So Dave, where ya been today?

Sitting in a doctor's office, all day, waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Did I mention it was all day? I did? Let me say it again. ALL DAY. WAITING.

You want a socialist health care system? Come on down to Puerto Rico! Give it a whirl! You make an appointment, you're given a time, and then you find out it's first come first serve!

When the Ragin' Mrs. was having back problems, we were sent to a neurologist to see if there was any permanent damage. We were told "Be there at 8:00 AM". So as we're collecting our paperwork, the nurse leans over to me and says "You might want to show up at 6 instead. It's first come, first serve."

Say what? Yes, I had heard her correctly. First come, first serve. So the wife and I arrived at that doctor's office at 5:30 in the morning, and we were SEVENTH IN LINE. Think about that.

Today was no different. The "appointment" was for 12:00. We got there at 10:30, and we were third in line. So we signed in, and went to get some lunch. Came back at 11:30. Sat down. And waited. And waited. And waited.

And waited.







And waited.





Guess what? We waited some more. This was the second day in a row we'd sat around and waited to see the doctor. Now, in the Doc's defense, he's a damn good doctor and he's not the one who set up this bullshit schedule. So we were happy to finally be able to see him, and then get the hell back home. So that's what I've been doing all day. Between sitting in a doctor's waiting room surrounded by loud people, followed up by driving in rush hour traffic in San Juan, I'm ready to either guzzle a fifth of scotch or go on a killing spree.

Do we have any scotch? Please?

Want some Dragon Skin body armor?

Granted, the person selling it doesn't think that anyone should ever wear it in combat. And the seller happens to be Micheal Yon.

Dragon Skin for sale: I paid approximately $4,000 for this body armor but would not recommend it to any buyer who plans to use it in combat. I do not like Dragon Skin for various reasons. The Dragon Skin is too heavy and also relatively difficult to wear. If you fall in the water with this body armor, I think you will drown before you can shed the Dragon Skin, or if you are trapped in tangled wreckage after an IED, you will have an extremely difficult time shedding the Dragon Skin. There is no quick release and it’s plain hard to get in and out of. I talked with a Special Forces soldier some months ago about body armor. His humvee was hit with an EFP and was burning. He said that if not for the quick release on his armor, he said he would have burned up.

Again, please do not buy this for combat. There are cheaper body armors that are better. I’m starting the bid at $1 and will use the proceeds to return to Iraq at the end of January.

You can only wear so much body armor before it begins to affect you in rather detrimental ways. To wit, I don't care how much armor you're wearing; if you can't move out of the way of the incoming bullets fast enough, you're going to get hit somewhere the armor doesn't cover.

Health Care Success Stories

And they ain't coming from the government. Bruce of No Looking Backwards has a post about healthcare clinics that have been popping up at supermarkets, Wal-Marts and other stores around the country. He's also got links to other blogger reactions. It's well worth the read.

Bottom line is this: The free market can provide better healthcare with less cost than the government. And the nanny-statists are shrieking about it for all they're worth.

Piss on 'em all.

UPDATE: I remembered seeing a review of one of those clinics on Instapundit. Found it.

I will never go to a regular doctor for a minor, routine illness again. Sick and wanting an appointment immediately, I went to one of those medical clinics in Wal-Mart. I got in almost immediately, everyone on the staff was extremely friendly, and it only cost $59. Wow. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed.

I'll have to post something later about clinics like that. But, yeah, later.

A Call to Help

****BUMPED, and updated****

As of yesterday, the Byrne's have raised almost two-thirds of what they need. According to folks who know, it's that last bit that's the hardest to raise. They're better off than they were last week, but they're not out of the woods yet. So I'm going to try to keep this post at the top just so folks know about it.


*******


One of the good guys on the 'net has been caught in a bit of difficulty. Short short version, he needs some cash. You can read the long version for yourself. Unfortunately I don't have much cash, so I'm auctioning off one of my cameras for him. If you're looking for a camera, or you know of someone who's looking for a camera, send them to this Ebay auction. It's a Mintolta X-700 35mm SLR camera. It comes with a Mintolta 50mm 1:2 lens, a Tamron f1:4.5/80-205mm zoom lens, and a Vivitar 3X Teleconverter. It's a good camera. I've taken some damn good pictures with it. Here's a few:

This picture was taken at Harvard University in Boston. It used the 50mm lens.


