The Affirmative Action Supreme Court Justice

At this point, can we simply admit that Affirmative Action was a bad idea?  Affirmative Action was one of the most insulting concepts the Left has put out there, because it was so insidious.  "Oh, it's OK, we know that you're dumber and not as capable as whites, so we're going to lower the standards just for you based on your skin color, because there's no way that you're smart enough or good enough to meet the standards that white people can meet."

When you boil Affirmative Action down into one statement, that's the statement right there.

I'm willing to bet that Affirmative Action also gave us the "Wise Latina" on the Supreme Court, which is one of the worst mistakes to happen to that body since FDR.  When a Supreme Court Justice writes an opinion that could be a carbon copy of a high-school girl's grievance letter, you know that the Supreme Court as an institution has taken quite a fall.

But of course

Another lie from Obama about Obamacare.  Really, at this point, does anyone trust a damn thing that comes out of Obama's mouth?

Corruptocrat Harry Reid called protesters "Domestic Terrorists"

Really, Harry, you worthless, corrupt piece of crap?

Maybe of you spent half as much energy protecting our border as you did trying to push ranchers off of their land so that you can make sweetheart deals with Chinese businessmen, you wouldn't have any protesters there at all.

Hey, you know who else could be called a "domestic terrorist"?  George Washington.  Thomas Jefferson.  Patrick Henry.  Knox, Adams, Franklin, and a whole lot of people who stood up to government tyranny and told the people who would lord over them to piss up a rope.

So fuck you, Harry.  Go fuck yourself sideways with a chainsaw, you Marxist cankersore.

Good Friday

That always struck me as just a bad name.  This is the day that our Lord and Savior died.  For those of you who aren't of the religious bent, perhaps this is the time for you to skip this post.

Ann Barnhardt has up a post that ties both Christmas and Easter together.  If you claim to be a Christian, I ask you to go read it.

As for me, I've spent quite a bit of Lend and most of Holy Week preparing and singing at my church. We take Lent seriously.  This is a time of repentance.  It's a time when we think about our many sins, and how Jesus took our sins to the grave with him, so long as we are willing to follow him and his teachings.

You have to ask yourself what you want more: the rewards of this life, or the rewards of the next.  It's really your choice.

Tax Returns came in

Yay, I finally got my money back from the government, who's been using it as an interest free loan!

Paying off a few debts that we have instead of splurging.  I have to debt free by the time I retire, or the whole plan and shebang comes to a grinding halt.  Still I could have paid those debts off without the government taking my money and keeping it.
 
Photo courtesy of A Nod to the Gods.  I recommend going and reading that post.

One of those days

I spent most of yesterday ready to blow....

Not a good day.  Not a good day at all.

(Wha?  No, that ain't me.  That's a graphical representation of what my day felt like.)

((Yes, that's an ANTI AIRCRAFT ARTILLERY shell shoved up some old man's patoot.))

Got a CD the other day

Someone gave it to me.  They didn't need it or want it in their collection anymore, I guess.

Damn, I forgot just how much I enjoyed this band.



Good music to crank up in the car.

Look, there's a reason so many pot-heads vote Democrat

They're brain damaged.

For the first time, researchers at Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of marijuana and brain changes – and found that young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures. 

“For the NAC, all three measures were abnormal, and they were abnormal in a dose-dependent way, meaning the changes were greater with the amount of marijuana used,” Breiter said.  “The amygdala had abnormalities for shape and density, and only volume correlated with use.  But if you looked at all three types of measures, it showed the relationships between them were quite abnormal in the marijuana users, compared to the normal controls.” 

Because these brain regions are central for motivation, the findings from Northwestern help support the well-known theory that marijuana use leads to a condition called amotivation. Also called amotivational syndrome, this psychological condition causes people to become less oriented towards their goals and purposes in life, as well as seem less focused in general. 

Given these eye-opening results,  Breiter said that more research is needed to look into marijuana’s effects on the brain – even in those who use the drug only once or twice a month.

Now, I know I'm going to piss some folks off with my anti-pot rhetoric.  But folks, if you're going home and lighting up a blunt every night, that's no different from going home and getting drunk every night.  THERE WILL BE NEGATIVE EFFECTS TO YOUR CONSTANT INTOXICATION.

"Oh, but Dave, weed is like NATURAL, man!"  So's arsenic.  Your point?

With few exceptions, every pot-head I've ever known has been a hard core leftie.  Now, whether or not that's due to their drug use, or the mindset that goes with accepting getting intoxicated every day, or the culture that says it's fine to get intoxicated every day, I don't know, and we can have a lovely debate about that.  But you cannot expect to do a drug that messes with your brain, and have no side-effects from it.

THC is fat soluble, meaning it sticks around in fat.  Guess what organ in your body is two-thirds fat?  Hmmmmmmm.......  And unlike water-soluble drugs, you can't just flush it out.  Anything that gets you high is toxic in large enough quantities.  Allow it to build up in your system, and you're going to have some huge problems.  Allowing THC to build up in your system is like pretty much like taking stupid pills every day.

OK, enough of me harping for today.

Screaming at idiots

There are times when I forget that I have a convertible vehicle, and the back panel is off.  One of those times was when I was stuck behind some brain-dead idiot who was parked in the middle of an intersection with the green light.

"GO, YOU FRICKING MORON!  YOU HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY!  IT'S A GREEN LIGHT!"

I had forgotten that with all the windows down and the back panel off, people can hear me.  As this guy's head jerking around proved.

Ah, well.  Put the phone away next time, you fricking moron.

Aw, Crap

Folks, Blogger used to notify me if I had any comments caught up in the Spam filter.  Not so much these days, I guess.  So I just unlocked about twenty comments going back two months or so.  If you posted a comment, and it didn't show up, I'm sorry.  Gerry N, I'm looking specifically at you - I think I unlocked about ten comments from you alone.

Mea Culpa.

This is the kind of thing that requires tar and feathers at minimum

The US Government is now seizing money from people who's parents may or may have not gotten overpaid by the Social Security fund.  Go read.  The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and the proper response that needs to be said when one of these government thugs starts demanding money is "How many of you must be tarred and feathered for this to stop?"

Land of the "free".  Yeah, right.  Pull my other leg.

But of course they would....

Obama admin plants false stories to attack Israel.  Because when you're a lying, Marxist piece of shit, why shouldn't you use sneaky tactics with the only real democracy in the Middle East who until the reign of the Obama regime was our strongest ally in the region?

Los Angeles explained in one article

City Building Inspector who took bribes and spent two and a half years in jail for his felonies still gets to keep his $72,000 a year taxpayer-funded pension.

Just another day in a Democrat American Communist Party controlled city.

If I have to explain to you why a public employee should lose his or her pension after committing felonies while on the job, I will, but only after beating you about the head and shoulders with a wet sack of dog crap.

The "Wage Gap"

Look folks, if you want to explain the "wage gap", just look at the jobs that are filled with a majority of men.

Steelworkers.

Plumbers.

Electricians.

Roofers.

Carpenters.

So on and so forth.

If you take a good look at those jobs, what do they all have in common?  They take a huge amount of physical labor to do, and they all tend to carry risks of some sort to life and limb.  Thus, they pay more.  Look at any job that has those qualifications, and you'll find a job that is done primarily by men.  And, since they are so physically demanding and carry such risk, you're going to pay those people quite a bit more than you will someone who's job requires them to sit in an office all day, or a job that doesn't risk cutting off various body parts if you get careless.

Sometimes it really is that simple.

Do not apologize! Hit them AGAIN!

So the Donks are up in arms over a Breitbart advert showing Nancy Pelosi's head on Miley Cyrus' twerking body.

I'll pause to let the bile go back down for you....


In any case, the Democrat American Communist Party has their knickers in a twist and are crying and screaming about what big meanies Breitbart is, and how the GOP must condemn Breitbart, and blah blah blah.  The usual subjects are all crying and whinging and what not, and boo-freaking-goo big babies need their ba-ba.

First of all, should any GOP politician condemn Breitbart for this ad, they can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

Second of all, Breitbart is using this moment to once again highlight the hypocrisy of the Democrats regarding Miley Cyrus being used to impersonate politicians.

Third, when the avowed enemies of America, i.e. the Democrats, are squealing like pigs then you know you've hit a good target.  HIT THEM AGAIN!  DO NOT STOP HITTING THEM UNTIL THEY ARE DOWN AND IN THE FETAL POSITION SOBBING FOR THEIR LIFE!

