To:Joey Carter
From: Barbra Streisand
Happy 80th Birthday Jerry! And many more. America needs more statesmen like you. You are one of the reasons the Democratic Party is great. It did my heart good to see you honored the way you were at the convention this year. And it was even better seeing you sitting next to that fantastic film maker, Mickey Moore. I've seen his temperature movie at least ten times and the more I see it the more I like it. I just wish he wouldn't hang up on me when I call him on the phone.
Your wife Rosemary must be so proud of you with your winning that Noble Prize. We Democrats are proud of you too. Everyone knows it was your sensitive leadership that won the Cold War. The Olympic boycott brought Russia to its knees. Reagan just happened to be lucky enough to have been in office when the Soviet Union collapsed. And if you were president today we wouldn't be fighting this ridiculous war. You knew how to deal with the Islamic world. They respected your sensitive leadership.
I read your op-ed on the upcoming election in Florida and you are right. Those Republicans can't be trusted and they will try to steal the election just like they did back when Al whatshisname really won. Whatever happened to him? I don't really hear much from him anymore.
I don't understand why Jim Kerry isn't doing so well. He's a genuine war hero running against someone who shirked his duty during Vietnam. I can't understand why Americans would vote for someone who avoided the war over a genuine war hero. I'm glad we don't have any Democrats who did that. When the country calls, Democrats always serve.
I am so looking forward to the debates when our candidate will make Joe Busch look like the moron he really is. Our candidate is tanned and ready. After the debates we will see the polls change and we will roll into victory in the October election.
I have to go now since it's almost time for the argument. John Carey is gonna kick ass.
Luv ya,
Babs
Remember when the Poodle tried to cosy up to some Marines at a Wendy's? They weren't too happy with him.
From Charlie.
As the election grows closer those on the left are really starting to foam at the mouth. Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy has stated that we are now more susceptible to a nuclear attack. Huh? WTF? Ted. Pour yourself another scotch and STFU. I hope you people in Taxachusetts are proud of this bloated, bloviating blowhard. His brother Jack must be spinning in his grave. I'm not too sure about Bobby since he was a liberal.
I wrote yesterday about how Jimmah Carter has completely lost it and compared Florida to Chicago in regards to crooked elections.
There's still more bullshit from the left.
I heard on the radio tonight that Marisa Tomei (Remember her? She won a best supporting actress award for My Cousin Vinnie. I've seen her in two movies since.) has threatened to leave the country if Bush wins the election. Now if only we could get some of the other dingbats like Barbra Streisand to make that promise.
Speaking of that shining intellectual, Babs has weighed in on the fake but accurate memos. David sent me the link and asked me to comment.
If you cross this administration you get your head handed to you. If you open your mouth and tell the truth like former White House Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsay did when he told the Administration that the Iraqi war was going to cost between $100-$200 billion dollars, you get fired.
Babs, you ignorant slut! He got fired first!
If you disagree with the President, like Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill did one too many times regarding the President's policy on tax cuts, you get canned.
Babs let's just put this down to a level that even a nitwit like you can understand. If your maid Consuela does not clean the toilet to your specifications and put the right amount of rose petals in it what do you do? You fire her ass. That's the way the world works.
If you claim that the Administration is misrepresenting the facts and misleading the public, like Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson did, your wife's career gets ruined when she gets outed as a CIA operative in the national media.
It turns out that good ol' Joe was lying and has since been discredited. And Valerie was no longer an active undercover operative. She's was a desk jockey fer chrissakes!
If you tell the administration that several thousand more servicemen and women are needed in Iraq, like General Shinseki did, you get publicly scolded as being incorrect.
Got me there Babs. Don't know whom you're talking about. But I would believe Tommy Franks more than someone I have never heard of. But what do I know? I'm just sitting here blogging in my running shorts. I'm not an international superstar like you.
And, if you choose to air a story about George Bush's military service, or lack thereof, like CBS did last week, you and your award winning news anchor, get investigated by the FCC.
You really don't want to go there Babs. After all, you worship the ground that Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, walks on. Bush served. Bubba didn't. So why are you bringing this up? Why didn't military service matter back in 1992 when a cowardly draft dodger like Bill Clinton was running against a genuine war hero like Bush 41? Why didn't military service matter when a cowardly draft dodger like Bill Clinton was running against a genuine war hero like Bob Dole in 1996?
But, OK. Let's discuss CBS and the award winning news anchor who got taken in by obviously forged documents because he wanted to believe they were true. They were fake. They have been debunked. It took the Blogosphere less than three hours! The FCC is investigating Dan Rather and CBS about Blathergate? News to me. Maybe you have that confused with the Superbowl and Boobgate. It would be easy for a boob like you to do that.
So it's no wonder that the press has taken a backseat to reporting the misdeeds of this administration. It's not surprising that the press failed to ask the hard questions leading up to the war in Iraq, when a more informed public still had time to speak up. Never mind that CBS's story included substantive and uncontested evidence that Bush didn't show up for duty when he was supposed to, that he skipped a required physical that grounded him from flying, and that he mysteriously received an honorable discharge.
