Cindy, you annoying troll...

First of all, I just want to say the following about Cindy Sheehan. She's lost a son who served bravely in Iraq, and I sympathize with her grief for her son. He volunteered for the armed services and served honorably. Unfortunately, he lost his life fighting for his country and for the freedom of another. This is a risk all soldiers are aware of when they sign up. It's an incredible sacrifice for a person to make and we should all be proud and grateful for soldiers like him.

With that being said, I think SHE is a jackass. She is doing nothing to honor her son's name with her outrageous behavior. She has created this false sense of celebrity for herself, and dwells on the attention for her self worth. She is an attention whore who plays to the cameras whenever they're on. I've seen her at the White House, refusing to leave with a goofy smirk on her face, only to throw on the tears when the camera is on for her photo op. Her crusade has become very self serving, in my opinion and it's almost as if the anti-war cause is a second thought for her.

I'm wondering how a person could have so much time on their hands that Bush bashing would become a full time endeavor for them. Surely, she has bills to pay, right? It's pretty evident that she's being supported by the likes of Michael Moore and moveon.org and all of the usual lefty sources, not to mention making money selling books. They are using her for their (perceived) benefit, without a doubt. Michael Moore has her plastered all over his site on a daily basis.

Nothing Cindy Sheehan does is going to change the U.S. policy on Iraq. Period. She knows that. And the left knows that. At least everybody with a brain knows it. However, they continue to help get her in the spotlight to further their agendas. They use her to draw attention without having to get their own hands dirty. They use her to "smear" the Bush administration and she is a good pawn for that. What's funny is that she does more harm than good for their cause. The more she's on TV, the sillier she looks. The more radical she gets, the more she looks like a basketcase nutjob. Politicians will find that associating themselves with a person like Sheehan will not be a good move for them. She does nothing to bring legitimacy to this anti-war cause. She does not come off as being very well educated or particularly articulate. Her sensationalist approach certainly doesn't demand respect. I'm quite certain that she is not an expert in foreign relations or international diplomacy either. So for her to try and tell the U.S. government how to conduct their business is quite laughable.

It's certainly her right to protest. I am not disagreeing with her right to speak her mind by any means. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. You can speak your mind and still treat others with respect, even if you oppose their views.

RIGHT WAY: Get involved with government. Become an active member of your local or federal legislative body. That is the way to be taken seriously and to actually affect change. Being a bomb-thrower in the media does nothing to change the issues you disagree with. That actually makes you look like a fool, more than anything.

WRONG WAY: Wearing inflammatory t-shirts to the State Of The Union speech in hopes of a photo op and to disrupt the occasion.

That is precisely what she did (or tried to do) last night at the president's State Of the Union address. She came in with a jacket on over her shirt that said "2245 dead - how many more?". This was neither the time nor the place for her to try and steal the spotlight. The world does not revolve around her. There are many complex issues that the President of the United States must deal with, not just Sheehan. She needs to get a clue.

What's even worse is that after her arrest last night, she tried to act like she had no intention of disrupting the speech. Give me a friggin break! On Michael Moore's website, she's painting herself as some sort of innocent spectator at the speech who was wrongly persecuted.

"I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled, "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like, "I'm going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight."

Aww...poor Cindy. Feel free to go read her account in its entirety. I'm not going to post it all here. She claims that she was arrested "because she was protesting". Mind you, she claimed before that she had merely removed her jacket because she was "warm" - not because she wanted to protest. It was simply a coincidence that she had an inflammatory message on her shirt at a televised political speech. Riiiiiight. Make up your mind, Cindy.

She even claims that she's wrongfully vilified for "disagreeing with the government". That is simply not true. She makes a target of herself by the WAY she conducts herself. Not only that, but she is not even the only one that was removed from that speech last night. A REPUBLICAN representative's wife was removed as well. She was removed for wearing "support the troops" shirt for the same reason that Sheehan was removed for wearing her anti-war shirt. Both are disruptive and inappropriate for that forum.

Additionally, in 1999, a man was removed from the Senate gallery for wearing a shirt protesting Clinton. It said, "Clinton doesn't inhale, he sucks". As funny as that is, it's totally inappropriate and makes that guy look like an idiot. So, it's not an issue of Bush "quieting dissenters". It's a personal conduct thing. Don't act like a jackass and you won't be removed. It's really pretty simple.

That's all the ranting I can do right now. I'm sure you're all asleep by now anyway. I would apologize for the rambling, but I'm not really sorry. :)