that changed or so it would seem.  Reggie Steffie, a high school football star had a game on Friday night.  Here too, was a young adult full of promise and hope and looking forward with great plans for life.  He was at a party that night and had a great time with team mates and friends till the wee morning hours when he decided it was time to go.

Complete strangers whose lives were to become irreversibly entangled through the tragedy of a car accident involving alcohol in which both lives would be forever changed.  Not only theirs but those of their entire families.  After a head on collision in which two of her friends were instantly killed, Jacqui was pinned in a burning car long enough to have had her hair, skin, fingers, and entire face melted off.  Reggie was physically uninjured, but his football career was over.  He would spend the next 7 years in prison and have to pay a fine of $20,000.00.  This was the least of his concerns.  When he learned the extent of Jacqui's injuries, he would lose his appetite, his ability to sleep, and his self worth.

Jacqui has had to endure 50 surgeries at last count and still counting to restore as much as possible of her face and mobility in her gnarled fingerless hands and arms.  That is the tragedy of one fateful decision by a teenage drunk driver.  Now for the rest of the story.  Jacqui misses her body,  her beautiful body and all that entails.  She is so very scarred that when she goes out into public, she is stared at as if she is some kind of monster.  In fact, when she first saw her altered face, she considered it the face of a monster.  Under the advice of a cousin, she determined to allow herself 5 minutes per day to cry and mourn her loss.  She recognizes that she has to move on.  As Oprah asked, "Are you glad you survived?"  Without hesitation, Jacquelin's response is an emphatic "Yes!  I want to live and experience everything I can.  I don't want to miss out on anything."  But the most telling moment of Jacqui's character was when she met Reggie's mother for the first time.  Consoling the woman who was choking up in telling her of her prayers for Jacquelin, Jacquelin offered her gnarled stump of a hand to this woman who had birthed the man who did this damage to her.  Jacqui understands in all the loss, to hold grievance against Reggie and his family is not gain to her, but would be further loss for herself.  She is perhaps a more beautiful person in the revelation of such character.

Reggie is no monster.  His guilt is something he will be saddled with for the rest of his life.  His regret is in no way mollified by the 7 years he is spending behind bars or by the $20,000.00 dollars he has to pay in fines.  He carries a picture of Jacqui in his mind and it will haunt him until the day he dies.  I ask you, "Could you live with that?"  Could you live in the knowledge that a beautiful young woman has been transformed into the image of horror by your stupid decision?  If you were Jacqui, could you summon the moral fiber to console the one who made you the picture of horror so that you face a mirror and have no other description of the image you see there but monster?  Could you find the strength to resolve to make the best of what you have left?  Some would consider this a fate worse than death.   I happen to disagree.  I believe each one of us has a greater purpose than self concern.  I believe Jacqui and Reggie can use their testimonies to encourage others.  I believe that these testimonies should be used to give glory to God.  In Jacqui, by finding the strength to go on in a spirit of joy.  In Reggie, testifying of incredible forgiveness available through the suffering of another.

These are two extreme examples of choices and consequences.  But every decision in life has consequences, some great and some so small as to be thought irrelevant.  Everybody would fare much better if we took the responsibility for our decisions much more seriously.

The greatest sin of the second Bush administration is poor communication with the people of the United States.  I understand why they have done such a poor job of it, but it is the greatest failing of George Bush's presidency.  The Main Stream press have continually worked to discredit him and have joined the Democratic party in undermining his credibility and have thought nothing of the damage to national security or the morale of our military in a war time effort.  In publishing military and national secrets during war, in seeking only the worst stories for the front page and spinning every event to make the US look as bad as possible in an international light, by burying positive news deep in the mid to back pages of the papers they are complicit in harming the reputation of the US and encouraging the enemies of freedom and Democracy.  David Horowitz is a great communicator and should be the Republican Party's spokesman on the war against Radical Islam.  He was giving a speech introducing his new book, "Party of Defeat" when he spoke these words:

