Penfist

Is definitely a factor in why he is doing well among Democrats. If we cannot have an open, honest discussion about this topic then we are a nation in self-denial. Things have been this way for at least two decades. The new standard is that white people cannot say anything at all about black people without risking being called racist and then having the charges, justified or not, repeated ad nauseum throughout the national media in the most hysterical tone possible. Meanwhile, black people can say any ridiculous thing they want to and it will be taken seriously. Otherwise, how do we explain the press coverage of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in the last 20 years?

Barack Obama is popular in large part because he is black. He’s also popular because he is a good speaker and a good looking guy. Take away the blackness and you’d have a good looking, well spoken white guy who wouldn’t have a chance in hell of becoming President. That’s the plain truth.

As much as I disagree with Geraldine Ferraro in most things she is completely and accurately stating the reality of life in America when she says Obama wouldn’t be a front runner without his skin coloring. Now that we’ve cleared that up can we talk about something that’s actually important?

As a nation, we are morally hypocritical slaves to religion.

I hold no love for Eliot Spitzer. In fact, I’m glad he is being forced to resign. However, his use of prostitutes in and of itself is not a valid reason to force him out. I don’t know why he felt he needed the service of prostitutes.I don’t know how his family feels about his wandering penis (although I can guess). Prostitution should be legal. It is a consensual activity between adults. Punishing Spitzer for being a hypocrite and perhaps a thief sounds dandy though. Any public servant who can afford a $35,000 hooker is a thief.

Our national dialogue on this issue is puerile because half the conversation is produced by blowhards who are willing to judge others while they themselves are doing dishonest backroom deals, ignoring their wives and children and generally leading lives filled with deceit, manipulation and powermongering. Meanwhile, if a lonely ugly man wants female companionship and is willing to pay a willing pretty adult women for that companionship he must also be willing to risk his good name. He must be willing to risk jail and the loss of his rights. She must as well. All because of the moral police who are so willing to speak on behalf of what God wants the rest of us to be forced to do or not do.

The next time I want to buy beer on Sunday and I can’t I’ll remember it is because of hypocrites like Eliot Spitzer. The next time I want to gamble online and I can’t I’ll laugh at the downfall of windbags and parasites like Eliot Spitzer. The next time I pass by a monument to some public figure I’ll wonder if they were a stupid jerkoff who feeds on the public tit like Eliot Spitzer. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Next time you’re thinking about lecturing an adult about his or her choices, remember Eliot Spitzer and make sure you aren’t worthy of your own little lecture before you start the lip flapping. People resent holier-than-thou types and love to see them fall down and go boom boom. Bye Eliot. Can’t say I’ll miss your ugly mug.

What do you hold sacred? Are you willing to allow others to criticize whatever it is you worship? The question is an important one because your answer is one measure of your spiritual and mental maturity. If you are unwilling to allow that which you hold most sacred to be criticized by others then you are immature and should be watched closely. As we are all aware, immaturity is a dangerous trait that leads to irrational behavior and possible danger to yourself and others. Many practitioners of Islam are dangerously immature, spiritually and mentally. Perhaps that is because Islam, as currently practiced in many parts of the world, is intentionally designed to retard its adherents and restrict their capacity for free thinking.

Private and public television stations have refused to air the anti-Muslim film “Fitna” by Dutch politician Geert Wilders, fearing a violent backlash that prompted the government to raise its terror threat level yesterday.

“I had hoped that a television broadcaster would say: ‘You have the right to do this, we will give you a podium’,” he told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

I wonder if the film is actually “anti-Muslim” or just anti-Islamic. But let’s get back to the point – an entire nation is afraid to air a film that take a hostile stance towards a religion and its adherents. Said nation actually feels justified in raising the terrorism threat levels within its borders due to publicity surrounding the film. What conclusions can we draw? Islam teaches violence? Yes. Muslims are violent? Yes.

In the United States, a filmmaker could make a porno flick called Jesus Christ, Supercock portraying Christ the son of God raping goats and nuns and there would be no raised terrorism alert levels. A controversy would certainly ensue. The pundits would certainly have new fodder. Some death threats might go out. However, it’s highly unlikely that you would see massive protests filled with Christians holding signs demanding the heads of the movie producer. Christians would be angry and upset but the vast majority of them would go on with their lives. Christianity in the United States does not preach the message that Jesus needs each Christian to defend his honor.

I’m working towards a point here. The point is that while I don’t personally have much love for religion, it can be tolerable if those who practice it are tolerant. If God exists (and I believe the universe is created) then God does not need you to defend his or her honor. An omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent being may tolerate humans killing one another over petty arguments. But don’t use that being as an excuse for your inability to act in a restrained and mature fashion when someone insults that which you hold sacred. You have just given the rest of the world a justification for hurling further insults and mockery your way. If you act as a barbarian then don’t be surprised when you are treated as one.

I haven’t seen Fitna. But I would certainly watch it and review it if someone sent me a copy or told me where I could go to view it. The right to criticize any religion or philosophy is a fundamental one. Spitting on the sacred cow is necessary sometimes.

John McCain may well be a war hero, and for that part of his life, he has my respect. That was decades ago. Since then, he’s worked hard to earn my contempt.

McCain, politically speaking, is no different than Barack Obama. They are birds of a feather. McCain offers us as a solution to all our problems the vehicle of the federal government. Since the federal government is an engine of rules and regulations, it is an anti-freedom vehicle. It promotes conformity. It promotes obedience. It promotes force. I don’t need any of what it has to offer, so I would rather burn in hell than vote for McCain.

I was driving home the other day listening to news and talk radio as I usually do. The announcer was playing sound clips of McCain saying something to the effect that anyone who disparaged his political opponents would be thrown out of his campaign. What? McCain feels it is more important to honor and respect all the candidates than it is to honestly discuss the merits or shortcomings of each of them. That’s the way I see it. He would apply this same logic to his own campaign.

How dare we bring up McCain-Feingold, that anti-constitutional piece of crap legislation. How dare we point out that McCain might as well be a Democrat. How dare we mention that John McCain is a sellout hypocrite who talks about values that he doesn’t practice, hasn’t internalized and cannot honestly claim to hold dear.

The bottom line on McCain is that he, like Hillary Clinton and like Barack Obama want government to make all the important decisions about the daily lives of individual Americans. And just like the other two finalists for President of the United Tards of America, McCain will ultimately make things worse, not better for the majority of Americans. Abdicate individual responsibility and replace it with mediocrity and leveling. Abdicate intrepid individualism and replace it with authoritarianism and conformity. Abdicate hope and replace it with government provided SSRIs. Vote for John McCain.

As far as I know, I’m a member of Generation X. If you are a member of my unlucky generation, you are caught between the Baby Boomers and Generation Y. It’s interesting how technology has affected these three generations.

Start with the boomers – they are generally afraid of technology that first appeared after 1970 or so. They still prefer to fly to a face to face meeting or pick up the phone. Members of my generation generally prefer e-mail because it isn’t time sensitive (it doesn’t usually demand immediate attention). The Y’s all seem to be addicted to an infantile bridge technology called texting. And texting is what I really want to talk about.

It’s an idiotic thing to be addicted to. Those tiny keyboards aren’t made for constant communication. I’ve tried it because I generally love technology. However, I refuse to embrace a technology that steps backwards socially. I’ve watched you Y’s with your addiction to driving and texting. You have a death wish. You have the attention spans of gnats. You couldn’t focus on an important task to save your job.

Embracing a technology like texting – one that forces a single core processor (the human brain) to overheat and eventually return a blue screen error – is a fool’s errand. I will embrace texting when it’s embedded on a multi-core chip or organic computing device that has the capacity to make it a pleasant experience. I’m not ready to drive and type. I’ve caught myself doing that on my Blackberry. I should have punched myself in the face for allowing myself to be trained that every response is so urgent I should risk my life to be available to answer e-mail even while commuting.

Is it just me or does anyone else think that Congress telling professional sports what substances players may or may not use is like putting Satan in charge of Auschwitz because the living conditions are bad? Might as well put the heroin addicts in charge of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some aspects of our modern American reality are completely idiotic.

Our national attitude towards drugs is one of those aspects.

My company is moving its corporate headquarters. It is simply amazing how a 72-hour event can waste six months of a person’s life (mine). I exaggerate slightly when I say waste. On the other hand at least 50% of the meetings I have attended related to this process have been redundant or unnecessary.

Job satisfaction, in my mind, is highly dependent on how much employees are treated as stakeholders versus how much they are micromanaged. Meetings can be good tools for communicating. They can also be good tools for micromanagers to ensure that control is being maintained. I am not going to go into extreme detail on the topic in this post, other than to state I have never attended a meeting with more than six people sitting around a table at one time that wasn’t wasting four of the people’s time 75% of the meeting’s duration.

Did that confuse you? The bottom line is – think about why you are having a meeting and whether or not everyone really needs to be there.

I am not sure I understand basic thinking in regards to modern economics. How is giving me an $800 one time tax credit (loaning me some of my own money) going to fix a debt/spending driven economy?

President Bush publicly confirmed for the first time that he would propose a package of emergency measures, outlining its basic principles on Friday, in an effort to restore the eroding confidence of investors and consumers. The package is expected to include more than $100 billion in one-time tax rebates for individuals and an opportunity for businesses to rapidly write off their capital investments.

As far as I am concerned everything the feds talk about is semantics unless it involves budget cuts or real reductions in federal spending. I don’t know anything about Ben Bernanke. Why should I listen to what he has to say? Someone convince me we aren’t headed for a crisis.

Here’s a fascinating blog entry on dressing practically from the perspective of a successful executive.

When I lost 60 pounds through a combination of vegan diet and exercise, I began to look for new clothes from an engineering standpoint, not a fashion standpoint. To work 20 hours a day and fly 400,000 miles a year, I need very practical clothing that fits well, survives abuse, and works in a multitude of settings .

Well worth reading. I wonder what percentage of the population puts this much thought into anything.

I just got a weird e-mail from my sister that someone is trying to organize a class reunion for my graduating high school class for next year. It’s been 18 years since I graduated, so that would put the reunion at 19 years out. I thought 20 was the big number when everyone got together to compare how we screwed our lives up and lost all our hair and dignity along the way.

Anyhow, if you are a member of the graduating class of 1990 from Winter Haven High School in Winter Haven, Florida and you come across this page let me know how you are doing. Hopefully, things won’t turn out like they did in Grosse Point Blank.

When 9/11 happened, I was horrified by the event itself. However, the long-term results of that single event strike much more of a chord of fear in my heart. Government is too big in the United States and 9/11 was an excuse to grow it to levels no one had tried prior to that terrorist attack. 9/11 birthed the Transportation Security Administration, an organization which does little to nothing to improve security when you fly but has made huge inroads in curtailing freedoms that we used to take for granted.

A House of Representatives panel yesterday released a damning report about a Transportation Security Administration Web site built to address grievances from travelers errantly flagged by the government’s no-fly list. It concluded that cronyism and a lack of oversight exposed thousands of site visitors to identity theft.

The news article quoted above goes on to conclude that the TSA is wasting taxpayers money by awarding no-bid contracts and building web sites that expose the public to malicious use of personal data. Sounds like we are less secure because of the TSA, which is the opposite of what we were promised.

Al Sharpton needs to be silenced. We don’t need a lynching either.

We just need to tell the media we are sick of the guy and please stop putting him on the air. I’m not sure when Al was hired as Tiger Woods’ spokesracist, but he apparently thinks that is his job. Al’s latest burst of mouth diarrhea got me thinking about lynchings a little bit. I realize most people have only one mental image when it comes to lynchings – an image of a black man hanging from a tree. The truth of the matter is that people of all colors have been lynched over the centuries, by people of all colors.

When Al Sharpton tries to claim ownership of lynchings on behalf of American blacks he is distorting reality. Even in the United States during slavery and Jim Crow laws, 20% of lynching victims were white. Why do I have to keep hearing from Al? I feel zero guilt for the institution of slavery and I have zero responsibility to pay for the problems of black Americans.

While I do have an interest in improving the lives of Americans everywhere, regardless of their color, Al Sharpton is only interested in improving his own lot in life. He has done nothing to make America a better place to live, except for himself.

I don’t know of a more clear example of a media outlet trying to skew public opinion than the recent example of Ron Paul being excluded from the most recent Republican debates hosted by Fox News despite the fact that his numbers in the Iowa primaries were more than double Rudy Giuliani’s.

But the best thing that happened to Paul in recent days was that despite his $20 million and his 10% showing in New Hampshire polls, Fox News excluded Paul from its Sunday night Republican debate with the big five — Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain. So Paul gets 10% in Iowa and gets excluded, but Rudy gets 4% and sits on the left end of the Fox Box desk. Hmmm.

There was quite an uproar and the New Hampshire GOP withdrew its sponsorship of the debate. Paul supporters, mocking the network’s “Fair and Balanced” motto, flooded Fox with protests, calls and e-mails and are organizing a boycott of Fox sponsors. Never one to miss an opportunity, NBC’s Leno invited Paul to appear and explain.

Last night I was watching CNN and Anderson Cooper was talking to various idiots in front of a backdrop that consisted of a solid sea of Ron Paul signs and supporters. Anderson, whom I met in Iraq, and who seemed like a very down to earth and genuine guy, apologized to his viewers for the Ron Paul swarm and tried to ignore them. I found that deliciously ironic. Where were Hillary’s people? CNN kept cutting to b-roll of that nasty piece of trash pretending to care about all of us and talking about her wonderful ideas for America all misty eyed. Good God that was some scary footage.

I don’t have kids of my own so I worry about other peoples’ kids. Maybe you can relate.

It was recently my privilege to attend Warrior Leader Course in Eastover, South Carolina. I have a few observations, condemnations and sprinkle of pithy commentary.

The first, and perhaps most important observation I have to make is that the Army is desperate to retain soldiers. With this desperation comes the need to lower standards. The lowering of standards is going to get people killed. It used to be that you had to pass the physical fitness test to graduate from the Warrior Leader Course, which used to be called Primary Leadership Development Course. Now you can graduate without being able to pass three simple events. A timed two-mile run, sit ups and push ups done in insufficient quantities are no longer grounds for being sent home. Maybe we’re all just tired from being deployed so much? Five of my squad of 17 soldiers were unable to pass their tests after the second try and therefore received a “marginal” on their graduation. The numbers do not include the three soldiers who were sent home early for having too much body fat to meet the Army’s requirements. Let me ask a question. Would you like to serve in combat with someone who is “marginally” physically fit? I would not.

Moving on to academics. The first half of the course was strongly focused on “academics.” I put the word academics in quotes because a lot of the information we were expected to learn was completely useless stuff like how to wear your uniform properly. Garrison skills may, over the years, ingrain some form of automatic discipline into a soldier that will make the commander smile as he walks by, but garrison skills do nothing to contribute to winning battles. Mixed in with learning the rules and regulations were materials that I did benefit from. These materials covered such items as how to move a squad through rural and urban terrain. We actually got to practice the use of these techniques will firing blanks into the faces of fellow squad members and having simulated artillery thrown at us. And that is always good stuff.

Some of the people in my squad had very low IQs. I’m pretty sure my test answers were being copied on the day of the written exam but I can’t prove anything. Let’s just say there is a direct correlation between IQ and muzzle awareness. If you ever find yourself in a group of people with loaded rifles, keep an eye on the dumb ones, because they tend to swing the rifles around while they talk and that’s just plain dangerous for the rest of the group.

The amount of bitching that went on was simply amazing. I have never seen such an eclectic group of ne’er do wells. We had a mix of 20-something battle hardened kids with solid field soldiering skills and bad attitudes mixed in with a group of older soldiers like myself. The young ones were a mix of cocky immortality fantasy bravado and PTSD covered with a layer of brash boasting and foul language. The older ones were a mix of plain dumb, apathetic, unwarlike and regular old tired. A few of us fell somewhere in between the various layers of maddening dysfunctional behaviors. I’ll call those guys the glue. They managed to hold us together but just barely.

