"Shocker" in the Desert

A book celebrating suicide bombers has been found in the Arizona desert just north of the U.S.- Mexican border, authorities tell Fox News.
The book, "In Memory of Our Martyrs," was spotted Tuesday by a U.S. Border Patrol agent out of the Casa Grande substation who was patrolling a route known for smuggling illegal immigrants and drugs.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/27/iranian-book-celebrating-suicide-bombers-arizona-desert/

In a political climate where the desire to take a flight from Spokane to Seattle is considered “probable cause” to subject me to a stripsearch and a rifling through of my effects, we are still allowing our borders to be porous and are essentially giving tacit permission for anyone who wants to come in to do so by our inaction – without search, without background check, without review – hell, we don’t even know that they are here in the first place. All of this is happening because to try and stop our border from resembling a pasta strainer would be considered racist. I don’t necessarily understand why that is racist, but since I’ve been called a racist for suggesting that we need to secure our borders, I’m guessing that is the reason that our politicians haven’t done anything about it.

But back to the original point…

We are at war with a people who specialize in asymmetrical warfare and terror attacks. In such a situation, it concerns me that the general gist of this article is that they were “surprised” to find this book, as opposed to the reaction I would like to have seen from the people that I am paying to secure my borders, which is “we were totally expecting this.”
Surprise, to me, means that they were not expecting our enemy, who fights assymetrically through terrorist attacks, to want to cross over our porous, unsecured border to attack us in our heartland. They were surprised by this. I am not in law enforcment, or in politics, but I could see this coming for years and am completely unsurprised at all that terrorists are crossing our borders and obtaining access to our country through our ineptitude. If the terrorist threat is so great that my pregnant wife must either submit to a massive does of radiation in a virtual strip search, or be felt up by a government lackey before she takes a commuter flight across the State, then why are we allowing anyone and everyone to cross the border that wants to?

Colonel Bunny at Eternity Road - Immigration

Colonel Bunny over at Eternity Road has a good, short post.

My response? What could you possibly expect from a generation of men who’ve been disarmed their entire lives, told that violence is not the answer, and that because they are white, it is racist to stand up for yourself?

We aren’t far behind here, only our immigrants generally speak a different language than theirs do.

The problem arises from this leftist concept that there is no personal reason or responsibility for being poor, and that rather, it is all society’s fault. If you are poor, they say, you should likewise be pissed, and violent, and unpredictable, because your plight has nothing to do with the fact that you are uneducated, lazy, and have no marketable skills besides feeling sorry for yourself.

Proof of this is the shift in attitudes in immigrants of all stripes in the last 10 years. Used to be that immigrants were the hardest working, most goal-oriented people in any community. They tried to make something of themselves, given the opportunity that freedom and western society presents, and they succeeded because they tried. Now, many of them do none of this, and simply sit around and bitch about their plight until someone does something about it for them. If they lift a finger at all, it is to protest, burn flags, and riot – not to do something about their problems.

Again, I’m speaking in generalities here, and this is certainly not true of all immigrants. However, it has become more common, the world over. Again, we find that leftist attempts to “help” the poor have in fact hurt them far worse than could have ever been imagined – yet, the poor are still voting for them so that they can continue to be objectified and exploited.

It boggles the mind.

Patterico's "Most Offensive Line in the SOTU"

Patterico found the “Most Offensive Line in the SOTU Address” yesterday, and I am flabbergasted.

http://patterico.com/2011/01/25/the-most-offensive-line-in-the-state-of-the-union/

The bipartisan Fiscal Commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it – in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes

Catch that? Did you really? Read it again. This is your president calling tax breaks “spending.” Thereby indirectly positing that the government is “spending” money by not taking it from you; that the money – ALL MONEY – belongs to the Government and you are only allowed to keep it if the Government spends it by giving it “back” to you by not taking it in the first place.

These little syntax errors in his speaking – these little Freudian flubs that he throws out from time to time – shed more light on what Mr. Obama thinks about us, as citizens, than a thousand hours of tele-prompted political speak ever possibly could. He wants to “spread the wealth around” (remember that one?) and wants to remind you that whether you think you do or not you work for him and he owns you and if you are allowed to keep any of the fruits of your labor at all it is because the government allowed it, bitch! You should be thanking him!

On the Russian Bombing

It never does any good whatsoever to jump to conclusions when the facts are not all in. Case-in-point:

1.) The Times Square bomber was not a white guy (sorry, Contessa Brewer!)

2.) The IRS plane crash-guy was not a right winger. C’mon, he quoted from the damned Communist Manifesto!

3.) Nidal Hassan wasn’t white, and did not act because of PTSD by proxy.

4.) John Lee Muhammad was not a white guy, and his actions did, indeed, have ties to Islam

Of course, the opposite was assumed in all of the cases above by a slathering, excitable press (who forgot about all four stories the instant they found out that they didn’t fit the “Narrative”).

So, like I said, it never does much to assume things in situations like this. However, I will say that I suspect Chechyn Islamist radicals to be to blame. I also suspect that the reason that they’ve failed to claim responsibility is two fold:

1.) it isn’t necessary – the Russians know.

2.) For purposes of survival, it is a good thing to not spend your time blowing up Russians and then gloating about it. Thy aren’t gentle about their reprisals like we Americans are.

Debt Ceiling

I love how every time they increase the debt ceiling, it is always under the auspices of an emergency, to “keep things going for now, until we can get our arms around a solution.” The spendtrhifts in washington never see an increase in the debt ceiling as a reason to cut back, however. Suddenly, they have more money to “spend” and they spend it, crossing their fingers that in 5 years when they have maxed out the country’s credit cards yet again, and they have to raise the debt ceiling one more time, that we’ll have either forgotten the last “emegency” or we won’t be paying attention.
Since when is it good fiscal policy to fix deficit problems by raising your credit card maximum? How does that compute to a group of people that are advertised as being our superiors, and emminently smarter than us flyover idiots?

Immortality Lost‏

Look, I nevr thought I was immortal. I always knew that I could get hurt or killed in an accident, and so I was always somewhat creful to at least look before I leapt my entire life. But I never really came to terms with my mortality; never really accepted that no matter how careful I am to avoid accidents and so forth, I’m going to die anyway, until I got hurt and sick a few years back. It was ain interesting process; one which I’m sure all men experience at some point in time, at some event or another when the immoderacy of youth finally catches up to the wisdom of age.

I hurt my back. That was the beginning. There were several steps to the final result, but the final result is all that mattered - Ruptured discs in l4/l5 and l5/s1. The pain was debilitating.

Then, I got stressed out. The project that I was working on at the time was the remodel of a PAC-10 Stadium. $15 million dollars worth of work had to be completed in 7 months, prior to the first football game of the 2008 season. Never mind that this stadium is two hours from my house, and I decided to commute instead of hauling the 5th wheel down and staying there for the week. Four hours of commuting, every day. I had to be there at 7 am, so I left home at 5. Got up at 4 every morning. Yuck.

The combination of stress and pain during this time period caused an otherwise controlled, regressive genetic condition that I have to rear its ugly head. By July, only about a month and a half before Grand Opening, I was covered head to toe in a psoriatic rash that felt like a 4 day old 3rd degree burn. The doctors told me I was 80 some-odd percent covered. My scalp, body, legs, face, and yes… even down there, was covered in a throbbing, burning, itching rash. The disease was auto-immune, so as I went further down the path, my immune system crashed. I woke up for work one morning in the following condition:

1.) It took me 15 minutes just to get stood up straight from bed, because my back hurt so badly that I couldn’t move. I took three Vicodin and waited for them to kick in before I could get into the shower.

2.) The water stung like blazes on the rash, everywhere it hit, but it was almost like relief, because at least the sensation changed for a minute from dull burning and itching to stinging.

3.) I had gotten 2 hours of fitful sleep that night, because the rash kept me awake. And the back pain. And the Vicodin.

4.) I realized as the pain in my back subsided from the vicodin that I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I checked it in the mirror, and realized that it was glued shut with pus. I had a case of pink eye. Wonderful.

5.) I realized that my other eye was infected, too, just not as far along. I was very sensitive to light at this point, and so I shut off the light to keep the discomfort down.

