During Gene & Sophie’s visit to Camp Pendleton, they ask for and get a taste of boot camp for the Marines. After they finish, they return to the commander’s office, and he makes a brilliant suggestion - that Gene put a visit to the troops on his schedule. Gene agrees it’s a great idea, and off he and Sophie go to the Long Beach Veterans Hospital.

This has to be the first time I’ve ever seen Gene Simmons cry, but I was crying with him. Quite humbling the whole visit was. Gene knows what’s important. I wish every American did.

And Gene Simmons made me smile again today after I read an interview he recently did with Radar Online. Sean Penn the “enemy of Western civilization.” Heh. Gotta love it! Here’s a portion of that interview:

RADAR: You seemed to have a deep respect for the soldiers you met at Camp Pendleton. What did you come away with?

GENE SIMMONS: It is embarrassing what’s happening to America nowadays. I’m embarrassed. The same thing happened in Vietnam, and I lived through that era. It was unbelievable. The answer seems to be, from some political experts, just get up and leave and the bad guys will decide, “Hey let’s disarm and everything’s going to be okay.” I’m so fucking sick and tired of such idiotic behavior.

It’s not the policies and the bills; it’s how we treat our military. It’s how we treat our young men or women who go out there, at 18 years old, and risk their lives. There’s no fame, they’re certainly not getting rich, and a lot of them are dying, simply for something they believe. By the way, it’s a volunteer army, all volunteer. The fact that anybody would have a fucking thing to say about that is astonishing. And the VA hospital that Sophie and I went to, it’s about an hour and a half down the road from Malibu. These morons can’t get up off their asses and out of their $10 million homes, get into their SUVs, and drive down to the VA hospital just to say, “Hey, what you do matters.” Doesn’t matter what they think of President Bush. It matters that 18-year-olds are getting out there and risking their lives. I didn’t see a single person there. That’s the most embarrassing thing. I’m furious at Hollywood.

No visitors at all?

No. Of course, if it means getting on a jet and going to Washington, D.C., to get in front of media, they’re all there. But they won’t get into a car where there’s no media and just go and shake the hand of a vet. And we met, as you know, Vietnam vets and Korean vets and Iraqi vets, and it just breaks your heart.

And here’s the venom for Penn:

But it seems like these people are protesting the war, not protesting the troops.

I don’t see the difference. Aid and comfort to the enemy is when you do it through media and there are big headlines like “We’ve Lost the War” and things like that. What makes you think that any graduate of any madrassa in the Middle East doesn’t blow that up? In other words, make a big copy of it and show it to everybody.

So someone like Sean Penn for instance … you don’t support what he’s doing?

Oh, I think he’s the enemy of Western civilization. I think he’s a terrific actor, but a political knucklehead. By the way, the difference between the Warren Beattys and Sean Penns and perhaps the Hannitys in the salons of the world is very little. The people who hate you don’t care what political side you’re on. They make no distinction between far left and far right. They just hate you. It’s so stupid. And the biggest problem, of course, is that media, no matter what you say, is skewed a certain way.

Folks like Gene Simmons, Ted Nugent, Montgomery Gentry, Stuck Mojo, et. al, truly understand what it means to be a hero. God bless ‘em all.

This was priceless…Gene got some rockers together to amp up the hymns of all the services and played them to a very welcome audience at Pendleton. KISS is a band that resonates with everyone, crossing all lines. And today, on this most sacred day of respect and remembrance of our American heroes, I couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute to our men and women.

And I don’t think Gene or Sophie would have it any other way.

This is the first of three posts about Gene’s “Simmons’ Family Jewels” show where he and his daughter Sophie visited Camp Pendleton. Gene announces he’s teamed up with some major companies to help outfit a MedVan for the troops there.

I’ve loved KISS since I was a kid, and this show made me respect Gene Simmons even more.

Tonight on Special Report, Bret Baier had a piece on about the GI Film Festival, which highlights films and movies that show true heroism and courage of our military men and women, unlike most Hollywood entries into the genre.

From their website:

The GI Film Festival (GIFF) is the first film festival in the nation to exclusively celebrate the successes and sacrifices of the American military through the medium of film. The three-day festival will be held on May 26-28, 2007 , Memorial Day Weekend, in Washington , DC , at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center . The GIFF will present films from new and established international and domestic filmmakers that honor the heroic stories of the American Armed Forces and the worldwide struggle for freedom and liberty. Some of the films screened will be fan favorites. Others will be screened for the first time. All will in some way express the courage and selflessness of our fighting men and women and the value of their work.

I just wish I could have attended. We need more festivals like this; celebrating America and not tearing her down.

Today on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace interviewed former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, running for the 2008 presidency on the Republican ticket. I was impressed by Huckabee at the Fox GOP debates, and the more and more I hear from him, the more I like him. Especially on his support for the Fair Tax.

Here’s a portion of the transcript:

WALLACE: Let’s start with one of the centerpieces of your campaign. You say you want to put the IRS out of business and to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, which you call a fair tax. How would that work?

HUCKABEE: It works primarily by replacing the current very complicated tax structure, that is not only burdensome but is extremely expensive — and it’s also filled with hidden ways in which Americans pay tax and never think about it.

I’d love to say April 15th become just another beautiful spring day. I’d like to be the president that nails the going-out-of- business sign on the Internal Revenue Service doors, a $10 billion a year industry.

We spend half a trillion dollars on compliance, and the real issue is that many folks at the bottom of the economic scale — they don’t have 35,000 lobbyists in Washington working for them like other people do, working over 535 members of Congress.