We got up between 0330 and 0500 every single day for the entire course. One morning someone turned on the lights a few minutes early and I was so angry I couldn’t stop loudly bitching for 15 minutes. Those stolen minutes of sleep are precious. I managed to avoid a repeat performance the next morning only by putting myself into that dead zone those in the military service learn to escape to. Most veterans have a place they can escape to at will, and I turned mine back on. I hadn’t used it since I left Iraq.

In between learning to patrol, sniping at each other from across the desks where we learned how to wear our uniforms properly and eating bad food, we played video games. The last two days of the course consisted of “simulators” including a virtual convoy, a virtual shooting range and virtual patrols run entirely off Zboards on laptop computers.

My squad of soldiers probably isn’t much different from any squad that has existed in the last few hundred years, except maybe for the logistics and raw firepower available to them, but I worry about the kids. Most of them will probably see a lot more conflict in the coming decade(s). Some of them will die. So I worry and I bitch and I try to be the best soldier I can be. I love those kids, and I hate them all at the same time. I love the military and I hate it too. I keep trying to learn and I keep getting older and maybe crankier in the process. I wonder if any of my experiences have been worth anything. I’m hoping the answer is yes.

I’m also hoping the kids are going to be OK when they get done growing up.

The Washington Post weighs in on Ron Paul:

When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it’s clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.

That force is less about Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him — and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties’ soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it’s listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast “obscenities” or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.

I am paying attention to how the guy is doing, and my wife and I have donated money. We’ll give some more before this election cycle is over.

Meanwhile, I try to keep a good sense of humor when I hear the Fox News bimbette of the day mocking my choice. After all, I am just as merciless in mocking all the “mainstream” candidates. And my guy has more money in the bank. You might have noticed his campaign commercials lately on Fox or one of the other talking head channels.

Why does he appeal? Ron Paul is the only guy who is promising less nannying, not more. Some of us want to feel as if we still make the important choices in life. Some of us want to be free of the banality of bureaucrats, or at least to be pestered less often and less harshly by the do-gooders who want to make us safe, dumb, fat and happy from cradle to crave all at someone else’s expense.

I have absolutely nothing against praying. Now that I’ve stated that for the record I also need to say that Sonny Purdue publicly praying for rain in Georgia one day before forecast thunderstorms are due to pass through the area is a little bit dubious, in my opinion.

The way I see it, the old saying “God helps those who help themselves” is about the best advice a person can be given in regards to praying as a means of problem solving. It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t think it really helps either – at least not from a practical standpoint. God doesn’t actively interfere in human affairs, at least not in any way any of us could possibly comprehend. From my vantage point, God may be watching, but that’s about it.

I’ll admit to praying myself. I did it a few times in Iraq as rockets were flying over my head. However, I’m rational enough to know that it wasn’t my prayer that kept the rocket from landing on me. And those rockets always did land. Sometimes they killed people. Assuming my prayers had the power to guide the rockets away from my own body how should I feel knowing they just shattered someone else’s existence and then snuffed it out?

I think Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue and his myrmidons should pray if they want too. Might even make them feel better to do so. However, when it comes to the public arena, I believe their efforts in front of the cameras and microphones are better spent discussing how Georgians can help themselves do a better job of water resource management and the sharing of those resources with neighbors. God isn’t going to get involved and save Georgia from its own bad decision making anymore than God got involved to save the millions who died from the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. A healthy dose of feel-good platitudes to the invisible and untouchable Creator is all fine and dandy, but I need to hear what the plan is. Praying is not a plan. Water resource management using the scientific method and proven project management principles are a plan.

CNN is reporting that Washington diplomats are complaining about a policy that may force them to choose between serving in Iraq or losing their jobs. Poor babies. Grow up.

Calling it “a potential death sentence,” several hundred diplomats expressed their resentment Wednesday over a new State Department policy that could force them to serve in Iraq or risk losing their jobs.

I guess all these idiots thought they were signing up for a paid vacation at Sandals or Club Med. The arrogance of the American bureaucrat class never ceases to amaze me. If you little shits want to make decisions about foreign policy then you should live the consequences of those decisions. I think it’s great that you’re being forced to get up close and personal. Maybe we’ll be less likely to fight wars when our State Department is filled with people who have lived war. Walk away from your career if you don’t like the policy. I could care less. Just quit whining.

I flew from Atlanta to Dallas Monday. The trip is normally fairly boring. This particular trip held no major surprises. As always, though, I people watch when traveling. I had ample opportunity at the Atlanta airport because the “security” line was more than an hour long. In fact, it was so long that the geniuses running the fool’s game we pretend has something to do with security routed us around every luggage conveyor belt in the place. The experience of walking in a giant conga line consisting of a few thousand people winding in and out between the baggage retrieval belts was sort of surreal.

There’s a lady struggling with her three carry-ons. And that lady over there just watched her kid almost get crushed by a bumbling fat man so distracted by his cell phone you could place a giant fan blade in front of him and he would walk right into it. Mixed in between the stand out idiots like fat man on cell phone and the luggage idiot are the other polyglot varieties of people you see in an airport. There are smartly dressed business people with looks of stolid resignation on their faces. Men and women alike with their leather briefcases containing who knows what corporate secrets shuffle slowly toward their aluminum transportation cans. They are used to this lunacy we call the modern American airport. They have submitted to the idiocy although some of them may be growing the seeds of revolution in their hearts. None of them likes being herded like a cow, but most of them aren’t going to moo loudly about it. The travelers are easy to spot because they are dressed so slavishly. Teenage girls in clothing so tight it might as well be glued on compete for the furtively admiring glances from unhappy middle aged suits who like a little eye candy. Couples fight quietly on the transport tram between terminals, their tans already fading as they are whisked back towards their boring little lives full of rampant consumerism, crushing debt and ho hum sex with each other. Ancient octogenarians recline with heads lolling in courtesy wheelchairs as they are rolled through the hallways on their way to somewhere they hope to die surrounded by people who care more than these airport denizens. Few make eye contact even when they brush one another in the overcrowded walkways or lock suitcases or collide trying to navigate in and out of the too narrow restroom entrances. The modern America airport is not a friendly place.

Through this mix of misguided human mutts wanders the homeless man. Only he knows his destination. His luggage consists of the leaves and dirt matted into his dreadlocks. His ancient trench coat is stained with good honest red Georgia clay. He has no cell phone like so many of his rude airport neighbors but he is muttering quietly under his breath just like they are. He wanders nimbly through the endless line of harried, harassed and oh so jaded commuters. The only flying he will do today will happen when he gets high. I see him once, then twice, then a third time. He and I are both moving towards the area where taking off our shoes will be mandatory. He is zig zagging and I am shuffling. Suddenly, his path is blocked by a woman on a cell phone. He motions that he wants to pass through the line. Everyone else has taken pains to let him by – they back up and give him his space. But not this woman. She is on a cell phone and she isn’t moving. In fact, cell phone business lady has decided that homeless man doesn’t even exist. He wants to get through. She wants him not to be a part of her reality. He waves a grizzled hand in front of her face; he is pointing in the direction he wants to go. Cell phone lady hunches over and cradles her cell phone protectively with one hand while grabbing her carry-on more tightly with the other. She is not letting him through. Homeless man gesticulates again! He raises the volume on his muttering activity. Things look like they might get ugly. Without warning, the stalemate is broken as the line shuffles forward and cell phone lady moves toward her date with an overweight idiot in polyester pants, a clip on tie and a nickel-metal badge. Homeless man zips through and continues his mad wandering. I will never see him again. I shuffle towards my own meeting with the people who keep me safe from myself.

As I do I think about who is more free. Is it homeless man or cell phone lady? And how free am I? I’m not feeling it.

I have made it clear in the past that I think Hillary Clinton is a sociopath. She’s the type of lady who would happily slit your throat with nary a bad dream. Ask Peter Paul, who served jail time on behalf of the woman some people call Hitlary. Peter Paul is fighting back against her bid for presidency.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=7007109937779036019" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]

Here is the Wired article Hillary Clinton Faces a Viral-Video ‘Truth-Boating’ where I found the Peter Paul outing video. Just remember, Hillary Clinton does not care at about anything other than her own power. The woman is soulless.

Friday evening I flew home from Denver. Home for me is the Atlanta airport followed by a 70-mile commute up I-75 and into the Appalachian foothills.

I sat next to a crazy lady on the plane. OK, not really crazy but really, really nervous. She had her shirt pulled up over her face half the flight. Every time the pilot banked the plane or there was any noise at all, she freaked out. She was a nice lady other than the crazy. I tried talking to her to make her less nervous. She was mad at her husband who was sitting across the aisle. I think she was mad because he fell asleep while she spent the flight freaking out. She bought me a beer and drank one of her own. We talked about her son and her life in rural Pennsylvania in between her panic attacks.

The crazy lady told her husband she was going to kick his ass when we were getting off the plane. I think it was because he thanked me for “helping” her during the flight. I’m not sure I helped. Some people freak out when they aren’t the one behind the controls. I know because I’ve lived through that stage in my life.

I got home at 2 AM, hugged my wife and before I knew it the alarm was bothering me. 5 AM hurts when you don’t hit the rack until three hours earlier. Especially after you’ve left your 20’s behind forever.

The rest of my weekend consisted of military drill. We lost our commander, Major Chris Dockery. He was replaced by a captain, who seems like a good officer and a nice guy all around. I complained a lot about Major Dockery in my blog while we were in Iraq together. Never by name. He has a different kind of management style than what I’m looking for in a boss. Nevertheless, I’m going to miss him. He was an honest and sincere man and he cared about his troops in his own rather bureaucratic and stubborn way. I’ve served under worse men. Major Dockery, if you happen to read this blog entry, I can’t say it was always a pleasure, but I respect you sir. Safe journeys.

That’s just a small reminder to all of you who are planning to vote for Hillary Clinton.

We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton

In the mean time, Ron Paul has raised more than $5 million so far, and he isn’t in bed with any big powerful lobbies that I am aware of. Isn’t that interesting? I’m not predicting a revolution, but at least one guy is resonating enough to stand out from among all the rotting souls in Washington, D.C.

I’m in Denver this week learning more IT guru secrets. It’s pretty cold here. It’s colder in Hillary Clinton’s heart. Don’t push this country any further away from the ideas and dreams that made it what it is by voting for that sociopath. And don’t vote for mediocrity by choosing another small government talkin’ big taxpayer money spending Republican. Remember that anyone who promises government will solve all your problems is a liar.

When you see something many times you often stop seeing it at all.

And then one fine morning you see it again for the first time. This morning’s motorcycle ride to work was like that for me. I saw a lot of things I have passed most mornings for years except I was really seeing them this morning. Features like the one lane curved road with a cliff on one side and a 100-foot drop on the other jumped out at me. The fog I was passing through felt alive. Every bug seemed to zoom into clear detail as I blasted towards them. I felt like I was watching the world through someone else’s eyes this morning. It was great!

The magic didn’t really end until I hit the interstate and the first asshole zipped past me in a minivan doing over 100. It had Quebec license plates. I stopped really seeing the world around me after the Canadians went by. They were on offense and I realized it was time for me to get on defense. I went back to my normal scan short scan long scan medium rinse, lather, repeat eye patrol. The magic visions faded. I’d like to have another morning of really seeing what’s around me soon though. The countryside of North Georgia is really pretty magical if you just see it the right way. This morning, the right way of seeing it was from my motorcycle at between 30 and 40 miles per hour.

You may or may not know what an “emo” is. I do. Emo is short for emotional, and emos are a fairly new type of subculture in the society of American youth.

These are the kids who replaced goths in the pyramid of hopeless self-pity and absolute despondence and helpnessness that we are creating for our future generations of leaders. Emos are completely unable to deal with reality, because they live in a fantasy world that is emotionally unhealthy and, not surprisingly, devoid of real logic. The world of an emo is a dark one filled with tears and no real direction unless you count the downward spiral into death as a direction.

But where do emos come from? That’s an easy answer. Public schools.

When your kid gets in trouble for even thinking about any type of self-assertion, the politics of the emo world are born. Think about it. Many public schools today will punish you for drawing a picture of any type of weapon. Ask your kid to write a diatribe about a society that values self-defense. Then tell your kid to create a cover page with the title, “Why I Have the Right to Defend Myself by Any Means” and get him to put some clip art of a pistol on the cover.

Tell the kid to take it to school and put it on his desk in every class without saying anything. No matter how good the diatribe is, no matter how valid the logic of the essay, your kid will be in trouble of some sort by the end of the school day. Perhaps a suspension. Perhaps the law will be called. Your child will be labeled. You’ll be lucky if your kid is allowed to continue attending the school.

From Wikipedia, “When referring to a person’s personality and attitude, most definitions of emo hold that an emo person is emotionally candid, sensitive, shy, introverted, glum, and quiet.^[7] Depressed and broken-hearted are sometimes used to describe the emo personality. Emo music and poetry contain multiple references to unrequited love, emotional and relationship problems. Being melodramatic or overly emotional is also often associated with being emo.^[7] ”

Is it any wonder children go emo? They cannot assert themselves as individuals, at least not in any way that approaches aggressiveness. That is patently unhealthy. We humans are sometimes naturally aggressive. We need constructive outlets for that aggression. We need to be able to roar. We need to be able to piss and mark our territory.

Zero tolerance and the politics of subservience to the state are working hard to ensure that no child will be left behind in the battle to sap our wills and destroy our sense of individualism. And that is why the next time you are at a mall you will probably see an emo or fifteen sulking about moodily. I blame public education camps.

I bought a Kawasaki Mean Streak on Saturday. I had a fun ride home from the dealer to my house, a distance of about 30 miles or so. Then I tried to go down my driveway. That’s when I christened the bike by dropping it. My driveway is steep, graveled, and in complete disrepair – there are rain channels running down the thing on both sides. At some points, these channels are 18 inches deep. No problem for a four wheel drive truck but certainly a real problem for an overconfident 30-something bike rider who hasn’t been on two wheels for a decade or so. Anyhow, I ripped some skin off one leg and put a tiny dent in the gas tank. That was a good lesson. It’s not easy to pick up a 700-pound bike on a hill.

Always be humble when you’re zipping around on two wheels. For the time being, I’m going to park up on the main road. Hopefully the driveway repair guy isn’t overbooked.

The bike is a real pleasure to ride when I’m not busy dropping it on my leg. I took it up past 100 MPH on the interstate this morning on the way to work – smooth as silk. I certainly wouldn’t want to fall at that speed.

I am in Sacramento this week working on some issues in our West Coast office.

Naturally, I flew here, since it’s too far to drive for all practical purposes.

I learned an important lesson on the flight. Fat people should not be allowed to book just one seat. When a person cannot physically fit into the space alloted for them something bad happens. The person flows into other people’s space. In this case, my space was the one being invaded. If you have not ever had the opportunity to fly for five hours leaning into the aisle of a jumbo jet, I can say I do not recommend the experience. If you fall asleep, as I did, the likelihood of your head being smashed by a stewardess cart is high. The woman seated in the middle seat actually oozed around the armrest, both below and above. I could not use the armrest at all because it was physically enveloped by this lady. I actually had to scoot as far left as possible to avoid being in constant physical contact with this woman, and even pressed up against the left side of the seat, I still got contact every time this lady shifted even a tiny bit. I’m not sure how she wedged herself in to begin with.

Ms. Overflow, as I will call her, was clearly uncomfortable with the fact that she was oozing into the seats to her right and left. She spoke not a word during the entire trip. She moved very little, and each time her gargantuan mass touched me she sort of tried to suck herself back into her alloted area. It was uncomfortable for both of us.

You would think that airlines would address this problem by putting in some seats for the larger people and charging them larger fares. I will not go through such an experience again. The next time I see that I have been seated next to someone who doesn’t fit into their space, I will complain and get off the plane if necessary. It’s just not worth the discomfort involved to be literally squashed against another human for that long a period of time. I’d rather embarrass us both. And Delta should be ashamed of itself for selling someone a space too small for them to fit into. I’ve dealt with worse inconveniences in life, but those were things I had no control over. I’m not flying the obese skies again. If we can measure baggage to ensure it will all fit, we can measure the people getting on the plane too.