6.) With no light, I couldn’t see very well, and lost my balance immediately. Until I managed to stumble to the light switch and turn it back on, I had no sense of balance at all. It was about then that I realized that I had a dull pain in my right ear, and figured I had an ear infection. It became excruciating by about 10 o’clock that day, to the point that I had to have my assistant drive me to the emergency room. But more on that later.

7.) I’d had a chest cold for about five days prior to this, and it came back with a vengeance that morning. I was coughing badly on my way to work, which sucked because every time I coughed, it hurt my ear so badly that I wanted to pass out.

I made it to the emergency room for the ear infection by 10:30 that morning. By the time they were done checking me out, the list of damages was extensive. My fever was 103 degrees. I had a skin infection (staph) in one of my rash-inflicted areas, presumably from scratching at night during my fits of sleep. I had double conjunctivitis (pink eye). I had an ear infection in my right ear, which was spreading to the other ear (and did by the end of the day). The kicker? My chest cold was actually a case of pneumonia.

I was admitted to the hospital. My doctor called my office and told them to find a replacement for me because he said there was no way I was coming back to work for – get this – at least a month. I went on short-term disability, and had the strong belief that I would get back to work in a week. 5 weeks later, I finally came back in. I was reassigned to a different project for a month after that, until I was allowed to go back to my stadium project and finish it out.

I learned that day that I was not immortal, for sure and for certain. I’ve since managed to get control of my auto-immune condition, and am living happily (although much, much greyer – people think I’m 45 from how grey I am, when I’m only 30) doing the same job I was before. The big difference is that I appreciate life much more now. I don’t get upset about the little things. I don’t worry about losing my job, or not being able to pay bills, or any of those things because none of any of that matters as long as I’m not living the hell that I lived in the year of our lord, 2007. They say what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger. I agree. I’m not really afraid of anything, because on that day in 2007, I wanted to die. I prayed for it. I hurt so bad, was so tired, so miserable, and had been for so long, that I didn’t care if I lived or died. What could I possibly fear now?

Wifey, Baby, and teh Die-a-beet-us‏

Wife is at T-minus one-and-a-half months and counting. So far, we have every indication that Evelyn Ann is a perfectly healthy baby, and that her mother is exceptional at being pregnant in every way…

…Except for one small exception to her exceptionalism (heh).

Wifey has gestational diabetes.

Which is really odd, because she doesn’t fit any of the risk factors. Family history? Nope. Overweight? Not even a little bit. Lack of excersize? She works out two to three times a week for an hour and a half and we go for walks and runs quite often (well, she runs – I am too beat up to want to run too much). African-American, Amerindian, or Asian? Nope.

Anyway, there is a chance that this may be a pre-existing condition that we only found out about because of the testing due to her pregnancy, because she doesn’t meet any of the GD risk factors, which has me nervous. If this is true, it isn’t really diabetes so much as a slight sugar intolerance, because her numbers would be normal to a bit on the high side of normal if she weren’t pregnant. I found out that the numbers allowed are smaller when pregnant.

I also found out that the risk to the mother is negligible – it is the baby that is at risk. They get too big, which I guess is a risk to mom, but they can take babies c-section these days with very little risk. The baby, however, runs the risk of descending into insulin shock at birth, as it is used to high glucose levels from mom, and overproduces insulin at birth. So, we are managing the problem with diet and excersize, and so far, we’ve been hitting really good numbers. The diet is real hard. Lots of meats and proteins (oh, damn) and cut back on carbs. So, like, meat, salad, and potatoes, only with a little less potatoes. I can do this!

Keep Me From Being... The One The Wolves Pull Down

I hate busybodies. I despise the very concept of a person that would dictate to others how they should live because they think that they’ve found some better way of doing things. Notice I said “dictate” not “suggest.” Suggestions for improvement, or opinions, are one thing – God only knows, I’ve got enough of both. It is when the person chooses to use the force and violence of government to impose their will on another that makes my blood boil.

My most recent experience with this is fraught with misconception, laced with idealism, and completely ignorant of reality, and it has to do with wolves.

Yeah, like howling-at-the-moon wild canines.

First, a bit of history. Men and wolves have a strange relationship. We either love to live with each other, or hate each other’s guts. Case in point, we took wolves into our villages and domesticated them as dogs, and yet, those wolves that decided to stay wild have been a competitor and the bane of our existence since the dawn of civilization. They are stiff competition to natural resources; they kill massive amounts of prey that would otherwise be in the forest for humans to eat. Often times, wolves kill just for the sake of killing, further driving up the competition for resources that have, historically, been much better and more thoroughly used by man. Wolves also kill livestock. Lots of them, and again, often times just for fun.

For these reasons, men and wolves have developed a very contentious relationship, leading to bounties on wolves placed by ranchers who’s livelihoods were being destroyed by thrill-killing predators. Current elite city folk like to pretend that the bounties placed on wolves back in the day were the result of misunderstandings, and prejudices, ignorance, dim-wits, and fear of stories about the “big bad wolf.” This is wrong. The men back then understood fully what they were doing, why they were doing it, and fear and prejudice had nothing to do with it; rather, it was brute survival. The wolves were killing these men’s stock, and destroying their ability to sustain themselves – it was kill or be starved. People and wolves do not coexist well. They never have.

That being said, I do not agree with the idea of extirpating them, as is what occurred. There was the ability back then, as there is now, to reasonably manage the wolf population so that they would not run the wild stocks so low that they had to resort to much more risky livestock killing. Instead, they killed them all, and I think that this was a crime against nature.

That being said, when the concept came about back in the 1990’s to reintroduce wolves into Idaho, where they had be extirpated 70 years earlier, I was not against it. I will admit to some concern at the concept, though, and my concern appeared to be well-founded.

They made several mistakes long the way. I’ll start from the tippy-top.

First, they didn’t reintroduce native, Idaho wolves. They went north, to the Tundra, and caught some timber wolves, and reintroduced those. The problem here is that what used to be a population of small, 65 to 80 pound wolves, is now a population of 130 pound super-predators (Note the weight - 127 pounds !!!)*. There is a reason that big, Canadian timber wolves never lived in Idaho, and it is because Idaho’s ecosystem wasn’t designed to have them there. The big timber wolves of the north are designed for very cold climates where they are pulling down very large prey like moose and caribou. The smaller, Idaho wolves were designed to hunt deer and young elk, but it was conjected (and backed up with some historical data) that they rarely preyed on mature elk, the way the current lot of wolves is doing.

Second, they reintroduced them, and then kept an eye on their numbers with the attitude that every additional wolf was a good thing, without any concern for the capacity of the ecosystem and the current herds of elk, moose, and deer in Idaho. Wolves remained federally protected (and still are) throughout the process, so there was no method by which they could control overpopulation in an ecosystem that had gotten used to them not being around. What this means is that over the 75 years that no wolves roamed Idaho, the elk and deer herds stayed about the same size, but concentrated into smaller areas as more land got developed and lost to elk and deer, and the animals, themselves, felt much less pressure to move and range away from wolf packs. They also got complacent, because they were only being hunted for 2 months out of the year by humans, and for the remainder of the year by absolutely nothing at all besides the occasional single cougar. So, you have thick population density of animals not used to worrying about wolves being around, and what resulted was a slaughter. Wolf populations soared as gluts of easy-pickings resources were taken, and elk and deer populations suffered horribly. The only method for population control was to live trap and relocate these superpredators, but the problem then became that they eventually ran out of places to relocate. The whole of Idaho is now overpopulated with wolves, and Idaho very seriously needs to do something about it. (Note, Washington isn't far behind. We are starting to have our own problems with wolves and also relocated problem Grizzly bears, also federally protected by people in Washington, DC)

And here is where we get into the busybodies. You see, they have followed the wolf saga from day one, and throughout the whole thing, they have been orgasmic with the concept of fixing that which we screwed up in the first place. In the process, however, they’ve screwed things up even worse than they were to begin with, but are not willing to accept that. Every day, we here in Idaho have to live with livestock losses, the decimation of our elk and deer herds, and the constant depredation of property and beloved family pets brought about by wolves, while they get to live in their ivory towers, 2000 miles away from the action with the smug feeling of satisfaction that they get by thinking that they’ve undone a horrible wrong, when in fact, all they’ve done is create another.

