More from Kerry's Shipmates

It looks like the SwiftVets aren't the only ones saying that Kerry is full of shit. It seems a few of his shipmates from the USS Gridley are starting to speak out.

Something that needs to be aired

Hat tip to Protest Warrior.

Here are some choice words from the Left that shows how they really feel.


"I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease. ... He is an absolutely reprehensible person."
--USA Today Columnist Julianne Malveaux on Justice Clarence Thomas

"If there is...justice, he'll get AIDS, or one of his grandchildren will get it."
--National Public Radio's (NPR) Nina Totenberg on Sen. Jesse Helms

"[I]t may take the destruction of Western Civilization to allow the rest of the world to really emerge as a free and brotherly society."
--Newly elected president of that hot-bed of collectivist agitation, The World Council of Churches, Andrew Young

"In South Africa we'd call it apartheid. In Nazi Germany we'd call it Fascism. Here [in the U.S.] we call it conservatism. These people are attacking the poor."
--"Reverend" Jesse Jackson [who wears $3000 suits -- and spends hundreds of thousand of $ on his mistress as hush money for keeping quiet about the bastard he fathered -- while bemoaning the fate of the poor & preaching"Christian" morality"

"Fundamental, Bible-believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-world global society and their children will not fit in."
--Former Democratic Congressman Peter Hoagland......does this sound familiar?? Communism anyone???? Suddenly the state owns your children??

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we think they ought to have."
--Former president of CBS News, Richard Salant

"I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years."
--Lyndon B. Johnson

"When you hear somebody doing it [criticizing the federal government], you ought to stand up and double up your fist and stick it in the sky and shout them down."
--Bill Clinton in a speech in Billings, Montana, 1 June '95......PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH BILLY BOY.

"We don't give a sh-- about what you have to say."
--Gloria Steinham, as she turned off the microphone when feminist Camille Paglia tried to voice a dissenting opinion

"You're fired, and your pension is forfeit."
--European Court of Justice (sic) to Bernard Connolly who wrote a book exposing European Union lies while acknowledging that what he'd written was true

"Suck my dick, you stupid nigger. Shut the xxxx up, and get your black ass out of here, nigger!"
--"Reverend" Jesse Jackson and his gang of thugs to Black conservative J. L. Peterson, when he tried to speak at an L.A. Trade Bureau Forum meeting. (Mr. Peterson is currently suing "Rev." Jackson for -- among other charges -- assault and battery, as he was also physically attacked.)

"I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."
--Self-described 'unbiased broker of events,' and CBS anchorman, Dan Rather, when asked in an interview: "Do you think Clinton is an honest man?"

"Take the initiative .. whether the issue is promiscuity or recruiting the straight. ... Ten percent is not enough! Recruit, recruit, recruit!"
--Lesbian activist, Donna Minkowitz, writing in the paper, The Advocate, urging her comrades to recruit more of America's young into the homosexual "lifestyle."

"We must cure Americans of their opposition [to the perversion of homosexuality] whether they like it or not."
--"Gay" authors M. Kirk & H. Madsen in their book After the Ball ...

"We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. ... Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us."
--A vision of the future presented by the Boston Gay Community News in February 1987

"Lenin was an apostle of world peace whose ideas have had a profound influence on the course of contemporary history. ... [and] his ideals ... are in line with the U. N. charter."
--U. N. Secretary General U Thant in a speech given in 1970

"In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it is just as bad not to say it."
--Socialist oceanographer, the late Jacques Cousteau

"If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees."
-- President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993

"And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."
-- Bill Clinton on MTV's "Enough is Enough", 4/19/1994

"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say."
-- Bill Clinton (May 29, 1993)

"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans . . . ."
-- William J. Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993

"We must be able to arrest people before they commit crimes. By registering guns and knowing who has them we can do that. If they have guns they are pretty likely to commit a crime."
-- Vermont State Senator Mary Ann Carlson

"I am one who believes that as a first step, the United States should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols, and revolvers...No one should have the right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun."
-- Professor Dean Morris, Director of Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, stated to the U.S. Congress

"We're bending the law as far as we can to ban an entirely new class of guns."
-- Rahm Emmanuel, senior advisor to Bill Clinton

"All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately ... The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every respectable German man the opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon ... must be regarded as an enemy of the national government."
-- SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933.

"Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State."
-- Heinrich Himmler

"Stroke of the pen, law of the land... kinda cool"
-- Clinton Presidential Aide Paul Begala referring to Executive Orders, July 1998

"If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them. "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in," I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren't here."
-- U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D/CA) speaking of her authorship of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban on "60 Minutes" 2/5/95

"We must get rid of all the guns."
-- Sarah Brady speaking on behalf of HCI with Sheriff Jay Printz & others on "The Phil Donahue Show" September 1994

"I don't care about crime, I just want to get the guns."
-- Senator Howard Metzenbaum, 1994

"We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!"
-- U.S. Representative Charles Schumer (D/NY) on NBC 12/8/93

"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal."
-- U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993

"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all."
--Nikita Khrushchev to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party 2/25/56

"Fascist ethics begin ... with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position."
-- Mario Palmieri in The Philosophy of Fascism 1936

"There is the great, silent, continuous struggle: the struggle between the State and the Individual; between the State which demands and the individual who attempts to evade such demands. Because the individual, left to himself, unless he be a saint or hero, always refuses to pay taxes, obey laws, or go to war."
-- Benito Mussolini

"I cannot save every undercapitalized business in America."
-- Hillary Clinton, when questioned about the impact health care mandates would have on small businesses, quoted in Fayetteville (GA)

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."
-- Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party presidential candidate and one of the founders of the ACLU.

"Among the elementary measures the American government will adopt to further the cultural revolution are the following: the schools, colleges, and universities will be coordinated and grouped under a National Department of Education and its state and local branches. The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of bourgeois ideology."
--William Z. Foster, National Chairman of the United States Communist Party, in his book "Toward a Soviet America".

"The children who know how to think for themselves, spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone (would be) interdependent."
-- John Dewey, pioneer of American modern education system

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It is up to you as teachers to make all of these sick children well -- by creating the international child of the future."
-- Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education at Harvard, addressing the Association for Childhood Education International in April,1972

"Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized, psycho-social treatment for the student, and teachers must become psycho-social therapists. This will include biochemical and psychological mediation of learning, as drugs are introduced experimentally to improve in the learner such qualities as personality, concentration, and memory."
--National Education Association report entitled "Education for the '70's." (1979)

"The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom...between the rotting corpse of Christianity...and the new faith of humanism. Humanism will emerge triumphant."
-- John Dunphy, January/February, 1983, issue of "The Humanist"

"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man."
-- Adolph Hitler, 1933

"We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."
-- Hillary Clinton, 1993

"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all."
--Strobe Talbot, President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, 1992.

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
--David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991

Mayday! Mayday!

Hat tip to Cox and Forkum

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words....

Ethics Quiz

This is a very good test of your ethics:

This test has only one question but it's a very important one. Please don't answer it without giving it some serious thought. By giving an honest answer, you will be able to test where you stand morally.

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation, where you have to make a decision one way or another. Remember, your answer needs to be spontaneous, yet honest. Please scroll down slowly and consider each line - this is important for the test to work accurately.

You are in Miami, Florida. There is great chaos going on all around you, caused by a huge hurricane and the accompanying floods associated with it.

You are a news photographer caught in the middle of this disaster that is on the verge of hopelessness.You are trying to shoot impressive shots that capture the emotion and tragedy of the events taking place. Houses are being destroyed all around as nature lets loose its furry.

Suddenly, you see a woman in the water. She is fighting for her life. trying to not be dragged away by the raging torrent of water.You move closer and the woman looks strangely familiar.

Suddenly, you recognize her. It's Hillary Clinton! At that moment you are aware that the raging water is about to take her away to a certain death, gone forever. You are aware you have two options. You can save her or take a Pulitzer prize winning photo of one of the world's most powerful women at the actual moment of her death.