Fake but Accurate. In your dreams. All that bullshit has been rebutted. It's all old news, but you liberals want to believe it so bad that you just keep bringing it up.
Yes...the documents CBS presented could not be confirmed for their authenticity, but these details of Bush's military record have been out for public consumption for years.
And your stupidity has been out there for consumption for years. This crap has been brought up every single time that Bush has run for public office since 1994. Guess what? It's not true.
Why is the media not discussing the facts behind the story instead of just focusing on CBS?
Because the facts dispute what the media wants to believe?
For example, Killian's secretary said those memos accurately reflected the Colonel's feelings.
His feelings but not what was in the memos. Big difference.
Ben Barnes, former lieutenant governor of Texas, admitted that he pulled strings to get Bush into the National Air Guard.
Here's a big surprise. He's a big Kerry supporter. After all these years he finally comes forward and says this stuff. Where was he in 1994? Where was he in 1998? Where was he in 2000? But now he comes forward. His daughter says he's lying through his teeth.
And Robert Mintz, retired National Guardsman who served in Bush's unit in 1972, doesn't remember seeing him there.
But other guys who served with him do. Let's talk about Flipper. Look at all the Swift Boat Veterans who say he's lying. Care to apply the same standards?
And in contrast to Senator John Kerry, who said "send me" when given the option to go to Vietnam, according to the LA Times, when asked the same question, Bush checked the box stating "do not volunteer for overseas."
So what? Bill Clinton was in England protesting against the war. A draft dodger is OK, but someone who served in the National Guard isn't. I would give your bullshit more credibility if you hadn't supported Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Since you did, all of these arguments about Bush's National Guard Service are nothing but bullshit. The only reason I'm spending time doing this is I enjoy pointing out what an incredible idiot you are.
The media's attention is diverted from the real story because we now live in a time where the fear of revenge by this administration sends a chill through the corporations that control our media and overwhelms the press' responsibility to investigate, educate and hold our leaders accountable.
See, in the fantasy world that Babs lives in the lamestream media is conservative. If it were, it wouldn't have taken Drudge to break the Monica Lewinsky story. NBC would not have sat on the Juanita Broaderick story until after the Senate hearing. CBS would not have used fake memos in their story on Bush's National Guard Service. Unfit For Command would have received coverage on the Today Show and other media outlets. Instead Kittey Kelley's unsubstantiated hit job on George W. Bush got three days on the Today Show.
I only wish we did have a fair press that did its job. Then maybe we would have had more accountability during the Clinton administration which will go down in history as one of the most corrupt adminisrations in the history of the Republic.
The press did not do its job then and it is not doing its job in its support of John Fonda Kerry.
I wish Babs would promise to leave the country if Bush wins. I'm sure we wouldn't have any trouble raising the airfare.
I would foot the entire bill if she would fly coach.
In the wake of Blathergate where Gunga Dan says essentially that the memos are fake but they're also accurate and all the liberals are screaming about Bush not releasing his military records, which he has, howza 'bout the Poodle releasing his? All he has to do is sign Form 180 which he so far has refused to do. C'mon. Don'tcha really want to know the truth about his purple hearts and his medals that he threw away? Wait! They weren't his. They belonged to someone else. Wait! They were his but they were really his ribbons not his medals. Wait! WTF! What's the frequency Flipper?
Thanks to Charlieb.
For all of my Australian readers (and I know I have a few) Toren Smith of the late lamented Safety Valve, sent me this that I think y'all will enjoy.
I've been inundated by pictures, so I'm posting more of them. This one from Charlieb is just too good!
There was a joke going around during Jimmah Carter's presidency that went like this.
Who has two bigger boobs than Dolly Parton?
Lillian Carter, the mother of Jimmah and Billy.
I wish Jimmah Carter would just live out his senility in Plains Georgia rather than constantly inflicting himself on us.
There used to be a rule that politics stopped at the waters' edge and politicians (especially incompetent and washed up politicians like Jimmah Carter) didn't run around the world badmouthing the United States' foreign policy. That rule stopped with the Clintons and Jimmah Carter.
The whole Nobel Peace Prize was nothing but a jab at our foreign policy and Jimmah was a nitwit to accept it.
Anyway, Jimmah Carter talking about foreign policy is like Bill Clinton talking about celibacy. It's like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton talking about racial harmony. It's like Ted Kennedy talking about sobriety and safe driving.
I just read the other day that Jimmah's two favorite movies are Casablanca and Farenheit 911. So he likes fiction.
Now Jimmah has checked in on the Florida elections. Jimmah, who certified the rigged election in Venezuela has decided to lecture us on Florida.
Washington --- Former President Jimmy Carter, who has policed elections around the world, on Monday harshly accused Florida officials of not doing enough to fix their election system following the 2000 presidential election debacle.
Ya know what really cracks me up about all this? Just where were the biggest fuckups during the 2000 election? They were in counties run by Dimocrats. The infamous butterfly ballot was designed by a Dimocrat.