After I took this shot, I changed the lens to the zoom lens with the 3X teleconverter. I stood in the exact same place, and took this shot.


It's one of the gargoyles hanging off the cathedral. Take a look at the first picture. Those tiny little nubs coming off of the corners about halfway up? Yep. That's them.

It's a good camera. If it weren't for the fact that the Byrne's needed the money, I wouldn't be selling it.

Luckily I still have two other cameras. Anyways, spread the word. I'd like to get as much as possible for them.

A vote for Barack Hussein Obama is a vote for Louis Farrahkan

In the middle of the race for the Democrat party nomination for President Barack Hussein Obama's personal "Mentor", the Minister of Hate, "Rev" Jeremiah Wright, decided to give Nation Of Islam hate-monger Louis Farrakhan an award:

“When Minister Louis Farrakhan speaks, America listens…For his commitment to truth, education and leadership, we honor Minister Louis Farrakhan with the Rev. Jeremiah W. Wright Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award.” -- Barack Hussein Obama's personal Mentor, the Minister of Hate, "Rev" Jeremiah Wright

Uh... "truth"?

Maybe for Wright and some others, Farrakhan “epitomized greatness.” For most Americans, though, Farrakhan epitomizes racism, particularly in the form of anti-Semitism. Over the years, he has compiled an awesome record of offensive statements, even denigrating the Holocaust by falsely attributing it to Jewish cooperation with Hitler — “They helped him get the Third Reich on the road.” His history is a rancid stew of lies. -- Richard Cohen

Bryan at HotAir sums up:

Farrakhan is one of the country’s most bizarre, most repulsive, most openly racist, most offensive public figures. Yet Obama’s minister lauded Farrakhan with an award for epitomizing “greatness.” What’s doubly strange about the Farrakhan award is that Obama’s is a Christian church. Why would a Christian church magazine laud a racist radical Muslim? It’s impossible to get past concluding that it did so because, while it disagrees with Farrakhan on religious matters, it agrees with him on political and racial matters and those agreements trump the religious disagreement.

Is this what Obama meant when he said some people aren't the right sort of Christian?

Is Barack Hussein Obama's "Rev" really the kind of "Christian" you've ever heard of?

Given that Barack Hussein Obama's father is Kenyan, and he grew up in Hawaii, going to private schools... isn't this a bit... cynically exploitive:

"He is, it turns out, perfectly willing to let this racial stew fester, so long as he thinks it will work to his advantage -- even though the controversy is totally baseless, and he knows it. That suggests to me that, as president, he would let any racial controversy fester if he deems it politically advantageous." -- Brendan Loy

Is there a better illustration of the MainStreamMedia's partisanship then the cover they provide for the race-baiting haters that are so close to Barack Hussein Obama?

Yet next to Hillary(D), Barack still looks good.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

Update... the Rev: Obama’s Spiritual Mentor Brings Up Monica

Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton “because her husband was good to us,” he continued.

“That’s not true,” he thundered. “He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky.”

So... if the Mormon Church gave David Duke of the KKK a lifetime achievement award, would the MainStreamMedia rush to preemptively report that Mitt Romney(R) is "distancing himself" from that act?

Yet this is Barack Hussein Obama's "Mentor"... and Ed Lasky isn't buying it:Obama 'repudiates' Farrakhan?

This statement by Obama is a political maneuver that should be given little credence. Obama is very actively involved in his church; he knew of this award long before Richard Cohen publicized its grant to Farrakhan. Furthermore, Pastor Wright has had a long relationship and alliance with Louis Farrakhan.

Obama did not object to these ties between Pastor Wright and Farrakhan before; nor has Obama rejected the anti-Israel diatribes of Wright. Regardless, Obama adheres to a church and a minister that have long espoused positions inimical to the American-Israel relationship, let alone the trumpeting of black values and racial exclusiveness.

Yet another pile-on, IBD on Obama's Church

At the core of the Democratic front-runner's faith — whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two — is African nativism, which raises political issues of its own.

In 1991, when Obama joined the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he pledged allegiance to something called the Black Value System, which is a code of non-Biblical ethics written by blacks, for blacks.

It encourages blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders. Such racial separatism is strangely at odds with the media's portrayal of Obama as a uniter who reaches across races.