Now here is the question: ( Please give an honest answer.)

Would you select color film or go with the classic simplicity of black and white?

Scotty would be proud

Scientists discover "tansparent aluminum."

Hat tip to Physics Web

Glass breakthrough
11 August 2004

Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce strong glass with good optical properties. The method avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to other oxides (A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761).

Glass is formed when a molten material is cooled so quickly that its constituent atoms do not have time to align themselves into an ordered lattice. However, it is difficult to make glasses from most materials because they need to be cooled -- or quenched -- at rates of up to 10 million degrees per second.

Silica is widely used in glass-making because the quenching rates are much lower, but researchers would like to make glass from alumina as well because of its superior mechanical and optical properties. Alumina can form glass if it is alloyed with calcium or rare-earth oxides, but the required quenching rate can be as high as 1000 degrees per second, which makes it difficult to produce bulk quantities.

Rosenflanz and colleagues started by mixing around 80 mole % of powdered alumina with various rare-earth oxide powders -- including lanthanum, gadolinium and yttrium oxides. Next, they fed the powders into a high-temperature hydrogen-oxygen flame to produce molten particles that were then quenched in water. The resulting glass beads, which were less than 140 microns across, were then heat-treated -- or sintered -- at around 1000°C. This produced bulk glass samples in which nanocrystalline alumina-rich phases were dispersed throughout a glassy matrix. The new method avoids the need to apply pressures of 1 gigapascal or more, as is required in existing techniques.

The 3M scientists characterised the glasses using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis, and tested the strength of the materials with hardness and fracture toughness tests. They found that their samples were much harder than conventional silica-based glasses and were almost as hard as pure polycrystalline alumina.

Moreover, over 95% of the glasses were transparent (see figure) and had attractive optical properties. For example, fully crystallized alumina-rare earth oxide ceramics showed high refractive indices if the grains were kept below a certain size.

Author
Belle Dumé is Science Writer at PhysicsWeb

Connections

John Kerry is complaining about Bush's alleged connection to the Swift Boat Vets. I woner when he's going to mention his connection to MoveOn.org?

Family Matters

Last night, I got an email from my cousin Travis who lives up in Dallas where my Aunt Jean's funeral is being held. According to him, our cousin Elaine (Jean's daughter) showed up and reminded everyone why she is persona non grata with the family. I was kind of hoping that she had changed over the years. Guess I was hoping in vain.

Ten years ago, at our grandmother's funeral, Elaine (who is a graduate of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University) got into a bit of a row with my aunt because - as Elaine put it - "Grandma's in Hell because she hasn't accepted Jesus." Elaine has made numerous judgements like this, telling anyone with earshot that they're going to Hell because they don't believe in God exactly the way she does.

Last night, when she arrived, she once again started passing sentence of Doom and Hellfire on everyone present, even pronouncing to everyone that her own mother is burning in Hell right now. Needless to say, the family is not happy with her.

I remember a time a few years back when Elaine, who is now in her early 40's, was cool. Ok, perhaps "cool" is not the right word. "Reasonable" is a more appropriate word. Before she went off to Falwell's brainwashing academy, she was a nice and intelligent person. Afterwords, she had become a shrill and accusing bitch whose sole joy in life appears to be telling everyone around her that they're not a good Christian and that they are going to Hell. I've not heard a single kind word from her to anybody in about twenty years. She even somehow managed to ruin her twin sister Loraine's marriage, though I'm not to clear on the details as to how. Somehow, though, I have the feeling that the words "sinner," "hell," and "damnation" were involved.

Even though I, myself, am a self-admitted heartless bastard - I had my heart surgically removed years ago, along with my conscience - I have to feel sorry for Elaine's kids. When last I saw them, ten years ago, they were among the most mentally and emotionally fucked up kids that I'd ever seen - and I've worked with some pretty fucked up kids in my lifetime. I would consider it a miracle if those girls aren't drug-addicted gutter-sluts with crack-babies of their own; that is, of course, assuming they haven't just decided to put themselves out of their own misery by now.

