I have a severely herniated disk that needs a discectomy. The surgeon tells me "I will go in and cut out the herniated portion of the disk, and you will be up an walking around the mall that afternoon."
"allergies don't affect the eyes"
a friend of mine is supposed to be go to an optamologist. The appoint was made by someone who does speak Spanish. When she gets to the Dr's office, the nurse starts asking her, in very broken English, how big she wants her boobs.
Same friend goes to her PCP because she suffers from Scyaticia, the Dr only tells her she needs to lose weight. He refuses to do tests, X-rays, MRI's or any other little things like tests.
Different friend goes to the doctor for a Staph infection, all he is willing to give her is Amoxacillin
I am sorry for any spelling errors.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Seems like a good idea
Vanderleun has a suggestion on what to do with New Orleans, since the worthless nobs have demanded flaming assloads of money from the Federal Government.
Right now, I can't say I disagree.
Found via Cold Fury.
Right now, I can't say I disagree.
Found via Cold Fury.
Ordered to drink
A post over at Snowflakes in Hell brought forth a memory lodged in the back of my brain. Back in the day, when I was an MP at Ft. Riley, all the MP's had to take a course on DUI/DWI Detection. The course included instructions on the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests, which are of course needed to indicated probable cause for the Breathalyzer test to be used. Now, in order to adequately instruct on the FST's, you need some drunk people to test on. It's all well and good to say "look for this response, look for these indicators", but until you see them when your very eyes, it just doesn't sink in.
So, the NCOIC of the traffic section would find some troops who were already certified in DUI detection, and have them drink for the class. The class would then use the intoxicated MP's as test subjects. I was asked to be one of the test subjects, since I was already certified. Of course I said yes. Back then I was a bit of a lush, and the thought of getting my drink on during Army time appealed to me.
One of the things that has to happen is that you are constantly given a Breathalyzer test, so that not only can you be monitored for health reasons but so that the students can be told how drunk you really are after they run the tests on you. Someone who's learned how to do the FST's has a damn good chance of nailing your BAC within a few points, without the Breathalyzer. So the instructors keep tabs on all the test subjects, and at the end of the course announce to the students what our BAC was while we were being tested.
Now, as I've stated, this was back during my heavy drinking days. I was allowed to bring my own booze, and I chose Southern Comfort 101. I did thirteen shots of it in three hours, or roughly four and a third shots every hour. All on an empty stomach. And I was schnookered, folks. When they tested my BAC, it was at .133, and fell to .113 by the time the students had finished running the FST's on me. Thirteen shots of 101 proof alcohol in three hours, and I was at a .133 BAC.
So now, keeping that in mind, think of just how much someone has to drink to get to the level described in Sebastian's post:
Great Googly Moogly! That level of intoxication would kill the average joe, yours truly included. The standard rule of thumb when dealing with your average person is this: .1 BAC is drunk. .2 is completely blitzed. .3 is comatose, and .4 is dead. I personally have never seen anything higher than a .45, and that was with a hard core alcoholic who'd been drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels every day for the past ten years.
As an aside, I was never asked to do the drinking again due to a slight *ahem* incident I had with an NCO. There was a certain Staff Sergeant who didn't like me at all, and always took pleasure in tormenting me when he could, no matter how petty the torment was. However, I had been told to get drunk by the Army, so I did. When I was sober, I could just shrug off any comments this SSG made, or deal with whatever order he gave. But under the influence, I didn't have my normal inhibitions.
So SSG Dickhead wandered up to me while I was performing the tests for the students. I was a bit loud, and SSG Dickhead decided to play his normal games. He had already prodded me a few times that day, so I wasn't in a very pleasant mood to deal with him. He interrupted the students, stuck a finger in my face, and said:
To which I promptly replied (and I've tried to spell it just like it sounded):
So, the NCOIC of the traffic section would find some troops who were already certified in DUI detection, and have them drink for the class. The class would then use the intoxicated MP's as test subjects. I was asked to be one of the test subjects, since I was already certified. Of course I said yes. Back then I was a bit of a lush, and the thought of getting my drink on during Army time appealed to me.
One of the things that has to happen is that you are constantly given a Breathalyzer test, so that not only can you be monitored for health reasons but so that the students can be told how drunk you really are after they run the tests on you. Someone who's learned how to do the FST's has a damn good chance of nailing your BAC within a few points, without the Breathalyzer. So the instructors keep tabs on all the test subjects, and at the end of the course announce to the students what our BAC was while we were being tested.
Now, as I've stated, this was back during my heavy drinking days. I was allowed to bring my own booze, and I chose Southern Comfort 101. I did thirteen shots of it in three hours, or roughly four and a third shots every hour. All on an empty stomach. And I was schnookered, folks. When they tested my BAC, it was at .133, and fell to .113 by the time the students had finished running the FST's on me. Thirteen shots of 101 proof alcohol in three hours, and I was at a .133 BAC.
So now, keeping that in mind, think of just how much someone has to drink to get to the level described in Sebastian's post:
Comer is pictured below in a 2006 mug shot snapped after a prior drunk driving arrest. In that case, her BAC was recorded in the relatively minor .3 range. In November, another Oregon woman, Meagan Harper, was nabbed for drunk driving with an extreme BAC. In her case, Harper’s BAC was measured at .55. Comer’s .72 edges out what TSG has previously identified as the highest BAC we’ve ever seen. That fallen record (.69) was held by Willard Ashley III, an Indiana man who was busted in October 2003. (3 pages)
Great Googly Moogly! That level of intoxication would kill the average joe, yours truly included. The standard rule of thumb when dealing with your average person is this: .1 BAC is drunk. .2 is completely blitzed. .3 is comatose, and .4 is dead. I personally have never seen anything higher than a .45, and that was with a hard core alcoholic who'd been drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels every day for the past ten years.