And this is where the elite part comes in, because, from 2,000 miles away, not having experienced on the ground what we are experiencing, and not having to deal with the wolves, themselves, they are calling us ignorant hillbillies that believe in the big bad wolf stories from our childhood that don’t know what we are talking about and that the wolves won’t cause problems. Again, they speak in theory (communism is a great thing!) while we, here in the trenches, speak in reality and actual experience (communism has killed more people than all other forms of evil combined, and makes even Hitler look like a piker in total body count). They ARE causing problems. There is no theory remaining, just actual experience. Idaho has actually created a wolf hunting season, and has released quite a few tags for a tiny harvest of the total wolf population, and the feds have sued to stop it. A legally issued tag by the state can become a liability to anyone that shoots a wolf, because even though Idaho says it is legal, a shooter still risks federal prosecution if they shoot a wolf. Idaho has told the Federal Government that they created a huge problem when they released wolves (against Idaho’s wishes, by the way) and now are saddling Idaho with the burden of handling the problem and not helping. The Feds have basically ignored every complaint.

And so, we are left with a choice. We have a sustainable, population control harvest of wolves, or, we allow things to continue until all livestock, deer, and elk have been killed in the state, and then the wolves starve to death, leaving nothing in their wake. Our Federal government has chosen option 2.

It boggles the mind.

*Take some time to read the website "Wolf Clash." Especially if you are from New York, or back east somewhere and you think the "re-introduction" of these non-native super-predators was a great, noble thing. Then, shut the hell up.

I am TJIC

If you haven’t read the flop about TJIC, a fellow blogger (and the guy who inspired me, indirectly, to start a blog that deals with personal and food-related topics as well as politics and goings-on) who has found himself in a bit of hot water over some pretty crass statements that he made on his blog, then I suggest you link over to Borepatch, who has a done a better job than I of summing up the issue. Also, of note, is Mark Alger’s nice post over at Eternity Road and BabyTrollBlog . Go. Read. I’ll wait.

Done? Okay…

First things first:

1.) I disagreed with TJIC in his comments section over making the comment that he made. It was rude, crass, and if I were Gabrielle Giffords’ husband, I think I’d be looking to punchisize* his face.

2.) I do not think that TJIC broke any laws with the statement. But beyond that, this was a tasteless joke, as TJIC made very clear in a subsequent posting where he stated that he did not support the shooting of congresspeople in 2011, and that it was intended to be a “What do you call 100 lawyers congresspeople at the bottom of the ocean? A good start!” type off-color, tasteless joke. TJIC even made a good argument for his crassness on his blog (which has been taken down so I can’t link) that was basically “They spend their lives dictating my life, infringing on my freedom, and pretending that they are my superiors, which I think is pretty crass, so you’ll forgive me if I, also, am a bit crass.” I can’t disagree with that statement, although I’m not sure I could be that crass when the lives of real people have been so horribly shattered as in Tucson.

3.) The police department told TJIC that if he surrendered his guns, they would not revoke his LTC. He did, and they suspended it, anyway. So, I believe that this was a case of illegal confiscation through deceit, even though TJIC willingly surrendered his guns.

4.) This is proof of what I’ve been saying all along – registration inevitably leads to confiscation. I’ve never heard any hoplophobe** explain to me what the purpose of registering guns is if it isn’t the eventual confiscation of said guns. There is no purpose to registration other than to let the authorities know where the guns are, so they know which doors to knock on the instant they get their first totalitarian impulse.

*Punchisize - I like to make up words - sue me.

**Hoplophobe - I didn't make this word up. I promise. Look it up. I like the word hoplophobe. It works much better than “anti-gunner” or “person who is against 2nd Amendment rights”, or any other convoluted method of naming them. The word means “one who fears weapons” and is broken down as such. “Hoplo” is from Greek origins. It has come to mean “weapon” but started from the root word “hoplon” which was the term used to describe the shield used by Greek heavy infantry starting in about the 6th century, BC. A Greek soldier was then known as a “Hoplite”. “Phobe” is of obvious origins. I hope I don’t need to explain that to you.

Outdoor Update

Jeez, I’ve been so busy lately, it is hard to say where I should begin. Alphabetically, I guess, so let’s start with fishing:

I haven’t been back out since my last trip where I thought I fried the injection pump on my boat. Turns out the pump isn’t fried like I thought – it still works fine. It seems as though the main reservoirs lost pressure somehow and stopped supplying oil to the small, engine mounted reserve reservoir, until it ran dry. There is another problem, too – there should have been an alarm horn that sounded to warn me of this. It didn’t. I am waiting for it to warm up enough so I can roll up my sleeves and find out what is going on here, and also if my engine is blown up.

Crossing fingers…

My friend hit Lake Roosevelt last weekend (I didn’t go, see pheasant hunting below) which is the Columbia River impounded behind the Grand Coulee Dam . He caught a 14 lb walleye. Damn nice.

Hunting went a little better. I did not get my elk. We found almost 200 head in two different herds, but they were outside the boundaries that my tag allowed for harvest. They never came into our unit. However, bird hunting has been a different story. My Dad and I went out three days before Christmas after a good snowfall and shot 27 birds in one day. 13 california quail, one pheasant, one ruffed grouse, 7 chukar partridge, and 5 hungarian partridge (does that add up to 27?). In a new personal best, I shot all 13 quail with one shot. They were packed up densely in the new fallen snow, and when they got up, I picked a buck out of the middle of the flock and slapped the trigger. 13 came down in total. My dog went nuts – she overloaded… so many birds, dad! It was a mistake – I’d never had anything like that happen to me before. I’ve shot multiples with one shot before, but never more than three or four. It is a good thing Dad was with me because the limit for one person is 10 (hopefully WDFW isn’t monitoring this page…) :)

I went out last weekend to a game preserve with a bunch of clients and took them pheasant hunting (on the company’s dime – gosh I love my job!). We shot quite a few pheasants, and Dutchess performed admirably. I got a lot of comments on what a good dog she is. Again, I trained her myself, so there is a point of pride there. That dog has done wonders for my career – clients become very loyal when you develop a friendship with them beyond work, and when you have funny hunting stories to tell… well, more the better!

Made up one of the salmon fillets that I caught on the Hanford Reach in October, with a homemade pesto and parmesan crust. It was delicious.

Made pheasant leg soup again. I just had it for lunch today.

Bird season is now closed. So is all big game. Next season coming up is spring black bear, spring turkey, and spring king salmon on the Clearwater river in Idaho. All in April and May.

As a note to those of you who do not live on the Pacific Coast, these King Salmon are actually born in freshwater, migrate to saltwater, and then come back into fresh water to spawn after about 5 years or so in the ocean. The amazing thing about them is that in the Clearwater, where I am catching them, they are over 400 river miles from the saltwater, and have swam over 8 massive dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers (link is to Lower Granite Dam, the last one on the Snake River before they swim into the Clearwater) just to get there. Even more astounding is that many of them are only HALFWAY to their spawning grounds. The Redfish Lake sockeye travel almost 1000 river miles to spawn (986 miles, if memory serves). Their spawning ground are just outside of Boise, Idaho. Look at a map. Find the mouth of the Columbia on the Washington/Oregon border. Now, find Boise, Idaho. Now, consider that the rivers don’t draw a straight line between the two, more of a squared off right angle… well, you get the picture. It is simply amazing.

The next big thing coming is March. White Sturgeon fishing. These prehistoric monsters have been known to grow up to 20 feet long and weigh 2,200 pounds. There are stories of the old method of catching them – using horse teams to drag them out – and losing entire horse teams because the fish pulled them off of the slippery rocks and into the river. They live in the Columbia, Snake, and Salmon rivers around here. Nowadays, the average size is 5-6 feet, and a really big one will be 12 or 13 feet long. They fight like crazy, and are the best eating of any fish I’ve ever eaten. I’ll start after them in March. Try to remember the camera this time, huh Goob?

Hard at Work - For... THE NARRATIVE!

…forwarding the narrative. Notice how this horrible thing with Dr. Kermit is on every front page of every newspaper in America? No?

How is that possible?

Well, let’s review…

1.) The government failed miserably at oversight. This does not forward the leftist narrative that government is better at everything and should, therefore, be in control of everything. Better sweep that one under the rug.

