Saturday, July 21, 2007

WOO HOO! I iz smart!

How smart are you?Am-I-Dumb.com - Are you dumb?


Meh. The questions aren't that hard for anyone who pays attention and listened in school. Found over at Blog Idaho. And yes, at this point I'm so damn sick for anything that reminds me of civilization that I'm checking out Idaho blogs, I've got the Coeur d'Alene Press in my bookmarks, and I'm damn near moved to tears every time I see a pine forest.

Nine months. Nine months. Nine months.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Quote of the Day

I'm of two minds here - From Cold Fury, we get this quote from R. H. Heinlein, which I happen to agree with for the most part.

” Those who refuse to support and defend a state have no claim to protection by that state. Killing an anarchist or a pacifist should not be defined as “murder” in a legalistic sense. The offense against the state, if any, should be “Using deadly weapons inside city limits,” or “Creating a traffic hazard,” or “Endangering bystanders,” or other such misdemeanor.”
Now, yes, as a basic principal I agree with that. But what happens if the state isn't worth defending anymore? Let me put it this way - I believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest founding document in the history of the world, and it's worth defending. However, I don't think that the current government is anywhere CLOSE to actually following said Constitution. And the people currently running things in D.C. aren't worth a squirt of piss in the wind. If I heard that somebody was attacking D.C., I'd be guarding two things - the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. Capitol Hill? Meh. Armed terrorists could murder every last bastard in the Capitol Building and I would only weep for a few of them. And my tears would be short lived, because wiping the current Congress from the face of the Earth would only improve this country, not hurt it.

On the other hand, the people in Congress who are causing the most problems fall under that whole "pacifist" description. So there's that.

Bah. That's now my night is going.

BWAAA HAAA HAAAA!

I'd love to see more of this, if possible. As far as I'm concerned, drug dealers deserve whatever they get.

And it's from Cleveland, of all places. Nice.

I'm telling you right now...

Kettle brand Chipotle Chile BBQ potato chips?

The bomb. Addictive. Damn good. Do NOT pick up a bag of these unless you have someone to share them with, otherwise you'll eat the whole damn bag on your own.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

OutSTANDing!

I'm going to copy this in it's entirety from Kim du Toit's site:

Luke AFB is west of Phoenix and is rapidly being surrounded by civilization that complains about the noise from the base and its planes, forgetting that it was there long before they were.

Apparently, an individual who lives somewhere near Luke AFB wrote the local paper complaining about a group of F-16s that disturbed his/her day at the mall. When that individual read the response from a Luke AFB officer, it must have stung quite a bit.

The complaint: “Question of the day for Luke Air Force Base: Whom do we thank for the morning air show? Last Wednesday, at precisely 9:11 a. m., a tight formation of four F-16 jets made a low pass over Arrowhead Mall, continuing west over Bell Road at approximately 500 feet. Imagine our good fortune! Do the Tom Cruise-wannabes feel we need this wake-up call, or were they trying to impress the cashiers at Mervyns early bird special? Any response would be appreciated.”


The response: Regarding “A wake-up call from Luke’s jets” (Letters, Thursday): On June 15, at precisely 9:12 a. m., a perfectly timed four-ship flyby of F-16s from the 63rd Fighter Squadron at Luke Air Force Base flew over the grave of Capt. Jeremy Fresques. Capt. Fresques was an Air Force officer who was previously stationed at Luke Air Force Base and was killed in Iraq on May 30, Memorial Day. At 9 a. m. on June 15, his family and friends gathered at Sunland Memorial Park in Sun City to mourn the loss of a husband, son and friend.

Based on the letter writer’s recount of the flyby, and because of the jet noise, I’m sure you didn’t hear the 21-gun salute, the playing of taps, or my words to the widow and parents of Capt. Fresques as I gave them their son’s flag on behalf of the President of the United States and all those veterans and servicemen and women who understand the sacrifices they have endured.

A four-ship Flyby is a display of respect the Air Force pays to those who give their Lives in defense of freedom. We are professional aviators and take our jobs seriously, and on June 15 what the letter writer witnessed was four officers lining up to pay their ultimate respects. The letter writer asks, “Whom do we thank for the morning air show?” The 56th Fighter Wing will call for you, and forward your thanks to the widow and Parents of Capt. Fresques, and thank them for you, for it was in their honor that my pilots flew the most honorable formation of their lives.