For those of you who are wondering why I haven’t posted – I’m busy. Too busy to write? Sadly, yes, at least on the blog. I’m working on it though. I’ll be back as quickly as I can get some people trained up. In the mean time, here’s a reminder of where I was last year, and where several hundred thousand of your fellow citizens are this year. BOOOM!!!

The entry was published in the 2006 World Almanac, and I was paid $225 for it, if memory serves correctly. But that isn’t what is important. What is important is that we’re still at war, and there are other people out there doing the job I was doing at this time one year ago. Some of them will not come home. Reach out and tell them you care about their lives. You can start at Milblogging.

See you soon, my fellow denizens of the electronic universe.

When I resumed my civilian job as an information technology manager after my return from Iraq, I started a new tradition, which I follow devoutly. That tradition is to purchase a Starbucks venti latte every morning on my way into the office. When you frequent a business every single day as a customer, you begin to notice the other regulars. One of them is the man with the broken face.

He is also a devout man, in a way that is very different from my own consistent ritual of purchasing that delicious venti latte. My ritual began because the lattes available in Iraq (they have lattes in Iraq?) was horrible by my standards. All the milk we had available was ultra-pasteurized, and while I drank it, I didn’t necessarily enjoy it as much as good old-fashioned American style milk. It kind of tasted like cardboard to me, so I promised myself I would enjoy my “real” lattes if I ever made it home in one piece. Since I did, I kept my promise to myself.

I don’t have the faintest clue what promise the man with the broken face might have made to himself, but I can certainly make an educated guess based on my observations of his existence on my morning Starbucks runs. First, let me describe him. He is a man about my size. That is to say he is a small man, by American standards. He probably stands about five feet six inches tall and is of normal build for that size. But when you take a moment to look at his features, you realize something is very different. This man has a face that only a mother could love. His eyes are on different planes. One is sunk in deeply and askew. There are also deep and significant craters all over his frontal facial features. There are ridges where none should be, and flat areas where most of us have ridges.

The man with the broken face sits at a table with his golden retriever, reading from a well-worn Bible. His lips move as he mutters passages to himself, and he often pauses in prayer. I do not know what he is praying for, but his dog waits patiently as he goes through his morning meditations.

I often wonder if the man with the broken face has peace in his heart. I ponder to myself; is he praying for a new face or world peace? Is he praying for a lovely wife who will overlook his twisted visage and love him for what lies in his heart, or is he asking God to punish those who cannot help but stare openly at the things that make him obviously different from other humans around him?

I have a crooked chin. I used to worry about it, until I realized that it really didn’t matter. I’m sure people sometimes see me from a profile view and make a mental note that one side of my chin juts slightly lower than the other. It took me years of self-reflection to stop wondering if other people were judging me because my chin is less than perfect. When I see the man with the broken face, I hope he is at peace with his own imperfections. Maybe one day, when I’m running early instead of late, I’ll introduce myself and shake his hand.

It’s easy to sum up a person based on the physical and much harder to take the time to measure a person’s character, but the character is so much more important. As time passes, and we age, our characters are what we will be judged by. People will study Mother Teresa, Mahatma Ghandi and Thomas Jefferson long after they have forgotten about Paris Hilton, the Back Street Boys and Anna Nicole Smith.

With the recent departure of my departmental number two at work, my free time has dropped from little to none.

I will mention in passing a few developments that have meaning in my life. I am only a few credits away from a bachelor’s degree in information technology. That is exciting, as I have been working on the degree nights and weekends for five years (minus a year off for war duties). I’ll move on to a graduate degree, but I haven’t decided what yet.

I bought my wife a Beretta Tomcat as her primary carry gun thanks to a recommendation from Gringo Malo. I wish she was as excited about shooting it as I am, but not everyone loves shooting for the sake of shooting. My wife used her .22 only once that I am aware of when she came upon an opossum which had just been run over and was suffering. She fired an entire clip into the wounded creature in order to end its pain. I hated that little .22 – it had three safeties on it. Three! If you are clumsy enough or forgetful enough or careless enough that you need three safeties on your pistol, you shouldn’t have a pistol. That’s just my opinion, and I’m glad I sold that gun to someone who liked the idea of three safeties.

Last but not least, my post requesting a Tasmanian pen pal has borne fruit, and I am in the beginning stages of a correspondence that I hope will prove educational and interesting in the long term.

Have you ever been reflecting on how quickly you run out of time to do something? I have run out of time to do almost everything I enjoy most. Luckily, I know that these things tend to come in cycles and so I do not despair when the work pace becomes outrageous. I will make up for it by stealing back minutes here and hours there at some point in the future.

A lot of Americans call this holiday the Fourth of July. I call it Independence Day because, for me, this day is a celebration of the ideas that make the United States of America a great nation. For many of you, this day means no work, shopping, fireworks and cool beverages on a hot day. All those things are fine. However, I need something deeper from this national holiday. I need reinforcement of what it actually means to be free to make my own choices. That’s why today, I packed up some of my guns and went to the range.

I spent about four hours practicing marksmanship. First, I worked on the 25-yard pistol range. I shot my Kel-Tec P-32 first. The P-32 is a fun little gun, but I would hate to find myself in a situation where my life depended on it. It’s quite accurate for hitting a human sized target in the chest area at the 25-yard distance – I can do so with about 90% accuracy. The problem with the Kel-Tec P-32 is that it (mine at least) jams quite frequently. I was using PMC .32 Auto ammo and it is possible that the pistol simply doesn’t like that round. Since PMC is out of business, I’ll try switching to something else next time. The Kel-Tec is a great ankle carry, but only as a backup until I figure why it jams so much.

Next I shot my HK .45 USP Compact. The USP Compact is a well engineered weapon, with no useless “safety” features at all. It’s highly accurate at 25 yards. I managed to put 9 of 10 rounds in the target today, but I pulled one round by breathing while pulling the trigger. Darn it! If I had to pick any single handgun to be stranded on an island full of cannibals with, it would be my HK .45 Compact. Why? It never, ever jams. The trigger pull is just right, and I like the factory sights. It’s as accurate for me as my longer barreled SA XD .40 Tactical at 25-yards. Let’s move on to that weapon.

I love the way the XD .40 Tactical feels in my hands except for one thing – the stupid rear safety. A grip safety is completely unnecessary for experienced shooters. If I don’t have a good grip on the pistol, then I deserve what I get when the trigger is pulled. I wish Springfield Armory would remove this “feature.” The only safety needed on a pistol is a good trigger guard. I don’t mind the trigger safety as much, although I prefer pistols without it. I am not going to drop my pistol or accidentally catch the trigger on something. The XD .40 is fun to shoot though, and it’s accurate enough to make a good primary carry weapon. I would stake my life on the pistol any day. I hit 10 of 10 at the 25-yard mark today with the XD.

Last but certainly not least, I fired about 75 rounds through my Bushmaster Varminter today. I warmed up at 50 yards and shot five groups of five rounds each. Then I went out to 200 yards and squeezed off another 40 rounds. Every one hit my Big Burst target, although I didn’t have very tight groups at 200. I’ll get better once I buy a spotting scope so I can adjust my shots better from one trigger squeeze to the next. The Varminter is my favorite weapon to shoot. I love the way it feels and the confidence it inspires at 500 yards.

The right to privately own guns is the one that keeps all the rest in place. Today, on Independence Day, I reminded myself of that fact. I was all by myself on the range, and that kind of worries me. I wish more Americans realized that without guns in private hands, good intentions wouldn’t be enough to keep us making most of our decisions without some bureaucrat constantly interfering in the name of someone else who has no stake in the life he or she is interfering with.

Some words have the irrefutable power of truth behind them, despite the fact that they exist only as collections of zeros and ones suspended on magnetic metal platters floating in time and space.

A Nation of Cowards is such a collection of words.

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong — since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so — but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you’re a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?

One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let’s not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.

In a society that increasingly subcontracts out the right of self-defense, against the principles outlined clearly in the founding documents of that society, is a nation in need of education. No one is more motivated than the individual whose very existence is threatened to protect said existence. So why would we let someone else, a stranger, take over the responsibility of protecting our very existence? Because we are taught to do so.

I do not find myself willing to subcontract out the responsibility for protecting my own presence here on this Earth. Rather, I am am the prime advocate of me. And that is why I spent another Saturday on the range. I sold a .22 caliber pistol to someone this weekend. He is a soldier, like myself, but he is also a typical American in this new nation of ours – educated to respect authority and trained to sublet his life out to others.

He asked me who he needed to register the gun with. “No one,” I said. In this state, you have the right to carry a gun in your vehicle, or to keep one in your home. You are allowed to defend your existence with a firearm. He had a hard time believing me. Much like his assigned bureaucrats must have, I used the technique of repetition to reinforce ideas in his brain – the center of his existence. While he practiced with the ammunition I had purchased on his behalf, and I practiced with my larger caliber weapons, we talked about the basic ideas that every American should have an awareness of.

“When do I have the right to use a gun in self-defense?” he wanted to know. “Anytime you feel like you are in danger,” was my answer. “What will the authorities think?” he asked. “That really doesn’t matter,” I told him. Then I explained that I would rather take my chances with a jury than I would with a being not bound by allegiance to the laws of man. He understood I think. He is starting to break the mental chains we are all wrapped in as soon as we enter the public education system of this United States of America. I hope he will practice often with his new gun.

Now, dear reader, I direct your attention back to a most potent compendium of logic, that essay entitled A Nation of Cowards. Read it. Then read it again. Who is in charge of your life? Ask yourself if you are brave enough to take ultimate responsibility for your own existence.

What are you going to do to shrink the bloated federal government and get focused on its original mission? That is the most important question we should be demanding an answer to from the bevy of suitors for the highest office in the land.

I am tired of reading pap about this crop of Presidential candidates. I don’t care about Mitt Romney’s family trip in 1983. I don’t care about whether Barack Obama is a smoker. I am not in the least interested in what women see when they see Hillary. John McCain is a war hero. Don’t care. Tommy Thompson has gigantic ears. I don’t want to read a story about that. John Edwards’ wife’s body is riddled with cancer. Not my problem. I could go on about all the things I do not need to know about the various candidates, but I think you get my point.

What I want to know is why I should vote for any of these fools? Not a single one of them is going to get the government off my back, out of my affairs and away from my pocketbook. Not a single one of them is going to tread lightly in my life. They all want a bigger piece of me, and for that matter YOU!

They can all go to hell as far as I am concerned. I don’t want them to do anything for me. I can do what needs doing myself, please and thank you. All I want from a President is strong national defense, secure borders and an occasional speech about how great it is to be free, and maybe the President could throw in a reminder or two regarding the awesome responsibility that comes with liberty. I’d like that speech to be based on reality. Can we work on that?

Sometimes I think we are becoming a nation of tranquilized zombies. What can I say to convince you not to vote for another power mongering, empty promise making lying sack of crap?

I listen to XM satellite radio every morning on my way to work, and every evening on my way home from work. Since I have a 70-mile one way commute, I get more exposure to news and politics than I would imagine a typical commuter does.

It occurred to me this morning while listening to ABC News that the United States of America has turned into a panic factory. We are fed stress all day long from hundreds of sources. You would think the world is about to end any day now based on the clamor coming out of my radio every day. Television is no different. Everything is designed and presented in a way that enhances or overstates whatever issue is being discussed. Here are some examples of the issues as presented through the eyes of ABC this morning:

Global warming – we’re all going to die underwater SOON! Luckily we have hundreds of artists who will sing about this issue until you are sick of it.
Iraq – no hope. It’s well past time to give up and get out. Nothing but death and destruction over there.
Health care – 47 million Americans are dying in the streets because we don’t have socialized hypochondria and unlimited free pills for everyone.

Man, I just don’t know how I’m going to get through my day. Everything is horrible.

McCain-Feingold was conceived and enacted under the false premise that it is the federal government’s job to protect Americans from political speech by censoring that speech. And now that idea is being flushed down the toilet. I couldn’t be happier, as I have been preaching against this fool’s legislation from day one.

McCain-Feingold restricted what and when you could say about politicians – a horrible law that was and is completely unconstitutional. In case you have been asleep every American is guaranteed the right to free speech and there is nothing in that promise that says anything about limited censorship of certain types of speech. To a typical American politician in 2007, the Constitution is a piece of paper to be ignored, so what it says hasn’t really mattered. Since Americans are by and large lazy and uneducated about politics, it has been fairly easy for politicians to enact tens of thousands of caches of garbage legislation that ignore every principle this nation was founded on.

McCain-Feingold is one of the worst of these dishonorable little control documents conceived in the spirit of nannyism and birthed by a group of people who hide behind good intentions and the raw, lumbering power of a massive bureaucracy that would have made most colonists pick up their muskets and assemble in the town square for a good old fashioned tarring and feathering, if not a lynching or two.

That is the message being sent by this study, which reports that teenagers affected by Hurricane Katrina are more likely to smoke than teenagers who didn’t have to live through the horror of George W. Bush’s indifference to black people in New Orleans, or something like that. I am not sure if the main stressors came from the hurricane or the idiots who populate the city and vote criminally inclined incompetents into office over and over again.

“The physical damage was easy to see, but the psychological damage from the hurricanes was pretty well hidden,” said Alfred L. McAlister, a behavioral scientist and an author of the study. “The hurricanes had an emotional impact on the youth and we need to recognize that and give them the help they need. Otherwise, they use tobacco as a crutch and then they become addicted.”

Almost 38 percent of students who reported they had a family member hurt or killed in the 2005 hurricanes also reported that they now were smoking, according to the study. In comparison, 13 percent who did not endure a death or injury in the family said they smoked.

Smoking rates were also higher among Jefferson County students whose homes were damaged or destroyed or if they had family or friends with damaged or destroyed homes, according to the study.

Students who still were living in temporary housing and who were absent from school for more than two months due to the hurricanes were two times more likely to smoke than their counterparts.

About 22 percent of American teenagers smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McAlister said the study shows teens turned to smoking to cope with the disruption.

“Raised stress levels lead to more smoking,” he said. “It was not shocking to find that relationship after the hurricanes.”

OK, fine, so stress leads people to smoke more. That’s not a news flash! It is still your fault you tried it in the first place. I am not sure why we spend all the time we do hyperanalyzing this kind of crap. I smoke, and I don’t blame anyone but me. When I am ready to quit, I will. Same thing applies whether you are a giant fatty, have a gambling problem, beat your spouse or have sex with anything that moves. It is your choice, and it is your fault, and you will only quit when you get sick of yourself. Quit blaming the hurricanes life throws your way for every stupid behavior you repeat on a daily basis. Put down that 2-pound cheeseburger or throw away your pack of Camels if you don’t like yourself, but don’t think it is anyone else’s fault that you ended up where you are.

That is one of the questions currently being discussed in the U.S. History to 1865 class that I am taking. The vast majority of the class feels that states do not have the right to secede under any circumstances. That makes me sad. When the majority of the population of any geographic area is no longer being served by the dominant government, then citizens not only have a right to secede, they have a moral obligation to do so.

There are two major facets to the secession question: 1) morality and 2) self-interest. These two items do not necessarily align with one another. When the U.S. Civil War began, the rationale for war on both sides was highly complicated. The North entered the war for two primary reasons: 1) Keeping the Union from dissolving by force and 2) forcing the issue of slavery. The first reason was immoral and the second was moral. Yet the first reason was Abraham Lincoln’s primary reason for using force to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. Lincoln felt slavery was morally wrong, but he did not declare war because of slavery. He declared war because he believed the federal government should be the highest authority in the land, and that states had no right to self-determination. Abolition was not his primary goal. Lincoln himself said this:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Some Southerners, to be sure, fought in the Civil War to preserve the immoral institution of human slavery, but many enlisted in the war effort because they felt that the North was trying to dictate how they should live.