As an aside, I was never asked to do the drinking again due to a slight *ahem* incident I had with an NCO. There was a certain Staff Sergeant who didn't like me at all, and always took pleasure in tormenting me when he could, no matter how petty the torment was. However, I had been told to get drunk by the Army, so I did. When I was sober, I could just shrug off any comments this SSG made, or deal with whatever order he gave. But under the influence, I didn't have my normal inhibitions.
So SSG Dickhead wandered up to me while I was performing the tests for the students. I was a bit loud, and SSG Dickhead decided to play his normal games. He had already prodded me a few times that day, so I wasn't in a very pleasant mood to deal with him. He interrupted the students, stuck a finger in my face, and said:
"Soldier, you need to shut the hell up!"
To which I promptly replied (and I've tried to spell it just like it sounded):
"Shergeant, you need ta go fuck yourshelf!"SSG Dickhead tried to press UCMJ charges against me, but due to the fact that I was inebriated on the orders of the Army, nothing could be done. Ah well. I've found through my experience that there is always a certain percentage of law enforcement personnel who enjoy bossing people around, throwing their weight around and generally making other folks miserable for their own personal enjoyment. SSG Dickhead was probably one of those people, but it could have been that he just didn't like me. I don't know, and I don't care. Anyways, it's time to go mow the lawn. See you all later.
Friday, January 11, 2008
My response to Mr. Alger
Who left a comment for this post in which I stated that I could not agree to the legalization of drugs.
This is pretty raw, and I might add a few things to it, but reading it through I decided it was long enough.
First I'd like to point out that I did say the War on (some) Drugs has been a resounding failure. Some cities use the War on Drugs as a way to enhance their revenue from seized assets. Some cities use it as an excuse to make their SWAT teams into semi-military forces. And lord knows that the government has taken every inch of power granted them and abused the hell out of it in the name of combating the flow of drugs into their communities.
Granted. So noted.
My point is the damage the drug users cause goes far beyond anything the government does. Let's take the woman who brought me to write that post. She smoked around $700 worth of crack cocaine and ran people over with her car. Now, lets assume that she didn't have a car to begin with, and instead stayed home with her kids.
Just how in the name of all that is holy can anyone be a parent when they're high as a kite? How much damage was done to that woman's children due to her lack of parenting? And yes, I'm going to state up front right now - when you are a serious drug addict, you cannot at the same time be a good parent. Prove me wrong. Try to show me someone who uses crack, meth, heroin, opium, cocaine, crank, ecstasy, or even marijuana on a daily basis who's parenting skills are at average or above average. And you'd better bring one hell of a lot of proof, because I've seen women all too often abandon their children in order to get their next fix. I speak from five years experience as a military police officer, and three years experience of working in a hospital with an addiction recovery center. In my experience, when a woman is forced to choose between getting high or taking care of her kids, the drugs win nine times out of ten.
How can anyone take care of their kids when they are high on some drug or another? How can you prevent that kind of damage from occurring? Because make no mistake about it, this children are going to be a problem that we as a society have to deal with later on down the road.
How many kids are now in foster care or some state sponsored home because their kids were taken away from them due to their drug use? The number a co-worker and I tallied up just from my three years at the hospital was into the THOUSANDS. The sheer cost of that, not just economical, is staggering. Children born addicted to drugs that now need to be taken care of, treated, healed from the very moment they were born. Kids bounced from home to home to home, and all the assorted emotional and mental trauma caused by that. This isn't just a dollar sign here folks, this is damage to our society that we have to deal with for years, decades to come. There is overwhelming evidence that the majority of criminals do not come from stable, healthy two-parent families. Nope. They come from broken homes, one-parent homes where there exists a multitude of problems, including drug use.
How do you hold someone responsible for that? That's not sarcasm, that's an honest question.
Let me address the alcohol argument, because this crops up quite a bit as well. While both alcohol and hard drugs cause intoxication, the difference lies in the degree of intoxication as well as the intent to get intoxicated. For most people one beer is not enough to bring about intoxication, and indeed most folks can go out to dinner, have a beer along with their food and suffer no ill effects. Most drinkers drink to "relax", not to become intoxicated to the point of incapacitation. There is an amount of alcohol that most people can imbibe without even approaching intoxication. However, the hard drugs have no such amount; the goal of hard drugs is intoxication to the point of incapacitation with as small an amount of the drug possible. Comparing drinking alcohol with shooting heroin is not a fair comparison, unless by "drinking" you mean guzzling a fifth of cheap scotch whisky in one shot. Which I have seen done. Yes, alcoholism is a problem, but I do not see the solution as giving license for more of that behavior in the form of other drugs.
Also, while alcohol is a depressant, many of the hard drugs are stimulants or worse. PCP was invented as an anaesthetic, but caused wild rages in many patients. Rodney King was on PCP when he was beaten back in the 90's. Do you know why he was beaten? Try to find the entire tape of the arrest. King was shot twice with tasers, and got back up to continue fighting. Should any one of my readers or I get shot with a taser, we would curl up into the fetal position, possibly wetting ourselves. King kept fighting. THAT is why they did the nightstick boogie on his ass. Me, I would have just shot him.
It's the complete lack of physical stimulus that causes the brain to short circuit on PCP, or at least part of the reason.
Cocaine use can cause delusions, paranoia, and a whole host of other mental issues. Sherm, a.k.a. cigarettes or joints dipped in formaldehyde can cause psychotic hallucination and violent rages that booze can't even begin to touch. Meth has a laundry list of issues that would take another entire blog just to deal with. As many problems alcohol has brought, the hard drugs have brought far, far worse.
Now, let me quote Mark and another commenter on this tangent. Mark Alger:
And commenter Ryan:
Gentlemen, I agree with you on this, I truly do. And I wish that the courts today would look at someone who committed a crime while under the influence of drugs and throw the book at them.