-- Lt. Col. Scott Pleus CO 63rd Fighter Squadron Luke AFB

I doubt that the LTC would need it, but if I ever meet him I'm going to buy him a beer for that letter. And as for Kim's comment:
People who buy houses or otherwise live close to airfields or airports and then complain about the noise ought to be put in the stocks and pelted with rotten fruit.
I've never understood how someone can move to an area close to an airport and then have the gall to complain about the noise. Duh, you moron, you moved in RIGHT NEXT TO A DAMN AIRPORT! If you move next to an airport and expect it to be quiet just for you, then you're so damn stupid that you need to be castrated so that your defective genes don't pollute the gene pool for the rest of humanity.
Seriously... airports, when they're built, are constructed as far away from residential areas as possible. Nobody buys up a hundred acres of suburb and says "Yeah, we're building an airport right here!" No, they go out of their way to be out of the way. And then people rush out to buy land right next to the frigging place, because it's cheap (something to do with noise pollution?), and build homes, and then complain about the noise.
What. Fucking. Morons. What an utter waste of oxygen.
Second - if the sound of a fighter jet ripping through the air doesn't raise a thrill in your blood, then you are either A) Deaf, or B) quite possibly not American. It's the sound of power. The sound of superiority. Hell, I'd move next to an Air Force Base just to listen to the sound of those jets taking off in the morning. When the wife had surgery at Lackland Air Force Base, one of the biggest thrills for me was just seeing those jets in the air, and listening to them take off. Loud, yes. Obnoxious, maybe, it depends on who you are. But a thrill? Hell yeah. It's the reason I loved watching the Blue Angels at SeaFair in Seattle.



(click on the pic for regular size)

If people don't like jet fighters, then perhaps they shouldn't move next to an Air Force Base. Just a suggestion.

And yes, I took that shot of the Blue Angels. Not the greatest I've ever taken, but still.....

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

To all Idiots in Congress

Which means just about the whole lot of you: Tell me again about how Al-Qeada isn't in Iraq?

US forces say they have arrested a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group accused of being behind some of Iraq's deadliest violence.


The man was named as Khaled Mashhadani. He was captured earlier in July in the northern city of Mosul, officials said.


US military officials said he had told interrogators that the group's supposed leader, Omar al-Baghdadi, was a front.


We got another one. HOOAH! Maybe we can hand him over to the Iraqis. I hear that they're a little less squeamish about obtaining information from captured terrorists......

ACP want to raise more taxes

For those who don't read me regularly, the ACP is the American Communist Party, also known as the Democrat Party. And this time the taxes will destroy an entire industry in America.


The federal government has proposed raising taxes on premium cigars, the kind Newman’s family has been rolling for decades in Ybor City, by as much as 20,000 percent.


As part of an increase in tobacco taxes designed to pay for children’s health insurance, the nickel-per-cigar tax that has ruled the industry could rise to as much as $10 per cigar.


“I’m not sure in the history of man, since our forefathers founded the country in 1776, that there’s ever been a tax increase of 20,000 percent,” said Newman, who runs the Tampa business founded by grandfather Julius Caesar Newman. “They had the Boston Tea Party for less than this.”


The Democrat American Communist Party, who never saw a tax they didn't want to raise or increase, would shut down all the cigar companies in this country within a year. Plain and simple. A decent stogie goes for anywhere from $5-$10. That's not for a top-of-the-line cigar, but just a decent one like the kind I buy from the cigar vendor on post. Cigars aren't cigarettes, folks. The tobacco has to age for two years at least before it gets rolled into a smoke. Then you have to bind it, roll it, and the master cigar roller puts the wrapper on it. Any blemishes or mistakes, and that cigar is sold off cheap, at or below cost, which means the maker doesn't actually make any profit off of it. Everything raises the cost of a good cigar. The higher-priced smokes like Upmann, Macanudo, and Cohiba go for anywhere from $10-$20 easy. Now add ten dollars on top of that.

99% of rich people didn't get rich by throwing their money away. People will simply stop smoking cigars. Kim du Toit brings up the example of the "luxury" tax put on shipbuilders:

Incidentally, if this tax proves too onerous for cigar smokers, they’ll either start smuggling in cigars (oh joy, more crime), or else they’ll just quit—very few people are addicted to cigars as others are to cigarettes—which means that cigar-making and -selling businesses will have to close, thus putting thousands out of work.


That’s what happened when the Socialists raised the luxury tax on yachts (another “gimme” for the Wealth Envious)—the local shipbuilding industry folded and nearly collapsed—but Congress is incapable of such feats of memory. Indeed, Congress has no memory at all in matters like this, focused as they are on such weighty matters as soaking “the rich”, reelection, and fundraising.