2.) A black abortionist is taking advantage of minority women and making a mint off of it – especially considering that he is performing illegal, late-term abortions where he stabs viable, born human infants in the neck with scissors and then tosses them down the garbage disposal. This does not forward the leftist narrative that only white guys can take advantage of minorities. In fact, I’d bet you even odds that if Dr. Kermit was white, this would be headline news, only spun in such a manner to show an evil white man hurting poor minority women.

3.) Women died there getting abortions. This does not forward the leftist notion that a legal abortion is a safe abortion. Better sweep it under the rug, too.

In all actuality, this is a feather in the old libertarian cap, this one. When the topic is discussed of “what would happen if the government wasn’t regulating these things?” with “these things” being doctors, mechanics, food quality, and so forth. Here is a perfect example of what happens when the government DOES regulate these things - so you tell me…
Do we really need them? Isn’t the fact that it has been proven that pennsylvania’s regulatory body when it comes to medical clinics is totally incompetent, and yet, clinics throughout pennsylvania seem to be doing fine, and only this one seems to have gone south…
well, isn’t that proof that government regulation is pretty much a waste of time, effort, and money? Isn’t this proof that rational men will do a good job without the nanny peeringover their shoulder, and that the nanny is incapable of finding the irrational, anyway?
Ooops, that is contrary to the Leftist narrative, too… better shut up now, because SHUT UP, that’s why!

No Words Can Express the Evil

So I tried to read through the excerpts of the Grand Jury report for Dr. Kermit as posted on other websites, and I couldn’t do it for long. I am currently sitting at my computer with a sick feeling in my stomach like I’ve hardly ever felt. There is a picture, you see, of one of the inarticulate, non-sentient masses of pregnancy tissue that this doctor delivered alive, and then stabbed in the back of the neck with scissors. It appears to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a six-pound infant, and is almost without a doubt very near full-term. This baby was delivered fully, and then killed by a doctor, who then joked about it being “big enough to walk him down to the bus stop.”

Here is the picture of this inarticulate, non-sentient mass of pregnancy tissue for your review and opinion. (WARNING - THIS PICTURE WILL GIVE YOU NIGHTMARES. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A CAST-IRON STOMACH, DON'T CLICK!)

Since I am not really sure whether I am a Christian or not, I think I get a pass when I choose to not forgive this piece of shit for what he has done, and suggest that if this truly is a just world, there is a hell, and this son of a bitch is going to burn there for a damned long time. I know, I know… civility… firey rhetoric… but then I consider that I actually would be glad if someone shanked this piece of shit, and I don’t really care to tone it down in the name of civility.
So, here you go, leftists, here is one example of right-wing nutjob hate speech. All it took was infanticide to get me there, too.

Jesse James

Normally, I wouldn’t waste ink on an idiot like James. That being said, every so often one of the Hollywood idiots does something so outrageous that I have to opine. In James’ case, he has now proposed to one of the two tattooed up sluts that he was banging while he was still married to Sandra Bullock, only 7 months after the divorce was finalized. Here is what I can’t understand…

WHY?

Three marriages down, and with all three of them screwed up because he chose to not be faithful, why would he chose to marry again? Hasn’t he proven to himself that he doesn’t want to be married? That he is happier being able to screw anything that walks? That he isn’t all about commitment? What in the hell does he think he is going to accomplish this time?

30 months, tops. He bangs another chick, and this current chick divorces him

Jumping to Conclusions - AGAIN

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/18/fbi-bomb-mlk-parade-route-domestic-terrorism/?test=latestnews

Oh don’t even start with me. I’m not defending the Aryan Nations. Not. Defending. Them. They are scum. The utmost evil scum dirtbags of the Earth. I’m posting this because:

1.) I live in Spokane and found it interesting that we made national news;
2.) Without any evidence, this was blamed on the Aryan Nations, who really haven’t even been a thing around here since about 2001.

Could there be other options? Hell yes. Any large gathering of people is at risk for Islamic terrorism anymore. It is possible that this was intended to harm a political candidate in the parade. It’s possible that, since we don’t know the nature of the device, it was nothing more than a stupid, idiotic prank (people are always going on about how “dangerous” bottle bombs are, but I’d posit that you could be hugging one when it went off and you’d experience nothing more than a little unpleasant ringing in your ears and some stinging). Could this be a bottle bomb? What kind of bomb is it? Were there Aryan demonstrations at the parade (there have been in years past, but like I said, not since 2001 or so). I’ll admit that the most likely source was Aryan nations. But they have CONCLUDED that in this article. This is not responsible journalism.

Poverty

There is no excuse for being impoverished save one: mental illness. Any other excuse is just that; an excuse; window dressing; a way for a man who has subconsciously realized that he is a lazy do-nothing to justify his ways. If a man wants to work less than his neighbor, that is fine, but then he needs to accept his lack of wealth without demanding that his neighbor, who works more than he does, make up for the deficit.

I challenge all readers to come up with a reason for poverty that is of no fault of the impoverished person, and did not result in a conscious decision by that person that lead to his being impoverished (other than mental illness). The formula is simple:

1.) Work 40 hours a week, minimum (again, even if employment isn’t available, you can still work. Fix lawnmowers on the side. Mow lawns, for chrissakes). Show up when you say you are going to, and work until you are finished. Learn a skill on the job if you can, but if not, learn one in your spare time and start putting it to work wherever you can.

2.) Put off having children until you can afford them (and really, in this day and age, is this really that hard?).

3.) Spend less than you earn, and eschew the use of credit except for major purchases like cars and housing (and even then, use it smartly and sparingly).

4.) Ensure that you insure. Life insurance isn’t strictly necessary unless you have dependents, but what is necessary is good disability insurance and a health insurance plan to cover care above and beyond routine checkups. That way, if you get hurt, or sick, you don’t fall into poverty as a result.

Four steps. That’s it. If you do these three things, you will succeed. I know several poor people, and to a person, they all have the same attitudes. Their jobs are inconveniences that they tend to not show up to regularly, meaning they have a hard time keeping a job, and those jobs that they can get are low paying and typically net low hours (they work an average of 20 hours per week). They use drugs and alcohol to excess, and show up for work hung over, and even drunk or stoned. They spend every moment that they can playing video games, not learning new skills or knowledge. A few of them have multiple children with multiple different women and when they do manage to earn a bit of money, most of it is garnished by the state for back child support. All of these are personal choices that they made. They CHOSE to be poor. I don’t feel sorry for them, nor do I feel a moment’s worth of responsibility to help them in any way.

I, on the other hand, put in 60 plus hours a week at my job and at other vocations and value building activities (like home improvements, for instance). I show up every day. I don’t drink to excess, don’t use drugs, and don’t even own a video game console. I am 30, and my first child is due in March. My life is 85 to 90 percent work and 15 to 10 percent leisure/play, whereas their lives are mostly leisure and play and very little work. Yet, when the final calculations come down, the government says that I OWE THEM??? I guess that is what they mean by “fairness”.

Sick, Wrong, and Gore-ey‏

All of you know who Al Gore is right? He’s the environmentalist guy that lives in a house, by himself, that is big enough to fit four of my houses into, and uses 20 times the energy my house uses (oh yeah, and he has 4 houses like this, too); who jet-sets around the globe in a private jet; and who spends all his time telling us that using energy is evil and should not be done. So, yeah, that hypocrite.

Remember his claim to fame?

No, not inventing the internet. The other one. The Love Canal. How he was all about cleaning it up and saving the poor residents of Niagara from the evil corporations that used them as a cheap place to dump toxic chemicals? You remember? You know the story. It is an Erin-Brokovich like story, where the evil company was trying to save a few dollars by killing everyone that lived around it with toxic chemicals. Remember?

Did you know that that was all a lie? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

Pretty much everyone has the straight skinny on what really went down, but there above, is a link to a Wikipedia page that sums it up pretty well. If you don’t want to link, here is my condensed version.

