Soldiers' Angel - Holly Aho

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you would have received a $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-Keg. A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon! Makes you proud to be an American!

Today my hubby and I were in the kitchen when he did something particularly clumsy. My hubby is more the affectionately ornery sort, so I kept my mouth shut as I looked at him askance, but the expression on my face must have spoke volumes. He looked at me and said, "I can read your mind, and that's not nice! Didn't your mother teach you that if you can't think anything nice, don't think anything at all?"

I replied, "No, but that explains an awful lot about you."

Is anyone else with me?

What? Let me get this straight. V-8 has a full serving of vegetables. So, if you drink one, why the heck do you need to actually eat your vegetables? So you can get 2 servings? I'm just saying, it's weird! If you drink the V-8, should be fine to order whatever you want, or not eat crappy green veggies. Stoopid commercial.

Need some advice? Something that will inspire and encourage you without saying anything really substantiative? You need to ask the Barak Obama Magic 8-Ball!!

Go ahead, ask it a question and then click the 8-ball for your motivating answer that leaves the real thinking to you!

Ask the 8-Ball!

Bwaaaaahaaaaaahaaaaa!

A GIRL'S ESSAY ON BOYS
Boys are men that have not got as big as their papas, and girls are women that will be ladies by and by. Man was made before woman. When God looked at Adam he said to himself: "Well, I think I can do better if I try again." And He made Eve. God liked Eve so much better than Adam that there have been more women than men.
Boys are a trouble. They wear out everything but soap. If I had my way, half the world would be girls and the rest dolls. My papa is so nice that I think he must have been a little girl when he was a little boy.
Man was made, and on the seventh day he rested. Woman was then made, and she has never rested since.

~Found in my Great Grandma's 1926 highschool year book.

And I have 4 boys. They can wear out soap!

Totally icky. White trash or not, this is why I drink pop out of the can.

is HERE.

Make sure you put down the drink and swallow first before clicking the link.

This past Sunday, at the end of our Sunday School class, everyone was asked for items of praise or prayer to close with. Up on the blackboard were written the words 'praise' and 'prayer' and each item was written down under the appropriate category as it was mentioned.

Now ordinarily this would be, well, ordinary. Certainly not worth blogging about. But this week, as I watched one praise item be added to the blackboard and then numerous prayer requests, it seemed strange.

I'd sat through the entire class and was convinced these were intelligent people I was sitting with. It was a large class of at least 60 people. So, why on earth, during this week of 'Thanksgiving' especially, could only one praise be thought of in a large group of intelligent people?

After this went on for a good 10 minutes I raised my hand as I had a praise, something to be thankful for. As my praise was being written on the board I turned to the class and mentioned my thoughts about the praise/prayer imbalance, especially during this week where our hearts should be turned more towards thoughts of thanksgiving.

I'm not sure my comments were well received or not. I will say that there were several more praises added to the board after that, but it got me to thinking about the whole topic in general.

Prayer, for most Christians, is time spent with God in a close personal relationship. While He wants to hear our needs, imagine if you had a friend that called you up every day to ask for something, and never said anything else! Imagine if each day you answered their requests and yet they never mentioned it, only requested something else! Yeah, it sounds like life with children. Perhaps that is why He is called our Heavenly Father

In any case, have you become so wrapped up in needs that you've lost sight of the joys and praises in life? I dare say I highly doubt that everyone in my Sunday School class yesterday was depressed, but what else would you think of a large group of adults who had nothing happy to mention but lots of needs and complaints?

Let's be sure to not only bring our requests to God, but give Him the glory when those requests are answered. Don't forget the praise in your prayer!

Things I've learned in the past 24 hours - transformer toys don't always transform, and the X-Box 360 is a piece of crap.

Riddle #1: What do you call a transformer toy that only resembles a toy that transforms?

Riddle #2: If the X-Box 360 were made in China, how many executives would have been executed by now?

Read more

As much fun as it's been this year to participate in the Project Valour-IT blogging fundraiser competition, donations seemed unusually slow to trickle in. I might have thought the cause was me, as my blog has a much smaller readership than the other team leaders. But the other team's donations were suffering as much as my Marine Corps team's donations were. I honestly agonized over the cause and prayed. It seemed not to be a lack of awareness, for some of the largest blogs in the blogosphere were posting about Project Valour-IT.

So why were donations so small this year I wondered. And then a member of my Marine Corps team sent me this email:

One of my readers pointed out that Soldiers Angels got
a poor rating from a nationwide search of charities,
and this might be one of the reasons for the problems
with the fundraising this year.

This was the ABC News story that alerted the reader:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/failing-to-serv.html

And this is the link to the rating:
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/charity_reportcard_v3_071109.pdf

It is disconcerting to read this, given the feedback
and the way things have been portrayed.

I clicked the links above and learned that once again, ABC can be as foolish as any other media outlet when it comes to poor research on a story, and an organization called the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP) can cost a wonderful charity like Soldiers' Angels hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations due to - not facts, but opinion.