"The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely," Carter wrote in The Washington Post just 36 days before the next presidential election.
And if there are problems, they will be in counties that are primarily Dimocrat. Mark my words.
Carter called Florida election officials "highly partisan" in favor of Republican President Bush and charged them with "brazenly violating" basic tenets of fair, unbiased and trustworthy elections.
Once again. The problems were in counties controlled by Dimocrats. And Jimmah, howza 'bout some proof?
Florida officials said they were stunned by the tone and sweep of Carter's criticisms but said that the former president had erred in his characterization of the state's election process.
Jimmah is very familiar with erring. Ya know when he has sex with his wife he always has to lay on the bottom 'cause all he knows how to do is fuck up.
Ya know I usually only use fuck when I'm drinking, but I'm stone cold sober. Jimmah has that effect on me. He was the most incompetent president of the 20th Century. His mishandling of the Iranian crisis is one of the reasons we are in the position we are in now. He rehabilitated himself with Habitat For Humanity but now he has become a national disgrace with his badmouthing of our foreign policy all over the world. He has become a Michael Moore Dimocrat. What an asshole!
"It is unconscionable to perpetuate fraudulent or biased electoral practices in any nation," Carter wrote. "It is especially objectionable among us Americans, who have prided ourselves on setting a global example for pure democracy."
Tell that to the Daley's in Chicago who have been doing it for years. A running joke there goes like this.
My father was a Republican all his life, but since he's died he's voted Dimocrat in the last three elections.
Dimocrats have stolen more elections than Republicans could ever dream of stealing. They're just pissed that the Republicans fought back in Florida and didn't let them steal that election.
Another thing that pissed off Jimmah is the fact that felons were dropped from voter rolls. Felons normally vote for Dimocrats. After all, the Dimocrat Party is the party that lionizes a murderer (Ted Kennedy), a rapist (Bill Clinton), and a former Kleagle of the KKK (Robert Byrd). It's only natural that felons would vote for Dimocrats. Birds of a feather and all that.
Randy Lewis, who worked as a press aide in the Carter White House and for a former speaker of Florida's House, was among those who questioned Carter's attack.Florida's elections are overseen by county election supervisors who do not answer to state officials, which is not the case in many other states, Lewis said.
Earth to Jimmah. County officials oversee the elections. That means in Dimocrat counties (where all the problems were in the 2000 election) Dimocrats are in charge.
Someone needs to give Jimma Carter a big ol' can of STFU!
Here are three things that have annoyed me today.
1. John Fonda Kerry. Yeah, this asshole annoys me every day but for a "war hero" he sure does have a thin skin. He can dish it out but he sure can't take it. For example, now he's bitching about negative advertizing. GMAFB! Jesus H. Christ! The Dimocrats' 527 groups have been hitting Bush all year. And their latest 527, CBS, just put out a story backed up by phony forged documents. And let's not forget Michael Lardass Moore's "documentary", Farenheit 9/11.
"Americans need a real conversation over our future," Kerry said in a speech at a school in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
Then why did you base your entire campaign on your four months service in Viet Nam, you phony prick?
"What they don't need is all these trumped up advertisements, they just make people curl up and walk away," added the Massachusetts senator.
Maybe you oughta talk to the asswipes at Moveon.org. They, and all the other Dimocrat 527 groups, including Dan Blather at CBS, were the ones who originated the negative advertizing. Moveon.org even had an ad on their website comparing Bush to Hitler. Why don't you tell those buttheads to stop that bullshit Flipper?
"I'm calling them 'misleadisments,'" Kerry said of the adverts. "It's all scare tactics ... because (Bush) has no record to run on."
Funny you should bring that up Monsieur Poodle. Why are you running on your four months in Viet Nam rather than your record as lieutenant governor of Massachussets (under Michael Dukakis), and your 20 years in the senate, not to mention your anti-war activities after you returned from Viet Nam? It's like you served in Viet Nam and then nothing happened until you started your campaign. Who the fark are you? Rip Van Kerry? You certainly don't want the American people to know that you are the most liberal person in the United States Senate, even more liberal than Ted Kennedy. For all of you psychology students, Kerry's accusations are a classic example of projection. We have been seeing a lot of that from the Dimocrats over the last three years.
The Democrats have complained bitterly about a new advertisement that shows Osama bin Laden , September 11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta, Saddam Hussein, and the ruins of the World Trade Center, and questioned whether Kerry was up to dealing with them.
He isn't. Remember, he wants to fight a "more sensitive" war.
In Wisconsin, Kerry also made a personality attack against the president, saying that he and his rival are both children of privilege, but Bush considers his comfortable position an entitlement.
Kerry said "he and I, we went to the same university, we're both very privileged." Both men attended Yale University.
The Democrat added that from his education "came a sense of fairness and responsibility" while Bush "thinks it's entitlement."
He made his money the old fashioned way: He married it.
"He doesn't care, he's out of touch," said Kerry.