Mmmmkay…

So there was this guy named Love who wanted to dig a canal through Niagara for some reason. He started it but didn’t finish it. In the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, the government used the unfinished, dry canal as a place to dump chemicals and waste products from military/industrial sources (including waste from the Manhattan Project, sooooo, yeah, probably some pretty nasty stuff). In the late 40’s, and early 50’s, they started allowing other companies to dump there. A chemical company named Hooker got a permit to dump there, and created a clay-lined, haz-mat landfill per standard practice (this is still more or less the standard practice for these things, even today), and with government permission also dumped a bunch of stuff there. By the late 50’s, they were finished dumping there, and backfilled the landfill to essentially reclaim the site. It became a big field, with no leaks, and no problem. Oh, yeah, and also by this time, they were the sole user of the site, and had somehow by then also become the owner of the property.

The local government became avaricious in regards to the site. They wanted it to build a school or some shit. Hooker told them that it was unsafe to use the site for anything because of all the stuff, both known and unknown, that had been dumped there over the last 50 years. The school district, replete with their avarice, told them that they did not care, that they wanted the land, and would take it via eminent domain if necessary. After months of arguing with them and warning them that it was not a good idea to use the land for anything, the school district stood by their guns, so Hooker agreed to sell it to them for $1, with the caveat that the school district sign a piece of paper holding them harmless for damages caused by the school district messing with the property, and also strongly recommended that they not build on the land.

The school district built on the land anyway. In the process, they breached the integrity of the clay lining of the landfill, and a spill occurred. Bam. Love Canal is national news.

Now, here is the real gasper. Hooker was held liable for the mess. That’s right. Hooker. So let me lay it out for you in summary:

1.) Hooker was LEGALLY using a government dump site with permission from the government to do so.
2.) The government signed rights for the site over to Hooker, who continued to legally and safely dump there, per the permit that they had to do so. The dump site was contained and built to the standards necessary to contain such a dump site.
3.) The government demanded the property back to be used for development, which Hooker advised against strongly, and only allowed it to happen with their protest and after the government released them from liability for any spills.
4.) The government, not listening to Hooker, dug and breached the landfill, and created a horrible mess despite Hookers warning that just such a thing would surely happen if they didn’t listen to them.
5.) after all of this, Hooker is held responsible (when it cant even be proven that the waste that was released was even Hooker’s waste to begin with – remember, the government dumped there for years, too). This AFTER it was established that dumping there was completely legal, done in a manner that was to the standards of the time and safe, and that the site was rememdiated and left in a condition where it would not leak if someone didn’t f^&* with it. The government f#$% with it, and now it is Hooker’s fault.

How does that work again? Why would anyone want to start a business in their country when you can operate legally for 50 years, then have everything you did get undone by government meddling, and then get blamed for it?

And you people want these people to have control over your healthcare? What the hell?

Why I think that hipsters are really ugly people

When your entire life is dedicated to being ironic and sarcastic, and you spend all of your time parodying other people through yourself, I just can’t see any way around it. Just because people are laughing at the hipster doesn’t mean that they aren’t laughing at the cohort that the hipster is parodying – in fact, they are simply making fun of people by proxy. This is their entire existence. Well, that, and trying to impress people by being the “first” person to set some trend or another, or listen to some band or another. What a pathetic, meaningless existence of nothing but making fun of others and meaningless one-upsmanship meant to show everyone how much better you than everyone else. For example:

The trucker hat thing was done as an ironic parody. Of who? Of truckers – that’s who.

Drinking crappy beer like Olympia or LaBatt blue? Another ironic, sarcastic parody of people who actually like these brands (stereotypically seen as poor, lower class people).

The recent trend has been to clothing associated with rednecks and white trash – not because they like the styles, but because they are making fun of them. Again, making fun of lower class people by imitating them.

See a trend here? Could it be that hipsters are just elitist pricks that think they are better than everyone else, and try to show that by picking on people that they see as being from a lower social class than them? Naww, couldn’t be.

You know, it occurs to me that if the targets of their irony and sarcasm weren’t mainly white people, that they would pretty much be a racist hate group for doing what they do. Imagine if they “parodied” the black or Hispanic communities. They would be the Ku Klux Goddamned Klan if that were the case, so for their sakes, it is a good thing that they’ve decided that the group that they are going to ridicule isn’t one of the “protected” groups in our society, or else we’d be protesting and hating them as opposed to just tolerating their elistist, “I’m better than you” bullshit.

To all the hipsters out there – try actually producing something useful for society rather than sarcasm and ugliness. I think you’ll find that the psychological and material satisfaction that you get from a good day’s work will by far outshine what meager, pitiful satisfaction you get from making fun of people and trying to constantly show everyone how much better you are than them.

Grrr - Written 1-12-11

I’m not feeling like I have much to say today. I’m just so down over the shooting and the slavering, Pavlovian response from the left that I think I want to go put a nipple on a bottle of scotch and disappear to the basement couch in front of the fireplace for a while.

How do you have a reasonable debate with such people? How can you speak your mind when everything that passes your lips is “hate speech” and every time some nutjob does something horrible, you are to blame for it?

How do you reason with a person that thinks that when a guy crashes his plane into an IRS building, after leaving a note quoting the Communist Manifesto, that the guy flying the plane was obviously a right-wing extremist?

Westboro Picketing Tucson Funerals

Westboro is at it again. I cannot believe these sub-human scumbags. Okay, we get it, we’re all doomed to hell because we don’t hate homosexuals and think that we should stay out of other people’s business. Now, will you please go away?

Sickning Realization - Written 1-11-11

I guess it never occurred to me, but I sort of realized last night that the level of political opportunism being taken at the expense of 6 dead people in Arizona is absolutely sickening – and sort of scary. Democrats and leftists the country over jumped immediately on the bandwagon in a self-satisfied orgy of blame, pointing fingers at their opposition and actually using this horrible tragedy as political opportunity to further demonize their competition. It occurred to me that it happened so quickly afterwards that it was almost like they were waiting for something like this to happen so they could pounce – then I realized that they were.

It reminds me of the admitted disappointment of many leftists that the Times Square bomber wasn’t a white guy – it was all over the news, although Contessa Brewer’s and Bloomberg’s admission to that end were just the most memorable. They wanted it to be a white guy. They wanted it so badly that they were disappointed when it became, at least to them, just another non-story of a “lone wolf” guy with a vaguely middle-eastern sounding name with surely no ties to terrorism – at that point, there wasn’t a story to cover, as far as they were concerned. But if it had been a white guy….

Oh man, they just started salivating at the thought of it. And this time, it was a white guy. Granted, he is a mentally disturbed, pot-smoking leftist, but there isn’t any reason to let that get in the way of a good story, right? He is white and the leftists are absolutely loving it. Loving that 6 people were murdered by a white guy, because they get to play their “evil right wing terrorist tea-baggers” line now, and they are so gleeful and self-satisfied that it makes me sick. 6 people are dead, folks, and it has nothing to do with politics. For all we know, this guy’s cat probably told him to do the shooting. Let’s spend some time reflecting on who we’ve become when we gleefully salivate at the thought of a white guy shooting a bunch of people because it gives us political capital. You make me sick.

I'm Under the Impression...

That this recent occurrence of violence could have ramifications associated with it that we do not like much at all. Reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. Justification for increased invasive, TSA-style security in more venues. Higher taxation for more police officers to miss their purpose and start hassling the good citizens instead of protecting them (I love this concept. We take your money at the point of a gun, use it to buy more men with guns, who will then harass the shit out of you using your own money to fund it.)

In the words of the immortal Ralphie:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudddddggggge. (Only I didn’t say “fudge”.)

Malum in Speechus

My previous post let a big cat out of the bag. I figured I’d better elaborate a bit on why I thought that the chances were good that the police officer taking my truck would probably be chasing down a suspect for something that I didn’t even consider to be a crime. It probably raised an eyebrow – admit it you were worried that Goober is a big, hippy-dippy “legalize drugs” dope fiend. I assure you, I’m not.

There are two legal terms that I’d like you to get acquainted with. Malum in Se is the first. It is latin. I know, pretty fancy, right? It is used to describe an action which is simply wrong on the face of it. Murder. Theft. Assault. These are things which are typically considered malum in se offenses, because they are wrong, no matter what moral or legal code you ascribe to. They’ve always been wrong, and are simply wrong because they are… well… wrong.