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

You know you're on target!  HIT THEM AGAIN!

Have I mentioned...

...just how much I loath people with "tuned" engines and fart-can mufflers on their rice rockets?

Dude, if your dick is that small, just get a dildo and strap it to your thigh.  Leave the rest of the world out of your compensation issues, OK?  The world is loud enough, we don't need you to add to it in order to try to impress chicks.

Back on Safari

Uninstalled Firefox last night.  Let Mozilla know that if they're going on a witch-hunt over support for traditional marriage, then they don't need my support or patronage.

Using Safari, which is the standard Apple browser that comes pre-loaded.  I'm going to give Opera a try later.

You knew it was a lie, didn't you?

Every promise made on Obamacare has been a lie.

"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan."  Obama knew this was a lie for years, and he repeatedly lied directly to the American people about it.

"If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor."  Obama knew this was a lie as well, and he repeatedly lied directly to the American people about it.

"It'll reduce the cost of insurance by $2,500."  Obama knew this was a lie as well, and he repeatedly lied directly to the American people about it.

Every promise made by Obama about Obamacare has been shown to be a flat-out intentional lie.  So when that Marxist tyrant comes out and crows about 7.1 million people signing up for Obamacare, well..


You just know it had to be a lie.

Go read the story.  The government was signing people up for Obamacare without their knowledge or approval.  Isn't that great?  Isn't that lovely?  Isn't that just what Marxist tyrants do when reality and truth don't fit their agenda?

Congratulations, America.  Your tin-pot dictator just re-confirmed what a worthless, lying sack of shit he truly is.  No wonder this country is a laughingstock right now.  Look who's in charge.

In the closing days of the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was mailing out letters notifying certain Americans that they had already started a healthcare coverage application on their behalf. The HHS letter stated that the information they used to begin the application for individual Healthcare was obtain by the state agency in charge of implementing Obamacare. The next step for the individual would be visit Healthcare.gov and complete the already started application to see if they qualify for “Marketplace coverage.”

Read more at: http://www.shark-tank.com/2014/04/04/hhs-started-individual-obamacare-applications-prior-to-deadlineobtained-personal-info-from-states/ | The Shark Tank

In the closing days of the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was mailing out letters notifying certain Americans that they had already started a healthcare coverage application on their behalf. The HHS letter stated that the information they used to begin the application for individual Healthcare was obtain by the state agency in charge of implementing Obamacare. The next step for the individual would be visit Healthcare.gov and complete the already started application to see if they qualify for “Marketplace coverage.”

Read more at: http://www.shark-tank.com/2014/04/04/hhs-started-individual-obamacare-applications-prior-to-deadlineobtained-personal-info-from-states/ | The Shark Tan

Hey, guess what would happen

If I used a government car to go grocery shopping?  I mean, if I just grabbed the keys to a GSA vehicle and took my wife out on a date, you want to guess what would happen to me?  I'd get hammered flat.  You DO NOT EVER EVER EVER TAKE A GOVERNMENT VEHICLE FOR PERSONAL USE. 

Unless of course, you're Eric Holder, the most corrupt and despicable Attorney General the United States has ever been forced to endure.  And then you can take a government plane on personal flights at least 27 times and not have to do anything about it.

This is a common theme with Democrats.  Anyone remember Granny Rictus and her six figure booze bills on government planes when she was Speaker of the House?  She'd load up her entire extended family and throw a party on her plane, all on the taxpayer's dime.

Eric Holder needs to pay back every single one of those flights, and then he needs to go to jail.

The "Tolerance" Brigade claims another victim

At Mozilla.  Makers of FireFox, which I have used since version 1.2, until now.

Anyone know a good browser?  I don't want to use Chrome, as Google already has too much information of mine, but what about Opera?

I mean, if they revolt over a CEO who supports traditional marriage, they don't need my support, business or patronage, do they?  No, they don't.

The Fort Hood Shooting

Once again, proving that disarming people and forcing them into "no gun" zones is the best way to get them shot by a maniac with a gun and a grudge, even if the the victims happen to be trained in combat techniques. 

Man, it's been a long week

And it's only Thursday......  Horry Clap.

Oh look, it's Laetare Sunday

So Father O'Leary was walking home from Mass, when he saw Mrs. O'Malley walking home as well.  Since Mrs. O'Malley was a newlywed, Father O'Leary struck up a conversation with her.

"So, Mrs. O'Leary, how is your husband on this fine morning?"

"Oh Father, he's working to provide a home for us."

"Ah, grand.  And do you have any children yet?"

"No Father, none yet."

"Well, as I'm going to Rome for my next duty next month, I'll light a candle for you to have children and have a grand large family!"

So Father O'Leary goes to Rome, and lights a candle for the O'Malley family, and finally makes it back to Ireland three years later.  And going to his old church, he sees Mrs. O'Malley with a stroller, and greets her with a joyous prayer.

"Ah, Mrs. O'Malley!  I see you have children, praise be to God!  Tell me, how many young children do you have?

"We have seven children, Father.  Two sets of twins and one set of triplets!"

"Oh, that's grand!  And where is Mr. O'Malley?"

"He's gone to Rome, Father....  to blow out that fookin' candle!"

Sunday Musings

Courtesy of Matt Walsh, and it's a good one.  You need to read the whole post, but this one simple sentence really boils down the whole "health care is a right" argument.

YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO A PRODUCT THAT MUST BE PROVIDED TO YOU THROUGH GOVERNMENTAL COERCION OF A THIRD PARTY.

This is the whole kit and kaboodle of the "rights" argument.  A right can only be a right if nobody else has to provide it.  The moment you make a claim to a "right" that someone else is forced to provide, either through goods, services or money, you are claiming that you can make that person your slave, because your "right" to whatever it is, be it health care, contraception, or food, is more important than that person's freedom to do as they wish with their goods, services or money.

This is why I call the pro-Obamacare people slavers.  They want to make slaves out of everyone, in order to provide "health care" to folks in order to harvest their votes.

Ragin' Dave's Quote of the Day, Never Back Down edition

From the comments at Vox Day:

We're often told that an institution -- the Catholic Church, the Republican Party, now Mozilla -- must compromise with liberals or perish. It's a lie. The perishing is a result of the compromise, not the alternative to it.

The Left does not want compromise, period.  The Left wants you to shut up and be a good slave that doesn't start any trouble.  You cannot compromise with a Leftist, because their default position is that you are nothing more than a revenue-generating slave, not an individual.  You are not a person, you are a number.  You are not a living, breathing human being, you are just another pawn to be used to buy votes with and keep the Free Shit Army happy.

Never compromise with a Leftist.  Never, ever, ever.  Your life will not improve through this compromise, and everyone's life around you will become less..... 

This should be required reading

The Unified Field Theory of Madness

Have your kids sit down and read it.  If they can't understand it, they're probably either too young or they've been in the publik skool sistim too long.

The theory must explain, first, the honest decency of the modern liberals combined with their astonishing indifference, nay, hostility to facts, common sense, and evidence; second, it must explain their high self-esteem (or, to be blunt, their pathological narcissism) combined not merely with an utter lack of accomplishment, but with their utter devotion to destructiveness, a yearning to ruin everything they touch; third, it must explain their sanctimoniousness combined with their applause, praise, support, and tireless efforts to spread all perversions (especially sexual), moral decay, vulgarity, and every form of desecration; fourth, their pretense of intellectual superiority combined with their notorious mental fecklessness; fifth, it must explain both their violence and their pacifism; sixth, the theory must explain why they hate the very things they should love most; seventh, the theory must explain why they are incapable of comprehending an honest disagreement or any honorable foe.

I honestly wish I had read this long before I started blogging.  This essay explains pretty much every liberal area I've ever lived, and why they always turn into crapholes of idiocy and failure.

The Leftist has only two choices here: accept reality, in which case he is no longer a Leftist, or deny reality, in which case his loyalty to the ideals of Leftism becomes rarefied and refined, and he become of their Cathari, the Pure Ones, an arhat of enlightenment.

