Snowball Express - Event for Families of Soldiers killed in War

[rufus dog]

This weekend there is an event for surviving family members of Soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are flown to Orange County and taken to a concert, Disneyland, a shopping spree in Irvine and spend a day at the Oakley facility. As they drive to the Oakley Corporate building local groups: girl scout, boy scout, schools, etc come out and wave to the buses filled with families. To me it seems like a great idea on many fronts.

Obviously the kids get a great weekend before Christmas with a trip to Disneyland, I'm sure Oakley gives them sunglasses and other gifts, and then there is the shopping spree. The other big thing is the busses slow to about five miles per hour as they drive past the crowd of about 1000. You have smiling little kids with their faces pressed to the window waving and in just about every bus you have a mother or grandmother standing behind a kid with tears streaming down her face. As I looked backed into the crowd I saw almost every mother and a lot of fathers crying also.

For those of you not familiar with the OC, it votes overwhelmingly Republican, the area around Oakley is about 90% Republican. In fact when I parked I saw the first Rudy for Pres sticker on a SUV that had a Coto de Caza frame holder. (Coto is the largest gated community in the US, where the Housewives of OC, or OC Housewives, whatever show is filmed, and yes the majority of the people who live there are that shallow, I always say it is a good thing it is gated because if we need to have a public insurgence we can quickly take over the guard shacks and imprison 15,000 wackos) So back to the point, of these thousand people I have to think that some of them walked away saying what the hell are we doing? Why are we sending young mothers and fathers off to the mideast to die? What is the purpose of the war?

I walked away thinking why are there only 1000 people out here on a Saturday morning? Saddleback Church which hosted Hillary for the Aids Summit has 50,000 members and is one half mile away. Orange County has 3,000,000 residents. Shouldn't there be at least 30,000 people out there seeing the faces of the mothers and grandmothers? Or do you believe that people will just stick to the Bush rhetoric?