The second term is malum in prohibitum which is used to describe actions which are wrong because they are prohibited, but not necessarily because they are wrong, per se. Walking on grass is not wrong on the face of the action, itself, but if it is illegal to walk on the grass in some public park, then this is a malum in prohibitum offense. There are hundreds of things codified in our law books that fall under this category. Gambling, for instance. Also, prostitution and the illicit drug trade fall under malum in prohibitum because they are not actions that are wrong on the face of it.

I apply a very simple acid test to something to decide if something is in se or in prohibitum and that test is simply this:

Does the act, when committed by one individual, infringe upon the fundamental rights of another without consent?

If it does, then it is an in se offense. If not, then it is in prohibitum.

“So, Goober,” you might ask, “what do you mean by “fundamental rights?”. My answer is simple. Throughout human history, it is obvious that we’ve been hard-wired to live by certain codes. Sometimes, we lived outside of those codes, but that was without fail to the demise of those who so chose. There are things that are hard-wired in the human brain as “wrong”, either by a higher force, or by evolution, or whatever you wish to claim, but the thing that is not in question is that they exist. Every time these rules have been broken, it was to the detriment of those who broke them. Throughout human history, it has been wrong within a society to murder, to steal, to use violent force upon another for no reason, or to bend him to your will, or to cause damage to another willfully. So, I believe that it is a safe bet to say that an individual has a natural, inalienable right to:

1.) Life;
2.) Property;
3.) Self-Determination;
4.) Good faith from and to those around him.

That means that only actions in violation of the above four rights, and only as they apply to the violation of the rights of an individual, can be described as malum in se. All else is malum in prohibitum and is therefore an attempt to codify and punish behavior that is not in conflict with basic human nature, and is therefore often times the codification of and punishment for things that were done by an individual that cause no harm to any other individual.

It is my belief that a good government will do everything that it can to minimize the number and effect of malum in prohibitum laws on its books. I do not believe that they can be eliminated totally. Hunting regulations, for instance, are in prohibitum laws that are necessary to properly regulate the “commons” of wild game. Without proper regulation of the commons, tragedy would surely ensue. Traffic regulations are another example of in prohibitum laws that are probably necessary. Rational men do not need traffic laws, but if you’d been driving with me this last weekend, you would have seen irrationality in such a massive scale (other drivers, not me) that you, too, would agree that they are needed.

That being said, there should be a very strict process through which in prohibitum laws are passed, by which there is proof of a compelling interest beyond a reasonable doubt to enact them, and one of the filters should be a measure of the harm caused by violations of the law. For instance, traffic laws exist because the consequences of irrational actions by one individual can effect another individual negatively, in the form of physical harm to himself and his property, which are in se offenses, even if they are accidental. Therefore, there is a strong basis for enacting these laws, because they directly regulate behavior that can easily indirectly cause an in se offense to occur.

An example of a law that does not meet this test is the criminalization of prostitution. When undertaken by two consenting adults, there is no third party individual being harmed by a malum in se offense, nor is there a possibility that there could be. For that reason, I cannot see why prostitution should be illegal.

And finally, back to the beginning…

“illegal” and “illicit” drug trade and use… Hot button topic, I know. To find out if it should be illegal, I apply my test. Is there any way which a legal drug trade could cause in se damage to a non-consenting third party individual? I could delve into this topic for hours, but allow me to point out that the legal trade of alcohol has been normalized back into the markets since it was “un-outlawed” in the 20’s. Before the prohibition was lifted, in se offenses from the illicit trade were myriad and constant. Once lifted, the market normalized into a legitimate trade and in se offenses are no more typical in this market than they are in any other legitimate market. A legalized market of trade in illicit drugs would not create in se offenses after a short period of normalization, just like the alcohol trade back in the early 20th century. So, count that out as a reason to ban it (and in fact, a reason to LIFT the ban, since the current, illegal trade is responsible for so many in se offenses on a daily basis that it is hard to add them all up).

Is there a reason that the use of illicit drugs could create in se damage to a non-consenting third party individual? Yes, without a doubt, the use of drugs can cause a person to do things – ugly, violent things – that they would not do if not under the influence. There is the possibility that an individual could be assaulted by a drug-addled person. But wait! Isn’t the same thing true with alcohol? Also, isn’t the prohibition on the private use of drugs an violation of the user’s right to self-determination and free will?

Here is where theory gets muddy to some people, when they start to find areas where they perceive that there is an intermingled web of cause and effect here that is contradictory, and requires you to make a decision that violates someone’s rights, no matter which way you go. It is not muddy or unclear to me, however.

Whenever the conflict is between a malum in prohibitum and a malum in se offense, in se wins, even if the in prohibitum’s spirit is to prevent secondary in se offenses. That means that when faced with the possibility that allowing drug use could result in increased in se offenses, and the certainty that banning drug use will violate the user’s free will and right to self-determination, then you go with the certainty, and you don’t ban drug use.

“But Goober!” you might be saying, “I’ve just caught you in a conflicting statement! Didn’t you say earlier that it is okay to assign speed limit laws to a person, thereby restricting his ‘free will’ to go as fast as he wants to, in order to prevent personal and property damage to third parties? Why is this any different than banning drug use to prevent drug-addled people from rampaging through the streets?”

Remember, you have free will and self determination to do whatever you want to do, with only one caveat. Your actions may not infringe upon the rights of another individual. Driving recklessly endangers other individuals, and you do not have the right to do that. Taking drugs does not endanger other individuals. Taking drugs, and then going on a drug-fueled rampage does, but note the de-coupling of the drugs from the rampage – an act you cannot do with excessive speeding and reckless endangerment – they go hand in hand. Without the rampage, there is no in se offense.

Posse Mommitatus‏

An interesting question posed in this Snopes article: “Do you really have to give up your car if a police officer demands it’s use?”

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/posse.asp

An interesting “what would you do?” question. I always love to take scenarios posed in movies and apply them to real life with the question “what would a normal, rational person do?” It is rarely what the person in the movies does, I assure you. Rational, normal, reasonable decisions do not a good movie make. So, what would you do? A police officer demands that you surrender your vehicle, and states that he is in hot pursuit of a suspect. What do you do?

Me? I don’t really care much what the law says. I’d tell him to go talk a long walk off a short pier – the state does not have the right to confiscate property from private citizens without due process, and this is not due process. If the officer was in dire need of assistance (ie, he was in real trouble and needed help) then I would gladly destroy my truck, and even risk my life to help him out, as I would for any person who needed my help, police officer or not. But I would as soon loan him my truck to chase down a suspect as I would loan my truck to anyone else (just to clue you in, it ain’t gonna happen). This is double true considering the fact that the chances are really good that he is trying to track down a guy for doing something tht I do not consider to be a crime.

6 Dead, 14 Wounded

And it looks to be the handiwork of yet another single nutjob looney-tune. I have so many things to say about this, but my first and foremost is that I feel the utmost sorrow for the families that lost loved ones in this senseless act. I cannot even imagine what the parents of that 9-year old girl are going through right now, and I fear mightily that the congresswoman having lived through being shot through the brain may not be a blessing, as I cannot imagine how she can ever have anything but a tortured, restricted existence that is a shadow of what her previous life was. I know that sounds harsh, but I can tell you right now that if I were in her position, having been shot through the brain and having the prospect of being a vegetable for the remainder of my natural existence – well, I’d rather be dead. The whole mess makes me sick to my stomach, and the fact that I am actively considering the fact that it might just be better for her to die than live with what will almost surely be total debilitation makes me even more sick – God damn reality, anyway.

I do have some commentary on a few of the events surrounding this tragedy. From the tippy-top:

1.) The main stream media has yet again shown their stripes. Nidal Hassan shoots a bunch of people at Fort Hood, after contacting the head of Al Qaeda and writing Islamic radical rant after Islamic radical rant, and we need to not jump to conclusions and can’t possibly know if this was an act of terror, or an act of a lone nutter who had never served a day in combat, yet had PTSD from treating so many people with PTSD (a medical condition that had never before been seen). Also, white people are going to commit horrible acts of violence against innocent muslims (which never happened, even after 9/11, but they can’t seem to give this up – it’s almost like they are hoping that someday it will happen).