Congress put that tax on luxury yachts thinking "Oh, those people are rich, they'll just pay the tax." No, they would not. Again, rich people do not get rich by throwing money away, and many a prospective yacht buyer simply decided that they were not willing to pay that extra money on top of a million dollars for the boat. What happened? The yacht builders went out of business. Guess who got hurt the most? The blue collar joes who actually BUILT the damn things in the first place. Carpenters. Woodworkers. Electricians. Welders. Fabricators. All out of a job, because Congress won't stop taxing the everliving shit out of anything that moves.

I don't smoke more cigars for the same reason that I don't drink twenty-year old single malt scotch - I can't afford it. Slap a $10-a-stick tax on cigars, and I won't be smoking any at all. And millions of people like me won't be smoking them either. So guess what happens to all those people who make a living rolling, packaging, shipping and selling cigars?

Yep. They lose their jobs. Thanks to Congress. Just another example of an out-of-control group of professional shitheads who don't deserve to ever sit on Capitol Hill again. I truly am waiting for the next revolution. And I would like to be the person who frog-marches the parasites in Congress out of the building and into jail where they belong.

One MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLION DOLLARS!

Just went to a seemingly non-existant company, courtesy of the "most ethical Congress evah"!

Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, the fiscal crusader who's never met an earmark he likes, questioned Democratic Rep. Peter J. Visclosky of Indiana on the House floor Tuesday about whether the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure actually exists - since, hey, it's getting like a million bucks or something.

Visclosky, who chairs the spending subcommittee responsible for the project, had to admit that, well, he didn't have a clue.

After a lengthy back-and-forth, Flake, complaining that his staff couldn't find a website for the center, asked Visclosky, "Does the center currently exist?"

"At this time, I do not know," the Indiana Democrat replied. "But if it does not exist, the monies could not go to it."


And who could possibly be the sponsor of such an earmark? Yes, you guessed it, the man Republicans love to hate, Pennsylvania Democrat John P. Murtha.

Despite the money's uncertain destination, the House rejected Flake's measure to strike the funds, 326-98. And the Visclosky bill also sailed through, 312-112.


Just. Fucking. Unbelievable. One MILLION DOLLARS for a "company" that may or may not exist. ONE MILLION DOLLARS of OUR TAXES just went to an earmark by John "Those-fucking-baby-killing-Marines" Murtha, the senile corrupt shithead. To a company that may or may not exist. Maybe.

I'm actively searching for that reset button.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Blithering Idiots

That's all I could think of when I read this headline:

Bush Surprises Senate Aides With Unexpected Interruption of White House Meeting

So, these people are having a meeting at the White House, and the President pops in, and these people are shocked?

Um.... he lives there, right? In the White House, I mean. Or have I gotten all my American History wrong and he lives in a cave under NORAD with Darth Rove and his evil henchman Cheney after all?

"It was stunning," said one GOP aide who attended the meeting. "We couldn't believe he came in."


"We kept looking at each other, amazed he came in," said another Republican aide.



MY GOD, THERE WE WUZ, HAVIN' A MEETIN' IN THE VERY ABODE WHERE HE DONE MOVED INTO, AND BY GAWD HE JUST WALKED IN ON US!

The very fact that this qualifies as "news" to some Republicans is reason enough to impliment term limits immidiately.

Bush was described as folksy, adamant and mildly profane as he interrupted the meeting between senior White House communications staffers Tony Snow and Ed Gillespie and GOP leaders. His message: the policy on Iraq isn't changing. He is not backing down and no one on Capitol Hill should be confused into thinking he is letting up.

So gosh, a policy meeting about military matters..... that would be the same military that the President is COMMANDER IN CHIEF of, and it's a surprize that he walked in?

sigh

You know what makes me even more depressed? As bad as the Republicans are, the Democrat American Communist Party is even worse. I've always heard that an electorate gets the government that it deserves. I'm sorry, but we don't deserve this. Unless there's some reason to have an entire city full of brainless parasites and the blood-sucking hanger-ons who accompany anyone who has access to money. Gah.

I admit it, I laughed

At this.

"He was well done."


That's what one woman said Monday after helping her son apprehend an alleged child rapist using her barbecue meat fork.


"I stuck him in his butt!" Linda Rhodes told MyFOXdfw.com, explaining how she and her son John Jennings apprehended the 17-year-old suspect Friday night in Garland, Texas.



Dude thought he was gonna get his pervert on, and he's the one that gets poked in the ass instead. Mwaha!

Monday, July 16, 2007

Ugg

Just so you know, this is yet another day when I wonder just why the hell I didn't join the Coast Guard.