The outcome of the Civil War was never really in doubt. The North had vast superiority in numbers and had the industrial base. Technology is amoral, and the North held the technology – it was therefore destined for victory. While the end of the war settled the question of slavery, it did not grant equality to blacks. That issue would not be settled for another one hundred years, when the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s forced Americans to reexamine racial inequalities in their society.

What the Civil War did accomplish was the growth of government, and the mitigation of liberty for all American citizens and residents. From the end of the war until the present day, the Federal government’s role in decision making for all Americans has grown to the point where a large segment of the American population is completely or partially dependent on theft by taxes for its well-being.

Back to the original question, though! Do states have a right to secede? What circumstances, if any, justify a declaration that a state no longer wishes to be a part of the union called the United States of America?

An alert enemy of the state (of socialism in America) recently came across this picture on Nancy Pelosi’s web site:

Alert readers will note that the person in uniform on the left is a Canadian soldier. And these people want to make decisions on our behalf. Either Pelosi and her staff are suggesting that Canadian health care in the military is the model we should be following (we already have the same type of health care for military personnel), or they are clueless about the military of either country. I vote for the latter. Pelosi and her staff don’t even know the difference between a U.S. and Canadian soldier.

Hat tip: Canis Libertas

I’ve long known about Salman Rushdie, the Indian author who has lived under an Islamic death sentence since 1989. Maybe it is time for me to add The Satanic Verses or one of his other novels to my reading list.

He is the victim of renewed ire from the Muslim world because the British Empire recently knighted him for his contribution to literature.

Rushdie went into hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued a 1989 religious edict ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because his novel allegedly insulted Islam. Iran’s government said in 1998 it could not retract the fatwa.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador to complain over Britain’s decision to grant a knighthood to Rushdie.

In New York, British Home Secretary John Reid said Britain will not apologise for its decision to bestow a knighthood on Rushdie.

“We have a set of values that accrues people honours for their contribution to literature even when they don’t agree with our point of view,” Reid said in response to a question after a speech to US business leaders.

In Malaysia people protested outside the British embassy following news of the knighthood.

Chanting “Destroy Salman Rushdie” and “Destroy Britain”, some 30 members of the opposition Parti Islam se-Malaysia urged Britain to withdraw the honour or risk the consequences.

“This has tainted the whole knighthood, the whole hall of fame of the British system,” party treasurer Hatta Ramli said.

The knighthood to Rushdie has also triggered massive protests in Pakistan where hundreds of people protested in the central city of Multan.

There, an effigy of Rushdie and a British flag were burned for the third day running. Effigies of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II were burned earlier in the week.

Traders, religious students and members of a religious party held separate demonstrations throughout the week.

Anytime someone is threatened with death because they are a vocal dissenter, especially a non-violent vocal dissenter, I feel I should probably find out why there is such a furor. Salman Rushdie must be saying something that makes sense.

And I’m positioned to take advantage of this new getting whiter craze. I’m the whitest person you’ll meet, and it’s all natural. I don’t have to use creams and life threatening treatments.

I don’t get it. White people feel the need to tan, and dark complected people feel the need to lighten up. I think some people will never be satisfied, no matter what skin they’re born into.

Last night I left my hotel to get some dinner. I was driving a Nissan Altima Hertz gave me. On the way back my rental car starting acting funny. The car started decelerating and I found myself pushing harder and harder on the gas. Eventually I was down to five miles an hour and the gas was pushed all the way down. I got myself pulled over with only a few honks and one guy giving me the finger.

The car would accelerate fine in reverse, but I didn’t think I was going to make it back to the hotel driving in reverse without getting a ticket for unconventional driving techniques. So I called Hertz. They had no idea what was going on, but they did try to help without much success. Finally, I shut off the car and started looking for a reason for the five mile per hour maximum speed. Nothing was obvious. Transmission fluid levels were fine. I started wondering if the car had a monitoring chip in it that didn’t like the way I was driving and shut me down.

About four hours after I limped back to the hotel, Hertz showed up with a replacement car I’m calling the Land Boat. I had never heard of the Ford 500, but it’s really not my style. The sunroof is nice, but that darn thing feels a like a tank to me. I am grateful though, that I do not have to drive around Dallas in reverse this evening.

One of my least favorite places to waste an hour. While I enjoy people watching, I do not enjoy being herded. Thus, passage through a modern U.S. airport in 2007 is a painful proposition from my perspective. I am sitting in an airport typing this and listening to banal TSA announcements.

I briefly considered changing careers so I wouldn’t have to travel for work anymore, and I certainly avoid flying for personal reasons whenever possible. It is not the traveling itself I abhor, it is the suspension of common sense we are all forced to endure while passing through the banal lines of bureaucrats.

They are the same at every airport I pass through. Bored, disinterested, impatient and often loud. Atlanta Jackson Hartsfield Airport (or whatever they call it these days) has the loudest TSA employees I’ve encountered. Dallas Fort Worth gets the honor of having the most impatient TSA representatives. Boston has the most disinterested group of polyster wearing petty bureaucrats shuffling around managing the ant farm.

It’s about time Justice David Souter made offered a rational opinion.

Next question after reading this article, when do the roadblocks go away?

A passenger in a car stopped by police has a right, just as the driver does, to challenge the constitutionality of the stop, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Monday’s unanimous ruling clarified the breadth of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits police from stopping vehicles without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. Evidence found in the course of an illegal stop usually cannot be used at trial.

The justices reversed a California Supreme Court ruling that said a passenger — unlike the driver — would feel free to leave the car and therefore would not be detained for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.

Writing for the court, Justice David Souter, said that view defies reality. “A sensible person would not expect a police officer to allow people to come and go,” he said, stressing that the police show of authority restricts a passenger’s sense of freedom. Souter said that most U.S. courts had adopted that view and that the California state court was in the minority.

Monday’s decision threw out the conviction of Bruce Brendlin, who was caught with drug paraphernalia after the car in which he was riding was stopped. The officers lacked grounds to pull the car over, and Brendlin argued that the drug evidence had to be kept out of court.

I’ve been stopped at least three times since I moved to my current county for NO REASON, other than I was unlucky enough to come upon a police roadblock. What were they checking for? Terrorists, I’m pretty sure. I managed to sneak through each time, mostly because I don’t make a habit of driving drunk and I don’t keep my carry pistol laying out on the passenger seat.

Nevertheless, I don’t like the roadblocks. They don’t make me feel any safer, they’re primarily an impediment to forward progress. And, they cost me money, because I’m paying th salaries of the guys with guns who implement the roadblocks.

Steven Spielberg has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for President.

”I’ve taken the time to familiarize myself with the impressive field of Democratic candidates and am convinced that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate to lead us from her first day in the White House,” Spielberg said Wednesday in a statement released by the Clinton campaign.

Old Steven may make enjoyable movies, but I think I’ll pass on his idiotic political advice. I’m not quite ready to surrender my soul to the devil, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is the devil. Go ahead, prove me wrong. If she is elected president, I things will get worse, quickly. Hillary Rodham Clinton is fully capable of making the Bush years ones you’ll remember fondly as “the good old days” assuming you are not busy fleeing to another place. Remember, just because I’m a great marksman doesn’t mean you should taking my cooking advice. Steve Spielburg may be a good movie producer/director/executive but that doesn’t mean he knows a damn thing about how to improve this country.

Sure, life under Hillary Rodham will be life free of any need to make those tough decisions. She’ll make them for you. How much should a person earn? Hillary will decide. Where should people be allowed to live? Hillary will know. How much should we raise taxes? Hillary has an answer, you can bet on that. Where should I go if I’m sick? Hillary will make sure the government hospitals are open and providing mediocre health care during normal business hours except on federal holidays. Man, that is going to be great.

Very scary stuff.

I got out to the shooting range with a co-worker this weekend and we blasted away with .38 revolvers and .40 service pistols to the tune of about 400 rounds. Sadly, my co-worker did a little better than me at 25 yards. I walloped the hell out of him at 500 yards with the .223 “assault” rifle, and that made me feel a little better. Also, all my groups were tighter on the paper targets and my speed shooting was more accurate. All in all, we sent about $100 worth of ammo down the range.

I love the smell that wafts from the barrel of a smoking hot pistol after you’ve fired an entire clip through it. There is nothing else I associate more with my own ability to chart a course through life than that single smell. As long as I am free to defend myself, I am free to conduct my daily business with little fear. There is something cathartic about the process of shooting. I don’t want to kill anyone with a gun, and I never have. I just believe in being prepared.

Another part of gun ownership I enjoy is the weapons cleaning session that inevitably follows a morning or afternoon at the range. The smell of bore cleaner and gun oil are as familiar to me as the smell of cordite. I love the tactile sensations of taking apart my pistols and rifles and reassembling them piece by piece. In my heart, I hope I never have to fire a weapon at someone in anger. I managed to spend a year in Iraq without doing so. But I am ready should the need arise. I will be the decision maker, because I take responsibility for my own existence.

The Ground Truth tells the story of a few veterans who came away from the Iraq War very discontented, mentally disturbed or psychologically damaged in some major way. The stories reflected in the movie are real, but the packaging is designed to bias people into thinking that everything about the war is bad, which is simply not true. Many people are killed, maimed and injured – that is the case in every war (I am one of the veterans in question.) Many bad decisions are made and many lives are ruined when wars are fought, invasions launched and weapons brought to bear. But not every veteran walks away from war as disturbed in the head as the people portrayed here.

The Ground Truth is sobering, realistic and flawed, because it only shows one third of the picture. That is OK, as long as the viewer understands going in that the movie is slanted towards convincing people of how awful and wrong the entire thing is by making showing all the bad and none of the good. We should all know that war does bad things to the people who participate in it, and that sometimes the living suffer more than the dead, or at least longer. We should also know that in wars, human beings commit some of the greatest acts of selflessness that have ever been displayed. Those stories are not told here.

I am currently taking an American history class in college. I was amazed to read that in the 1850 census, it was determined that New England had a 0.4% illiteracy rate among adults. Let’s look at illiteracy today, shall we?

Illiteracy this extensive is virtually unprecedented in America’s history. Eighty years ago, in 1910, only 2.2 percent of American children between the ages of ten and fourteen could neither read nor write. It is important to remember that the illiteracy of 1910 reflected for the most part children who never had the advantage of schooling. The illiterates of today, however, are not people who never went to school; they are, for the most part, individuals who have spent eight to twelve years in public schools.

Clearly incompetence of this magnitude is not the result of accident. A large part of the blame rests with the educational establishment itself, the very people and institutions entrusted with the task of educating America’s children.

There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that many of our public school teachers are themselves woefully under-educated. In 1983, for example, school teachers in Houston, Texas were required to take a competency test. More than 60 percent of the teachers failed the reading part of the test. Forty-six percent failed the math section while 26 percent could not pass the writing exam. As if this weren’t bad enough, 763 of the more than 3,000 teachers taking the test cheated.

How well can your kid read and write? Is he or she capable of expressing himself in terms the rest of us can understand?

The Washington Post has published an article calling Ron Paul an “also-ran.” The most important quote in the article is from a supporter:

. . .I’m not supporting him because I think he could get the nomination. I’m supporting him because I think he can influence the national conversation about what the role of government is, how much power should government have over our lives, how much liberty should we give up for security. These are important issues, and frankly, no one’s thinking about them as seriously and sincerely as Ron Paul.

Ron Paul, if elected, would not have time in four years to get even 10% of his ideas implemented. We’ve moved too far towards socialism for that to happen without a violent revolution. However, the guy is a voice for those of us who want less government and more freedom. Government and choices just don’t go together. Government does not equal liberty. They are diametrically opposed, because government’s only function is to make arbitrary decisions on behalf of individuals and then ensure those decisions are carried out by using the monopoly on force.

Here’s an interview with General David Petraeus worth reading, primarily because of the Maliki quote:

In an interview in this week’s Newsweek, Maliki avoided being drawn into the debate between the Bush administration and Congress. The U.S. “helped us by toppling the regime and accomplishing many steps of the political process but they still can leave,” Maliki said. “If the consequences of staying are bigger than the consequences of leaving, they will leave.”

Crocker said the Iraqis also are frustrated with their slow progress but are “very close” to agreement on a plan for managing the country’s oil production and share resources.

A key point is that both the Iraqi government and the U.S. government are saying the same thing about the U.S. presence in Iraq – if it SHOULD end, it WILL end.

What remains to be negotiated is when the U.S. presence should end. What should happen next? The Iraqi government needs to pass legislation related to two key issues – distribution of oil revenues and how the country will handle regional issues. The Iraqi government needs to show some sort of progress if it hopes to survive. Elections are coming up in the U.S., and everyone knows that they are going to change the political climate drastically – both inside the U.S. and in all the places where the U.S. has been manipulating governments, whether for good or bad.

A few readers have informed me over the last couple of days that the blog has been giving them CPU usage errors when they try to post comments. For that, my apologies. I know how frustrating it is to spend time writing something only to have it disappear when you hit the post button. I’ve spent hours this weekend looking at why this was happening.

The bottom line appears to be that my theme had way too many plugins activated, and it was causing the MySQL database to use more than acceptable resources on my hosting company’s server. The blog has also been pretty slow loading as a result.

In order to try and correct the problem, I’ve changed my default theme, upgraded to WordPress 2.2. and removed about 60% of the plugins. Please let me know if you get any error messages from this point forward, and I hope you like the newer, cleaner look and that you don’t have to spend any time waiting for various posts to load.

Some guys have come up with an idea – shoot shirts full of holes and then sell them at ridiculous prices. I have an idea. I’m going to do the same thing and sell mine for half the price with twice the authenticity. You see, I am an actual veteran of war. Yeah. That’s the ticket. And you thought parachute pants were overpriced. It’s all about the street cred.

That girl who did the Obama crush video is smoking hot, and it gets people talking about Barack Obama. Some creative Ron Paul supporters should outdo the effort by getting a half-dozen hotties to shill for Ron Paul. It’s all about the buzz. I do think a lot of people have a super crush on Ron Paul – he’s still hot on Technorati and has been for more than a month now. One reason is that he gives people hope. Ron Paul represents a huge departure from business as usual in that black hole called Washington, D.C. People get passionate about the guy because he’s not on the stage to talk about Ron Paul, and the only thing he promises when he is on the stage is to get rid of every federal department he can. Imagine the nation actually being free again – what a concept. No federal nannies roaming the land looking for people to incarcerate.

If one girl can get an entire nation talking about Barack Obama, imagine what six hot Ron Paul supporters could do for him. The only thing I wouldn’t do is show Ron in a bathing suit. Obama needs to work on his abs a little but he isn’t doing bad considering one out of three American adults is a massively overweight mobile tub of lard.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/wKsoXHYICqU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

If someone wants to finance such a project on behalf of Ron Paul (without his blessing), let me know, I can storyboard and shoot video pretty well and I’m a decent editor! I would donate my time and energy because my crush is on freedom, and the only guy talking about freedom with any sort of authenticity is Ron Paul. The rest of the candidates represent more of what we’ve all grown used to – a behemoth sized federal government that smashes anyone who gets in the way.

I don’t like the Department of Homeland Security and I dislike the TSA even more. I’ve always been pretty up front in saying that I think our airport security is a joke. I don’t mind having my items scanned, but the herd mentality and silly procedures irritate me. The unthinking bureaucracy positively infuriates me. I have watched old ladies and old men being harassed and I’ve watched businesspeople become enraged at the way they are being treated. I’ve seen young mothers struggling to get through the foolishness that constitutes our pretend security process in America’s post 9/11 airports. Which bring us to this story.