The opposition party has full access to our secrets and our intelligence.  They conducted a campaign beginning in July 2003 to attack the United States and its commander in chief.  That is the position of the Democratic party.  That is a national disgrace.  We went into Iraq in March 2003, we liberated Baghdad in April 2003 with 139 casualties.  It was July (that's three months or so) after we liberated Baghdad.  We were winning the war.  But when the resistance was starting from the al Quaeda terrorists and the Baathist Fascists in Iraq and our young men and women were in harm's way that the Democratic party ran a national TV ad.  And the TV ad said "Read his lips, President Bush deceives the American people."  President Bush is a war criminal, that's what that was saying.  What change was there in American policy between April and July?  There was none.  The Democratic party, you'll remember, had a presidential primary at this time.  I can't think of anything lower than selling your country out.  Selling your young men and women who are on the battlefield out.  Selling the security of 300 million Americans out, because you wanted to win the Democratic presidential primary.  Now, let's look at a couple of these lies that the Democratic party has based their campaign against America, against the American people, against the Iraqi people, and against the war on terror.  The first is that Iraq is no threat, or was no threat.  Was Afghanistan a threat?  Afghanistan is a much poorer nation than Iraq.  Afghanistan has no oil.  Its got half the population.  Its virtually all tribal.  Baghdad was a pretty modern city.  Of course, that's the whole point of the Bush doctrine and of the war that we are fighting in Iraq.  That 9/11 told us that a weak and fragile and unstable nation, a very poor nation, if it supports terrorists, can strike the American mainland.  Something the Nazis never did, the Germans could not do.  Something the Japanese could never do.  Something no enemy in the last 150 years could do.  And that's why Saddam Hussein was a threat.  Because Saddam Hussein had put... after the Gulf war had put Alahu Ackbar into the flag as a calculated effort to join the forces of the Islamo-fascist crusade because they shared a common enemy.  America, the great Satan.  He had tried to assassinate the president of the United States, he had held international conferences for terrorists, he had hosted abu Habbas and abu Nedal, and Musab al Zachari, and Ansar al Islam.  All of this Saddam Hussein had done.  And so, if you look out at the world, with any modicum of responsibility on 9/11, you would see that Iraq was the next big threat to the United States.  I tried to lay out here, why Iraq should have been considered a threat, but you don't have to take my word for it.  You can go to Al Gore.  On February 2, 2002, Al Gore gave a speech.  Now this speech followed a speech... the state of the union that year by George Bush.  And that was the axis of evil speech.  And many Democrats were in a rage over the use of the term evil to describe Iraq even though the regime had murdered 300,000 Iraqis and put them in mass graves, even though it had dropped poison gas, a wmd, on an ethnic population (the Kurds) even though it had invaded two countries within recent memory, even though Saddam Hussein was in violation of the terms of the Gulf war truce, Al Gore gave a statesmen like speech and he defended Bush's use of the term evil because it was an accurate description of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.  And this is what he said about whether Iraq posed a threat.  Instead of saying it posed no threat and would cause us to be judged harshly by history, what he said was, and this is an exact quote, "Iraq is a virulent threat in a class by itself."  "a virulent threat in a class by itself, and the United States would be justified in going to the limit to take Saddam Hussein down."  That's what Al Gore said.  So this book I've written, "The Party of Defeat" is about a party that betrayed its own war.  that betrayed its own country, and that betrayed its men and women in the field.  Don't let anybody tell you that you can support the troops but not the war.  If you support the troops, you support their mission, because when you do what John Kerry did, and say, "Its the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" you send a demoralizing message to our troops and an encouraging message to our enemies.  On the WMD's, Saddam Hussein lost the Gulf war.  When he invaded Kuwait, the first George Bush organized an international coalition to stop him.  But actually, that coalition was a little too multi-lateral, because it included the Arabs and the Arabs said you cannot remove Saddam Hussein.   What ended the Gulf war was a truce.   It said Saddam Hussein can stay in power but these are the conditions.   And the conditions were UN resolution 687,  and UN resolution 689.  The Gulf war truce UN resolution 687 and 689 said "You will not build, you will not plan to build, you will not have programs to build weapons of mass destruction.  and you will allow UN inspectors onto Iraqi territory and freedom to go anywhere they want so they can determine that you're not doing it, because nobody in his right mind can trust you."  Those two UN resolutions which were followed by fourteen others, were there to keep Saddam from doing what he wanted to do, and what we know he wanted to do, which was to build weapons of mass destruction.  Saddam Hussein systematically violated these resolutions until a day came in 1998 when he actually threw the UN inspectors out.  Iraq was always on the U.S. government's mind.  Hillary Clinton in one of her statements said that she... not only did she vote for the war when she was defending her support for the war, not only did she support the war because of the intelligence that Bush gave her, but the intelligence she got from the Clinton administration.  Saddam Hussein was a threat.  Now, this is what George Bush did, he gave a speech identifying Iraq as a national threat, part of an axis of evil.  And then George Bush in September went to the United Nations and spoke to the general assembly and said, "There are 16 outstanding resolutions which are arms control agreements which are part of the UN truce with Saddam Hussein that kept him in power.  Either you will enforce your word, or you will be seen to be irrelevant."  Which the UN is.  "And we will do it for you."  That's what George Bush said.  And then he went to Congress and he got the authorization for the use of force.  So the very opposite of what the Democrats claim is the truth.  George Bush did not violate international law, he tried to enforce it and the Democrats didn't support him.  The Bush administration made a diplomatic mistake, which was to go back to the UN.  Once they had the resolution, they should have acted on it.  And Tony Blair begged the Bush administration to go to the UN again and get another resolution.  And unfortunately, the Bush administration listened to Colin Powell and did so.  And Colin Powell got what he deserved for this.  Because, what he did, go to the UN to sell the war.   And the way he sold it was to imply that Saddam had more weapons capability than he had.  And that's why people say its about WMD's.  No it isn't!!  It wasn't at all about the weapons of mass destruction.  It was about his potential to build those weapons and his programs to do so, and his intentions to do so.