As he got in one of "family's SUVs" to take him to the airport where he could board his wife's private jet to take him back to one of his wife's mansions (She has five ya know and she got her wealth the old fashioned way. She married it and inherited it, from a Republican no less who's probably spinning in his grave since his wealth is helping an asshole like Kerry.) and then take out the $600K boat his wife bought him. Yeah. This is a real man of the people. Think about it. Who would you rather have a few beers with, Kerry or Bush?
Enough about that phony traitor John Fonda Kerry.
2. I just saw an ad on television for an album of songs by Regis Philbin. Regis singing? WTF? Is that your final answer? There are people in this country who would purchase an album of songs by Regis Philbin? I guess they're probably Kerry voters.
3. Yet another sign our republic is in danger. A few days ago the Atlanta Urinal and Constipataion published an article about all the poor people in Haiti in the aftermath of Ivan or Jeanne or one of the hurricanes. It doesn't really matter. It doesn't take too much to cause a disaster in the Third World. In the same section they had an article about all the money that well off people were spending to pamper their pets.
I've noted earlier that the AJC has a section of the paper called The Vent where people can call in and vent. Many of the people are certified idiots. For example, this vent from Monday's paper.
Anyone thinking of pampering their dog should send the money to Haiti instead.
I've got two words to say to this asshole: Fuck. You.
It never fails. There is always some socialist asshole who wants to tell those of us who have busted our asses to get ahead how to spend our money. Listen you booger eatin' moh-ron, if you are so concerned about the people in Haiti, you send them money.
I could write a 1000 word essay on this. I have already. It's like sending money down that shithole known as Africa. It doesn't take much for a nation to be rich. Look at Japan. They have no natural resources but they are one of the richest countries on the planet. The reason they are having problems now is that they do not believe in free trade. Protectionism is counter-productive.
Haiti has been the victim of incompetent gummint. We threw out Baby Doc, but his replacement turned out to be just as bad. Is that our fault? I guess it is if you are a liberal.
We almost had polio eradicated but there were some Muslim leaders in Africa who wouldn't allow vaccinations because they were afraid that the vaccinations would sterilize the people. This was a western plot to keep Muslims from reproducing (Not really a bad idea if you stop and think about it.). As a result, polio is once again on the march in Africa.
Goddamit! I'm tired of us being the country blamed for everything while at the same time everyone in the Third World is holding out their hands demanding that we support them. Fuck 'em!
What I would really like to see (In my dreams!) is for us to figger out some magic way to achieve energy independence and build an effective missile defense system. Then we could close off our borders and I mean really seal 'em off. Limit the visas we issue. Coming here is a privilege not a right. And tell the rest of the world to fuck off!
Of course that means we also kick the United Nations out of New York. Neal Boortz had a great idea. Let them move to Haiti. Let them fix all the problems in that shit hole. That's what they're for. Let them do some good for a change.
Yeah. That'll be the day.
Today's pun comes from Charlieb.
A sweet little boy surprised his
grandmother one morning and
brought her a cup of coffee.
He made it himself and was so proud.
He anxiously waited to hear the verdict on the quality of the coffee.
The grandmother had never in her life had such a bad cup of coffee,
and as she forced down the last sip she noticed three of those little
green army guys in the bottom of the cup.
She asked, "Honey, why would three little
green army guys be in the bottom of my cup?"
Her grandson replied, "You know grandma, it's like on TV...
'The best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup.'"
Tonight is one of those nights when the creative juices are just not flowing. I can't seem to get worked up over anything and I'm not in the mood to try and write sumpin' funny. Anyway, I wrote sumpin' original on Saturday and that's when I usually post sumpin' that someone else wrote.
I do want to thank those of you who keep sending me pictures and other interesting stuff. I try to send thank yous or post links, but I don't always succeed. And, if I don't post anything you have sent to me don't feel bad. I keep everything and I may eventually get to it. For example I've got a backlog of cat pictures that I can cat bomb Pumpman with but I'll probably wait until after the election.
I was supposed to be at Cayman Brac SCUBA diving this week but that fell through. On the upside I was able to have Cindy and her husband over last night to celebrate her birthday which is later this month. Pssst! Don't tell anybody but she's turning 50.
Being lazy, I went to Fresh Market with her and let her pick out what she wanted. We got crab legs as an appetizer and an already prepared pork roast that I only had to heat up. I made German fried potatoes to go with the roast.
Between the crab legs and the roast I made a salad with lettuce, red onion, and some Heirloom cherry tomatoes.
I tried to grow Heirloom tomatoes last year and I got mostly cherry tomatoes. The large tomatoes I got were incredible but I didn't get that many. This year, I got a volunteer plant that only produces cherry tomatoes, but they are real good in a salad.
After grocery shopping, I hopped in my Z3 and drove over to Minks package store hoping that they had some Delamain Vesper cognac. Cindy's birthday is when I switch from grappa to cognac as an after dinner drink. As luck would have it, they did. I then drove down to Green's, where Michael works to get some champagne. Saturday was a great day to be in a sports cxar with the top down.
Here's how it went down:
Crab legs with champagne.
Tossed salad with a 1995 burgundy from my cellar.