Unfortunately we know that this is not the case. And in some areas, the courts may not be allowed to do what needs to be done. Anyone remember this case? A judge orders a couple not to have kids until the ones they already had are no longer in foster care. The kids, young kids, were testing positive for cocaine because the parents were so fucked up and worthless. The couple would pop out a kid and it would be taken away and placed in foster care. So the judge told them NOT TO HAVE ANY MORE KIDS, since they obviously couldn't take care of the ones they had. In short, the judge told them to be responsible for themselves and their family, or don't have a family. Hell, it sounded like a good idea to me! Later on down the road, the judge was overturned, and that couple was able to keep on snorting coke and popping out kids that the state now had to take care of.
If it were up to me, I would rip out that woman's uterus, remove that man's testicles, and let them go about getting high and screwing all they want to. BUT WE CAN'T DO THAT, not legally. So the kids get massively screwed up, the state (and that means us) have to support the kids, and there's nothing we can do?
I take it back. I wouldn't remove her uterus. I'd just take both of them about back behind a building and blow their heads off, as they are obviously not real human beings. But I can't do that either, can I? Legalization would only exacerbate this problem, not quell it. And until I hear a majority of people say that they are willing to sterilize drug addicts for the good of society, legalizing drugs would just be opening up a Pandora's box of problems for this country.
Yes, I said it. Yes, I'm serious. Sterilize the drug addicts. The damage done to society from drug addict parents failing to raise their children cannot be understated.
And herein lies the problem of demanding that these addicts be held responsible for their actions: if these people were held responsible, I wouldn't have much of a problem with legalizing drugs. But it is almost impossible to hold these people responsible for the damage they do to everyone around them. Either to their children, or to their families as they fail to hold jobs due to their addictions. Or as they steal money, possessions, vehicles, anything to sell so that they can get their fix. Legalizing drugs is not going to fix those problems. Someone tell me how they propose to hold a person responsible when their drug addiction ruins their family, and we as a society have to pick up the pieces? Just what can we as a society do that would fix the problems they've given their children, or their parents, or their spouses?
Are we as a society willing to tell drug addicts "No" when they walk into a hospital and demand millions of dollars of treatment for ailments caused by their drug use? Back in 2005 I wrote a blog post about Harborview Medical Center in Seattle expending over a million dollars on ten patients alone. Drug addicts. That is a million dollars spent on people who have created the problems that needed treatment, with no way to recoup that cost. That million dollars was passed on to the paying customers like yours truly. As I wrote in that post:
I still mean that today, but I don't think this country is ever going to do anything like that.
I don't think that this country is willing to take the steps necessary to prevent drug addicts from causing the harm that they do. And I know from observation that this country is unwilling to hold addicts responsible for their actions. So I cannot in good faith advocate for the legalization of drugs. Should the situation change, then my opinion would probably change as well.
But until that day......... Nope.
This is pretty raw, and I might add a few things to it, but reading it through I decided it was long enough.
First I'd like to point out that I did say the War on (some) Drugs has been a resounding failure. Some cities use the War on Drugs as a way to enhance their revenue from seized assets. Some cities use it as an excuse to make their SWAT teams into semi-military forces. And lord knows that the government has taken every inch of power granted them and abused the hell out of it in the name of combating the flow of drugs into their communities.
Granted. So noted.
My point is the damage the drug users cause goes far beyond anything the government does. Let's take the woman who brought me to write that post. She smoked around $700 worth of crack cocaine and ran people over with her car. Now, lets assume that she didn't have a car to begin with, and instead stayed home with her kids.
Just how in the name of all that is holy can anyone be a parent when they're high as a kite? How much damage was done to that woman's children due to her lack of parenting? And yes, I'm going to state up front right now - when you are a serious drug addict, you cannot at the same time be a good parent. Prove me wrong. Try to show me someone who uses crack, meth, heroin, opium, cocaine, crank, ecstasy, or even marijuana on a daily basis who's parenting skills are at average or above average. And you'd better bring one hell of a lot of proof, because I've seen women all too often abandon their children in order to get their next fix. I speak from five years experience as a military police officer, and three years experience of working in a hospital with an addiction recovery center. In my experience, when a woman is forced to choose between getting high or taking care of her kids, the drugs win nine times out of ten.
How can anyone take care of their kids when they are high on some drug or another? How can you prevent that kind of damage from occurring? Because make no mistake about it, this children are going to be a problem that we as a society have to deal with later on down the road.
How many kids are now in foster care or some state sponsored home because their kids were taken away from them due to their drug use? The number a co-worker and I tallied up just from my three years at the hospital was into the THOUSANDS. The sheer cost of that, not just economical, is staggering. Children born addicted to drugs that now need to be taken care of, treated, healed from the very moment they were born. Kids bounced from home to home to home, and all the assorted emotional and mental trauma caused by that. This isn't just a dollar sign here folks, this is damage to our society that we have to deal with for years, decades to come. There is overwhelming evidence that the majority of criminals do not come from stable, healthy two-parent families. Nope. They come from broken homes, one-parent homes where there exists a multitude of problems, including drug use.
How do you hold someone responsible for that? That's not sarcasm, that's an honest question.
Let me address the alcohol argument, because this crops up quite a bit as well. While both alcohol and hard drugs cause intoxication, the difference lies in the degree of intoxication as well as the intent to get intoxicated. For most people one beer is not enough to bring about intoxication, and indeed most folks can go out to dinner, have a beer along with their food and suffer no ill effects. Most drinkers drink to "relax", not to become intoxicated to the point of incapacitation. There is an amount of alcohol that most people can imbibe without even approaching intoxication. However, the hard drugs have no such amount; the goal of hard drugs is intoxication to the point of incapacitation with as small an amount of the drug possible. Comparing drinking alcohol with shooting heroin is not a fair comparison, unless by "drinking" you mean guzzling a fifth of cheap scotch whisky in one shot. Which I have seen done. Yes, alcoholism is a problem, but I do not see the solution as giving license for more of that behavior in the form of other drugs.