I know that there are good units in the Army. I've been a part of them. I've experienced just what a properly run unit can be and do.

This down here? Yeah. Not it. In fact, I really don't think that the Army in Puerto Rico is really part of the US Army. This is Pancho Villa's Army. It's a sad joke.

Anyways, I'm sure you all didn't surf on over here to listen to be bitch and moan. So let me direct you to a letter from an airline pilot that Patterico posted over at Hot Air. It's a complete rundown of how the Federal Gummint has managed to fuck up just about every aspect of security on airlines.

There is no question that we will get airline security right someday. My only question is whether, at this point, we will get it right before the next attack. After 9/11, we were given the gift of time and of awareness. I am very concerned we have squandered the gift of time — and there is little left before we are hit again — and we are losing the gift of awareness, as we truly forget what that morning was like. There is no question in my mind, based on everything I hear in my position, that Al Qaeda is actively, aggressively preparing to target the United States again, and that commandeering an airliner is still the easiest, quickest method of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. I am even more concerned that the next attack could be far worse than 9/11, which, while devastating, would pale in comparison to other available targets.
The TSA is stuck in a deficient mindset, and it's convinced me that the people in charge are Leftists through and through. They refuse to deal with the people who want to kill us, and instead focus all their attention on the objects that those people would use in their murderous acts. The problem with that approach is that somebody can and will always find a replacement object if you take their first option away. If you focus on objects instead of people, then you get the ridiculous instances where Marine Corps Ace and Medal of Honor awardee Joe Foss had some nitwit trying to take away his MoH because it had sharp points on it.

Here's a picture of the deadly hand-to-hand weapon that the 86 year old war hero could have used.


Pathetic.

That is the sort of thing that happens when you focus your attention entirely in the wrong direction. If some kid is learning how to spell, and he keeps making mistakes when he's spelling "Leftist moonbats", do you take away his pencil? "Gosh, that pencil is causing so many mis-spellings, we'll just have to get rid of it!" No, you teach the kid how to properly spell. You deal with the person, not the object.

The same holds true with stopping terrorists. We had the Shoe Bomber try to blow up a plane, so now we all have to go barefoot through the security checkpoint and have our shoes x-rayed. Then some terrorist tumblefuck tried to blow up a plane using a gel explosive, so now we can't have more than a 3 ounce bottle of liquids in our carry-on baggage. All of this bullshit is reaction to different objects, and it's absolutely fucking moronic. One, you can only react after something has happened, so by reacting you're already showing that you're behind the curve. Second, take away an object and somebody can find a different object to replace it! Scan the shoes, the terrorists will use gel explosives. Now try to stop gel explosives, and they'll find something else. By refusing to deal with the actual problem, i.e. the people who want to kill us, they've set themselves up for failure.

I mean, hows the crime in LA, D.C., Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia? Those cities have extensive gun bans, right? And yet people are still getting shot. Because those cities have focused on an object, and not the people behind the crime.

I honestly think that we'll get hit again eventually, especially with the way that people refuse to deal with the problem head on. Go read that pilot's letter. It's rather scary. The gummint isn't doing it's job, plain and simple.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Words of Wisdom

You have to taste the world. You have to sample it. You have to try it on. You have to see what works for you and what doesn’t. You need to find out what worked in this world and what made things awful, and you can’t do that if awful is disguised as something not awful, or you’re too stuck in who your relatives were to allow yourself to do it.

Then, because we’re not stuck in being who our ancestors were, we take the best that all the world has to offer. We learn from their mistakes. We set aside their backwards ways, with respect and deference, but we set them aside, just the same. We don’t have to do things their way, simply because they did, if there are better ways.


From Mrs. du Toit. She's been on a roll as of late, and if you're not checking up on her blog at least once a day you're missing out.

OK, all you computer people

Here's the deal - I'm looking for a cheap graphics program that I can use for a variety of uses. I don't need Photoshop, I won't be doing anything that fancy or high tech. But I am looking for a program that will allow me to do basic graphics without costing me an arm and a leg, since finances are rather tight. I had Microsoft Works from when I got a computer a decade ago, but it didn't run well on XP, and it ain't even gonna touch Vista. I did a few things for my unit and other organizations that needed simple graphics. Let me give you a few examples of the things I do.

The NCO Creed:


Here's a Certificate of Achievement I made for my Group Command Sergeant Major. He wanted something that could be used to recognize the Soldiers who did funeral details:




That's the sort of thing I need to be able to do. Any suggestions?