The code also warns blacks to avoid the white "entrapment of black middle-classness," suggesting that settling for that kind of "competitive" success will rob blacks of their African identity and keep them "captive" to white culture.

In short, Obama's "unashamedly black" church preaches the politics of black nationalism.
...
Wright makes the Rev. Jesse Jackson look almost moderate and patriotic. Yet this is whom Obama picked to baptize his daughters, plus to act as his "sounding board" during his presidential run.

The candidate already has heeded his church's "nonnegotiable commitment to Africa," spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis, for one. Obama has close family ties to Kenya, and even founded a school in his ancestral village — the Senator Obama School.

In the bloody conflict there, which already has claimed some 700 lives, Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga, head of the same Luo tribe to which Obama's late Muslim father belonged.

Obama's older brother still lives there. Abongo "Roy" Obama is a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urges his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.

Beyond family politics, these ties have potential foreign policy, even national security, implications.

Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country. He has also vowed to ban booze and pork and impose Muslim dress codes on women — moves favored by Obama's brother.

With al-Qaida strengthening its beachheads in Africa — from Algeria to Sudan to Somalia — the last thing the West needs is for pro-Western Kenya to fall into the hands of Islamic extremists.

Yet Obama interrupted his New Hampshire campaigning to speak by phone with Odinga, who claims to be his cousin. He did not speak with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki.

Soooo... Barack Hussein Obama's brother is in alliance, and has tribal ties, to a Marxist revolutionary working in alliance with Al-Qaeda style Islamofascists, who Barack Hussein Obama chats with on the phone... but that isn't news?

Will it become news if the riots over Odinga's defeat in the Presidential election turn tribal>

The response from the MainStreamMedia? Same as the apologists: "*Yawn*"

My New Year's Wish

I wish that this cartoon was shown in every public school in the country.

Anyone know where I can get a copy?

Woah

Post removed since my dumb ass didn't see that DANE had posted it yesterday.

Gun Bigots

I don't know who first referred to "gun bigots", but I think it's a great way to call out those who would deny Americans their constitutional rights. And that's what I was thinking when I first read this:

In arguing that the Second Amendment case now before the Supreme Court shouldn't have any bearing on state gun control laws, Attorney General Cuomo is finding himself largely alone among state attorneys general.

Mr. Cuomo filed a brief, signed onto by only four other states and Puerto Rico, to the federal high court last week in District of Columbia v. Heller, which will be heard in March. In the case, the Supreme Court will review whether Washington, D.C., residents have a right under the Second Amendment to keep handguns at home for self-protection. The District of Columbia has what amounts to a blanket ban on handguns.

Let's look at who signed this brief, shall we?

The brief, prepared by Mr. Cuomo's office, is joined by Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico.

I don't know much about Hawaii or Maryland, but I know that the crime rates for New Jersey and Massachusetts is up there. And since I happen to be living in Puerto Rico right now, why don't I expound a bit on that, Hmmmmm?

Let me start by telling you about La Pearla. La Pearla is a barrio right outside the northern walls of Old San Juan. It occupies maybe five to ten acres of land, squeezed in between the wall and the Atlantic Ocean. It's known as an area controlled by gangs, drug lords and criminals. A couple of years ago, the Feds decided that they were going to go into La Pearla in order to pick up a criminal they knew to be living in there.

They made it about 100 feet before their cars were turned into Swiss cheese. No lives were lost, but they made a hasty retreat, and have never attempted anything like that again. They came up against too much firepower.

Now, keeping that in mind, let me inform you that gun laws in Puerto Rico are stricter than almost anywhere else I've been in the USA. You have to apply for a permit to get a gun. And if you are allowed by the corrupt, shit-eating bastards in the PR gummint to buy the gun, you must then apply for a permit to travel with it. If you wish to carry it with you, that's another permit. One of my co-workers added it all up, and figured that you might spend $2,000 in permits just to be able to get a firearm, IF, and let me restate that, IF the gummint allows you to buy one.

So, just how did those criminals in La Pearla get all those firearms?

I had to leave my guns in my father's gun safe when I PCS'ed down here, because there's no guarantee that the Puerto Rican gummint would even allow me to have those weapons. And if they were in my household goods, that means that I don't get my household goods delivered.

And yet, the drug lords of La Pearla have enough firepower to keep the cops well away from their barrio.