Pork roast with German fried potatoes with the rest of the burgundy. Then a pinot noir that Michael brought.
Strawberries with whipped cream. Screw my cholesterol count!
Give Cindy her present which was a pair of earings. She can't have her ears pierced so she's happy if I can find earings she can wear.
Open the Delamain Vesper. Hmmmmm! Goooood!
I got to sleep in this morning. Michael and Cindy got to drive to Columbia South Carolina to see my sister's house, have dinner, and spend the night. They probably had a very good dinner as my sister is a very good cook. Michael also took a bottle of wine with him to have with dinner.
The other upside about my SCUBA trip being cancelled is I get to go to Michael's annual Ten Years After Party. Everyone has to bring a ten year old red or a five year old white. Michael and Cindy are hoping the weather cooperates so we can hold it out by the pool.
I may go shopping with Cindy for party food like I did last year. If so, we will probably go to Eatzi's in Buckhead. Whoa! There is a target rich babe environment. If I were twenty years younger that would be a great place to hangout on a Saturday afternoon.
Retirement's getting closer. I only work two days this week.
How does that crow taste Dan?
Sent to me by Robert.
OK. I admit it. I am a real honest to God war hero. I really don't like to talk about it but it is seared, seared in my memory. The picture below was taken on the very day it happened.
I know it was December of 1968. It is seared, seared in my memory. I'm not sure about the exact date, but everything else about it is seared, seared in my memory.
I apologize for the quality of the photo but it is, after all, almost 36 years old.
Update: The photo was enhanced by this guy.
To demonstrate how this is seared, seared in my memory, I'll identify the men in the group of four. From left to right, Keith Kirkpatrick, me, Pres Smith and Steve Cohen, and those are tab top rings in his hat.
We were sitting on a pontoon in the Bassac river just across the border from Cambodia, that is, we were within 150 miles of the border. That is seared, seared in my memory.
On the Bassac River where we were they had LST's anchored there to provide support for PBR's (Patrol Boat River). Unlike the Swift Boats that did most of their work in coastal areas, these guys worked up river and in country. If Kerry had been on a PBR, I might have believed his Christmas in Cambodia story. Often PBR's were commanded by a senior NCO.
I'm not sure if there were one, two, or three LST's on station, but everything else is seared, seared in my memory.
The reason we were up the Bassac on this eventful day was we had transported supplies up to the ships on station. We did this twice. The Bassac River was not a free fire zone. On our way up the river, we had guys manning .50 calibers on both side of the ship, but if we were fired upon, we had to get permission to fire back. Those rules of engagement are seared, seared in my memory.
Now comes the story of my wound, which is seared, seared in my memory. The pontoon we are sitting on is what the PBR's would tie up to. We were having a little 'beer on the pontoon' party. LST duty sucked but there were some benefits. One was 'beer on the pontoon' and the other was 'beer on the pier' which was what we would sometimes have when beached at Danang or Cua Viet. We'd break out some cases of beer, fill a couple of GI cans full of ice and then fill them up with beer cans. Off duty personnel were allowed to have two beers, but no one really kept track.
So there we were drinking our beer calm as could be. Now comes the part that is seared, seared in my memory. When opening my second can of beer, the tab ring broke off the tab top. So now I had to try and get the beer open by other means. I used my P-38 to pry the tab up enough to grasp with my fingers and pull off. Unfortunately, I managed to cut myself while doing so. Oooooow! I've been wounded!
So there I was, up the Bassac River, not very far from the Cambodian border, in a non-free fire zone and I'm wounded. The trauma of this event is seared, seared in my memory.
And I didn't even get a Purple Heart.
But I finally have closure. Maybe now the nightmares will stop.
But first, Smartaz489 sent me this link to some Klingon boobage.
These are real.
Another Charlie sent me the following and it sure was news to me. I didn't know the Poodle had been in Viet Nam. Why doesn't he make this the centerpiece of his campaign?
I love this guy! Someone commented on my Stan Laurel post that I needed to do a Laurel and Hardy using Kerry and Michael Moore. So, I sent a note to Matt Ashby over at Stark Truth and asked if he could Photoshop sumpin' for me. I told him he could put it up on his site and I would link to it. Could you believe that less than an hour later he came up with the following?
Awesome Matt!
Paul really went off in the comments on my Kerry's Position on Iraq post. I will admit he went over the edge, but he did raise some salient points in a debate with our left leaning libertarian (That means liberal) Robin. I guess it's time once again for me to talk about Islam.
Islam literally means submission. It means that a Muslim must totally submit to Allah. There are five pillars of Islam:
1. Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad.
2. Establishment of the daily prayers. Five times a day.
3. Concern for and almsgiving to the needy.
4. Self-purification through fasting during the month of Ramadan.
5. The pilgrimage to Mecca (the Haj) for those who are able.
Nowhere in there is the killing of Jews and infidels.
Here in Georgia there is a candlelight vigil going on tonight in Marietta by the Muslim community to mourn the death of Jack Hensley who was brutally murdered by some sub-human savages in Irag. I will be curious to see how many Muslims actually attend. We have had demonstrations like this by the Muslim community before, but they have never drawn very many Muslims.