I spoke above of the Unreality Principle. Here is where it comes into play. The Unreality Principle is the moral imperative to ignore and deny reality at all costs, and remain loyal and faithful to the consensus-made make-believe illusion-choked funhouse-mirror Wonderland of Liberal Bullshit. You must bathe in the bullshit, eat the bullshit, drink the bullshit, and stuff the bullshit up your nose as far as far can be, because from now own the offal will be feast and wine to you, and will be your baptism and your oxygen. It will feed and sustain you.

However, the Unreality Principle demands a cost. First, there is something like a daily maintenance cost: you must attend closely to whatever the social cues are telling you, and believe them and not your lying eyes. 

 Read the whole thing.  It'll be a good start to your day.

Home Again, Home Again

Jiggity-Jig.  Sorry bout the lack of postings; I had no idea I was going to be pretty much running from the moment my feet hit the ground to the point where I got back on the plane.  Time was short, to say the least.  And now I get to try to catch up, as well as do all the work I couldn't do because I was too busy hauling ass on a bunch of make-work bullshit set up by higher.

So yeah, give me a bit to see just what the world's been doing.

Oh. Hai!

Um.....  soooooo, I was out of town...  still am...  Seems I forgot to post any scheduled blog posts.

Sorry 'bout that!

Boom

Thank God that states are waking up.

On Thursday, Idaho Governor Butch Otter (R) signed a bill, which would effectively nullify future federal gun laws, by prohibiting state enforcement of any future federal act relating to personal firearms, a firearm accessories or ammunition.

S1332 passed the house by a vote of 68-0 and the senate by a vote of 34-0. Alaska and Kansas have also passed similar laws.

Erich Pratt, Director of Communications for Gun Owners of America, cheered the governor’s action. “By signing this nullification bill into law, Idaho has joined an elite class of states that are telling the feds to ‘get lost’ — especially when it comes to unconstitutional gun control infringements”

Emphasis mine.

It's time for the States to tell the FedGov to piss up a rope.  Enough is enough.

!!!!!

New experiences

In all my years of shooting, I have never once engaged in Trap or Skeet.

Until today.

Damn, I can see my money getting used up quick on that.  That's way too much fun.

SSDD

Same Shit, Different Day.  Is there anyone who's actually surprised that Moochelle is her usual classless self?

Michelle Obama and three of her family members are staying in a $8,350-per-night Beijing presidential suite, but despite a 24-hour butler and other perks that come with the lodging, her entourage has inconvenienced 'pretty much everyone' and made the hotel staff 'fed up,' a well-placed hotel staffer has told MailOnline.

The sumptuous pad at the Westin Beijing Chaoyang hotel – its website calls the room 'an oasis of comfort – is a 3,400-square-foot masterpiece including a private steam room, 'corner sofas with silk pillows,' and in-room dining for six. 

But the Obamas' stay has already affected staff and guests at the hotel, with the Westin front-desk veteran alleging that Mrs. Obama's mother Marian Robinson has been 'barking at the staff since she arrived.' 

Not only do Barry and Moochelle waste hundreds of millions of US Taxpayer dollars on their world vacations, but they ruin the day for everyone else around them while they do so.  They are the Ugly Americans.  Classless, clueless, hopeless.   I cannot wait until they finally leave the White House, and I'm pretty sure that most of the civilized world feels the same way.

!!!!!

Be careful for what you ask....

Since I had a request to continue this story.....


So there I was, seated upon the porcelain throne Monday morning, enjoying the peace and quiet that normally accompanies being up early and having the loo to yourself, when the earth moved.  A normal stress reaction is to have your sphincter clench up.  So when my porcelain throne began bouncing up and down and side to side, my body does what a body does when caught in a stressful situation and clenched up.

However, since I was halfway through the act when I clenched up, it had a two-fold effect; it was one part defecatus interruptus, and one part rocket-propelled poo, as my body's reaction to the entire house bouncing like a trampoline being abused by Micheal Moore caused my lower intestine to empty out at the speed of light.  I was alternately caught halfway between painful constipation and crapping at such velocity that it caused a backsplash that wet my nethers and required quite a bit of ass-wipe to dry completely.

And as I said, the first thought in my head was "I'd better flush this before we lose water."

Luckily there was no interruption of services, as the earthquake and the noise the dogs were making woke up the Ragin' Mrs., who had to use the facilities herself immediately upon getting out of bed.

I'd been through other earthquakes before, including the Nisqually earthquake in Seattle in 2001.  But I'd never been through anything like that while in the middle of deep contemplation, as it were.  It was an interesting experience.

So... ahem....

Apparently someone wrote a piece about the "sorrows" of monogamy.

What a load of crap.  Let me just excerpt a small part.

In Jones’s view, long-married humans confronting boredom have three basic coping “strategies” to choose among. Some spouses become “quashers,” resigning themselves to their sexless fate either bitterly or with frenetic, Facebook-posting cheer. “Sneakers” stalk old flames online.

(.....)

Unexpectedly, however, Jones reserves his most astutely acerbic commentary for the third group, marriage “restorers.” “Overachieving” restorer couples (according to him, there are no underachievers in this cohort) are typically “affluent, educated, successful, and highly motivated,” and they attack their sexual malaise as a project:

Look, folks - I speak as a monogamous man, happily married, who has been together with the same woman for over a decade:

As long as you work on keeping your marriage strong, the sex just gets better.

There are plenty of married folks out there who seem to think that once the ring is on the finger, all work towards improving the marriage or making yourself presentable to your spouse can end.  Those people are idiots, and it's no wonder they're bored with monogamy.  Then there are the general assholes, who look at marriage as a way to control the spouse.  Those people are also idiots.  Got it.  Great.

But if you put the same amount of effort into your marriage as you put into getting your spouse to marry you in the first place?  If you and your spouse constantly work to keep your relationship strong?

Mind.  Blowing.  Sex.  Peel-paint-off-the-walls sex.  Curl your toes and straighten your hair sex.  Make the neighbors call the cops due to the noise sex.

Just because I got married didn't mean that I stopped dating my wife.  We go on dates.  We watch movies together on the couch.  We do all the same things we did when we were dating and more.  And our sex life is better now than it's ever been.  Because we both care enough about each other not NOT take each other for granted.  We don't just expect that life will go on without any effort on our part.  And as we've grown in our relationship and our love for each other, we've found out even more about what makes each other tick, and what trips our triggers. 

Monogamy is not boring.  If you're bored with monogamy, you're bored with your relationship, and that's a signal that there are huge problems in your marriage.  It's not the sex that's bad, it's your marriage.

The Modern Man

Taken from John C. Wright's blogpost, which of course is a must read.

Now, an odd suspicion should be growing in the mind of the reader at this point, having heard this list of passions. These are all matters the modern men, especially men of the Left, the cynics and nihilists, have taken particular pains to mock and deride.

Lust and fornication, the moderns certainly admire and support, but lust and romance are opposites, even as fornication and marriage are opposites. The idea of a bride and bridegroom both coming to the marriage bower as virgins and cleaving to each other in tender yet fierce mutual adoration, worshiping each other with their bodies, and forswearing all other partners, this is an image the moderns find repellant, if not incomprehensible. It reminds them of the suburbs, or white picket fences, or Ozzie and Harriet. To them it is saccharine and nauseating. The only marriages they favor are gay marriages.

As for glory and honor and patriotism, love of chivalry and love of nation, the modern mind regard these things with distaste or disgust or even horror. They are regarded as machismo, as sinister attempts to oppress the weak, or to glorify violence and aggression. Patriotism to the modern man is bigotry, and vile; love of God they dismiss as superstition. The moderns have an insolent double standard: The superstition is harmless or even admirable, in an avuncular and condescending way, when practiced by Mohammedans or Buddhists or Animists, but it is an appalling enemy of enlightenment and progress when practiced by Christians.

The mere fact that a matter so basic as the difference between the emotions called appetites and the emotions called passions needs here to be introduced is itself a symptom of the disease that afflicts the modern mind, and hence part of this autopsy.

 Well, go read the rest!  It involves the Lord of the Rings!

Relatives showed up yesterday

No, that's not a euphemism.  In-laws.  My in-laws lack the ability to plan ahead, or to inform anyone else of their plans, so I got the call from the Ragin' Mrs that they were inbound and due to arrive in a few hours.

They were home when I got here after work.  Had a good dinner, drank a glass of wine, and then they were off on their trip.  Took up my evening, though.  Perhaps I'll post something substantive later.