I was once lamenting the fact that since I didn't have my weapons, I couldn't go to the range to practice. A fellow Soldier told me "Oh, I can get you a gun if you want it." I asked about the permits. He stated "I didn't say it would be a legal gun, but I can get one if you want it."

Guns, illegal guns are easy to get, cheap to buy, and everywhere on the streets. And yet a law-abiding citizen can't buy a gun without jumping through multiple hoops and the possibility that the gummint will tell them "Nope. You can't buy one. Thanks for the permit fees."

Did I mention that the crime rate here in Puerto Rico is astronomical? Oh yeah. People either live in a gated community with private security guards, or they have bars on their doors, bars over their windows, barred and locked garages. It's like a prison everywhere you go. Bars and locks, bars and locks, on everything from private homes to shops. Until you get to about the third or fourth floor of a building, and then the bars seem to peter out. The gated communities have barbed wire on the walls, razor wire, I've even seen broken glass sticking out of the top of the concrete.

Forget the white picket fence. Here in Puerto Rico, it's white iron bars with multiple locks on them.

And yet people keep dying, murdered by some criminal or another. Here's a link from 2004, that shows the murder rate for NINE MONTHS was 574 murders. In 2003 for that same time period, it was 604. Puerto Rico has a homicide rate three times that of the USA. All with the most restrictive gun laws in place.

I have no choice but to call that an abject failure at every level. This island doesn't need gun control, it needs to start allowing the law abiding citizens to protect themselves. More laws that people refuse to obey WILL NOT SOLVE ANYTHING. Allowing private citizens to protect themselves from criminals would bring much of the problem to a screeching halt. When the people no longer have to barricade themselves into their homes, and instead have the means to defend their property and their families, the criminals will either die off, move elsewhere or find a new line of work.

Repealing the gun laws would be one of the best things to happen to this island. But if a Gun Bigot like Cuomo gets his way, it's not going to happen.

UPDATE: SayUncle says that "Gun Bigot" was coined by Joe Huffman. There's another blog I have to add to the blogroll.

The NYTimes does a 'study' and "discovers"...

The NYTimes headline Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles
by DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Shocka... Sweetness & Light notes the propaganda rag:

To compile and analyze its list, The Times conducted a search of local news reports, examined police, court and military records and interviewed the defendants, their lawyers and families, the victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials.

...Needless to say The Times has its usual “experts’ at the ready, like Dr. Robert Jay Lifton — who oddly enough writes anti-US books and even little screeds for the America-hating Nation magazine.

Color me surprised that the "study" fits the narrative of this, the most recent in a long list of frauds by the whores of the NYTimes.

Van Helsing points out the obvious, that American's who serve have a much lower probability of committing violent crime:

Move America Forward points out that despite putting seven researchers on the story, the Times was only able to find 121 cases of veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan committing murders in the USA. That comes out to a murder rate of 1.34 incidents per 100,000 vets per year. The murder rate for the general population is 5.80 per 100,000 per year. For men, it's 7.67 (all of the vet killers were male).

So logically... service in Iraq should be universal to lower violent crime rates?

Powerlineblog:

Do the math: the 121 alleged instances of homicide identified by the Times, out of a population of 700,000, works out to a rate of 17 per 100,000--quite a bit lower than the overall national rate of around 27.

But wait! The national rate of 27 homicides per 100,000 is an annual rate, whereas the Times' 121 alleged crimes were committed over a period of six years. Which means that, as far as the Times' research shows, the rate of homicides committed by military personnel who have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan is only a fraction of the homicide rate for other Americans aged 18 to 24. Somehow, the Times managed to publish nine pages of anecdotes about the violence wreaked by returning servicemen without ever mentioning this salient fact.

Taranto

Are they depraved on account of they were deployed? In fact, the Times's data are not sufficient to establish a correlation, much less a casual relationship, between stateside homicide and previous service in Afghanistan or Iraq.

To determine whether there's such a correlation, we'd need to know, in addition to the number of war vets charged with homicide, the corresponding figure for the general population, as well as the denominators--i.e., the number of war vets and the size of the population as a whole. A serious analysis would also take into account the demographic characteristics of the veteran population, which is disproportionately young and male. ...

What the Times has discovered, then, is a dramatic increase in the number of news reports in which homicide defendants are identified as servicemen or recent veterans. Does this mean that those who've served their country are more crime-prone now than they were in peacetime? Or does it mean that reporters are more prone to perpetuate the wacko-vet myth than they were during peacetime?