Do I think we should exterminate all one billion plus Muslims on this planet? Do I think we should round up all the Muslims in America and ship them out of the country? Well, no. I do think that Muslims world wide need to take a good look at their religion and fix it before we have to do something drastic.
Ponder this. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Most terrorists are Muslims. Look at all the wars going on in the world today and almost all of them involve Muslims. Genocide? Look at the Sudan where we are seeing Arabs trying to exterminate blacks. Where is Flipper's precious UN? Howza 'bout what the Muslims in Nigeria are doing to the Christians? Where is the outrage from Lurch's UN?
Muslims think that we should tolerate their religion, but countries that are ruled by Muslims, such as Saudi Arabia, do not tolerate other religions.
We owe a lot to Islamic culture. During the Dark Ages in Europe they were the ones who saved much of the classic Greco-Roman culture. Our numbers are Arabic. We got Algebra from them. Unfortunately, all they have contributed lately is airplane hijackings and suicide bombings. Now they seem to want to party like it's 699 AD!
Judaism started out as a bloodthirsty religion. Read the Old Testament. Christianity had its bad times with the Inquisition and forced conversions in the 15th through 17th Century. Someone needs to step up and reform Islam.
What pisses people like Paul (and me ) off is the silence of Islamic leaders about the atrocities in Irag, the Sudan, and Nigeria. Usually we hear bullshit like, "Yes this is bad, but Israel..."
Yep! It's always Israel. All we have to do is let them exterminate the Jews and everything will be just hunky dory. That's the ticket. All that's wrong with Islam is those pesky Jews.
There's just one thing wrong. That's bullshit. Do you really think that the rest of the Arab world gives a shit about the Palestinians? If they did, the Palestinians wouldn't be living in squalor. If all the Jews were eradicated from the face of the earth tomorrow, nothing would be fixed. The Muslims would still hate us.
The problem is the current state of Islam. What Paul realizes and Robin doesn't is that we have another world war on our hands. The Cold War was World War III and Robin's buddies, the Dimocrats were on the wrong side of history in that war. Most notable was John Fonda Kerry who slandered many brave soldiers with testimony about false atrocities. I will never, ever forgive him for that.
We now have leaders of Islam, an intolerant religion that is not and has never been a religion of peace preaching holy jihad. During Islam's beginnings it spread from the Arab peninsula and created an Islamic empire by conquest and forcible conversion. They have reverted back to those beliefs. Radical Islam, which is what we are fighting, wants the entire world to be Islamic. Robin and his buddies don't seem to realize that even though the jihadists have made it perfectly clear.
Listen to the hate that is being preached from mosques in the Middle East in the Friday sermons. It is disgusting.
We are fighting World War IV and the sooner we realize that the better. No, I do not think that we should exterminate all the Muslims on this planet. What I do think is that the leaders of Islam need to take a good long look at their religion and decide if they want to coexist with the rest of the people on this planet.
It is in our power to exterminate them. I only hope that they can reform their religion so we do not have to resort to sumpin' like that.
It would only take one nuke to take out Mecca.
My dive trip to Cayman Brac that was scheduled for next week was cancelled. Actually Cayman Brac was not in that bad of shape but Grand Cayman is and a lot of people moved to Cayman Brac while Grand Cayman is being rebuilt. Right now the population of Cayman Brac has tripled. We're hoping to go next February.
Since I've got all next week off, I decided to take a vacation day today to recover from the wine tasting and work a day next week instead. I still wound up doing some work.
Operations called me about 5:30 and told me that one of my users was having problems with a new system I had built for him. The IPL volume was busy and he wasn't able to IPL. It was a neat bug. It was an error on my part. I fixed it. Which brings up the latest at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name).
I'll be the first person to admit that I haven't been working my ass off for the last three years. I pissed off the CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager) that I was working for back then. I made him look ridiculous. He did all the work, I merely pointed it out. He dropped my rating in my next appraisal and I, nearing retirement and realizing that my career was essentially over, decided to work down to that rating.
Let me just say that even after cutting back on my work, I am so good at certain things that I do (This is not bragging. I am stating a fact.
All you have to do is ask the people I support.) and am so familiar with our environment (I built the configurations) that it would take a very talented person to come in and replace me immediately. What I do in 20 hours would take my replacement 30 to 40 hours to do. My team lead knows this. My current manager, and my old CDSMŽ who is her boss doesn't.
Last week I asked my team lead what they were gonna do about replacing me as I had a candidate in mind. He told me that management told him they weren't gonna replace me. I know how that made him feel since he already works his butt off and now he and the other fulltime programmer were gonna have to pick up my workload as well. If the new network guy knew anything they could have farmed some of what I do out to him, but he cannot do anything that I do. He cannot even do a lot of what he is supposed to do and I've been doing it by default.
When my users found out I was retiring and asked who was gonna replace me I told them the truth: no one. This pissed off a lot of my users. I'm in the middle of a lot of projects that I will not have completed by the time I leave. Someone is gonna have to complete them.