You see, ABC's story was about charities/non-profits whose mission is to support our military and don't do a good job of it, spending little of their donations on the military. The main resource ABC uses for this story is "a new report card from a leading charity watchdog group." This supposed watchdog group they refer to is the AIP. While ABC doesn't mention Soldiers' Angels in their article, they do share this report card, and Soldiers' Angels is in it with a grade of 'D'.

I was shocked. I joined Soldiers' Angels almost 3 years ago, and have found them to be one of the most mission oriented charities I've ever known. I could not imagine what criteria led them to receive a D grade, and the so called 'report card' doesn't say. So I headed to the source to see if I could find a breakdown in the given grade for Soldiers' Angels.

I want to stop and say here that at this point, since ABC had used this report card in their story, that I expected something factual and definitive from the AIP in their grading process. I was shocked to read this on the AIP's 'Criteria' page:

The letter grades represent the opinion of AIP.

What?

I'd already I read their About Us page, and realized I'd mistaken the word 'independent' for 'unbiased'. Their page states:

AIP is fiercely independent. We do not charge the charities we review to be listed in our Guide or for the right to publicize their rating, nor do we accept any advertising whatsoever on our web site or in our publication. Our board of directors does not include any heads of nonprofit associations, who receive their pay from the groups they are watching. Because over 95% of our support comes from small, individual donations, we have the freedom to speak openly and to be critical of the unethical practices of some charities, without concern for special interests cutting our funding.

Independent, but nowhere does it mention unbiased. And their own website admits their grades are based on their opinion, not specific facts or fraud that an individual can point to. In fact, their criteria page goes on to say:

AIP encourages each donor to consider these factors and others, which you may feel are more significant, when making charitable giving decisions.

So, in choosing a charity to give to you must return to your own opinion of factors you consider significant in selecting a charity to donate to. So what good is AIP? Seems they are just someone else with an opinion they want you to pay to hear.

Now you know what you are paying for.

And then I found this article on AIP's home page: Soldiers Angels Lose their Halos. I thought maybe there I'd find something more definitive. A breakdown of this grade, a reason for such a low opinion of such a wonderful organization. Instead, I find another badly researched article that ends with this thought:

It is fine for a charity to send tokens of appreciation to soldiers, but it is wrong to mislead donors by implying that the basic needs of soldiers are not already being met by the military.

I have alot to say about their stupid article that never mentions fraud, or misspending of funds, or over paid persons running the charity, but nit picks on whether or not soldiers need boots, but Soldiers' Angels had already said it better.

Soldiers' Angels' official response includes this response to the boots issue (in part):

Our heroes that are adopted by our Angels are
deployed men and women who in most instances sign up
themselves to be adopted ... the hero (or individual submitting the
hero’s name) can leave comments containing requests
on what the hero would like from his or her Angel.
One of the often requested items from the deployed
heroes is boots. In addition to leaving comments,
once an Angel contacts his or her hero, the Angel
asks what they can do to help. Again one of the
often requested items from the hero is boots.

It is for this reason that SA decided to make
boots available for purchase on its website. The
availability of boots on the website is a
convenience for the Angels and others, who wish to
supply boots to our heroes. It provides the Angel or
others with a boot which we are told is more
comfortable than the standard issue boot, and which
is approved by the military, thus guaranteeing that
the hero will be in compliance with military
regulations. It should also be noted that the boots
are priced at cost and SA covers the costs of
shipping.

The Article does correctly point out that worn
out combat boots will be replaced for our troops,
but wholly fails to recognize that replacement is
subject to supply and the individual soldier’s
location in the deployed theater, both of which
impact the soldier’s ability to actually turn in and
order additional boots. In response to the
Article, SA has received numerous emails from our
heroes explaining not the theory, but the actual
situation encountered by our Military personnel.

This sentence here - "...wholly fails to recognize that replacement is subject to supply and the individual soldier’s location in the deployed theater, both of which impact the soldier’s ability to actually turn in and order additional boots" reminds me of this commercial:

Read the entire response from Soldiers Angels regarding the article, but I want to point out one of the responses' final comments:

SA would not have either the boots or the First
Response Backpacks in the SA store if there wasn’t a
need. As with much that SA does, the need came to
SA, SA does not manufacture the need.

So......

Is this the reason for the diminished donations during this year's Valour-IT fundraiser? I sincerely hope not. Soldiers' Angels has been supporting our troops since 2003, and will continue to do so in the future. How much they are able to help remains up to you.

This year's donation goal for each team is $60,000. The fundraiser was extended from the 11th to the 12th in the hopes of coming a little closer to that goal. Then, in an unfortunate accident, power to Soldiers' Angels webserver went out for most of the evening on the 12th. I'd like to officially extend that deadline once again to include today. I for one, intend to keep my donation on my sidebar until the entire goal for the Marine Corps team is met - PERIOD.

There is no finer non-profit organization that supports our heroes than Soldiers' Angels. That's MY opinion. Now hopefully you'll make the choice to contribute that donation you hadn't yet given based on skewed information and someone else's less informed opinion.

Donate today!!!