Also, while alcohol is a depressant, many of the hard drugs are stimulants or worse. PCP was invented as an anaesthetic, but caused wild rages in many patients. Rodney King was on PCP when he was beaten back in the 90's. Do you know why he was beaten? Try to find the entire tape of the arrest. King was shot twice with tasers, and got back up to continue fighting. Should any one of my readers or I get shot with a taser, we would curl up into the fetal position, possibly wetting ourselves. King kept fighting. THAT is why they did the nightstick boogie on his ass. Me, I would have just shot him.
It's the complete lack of physical stimulus that causes the brain to short circuit on PCP, or at least part of the reason.
Cocaine use can cause delusions, paranoia, and a whole host of other mental issues. Sherm, a.k.a. cigarettes or joints dipped in formaldehyde can cause psychotic hallucination and violent rages that booze can't even begin to touch. Meth has a laundry list of issues that would take another entire blog just to deal with. As many problems alcohol has brought, the hard drugs have brought far, far worse.
Now, let me quote Mark and another commenter on this tangent. Mark Alger:
The error as I see it here is the same one made in questions of gun rights and control. The instrumentality is not to blame -- it is purely a matter of individual behavior.
And I also believe that because we have (I believe misdirected) so much attention paid to drugs qua drugs, we have diminished the importance of individual behavior. A person can "get away with" misbehavior -- with a lighter sentence, for example -- by claiming diminished capacity, instead of that making it worse, as it should be.
And commenter Ryan:
Here is how I look at it. If the lady had drank a half gallon of vodka before that horrible incident would you suddenly say vodka is the problem? The drug is not the issue, atleast directly. What she did was reckless, dangerous and horribly irresponsible but running over 50 people is what should be illegal, not the substance she was on. Alcohol is involved in half of all arrests nation wide but there is no call to ban it.
Drugs are related to all manner of violent and property crimes. However all of these things are already illegal which is why we call them crimes.
Gentlemen, I agree with you on this, I truly do. And I wish that the courts today would look at someone who committed a crime while under the influence of drugs and throw the book at them.
Unfortunately we know that this is not the case. And in some areas, the courts may not be allowed to do what needs to be done. Anyone remember this case? A judge orders a couple not to have kids until the ones they already had are no longer in foster care. The kids, young kids, were testing positive for cocaine because the parents were so fucked up and worthless. The couple would pop out a kid and it would be taken away and placed in foster care. So the judge told them NOT TO HAVE ANY MORE KIDS, since they obviously couldn't take care of the ones they had. In short, the judge told them to be responsible for themselves and their family, or don't have a family. Hell, it sounded like a good idea to me! Later on down the road, the judge was overturned, and that couple was able to keep on snorting coke and popping out kids that the state now had to take care of.
If it were up to me, I would rip out that woman's uterus, remove that man's testicles, and let them go about getting high and screwing all they want to. BUT WE CAN'T DO THAT, not legally. So the kids get massively screwed up, the state (and that means us) have to support the kids, and there's nothing we can do?
I take it back. I wouldn't remove her uterus. I'd just take both of them about back behind a building and blow their heads off, as they are obviously not real human beings. But I can't do that either, can I? Legalization would only exacerbate this problem, not quell it. And until I hear a majority of people say that they are willing to sterilize drug addicts for the good of society, legalizing drugs would just be opening up a Pandora's box of problems for this country.
Yes, I said it. Yes, I'm serious. Sterilize the drug addicts. The damage done to society from drug addict parents failing to raise their children cannot be understated.
And herein lies the problem of demanding that these addicts be held responsible for their actions: if these people were held responsible, I wouldn't have much of a problem with legalizing drugs. But it is almost impossible to hold these people responsible for the damage they do to everyone around them. Either to their children, or to their families as they fail to hold jobs due to their addictions. Or as they steal money, possessions, vehicles, anything to sell so that they can get their fix. Legalizing drugs is not going to fix those problems. Someone tell me how they propose to hold a person responsible when their drug addiction ruins their family, and we as a society have to pick up the pieces? Just what can we as a society do that would fix the problems they've given their children, or their parents, or their spouses?
Are we as a society willing to tell drug addicts "No" when they walk into a hospital and demand millions of dollars of treatment for ailments caused by their drug use? Back in 2005 I wrote a blog post about Harborview Medical Center in Seattle expending over a million dollars on ten patients alone. Drug addicts. That is a million dollars spent on people who have created the problems that needed treatment, with no way to recoup that cost. That million dollars was passed on to the paying customers like yours truly. As I wrote in that post:
In my opinion, the War on Drugs has been a collossal failure, but not because of the notion that we should allow people to do whatever drugs they want. It's a failure because it attempts to deal with the symptoms of drug use without ever deterring the drug use itself. If I were put in charge of the War on Drugs, I would make a very simple announcement:
Should someone need social or medical services due to their drug use, that person will be denied those services.
If you have an MRSA infection due to sticking yourself with a dirty needle when you did heroin, you don't get taxpayer funded medical treatment. If that means you die, so be it. You did it to yourself. It was your choice. Your "moral judgement about drugs". If you get into an accident because you were drunk, we leave you in your car and tell you to have a nice night. What happens to you is no concern of ours, as you made the choice to drive drunk, not us. Your meth lab caught on fire? We'll stop the fire from spreading to the area around it, but we won't lift a finger to save your place. And if you're burned from the fire, you are denied any public funds to treat your injuries. I hope you made enough money selling meth to cover the costs of the hospital burn center.
And at the very end, the addicts will use the one taxpayer funded service they'll ever use again: The morgue, and the public cemetary.
I still mean that today, but I don't think this country is ever going to do anything like that.
I don't think that this country is willing to take the steps necessary to prevent drug addicts from causing the harm that they do. And I know from observation that this country is unwilling to hold addicts responsible for their actions. So I cannot in good faith advocate for the legalization of drugs. Should the situation change, then my opinion would probably change as well.