The Times is trying to prove the truth of a media stereotype by references to media reports. It might have proved nothing more than that it is a stereotype.

So the NYTimes has done a study and discovered the NYTimes is murdering our servicemen's reputation.
Cross Posted at DANEgerus

You Might Be a Member of the Taliban or Al Qaeda if...

10. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.
9. You own a $300 machine gun and a $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.
8. You have more wives than teeth.
7. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.
6. You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.
5. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry ammunition in your robe.
4. You've been asked, "Does this burka make my ass look fat?"
3. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.
2. You've uttered the phrase, "I love what you've done with your cave."
1. You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon unclean.

And no... this can't be interpreted as anti-Muslim, unless you personally consider Taliban or Al Qaeda inseparable from, and representative of, the Ummah. In which case isn't that really your own personal issue?
;)
Too Harsh? Really?

Taliban Commits Mass Murder, AP Publishes Their Press Release

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

OMG, the TSA has gotten a few clues!!!

The Raging_Dave would be the first to tell people *not* to discuss the TSA with me, unless they want to hear a tirade about useless government agencies that need to get a clue.

Well, they have gotten a couple.

From their Claims Management Office

TSA recognizes baggage locks.

I am only going skin deep on this, since I do not want to repeat the web pages I have referenced. I just found the locks listed as "travel sentry" at our local PX. The beauty of it is that not only is TSA the only one who can open them, but, with most of these locks there is an indicator if they have been opened by the TSA.


Now I will get into my favorite rant about the TSA: their treatment of the handicap. I make no secret that I had back surgery a while back. On our return trip, I was still in a wheelchair, and they expected me to stand for long periods of time, hold my feet straight out, they would not let the Raging_Dave in the area with me etc, etc, etc.... And do *not* get me started on their handling of medical devices! Since my surgery I have been quite horrified by the inability of the TSA to deal with handicap passengers and their equipment. I am surprised that I have been allowed to fly at times because it has been so ridiculous! Last time they closed down our line, had several TSA agents looking at the X-ray, and were unwilling to do a visual inspection, despite me telling them it was medical equipment that required a visual inspection.

This is the new guidelines for Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

This is a bit more extensive, so, I will give you the hi-lights. I have a suspicion that this will look fairly invasive to most, but, it is such an improvement over their previous *lack of system*. I actually have hope that I will not feel the need to strangle the TSA next time I fly.

Tips for Screening

Travelers with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

• If a personal search is required you may choose to remain in the public area or go to a private area for your screening. If you refuse either option you will not be able to fly.


• You should be offered a private screening before the beginning of a pat-down inspection if the pat-down will require the lifting of clothing and/or display of a covered medical device.


• You should be offered a disposable paper drape for additional privacy before the beginning of a pat-down.


• You may request a private area for your personal search at any time during the screening process.


• Your companion, assistant, or family member may accompany you and assist you during a private or public screening. After providing this assistance, the companion, assistant, or family member will need to be rescreened.


• You may ask for a chair if you need to sit down during the screening process.


• You should be allowed to raise you arms out during an inspection only as far as you indicate you can.


• You should be allowed to remain in your wheelchair if you indicate that you are unable to stand and/or walk through the metal detector.


• You may request a pat-down inspection in lieu of going through the metal detector or being handwanded. You do not need to disclose why you would like this option.


• If you have a disability, condition, or implant, that you would like to remain private and confidential, ask the Security Officer to please be discreet when assisting you through the screening process.


• You have the right to ask a Security Officer to change her/his gloves during the physical inspection of your accessible property, before performing a physical search (pat-down,) or any time a Security Officer handles your footwear.


• Medication and related supplies that are carried through a checkpoint are normally X-rayed. However, as a customer service, TSA now allows you the option of requesting a visual inspection of your medication and associated supplies.


• You must request a visual inspection before the screening process begins; otherwise you medications and supplies will undergo X-ray inspection.


• If you would like to take advantage of this option, please have your medication and associated supplies separated from your other property and in a separate pouch/bag when you approach the Security Officer at the walk-through metal detector. Request the visual inspection and hand your medication bag to the Security Officer.