The incident started when Monica, who left the Secret Service to raise a family, was stopped while going through airport security because there was water in her son’s sippy cup. The sippy cup was seized by TSA. Monica wanted the cup back because the sippy cup was the only way her son would drink — and it was a long flight between Washington, DC and Reno, Nevada where she was going for a family reunion. If you’ve ever had a toddler you understand about sippy cups.
So she was willing to spill the water out. Drink the water. Anything — all that she wanted was to be able to have a cup that her 19-month-old toddler could drink from.
Here’s what happened in Monica’s words:
"I demanded to speak to a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] supervisor who asked me if the water in the sippy cup was ‘nursery water or other bottled water.’ I explained that the sippy cup water was filtered tap water. The sippy cup was seized as my son was pointing and crying for his cup. I asked if I could drink the water to get the cup back, and was advised that I would have to leave security and come back through with an empty cup in order to retain the cup. As I was escorted out of security by TSA and a police officer, I unscrewed the cup to drink the water, which accidentally spilled because I was so upset with the situation.
"At this point, I was detained against my will by the police officer and threatened to be arrested for endangering other passengers with the spilled 3 to 4 ounces of water. I was ordered to clean the water, so I got on my hands and knees while my son sat in his stroller with no shoes on since they were also screened and I had no time to put them back on his feet. I asked to call back my fiancé, who I could still see from afar, waiting for us to clear security, to watch my son while I was being detained, and the officer threatened to arrest me if I moved. So I yelled past security to get the attention of my fiancé.

Lesson of the story: don’t piss off the massa. Yous gonna gets a whippin’ if ya does. 

Iraq is full of "holy" places. I really despise the word holy because it is too often used as a justification for people to throw civility out the window and act like animals in the name of their religious memes. The city of Samarra, Iraq contains such a focal point, or it did. In 2006, while I was serving in Baghdad, Iraq the Sunni insurgency managed to blow up the golden-domed mosque which I believe contained the shriveled corpse of an Islamic holy man or two. Blowing up the golden dome was a catalytic event in the low intensity civil war being fought between Sunni and Shia in Saddam’s former playground.

A little more than a year later, in the middle of a troop build-up by the U.S., Sunni insurgents managed to blow up the remaining minarets, an event that is a major tactical victory for them. For the U.S. to claim any type of victory in Iraq, moderate gains in stability are necessary. There will be no moderate gains in stability until the country can achieve basic security. Clearly, that is not yet feasible. I am dubious that it will become feasible until the Iraqi military and police forces get serious about fighting for nationalism instead of sectarianism. Blowing up the golden dome twice sends a clear message that nothing has improved since the first bomb went off. It’s the equivalent of Osama bin Laden telling the U.S. he is going to 9/11 us whenever he feels like it and then doing so with impunity.

The generals and admirals in Baghdad’s International Zone/Green Zone should be answering the question of how to accelerate training the Iraqi armed forces and how to address the culture of corruption and sectarianism that exists in the Iraqi government on down to the uniformed units out in the streets. That will be hard to do when we are fighting our own culture of corruption, waste and bureaucracy simultaneously.

In the meantime, imagine what would happen if someone managed to walk into Washington, D.C. and blow up the Lincoln Memorial. Now take the amount of outrage you think would result, multiply it by 100, factor in a culture where life is much cheaper and stir vigorously. That’s Iraq today, at least in the mind of the typical American voter. Since American voters will have a huge stake in deciding the future of Iraq, I have to say score one for the forces of instability in Iraq.

Breaking down in tears over a pair of pants is not a sign of good mental health. They’re pants! They can be replaced.

A Washington, D.C. law judge broke down in tears and had to take a break from his testimony because he became too emotional while questioning himself about his experience with a missing pair of pants. Administrative law judge Roy Pearson is representing himself in civil court and claimed that he is owed $54 million from a local dry cleaner who he says lost his pants, despite a sign in their store which ensures "Satisfaction Guaranteed."

Judge Roy Pearson is a criminal shyster. He should be prohibited from any position of authority anywhere and forced to pay the dry cleaners for all the hassle he has caused them. The guy is a piece of crap. Pants are worth neither tears or millions of dollars. The fact that someone can even be heard by a court with such ridiculous demands is an indicator that something is severely wrong with our justice system.

Ron Paul is still near the top of the charts on Technorati. He may be mostly ignored in the media, but the media aren’t real people. I came across an interesting article Seven Reasons why the Internet loves Ron Paul this morning. If you like Dr. Paul, you’ll probably enjoy the post.

I don’t the good doctor has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning – the status quo is much too powerful. It will take something like a nuke going off in downtown Washington, D.C. to really foment significant political change in this country. We’re too fat and ignorant to really desire the kind of small federal government that Ron Paul advocates.

Still, I am heartened that Ron Paul does capture the attention and support of at least a small segment of the nation’s population.

Techs, like other human beings, often enjoy practical jokes. But techs think differently than other people. One of my employees, let’s call him Tech X, spent the weekend concocting a practical joke at the expense of the junior manager in my IT department (I am the senior manager.) The guy is away at training right now, so there are ample opportunities to mess with his work area.

Tech X borrowed his keyboard, took it home and made a few modifications.

Necessary ingredients for this practical joke:

1. Keyboard
2. Talking greeting card
3. Copious amounts of spare time
4. Patience
5. Obtuse knowledge of soldering techniques

The end result of the project is a keyboard that functions a little differently than a person might expect. When my co-worker returns from his training class he will be surprised to find that anytime he hits the CAPS LOCK key on his keyboard, it will say, in a chipper and excited voice, "The good news is I saved a ton of money on my car insurance!"

My name is Trevor Snyder and I approved this practical joke. Good job, Tech X. You’re bucking for a raise!

Infidel is the autobiography of a Muslim Somali named Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book tells the story of growing up in Africa and the Middle East. Without giving away all the details, suffice it to say that Infidel is an intelligent damning of the effects of the religion called Islam on the human mind. Ayaan’s tale is one of forced transitions, surprising transitions and needed transitions that have not yet happened.

Ayaan goes from being a somewhat devout Muslim to being a determined apostate living under a death sentence. Infidel is a thought provoking read about the mental cages that human beings trap themselves inside. It is a thought provoking journey between rigid, rabid devotion and reasoned, naive liberalism. It is a tale of the 21st century clash between a static, unchanging world and one that is tolerant and evolving. Highly recommended. Infidel is not a book to read for the lovely prose or the spine tingling drama. It is a book to read because it encapsulates and summarizes how fundamental Islam views women, how it views kafirs (unbelievers) and how it fiercely resists change.

There really isn’t anyone else running I can get excited about. Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate who represents significant departure from the status quo. At least in the direction I’d like to head. Here’s a video of Paul talking with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show that is worth a few minutes of your time:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/8qrwy3mR3Mo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Ron Paul will be appearing in his third Republican candidate debate tonight. I’ll be watching. Tune in to CNN at 7 PM EST.

The biggest problem in Iraq is lack of basic security. Fix that and everything else will become immediately more palatable to almost all of the people involved. The problem is, we don’t have enough raw manpower (humanpower for you feminists out there).

The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

Actually, we do have enough manpower, but only if we pulled our troops out of Europe and Japan. And why not? Were we planning on staying forever? The answer, sadly, seems to be yes. If I were in charge, and the choice was between losing military presence in Europe and Asia and losing the war in Iraq I would choose to win in Iraq. No security in Iraq means no security in the Middle East (if such a thing is possible) means no security anywhere. The U.S. should be looking for ways to speed up the achievement of stability in Iraq so we can remove ourselves from future regional interference as quickly as possible. I think this means more troops in the short run. No one has the political will or clout to make it happen though.

If we can only secure 31% of the neighborhoods in Baghdad then we are severely understaffed. Without basic security, anything good that develops in Iraq will happen at a much slower more painful pace. Of course, we’re being encourage toward that other option – throw up our hands and walk out of the room. It will be interesting to see how that one goes.

The best thing about the Democratic Presidential hopeful debate is that it is over. I want to hear those fools debating even less than I want to hear the Republicans talking their game. Let’s start by summing up the leading candidates, shall we?

Hillary Clinton – Sociopath, reverse carpetbagger, socialist, powermonger, dangerous. Hillary would sell her own mother for a vote, and she would definitely destroy any individual in the name of "common good." Common good as defined by Hillary is anything that advances the fortunes of Hillary herself. If you want a sociopath with no soul in the White House, she’s the leading choice. This women changes positions more than a two dollar whore on a busy Saturday evening.

Barack Obama – Typical leftist. Barack wants to fix social ills. Problem: he wants to do it with your money. Barack is probably the least offensive of the three leading Democratic candidates, but like the others, his solution to any problem or perceived problem is to grow government. Government does not fix problems, it merely takes ownership of them and manages them. Once a government department is created, it will exist in perpetuity until the next revolution cycle destroys it. Barack will just grow and grow government. Vote for him if you want GDP to shrink and taxes to go up.

John Edwards – Professional vampire. Litigators are the modern day vampires of our society. John Edwards has made his fortunes by breaking the backs of others, purportedly in the name of justice. The truth is, this guy is a killer. He latches on to whole classes of people and drains them financially. There is no reason to suspect putting him in charge would suddenly change his behavior. It would just give him access to wider and wider groups of potential victims. Vote for John Edwards if you support the vampire class and want the country to became a dry, empty shell devoid of vitality.

The only candidate of note (in my mind) among the Democratic herd is Mike Gravel. Why? He called earmarks an abomination. They are definitely that, and so much more. Imagine being able to rob a bank the way Congress robs the American people – you walk in, hand your note to the teller, and then, in a leisurely fashion, debate how much money you want. Each robber gets to add his or her own demands. They get to take their time because they know the teller is a pushover and the cops aren’t coming; the cops work for the thieves. That is my earmarks analogy.

Now that you have my reality synopsis under your belt, feel free to read the pap mainstream summaries:

Concord Monitor

San Francisco Chronicle

Newsday

I’m getting sick thinking about how poor our choices are these days. I better go now.

It’s also very expensive, as hobbies go. I think I have about $2,500 invested in camera gear. Between my Canon body and my Sigma lenses and flashes, I have about 40 pounds of gear to lug around when I go on a shoot now.

The image here was part of a themed shoot I did recently in downtown Atlanta called Project Awareness. These models were supposed to represent depression. I’m not really an artsy type – do they look depressed to you? 

If you’re into photography, go check out my other web site: trevorsnyder.com I’m always looking for ideas and models to shoot.

When Al Gore invented the Internet he should have known it would soon ruin the lives of countless young pole vaulters. Allison Stokke should sue Al Gore for destroying her sanity. Or maybe she should sue Eli Saslow, staff writer for the Washington Post, for perpetuating an environment of public discussion of all things Allison.

Stokke read on message boards that dozens of anonymous strangers had turned her picture into the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood.

The article the above quote was pulled from drones on and on about how Stokke now "locks her doors and tries not to leave the house," etc. ad nauseum. Give me a break. Allison Stokke is clearly incredibly physically fit. Is she really as mentally weak as the Washington Post insinuates? I’m dubious.

One of the most disturbing aspects of our modern mass media is the tendency of its content creators to perpetuate a state of fear and victimhood. They do so because those things sell. In the process of selling Americans fear and victimhood, they wear down our rationality. Why should Allison Stokke fear the sudden burst of publicity around her name? Americans have the attention span of gnats. If she can weather her 15 minutes of uncomfortable limelight, the storm will pass. It’s really not that big a deal, and Eli Saslow is a fool for having devoted so much time to such a minor event.

And next year. And the year after that. We’re all so caught up in the "what can government do for me/what SHOULD government do for me" fallacy that we are bankrupting ourselves.

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.

Congress is allowed to use non-standard accounting practices that would send any CFO of a publicly traded company to jail. Why? The behavior is just as criminal. The only difference is that the company is the United States of America and the shareholders are you and I.

In case you have been agonizing over how best to display your breasts in the workplace, here is an article for you, and a quote from the ubiquitous "expert."

"A recent study showed men photos of women in a workplace with large breasts showing cleavage, medium breasts and small breasts. When asked about who looked most professional and personable, the men chose the women with medium-sized breasts," she (the ubiquitous expert) said.

I guess this is what people are interested in when they get tired of American Idol trivia. There is nothing in the article about how men should package their package. I suppose we need to evolve more as a society before we can have newspaper articles about how best to do that.

Cindy Sheehan, who I think is just a little bit unbalanced, has bid adieu to the public stage. I am thankful. Sheehan recognizes some of the problems our nation faces:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

What she fails miserably at is finding any meaningful answers. Her boy "died for nothing" or "died for lies." The American system is broken on both sides. While it’s true the two-party system is a miserable and corrupt failure, I’m certainly not going to give up. Sometimes I work within the system, and sometimes I work around it and sometimes I flaunt it, depending what’s in my own best interests. I’ve never watched American Idol.

The system we live under is flawed, but it rarely consumes people who don’t allow it to. Cindy Sheehan has already been consumed by her unhealthy hatred of George W. Bush. She’s already been consumed by the idea that her son died for "nothing." She’s already been consumed by her disappointment that she couldn’t convince more Americans to drop their comfortable existences and follow her on the road to a peace-loving utopia of collective harmony that will never exist unless humanity is somehow transformed into a Borglike hive mind. I hope that never happens.

Cindy, I hope you live out your remaining years in peace, but I won’t think of you often. Anonymity bless you and may your soul searching one day bear some type of edible fruit. While you’re mending and rebuilding your life, Cindy, my advice to you is to learn to shoot a gun. You’ll want a backup plan in case world peace doesn’t suddenly manifest.

When I emerged from the house today I was immediately assaulted by an unpleasant odor. I looked around and the sky was gray. Visibility was limited. Oh great, I thought to myself. That idiot Chip is burning beer cans and washing machines again. My neighbor has, in the past, had a bad habit of getting drunk and burning household trash. His household trash isn’t old newspapers and cast off wood furniture. No, Chip’s household trash, historically speaking, has consisted of metal implements and aluminum cylinders.

This time, I was wrong. I had to go into the nearby town of Jasper for bullets. Chip had no smoldering fire going. Neither did Sam, the guy up the hill; the same guy who shot one of my dogs through the face with a 22 rifle while I was in Iraq.

The smoky, stinky conditions didn’t change during the 20-mile trip into Jasper. It was surreal. In the six years I’ve lived in the North Georgia foothills, I have never seen visibility so limited during what would otherwise be a clear day. I got into town and asked why everything was so overcast. The girl making my latte at Starbucks told me that two fires in Georgia had joined together.

I guess a 700 square mile fire can drift a ways. Today made me wonder how my wife and I would cope if the woods around here ever went up. It’s pretty dry this year and we would have to try and evacuate our 18 dogs (we rescue them.)

When did we, as a society, start giving people the idea that they should be financially rewarded for fucking up? Or that their families should?

As if the story of deceased Cardinal pitcher Josh Hancock wasn’t tragic enough, it appears the Hancock family is determined to make it worse. Hancock of course was the Cardinal reliever who drove a rental SUV into the back of a tow truck on Highway 40 in St. Louis killing himself but luckily injuring no one else. It was later revealed that Hancock had a blood alcohol level of nearly twice the legal limit, was speeding, and was using his cell phone at the time of the crash.

No. No. No. This story is crazy. The Hancock family members bringing this lawsuit should have their citizenship revoked and be thrown out of the country. I don’t give a damn about their grief. As soon as they decided to sue everyone else for their son’s stupidity, they lost my sympathy. Their son died because he made bad choices that cascaded. No one else was directly responsible for his death except him.

I’m sick and tired of these frivolous lawsuits. I wouldn’t shed any tears if a madman started stalking and killing the lawyers that are responsible for convincing people to file them.

The only person responsible for Josh Hancock being dead is Josh Hancock. If I die while driving drunk and talking on a cell phone, please tell everyone I died because I made an idiotic series of decisions and encourage them not to repeat my mistakes.

In case you didn’t know it, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, wants to take guns away from Americans. He’s willing to fight dirty too.

One of the tactics he has been using is to send people into gun stores to try and get the dealers to commit various technical violations of already unconstitutional federal gun laws.

Using law as a tool to try and destroy the livelihood of private citizens doesn’t stack up well with me. Apparently, a lot of Virginians feel the same way. They met recently to raise money for the legal defense of the Virginia dealers Bloomberg is suing. 

A bill just passed in the House that will "investigate and punish gasoline price gougers."