But until that day......... Nope.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A Good Cigar
There's a local cigar company that has a shop at the PX here on Ft. Buchanan. Don Rey Cigars. I tried to get a link to their website, but it seems to be offline for right now. Maybe it's just me.
Anyways, they rolled the World's longest cigar, right at the Ft. Buchanan PX. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records. 135 feet and 2 inches, if I recall correct. The Ragin' Mrs. and I helped roll it, along with about 50 or so other people.
The photo is of their master roller putting the wrapper on the cigar. I tried to find it on the Guinness Book website, but it came up with "no result found". Then again, I tried to put "world's longest" and into their search engine, and came up with "no result found". So maybe it's not just me. But they were certified, and have the certificate hanging up in their store at the PX.
That's me in the middle in the grey shirt. The reason I'm blogging on this is because last night I smoked one of their robustos with a Connecticut wrapper, and it was one of the best cigars I've had in a while. It was damn good. I had bought two of them, because I always share with a friend of mine, and we both agreed it was one of the best cigars we'd ever had of theirs. I wanted to share the link with anyone who liked good cigars, but since their website appears to have problems that will have to wait for another day.
And hell, I always enjoy posting photos.
Anyways, they rolled the World's longest cigar, right at the Ft. Buchanan PX. It's in the Guinness Book of World Records. 135 feet and 2 inches, if I recall correct. The Ragin' Mrs. and I helped roll it, along with about 50 or so other people.
The photo is of their master roller putting the wrapper on the cigar. I tried to find it on the Guinness Book website, but it came up with "no result found". Then again, I tried to put "world's longest" and into their search engine, and came up with "no result found". So maybe it's not just me. But they were certified, and have the certificate hanging up in their store at the PX.
That's me in the middle in the grey shirt. The reason I'm blogging on this is because last night I smoked one of their robustos with a Connecticut wrapper, and it was one of the best cigars I've had in a while. It was damn good. I had bought two of them, because I always share with a friend of mine, and we both agreed it was one of the best cigars we'd ever had of theirs. I wanted to share the link with anyone who liked good cigars, but since their website appears to have problems that will have to wait for another day.
And hell, I always enjoy posting photos.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
The Delegate Count for the (R)'s
Lets see... as of Iowa, Wyoming and New Hampshire:
Somehow... not news? Mitt Romney(R) should "drop out"?!?
Is it an accident the state with no (D)emocrats, Wyoming, got no MainStreamMedia coverage?
Cross Posted at DANEgerus
Counts revised per Powerline
Mitt Romney .... 24
Huckabee ....... 18
McCain ......... 10
Thompson ........ 8
Paul ............ 4
Guiliani ........ 1
Hunter .......... 1
Somehow... not news? Mitt Romney(R) should "drop out"?!?
Is it an accident the state with no (D)emocrats, Wyoming, got no MainStreamMedia coverage?
Cross Posted at DANEgerus
Counts revised per Powerline
Hey, you know what would help with this?
A FENCE!
This might just tie in with my post below - would you like to know one of the best ways to fight the cycle of drugs in our streets?
Stop them from getting to our streets in the first place.
How about building A DAMN FENCE across our Southern border, so that Pedro can't just walk his drugs into this country and to the city of his choice? Hmmmmmmm? Sounds like a good idea to me? And maybe then we can stop the illigal aliens from crossing at will too! Wow, what a concept! Oh, and those terrorists who want to get into this country? Yeah, a fence would slow them down as well! But building a fence would mean that the Federal gummint would have to first grow a set of balls and tell Mexico that if they didn't like the idea of a fence, well, TOO DAMN BAD! Stop exporting your problems into this country!
There are so many reasons to build a fence on the Mexican border that it's not funny. Actually, it hasn't been funny for quite some time. I don't know about you, but the idea of drug cartels with automatic weapons and HAND GRENADES being able to cross our border to push their drugs into this country doesn't exactly fill me with peace and happiness.
MEXICO CITY — Three U.S. residents and seven other suspects arrested in a deadly shootout just across the border from Texas are members of the powerful Gulf drug cartel, Mexican officials said.
The gunfire, which left three people dead, broke out around noon Monday when Mexican federal agents chased a van full of people carrying assault weapons in the town of Rio Bravo, across the border from Donna, Texas, according to a government statement.
The army and federal police sent reinforcements after the suspects took shelter and
began detonating grenades, Federal Public Safety assistant secretary Jose Patricio Patino told reporters Tuesday.
This might just tie in with my post below - would you like to know one of the best ways to fight the cycle of drugs in our streets?
Stop them from getting to our streets in the first place.
How about building A DAMN FENCE across our Southern border, so that Pedro can't just walk his drugs into this country and to the city of his choice? Hmmmmmmm? Sounds like a good idea to me? And maybe then we can stop the illigal aliens from crossing at will too! Wow, what a concept! Oh, and those terrorists who want to get into this country? Yeah, a fence would slow them down as well! But building a fence would mean that the Federal gummint would have to first grow a set of balls and tell Mexico that if they didn't like the idea of a fence, well, TOO DAMN BAD! Stop exporting your problems into this country!
There are so many reasons to build a fence on the Mexican border that it's not funny. Actually, it hasn't been funny for quite some time. I don't know about you, but the idea of drug cartels with automatic weapons and HAND GRENADES being able to cross our border to push their drugs into this country doesn't exactly fill me with peace and happiness.
Another reason....
.....for why I cannot support legalization of drugs.
If drugs only hurt the person using them, it wouldn't be a problem. But anyone who thinks that the only person getting harmed is the user needs to re-evaluate exactly what happens to the rest of society when a a person becomes a drug addict.