The only good thing I can say about this is that she's lucky I'm not able to attend the funeral and memorial service. I didn't rip into her at my grandmother's funeral because that's not something my grandmother would have wanted. Aunt Jean, however, would be applauding from the hereafter as I slapped the stupid out of her petulant daughter.

Democrat Attack Harpy chimes in on Kerry

Wednesday, August 18, 2004


Kerry deals away his ace in the hole


By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON -- It appears American voters have little choice between the presidential candidates in the November election when it comes to the disastrous war against Iraq.

Both President Bush and his rival, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., seem to think it was worth the 932 American lives (so far) and thousands of U.S. wounded to get one man behind bars -- Saddam Hussein.

There also are the untold thousands of Iraqis dead and wounded as well. But, as one Pentagon spokesman told me, "They don't count."

Kerry has made a colossal mistake by continuing to defend his October 2002 vote authorizing President Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Last week at the Grand Canyon, Kerry said he would have "voted to give the president the authority to go to war" even if he had known there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction -- Bush's original justification for war on Iraq.

Kerry explained that he believes a president should have the "authority" to go to war, and he voted accordingly. But he insisted that Bush subsequently misused the authority by rushing headlong into combat based on faulty intelligence about Saddam's weapons arsenal.

Kerry is mistaken on a key point. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president does not have that sole right to declare war. Despite its mindless default, that right still belongs to Congress.

Kerry has passed up several chances to distance himself from the Iraqi debacle. But instead he has left himself wide open to Bush's ridicule. What's he got left -- stem-cell research?

Bush had a field day smirking and mocking his political rival and telling the nation that he was "right" to attack Iraq, absence of weapons notwithstanding.

Bush has sarcastically told cheering Republican rallies, "After months of questioning my motives and even my credibility, Sen. Kerry now agrees with me."

"We did the right thing," Bush bragged. "And the world is better off for it."

The senator should have called Bush's hand months ago and laid it on the line after so much official deception. How could he say he would have voted for the 2002 war resolution after he and the whole world learned the rationale for the war was based on falsehoods?

Does Kerry realize that the U.S. invasion of Iraq without provocation violates the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg Tribunal principles?

Kerry has a weak fallback position-- that he would have planned things differently before going to war and would have lined up more European allies. Knowing what they know now about the Bush fiasco, France and Germany are congratulating themselves for having the good sense to stay out of Iraq.

So Kerry has blown it big time, rising to Bush's bait and throwing away his ace in the hole -- Bush's shaky credibility on the profound question of war and peace.

Bush has yet to apologize for misleading the nation or to explain why he needed a war when Saddam's regime was tightly contained with sanctions, weapons inspections and U.S. patrolling of the "no-fly" zone.

Bush has no exit strategy or timetable for a troop withdrawal even under the facade of Iraqi sovereignty.

Kerry has talked about drawing down American forces and an eventual pullout.

But he could learn something from two previous wartime Republican presidential candidates who had a better take on the public pulse and won the White House.

In 1952 during the Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower made a campaign promise that he would "go to Korea" and end the bloodshed. He did go to Korea and the war ended with a cease-fire standoff months after his inauguration.

In 1968, Richard Nixon said he had a "plan" to end the Vietnam War and the voters, wanting peace, bought it. Nixon -- in part forced by Congress -- reduced the U.S. troop commitment to Vietnam, but U.S. forces were still there when Nixon was forced to resign from office in 1974 because of the Watergate scandal. But the war ended the following year.

These were not triumphal solutions but they did give Americans some hope of eventual escape from the two quagmires.

In 1964, a Los Angeles Times cartoon by famed Paul Conrad showed a pollster knocking on a door. A woman sticks her head out of a window and the pollster asks her voting preference: "President Johnson or Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz.?" She replies: "Who else have you got?"

That may be the fix some Americans are in again.

Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com. Copyright 2004 Hearst Newspapers.

John Kerry and the VFW

John Kerry was wooing the VFW earlier this week. Here's a little gem to consider when thinking about how Kerry thinks of Vets.