On the other hand, a lone white guy shoots a congresswoman and many others, and it is obviously a tea-partier right-wing extremist before any facts are known, or if it is even known if the shooter really was a white guy or a tea party member (never mind that it actually looks like this guy is first and foremost a psycho nut-job, and second, if anything, a leftist. But a nutjob, regardless.) I remember clearly when the Nidal Hassan thing happened, that there was conjecture that it was a white extremist before the facts even came out. I don’t know how many more examples of this we need until we realize that the MSM is not out to give us the news and let us make our own decisions, but instead, to drive the narrative and instill opinion upon us all. Yeah, I know Fox News isn’t exactly unbiased, either, but as the lone red channel in a sea of blue, I’m glad as hell that they are there as a balancing act, rather than as an unbiased source.

2.) Predictably, Sarah Palin was blamed because she had a map with crosshairs on it, and said something about not retreating, but reloading (ignore the fact that in both contexts, she made very clear that she was speaking symbolically instead of literally). No-one said anything about Kos’s articles talking about targeting blue-dog congresspeople, and the fact that he, too, had a graphic with crosshairs, and that one of those crosshairs was over the critically-wounded congresswoman’s district. Also predictably, no-one seems to have come out and spoken the obvious truth, which is that political rhetoric has always been heated, and has always carried imagery of war and conquest and the vanquishing of one’s enemies – and that people have always understood this. Folks are not stupid enough to look at Sarah Palin’s map and think “Ooooh, CROSSHAIRS! I should kill me a congresscritter!” That is, unless they are psycho nutjobs. But there is just as much chance that his guy’s cat told him to kill the congresswoman, as he was urged to by the incendiary rhetoric of Kos or Palin, and any calls to censor rhetoric like that used by either is plain and simply ignorance and evil.

3.) I predict that if this guy had left-wing oriented reasons for doing the shooting, such as his being against the immigration or healthcare stances of this blue-dog democrat congress-woman, that it will be swept under the rug.

4.) There is some talk in right-wing extremist, and also left-wing anarchist circles about the congresswoman being a valid target because she had decided to take this position to bend the will of others into her vision of what they ought to be, and that such an act is abjectly evil. While I do not disagree that people in government tend to be power-hungry, evil, and with the vision of bending the wills of free men to their means, I do not think that this evil justifies the even greater evil of taking a life. There are only two reasons to take a life. Period.
A.) In defense of your own life;
B.) In defense of the life of another (innocent).
And yes, this means that I will not be persuaded to join any revolution prior to my life being threatened by the government. Sorry, folks, that is just the way the cookie crumbles. This congresswoman decided to go into what I’m sure she referred to as “public service” but is more aptly titled “public dictator” and for that, I think she is wrong-headed and wrong in act and theory. However, I will not subscribe to any thought process that causes “wrong” to become a capital crime. Until a person actively threatens my life, I merely disagree with her, and that is not a shooting offense.

ignorance is a horrible thing - especially when it is state-sponsored ignorance‏

As we hone in on what is causing the AIDs epidemic, we begin to see things like this.

Yes, this is a government that is recommending that its people prevent AIDs not through abstinence, or using condoms, or by getting screened routinely, or anything else. Nope, this government says “Just wash it down with tap water – you know… after.

And we wonder why the entire African nation is dying of AIDs. Africa is just another, more evident, more glaring example of why government sucks.

Always Looking Out For You (When They Feel Like It)

If you have a pulse, I’m sure you’ve seen and/or heard of the video of the city worker running over some poor schmuck’s car with a front end loader and then beating feet. I’m also sure that you heard the city’s reaction, which was to tell the owner of the car to go #$%k himself, even after he presented proof.

Therein lies the rub. We have installed a ruling class of people in our society – unaccountable, irresponsible bureaucrats whom we’ve trusted to take control over various important functions of our everyday lives – and then act shocked when the unaccountable, irresponsible bureaucrat whom we’ve trusted these important things to acts, well, unaccountably and irresponsibly.

Folks, the people working at the government are no smarter than you or I. They are your beer-swilling, loud-mouthed neighbor who revs the engine on his boat at all hours of the night and is annoying at neighborhood block parties. Do not give the government any more control over your life than you would gladly cede to your neighbor, because government IS your neighbor – largely comprised of bureaucrats who couldn’t get/hold a job in the private industry, so they ended up in government. If you want them running your health care decisions for you, then go for it, but please, count me out.

Chicken Pitas

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Chicken Pitas

Feeds four people.

4 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized cubes or strips
1 medium onion. Or half a big one. Or whatever.
Fresh garlic (4 cloves for normal people, I use 8)
Olive oil
1-2 tbsp crushed rosemary (to taste)
1-2 tbsp marjoram (to taste)
White wine
2 chicken bullion cubes
Nan bread or pocket-less pita bread.
Shredded cheese
Feta cheese
Romain lettuce

Here’s the process. You take a big frying pan. You put enough olive oil in it to coat the bottom. Get it hot. When it starts to smoke a bit, dump in your onion and fry it until it gets translucent. Then, dump in your chicken, the rosemary, the garlic, and the marjoram. Sear the chicken. When the pan starts to glaze (you still have the heat on high, right?), pour a splash of white wine into the pan (1/2 cup maybe? I don’t know..) and reduce the heat. Put the bullion cubes in at this point, allowing them to dissolve in the wine. Stir the whole mess a bit, making sure the wine stays simmering. If your chicken pieces are bigger, you may even want to cover it at this point to make sure the chicken cooks fully before the wine reduces away. If they are smaller, and you’re confident they’ll be done before the wine goes away, then don’t cover. I know, decisions, decisions. If you’re conflicted, cover it for 5 or 6 minutes, then pull the cover off and reduce the wine all the way. Worst case scenario, you overcook the chicken a bit, but over-steaming chicken really doesn’t hurt it that much.

Okay, once the wine is reduced more-or-less completely*, pull that puppy off the heat. You’re done with the chicken.

Steam your pitas in a steamer, or, the redneck way by covering them with a wet paper towel and microwaving them. Either way, if you over-do it, you’ll get rubbery, crappy pita bread, so watch it.

Then, you spoon-a da chicken onto da pita, and then you add-a da cheese (I like feta, but you can use whatever cheese floats your boat) and da lettuce. I also like to add a drizzle of Caesar dressing, but just a little bit, to moisten it up some. Then, you eat it. Mmmmm.

Best served with olives on the side and a Caesar salad with the little shrimpy things in it. And some kind of wine. I’m no connoisseur, but I would suspect that those that know about these things would suggest a dryish white wine, like a chardonnay, but I’ll just drink whatever is laying around the house, including beer.

*I had an idea where I didn’t reduce the wine all the way down, and instead used a strainer spoon to get the chicken out of the wine, and used some cream with a bit of corn starch dissolved in it to thicken up the wine/olive oil/chicken fat/pan glaze mixture left over into a sort of savory sauce/gravy thing that could also go on the pita. Haven’t tried it yet, but I will try to remember to update you when I do to see if it works.

Enterprise Videos

I don’t really know what is considered “conduct unbecoming an officer”, but I wonder…

It was hardly mentioned that these videos were produced largely as humorous, but useful guides for sailors, bearing titles such as “The Hazards of Shore Leave” and various other things. It makes me wonder if the production of such videos was actually part of the job of the XO of a Naval Vessel, and if the only questionable thing was that he presented these topics using gross, offensive humor instead of the military’s drab and boring usual tactic (“VD, and YOU!). Perhaps this might have even gotten the message across a little better than a drab infomercial on the topic would have.

I’ve read multiple articles on this, and have read about how “distasteful” and “obscene” and “offensive” these videos are, and yet, the only things that were described as being any of the above in any of the articles were as follows:

A.) He made a jerk-off motion with his hand. This is seen on national broadcast TV constantly, so I fail to see the big deal here.
B.) The video included an improvised proctologic exam (not showing anything, mind you, just insinuating it). I’ve seen proctologic exams discussed and even enacted on no less than a half dozen shows – Seinfeld, Family Guy, Blue Collar Comedy, and so forth.
C.) The video showed two women, and then two men, in showers together, showing them only from the shoulders up, but insinuating that they were naked. Any soap commercial on broadcast TV will give you far more viewing pleasure that just some shoulders.
D.) Probably the biggest deal – the XO used a derogatory word for homosexuals in one of his monologues. Again, any number of shows on TV do the same thing on a nightly basis, but this one is a little tougher because this guy is undoubtedly the boss of (probably) a number of gay people, so I agree that this one was totally out of line.