You cannot tell me that a drug user only harms themself. The damage done by addicts to the rest of society runs pretty deep, from the economic cost of treating the addicts, to the physical cost done by the addicts, the the damage that cannot have a price put on it done to the people who have to deal with the addict day in and day out. And while the War on (some) Drugs has been a resounding failure, I can't in good faith say that we should just legalize everything, because that would create an entirely new set of problems that I think would be worse than the ones we're dealing with now.
WASHINGTON — A woman who injured nearly 50 people when she plowed her car through a street festival while high on crack cocaine was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday.
If drugs only hurt the person using them, it wouldn't be a problem. But anyone who thinks that the only person getting harmed is the user needs to re-evaluate exactly what happens to the rest of society when a a person becomes a drug addict.
According to prosecutors, Bell had gone on a crack binge in the 24 hours before the street festival, consuming $700 worth of the drug. She then placed her 7-year-old daughter in the back seat of her station wagon and headed toward Unifest, a church-sponsored street festival in
At speeds of up to 70 mph, Bell made two passes through the area, knocking people to the side and under the car. A police officer who tried to pull her over said she was laughing as she drove. Her station wagon was finally stopped when officers crashed their scooters under the vehicle and a man jumped through the window to put the transmission in park.
You cannot tell me that a drug user only harms themself. The damage done by addicts to the rest of society runs pretty deep, from the economic cost of treating the addicts, to the physical cost done by the addicts, the the damage that cannot have a price put on it done to the people who have to deal with the addict day in and day out. And while the War on (some) Drugs has been a resounding failure, I can't in good faith say that we should just legalize everything, because that would create an entirely new set of problems that I think would be worse than the ones we're dealing with now.
RE : The educated ignorant
To the Raging_Mrs,
I really don't mean this as a challenge, but rather an indirect answer to your question. I can't explain why stupid e-mails get forwarded, but I would like to bloviate about the subject of that e-mail.
While I concede that particular e-mail is full of exaggerations, and lies, Snopes is guilty of beating the 'strawman' without actually addressing any of the real issues about Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
Is Barack Hussein Obama Jr a Muslim? No... but when the MainStreamMedia print articles about Mitt Romney's relatives being polygamists 140 years ago it begs the question. Wasn't the late Barack Hussein Obama Sr. a Muslim polygamist?
Was either circumstance illegal? Immoral? No... but BHO Sr's story is a bit more timely then the "News" about Mitt. Say, about 140 years more timely.
And although long debunked, wasn't it Hillary(D)'s own top advisor Bob Kerry(D) calling Barack Hussein Obama Jr a Muslim while blaming the (R)epublicans?
Yeah... it was... Hhmmmm.
The myth actually depends upon the Muslim belief that apostasy is punishable by death and by implication Barack Hussein Obama Jr cannot leave the faith without condemnation to that sentence. Wasn't Barack Hussein Obama Jr first step-father also a Muslim? Hhmmmm...
Here is a better question. Is Barack Hussein Obama Jr. a Christian? He's certainly played the moral-supremacy card, much like Huckabee(R), by condemning 'those' Christians as... Too Christian?
Really? “hijacked” by the “Christian Right”? Really? Well... let's look at Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the "Mentor" to Barack Hussein Obama Jr. who coined the phrase "audacity of hope" Tom Maguire commented
Is visiting a terrorist supporting tyrant alongside a racist hater like Louis Farrakhan behaving like a good Christian?
Kyle-Anne Shiver has some of Rev Jeremiah Wright's sermons
So... Barack Hussein Obama Jr isn't a Muslim... and he is a Christian. Uh huh. If you call sitting in the front pew of Rev Wright's "church" next to Oprah, listening to such false-hoods, "Christianity".
But what about some of the other issues that Snopes evaded or ignored? Because by declaring the e-mail "False", and selectively debunking a few of the subjects raised, Snopes suggests that the entire e-mail was a collection of lies. Yet:
Barack Hussein Obama Jr lives in a home purchased with the assistance of a mobster, Tony Rezko...
Barack Hussein Obama Jr is one of the Ten Most Corrupt Political Figures of 2007...
Barack Hussein Obama Jr :No Hand on Heart for National Anthem. Judge the picture, and video, for yourself.
Barack Hussein Obama Jr Won't wear an American flag pin...
The real question isn't why won't he wear an American flag pin, but why he so publicly declared he was going to stop, and what kind of statement that makes for a Presidential candidate.
Kyle-Anne Shiver has MhoreOn Barack Hussein Obama Jr
Yes. That's right. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. has refused to do his job as a Senator and yet is now claiming he is qualified for the Presidency. So I ask you, all kidding aside, would anyone take this close associate of Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright seriously if he wasn't the 'correct' pigmentation?
The man has done nothing, yet he has released two biographies, one titled, The Audacity of Hope... Hmmm... audacity can mean
...or forward e-mail smears.
I really don't mean this as a challenge, but rather an indirect answer to your question. I can't explain why stupid e-mails get forwarded, but I would like to bloviate about the subject of that e-mail.
While I concede that particular e-mail is full of exaggerations, and lies, Snopes is guilty of beating the 'strawman' without actually addressing any of the real issues about Barack Hussein Obama Jr.
Is Barack Hussein Obama Jr a Muslim? No... but when the MainStreamMedia print articles about Mitt Romney's relatives being polygamists 140 years ago it begs the question. Wasn't the late Barack Hussein Obama Sr. a Muslim polygamist?
Was either circumstance illegal? Immoral? No... but BHO Sr's story is a bit more timely then the "News" about Mitt. Say, about 140 years more timely.
And although long debunked, wasn't it Hillary(D)'s own top advisor Bob Kerry(D) calling Barack Hussein Obama Jr a Muslim while blaming the (R)epublicans?
Yeah... it was... Hhmmmm.
The myth actually depends upon the Muslim belief that apostasy is punishable by death and by implication Barack Hussein Obama Jr cannot leave the faith without condemnation to that sentence. Wasn't Barack Hussein Obama Jr first step-father also a Muslim? Hhmmmm...