And so a New Soldier has returned to America, to a nation torn apart by the killing we were asked to do. But, unlike veterans of other wars and some of this one, the New Soldier does not accept the old myths. We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans' Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the "greater glory of the United States. We will not accept the rhetoric.

We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars—in fact, we will find it hard to join anything at all and when we do, we will demand relevancy such as other organizations have recently been unable to provide.

We will not take solace from the creation of monuments or the naming of parks after a select few of the thousands of dead Americans and Vietnamese. We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim.

-John Kerry, The New Soldier

Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You're black.

John Kerry is accusing George Bush of letting groups do his dirty work. Still no comment from Kerry denouncing Moron.org for doing his dirty work.

Interesting development

Judicial Watch, a non-partisan organization that watches for cases of government fraud, has requested a formal review of Sen, John Kerry's records and awards "earned" in the "performance" of duties while in Vietnam.

I suppose...

...it's time for me to come out and say exactly what my beliefs are on various topics.

First and foremost, I don't go for this uber-sensitive garbage. In everything that happens, we have a choice on how we react, including whether or not to choose to be offended. If merely reading, seeing, or hearing something you don't like is enough to cause you to automatically be offended, then you should just go ahead and pop about 20 valium. I'm sure you'll feel much better in about half an hour. Someone once said that "Real power is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose."

From this point on, I'm going to itemize my beliefs for easier reading. If you find any of these to be offensive, go see your doctor about some valium.

• Welfare: Welfare was intended, at inception, to be helping hand to those who need it, not the way of life it has become. One of the few (very few) things that Bill Clinton ever did right was to push for welfare reform and turn it back over to the states instead of it being doled out by the federal Mommy State.



• Religion: You're free to worship whomever you choose. You could choose to worship Beppo the Wonder Monkey if you wish, but that doesn't mean the rest of us should have to care. There isn't a religion around today that's not trying to pull the line of "Waaah! Waaah! I'm being persecuted because I'm Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Whatever!" Get over yourselves already. No one is persecuting you, so get off your cross. I will say this, though, Karma is a bitch, ain't it?
  
  Oh, and for the record, I'm not a Christian. I haven't insulted myself with that label for more than twenty years. Come to think of it, I don't endorse any of the so-called "organized" religions at all



• Sexuality: What consenting non-related adults (notice the operative words here) do in the privacy of their own home is their own business and nobody else's. If you're straight, that's fine. If you're gay, that's fine, too
  
  Too many people are working themselves into a tizzy over the fact that somone might be enjoying life in a way that they, personally, do not approve. Religionists (espcially Christians and Muslims) are notorious for this.



• Same-Sex Marriage: This is one topic where I happen to piss everyone off. Marriage is a religious institution in which the State should not be involved. It is my personal belief that the State should have no hand in religious affairs. Whether or not a church wishes to endorse same-sex marriages, that's their business. Nor should the State be forced to subsidize your marriage in the form of tax-breaks, etc. I'm talking about complete separation between the two. At the same time, get your god (whichever one you worship) out of government and put it back in church or your homes where it belongs.



• Taxes: As it stands right now, we pay taxes on what we make, what we spend, and what we don't spend. Pretty soon, the government will find a way to tax us on what we don't make. Oh, wait, they already do that - it's called "property tax."
  
  Our current tax system is unfair in that it treats people differently for various reasons. A more fair system should be implemented, like replacing it with either a flat tax (absolutely no loopholes, shelters, or exmptions PERIOD) or (referably) a national sales tax. The reason I say a national sales tax is a good idea is that it is a tax on consumerism. Rich people buy more, so they pay more in tax. People who aren't rich buy less, and thus pay less in taxes.