I guess I need to watch the videos to really see if the stink is worth the ink, but so far, I haven’t really seen anything here that would warrant this guy getting anything more than a stern reminder that he shouldn’t use slurs as the captain of a naval vessel, whether racial, sexual, or otherwise.

All-in-all, I think what was described was quite a bit milder than your usual, run-of-the-mill episode of Family Guy – I really don’t see the big deal. If it helped morale at all on board the ship (which I’ll bet it did, aside from a few whiney types who were “offended”) then I would think that the end justifies the means and more power to him. I’d be interested to see how many, of the 5,800 on board, were really offended. I’d also be interested to find out why, after 4 years, this is just now coming out.

Snake River Update

Grrr! I went up the Snake again on Thursday of last week. We had a great time. We saw bighorn sheep, deer, turkeys, and a bunch of different birds, including bald eagles. Unfortunately, I left the camera and the beer at home. I suck.

Caught zero fish. Every other boat on the river caught the hell out of them. I suck again.

But I’m learning. I’ll get better. I will also remember my camera.

Had a little boat malfunction – the oil injection pump went tits up, stopped working. This is a bad thing. The engine stopped about 3 miles from the launch. Really bad. It didn’t seize, so I feel lucky, but I think I’ll have some mechanic work to do to get it fixed.

DADT

I am not gay. That is one thing that I can tell you without any reservation or question on my part. The very idea of being gay pretty much takes the wind out of my sails like nothing else could (if you know what I mean). It is gross for me to even think about.

This is why I don’t dislike gays, or in any way consider gayness to be a choice. I could no more choose to be gay than I could choose to be short. I suspect that the same is true for most gay people – they didn’t choose to be gay, because I don’t think that you can choose something like that. I certainly could not – there is just no way. Yuck-O.

That being said, gayness is sort of the essential libertarian dream – two consenting people engaging in an activity that they consider to be mutually beneficial, that harms no other person in any way, and what anyone else thinks about it be damned.

That I couldn’t be gay, and that I consider the concept to be sort of gross, does not cause me to look down on gay people any more than I look down on people who eat raw oysters on the half-shell (another activity that I consider really, really gross). I’ve known a bunch of gay people, and if there was anything that was remarkable about them, as a group, it was that they were really quite, well, unremarkable. They were just people. Totally normal in every way except for who they went to bed with at night. They were each unique, just like everyone else (heh), and possessed a wide range of personalities and mannerisms – just like everyone else.

Yeah, I’ve known feminine gay men who were very light in their loafers and spoke with a lisp about fashion and interior decorating (but this guy isn’t going to be enlisting for military service, now is he?). I’ve also known one gay man who was one of the manliest men I’ve ever met, a CEO of a large company, who hunted and fished and was just like one of the guys – except for he went home with one of the guys at the end of the day. Forget the last part, I’d share a foxhole with that man any day.

My point is this – IF there is a problem with gays in the military, I do not believe that it will be the gays that are causing it. IF that is the case, then gay people should not be punished for the problems being caused by being forced to live in secrecy and with the fear of being “discovered.” The problem lies with those causing the problem, not with gay people, so lets make sure we are punishing the right people, here, can’t we?

Casual Links do Not Prove Causation

Talking with my sister this week, she made a comment that got me to thinking, and actually prompted me to caution her on the myriad of logical fallacies one commits when they assume that because A is true, and B is true, that A somehow causes or is tied to B. It isn’t always that clear cut, though, which is why I am writing this. My sister’s example:

She doesn’t drink soda (or pop, or coke, or whatever you call it regionally) because she cited a study that showed that people who drank soda were on average 10 pounds heavier than people that do not drink soda. Further comments by her lead me to believe that it was her understanding, based on the study, that if a person who does not drink soda started to drink soda, that they would gain, on average, about 10 pounds as a result of drinking soda. After all, doesn’t the study say exactly that?

Well, not really.

Here is why. There could be a myriad of other reasons why people who drink soda are heavier than those who don’t, and these reasons range from soda only being partially to blame, or not to blame at all. For instance, could it be possible that people who make a conscience decision eschew the consumption of soda could be less weighty simply because they, as a whole, make better dietary and health decisions in general, including but not limited to the decision to not drink soda? This decision is typically health based; soda is not good for you, so they decided to not drink it. But couldn’t this be true of other dietary intakes? If they are concerned with eating and drinking well, enough so that they eschew soda, isn’t it reasonable to think that they also make other good decisions like lowering calories and fat intake, reducing sodium, and eating less? Could the ten pound weight difference have little to do with soda, itself, and more to do with the lifestyle of people who decided to not drink soda? Could it be that a person making all of these other good dietary decisions, but still deciding to drink soda, might not gain a single pound?

I saw another study recently that caused me to pause, again. The study stated that children who watch more than 3 hours of TV per day do less well on standard tests than children who do not. Again, I wonder if the headline should have read “Children Who’s Parents Ignore Them for 3 Hours Per Day Do Less Well Than Children Who’s Parents Who Interact With Them, Find Other Activities For Them, and Do Not Ignore Them.”

Start listening to these studies, and pay attention to other possibilities that could be creating the result other than the stated, studied cause. I think you’ll find that there are at least a handful of other, logical reasons for the study’s results other than the concluded outcome given by the scientists, every single time. I remember an article I read last year that was an alarmist piece about melting glaciers that read something like “plants that have not been exposed for 5,000 years are being exposed as XXX Chilean Glacier melts away because of current warming.” I read it differently. I read it more along the lines of “5,000 years ago, the planet was warm enough that this glacier had receded so far that plant life lived here, in an area that is only just now being uncovered, meaning that it is still colder now than it was 5,000 years ago.” Yawn.

Keep an open mind. Think for yourself. Stay alert. Stay focused.

What Does Liberalism Have to Show for 50 Years?

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=557701&p=2

Awesome. Go and read.

Obama Called Michael Vick

Funny, this. I saw an article in a local liberal rag about this very thing, entitled “Unforgiven” that basically bemoaned the fact that convicted felons had to carry their felony around with them for the rest of their lives. This “scarlet letter” as they called it, kept these people from ever getting “good” employment, and for that reason, they were always poor and downtrodden.

I was shocked at the obtuseness of the people writing this article, as much as I am shocked at Obama’s obtuseness in having said what he said about Michael Vick.

For every job that is open, there are likely multiple applicants vying for the position. What the article, and Obama, essentially said, that given two qualified applicants, one who is a felon, and one who is not, that it is unfair to choose the non-felon over the felon based solely upon the latter’s felon status.

Can you believe this?

To have a felony on your record means that you have a history of making horrible, unethical, and criminal decisions. Millions of Americans have done the right thing and not committed felonies, meaning that they do not have a written record of having made horrible, unethical, criminal decisions. Given the choice between someone who is on record as having (or at least having had at one time) no compunction against stealing from you, hurting your family or whatever else you can get a felony for, or a person who does not have such a record, why is it unfair to use that in your decision making process?

Why should we feel sorry for those who are reaping the consequences of their decisions past? We all do. In fact, many decisions past live with us our entire lives, not just felonies, so why this sudden outpouring of support for ex-criminals? It’s called the real world, folks. You make a bad decision and get AIDS, no amount of whining from the liberal establishment is going to fix that. You make a bad decision and get some girl pregnant, you reap the consequences. One tiny, insignificant bad decision like hitting the brakes at the wrong time can end your life on our nation’s highways. Why is being a felon any different?

And no, President Obama, we don’t all deserve a second chance. We all deserve to be judged according to our reputation and past decisions, and those of us that don’t need a fucking second chance in the first place should be considered before those begging for a second chance after they screwed up their first.

Adults reap the consequences for their actions, and accept them without whining about it. That is why adults carefully consider their decisions before acting, instead of allowing impulse and rashness to rule their entire lives. A lack of self-control can easily get you killed, for chrissakes, so don’t come whining to me when all that your bad decisions have done is deny you the ability to get a good job for the rest of your life.