Here is a better question. Is Barack Hussein Obama Jr. a Christian? He's certainly played the moral-supremacy card, much like Huckabee(R), by condemning 'those' Christians as... Too Christian?
Really? “hijacked” by the “Christian Right”? Really? Well... let's look at Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the "Mentor" to Barack Hussein Obama Jr. who coined the phrase "audacity of hope" Tom Maguire commented
I'd certainly be more comfortable with a presidential nominee whose main spiritual man:
1) hadn't visited Col. Qaddafi (even back in '84);
2) talked less about "oppression" and "this racist United States of America;"
3) when discussing the solution to poverty, talked more about individual achievement and less about the role of "community"--including maybe even celebrating "middleclassness" instead of using it as shorthand for selfishness;
4) in general wasn't so obsessed with race--as evidenced most negatively in talk of "white arrogance" and derogatory reference to the "Great White West." ...
Is visiting a terrorist supporting tyrant alongside a racist hater like Louis Farrakhan behaving like a good Christian?
How about some video of Rev Jeremiah Wright's Message
Kyle-Anne Shiver has some of Rev Jeremiah Wright's sermons
"Fact number one: We've got more black men in prison than there are in college," he intones.More on the Rev?
"Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!"
"We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional KILLERS. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. . . . We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. . . . We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means!"
The crowd whoops and amens as Wright builds to his climax: "And. And. And! GAWD! Has GOT! To be SICK! OF THIS S**T!"
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular attendee at Wright's services in his inner city mega church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its other 8,500 members, he's been a close disciple and personal friend of Wright. Wright conducted Obama's marriage to his wife Michelle, baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama's Chicago home.
...
Wright on 9/11: "White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns." On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: "Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months."
Wright on Israel: "The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism."
Wright on America: He has used the term "middleclassness" in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions "white arrogance" and the "oppression" of African-Americans today; and has referred to "this racist United States of America.
"In 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views. . . . " -- Taranto
On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that "people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just 'disappeared' as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns."-- Taranto
"...as a presidential candidate, Obama does owe voters some clarification on where he does and does not agree with Wright. Does Obama agree with Wright that the US is the “United States of white America?” Is he running for the presidency of that country, or the one that actually exists?" -- Bryan at Hot Air
So... Barack Hussein Obama Jr isn't a Muslim... and he is a Christian. Uh huh. If you call sitting in the front pew of Rev Wright's "church" next to Oprah, listening to such false-hoods, "Christianity".
But what about some of the other issues that Snopes evaded or ignored? Because by declaring the e-mail "False", and selectively debunking a few of the subjects raised, Snopes suggests that the entire e-mail was a collection of lies. Yet:
Barack Hussein Obama Jr lives in a home purchased with the assistance of a mobster, Tony Rezko...
Barack Hussein Obama Jr is one of the Ten Most Corrupt Political Figures of 2007...
Barack Hussein Obama Jr :No Hand on Heart for National Anthem. Judge the picture, and video, for yourself.
Barack Hussein Obama Jr Won't wear an American flag pin...
The real question isn't why won't he wear an American flag pin, but why he so publicly declared he was going to stop, and what kind of statement that makes for a Presidential candidate.
Kyle-Anne Shiver has MhoreOn Barack Hussein Obama Jr
Barack Obama had just graduated from Columbia and was looking for a job. Some white leftists were looking for someone who could recruit in a black neighborhood in the south side of Chicago.So... a closet-Marxist who was handed a state Senate seat by the Daly-machine in Chicago, won the Senate seat after the divorce records of his (R)epublican opponent were illegally released to the Press allowing him to run virtually unopposed, who lives in a home partially paid for by a mobster, and who has exactly zero legislative accomplishments... wants to be President?
Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Obama was 24 years old, unmarried, very accustomed to a vagabond existence, and according to his memoir, searching for a genuine African-American community.
Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned how to "rub raw the sores of discontent," in Alinsky's words.
One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method was Mike Kruglik, who had this to say to an Ryan Lizza of The New Republic, about Obama:"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."The agitator's job, according to Alinsky, is first to bring folks to the "realization" that they are indeed miserable, that their misery is the fault of unresponsive governments or greedy corporations, then help them to bond together to demand what they deserve, and to make such an almighty stink that the dastardly governments and corporations will see imminent "self-interest" in granting whatever it is that will cause the harassment to cease.
In these methods, euphemistically labeled "community organizing,"...
Yes. That's right. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. has refused to do his job as a Senator and yet is now claiming he is qualified for the Presidency. So I ask you, all kidding aside, would anyone take this close associate of Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright seriously if he wasn't the 'correct' pigmentation?
The man has done nothing, yet he has released two biographies, one titled, The Audacity of Hope... Hmmm... audacity can mean
"...boldness or daring, esp. with confident or arrogant disregard for personal safety, conventional thought, or other restrictions" or "effrontery or insolence"I think those definitions better reflect the delusional arrogance of a prosylatizer of hate like Rev. Jeremiah Wright then of the uninformed who would vote for Barack Hussein Obama Jr. ...
...or forward e-mail smears.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Love what you've done with the place, Dave.
Was that fun - messing with the template to add those blogrolls 'n stuff???
Holy Crap!
Go. Read. This. For those of you who have already seen it, my apologies. But I've been rather busy lately, so this is the first time I've laid eyes on it.
It ain't about the environment, folks. It never has been. IT'S ABOUT THE DAMN MONEY!
Well, if that doesn't just encapsulate the watermelons of the Left in two paragraphs, I don't know what does.A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference. A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations....”
“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
It ain't about the environment, folks. It never has been. IT'S ABOUT THE DAMN MONEY!
Sound and Fury
And suckers. In the P.T. Barnum meaning of the word. Most people know of my displeasure with modern music. You can do a lot with sound in a studio, and most bands do. I've heard a band or artist on the radio, and when I went to see them live they sucked. That's one of the reasons I got the KT Tunstall CD; she sounds as good live as she does on the radio. It's not just some studio geek making her sound good, she's actually talented.