My users know what I do. Their managers know what I do. It's a shame my managers don't.
Evidently their managers started thumping on my managers because my manager stopped by my office last Friday and asked what I had told my users about my replacement. I told her what I had been told, that I wasn't being replaced. She said I was wrong and that I was gonna be replaced by a fulltime contractor. Hmmmm. They had only made that decision the previous day. I wonder what happened?
Here I am with only nine more working days before I'm gone and I get in trouble again. As I told my team lead on Monday, I took one last bullet for the team.
But I fixed the problem.
No wit and whimsy as I have a Sommelier Guild of Atlanta tasting tonight. We don't know what food we're having as we have told the chef at Murphy's to surprise us, but here are the wines.
Sometimes it can be a real rough life.
Jim from Downunder sent me this picture that gives us the best example of John Fonda Kerry's position on terrorism.
Golly. CBS finally admits it was duped.
"Based on what we now know, CBS News cannot prove that the documents are authentic, which is the only acceptable journalistic standard to justify using them in the report," said the statement by CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "We should not have used them. That was a mistake, which we deeply regret.
No dickwad. You regret getting caught.
"Nothing is more important to us than our credibility and keeping faith with the millions of people who count on us for fair, accurate, reliable, and independent reporting," Heyward continued. "We will continue to work tirelessly to be worthy of that trust."
Too late. From now on people are gonna laugh at your news division. Already your new motto "Fake But Accurate" is all over the internet. The only way you can salvage your reputation is if heads roll. The head of CBS News should resign. Dan Rather should resign or be canned.
But Rather was duped you may say. It was his producer who should have researched it better.
Nope. Rather wanted to believe it. In fact he does believe it. He's stated so. The fact that the documents were forgeries is irrelevant to him. Here's a portion of Gunga Dan's statement.
But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.
Good faith my ass! You believe the story Dan. I love that "investigative reporting without fear of favoritism". Or accuracy. And favoritism? The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth story wan't even a blip on your radar. By the way Dan, Unfit For Command has been number one on the New York Times Besteller List for the last three weeks. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
CBS is no longer the Tiffany network. It is now the Cubic Zirconium Network.
I had another chat with my buddy who worked for IBM in the 70's fixing typewriters. One of the liberal websites, I think it was the Daily Dickhead, said that Executive typewriters were very common. I asked him if that were true. He said that out of a territory of one thousand typewriters only five or ten of them were Executives. He said that you had to be a real good typist to use one, especially if you made a mistake and had to figger out how many spaces to go back after erasing or whiting out the character.
He said there was one other problem with them. If you didn't watch them carefully, they had a tendency to type fake memos. Why do you think Jimmah Carter got routed so badly in the 1980 election? And let's not even bring up Walter Mondale.
If they had been around in 1992 Clinton would have never been elected.
Today's Monday pun came from this guy.
A fellow who was having trouble with his teeth visited the dentist to
see what the problem was. The dentist found that two teeth were in very
bad shape and both needed crowns.
This seemed to solve the problem but after only a couple of weeks, one
of the teeth was giving the patient trouble again. So he went back to
the dentist. An examination showed that one of the two crowns was in
perfect shape but the other had eroded significantly and was causing
the problem.
Or, as the dentist explained, uneasy lies the crown that wears ahead.
Perusing the letters to the editor in Friday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation, I came upon this gem written by Charles Smith of Smyrna Georgia.
President Bush was certainly not the only one to join the National Guard to avoid being killed, to be lax about attendance or to seek an early discharge to go to school.So why is his National Guard service still big news?
Hmmm --- who would benefit most from diverting attention from such issues as a failed foreign policy, a rapidly deteriorating economy, the war on the environment, religion in politics? I wonder . . .
We now take you to the White House.
W: Well Karl, my plan worked. That arrogant asshole Dan Rather is history.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: You didn't think my plan would work did ya?
Rove: No Mr. President.
W: Rather and those other fools at CBS didn't know what hit them.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: And I would be the last person they would ever expect to be behind the forgeries. What is even neater is I typed them myself. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: And it was such a nice touch to have our operative fax them from a Kinko's in Texas wasn't it Karl?
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: They wanted to believe them so bad they ignored all the warning flags. It only took four hours and the bloggers had already shown them for the obvious forgeries that they were. How ironic that they say I got taken in by forgeries pertaining to Iraqi WMD's. At least those forgeries were professionally done.
Now we gotta figger out how we can bring that supercilious, sneering prick Peter Jennings down. Got any ideas Karl?
Rove: Not yet Mr. President.
W: Little do they know that my persona of a bumbling moron is only a sham. Look at who was the smartest Smothers brother. It was Tommy who played the fool. I've been snookering all my opponents for years. Look at that moron Algore. He was supposed to wallop me in the debates and the expectations for my performance were so low, all I had to do was show up.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: But it suits my purpose to have the Democrats think that you're the evil genius and that Cheney and Rumsfeld are running the country. The Democrats are such simple fools. And then they go and nominate that pompous idiot John Kerry. His campaign is based on four months in Vietnam fer gawdsakes. What an idiot! I was hoping for Howard Dean. He's at least more entertaining than Kerry. Kerry's so boring I'm afraid that I'll fall asleep when I'm debating the butthead. Maybe I can just have Mr. Nuance debate himself. Then when he gets confused I can ask him, "Why the long face, John" Long face. Get it Karl?