• In order to prevent contamination or damage to medication and associated supplies and/or fragile medical materials, you will be asked at the security checkpoint to display, handle, and repack your own medication and associated supplies during the visual inspection.


• Any medication and/or associated supplies that cannot be cleared visually must be submitted for X-ray screening. If you refuse, you will not be permitted to carry your medications and related supplies into the sterile area.

Why the GOP loses

David Kopel on the Volokh Conspiracy:

If not for the massive volunteer work of persons concerned about the Second Amendment, George W. Bush would not have won the very close elections of 2000 and 2004. To state the obvious, the citizen activists would never have spent all those hours volunteering for a candidate whose position on the constitutionality of a handgun ban was "Maybe."

The GOP has seemed to do everything in it's power to drive itself into the ground as a smoking, broken wreck. If one were to simplify the issues that matter to the GOP base, one would get a checklist that looks like this:

1. Secure the border.
2. Win the war on terrorism.
3. Control government spending.
3a. Shrink the size of the government
4. Repeal as many gun restrictions as possible.

(note - those are not listed in order of importance per se, it's just my list)

Now, let's look at what the GOP has been doing.

1. Secure the border: Complete and utter failure. The GOP actively tried to push a shamnesty bill down our throat.

2. Win the war on terrorism: Average. We've finally done the right thing in Iraq, but the GOP allows the Democrat American Communist Party to play games with military funding bills. Not good.

3. Control government spending: Yeah right. The GOP has proven that any political party, if in control long enough, turns into big spenders of someone else's money.

3a. Shrink the size of the government: Again, yeah right. The only difference between the GOP and the Democrat American Communist Party in this case is the initial after their name.

4. Repeal as many gun restrictions as possible: Based on the brief filed by the Solicitor General, they're a failure at that as well. I would note that most of the heavy lifting done in the fight to keep and bear arms has been done at the grassroots level, NOT by the GOP.

In short, given how the GOP has been acting for the past eight years, it's no surprise that they lost their majority in Congress in 2006. We were given the choice between big government nannystatist fuckheads who admitted what they were (D), and big government nannystatist fuckheads who claimed to be conservatives (R). It's about time that someone actually stand up for what they claim to believe in. Otherwise the GOP is going to continue to bleed until it finally dies a death that it deserves.

As a side note, if you hit up the blogroll section "The 2nd Amendment", you find scads of people posting on the amicus brief filed by the SG. Read 'em all. You need to be informed on who and what you'll be voting for this November.

Dude

What the hell happened to the Cowboys? I mean, yeah, my Seahawks got pasted, but nobody expected Little Manning to do anything against Dallas!

You know what this means? It means the next game is going to be at Green Bay. And I don't think Little Manning's recievers are going to like that one bit.

My favorite medical moments from Puerto Rico

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.

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.

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

The Delegate Count for the (R)'s

Lets see... as of Iowa, Wyoming and New Hampshire:

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!

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.

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

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.

"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!"

More on the Rev?

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.

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,"...

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?

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.

Democratic Underpants calls New Hampshire as going to...

...Diebold

And:

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.

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.

Well, if that doesn't just encapsulate the watermelons of the Left in two paragraphs, I don't know what does.

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.

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 Muslim and 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

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!

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.

Ahem....

HOW 'BOUT THEM SEAHAWKS!!!!

Now granted, if they play next week like they did tonight, they're toast. But hey, I'm gonna revel in the win tonight.

vote with troops

I found this nice little website that has a wonderful message:

their mantra is that Votes Affect Morale

Please visit this website.

This was after a few (too many) drinks

But what the hell.

Looking for x-ray technician training?

Found here.

The Death Penalty for raping a child?

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Friday it would decide whether the death penalty can be imposed for the crime of raping a child, expanding its review of how capital punishment is carried out in the United States.

Works for me. If every execution saves 3 to 18 lives then how many of these crimes will be prevented?

Or avenged. I'm fine with that too.

In fact... where can I apply for the job? Have baseball bat will travel.

Cross Posted at DANEgerus

Fred Thompson places third

And Mike Huckster places first in Iowa. Although I'm pretty sure you already knew that.

Third is still a fighting position. On to New Hampshire!

Heh: What the F*&K is wrong with you people?

Here's what gets to me a little bit - Iowa is NOT the USA, and yet because it's the first caucus everyone is slobbering and drooling over the results coming out of there. My question is, why? The Baron du Toit reminds us that Pat Frickin' Buchanan got 25% of the vote in 1988.