But now I find out that music labels are even ruining the music that I do enjoy. You can go spend some time reading that post. It's an eye opener, to be sure. And you want to know what I find rather funny? As the quality of music goes even farther down the cesspool, the equipment people are buying gets more and more expensive. Seriously. I agree wholeheartedly with Steve H. and the Baron. Why in the hell are people spending thousands of dollars on equipment like that, especially when the quality they're trying to hear in the music no longer exists due to assholes who master the CD?
I've got more to say on this subject, but I need to collect my thoughts and write them down in a way that will make sense to everyone. But in the meantime, go read that first link. It's worth it.
But now I find out that music labels are even ruining the music that I do enjoy. You can go spend some time reading that post. It's an eye opener, to be sure. And you want to know what I find rather funny? As the quality of music goes even farther down the cesspool, the equipment people are buying gets more and more expensive. Seriously. I agree wholeheartedly with Steve H. and the Baron. Why in the hell are people spending thousands of dollars on equipment like that, especially when the quality they're trying to hear in the music no longer exists due to assholes who master the CD?
I've got more to say on this subject, but I need to collect my thoughts and write them down in a way that will make sense to everyone. But in the meantime, go read that first link. It's worth it.
Monday, January 07, 2008
The educated ignorant
The Raging_Dave and I are not people to surround ourselves with stupid, ignorant or obtuse people.
I recently received an email from a friend of ours who is highly educated and intelligent. She is a wonderful and giving person, who will support her friends and family to the death. I will also say, she occasionally has "off" moments, that don't happen to the rest of the universe.
The email was about Barack Obama. It stated that he was a *radical muslim* who hides his religious leanings, refused to use the Bible to swear in, but instead used the Koran, and refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegience.
This email further referenced www.snopes.com as confirming these *"facts"*.
OK, I went to www.snopes.com and searched for Obama and Muslimand found out that it is all a bunch of tripe.
Guys you know how the Raging_Dave gets hot under the collar. At times, I am not much better.
I hit "reply all", not just to the email I received, but the previous sender as well. I sent the following message:
" Despite what this letter is saying, I looked on www.snopes.com and typed in Obama Muslim. Snopes says this is complete and total BS. Please check your sources before you forward such tripe. Never email me this kind of thing again!!!!"
Here is what kills me folks, one of the people, whom I also know, and believe to be an educated woman, replied that it was correct, and sent me a Snopes link that was about a his *Christian* Church that espouses "the Black Value System, and urges commitment to the Black Community, the Black Family, and the Black Work Ethic".
So, here is where my problems lie...
1- I know these women can read
2- Are they so used to the "liberal media" that they are unable to understand simple context
3- why the HELL are the passing on BOGUS information that is not only *not confirmed* but outright falsified by the source they cite.
I don't get it...
Can *someone, anyone* please explain it to me????
PLEASE
I recently received an email from a friend of ours who is highly educated and intelligent. She is a wonderful and giving person, who will support her friends and family to the death. I will also say, she occasionally has "off" moments, that don't happen to the rest of the universe.
The email was about Barack Obama. It stated that he was a *radical muslim* who hides his religious leanings, refused to use the Bible to swear in, but instead used the Koran, and refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegience.
This email further referenced www.snopes.com as confirming these *"facts"*.
OK, I went to www.snopes.com and searched for Obama and Muslim
Guys you know how the Raging_Dave gets hot under the collar. At times, I am not much better.
I hit "reply all", not just to the email I received, but the previous sender as well. I sent the following message:
"
Here is what kills me folks, one of the people, whom I also know, and believe to be an educated woman, replied that it was correct, and sent me a Snopes link that was about a his *Christian* Church that espouses "the Black Value System, and urges commitment to the Black Community, the Black Family, and the Black Work Ethic".
So, here is where my problems lie...
1- I know these women can read
2- Are they so used to the "liberal media" that they are unable to understand simple context
3- why the HELL are the passing on BOGUS information that is not only *not confirmed* but outright falsified by the source they cite.
I don't get it...
Can *someone, anyone* please explain it to me????
PLEASE
Sunday, January 06, 2008
OK, someone answer me this
Just how fucked up do you have to be in order for a judge to grant full custody of your kids to Kevin Federline?
I mean, seriously. Just how hard has that girl hit the bottom? Or has she even hit the bottom yet? Does she have a ways more to fall?
Someone please take her parents out and horeswhip them until they reach ambient temperature. And have them do the same to Britney, please, since that's about the ONLY FUCKING WAY I CAN STOP HEARING ABOUT THEM ALL!
I mean, seriously. Just how hard has that girl hit the bottom? Or has she even hit the bottom yet? Does she have a ways more to fall?
Someone please take her parents out and horeswhip them until they reach ambient temperature. And have them do the same to Britney, please, since that's about the ONLY FUCKING WAY I CAN STOP HEARING ABOUT THEM ALL!
Why we need Fred Thompson to be the nominee
Folks, Fred Thompson is the type of man we've wanted to run for President for the past twelve or sixteen years. We've been screaming for a conservative candidate to actually step up to the plate, and now that he has we need to give him our support. Call that a bit presumptuous if you will, but that's the way I see it.
All the other candidates are mostly talking about how super-duper they are. Thompson is actually putting his ideas out into the USA.
Can the other candidates say anything like what Thompson has said? WILL they say anything like that? I don't think so, otherwise they would have done it sometime during the past year while they were all out campaigning.
Oh, and there's another debate tonight. Great.
All the other candidates are mostly talking about how super-duper they are. Thompson is actually putting his ideas out into the USA.
Can the other candidates say anything like what Thompson has said? WILL they say anything like that? I don't think so, otherwise they would have done it sometime during the past year while they were all out campaigning.
Oh, and there's another debate tonight. Great.