You can't absolve yourself

Absolution requires repentance, correcting yourself, and restitution for your sins.  And I'm willing to bet that this rube who just self identified can't check any of those boxes.

You can't be absolved until you make reparation and correct or fix the damage you caused with your actions.

You can't absolve yourself, although the Me Generation obviously is so clueless about how the World actually works that they are unaware of this fact.  Hell, this brainless bint voted for the Marxist Messiah twice - she's already proven that she's on the lower end of the intelligence scale.

And Nature Said....

...."WHASSUP, BITCHES!  I'M IN YUR GROUND, RATTLIN' YUR BASE!"

4.4 magnitude.  Not a huge one, and it was quick enough that by the time it was over I just realized what it was.  At first I thought a truck had driven into our house. 

And no kidding, I was on the throne for my morning constitutional when it hit.  My first thought after the floor stopped shaking was "I'd better flush this before we lose water!"

The things you think about.....

Saint Patrick's Day

Yes, he is a real Saint in the Catholic Church.  And yes I'm Irish on my Dad's side so we celebrate St. Paddy's day here in the Ragin' household.

I quartered an onion and set the pieces in our crockpot.  Then I put a corned beef on top of that onion.  Then I poured Guinness into the crockpot up to the bottom of the corned beef.  Put a lid on it, crank it up to high for about two hours, and then turn it to low for the rest of the time.

It's been cooking since last night.

It's going to be awesome.

The wife is going to make an appropriate potato, leek and bacon dish to go with it.  I'm a lucky man.

Catholicism 101, Part 1

OK, since Erin asked, I'll try to answer.  I can't say that I'm the best person to explain Catholicism, but here we go.

First, for those who don't really know much about the Catholic Church, let's start with the fact that the modern Catholic Church as most people today know it is fairly new.  The modern church follows the rules laid out by the Second Vatican Council in 1965, or Vatican II as it's popularly known.  Prior to Vatican II, the Mass offered by Catholic churches world wide was the Tridentine Mass.  That's the Latin Mass.  The modern Catholic church service is known as the Novus Ordo.

I was raised in a Novus Ordo church.  I also walked away from it once I left my parent's house and started living on my own.  My return to the church started when I started thinking about marriage, and has to this point brought me back to the Tridentine Rite.

In my opinion, the Novus Ordo mass is the Catholic Mass with the spirituality and beauty removed.

Let's talk about a few of the fundamentals of Catholic faith, shall we?  First and foremost, we believe that Christ is present on the alter at Mass.  A priest doesn't "say" mass, he offers the sacrifice of the Mass.  We believe that Christ is present in the Tabernacle, which is why Catholics are supposed to genuflect before they sit in a pew.  Christ is our God and Savior.  We treat him as higher than any king who lived on the Earth.  I won't bow or kneel for any man or woman on this planet; I kneel before God and God alone.

When the priest consecrates the Eucharist, God is present in the Host.  That little wafer of bread?  Yep.  Trans-substantiation.  In effect, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.  In the traditional Mass, when you take Communion (receiving the Eucharist), you kneel as you receive the body of Christ.  There is an alter server or deacon holding a plate under your chin just in case the priest drops the Eucharist, or you fail to keep it in your mouth.  Why?  Because you do not drop Christ on the floor,  period.

I suppose that there are a lot of folks out there wondering just why the hell Catholics are so darn caught up in the Body and Blood thing.  Well, because Christ himself commanded it.  "Take this, all of you, and eat it.  This is my body, which will be given up for you and for many."  The Mass is the bloodless recreation of God's sacrifice for us, and he has commanded us to perform that sacrifice.  So we do.

For those who wonder about the whole "Sit, stand, kneel, stand, sit, kneel, Sunday Calisthenics!" that Catholics do, it's pretty simple.  You stand for the entrance/exit of the Priest, and you stand for the word of God in the Gospels.  You kneel as you pray, and you sit for everything else.

I think that's about all I can write for today - my scattered thought patterns are pretty darn evident in my writing at this point.  In Part 2 I'll go over the Virgin Mary, who is an important person in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

No Free Ice Cream Today

There are times when I leave work so brain-dead that I can't do more than eat dinner and do the dishes afterwards.  Today is one of those days.

If you are Catholic

Then I want you to go read another one of Ann Barnhardt's spot-on posts about Pope Francis and Cardinal Dolan.

And if you are Catholic, I am begging you to find a local chapel that offers the Tridentine Mass.  Go see what the Catholic Church threw away after Vatican II.  Go see the true Catholic Mass as it's supposed to be offered.  Find a church affiliated with the Priestly Society of Saint Peter, or Priestly Society of Christ the King, or the Society of Pope Pius X.

I don't think that most modern Catholics understand what has been lost.  I know that I didn't understand until I went to a Tridentine Mass and saw it with my own eyes.  I have learned more about the Catholic faith in the past year than I did in the previous decades leading up to this. 

I'll expound more on this after the workday is done.

They told me it couldn't be done

They told me I was insane.  But I showed them!  I showed them ALL!

With my COFFEE AND CHOCOLATE BACON!

Actually, it needs a few tweaks before it's ready to go.  Flavor is OK, salt is there, smoke is awesome, but a lot of the spices I put in there just got lost.  So we need to dial back on a few things, change an ingredient, and give it another try.

No pictures.  Maybe next time, when it's perfect.

Well, yes....

....Even the mice are better in Idaho.

Still wouldn't stop me from having a barn cat to keep 'em out of the hay.

The neighbor has an orange tree

That is as old as his house.  And these houses were build in the late 40's, early 50's.  I've never had oranges this good or this juicy.  The flavor is better than any other oranges I've had, and I can get gallons of juice from one picking session.  I have no idea what kind of oranges they are, just that it's a tree that hasn't been messed with genetically all that much.  It might be a hybrid, but it's far too old to really be GMO.

So with that being said, anyone want some seeds?  I set a bunch out to dry after my last juicing session, but realized that I probably won't be anywhere I can plant an orange tree after this tour.

Things what cause me to pray

The Demise of the American Dream in Two Charts.

 I pray that I make it back to friendly territory before the shooting starts.  I pray for my friends and family to be safe.  And I pray that this country wakes the hell up.

But God doesn't always answer prayers the way that we want.  And an ever-growing majority of this country has turned away from God, so they no longer have any claim to his blessings.  When you tell God to leave you alone, he does.

Sorry for the dark thoughts on a Sunday.  Maybe it's because it's Lent, and I've got repentance on my mind.

Kyrie Eleison
Kyrie Eleison
Kyrie Eleison
Criste Eleison
Criste Eleison
Criste Eleison
Kyrie Eleison
Kyrie Eleison
Kyrie Eleison

Aw Crap

Daylight Savings Time.  Tomorrow.

Whynthehell do we still do this crap every year?  There's no more point to it!  Having lived in places that don't dick around with DST, and having relatives in Arizona, who also doesn't dick around with DST, I can assure you, Daylight Savings Time is NO LONGER NEEDED!

So set your clocks ahead before you go to bed tonight, because God only knows that if we don't do Daylight Savings Time the world might end or some bullshit like that.

What a farking load of crap.

Spent all day outside

The Ragin' Mrs. and I took a survival course today; how to make basic tools out of literally nothing but the objects you find in a deserted wilderness.  Hopefully it will just be an academic exercise.

In the meantime, I'm tired, sun-burnt just a tad, and ready for beer.

As I watch the train wreck....

....otherwise known as the Obama Foreign Policy Circus, I just keep wondering how many hits can be taken before bigger pieces start to fall apart.

I mean, when is the modern-day assassination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand going to happen?

Europe has been riding America's military coat-tails for so long that they couldn't withstand a serious push by Putin.  All that Vlad has to do is turn off the oil and gas pipeline, and Europe is going dark and cold.  Ever since Obama decided to abandon our allies in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the rest of Europe knows that they can't rely on the USA to help out and keep the peace.

Thanks to Obama's never-ended efforts to weaken America and her allies, any missile defense systems that could have been in place were abandoned, thus leaving America and her allies in a position of weakness, which of course is Obama's preferred position for the USA.

Iran knows that Obama is gutless, pathetic and weak, and that they can maneuver with impunity.  The Middle East knows that Obama is gutless, pathetic and weak, and that they can't get any help from America when it's needed.