PAT FREAKING BUCHANAN! Yeah, he went real far after that didn't he? It's probably thanks to Iowa that the rest of the country has to listen to Buchanan as the token "conservative" on talk shows all over the TV. Hell, that's another reason I junked cable down here.

But I'll make you a guarantee - Huckster's "aw shucks I'm a Baptist Preacher" routine won't fly nearly as well in New Hampshire. Or Vermont. Or Maine. So let's keep on keepin' on, and push for a Fred Thompson Presidency!

In case anyone in Iowa is reading this

The media is lying to you. The media is full of shit. The media is nothing more than agenda pushing, Democrat American Communist Party whores. The media is nothing more than a propaganda organ for the Democrat American Communist Party.

Next question.

Found via Michelle Malkin.

This is why we have to stress assimilation

Our good friend DANEgerus links to a story that's been around the web for the past few days. A "father", and I use that term loosely, has killed his two daughters. The reason? Well, the best explanation is that they didn't conform to his social desires. You see, the father is a Muslim, and I guess his daughters didn't feel like wearing a bag over their head.

THIS is why assimilation is needed. Anyone who says all cultures are the same is a damned idiot, who should be ignored as much as possible. Our culture says you protect your children. Yaser Abdel Said's culture says to kill your children to protect your "honor".

What? Huh? Are you kidding me? Seriously, let that sink it. This is the same culture that will kill a rape victim to preserve her family's "honor". Think about that. They won't kill the damn rapist, but they'll kill the rape victim. For their honor. That's fucked up right there. That's not sane. And I don't care who the hell you are, if you subscribe to that belief, then your culture is inferior to mine in every way. Period, end of story, nothing further to discuss.

When we allow people to move to this country, we need to make damn sure that they know it's NOT OK TO KILL YOUR DAUGHTERS! Because we do NOT need some barbaric fucking so-called culture to take root in this country. Oh hell no.

What the HELL is this?

I just went to Fox News online, checked the news on Iowa, and the picture greeting me was this:



Click on it for bigger. Check out the photo of the guy on the the stage. He's running a vacuum cleaner damn near over the American flag which is LYING ON THE FUCKING GROUND!

WHAT! THE! FUCK!

I don't know what this guy's political affiliation is. For all I know, he's some schmuck hired to clean some stage. Whatever. WHY THE FUCK IS THE AMERICAN FLAG LYING ON THE GROUND? WHY IS THIS DOUCHBAG ALLOWING IT TO LIE THERE? WHY IS HE ABOUT TO SUCK IT INTO HIS VACUUM CLEANER?

There are some times when I wonder why the hell people are allowed to call themselves "Americans" when their actions show they are anything but.

Bill Whittle Posts Again!

Part 1. Part 2. Go. Read. Now.

And once again

Government Health Care will KILL YOU!

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - A Surrey woman's holiday in California has turned into a healthcare nightmare. The 68-year old needed emergency surgery after her appendix burst, but now she can't come home due to a lack of hospital beds.

Stephen Harris with the South Fraser Health Region says ... as soon as a bed becomes available, Meeks will be transferred to a local hospital. Arlene's daughter Kim says her mom is 'frustrated as hell', and she just wants to come home.

This is not an isolated incident. Government-run health care systems are failing, in every country that has them in place. The government cannot be trusted with YOUR HEALTH, and we need to keep announcing that fact every chance we get.

C'mon, Fred!

Seems like Iowa voters have finally figured out who Fred Thompson is, and they like what they're seeing.

As for me, what I find truly appealing is the fact that Thompson, while wanting to become President, has not made it his entire existence. His life will not end if he doesn't become President. Compare that to damn near every other candidate, who's sole reason for living seems to be politics. And that's a knock on both parties, not just the Dem Cong.

Thompson's identity is not defined by any political seat he may hold. And that, my friends, it worth supporting.

Been doing some bloggish housework

Updated the Watcher of Weasels blogroll on the right. Added a 2nd Amendment blogroll, folks who are out there fighting the good fight on our behalf. The "Other Blogs of Note" blogroll is probably going to go bye-bye, and be replaced by one or two blogrolls based on subject matter and my highly biased, unobjective preferences. We'll see what happens and what I feel like doing.