Here’s how the fair tax works. You get rid of income tax. You get rid of all the withholding. You get rid of corporate taxes completely, totally, because those taxes are not really paid by the corporations. They’re passed on to the customer with a 22 percent embedded tax in the system.

You eliminate that, which means the prices of what you purchase will go down. You replace it with a 23 percent consumption tax. Now, that sounds expensive, but here’s what happens. You only pay when you purchase something new, whether it’s a product or it’s a service.

And the point is it’s a completely transparent tax system. It doesn’t increase taxes. It’s revenue neutral. But here’s what it will do. It will bring business back to the United States that’s leaving our shores because our tax laws make it impossible for an American-based business to compete.

I also like what he has to say about Fred Thompson and the GOP gallery in general:

HUCKABEE: Fred Thompson certainly will have a real presence in the race. You know, and I don’t know enough about his record in terms of the issues but, you know, I think any of us who are running have to recognize that there’s going to be room even for more than the 10 who are already on the stage.

Now, I can go for a Thompson/Huckabee ticket 100%! That’s got a real nice ring to me.

Watch the interview here.

A couple of weeks ago, Neil Cavuto had student Barry Lucier of Roger Williams University on to talk about his recent experience in his college classes. Seems that Roger’s classes were changed up a bit, and one of his labs was switched with Owl Gore’s schlockumentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Now mind you, this lab/now-movie was required for passing the class, but since Barry wasn’t buying in to the whole global warming crap, he asked for an opposing film to be shown as well to offer some balance. What do you think his professor’s answer was? You guessed it! I’ll let you watch and hear him tell the story himself.

These idiot professors need to be held accountable, and soon some day, perhaps parents will be outraged enough to take it to the highest levels of academia to get more academic freedom. Heck, if you think Barry had it bad, some kids in Canada were forced to watch it FOUR times in different classes. If this isn’t liberal indoctrination, I don’t know what is. And these are captive audiences; not even close to a level playing field for any of them.

Tonight’s “Real Time” was fairly boring, even the segment with Michael Moore. He’s becoming so irrelevent, he’s not even worth talking about. But anyway, P.J. O’Rourke and Ben Affleck were THE panel members tonight, with Bill explaining it was the last show of the season and they ran out of money for a third guest. Ha Ha…hummmm… Guess they ran out of money for joke writers, too.

Anyway, the most interesting part of the show came when the discussion turned to the latest successfully-passed Iraq Funding Bill, for which the Democrats had to finally remove the withdrawal timeline before the President would sign it. And of course, that doesn’t sit well with the “HEY, WE ELECTED YOU, YOU BETTER DO WHAT WE SAY!” defeatocrats like Affleck and the Kos Kids, so Affleck went off on his own “I want my lunch money back!” tirade, calling the dems pussies and saying they were weak.

Here’s a partial transcript, courtesy of Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters:

BILL MAHER, HOST: Now, what did you think of the Democrats, you know, caving in on this Iraq spending bill? Yah, I mean…

BEN AFFLECK, ACTOR/ACTIVIST: These fucking people. You know what it is? Democrats, this is the fucking problem with them.

MAHER: Let it out, Ben. Let it out.

AFFLECK: I’m going to do it right now, because, you know what’s funny that you’re not going to give away? The Democrats live in fear of basically, you know, being called cowards. Of looking soft on military. Of looking like pussies, basically. We’re afraid that somebody’s going to call us a pussy. That somebody’s going to criticize us. And these people got elected basically on opposing the war. They got sent to Washington to oppose the war. They went there to make a vote on opposing the war. And then, when they got sent back the bill to, you know, and they were told, “Look, you know, the president’s not going to, you know, you have to put these, uh, you know, timelines in there, you know, you’re either going to vote for or against this measure that says, you have to, if you want this money, you have to give us timelines to get out of Iraq. Are you going to be for this or against it?”

They were afraid that if they basically sent it back to the President and said, “No, we need the timelines.” And they left, for Memorial Day vacation. And when they left, the President would criticize them when they went on vacation for not supporting the troops. In other words…while they were on vacation, they were afraid of being criticized. So rather, out of a fear of being criticized, they sacrificed their core political beliefs. And they wonder why people call them fucking weak.

Heh. Don’t ya just love it when the politicians reveal their true colors to their “base?” Yes, I know that works both ways, but a pussy dem dish is best served cold. And Affleck was “chillin’.”

You can watch the video here.

MAN, we need more like him on all courts I can think of! Yes, it’s another local story, but it’s worth checking out. Fulton County, GA Supreme Court Judge, Craig Schwall was presiding over a trial of a man named Gerrick Jackson, who was convicted of molesting his girlfriend’s children while they were together. So egregous were the acts that Jackson got two consecutive life sentences plus 20 years! Jackson digitally penetrated his girlfriend’s 8-year-old, and anally sodomized her 16-year-old who is mentally retarded. What makes it even worse is that the girlfriend’s former boyfriend in 2003 also molested her two children. That’s when the judge lost it.

According to WSB-TV:

A Fulton County judge sentenced 34-year-old Gerrick Jackson to life in prison for molesting two children. But the judge saved his harshest words for the victims’ mother.

This is the kind of guy I want on all criminal benches, and I hope Bill O’Reilly finds out about this judge. This is true justice, and even though the mother of the kids doesn’t get “punishment” per se, the judge let her know how atrocious a person she is. And even more unbelievable, as of this writing, DFACS (Dept. of Family and Childrens’ Services) still has not removed these kids from this stupid bitch. WSB’s reporters will follow up on this, and so will I.