Now, if there is any doubt left that the Bush administration lied to the American public, to the Congress or to the UN or that we were justified in invading Iraq, or that we could afford to allow that tyrant to continue in his plans to help work destruction on the innocent people of America, please, tell me what it is.  More, if there is any doubt that the actions of the Democratic leadership is not traitorous in their actions against our national security and against our men and women in the field at war, please, inform me.  If there is any doubt that these actions expose the complicity of the American main stream press, please, tell me what doubts you can dredge up.  This is not patriotism to act this way, careless of the effects on our security or that of the troops, or their morale.  If the Democrats win this election with this for credibility, I am without hope for our nation and its future.  John McCain is a moderate.  He has worked across the aisle enough times to anger most Republicans and only got the nomination because the more conservative Republicans were split between the two more conservative candidates.  Barack Obama is a radical leftist and his voting record proves it.  He is unvetted and has zero accomplishments to point to, much less working with the opposition, so how can he fulfill his promises to be the agent of change and hope?  Hillary Clinton is running on her husband's experience.  She voted for the war before she promised to abandon the war.  This isn't flip flop, this is pandering to the base merely for the seat of power.  The Democrats are proven traitors and deserve nothing less than a trial for treasonous act against national security in a time of war.  We cannot afford to put into office any member of the party of defeat, and of enmity with the nation that grants that power voluntarily.  We have to have a Chief that isn't moved by every wisp of breeze of political winds.  We have to have a leader with the vision and the steadfast resolve to meet every challenge with the grace and assurance of having practiced what's right and good.  No promise of benefits is greater than the value of assured security to continue in our existence as a nation of freedom and democracy.  The only issue on the ticket this election has to be the security and continuance of our great culture.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Without that security, there are no human rights protection, no freedom of speech, no opportunity to succeed in business, no opportunity to live in peace and security, no opportunity to participate or not participate in the religion of your choice.  Do not reward the party of defeat this election year.  Don't even encourage them to speak until they get this one issue right.  National security is tantamount in politics.  Everything else is secondary.

I was doing a little research on another article when I came across this great site.  On it I was acquainted with a video series on YouTube which reveals tolerance training our corporations are subjecting their employees to.  This training series was created in 1968 by a third grade school teacher. (Jane Elliot)  With the exception of including women's rights and homosexuality the training hasn't changed in 40 years.  She subjected her third grade class to this exercise to teach them about racism.  I have no doubt that racism still exists in America today, however, as demonstrated by Reverend Wright in the past month or so, much of today's racism is propagated by blacks.  I had the privilege of living outside this racist society for two years courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and I know the difference between a society that expects little of blacks and places failing programs in their communities with its blacks carrying a chip on their shoulder and believing that most people actively work to victimize them and the society that has blacks integrated into the society.  When I met a black person there, I knew he did not expect me to think less of him than of people from my own heritage.  But there is much more to the story than tolerance training is willing to deal with and therefor tolerance training is an ineffective means by which to address these issues.  In fact, if you watch all twelve segments of the video, you will see this former third grade teacher discount assimilation as meaning "make you like me."  In some ways that is true, but the way it was applied the very idea is to blaspheme the tolerance gods.  Assimilation means to work within the system with the same rights, protections, and benefits as the rest of us, not to make your heritage irrelevant and certainly not to excuse self destructive behaviors or to give special privileges to atone for our racist sins.  This has to be true of all cultures in the melting pot. 