I know who they are, and I would like them all arrested. Go to the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. and you’ll find the people most responsible for high gas prices. We call them politicians and they are stealing money from every gallon of gas you buy.

If we could eliminate federal tax on gas, the prices would become a lot less "outrageous."

Once we locked up Congress, we could consider knocking more off gas prices by locking up individual state legislatures responsible for additional crazy artificially inflated gas prices.

I find it interesting that in my home state of Georgia, 10% of the cost of a gallon of gas is pure tax (once you add sales tax it jumps to 17-18%). Georgia has one of the lowest state gas taxes. If I lived in New York, the percentage of pure government gouging would be closer to 15% on every gallon I pumped. Stop the government price gougers!

Yeah right. They Senate got everything into their latest 1,000 page tripe concoction except the kitchen sink.

I do not understand why it is legal to lump six thousand unassociated issues together in one bill, but Congress does it all the time.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that the bi-partisan amnesty bill that just passed the Senate is also an anti-gun bill. But it is.

The bill would legally define gun store employees and owners as a "criminal gang" if they make two or more errors in paperwork.

I wonder what else is hidden in the 1,000 pages of legalese gibberish.

According to a townhall.com op-ed by pro blogger John Hawkins, the illegal alien amnesty bill will cost at least $2 trillion.

America’s children are taught in school that government makes things better. That couldn’t be further from the truth, at least in this case. This amnesty bill will make things worse for the majority of Americans by forgiving a class of criminals among us and forcing us to pay for their welfare at levels even higher than we are already doing.

I am almost frightened to see what our fabulous House of Self-Representation will add into this garbage legislation. Maybe when they get done with it we’ll have a new department in the Fed. We don’t have enough three letter departments yet. Why not add one more?

Maybe we can call the new arm of government the IRA; the Department of Injustice, Robbery and Amnesty.

I thought it was illegal to discriminate against someone based on sexual preference. Unless you’re the government. The rules don’t apply to the people who make the rules. They have their own rules. That’s why the FDA can ban gay people from donating blood for dubious reasons and get away with it.

WASHINGTON – Gay men remain banned for life from donating blood, the government said Wednesday, leaving in place — for now — a 1983 prohibition meant to prevent the spread of HIV through transfusions.
The Food and Drug Administration reiterated its long-standing policy on its Web site Wednesday, more than a year after the Red Cross and two other blood groups criticized the policy as “medically and scientifically unwarranted.”
“I am disappointed, I must confess,” said Dr. Celso Bianco, executive vice president of America’s Blood Centers, whose members provide nearly half the nation’s blood supply.

Intravenous drug users and "anyone who has been paid for sex" is also banned from donating blood forever. I wonder what test the FDA uses to figure out which potential donors have been paid for sex. Government can be incredibly asinine. If I had a choice between dying or receiving blood donating by a gay sex worker who shoots heroin on weekends, I’d take the blood.

First they poison our pets and now they’re trying to kill Central Americans with toothpaste! Damn the Chinese and their unregulated use of toxic chemicals.

I’m actually suspicious this is yet another CIA campaign to topple a government. Speaking of which, can anyone name a CIA campaign to topple a government that actually led to a better government springing up in the old one’s place? If so, I’m willing to consider endorsing such foolish methods of enacting foreign policy. Otherwise, I think we’re stupid for using the CIA to try and overthrow Iran’s religious dictators. Must not have learned anything from our mistakes with the Shah. I don’t like the idea of playing Pakistan against Iran much either. Pakistan already has nukes, so we pay her strongman off with bribes. That’s certainly not ideal.

Again, if someone can point me to one or more clear cases of positive long-term results that came from CIA meddling in foreign affairs, I would love to digest the information!

I realize that Iran as a nuclear power would probably end badly for everyone. I’m not debating whether or not Iran’s current rulers represent a threat to Americans everywhere. They do. They remind us every day.

Neither the Chinese or the CIA should use poison carelessly. 

It isn’t the Jetsons, and downtown Atlanta has some pretty crappy air quality during the summer, but if you are into paying as much as possible per square foot of real estate, then consider moving into the Aquarius Tower near downtown’s Centennial Park. Among the touted features:

• Prominent downtown Atlanta location across the street from Georgia Aquarium

• Walking distance to Centennial Olympic Park, restaurants, and retail

• Upscale corner café at street level

• Controlled access for maximum privacy

• 24-hour concierge

• Valet parking featuring Atlanta’s first space age underground automated parking system

• Ultramodern lobby with towering ceilings

• High-speed passenger and freight elevators

• Security cameras located throughout the building

• Swimming pool with sun deck

• Spa

• Exercise room

• Event and club lounge

• Media room & Board room

• Guest suite

• Unobstructed, spectacular views from condo units of Atlanta, overlooking Centennial Olympic Park

The building features turbines and solar panels that will purportedly generate power to create a "sustainable" building. They don’t mention the plethora of unemployed people with attitude problems down at street level. While I’m sure that type won’t be allowed into the building, nothing prevents one of them from challenging you to a fight at the stop light, like a particularly large and aggressive specimen did to me the other day for no apparent reason. Maybe he didn’t like the color of my truck. I don’t think I want an urban lifestyle again until someone figures out why all the people with broken minds congregate in city centers and then comes up with a solution.

I know many people enjoy being in the center of things where they can breathe the dirty air. If that’s your bag, consider the Aquarius Tower. Condos are supposed to be ready for move in around 2009. Reserve your $300,000 one bedroom today!

Europe and Japan are way ahead of the U.S. in cellular phone technology, and have been for some time.

. . .much of the hottest new equipment won’t be available in the United States anytime soon, if ever.  In an unusual turnabout, we Americans have our noses pressed against the shop window of the future, admiring technology we can only dream of owning.

Some would say the answer is legislation, but I think the free market, if left alone, would correct the problem over time. Of course, I could be wrong. The United States should have made the switch to metric a long time ago. I’m not sure why we still measure everything using the old and cumbersome English system. Even the English have given that up.

Ron Paul’s name continues to resonate throughout the blogosphere. People are either in love with his ideas, or they feel threatened by his very existence. This is most evident in the level of ire that can be found at popular sites like Digg.com, where most comments seem to be either passionately pro-Paul or vehemently anti-Paul. Most of the anti-Paul proponents appear to be frustrated by the Texas Congressman’s sudden appearance out of nowhere and the fact that he inspires people so ardently that they repeatedly post stories about his every word.

At blog tracker Technorati.com, Ron Paul’s name has been the top search term for several weeks, supplanting the usual Paris Hilton/Anna Nicole Smith/Fergie type crap people are looking for. How can a politician strike such a chord with people? The answer is simpler than most people want to admit.

Most politicians talk to their constituents. Ron Paul speaks on behalf of his constituents. For decades, Republicans have been talking about small government while growing government. That’s like a guy complaining about people who fart in elevators while he is busy ripping loud ones in, you guessed it, an elevator.

Another factor that resonates with people is that Ron Paul actually suggested that foreign policy decisions affect how the rest of the world views Americans.

But to suggest that we shouldn’t even consider that our actions overseas might have unintended consequences is, frankly, just ignorant. And to attempt to silence anyone who says otherwise as outside the bounds of civilized debate is doubly ignorant.
If you get stung by a hornet, it makes sense to see if there’s a hornets’ nest near your home and, if there is, to exterminate it. It doesn’t make sense to forge out looking for hornets’ nests anywhere you can find them, smacking them with sticks. You’re bound to get stung again.

Shocker! How dare he! For the record, I am NOT a supporter of an immediate pullout from Iraq. That would be the worst possible decision we could make. What I am interested in is a leader who can be pragmatic and visionary instead of stubborn and stumbling. Unlike the legions of screaming anti-Bush fanatics out there, I am not interested in holding a grudge. I would much rather get a new captain for the ship than scream at the old captain while we steam full speed ahead into disaster.

Non-interventionism as general policy is a great idea. Smaller government as general policy is a great idea. Ron Paul will not talk about these ideas and then add a new drug bill to the taxpayer’s plate. Ron Paul will not see a specific threat and then declare that we must fight a War on (Insert Nebulous Concept Here).

I’m ready for real change, and I don’t think I’m alone. And that is why people are fired up about Ron Paul. He represents a real danger to everything about the status quo of American politics. If we could clone Ron Paul a few hundred times in Congress, this country would return to the days where the words freedom and liberty actually had something more than a rhetorical meaning.

Homeland Stupidity is reporting that FEMA was focused on disarming residents of the town of Greensburg, Kansas following the F5 tornado that hit on May 4, 2007. I don’t have any knowledge of the source, but it’s a believable story, at least from my perspective.

FEMA’s mission was to safeguard the property of businesses in the area and offer “low interest” loans to property owners affected. The National Guard was on hand along with the local police, to act as the enforcement mechanism for FEMA, while occasionally hauling debris and garbage out of the city. . . .In the immediate recovery after the storm, FEMA and local police not only worked to find survivors and the dead, but also any firearms in the city. As you pass by houses in Greensburg, you notice that some are spraypainted with how many weapons were recovered from the home. This is central Kansas, a region with extremely high legal gun ownership. Of the over 350 firearms confiscated by police immediately after the storm, only a third have been returned to their owners. FEMA and the police have systematically disarmed the local population, leaving the firepower squarely in control of the state.

Equally as disturbing are reports that offers of help from all over were turned away. Maybe they were just preparing for the President’s tour of the disaster site by helicopter. Wouldn’t want someone taking a pot shot at him.

The Ruger Mini 14 is a new centerfire target rifle I would love to get my hands on!

I can just feel the accuracy from here. Target shooting is one of my favorite leisure time activities.

I guess I better start saving, at $1,000 retail, it’s probably going to have to wait for my Christmas bonus to hit the old checking account. Google Ads are nice, but at $2 a day in revenue, I’ll be waiting a long time before I can pay for a Mini 14 with revenue from this blog.

Here are some mixed user reviews.

I’m not quite sure the link above is referring to the Mini 14 pictured here, since they were written in 2004 and Ruger is advertising this Mini 14 as new in 2007. I found a Mini 14 fan site, and the model they have pictured is significantly different.

I know lots of you gun owners cruise this site – please comment.

High on my list of things I "need" is the new Viridian green laser sight. I want one to go with my Springfield Armory XD 40.

I just wrote to the company and asked them about doing a review of the Viridian SXD, which is the model made for the  SA XD’s with 4" and 5" barrels. Green laser sights are brighter than traditional red laser sights and therefore they are much more useful for daylight shooting than their older counterparts.

The retail price for the laser sights is $339, which isn’t too bad when compared to red laser sights which retail for between $239 and $439. 

What’s next? Cats and dogs sleeping together? World peace? This is crazy.

Rosie O’Donnell praises Ron Paul on The View

Pat Buchanan lauds Ron Paul at Townhall.com

I look forward to the day when I can fly commercial without taking my shoes off anymore. I want to run off into the sunset singing about miracles, but I realize this is only a glimmer of light through the storm clouds.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the former mayor of New York City is losing ground in the Presidential race. Fine with me.

Giuliani’s main problem is that he is an authoritarian who believes the federal government should dabble in solving social problems. I might agree if I could find any evidence that the federal government has fixed a single social issue since its inception.

Let’s see – War on Drugs? Nope. Ongoing and I see no signs FedGov is winning. Drugs still widely used and readily available. U.S. has highest per capita rate of incarceration in industrial world. Forty years in, I wouldn’t call the War on Drugs a success story. I’d call it a colossal waste of money and human lives.

How about the War on Poverty? As far as I can tell, we’re making no progress there either. People may have more "stuff" in the United States than they have had at any previous time in our history, but there are still a whole lot of people living below the federal poverty line. I think that "war" just a game we play to keep taxes high, and employ more federal workers. I don’t really see large segments of the poor in America breaking out of their cycles of ignorance and apathy. Maybe if my stolen money was being used to create a culture where education was valued above ability to sink a basket I would feel differently. Forty years in I wouldn’t call the War on Poverty a success, I’d call it a colossal shift from independence towards ignorance.

Are we winning the War on Terror? Nah. It’s another made up unwinnable war. You cannot win a war on a word, especially when the word is becoming meaningless from overuse. Five years in, I’d call the War on Terror a giant boondoggle precipitated on a real threat that we’re doing a damn poor job of dealing with.

As President, Rudolph Giuliani would offer more of the same thing we’ve all grown accustomed to, the same stuff that got us where we are now – a powerful nanny state that makes all the important decisions on our behalf.

I fail to see how that benefits anyone but the bureaucrats in the long run. Nannyism certainly isn’t making America more free.

Just as the TSA and DHS are doing little to prevent terrorism, the "breakthrough" immigration bill will do little to fix what’s broken about immigration in the United States. The fact that the bill has bipartisan support is irrelevant. Most of humanity used to believe the earth was flat. That a dumb idea, not to mention a wrong one. This bill is also a dumb idea that is predestined for failure no matter how many people think its the best thing since the invention of the electric toaster. The media can coo and fawn all day, and they will, but they’re still wrong.

Among the bill’s most constructive elements are provisions that would provide legal protection for hundreds of thousands of migrant agricultural workers; a fast track to permanent residence for immigrant college students and members of the military who entered the country as children; tighter border security; and a system for employers to verify that job applicants are here legally — with penalties for employers who fail to do so.

If the nation wants to have an honest discussion about amnesty, immigration and government, here’s what I would suggest doing before we bring the millions living here illegally "into the fold."

• Eliminate Social Security and Medicare
• Privatize education
• Dismantle HUD

Only after these initial steps have been taken will it be feasible to discuss how to deal with immigration. We have to eliminate the free candy before we can talk about why we’ve got so many uninvited visitors in the house. It ain’t rocket science. However, after educating generations of Americans in public institutions, it might as well be.

"Green Zone" is perhaps the worst possible name for the sector of Baghdad where the U.S. and Iraqi governments hold court. It should be called the Bullseye instead. Recent reports indicate that the Green Zone is taking lots of mortar and rocket fire. That’s nothing new.

During my year in the Green Zone, I lost count of the number of mortar attacks. Sometimes, they would come while I was in the shower. One time, a mortar landed close enough to my trailer that the concussion knocked the shampoo bottle out of my hand and pushed me against the wall.

Today’s explosions followed a series of recent mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone. Yesterday, nine US embassy contractors were wounded when mortars were fired.
On May 2, two Indians, a Filipino and a Nepalese national working for the US embassy were killed in a rocket attack. Since then, US embassy officials have ordered staff to wear flak jackets and helmets while outdoors or in unprotected buildings.

I guess people are wearing their flak jackets in the showers now, since they live in "unprotected buildings." Business as usual. I never did get why they didn’t have sandbags protecting the roofs of those trailers we lived in. The British had them.

I want to purchase a hydrogen car one day. It’ll happen because of people like this.

Hydrogen is generated spontaneously when water is added to pellets of the alloy, which is made of aluminum and a metal called gallium. The researchers have shown how hydrogen is produced when water is added to a small tank containing the pellets. Hydrogen produced in such a system could be fed directly to an engine, such as those on lawn mowers.
"When water is added to the pellets, the aluminum in the solid alloy reacts because it has a strong attraction to the oxygen in the water," Woodall said.
This reaction splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in water, releasing hydrogen in the process.

I do have to wonder how the guy in the back (assume he’s the scientist in charge) got that eye patch.

Robbing the American people is just too tedious a process for the Democrats. Luckily, Nancy Pelosi is now the chief thief in charge. She’s a historic woman, you know. If you don’t believe me, just ask her about it. She’ll tell you for hours.

But I digress. This article is about thievery, not womanhood. The Democrats promised, "the American people that we would have the most honest and most open government and we will.” It was actually Pelosi who said that, but she is the historic woman mouthpiece for all the Democrats. Historic indeed. You see, the rules Congress follows sometimes present an inconvenience. The solution? Change the rules.

In a stunning move, House Democrats today revealed they will attempt to rewrite House rules that have gone unchanged since 1822 in order to make it possible to increase taxes and government spending without having to vote and be held accountable.  House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today vowed Republicans will use every available means to fight this unprecedented change.