 Russia is invading Ukraine.  Iran is shoving weapons and money to Syria, which is sending them to Gaza.  And the entire world knows that Obama is a stupid, weak, gutless pathetic bitch, so America isn't going to do a damn thing.

Hey, where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

It's dark, and I can hear people laughing.....

Flashback courtesy of MauserMedic

The Kabul Krud, I liked to call it.

Please keep in mind, this is the middle of the day.  There were no clouds in the sky.  What you are seeing in this photo is straight up air pollution.

As I stated in the comments to yesterday's post, I spent three days in Kabul, and spent the next week coughing crap out of my lungs.  Literally, crap.  The local population burns anything it can to stay warm, including dried dung.  You can smell it in the air.

Welcome *hackhack* to Los *coughwheeze* Angeles

I took this picture on New Year's Day.  I was listening to the Rose Bowl on the radio as I was driving up Highway 2, and everyone kept talking about what a beautiful day in Pasadena it was. 

This shot is from the Angeles National Forest.  You can see downtown Los Angeles at the center-left, and if you squint at center-right you can see the blimp that was flying over the Rose Bowl during the game.

I'd like to point out that it is NOT a cloudy day.  There was barely a cloud in the sky.

That, my friends, is the smog of Los Angeles.  That is the poison that I'm forced to breathe in every single day.  Driving up Highway 2, the air was literally brown.  It's like living in some futuristic, dystopian movie.  And this was a day where the locals were singing praises about how clean the air was!

I cannot wait to leave this shithole.

Morning

There is nothing like waking up, shuffling to the bathroom, taking a good hard piss, and getting smacked in the face by the smell of asparagus.

It's like a dirty wet sock full of nickles.

Won't stop me from gorging on it again in the future though.  Mmmmmmm....  asparagus.

Hey.....

Was there some awards show last night?


Who won?

I am not alone

I am not the only person who thinks that DubStep music sounds much like what you would get if you fed a humpback whale Alka-seltzer and ExLax, then recorded the resulting sounds.

As an added note, Matt Walsh wrote a post regarding modern pop music, specifically Beyonce.  There's 630 comments when I looked at it.  I won't go into what I think about the comment writers, especially those who disagree with Mr. Walsh, save to say that their preference in music matches with their argumentative skills quite nicely.

I think I've said it before, but it took fifteen hundred years to go from blowing in animal horns and beating on drums while chanting rhythmically to full orchestral pieces that bring tears of joy to your eyes.  And then it took less than two hundred years after that to go back to music that is, in essence, blowing animal horns and beating on drums while chanting rhythmically.

One hundred thirty-seven years to go from this:



To Miley Cyrus.

Here's to hoping the pendulum swings back the other way sometime soon.

Once again

Proving that Sarah Palin was and is still more qualified to be President than Barack Obama.

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next.

We have three more years of the Obama Horror Show, watching the world burn while Obama fiddles.

25 Signs You've Grown Up

Stolen from here.  List is below, with my comments.

1. Your potted plants are alive. And you can’t smoke a one of them.  (Never did smoke my potted plants)
2. Having sex in a twin-sized bed is absurd.  (Posh.  Have sex where ever you can)
3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.  (Crap)
4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to sleep.  (Crap!)
5. You hear your favorite song on an elevator.  (Crap crap!)
6. You carry an umbrella. You watch the Weather Channel.  (Nope.  I look outside)
7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of hookup and breakup.  (CRAP!)
8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 7.  (Um.....  crap.)
9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as ‘dressed up.’  (Nope, they still do!)
10. You’re the one calling the police because those darn kids next door don’t know how to turn down the stereo.  (CRAPPITY CRAP!)

11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.  (Ewwwwww......  crap.)
12. You don’t know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.  (Taco Bell closes?)
13. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.  (Yeeeeaaaaah....  crap.)
14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonald’s.  (Blue Wilderness, actually.  Wait.  Crap.)
15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.  (Nope, I have a rockin' couch.)
16. You no longer take naps from noon to 6 p.m.  (Zzzzzz....  CRAP!)
17. Dinner and a movie = The whole date instead of the beginning of one.  (Dinner AND a movie?  Crap!)
18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 a.m. would severely upset, rather than settle, your stomach.  (Cra...  *ralph*  ap.)
19. You go to the drugstore for Ibuprofen and antacids, not condoms and pregnancy test kits.  (And Tiger Balm.  CRAP!)
20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer ‘pretty good stuff.’  (I do home vinting.  HA!)
21. You actually eat breakfast foods at breakfast time.  (Define "breakfast", because Bacon is for every meal....)
22. “I just can’t drink the way I used to,” replaces “I’m never going to drink that much again.”  (Hell, I said that back in my 20's.  Aww, crap)
23. Over 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.  (CRAAAAAAP!)
24. You don’t drink at home to save money before going to a bar.  (I don't really go to bars.  Never did.  Just my thing.)
25. You read this entire list looking for one sign that doesn’t apply to you! 

I guess I'm not all the way grown up yet!  Yay me!

Bill Whittle time

As an aside, I'd really, REALLY love a chance to visit the PJTV studios, given that I'm actually in the area.

When I first heard...

...the audio of Dingy Harry Reid standing on the Senate Floor and claiming that all the bad stories about Obamacare were a bunch of lies made up by the Koch, I almost drove off the road.



I just really don't know what to say in the face of that kind of evil.

Yes, I said it.  Evil.  Smearing the victims of the legislation that you passed by a legislative loophole as "liars" is evil.  Disregarding the claims of the people who have been damaged by the legislation you have passed through trickery and deceit as "liars" is evil.  Lying to get a massive bill passed, and then calling all the people injured by that bill "liars" is EVIL.

Harry Reid is a perfect spokeshole for the Democrats; vain, petty, corrupt, greedy, lying, and evil.

And those are his good qualities.


I'd meant to post this yesterday.  Got caught up in stuff.

The M4/M16 debate rears it's ugly head again

I can't say I like the M4 or the M16.  I don't.  There are a lot of reasons for that.  Many of those reasons are detailed here.  However, the one huge problem that the gun has, and I've gone over this multiple times, is that it's a gas-operated system.  The gasses from the expended round are fed back into the bolt to push it back and cycle the feeding operation.

The gun shits where it eats.

That's bad.

What's good is that you can fix that problem without having to buy a whole new weapons system.  Replace the gas tube with a gas piston, which keeps all the carbon and crap and heat out of the chamber.  Will it cost a bunch to refit all the rifles and carbines in the US military?  Yes.  But not nearly as much as buying all new guns.

So, let me state once again...

If X is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is a drip of water under pressure, then an expert is an unknown drip under pressure.

Read this list of seven foods that used to be bad for you.

1.  Coconut oil:  never really used it, and to be blunt, I never really heard anything about it until now, but let's just lay out for the point of argument that the "experts" were wrong about it. 

2.  Coffee.  "It'll stunt your growth!  Blah blahblahblah!"  Yeah, whatever.  I've been drinking the stuff since I was 14, and I'm taller than everyone in my family except my brother.  And I won't get into what he did to stunt his growth.

3.  Whole Milk:  At this point, if you're still afraid of a normal amount of fat in your diet, you've been brainwashed by the FDA and various other government entities.

4.  Salt:  The great heart killer, right?  Sodium!  OOOOooooOOOOOOooooooo!  Except that if you exercise regularly, you know you need salt.  When I went to my first Estrella War, the snacks for the fighters involved pickles, pretzels and orange slices.  We wanted to get salt into them, because they've been sweating so much that without the salt they would go into various forms of heat injury, no matter how much water they drank.  You need salt to survive, folks. 

5.  Chocolate:  Dude, if chocolate were that bad for you, entire generations of women would have died off by now.  They did not.  Point made.

6.  Popcorn:  Because the death rate for Americans increased when popcorn was invented?  No it didn't.....  so why consider it bad?

7.  Eggs:  I've spoken about this before.  Eggs are a wonderful source of protein, not to mention that they perform so many different roles in the kitchen that modern cuisine probably wouldn't exist without them.  Let me give you just one example:  Mayonnaise. 

So many government experts have been wrong about food for so long that I'm amazed that anyone actually listens to the crap that spews out of their mouths.  You want to know what foods to eat?  Take a gander at what folks have been doing for centuries.  What did they eat?  You want to know what happened if they didn't eat the foods they needed?  THEY DIED.  You don't see too many vegans in Colonial America, m'kay?