• Healthcare: Speaking as someone who used to work in the healthcare field, I can tell you why the cost of good healthcare in this country is so damn expensive: the unholy trinity of insurance companies, ambulance-chasing lawyers, and a gullible public with a belief that they're entitled to something. Doctors weren't able to save the life of your 70 year-old-mother whose been smoking for 60 years, has emphesema, cancer, diabetes, and bad acne? Well, just go get a lawyer and sue! Enter the malpractice insurance agency who will, more often than not, go ahead settle out of court to save costs on a court battle - even in the case of an unwarranted lawsuit. Then you have personal health insurance comapnies who charge you an arm, a leg, and one testicle to provide "affordable" healthcare - at the discretion of some brainless bureaucrat, and, if you should actually happen to use that insurance for its intended purpose, they raise your rates to cover their costs.
  
  If you think the above situation is bad, wait until the Left manages to get government involved in the form of "universal" or "one-payer" healthcare! Historically, any time the government intevenes for "the public good," things got right to hell. Now, not only will we be paying for everyone's healthcare - in the form of higher taxes - we'll also be paying for the bloated bureacracy that will inevitably be needed to run this monstrocity.



• Iraq: I regret that we have to be there now when we could have finished this mess back in 1991. Don't confuse me with some pro-war chickenhawk. Having been in the military, and having served in the first Gulf War, I know what things are like over there, what the people are like, how they are treated, etc. When we pulled out back after the Gulf War, I made the prediction that we'd be back within fifteen years. Also, I can pretty much say that, those who have seen war, never want to see it again, but that does not prevent of from doing what is necessary, no matter how much we may not want to do it.



• Second Amendment Rights: What part of "shall not be infringed" is so difficult to understand?



• Partisan Politics: Give me a friggin break here. George Washington had it right when he said that there should be no political parties in the US. Parties lead to an inherent divisivness, which has never been more apparent that it is today. Issues are far more important than parties; a concept that brainless partisans seem to have difficulty understanding.



• George Bush vs. John Kerry: I have to admit that I'm having a tough time with this one.
  
  On one hand, John Kerry's record speaks for itself: the man is an untrustworthy opportunist who stands for absolutely nothing. So far, he's based his entire campaign on two things: his "service" in Vietnam, and the fact that he's not George Bush. As a vet myself, I have great respect for those who have served honorably. As days pass, more and more evidence mounts that John Kerry did not serve honorably. Some 250 or so vets who served with him have come forth with their tales of his dishonorable - and in some cases cowardly - behavior. I find it difficult to believe that 250 men - many of whom are Democrats - would have come forward to lie about the man-who-would-be-president. If that were not enough, Kerry's activities as the leader of the communist-sponsored Vietnam Vets Against the War, in which he either perjured himself before Congress in the Winter Soldier hearings, or admitted to participating in war crimes. This makes him either a perjurer or a war criminal.
  
  George Bush, on the other hand, has done some things with which I can agree, and some other things at which I have to shake my head in disbelief. I admired his handling of things after 9/11, and I support his decisions to go to Afghanistan and Iraq. However, it looks as if he hasn't learned the lessons of Vietnam, and is trying to lead a "sensitive" or "PC" war. This is the exact kind of pussy-footing that cost us Vietnam. You don't win a war by being a nice guy; you win it by making the other guy wish he never pissed you off in the first place. I support the tax cuts, even though I don't think he went far enough with them. Probably the biggest thing in which I have a disagreement is his support of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Not only is such an Amendment an unprecedented invasion into personal issues, using the Constitution to address a social issue is just plain wrong. The last time this was tried turned out to be an unmitigated disaster - or has everyone forgotten the lessons learned from passing the 18th Amendment?
  
  This is the first time in my life that I'm not voting for a candidate for President, but rather voting against a candidate. I may not feel that George Bush has earned my vote, but there's no way that I can even consider voting for John Kerry, and Bush is the only candidate that has a chance of beating him.

Mattie Geraldine Brannies, 1934-2004

For almost her entire life, Mattie Geraldine (Jean) Brannies was in somebody's face. Born to humble beginnings, Jean did her best to provide her family and the ones she loved. Her brusque and forthright nature didn't make her many friends, but that didn't matter to her as long as the important things in life were taken care of. She would never allow herself to quit, no matter how hard things got.