The reason integration is failing is not the responsibility of the white Christian male anymore.  When a white man is 60 times more likely to die at the hands of a black man than a black man is to die at the hands of a white man, fear of blacks is not unreasonable.  This is not xenophobia, phobias by definition are unreasonable fears.  Blacks are much more likely to die at the hands of black men than white and whites are much more likely to die at the hands of whites so we should be more afraid of our own kind than of others.  When crime rates are staggeringly lopsided on race indicators, it is not the broken system to blame for the high representation of blacks in our prisons.  When broken homes and unwed mothers are staggeringly lopsided on race indicators, it is not the white communities debt to blacks that can fix these problems.  Liberals want to do something for blacks, well guess what, Conservatives do too, but I don't want to throw good tax dollars after bad.  I want systems that work, rather than propping up miserable failures.  That's why I'm Republican.  Republicans are the party of ideas that work.  Republicans are the party that worked to free slaves, the party that institutes programs that work the same as we have done in national parks, environmental cleanup programs, and a host of others.  Look at the history of Democrats' programs.  Which one, which single program has helped black people out of oppression?  There isn't one.

Newt gingrich

1. Repeal the gas tax for the summer, and pay for the repeal by cutting domestic discretionary spending so that the transportation infrastructure trust fund would not be hurt. At a time when, according to The Hill newspaper, Senator Clinton is asking for $2.3billion in earmarks, it should be possible for Republicans to establish a "government spending versus your pocketbook" fight over cutting the gas tax that would resonate with most Americans. Lower taxes and less government spending should be a battle cry most taxpayers and all conservatives could rally behind.
2. Redirect the oil being put into the national petroleum reserve onto the open market. That oil would lower the price of gasoline an extra 5 to 6 cents per gallon, and its sale would lower the deficit.
3. Introduce a "more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill" as a replacement for the Warner-Lieberman "tax and trade" bill which is coming to the floor of the Senate in the next few weeks (see my newsletter next week for an outline of a solid pro-economy, pro-national security, pro-environment energy bill). When the American people realize how much the current energy prices are actually a "politicians' energy crisis" they will demand real change in our policies.
4. Establish an earmark moratorium for one year and pledge to uphold the presidential veto of bills with earmarks through the end of 2009. The American people are fed up with politicians spending their money. They currently believe both parties are equally bad. This is a real opportunity to show the difference.
5. Overhaul the census and cut its budget radically. The recent announcement that the Census Bureau could not build an effective hand-held computer for $1.3 billion and is turning instead to 600,000 temporary workers to do a paper and pencil census in 2010 is an opportunity to slash its budget, shrink its bureaucracy, and turn to entrepreneurial internet-based companies to build an information-age census. This is an absurdity that cries out for bold, decisive reform (see my YouTube video "FedEx versus federal bureaucracy" for an example of what I mean).
6. Implement a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system. The problems of the Federal Aviation Administration are symptoms of a union-dominated bureaucracy resisting change. If we implemented a space-based GPS-style air traffic system we would get 40% more air travel with one-half the bureaucrats. The union has stopped 200,000,000 passengers from enjoying more reliable air travel to protect 7,000 obsolete jobs. This real change would allow the millions of frustrated travelers to have champions in congress trying to help them get places better, safer, faster.
7. Declare English the official language of government. This real change is supported by 87% of the American people including a majority of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Latinos. It is an issue of national unity that brings Americans together in a red, white, and blue majority.
8. Protect the workers' right to a secret ballot. The vast majority (around 81%) of Americans believe that American workers have a right to have a secret ballot election before they are forced to join a union. Last year the House Democrats passed a bill that would strip American workers of the secret ballot. A new bill should be introduced reaffirming that right, and it should be brought up again and again until marginal Democrats are forced to vote with the American people against the union power structure.
9. Remind Americans that judges matter. Senate Republicans should mount an ongoing fight (including a filibuster of other activities if necessary) to get the American people to realize that liberals want to block all current judicial appointments in order to maximize the number of left wing radical judges they can appoint if they win the White House. This issue has three advantages. It reminds people that judges matter and that a leftwing radical Supreme Court would be bad for the values of most (70 to 90 percent, depending on the issue) Americans. It shows the Democrats are not engaged in fair play. It arouses the activism of those who have been disappointed by Republicans and have forgotten how bad a liberal Democratic Presidency would be.

JudgeRight's Journal

A $104,655.60 Ad in the Washington Post a businessman named George J. Esseff, Sr.

Maybe you're a Republican?

In today's America ask a growing number of high school and college students, their teachers and professors, the self-anointed media elite and/or hard working men and women of all ethnicities, the question, "What is a Republican?" and you'll be told "... a rich, greedy, egotistical individual, motivated only by money and the desire to accumulate more and more of it, at the expense of the environment, the working poor...and all whom they exploit..."