The neighbor's orange tree is in bloom

My entire backyard smells like perfume.  It's a delightful change from the nasty smell this place normally has.  Too bad it can't last all year.

The Publik Skool Sistim

Folks, I wasn't a big fan of the publik skool sistim to begin with.  Common Core just made my distaste for publik skool even worse.  Do please follow that link and watch the video to see examples of how badly our children are being screwed with in their supposed education.

The Publik Skool Sistim in this country is not educating our kids.  The Publik Skool Sistim is teaching our children to be uneducated and ignorant drones.  I honestly believe that the Publik Skool Sistim is designed to provide a permanent slave class to the elites who go to private schools or some other schools that actually teach and educate the children.  A slave class that is incapable of learning anything beyond what they've been fed for twelve years in publik skool.

So, to wit:  After undergoing the indoctrination sessions in your local Publik Skool Sistim, your children will not be able to do math, but they'll know how to masturbate by the fourth grade.  Isn't that all just progressive and stuff?

Imagine a stranger came up to your son on the playground and said: “Hey little boy, if you touch yourself it’ll feel good and tingly. I drew some cartoons of kids masturbating. Wanna see?” What would you do? Would you shake his hand and thank him for the helpful sex ed lesson? Or would you call the cops and see to it that this sicko has to alert the neighbors every time he changes his address?

There is no discernible distinction to be drawn between the creep on the playground and the public school official who approves this kind of material for children. This is child abuse, plain as day.

I would destroy the Department of Education faster than my dog jumps on a dropped piece of steak if I could. 

Challenge Accepted

A while back my team was discussing different breakfasts we had enjoyed (any military unit will have at least one discussion a day regarding food), and we began tossing around concepts for food that we might like.  Of course, bacon featured heavily.  So did coffee.  And chocolate.

Chocolate coffee bacon?

Challenge accepted.

I picked up a pork belly, and today mixed up a rub with all the requisite ingredients.  Salt, pepper, sugar, dark roast coffee, cocoa powder, and some spices.  I'm going to let it cure for at least a week, probably two, and then cold smoke it nice and slow with some plum wood that a friend gave me.  I'll cook some up before I go into work, pass it out, and tell them all to bow to the king, baby!

Mmmmmm.... Breakfast

A post over at C&S made me think back to the first time the Ragin' Mrs. made the Breakfast of the Gods...

Highlighting the .gov Thuggery

You have got to read this entire post from Claire over at Knowledge is Power.  It is just another example of how the Federal Government can ruin people's lives with it's bureaucracy and stupidity.

How my day is going

I'm the pedestrian

The Bobs of the world

Back when I was a young troop at Fort Riley, I was put in charge of a special young soldier.  We're going to call him "Bob".  I won't mention is actual name on the blog, because there might be a chance that there's a websearch on his name, and quite honestly I don't want to get pulled into any crap that Bob may have started.

Bob was my gunner.  Now, I had a team leader, but that team leader was more interested in nailing every female in my company than actually leading his team, so Bob got dumped on me.  This was a repeating occurrence, and was one of the reasons I got out of the military after my first hitch.  That's another story in and of itself, but I digress.

Bob was a momma's boy.  There's no other way to put it.  This kid was used to having everything handed to him on a silver platter.  Every mistake was not his fault, it was someone the fault of someone else.  Every problem was a major catastrophe.  Every failure was due to someone else, not this young troop.

Let me give you an example:  We were going to a Field Training Exercise.  FTX.  There was a packing list for every FTX.  Part of the Troop Leading Procedures for an FTX was to conduct an inventory of your Soldier's gear to make sure he was bringing everything on the packing list.  Everything got laid out in the Soldier's room, and you made sure that every item was there.

So this is Fort Riley.  In January.  It's friggin' cold, OK?  Even if the temperatures weren't horrible, the wind chill was sure to bring things down into sub-zero ranges.  You brought your cold weather gear to the field.  Period.  Failure to do so would result in possible frostbite, chillblains and hypothermia.  You didn't joke around with your snivel-gear.  So I conduct the inspection, make sure that every troop I was responsible for had their gear laid out, and told them to pack it up and get it ready to go.  Bob was included in this inspection.

So we get out to the field.  Bob is the gunner, remember?  So he's up in the turret.  Lots of wind up in the turret, especially when you're doing 45 down a dirt road in the training areas of Fort Riley.  Cold weather gear is a must-have.  But guess what Bob didn't have?  His parka.  The one piece of gear you must have if you're riding in the turret of a Humvee in January on Fort Riley.

Now, having conducted the inspection where I made sure that Bob's parka was included in the gear that he must bring, I was out of my mind trying to figure out why Bob didn't have his parka.  I racked my brain trying to figure out where I had failed to ensure that Bob didn't have his parka.  Did I fail to see it in the inspection?  No, my checklist clearly showed where I had not only seen the parka but ensured that I had told him to bring it.  Did I fail to mention that you needed a parka in January in Fort Riley?  No, that had been part of the pre-movement briefings.  Then why the hell didn't Bob bring his damn parka?

You want to know the reason?  Would you like to know the excuse he gave me?  Because his rucksack was heavy, and so he left his parka behind to keep the weight down.

I'm being serious here.  This despite the fact that as MP's, we threw all our gear into a damn vehicle and didn't have to actually hump it all over hell and gone.  Bob's rucksack was heavy, don't you know!

And to top it all off, the little shit told me that it was my fault for not double and triple-checking his gear, because being given a direct order to bring his cold weather gear only ONCE wasn't good enough.  I guess the briefing where we told him about frostbite and losing various appendages to the cold weather wasn't good enough.

That slimy little shit ended up wearing my parka for the duration of the field problem, because a leader does not let his troops go without gear.  I won't say what his punishment was, but rest assured that my wrath did not go unfulfilled, especially as I spent the entirety of the field problem wearing just my BDUs and a polypro shirt.  I actually gained quite a bit of fame during that field problem, dealing with Bob and his whining for weeks on end.  I think the platoon leadership was amazed that Bob was not only alive at the end of the FTX, but that I had gotten him to actually fulfill his duties while we were out.

The Democrat Party is Bob.  They constantly manage to screw things up, then blame everybody but themselves, and then demand that everyone else make up for their lack of brains/brawn/willpower/self-discipline.  The GOP is my teamleader, who dumped his responsibility onto me and left me to deal with his failures.  I'd like to point out that Bob was wearing MY parka, not my teamleader's gear.  Again, there's a reason I got out of the Army after five years. 

I'd say Obama is a Bob, but he's not.  He's deliberately trying to fuck this country over, and he's succeeding, with the aid and comfort of the Bobs in the GOP.

The Tea Party is me.  And you.  And everyone who is doing what they are supposed to do, while also trying to make sure that the Bobs of the USA don't fuck us straight into failure.

Bob eventually went AWOL, much to the relief of every person who was responsible for him.  He was dropped from the rolls after a month.  He was arrested three months later, doing 105 in a 65 MPH zone in his mommy's Mercedes.  No, I am not making that up.  Not only did his mommy not send her little precious snowflake back to the military when he showed up on her doorstep, she treated him like her precious little boopsie and let him live at home and drive her fancy car until he finally got caught being a dumb-ass once again. 

As a conservative, our representation in Congress is mostly AWOL.  There are a few folks who have good people in place.  Ted Cruz.  Mike Lee.  My own representative, Raul Labrador.  My Senators, who actually vote as the conservative people that they campaigned to be.  But the leadership of the GOP?  We can't count on them to go AWOL.  We have to vote their asses out of Congress.

I doubt we can do so.  We're screwed.  But we still have to try.

I spent a number of years as a civilian, and I don't regret one single day that I had after I left the Army,  The years I spent out of the military taught me more than I can type in one post, and I grew immeasurably. And in the end, I re-enlisted, and made damn sure that I never suffered another Bob, or another team-leader like the one I had.  It's time to buck up and do the same on the political front.  I've seen report after report that Ted Cruz is one of the most hated Senators.  And he's hated by the GOP.  He's ostracized by the GOP.

That tells me who we have to make sure gets sent home.

Gee, why don't people like California?

This state just needs to fall into the ocean and drown.  For the good of the rest of the country.



This shithole, this filthy cesspool of a state, should not be allowed to infect the rest of the country with it's stupidity, ignorance, and evil.

