Happy 4th, everybody! (some patriotic stuff for you, my brothers and sisters…)

I know I usually have some sort of conspiracy crap for ya, but I decided to shift gears a bit, and hit you with some other crap. Hope you don’t mind…

  As a younger and less grateful American, I always used to use this holiday as an excuss to blow-up fireworks, drink heavily, and generally be up to no good in the name of “freedom”.
 Now that I’m a bit older and hopefully wiser, I have have seen my friends/peers go off to foreign lands,(Germany, Guam, Iraq, and Afganistan), in the name of OUR freedom, to uphold the values and rights handed down by our fore-fathers.
  It brings a tear to my eye to think of what a proud and selfless act it must be to put the life of yourself and your fellow soldiers/countrymen on the line for our ideals and quality of life.
  Just wanted to say thanks to all that have served, past, present and future. We are strong because of you. (Thanks,  Dad, Bob, Duey, Rob, and the rest.)
  (getting down from my soap-box…)
  I leave you with a few words from my favorite president.(even though he was a Republican!jk!)
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
 on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
 dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-
field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
 that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave
 their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
 fitting and proper that we should do this.
  But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot
 consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men,
 living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it
 far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
 will little note nor long remember what we say here, but
 it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
 living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
 work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
 advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
 great task remaining before us…that from these honored
 dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
 they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
 highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
 that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
 freedom; and that government of the people, by the people,
 for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Abe
November 19, 1863

Have a safe holiday and please remember why we celebrate it.

ps  GO THUNDER!!!!!

pps  Here’s some other stuff that makes me proud to live here!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hK3Y1Ehv9c