Jean Brannies passed away at 6:30 pm this evening of congestive heart failure at the age of 70. She is survived by three siblings - Francine, Joe, and Charlotte, and four children - Richard, Michael, Elaine, and Loraine.

RIP Aunt Jean.

NYT's Journalistic Hypocrisy

I have to say that I saw this coming from a mile away. The New York Times ("all the liberal propaganda unfit to print") is crying foul about having subpoenas filed against them in a federal investigation to discover who outted Valerie Plame. Not so long ago, every "reporter" in the liberal media was demanding that Robert Novak reveal his sources as there was a possibility that the leak was made by someone in the Bush administration. Now, as evidence mounts to the contrary, and other reporters are being asked to reveal their sources, NYT, LAT, etc. are clamming up and citing the First Amendment.

We all know that the Left views the First Amendment as their sole property, but it's never been more apparent than it has been recently. When Whoopi Goldberg's crappy-series-of-the-week gets canceled or Susan Sarandon isn't invited to a showing of Bull Durham for whatever reason, it's "censorship," but when Dr. Laura Schlesinger is denied a talk show, it's "a victory in the war on 'hate-speech.'" The media takes the same viewpoint: it's Free Speech as long as we agree with it, otherwise, it's "hate speech." When the NYT was demanding that Novak hand over his sources, they kept trying to claim that it was his "journalistic repsonsibility" to reveal who gave him Valerie Plame's name. Now that the NYT is being asked the same question, Free Speech and Freedom of the Press are under an "unprecedented assault."

The hypocrisy is stunning, though not unexpected.

Assholes, SUVs, and cellphones

This morning, as I was riding to work on the bus, some coiffed yuppie in his SUV turned in front of the moving bus - stopping just in time to miss the bus by about a foot. Naturally, said yuppie was distracted by the cellphone that was glued to his ear. Even as he slammed on his breaks to avoid an accident, his cellphone never moved from his ear. Then, he had to nerve to act as though the bus driver cut him off. The pseudo-righteous indignation was readily apparent as the bus drove by.

After having several close calls with various idiots of all races and genders, I have come to this conclusion: cellphones + SUV = Asshole. I reach this conclusion by observing various cultural groups and the types of vehicles that they drive. While there are retards in every cultural group, the one with the highest asshole factor - by a very large margin - are the self-important SUV-driving yuppies. Throw a distracting cellphone into the equation, and the asshole/idiot factor increases exponentially.

After some deliberation, I have decided on what term best describes these self-centered, egotistical, neurotic retards: "Assholier-Than-Thou." No other phrase so accurately encompasses that mentality that these yuppies display. In their sheep-like pursuit of "Keeping up with the Jones,'" they have transcended stupidity and embraced sheer idiocy.

Changes

Made a couple of changes to the template. Let's see if they take.

Carl Eller and Bill Cosby

As noted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Carl Eller joined Bill Cosby in advocating the promotion of personal responsibility among blacks. Predictably, the left-leaning establishment that keeps telling blacks that everything wrong in their life is the fault of "whitey" jumped on the bandwagon and attacked Mr. Eller for selling out to "Da Man." The likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are getting worried that they're losing their cash cow in the guise of "promoting civil rights." So, in order to keep their extortion ring running, so-called "civil rights activists" are attacking Eller and Cosby for "acting white."

Cosby, however, isn't paying attention to these naysayers. In fact, he's doing quite the opposite: he's putting his money where his mouth is. He has started using his own money to pay the college tuition of young black americans who are desparately struggling to make things better for themselves. Big up on The Cos!

If there were more Cosbys and Ellers, and fewer Jacksons and Sharptons, racism in the US would all but disappear - with the exception of the few lunatic holdouts that exist in each ethnicity.

First post

Ok, so I decided to get one of these blog thingies. I already have a Live Journal, but that's mainly for my personal day-to-day nonsensical stuff. I plan to use this one as a sounding board for my rants and maybe some of the articles that I plan on writing.

Sit back, take your shoes off, make yourselves comfortable, and feel free to chime in every now and then.