Busy day today

Sorry, no free ice cream.

Your musical post for the day

Unfortunately, our parish has experienced what must come to all people, and a dear member of our church as died.  So I'm learning the Requiem Mass.  There are some parts that are more difficult than others, such as the Sequence.



By the time I PCS, I'll be a font of musical knowledge that may or may not get used at my next duty station.

Liberals try to explain Tea Party Racism

You have got to see this - a guy goes to some protest and asks a bunch of progressives if they think the Tea Party is racist.  They all say yes, of course.  And when asked for examples of racism from the Tea Party....  well....



That's friggin' beautiful right there.

UAW loses in Tennessee

Thank God for Tennessee.  The only thing the UAW is good for is jacking up the cost of building cars, and funneling huge amounts of cash to the Democrat American Communist Party.  There is absolutely no reason why any sane person would want to have the UAW take over their working arrangement.

Look at what the UAW did to the Big Three in Detroit.  Why would you want that to happen to your jobsite?  Your company?

It's a horrible time to blog

I'm tired, I'm half-soused on scotch, and I'm pissed off.  So naturally, I'm going to type away.

Ann Barnhardt has a letter up from a Staff Sergeant who is leaving the US Army because of the various flaws that he sees in the leadership. 

I can no longer wear the uniform knowing that I am lending my skills to this government which directly attacks the Constitution that I swore to uphold.  I told one of my friends recently that my ‘problem’ was that I was giving the regime legitimacy every time I put the uniform on.  Every senior person I have talked to about this thinks I am either nuts, anti-social, prejudicial to good order and discipline or something of that stripe.  All of them are waiting on their precious pensions or are too afraid to have THEIR commanders come down on them.  I pointed out that we swore to do this at the cost of our own lives, so what is a promotion, or a career or a pension compared to that?  Is any of those things worth your soul?  I had the opportunity to double my pay and pension and cover myself in glory one more time, but I have chosen to really tork off my chain of command by asking to rescind my application to WO School and not reenlist.  To many of my friends and co-workers, this is a complete 180 and hard to understand.

All emphasis in the original. 

Now let me state up front:  I do not have any disagreement with the problems that he lays out.  The civilian government is, on it's face, a tyrannical dictatorship.  We have a President who violates the Constitution on a daily basis.  We have a Senate who has assumed as it's main duty the blocking of any bill that might attempt to reign in the President's action.  And we have a bureaucracy who attacks the portion of the country who just wants to be left alone, and is aided and abetted by the dictator in the Oval Office and his flunkies in the Legislature.  We have a Supreme Court who waves their hands and magically turns a mandate into a tax, and who twists itself into pretzels in order to find the unconstitutional to be constitutional. 

In short, this country is fucked.  And I'm not even approaching this from the moral angle. 

The Staff Sergeant writing Miss Barnhardt goes on to describe a young Lieutenant making one of the stupidest statements I've ever heard from a commissioned officer, and that's saying something.  All in all, he can no longer support the government that controls the military that he loves.  I get it.  Lord, do I ever understand where he's coming from. 

So why haven't I done what he has, and walked away from the military?  I mean, if I no longer believe that my government is a constitutional government and is instead a collection of tyrants all jockeying for position in the new banana republic, why am I still here?

Because someone has to limit the damage.  Someone has to be damage control. 

I truly wish I could sit this Staff Sergeant down and lay it out for him.  Yes, Obama is a dictator.  Yes, this country is fucked.  Yes, shit will hit the fan.  And when that shit hits the fan, and when Obama or the next tyrant orders the military to fire on Americans who simply want to protect their rights and their liberties, who will be there to tell them "NO!"?

You want to know why I'm still in?  There's your reason.  Because for every stupid Lieutenant there needs to be a Senior NCO to pull him aside and tell him exactly how much of an idiot he is.  Because when that stupid young Lieutenant passes along the order to fire on Americans, there needs to be a Non-Commissioned Officer to pull him aside, pull his head out of his ass, and proceed to remind him of his Oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against ALL ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.  There needs to be people to remind the younger Soldiers that unconstitutional orders are ILLEGAL ORDERS, and you have an OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY THEM, just as you have an obligation to disobey orders to commit war crimes or violations of the Geneva Convention.

And I also need to be one of the people teaching the new Soldiers exactly what their duties are, and what constitutes an illegal and unconstitutional order.  Someone has to try to make sure that the military doesn't turn into just another wing of the Democrat American Communist Party, Enforcer Branch. 

And that Staff Sergeant who's turning down a WO spot and getting out is leaving behind his opportunity to do that teaching as well.  

And should it come to it, there needs to be people to stand up to the Field Grade and Flag officers, who can and will look them in the eye, and tell them that what they are doing is wrong, and illegal, and immoral, and unconstitutional.  And if I get cashiered out for doing so and lose my precious pension, which may or may not be worth the paperwork it's written on, then so be it.

Where is it easier to effect a change, outside or inside?  Why would I leave when I still have the opportunity and the ability to make sure that my troops, the Soldiers that I lead, will choose the right path when the time comes?  And make no mistake, that time is coming.  We're too far gone to go back now.  We're on the downhill slide, and increasing speed.  But as long as I can make sure that my troops follow the Constitution, and live up to the values that the military claims to stand for, then I'm going to be there.

We already know that there are military leaders who would target Americans who want liberty instead of government tyranny.  So who is going to stop those leaders when they're told to attack the people in this country who actually believe in the Constitution and the rule of law?  We need good people in the Army.  Yes, the government is an unlawful group of criminals.  That means we need Soldiers with integrity, honor and loyalty even more than ever before.  We need people who will resist becoming political pawns.

It's a hell of a lot easier to influence people from the top, rather than the outside looking in.  THAT is what I would tell that Staff Sergeant.  He is in a position to have a huge affect on his Soldiers.  Leaving now means that leadership disappears.  And that would be the real crime.

Rotting from the Head

So the Ohio National Guard decided to have themselves a training event.  I've been in a few training events myself, so I understand their nature and how important they are for the troops to practice what they do.

In just about every training event I've been in, the enemy was from a place with names like "Krasnovia", or "Eastern Nowhereville", or some made up name.  It doesn't really matter what the name is, so long as you get to practice what you do, right?

But what about the motives of the enemy?  After all, the reason you're practicing is to deal with real-world examples of what you would go up against, right?

Well, maybe not.

Documents from an Ohio National Guard (ONG) training drill conducted last January reveal the details of a mock disaster where Second Amendment supporters with “anti-government” opinions were portrayed as domestic terrorists.

The ONG 52nd Civil Support Team training scenario involved a plot from local school district employees to use biological weapons in order to advance their beliefs about “protecting Gun Rights and Second Amendment rights.”

Portsmouth Fire Chief Bill Raison told NBC 3 WSAZ-TV in Huntington, West Virginia that the drill accurately represented “the reality of the world we live in,” adding that such training “helps us all be prepared.”

 You get all that?  2nd Amendment supporters are now domestic terrorists.  And the Army is training to put them down.  And it gets better!

In the disaster-preparedness scenario, two Portsmouth Junior High School employees poisoned school lunches with mustard gas, acting on orders from white-nationalist leader William Pierce.

 So 2nd Amendment supporters are racist terrorists!

Look, these kind of words and images have meaning.  It is training, after all.  And it seems that the Ohio National Guard is training their people to think of pro-Constitution folks as racist domestic terrorists. 

 Apparently last year the Ohio National Guard did the same thing, only with a Left-Wing group.  They apologised for upsetting the liberal snot-wads the very next day.  Because everyone knows that there's no such thing as a liberal domestic terrorist, unless you count Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dorn, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan (although he may not count since he was Palestinian and they're all just terrorists), Students for a Democratic Society, Weather Underground, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, the shooter from the National Holocaust Museum, and damn near every perpetrator of a mass shooting in the USA in the past three decades.

And everybody knows that Democrats can never be racist, even though they started the KKK, had a Grand Kleagle as a Senior Member of Congress until he finally kicked the bucket (that would be Grand Kleagle Robert C. Byrd), filibustered every civil rights law that came across Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson's desk, (which ended, ironically enough, when he became Vice President and then President and was forced to sign all those bills he had filibustered into law), and can be found today insulting and demeaning any black person who has the balls to step off the Democrat Plantation, just to name a few examples.