As an aside, if you really, really, REALLY want onto our blogroll, let me know. Or publicly beg for the honor of being listed on this blog. Not that it's all that much of an honor, but I just like having people beg me for stuff once in a while.

UPDATE: New blogroll added. I cleared out over a dozen dead links, updated quite a few, and added one or two (Micheal, Steve B., give it a look!) I put the updated Watcher's Council onto it's own blogroll rather than having it hand entered. I'll be doing the same for the military links eventually.

It needs to be repeated

Government Health Care will KILL YOU.

In a New Year message to NHS staff, the Prime Minister indicates people may have to fulfil new "responsibilities" in order to establish their entitlement to care.

The new conditions could be set out in a formal NHS "constitution", Mr Brown says.

In his open letter to doctors, nurses and other health workers, the Prime Minister promises to press on with Tony Blair's reforms of the NHS, pledging more personalised care for all patients.

He adds: "We will also examine how all these changes can be enshrined in a new constitution of the NHS, setting out for the first time the rights and responsibilities associated with an entitlement to NHS care."

Creating formal conditions for treatment would build on recent controversial developments in health policy.

Despite the NHS commitment to provide free universal care, it is already common for doctors to set conditions on patients seeking treatment.

So the government gets to decide who gets care and when. Which means that there are quite a few people who are going to die, waiting for treatment that the government refuses to pay for, deal with, or administer.

Just keep all this in mind when you go to the polls. Keep this in mind when some Democrat American Communist Party member preaches about Universal Health Care. If your loved ones had cancer, where would you want them treated? Because right now we still have that choice. But should the Democrat American Communist Party take power, that choice will be removed from us.

Went golfing yesterday

I hadn't hit the links in quite a while, and it was obvious from my first tee shot that I needed some practice. But the Ragin' Mrs. and I had a decent time. Played nine holes, smoked a cigar (me, not the Mrs.), saw an iguana strolling across the 7th fairway, and avoided getting sunburnt. By the 6th hole I was getting back into the swing of things. All in all, it was a decent day. Stayed up to see in the New Year, and then crashed.

Got a call from my friend Alex, as well. Although it was entirely by accident. I don't even know what time it was, but the phone rings at some ungodly early hour, and I pick it up. "Hello?"

"Hey bud, I'm almost at your house!"

Since Alex lives in Idaho, and my current residence is in Puerto Rico, I'm quite puzzled by that.

"You're where?"

"I'm almost at your house! I'm walking down the street right now!"

"Alex, do you even know who you called?"


........

........

"Oh shit. Happy New Year, Dave!"

So anyways, Happy New Year to all of you. Here's the iguana. Click for a bigger picture. He was missing half of his tail from the looks of it, and he was just strolling along like he owned the place. Don't know who the folks in the background are - just some people playing golf.

My, how PROGRESSIVE of them

Why is it that "progressives" always want to kill any living thing they find inconvenient?

As we reported last year, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) helped to enact an NRA-backed law to save the 1100 Roosevelt Elk and Kaibab Mule Deer on Santa Rosa Island from court-ordered extermination. Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) and Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) were outraged. It was clear that they were not going to give up until every elk and mule deer on the island had been destroyed.

This week, Senator Feinstein succeeded in inserting a provision into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that repeals this animal-saving law. This action, passed in the dark of night, reinstates the extermination order that must be carried out by 2011. This is a terrible blow to wildlife conservation in America.

Santa Rosa’s elk and mule deer are unique and invaluable because they are free from chronic wasting disease (CWD) and other ailments that threaten these species on the mainland. Forty miles of Pacific Ocean ensures them an ideal sanctuary. Senator Feinstein and the others have destroyed this last remaining insurance policy against losing these magnificent species if an epidemic strikes the mainland.

This episode also proves beyond doubt that the Humane Society of the United States isn’t trying to “save” animals. The radical anti-hunting group refused to utter a single word of opposition to the government-mandated slaughter of the elk and mule deer that have coexisted with other plant and animal species on the island for more than 75 years.

Senators Feinstein and Boxer, Representative Capps, and even the National Park Service, want all of the animals on the Island exterminated so that some are not ethically hunted as a management tool. It shows, in no uncertain terms, the ruthlessness of radical hunting opponents.

What a waste. This would be just utterly shameful, if Leftists were capable of feeling shame. Found here.