The new Democratic controlled Congress might as well just have a giant banner made up that reads: RULES ARE FOR FOOLS! or maybe RULES? We don’t need no stinking rules!

Maybe they should just go ahead and take George Washington off the dollar. Nancy Pelosi could be the historic woman pictured on our currency instead.

With pressure mounting to end the war in Iraq, maybe the Congress could just go ahead and declare war on the citizens of the United States of America. Both Republicans and Democrats have been robbing us for years, but the sheer size of the brass balls needed to suggest that voting is just too much of an inconvenience is astounding.

Nancy Pelosi said, "Americans will no longer tolerate the Republicans’ continued abuses of power and catering to corporate special interests." Guess what Nancy? Americans will no longer tolerate the Democrats continued abuses of power and catering to the least productive and least educated segments of our society either. We’re not all a bunch of dumb asses lady! Lots of us are monitoring you and your cronies. We have databases too. Watch your step. I now you don’t believe it, but you report to us, not the other way around. Don’t make us remind you the hard way.

Over at Grouchy Old Cripple, someone named Ron has changed his mind on Iraq.

Well, I was wrong. Not in a flash of insight or dazzling epiphany or sudden comprehension, but over years and months of subconscious analysis and data collection I’ve come to realize that the people of the "birthplace of civilization" are savage, barbarous, worthless bastards. We are wasting our time and money and energies trying to come up with a silk purse from a sow’s ear. The entire Middle East, from Afghanistan to Morocco, from Turkey to Somalia, is a sty, a sick primate breeding pen, a cradle of suspicion and fear and intrigue whose only currency results from the rest of the world’s addiction to liquid fossil fuels.

Well, I think Ron is wrong. Ron never got to meet the janitors I grew to care about, the ones who cleaned up after my unit during my year in the Green Zone. They were good guys. They loved soccer, and they loved our weight equipment. They loved posing for pictures and they had families they loved talking about. They were human beings trapped in terrible circumstances, and they wanted to live as much as me. I hope they’re all well.

We’ve made many mistakes in Iraq, most of them were made long before we invaded in 2003. Human beings in need are the same everywhere. They deserve hope. When you live in hell, you deserve some sort of lifeline to the paradise outside.

Is the U.S. government doing a good job of providing that lifeline? No. But there are millions of Iraqis who deserve better.

The same applies to places like Darfur and North Korea. We can’t fix everything.

I’m willing to debate foreign policy. I am not a fan of empire building. I do believe we have a moral responsibility to help our fellow humans when we can, whether they live next door or across the globe. How we help is up to each of us individually, and sometimes is up to all of us collectively.

If the Iraqi government voted today to ask the Coalition to leave, then I would say we should gracefully accede and leave in an orderly fashion. My janitor friends would probably last a month. I want to hope for the people of Iraq, as much as I hope for the people of the United States of America.

The human brain is somewhat like a sponge. It tends to absorb whatever environment you feed it. If that environment is the TV show Jackass, go ahead and take about 40 years off your life expectancy.

A US television stunt show inspired students in balaclavas to rush into a Hobart school office and yell "this is a hold-up" to frightened staff.
Another boy filmed the prank at Sacred Heart College, mimicking the popular but controversial Jackass series.
The four Year 8 boys then ran to the playground and intimidated a female teacher’s assistant, demanding she return a confiscated ball.

Other than the balaclavas, I’m not sure what the kids used as intimidation, because guns are not available in Australia. Maybe they were holding pineapples in a threatening way or something. Anyhow, apparently Australia has a marvelous new way of dealing with spongebrains who watch too much Jackass.

Mrs Morgan said the boys would go through the restorative justice process the school had introduced last year. It focused on the restoration of relationships rather than punishing bullies.
"It has reduced bullying in the school significantly," she said.

I love progress. I can’t wait for restorative justice to reach our shores. Man, it’s going to be great! No more punishment!

Prince Harry isn’t going to war because of "specific threats." The West might as well just convert to Islam.

Prince Harry will not deploy with his regiment to Iraq following "specific threats" to target him by insurgents fighting British and US forces, the head of the Army said.
General Sir Richard Dannatt said that his presence in Iraq would expose the 22-year-old Prince as well as the troops serving with him to "a degree of risk that I now deem unacceptable."

Gosh knows we cannot afford to lose a member of the British royalty even if that means we cannot lead by example. As you all know, in a democracy, like the kind we want Iraq to have, princes do not fight in wars because it is simply too risky for them. They are oh so much more valuable than anyone else. Toodles.

The former mayor of New York is quite testy. 

Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, jumped in to object after Texas Representative Ron Paul, 71, suggested the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in 2001 were precipitated by American interventions in the Middle East.“That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack,” Giuliani, 62, said during the debate in Columbia, South Carolina. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before, and I’ve heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.”
Giuliani’s statement, which drew applause from the crowd, came after the Republican frontrunner defended himself from attacks from some of the second-tier candidates for his support of abortion rights.

I wonder if Giuliani realizes that we ALL lived through September 11, 2001? It had a huge psychological impact on my life. I took it very personally. Does that mean I’m completely unwilling to discuss the reasons why we were attacked? Of course not. I have an opinion too, and as far as I’m concerned it matters just as much as Giuliani’s opinion. I also want to eliminate or minimize the threat of future attacks, and one way to do that is by honestly examining the motivations of the people who attacked. You can’t do that if you’re busy demanding that someone with an opposing viewpoint retract their statement(s) because you don’t see eye to eye.

Last night while watching the debate I began noticing a new media catch phrase – "second tier" candidate. Nice. Makes it real easy to minimize, dismiss and then ignore the candidates you don’t want to cover.

The real impact of last night’s debate has yet to be ascertained, but it appears to me the Republicans are going to settle for business as usual. That’s disappointing.  I was hoping the revolution might be coming. Maybe next election cycle.

I’d still like to hear how Ron Paul would, in great detail, deal with the war in Iraq, particularly from a humanitarian standpoint.

As a second tier blogger, maybe I’m all alone, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: Not alone. The Liberty Papers has blogged the Ron Paul/Rudy Giuliani "exchange."

I watched the debate. The questions were mostly garbage.

Ron Paul got asked about what parts of government he would eliminate. He went right to departments – Education and Homeland Security were both on the list. God Bless him. Neither one has done a damn thing for us. He didn’t have time during that question to mention Medicare, Medicaid or the IRS. Anyone who has been paying attention knows he got some licks in on the IRS last debate.

Kick John Edwards in his carefully coiffed hair! That was OK. They got some humor in there.

Hillary Rodham Clinton got kicked too, for suggesting that free enterprise is a ball and chain.

Giuliani avoided directly answering a query about his pro gun control and pro abortion stance. I’m not sure about Giuliani.

Tommy Thompson should get a neck tuck like John McCain clearly did in the recent past.

McCain wants to "reach across the aisle" and claims he is "most qualified" based on his life experiences.

The guy with the blue polka-dotted tie thinks the education system has improved recently. I guess we agree to disagree.

Mitt Romney supports the 2nd Amendment but thinks that doesn’t include assault weapons. I suppose he thinks that the people who settled this land only used their weapons for hunting deer. Great. Can’t wait till he crashes and burns out of this race.

Ronald Reagan got mentioned a lot for a dead guy. He must have been doing something right.

Ron Paul got mostly left out. That pretty much pissed me off.

Tommy Thompson really suffers from old man ear growth syndrome. He did seem to know his stuff when it came to stem cells though. He thinks we don’t need to destroy any more embryonic stem cells.

Mitt Romney gets why that what makes America great is how much we value life. What he doesn’t get is when life begins. That’s just my personal opinion. I don’t encourage abortion, but none of us really knows, scientifically speaking, when sentient life begins for a fetus. Is a cell mas a "beautiful child of a loving God?" I really don’t know.

How did Mitt Romney get his hair so perfect?

The American people don’t want John McCain to support amnesty, but they do support biometrics, according to the war hero. He thinks the status quo is unacceptable. I somewhat agree, but not with biometrics. Biometrics are anti-freedom and anti-choice.

Mitt Romney of the perfect hair thinks there should be no advantage from "coming here illegally." I’ll bet Iraqi refugees all over the world are cheering tonight. No special doorway for them. Let’s talk about those people. I’ll bet they feel pretty damned.

Delusionally, McCain thinks his McCain-Feingold legislation did something to improve American politics. Wow!

Giuliani isn’t soft on "anything" and he wants people to know biometrics work! He secured a large city, after all. Let’s be sensible about immigration, he reminds us. I agree. Let’s be sensible. Let’s stop fettering our cops with bureaucratic rules.

Where the crap are the questions for Ron Paul?

A fence might work, but trying to reduce the smuggling of narcotics won’t. That’s the market in action. They’ll just dig more tunnels or rent more planes and cigarette boats.

"Knock on the front door because the back door’s gonna be closed." I’m not touching that one.

The party has lost it’s way, says my hero Ron. He’s against nation building, and that’s OK with me. I like humanitarianism but not entangling alliances. Make the culture something others will be forced to emulate because IT JUST WORKS.

"We don’t understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what we would do if it happened to us."

Giuliani had to jump in on that one. He’s heard some pretty absurd explanations of why 9/11 happened.

Ron Paul talked about blowback. He’s right. There is always blowback. We can only meddle so much. An outcry!

Cut off.

They don’t think we’re going to solve this tonight.

Let’s get on the goddamn Confederate flag. That’ll change things.

As long as that flag isn’t on top we’ll be OK! Thank heavens for McCain.

On to the killers. It’s a dangerous world. We make tough decisions. As President polka-dots won’t repeat his mistakes even though none of us can see into the future.

Oh crud! Global warming. "We put most of the stuff up there."

Tancredo doesn’t believe something. I’m not sure what. He thinks there might be something we can do about it though. Let’s reduce the carbon emissions – it’s a national security issue. Switchback! They would be trying to kill us anyhow. It’s time to defend ourselves.

Oh shit! How would they react during an "evolving terrorist attack." Stay tuned.

And we’re back!

Nice! The moderators are trying to determine which candidates support torture. They started with McCain, the only one who has been physically tortured. He referred to the Army Field Manual. His bottom line – no torture.

Giuliani says "hypothetically" he doesn’t want to see another 3,000 dead.

Romney says make sure we use prevention. I guess he’s an isolationist too? Does that work in a shrinking globe environment? He thinks we need more Guantanamo type prisons.

Now we’ve got to attack West African countries. Ronald Reagan invoked again. And now Colin Powell. All the force necessary. If they’re anti-American – attack. Take the camps out. Methodically, only after it’s been verified.

No United Nations from the gray tie. Love that one. He wants to protect U.S. lives, that guy with the gray tie.

Hunter would only need one minute with the SecDef. He’d want "high pressure" techniques. And the decision would be rendered within an hour. Man, that guy has never dealt with bureaucracy.

McCain reiterates no torture. He’s gotta be right on that. Physically. I think psychological torture might sometimes be necessary. Survival certainly is, sociologically speaking.

Huckabee thinks we need to shop. But we can’t have "business as usual." Hmm, tell that to the people who don’t even know we’re still in Iraq or don’t know why we went to begin with.

OK we’re back to Ron Paul.

What economic policies would he propose?

The lower the taxes, the better. Sounds simple. Can I get an amen?

Calls them on "newspeak" regarding torture. He does a lot of finger pointing.

Now Tancredo is looking for Jack Bauer. He says "last, best hope of Western Civilization." Do every single thing you can. Torture. Otherwise, it’s going to happen.

It’s all old white men now. Response: reach out. 

You know what, I don’t care who leads, as long as they lead.

What does it matter if the leader is man? What’s the color matter? What’s the ethnicity matter?

Romney says he no longer wants to eliminate the Department of Education. He supports the dream world of "No Child Left Behind." What’s going on in inner city schools is the central issue. That’s where he stands.

Let’s absolve ourselves of the debt we owe the Chinese. After all, they’re arming themselves with our deficit.

Why isn’t anyone really addressing the deficit?

That’s it. The Republican debate in South Carolina is over.

Who won? You decide?

I’m not fair and balanced, I’m biased. Not one of the candidates was perfect, but the media control of the debate made that even worse. 

Update: Could it be any clearer that Fox News supports John McCain? About time to switch channels.

Max Boot has written an article outlining how he thinks the war for stability can be won. 

Since February, General David Petraeus and his team in Baghdad have been implementing classic counterinsurgency precepts that have worked wherever they have been tried in adequate strength over a sustained period of time–from the Philippines and South Africa in the early 1900s to Malaya in the 1950s, El Salvador in the 1980s, and Northern Ireland in the 1990s. They are surging more troops into troubled areas and pushing them off the remote fortress-like Forward Operating Bases and into neighborhoods where they conduct foot patrols, erect concrete barriers, and establish a street-level sense of security. The situation in Anbar province has improved substantially, and, while the areas around Baghdad remain deeply troubled, there are signs of progress in the capital itself. (Sectarian murders are down two-thirds since January, though deaths from spectacular suicide bombings remain high.)

Among the tips:

• More prisons
• An "identity database"
• More aggressive pursuit of foreign fighters
• Streamline the U.S. command bureaucracy
• Better management of rebuilding projects
• Better command accountability
• Increase the size of the Iraqi Army

Boot suggests that Iraq can become stable without any of these measures being implemented. I’m torn. I spent a year of my life in Iraq. The situation, especially in Baghdad, is terrible for the average Iraqi. I think the single most important factor in turning around the insurgency is basic security. If the Iraqi Army, with help from the Coalition, can provide basic security, then the country will turn around. Removing the influence of agitators like Moqtada al-Sadr is also critical.

From Larry Elder’s web site, just because it needs as much exposure as possible:

TAX EVASION: In a 1988 interview, Sharpton said he saw no reason why blacks should pay taxes. “If we do not have a justice system that protects us, what are we paying for?” Sharpton has faced multiple charges—and one conviction—of tax evasion.

TAWANA BRAWLEY: 1987. Al Sharpton, during the infamous Tawana Brawley case, falsely accused a former assistant district attorney of raping and sodomizing Ms. Brawley. Young Tawana stated that white racists abducted, raped, and sodomized her, scrawling the initials “KKK” on her in human feces. A grand jury later found the entire incident a complete hoax. Most likely, Ms. Brawley, afraid of punishment for staying out too late, fabricated the entire story. This did not stop Reverend Al Sharpton, who accused Pagones an assistant district attorney, of the crime. “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us—sue us right now.”

Pagones did. After receiving death threats, and threats against his child, Pagones sued Sharpton and two others for defamation. A jury unanimously concluded that Sharpton defamed Pagones, ordering Sharpton to pay $65,000 to Pagones. The Reverend promptly announced his intention not to pay. A couple years later, Sharpton’s buddies passed the hat and paid off Sharpton’s debt, which totaled $87,000 with interest and penalties. To this day, never having paid one penny of his own to Pagones, Sharpton refuses to apologize, “I did what I believed….They are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say they forced a black man coming out of the hard-core ghetto to his knees….Once you begin bending, it’s ‘did you bend today?’ or ‘I missed the apology, say it again.’ Once you start compromising, you lose respect for yourself.”

CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: In 1989 “the jogger,” a young white woman, was monstrously raped and nearly beaten to death in Central Park. Sharpton insisted—despite the defendants’ confessions—that her black attackers were innocent, modern-day Scottsboro Boys trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Sharpton charged that the jogger’s boyfriend did it, and organized protests outside the courthouse, chanting, “The boyfriend did it!” and denouncing the victim as “Whore!” He brought Tawana Brawley to the trial, to show her “white justice” and arranged for her to meet the attackers. Sharpton appealed for a psychiatrist to examine the victim, generously saying, “It doesn’t even have to be a black psychiatrist….We’re not endorsing the damage to the girl—if there was this damage.” (While it doesn’t excuse his calling the victim a “whore” and denigrating any damage to her, or his accusations against the boyfriend, the convictions of the accused were eventually vacated, despite their taped confessions, after another man—whose DNA matched—confessed to the rape in 2002.)