I am a Republican - And I am none of those things....and I don't know any Republicans who are!

WHAT I AM first and foremost, is a loving husband of some 52 plus years, the father of four and an American who's proud of his country...and his country's heritage.

WHAT I AM is the grandson of immigrants who risked every-thing, including their lives and those of their children, to escape tyranny in search of freedom.

WHAT I AM is a man who grew up during the Depression and witnessed first hand the effects of the Stock Market crash and the soup lines that followed. I watched as both my parents and grand parents, who had very little themselves, share what food they had with a half dozen other families, who had even less.

WHAT I AM is someone who worked his way through college by holding down three and four jobs at a time and then used that education to build a better life.

WHAT I AM is a husband who at age 24 started his own business for the "privilege" of working 60, 70 and 80 hours a week, risking everything I had including my health, in search of a better life for myself and my loved ones.

WHAT I AM is a businessman whose blood, sweat and tears....and plenty of them..., made it possible for me to provide a secure living not only for my family and myself, but also for literally hundreds of my employees throughout the years. Employees who in turn were able to buy their own homes, raise their own families and give back to their communities and their country.

WHAT I AM is a man who believes in God; a God who has blessed this country... and all for which it stands.

WHAT I AM is someone who knows, if you doubt miracles exist in today's world, you need only to look into the face of those who received them....and the eyes
of those who give them.

WHAT I AM is an American who's proud that his President embraces a belief in God; proud of a President who understands, as "politically incorrect" as it may be, there is evil in this world and for the security and safety of all freedom loving people everywhere, it must be confronted...and it must be defeated.

WHAT I AM is an American who takes comfort in the knowledge that our President refuses to allow decisions concerning the very safety and security of this nation, to be governed by the political whims of foreign governments.

WHAT I AM is tired of hearing from leading Democrats who see only negativity in America; racism in her people; class warfare in her society and "political incorrectness" in her character.

WHAT I AM is a former democrat who now understands that it is the soldier and not the reporter that guarantees us our freedoms of press, speech and dissent.

WHAT I AM is a man who believes in the sanctity of life. A man who is repulsed by the pandering of the political left for votes, at the expense of the unborn.

WHAT I AM is a husband and father who believes in the sanctity of marriage and the preservation of the family unit.

WHAT I AM is an ex-movie goer who is repulsed by those insecure, socially inept, elementary thinking, ego-inflated "entertainers" who have appointed themselves "experts" in the fields of national security and geo-politics and then use their forum to attack this nation, its leaders and its actions....much to the delight and encouragement of our enemies.

WHAT I AM is an American who understands the difference between "censorship" and "choice." Evidently, these individuals do not, because when these same "celebrities" receive public ridicule for their offensive actions, the first thing they yell is "censorship." What they seem incapable of understanding is...the right of free speech and dissent is shared equally by those offended...as well as those who offend. I support and will continue to support those films and performers whom I choose to and refuse to support those I don't. It is my right as an American a right I will continue to enthusiastically exercise.

WHAT I AM is a voter, tired of politicians who every time their voting records are subjected to public scrutiny, try to divert attention from their political and legislative failures by accusing their opponents of "attack ads" and "negative campaigning"....and the news media who allow them to get away with it.

WHAT I AM is a Catholic who loves his God and his Faith....and who's been taught to respect all religions whose teachings are based in love, peace and charity. As such, I am embarrassed and ashamed of those individuals in both private and public life whose decisions and actions are devoid of any sense of character or morals; individuals who are only driven by what's best for them....rather than what's right... often times at the expense of many....including our national security.

WHAT I AM is a realist who understands that the terrorist attack that murdered hundreds of innocent Russian children could have occurred here, in our heartland. That's why I sincerely believe America needs now, more than ever, a President who sees with a clear and focused vision and who speaks with a voice when heard by both friend and foe alike is understood, respected and believed.

WHAT I AM is eternally grateful to Ronald Reagan for having the bravery to speak out against Communism and the courage of his convictions in leading the fight to defeat it; and George W. Bush for the vision, courage, conviction and leadership he has shown in America's war on terrorism amidst both the constant and vicious, personal and political attacks both he and his family are made to endure.

WHAT I AM is a human being, full of numerous faults and failures, but a man nonetheless who though not always successful has continually strived to do "what's right" instead of "what's easy." A man who is challenging the religious leaders of all faiths, to not only preach to their congregations the fundamentals of "what's right&quo