Look, someone up the military Chain of Command in Ohio had to approve this.  There is some General or Colonel who looked at this plan and said "Yep!  Looks good!  Go with it!"  And rather than using real world examples of what they might go up against, they decided to indulge in the Democrat American Communist Party wet dream of "Right Wing Domestic Terrorism". 

Well, at least they tipped their hand.

!!!!!

Just in case you haven't seen it

It's...the...law? pic.twitter.com/qg9iTYT1JJ
— Slublog (@Slublog) February 11, 2014

With every delay, the Democrat American Communist Party is admitting that their law is a complete, total and abject failure.  If it were a success, it would be fully implemented by now. 

Ragin' Dave's Quote of the Day

From J Cal Davenport, who describes the blissful ideal of a liberal life free of any responsibility:

But isn’t this what liberalism is? The mentality of someone with too little experience to appreciate what it took to get here? 

The lack of perspective to realize what must be pulled down to make room for a new liberal edifice?  The naïve rejection of “any ancient or admitted authority?” History began before each of us was born. To put it another way: you didn’t create the free and prosperous nation in which you live. Someone else made that happen.

Perhaps I am being too harsh. Perhaps it is too much to expect most Americans to make something of themselves while avoiding abject poverty in the period of the greatest prosperity the world has ever known (an outcome largely the result of a virtuous independence, responsibility and reliance on institutions besides government, but I digress…).

Emphasis in the original.  And I put it up, because I'm long past trying to actually argue with liberals, as they are either A) completely and totally ignorant and/or indoctrinated, and thus easily manipulated by their government masters, or B) the people pulling the strings to make the easily manipulated dolts, drones and morons do what they want.  So what can I do?  Well, I start by shaming them.  And my goal is to either shame the ignorant into actually learning something, or get them to just shut the hell up.

Either works for me. 

This is why we're not voting ourselves out of this mess

We are now at the point where unelected bureaucrats create a new entitlement program that spends over half a trillion dollars, and there's not a damn thing people can actually do about it.

The committees’ report does not provide a complete picture of how Treasury, the IRS, and HHS conspired to create this new entitlement program. Treasury and the IRS have refused to show certain documents to congressional investigators. Even when they are willing to share documents, they allow investigators to review them only briefly, without taking notes.

The IRS has shown itself to be a completely immoral, politically charged thug-ocracy wholly devoted to the Democrat American Communist Party and the destruction of the Republic.  It needs to be destroyed.  As Insty put it, "Heads should roll. And I’m not even sure I mean just figuratively, if this is true." 

I'm willing to get that if you started hanging the IRS leadership from lamp-posts in D.C., these problems might end pretty quickly.

My friends are so awesome

So several months ago, I was teaching one of our friends from church how to make wine and mead.  We got to discussing our favorite brews, I mentioned a beer that I had in Wisconsin that I couldn't get in California.  As far as I know, you can't buy it outside of that state.  Oscar's Chocolate Oatmeal Stout from Sand Creek Brewing Company.  It's like liquid awesome in a bottle.  It's one of the best beers I've ever had, truly.  The Ragin' Mrs. and I used to go to the brewery and sit in the tap room, and sample everything they had.  It was just good beer.

So anyways, I extoll the virtues of Oscar's to my pal, and we make a whole bunch of mead.  I don't give it a second thought.  So yesterday, that family and mine get together for dinner and a belated Christmas gift exchange (long story).  We got some gifts for their kids, and they made a pair of nice earrings for the Ragin' Mrs.  And then they pull out this big box.  I open it.  It's a case of Oscar's Stout, straight from Wisconsin.  They had called up the brewery and purchased a case, then had them mail it to their house.  I was able to have Oscar's Stout for the first time in close to two years.

Have I mentioned how awesome my friends are?

No, No, No, No, NO!

So the Ragin' Mrs. and I are doing research on distilling.  In case you don't know, we home-brew.  We make our own wine, mead, and cider.  We got into it partly because the Ragin' Mrs. has an allergy to sulfites, which are found in just about every commercial wine, and partly because we honestly believe that we need to know how to do certain things.  We don't currently do any distilling, because we just don't have the room. 

But part of our research has been of the legal variety, because the last thing I want to do is spend time in jail just because I want to make my own whiskey or vodka.  You can legally brew 200 gallons of wine for your own personal consumption.  I can tell you that I've never come close to brewing 200 gallons, even with brewing year-round, and we give a LOT of mead away to our friends and family.  But home distilling takes you into a whole new level of legalities, and it all revolves around whether or not the government gets its money.  Taxes, baby.  Taxes.

So the Ragin' Mrs. looked up this particular web-page, and read a sentence that she rightly deduced would give me fits:

By making and selling your own moonshine, you may be stealing up to $25 per gallon from taxpayers.

No, no, NO!  Wrong answer! 

Every penny the government takes from us in taxes these days is taken with the threat of force if we do not comply.  In short, the government is STEALING FROM US.  Avoiding the excise taxes associated with booze is NOT stealing from the taxpayers!

This kind of backwards, government-minded thinking would mean that taking a lower-paying job to avoid a higher tax bracket is now somehow "stealing from taxpayers".  Growing your own food and not purchasing it at a store is now "stealing from taxpayers".  Building furniture instead of buying it at a store is now "stealing from taxpayers". 


The mindset expressed at that webpage quite honestly makes me want to vomit.  It is the mindset that thinks of the Government as the master, and the citizens as slaves who exist to fulfill the wishes of their government slave-owners.  It is the mindset that leads to greater government intrusion into our lives.  And it.  Is.  Wrong.

Quite honestly, that's the kind of mindset that makes me want to set up a still, just to piss in the government's Cheerios. 

I suppose that there are various arguments against moonshine out there that are valid, but claiming that it's wrong because the government doesn't get it's cut, when the government is already taxing the holy hell out of everything we touch or earn, is not going to cut it.

Ow

I ran up to the Griffith Observatory today.  If you've ever taken a look at the place, you'll see it's on top of a BIG FRIKKIN HILL.

My legs hurt.

The Democrat Response

To the CBO report on Obamacare seems to be "Well, who needs jobs anyways!  You don't need jobs!  Jobs just tie you down!  Don't be tied down, man!"

I mean, the Democrat Party just came out of the closet and proudly announced that their major constituency are people without jobs who are completely dependent on the government, and they are going to grow that constituency as quickly as possible.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.  You know the worst part?  The Democrats are rallying behind the cry of "WHO NEEDS JOBS ANYWAY!" as hard as they possibly can.  We are living in a country where the majority of voters are essentially demanding that the few tax-paying citizens who are left pay even more so that the parasites can vote themselves an even larger portion of the budget.

This will not end well.

 I truly do hope that twee bitch suffers from every malady that Liberalism infects on a society.

!!!!!

OK, now that's funny!

If you've been following the latest gun news, where some company put out a round that is essentially tin-foil shaped like a hollow-point round that looks bad-ass but really wouldn't do much, and everyone pretty much started mocking it the moment the adverts came out....

The mockery continues.

Look folks, they've been making bullets for centuries now.  Other than some aerodynamic shaping, they've remained pretty much the same ever since they rounded one end and flattened the other.  There's a reason for that simple fact.  When you figure that reason out, you can pretty much shake your head at all the NEW!  AWESOME!  BOO-LIT DESIGNS!

Here's yer free ice cream

Seneca Street in Downtown Seattle, looking across I-5.  I don't know if you can click it to make it bigger - seems Blogsnot is having some fun with larger photos.

I honestly believe that Seattle is one of the most beautiful cities in America.  Too bad it's full of crazy fuckheads who make living there miserable.

When you get a dog

You always think of the beginning.  You never think of the end.  If you thought of the end, you might never get a dog.

But if you never got a dog, you would never understand the joy between the beginning and the end.  So you don't think of the end, until it comes.

I got nuthin'

There comes a point where you either come home and do something productive, or you come home and drain a bottle of scotch and beat yourself unconscious with the empty bottle.  So in that vein, I'm outta here for the day.  I won't go into details.  My job sucks, take that for what it's worth.

In the meantime, enjoy some NSFW postage.

SEAHAWKS WIN!

43-8!  Good lord, that was a butt-whuppin'!  I did not expect that from Payton Manning.  Hell, I didn't expect that from Seattle! 

Truth be told, I think any of the top four NFC teams would have beaten Denver this year.  The NFC was just that much better.