CROWN HEIGHTS/ “DIAMOND MERCHANTS”: In 1991, Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old black child was killed in a traffic accident in Crown Heights (in Brooklyn), when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control. Sharpton turned it into a racial incident. Sharpton led 400 protesters through the Jewish section of Crown Heights, with one protester holding a sign that read, “The White Man Is the Devil.” There were four nights of rock- and bottle-throwing, and a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded by a mob shouting, “Kill the Jew” and stabbed to death. A hundred others were injured. Sharpton said, “The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato] was killed by accident….What type of city do we have that would allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies?…Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights….All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds.” Later Sharpton said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

ARAFAT: When Sharpton annoucned a 2001 trip to the Middle East, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach helped plan his itinerary. Sharpton, according to the Rabbi, promised not to meet with Yassir Arafat, yet only days later, Jewish New Yorkers opened the morning paper to see a smiling Arafat and Sharpton, meeting and shaking hands in Israel. Furious, Rabbi Boteach said, “Prior to our recent trip to Israel, U.S. black leader Reverend Al Sharpton and I discussed several times that there were to be no meetings with Arab or Palestinian leaders, not because I wished to set preconditions for our travel, but because the express objective of our mission was to show solidarity with Israeli victims of terror. The idea was to provide a magnanimous gesture of friendship and solidarity with the Jewish nation that would hopefully have strong reverberations for the relationship of the Jewish and black communities back home.”

FREDDY’S FASHION MART/”WHITE INTERLOPER”: 1995. A Jewish store owner in Harlem was accused of driving a black record store owner out of business, when the United House of Prayer, one of the largest black landlords on 125th Street, raised the rent on the Fashion Mart owned by a Jew, Freddy Harari, who then raised the rent on his subtenant, Sikhulu Shange, who ran a record store. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish owner away, Sharpton said, “…There is a systematic and methodical strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I want to make it clear…that we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” Following a demonstration three months later, one of the protesters, a black man, stormed Freddy’s Fashion Mart with a pistol, screaming, “It’s on now! All blacks out!” In addition to shooting, he set fire to the building, eventually killing himself and seven others. Initially, Sharpton denied having spoken at any rallies. When tapes surfaced, he said, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” Eventually, he apologized—but only for saying “white,” not “interloper.”

CRIMINAL JUSTICE: During the “Million Man March” in Washington, civil rights “activist” Al Sharpton thundered, “O.J. is home, but Mumia Abu Jamal ain’t home. And we won’t stop till all of our people that need a chance in an awkward and unbalanced criminal justice system can come home.”

OUT OF THE KING MOVEMENT: Although he was 14 when Martin Luther King was assassinated, Sharpton claims he “came out of the King movement.” Sharpton once explained, “I was on some show this week, and people said, ‘Why don’t you just let it go? Why don’t y’all just get over it?’ Get over what? Get over Dr. King dying? Get over Medger Evers dying? Get over Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner dying? Get over those four girls in Birmingham dying? We are never gonna get over it, and we are never gonna let you forget it!”

FBI TAPES/COCAINE: In 2002, HBO aired a 19-year-old FBI surveillance of Sharpton with self-described mobster Michael Franzese and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American businessman. The three were discussing promoting boxing matches and musical events. HBO’s “Real Sports” got a hold of a hidden camera video that shows undercover agent Victor Quintana posing as a drug dealer trying to convince Sharpton to play a middleman in a big cocaine buy.

Sharpton asks the undercover agent, “What kind of time limit are we dealing with?”
“Coke?” the agent asks.
“Yeah.” Sharpton says.
The phony drug dealer says, “Could be about the same time we have 4 million coming to us.”
Sharpton: “End of April?”
“End of April. Six weeks from now. Is that a good time you think?” the agent asks.
“Probably,” Sharpton replies.
Later on, the undercover agent offers Sharpton a finder’s fee for help with the drug deal and says to Sharpton, “I can get pure coke for about $35,000 a kilo … Every kilogram we bring in, $3,500 to you. How does that sound?” Sharpton nods in response.
The deal never went down, and Sharpton has said he was just playing along because he was scared of the would-be kingpin. “And I’m in his office. I don’t know whether this man is armed. I don’t know what’s going on. So I kind of say, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ to get out of there,” Sharpton claimed the tape was leaked by law enforcement officials to disrupt his 2004 presidential run, and he sued HBO, its parent company AOL Time Warner, and several individuals who worked on the story. No charges were ever brought against Sharpton because of the tape, which was allegedly made to get Sharpton to act as an informant for the feds into an investigation into corruption by Don King and the boxing industry. The HBO report featured former Mafia captain Michael Franzese saying that the FBI was on the right track when it targeted Sharpton in a sting back in 1983 to try and root out corruption in boxing.
Sharpton admitted in 1988 that he informed for the government in order “to get rid of drugs and election fraud” in black neighborhoods. He denied informing on civil rights leaders and organized crime figures.

FBI TAPES/DONATIONS: After Sharpton’s name surfaced on wiretaps in an unrelated Philadelphia City Hall corruption case, the FBI launched a probe into Sharpton’s fund-raising for his failed 2004 presidential run. The FBI secretly videotaped Sharpton on May 9, 2003, pocketing campaign donations from two “shady fund-raisers” in a NY City hotel room, and then demanding $25,000 more. The two fund-raisers were La-Van Hawkins and the late Ronald White. Hawkins is currently on trial in Philadelphia on corruption charges. White was going to be indicted, but died before charges were brought. A later wiretap recorded Hawkins telling White that they had raised more than $140,000 for Sharpton the previous quarter, but Hawkins was concerned that Sharpton had only reported about $50,000 to the Federal Election Commission, as required by law. Sharpton said the allegations were a “politically motivated smokescreen” to hide the fact the Justice Department is out to get him. He ripped the probe and the secret videotaping, saying, “Can you imagine what would happen if it was a white presidential candidate?”

Ah, that harbinger of modern American civil liberties, the PATRIOT Act. Smell that sweet freedom patriots! Citizens everywhere are sleeping more soundly at night knowing FedGov is on the job. 

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller spent much of March doing something neither man was used to doing: apologizing. On March 10, Mueller admitted that the agency hadn’t told the truth about its uses of PATRIOT Act powers to investigate Americans, admitting that nearly 50,000 privacy-busting “National Security Letters” had been sent in 2005 instead of the 30,000 Congress had been told of. Three days later, Gonzales walked the same plank to confess that the Department of Justice may have lied to Congress about the reasons why eight U.S. Attorneys had been dismissed and replaced with less-experienced drones who’d be more willing to investigate Democrats.

Civil libertarians have been warning that the PATRIOT Act would be abused since before it became law. They were right. There are many qualities we should demand from our civil servants, but arrogance is not one of them.

Civil liberties watchdogs, whose numbers had swelled since 2001, saw the revelations as a confirmation of their worst fears, and PATRIOT reauthorization became a tougher sell. According to Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), what really outraged senators wasn’t the scandal itself so much as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ refusal to meet with them to discuss the PATRIOT Act, the expiring provisions, and various related issues.

Stupid, stupid Alberto. He set himself up. His deputy has already resigned.

It is only a matter of time before Alberto Gonzales, like Donald Rumsfeld, is forced out. I don’t blame Gonzales personally. Government has grown too big and powerful for its own good. Alberto Gonzales is the symptom, not the cause.

Twenty-thousand lies and a bag full of spit are all you should expect from Washington. The faces and names change, but the dishonesty and arrogance remain the same.

Before I went to war, the State of Georgia failed to pay my promised educational benefits because a) I filed paperwork too late b) no federal funds were available and c) any other excuse they could think of. Long story short, as far as I am concerned, I went to war short $4,000 I was promised. Now that I’m back from Iraq, the State of Georgia still doesn’t want to fund my college education. Typical.

ME:

I am a college student at University of Phoenix Online as well as being an E5 with the 124th MPAD in Georgia. I need to know what is required for me to be reimbursed for classes I have completed this year.

State of Georgia Education Officer:

SGT,
You can’t be reimbursed.  You must apply for tuition assistance at https://nationalguardbenefits.com prior to the start date of your courses.

When you join the National Guard your recruiter will probably tell you how great all the benefits are. What the recruiter will not tell you is how hard the bureaucrats make it to collect any of those benefits. The recruiter also will not tell you that those benefits really aren’t all that ironclad. Here’s an example of just the first page of the crap forms you have to fill out to (hopefully) collect partial reimbursement for taking a college course. The recruiter probably won’t be there to help you wade through the bullshit when it comes time to actually collect on what the government should owe you.

The rest of the process is just pages and pages of convoluted crap. Half the links you click don’t open, or result in various cryptic errors. If you call one of several listed "help" numbers, they just direct you to somewhere else. Each department blames another for why you aren’t receiving any actual monetary compensation in exchange for your blood, sweat and indentured servitude to Big Brother.

After talking to Steve and Mike at the VA this morning, I can say it isn’t all bad. Those two were competent, but they still had to direct me to forms, forms and more forms. You would think that the benefits would be automatic. Hell, the government has my damn DNA on file somewhere – you’d think they already know everything there is to know about me, including the fact that I’ve spent seven years serving in uniform.

The State of Georgia and the federal government are not making it easy for me to collect the education benefits I am entitled to. I consider myself of above average intelligence. I can only imagine how many veterans who might benefit from a college degree give up before they get started when confronted with the massive bureaucratic maze that must be navigated in order to receive "tuition assistance." Maybe that is the true measure of importance in awarding someone an advanced degree – their persistence, tenacity and sheer stubborn refusal to be defeated by a bureaucrat.

Now that I’ve wasted my entire morning trying to collect education benefits (not to mention the other hours fruitlessly spent filling out paperwork and trying to navigate a maze of officials, bureaucrats and monkeys throwing paperwork from every direction) don’t say you were not warned! If you are considering joining the military for education benefits, they are available if you have the patience of Job and the persistence of the devil. Good luck to you.

I base my headline on incontrovertible logic that goes like this – the only terrorist I know with a name that rhymes, Mullah Dadullah, is dead. Therefore, terrorists with names that rhyme are more likely to die than terrorists whose names do not rhyme (some of those type are still alive as I write this).

Now that the Terrorist Whose Name Rhymes is dead, some of his brethren whose names do not rhyme but may be redundant (think Jihad Jihad or Ali Ali for instance) are possibly attempting to take revenge. And yes, there really are followers of the Prophet named Jihad Jihad and Ali Ali. I’ve met them both, and they may or may not be associated with Islamic fundamentalist acts of violence. What I know for sure is that their names do not rhyme and that they were alive last time I saw them.

The military spokesman said that the killing of the US soldier and the subsequent blame game seem to be an attempt by some vested interests to create misunderstandings between the two partners in the war against terror. He said the incident might be a reaction to the killing of Mullah Dadullah, who was described by the American military officials as the Zarqawi of Afghanistan.

Of course, it is possible they are merely common miscreants. Damn those varmints! Some parts of the world fail to understand a good opportunity for humor. They just shoot at everything.

The Washington Post today gushes over the amazing new and "improved" Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act of 2007. 

Under the current hate-crimes law, federal prosecution is permitted only if the offense occurred while the victim was engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting or going to school. This bill would eliminate that requirement. To ensure that the law would be used only in exceptional circumstances, the U.S. attorney general or key senior Justice Department officials must certify in writing that state and local law enforcement were consulted and that the state lacked jurisdiction or did not intend to exercise it, requested federal assistance or did not object to federal intervention. And the bill would provide financial assistance to local law enforcement agencies investigating hate crimes under their own laws.

Can we all get serious for just a minute here? I don’t know which of the retarded quorum members over at the Post wrote this editorial.  Maybe it was generated in their hive mind. Who cares? They actually titled it "Protection From Hate" as if the federal government protects Americans efficiently. Since when have they done that? This fine, fine piece of garbage legislation ensures our land will grow kinder and gentler (yeah, right!) When that nice young gay man in your neighborhood is murdered by having his head beaten into pulp with a brick the protections from hate kick in as follows:

. . .the law would be used only in exceptional circumstances, the U.S. attorney general or key senior Justice Department officials must certify in writing that state and local law enforcement were consulted and that the state lacked jurisdiction or did not intend to exercise it, requested federal assistance or did not object to federal intervention. And the bill would provide financial assistance to local law enforcement agencies investigating hate crimes under their own laws.

It’s so simple. So clear. Everyone will feel safer at night. More people will be holding hands in public again, secure in the knowledge that should something bad happen nearby, a member of Congress will appear at their moment of need brandishing a freshly minted copy of a modern day knight’s sword AKA the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Act of 2007. I look forward to the miraculous reduction in crime that is about to become a reality.

Remember criminals and those who aspire to crime – the next time you are going to pistol whip someone, have them fill out the simple survey first. Get them to sign an affidavit stating that they realize you are not committing the crime based on ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED RELIGION, NATIONAL ORIGIN, GENDER, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, GENDER IDENTITY, OR DISABILITY. That way you’ll catch a break at the sentencing. And by the way, all those words were capitalized because that is how they are written in the bill. They must be important!

Someone remind me how our social and political lives have improved because of Congress? I can’t think of anything.

This is the kind of garbage that does nothing to improve our daily lives but complicates our legal system to the point that people see it as a joke. The only people who benefit from this type of junk legislation are the legislators who make their living writing this trash.

The United States bears responsibility for helping these people. Two million displaced Iraqis need humanitarian assistance.

The numbers dwarfed anything that the Middle East had seen since the dislocations brought on by the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Syria, there were estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. There were another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The overall estimate for the number of Iraqis who had fled Iraq was put at two million by Guterres. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside Iraq’s borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean about 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes.

How many Iraqi refugees were allowed into the U.S. last year? 500. That’s shameful. We created the displacement by invading, and we should do more to address the problem.
 

One researcher is warning that just because you look think does not mean you are. Some people are thin on the outside but have dangerous fat deposits internally.

Q. Where is internal fat located?
A. It surrounds vital organs like the heart, liver or pancreas and is invisible to the naked eye.
Q. Is internal fat dangerous to your health?
A. Doctors are unsure about the exact dangers of internal fat, but some suspect it contributes to the risk of heart disease and diabetes. They theorize that internal fat disrupts the body’s communication systems. The fat enveloping internal organs might be sending the body mistaken chemical signals to store fat inside organs like the liver or pancreas. This could ultimately lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes or heart disease.

Should you worry? No. Studies show that stress kills. However, you might want to hit the gym a few times a week. The saying "it’s what inside that counts" seems appropriate. 

There are now more than two million returns when you type Ron Paul for President into Google. Contrast that with Rudy Giuliani for President, which yields about 1.2 million results, or Mitt Romney for President, which yields a similar result. It appears, at least among Republican candidates, that Ron Paul is the juggernaut of the Internet. How that will translate into a nomination remains to be seen.

The key to Paul’s popularity is easy. Ron Paul is that rarest of politician – a man who really believes what he says he believes. Ron Paul exudes conviction and pragmatism.

Ron Paul has been the most consistent successful politician advocating the limited-government principles that he sees embedded in the Constitution. Part of his appeal, to a voting base that we can safely presume isn’t as libertarian as Paul is himself, is that of the very rare politician following his own conscience and mind with steadfast integrity. Indeed, Paul is not afraid of aggravating even parts of his libertarian constituency when he thinks it’s the right thing to do, as on immigration (where he’s against amnesty and birthright citizenship, and for increased border control) and his vote this month in favor of prescription drug negotiation.

While other politicians devote huge resources to carefully calculating and scripting every response, Paul speaks his opinion with conviction and force. He doesn’t have to pause to consider his position on any given issue – he already knows where he stands. Where he stands resonates well with many voters.

Lower taxes? Yes, that resonates. Smaller government? Definitely, that one strikes a chord. New direction in Iraq? People are ready for something, almost anything to change.

I expect the May 15 Republican debate in South Carolina to further focus grass roots support on Ron Paul. Tune in and maybe you’ll become part of the Ron Paul juggernaut.