Rove: Yes I do Mr. President. That was very funny.
W: The only Democrat I worried about was Joe Lieberman but the leftist Bush haters have taken over the Democrat Party and have let their hatred of me blind them to the best candidate.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: Karl, as soon as I get reelected we're gonna have to start thinking of a successor. It's too soon to have my brother take over. If McCain wants the job, and he doesn't think 72 is too old I think I may just let him succeed me. He's been a good supporter during this campaign.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: With any luck the Democrats will nominate that bitch Hillary Clinton. Then we can leak those pictures of her, Janet Reno, and Donna Shalala going at it. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. Heh. We can send copies to that crippled dude in Atlanta. He'd publish them for sure.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: Time to talk to Rumsfeld. We need to figger out what to do about the Iranians. Would it be best for us to take out the reactor or let Israel do it? Geez! All this talk about screwing CBS and the Democrats has made me hungry. Let's go to lunch Karl.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
W: We can talk about my plan for world domination after lunch.
Rove: Yes Mr. President.
When I was in the Navy my first year consisted of boot camp and electronics school. The other three years were spent on amphibious ships: an LSD (Long Slow and Dismal) and an LST (Long Slow Target or Turd). Amphibious ships are referred to as the Gator Navy.
Ships take on water while in port, but they cannot carry enough fresh water so they make a lot of it out of sea water. Unfortunately they can not make enough of it for the needs of of the ship and crew so sometimes we would have to go on water rationing where fresh water was only available for showers and shaving on certain hours of the day. I did my part. One of the times we went on water hours I quit shaving. That explains my appearance in this photo.
One of the nice things about increased readership is I have lots of people sending me stuff that i can use when I don't write anything original, like most Saturdays. The following was sent to me by Dan S.
In the beginning they carried swords and sabers, dirks, Brown Bess's and flintlock Pennsylvania rifles, fowling pieces, bullet pouches and powder horns, cannon balls and anything else they could scrounge to help defeat the enemy. They dragged themselves and cannon through the mud and snow, the misery of slogging endless miles through the storms of winter and the stultifying heat of summer. They carried the wounded, the dying and the dead.
They carried the sure knowledge that as long as one of them was alive, the battle was not lost. They carried a dream of Freedom from despotic government, of the Liberty To Insure the Inherent God-Given Rights of all People of the Nation and their Posterity.
Later they carried P-38 can openers(I still carry one that I got out of a C-rats package on my key ring. I still use the key ring I got in the Navy... GOC) and heat tabs, watches and dog tags (I carried one of my old dog tags on my key ring up until two years ago when the eye broke ... GOC), insect repellent, gum, cigarettes, Zippo lighters (Yep. Had one of those until I quit smoking ... GOC) salt tablets, compress bandages, ponchos, Kool-Aid, two or three canteens of water, iodine tablets, Sterno, LRRP rations, and K-rations stuffed in socks. They carried standard fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, flak jackets and steel pots. They carried M-1's, then M-16's. They carried 60mm, 81mm and 4-deuce mortars. They carried ammunition and beer of all varieties. They carried tripflares and Claymore mines, M-60 machine guns, M-79 grenade launchers, M-14's, CAR-15's, Stoners, Swedish K's, 66mm LAWs, shotguns, .45 caliber pistols and "grease-guns", silencers. They carried the sounds of bullets in flight, rockets, and choppers, and sometimes the sound of silence. They carried C-4 plastic explosives, an assortment of hand grenades, PRC-25 radios, knives and machetes and matches.
Not all at once.
Some carried napalm, CBU's and large bombs; some risked their lives to rescue others. Some escaped the fear, but dealt with the death and damage. Some made very hard decisions, and some just tried to survive. They carried malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, ringworms and leeches.
They carried the land itself as it hardened on their faces and bellies and boots, if they had any. They carried stationery, pencils, and pictures of their loved ones - real and imagined. They carried love for people in the real world and love for one another.
And sometimes they disguised that love: "Don't mean nothin'!"
They carried memories. For the most part, they carried themselves with poise and a kind of dignity. Now and then, there were times when panic set in, and people squealed or wanted to, but couldn't. When they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said "Dear God!", and hugged the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and God and their parents, hoping not to die or lose a leg.
They carried the traditions of the United States military, and memories and images of those who served before them. They carried grief, terror, longing and their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear: the embarrassment of dishonor. They crawled into tunnels, walked point, and advanced under fire, so as not to die of embarrassment.
They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it.
They carried the emotional baggage of men and women who might die at any moment, who know the terror and horror and futility of war.
They carried the weight of the world.
THEY CARRIED EACH OTHER, THEY CARRIED YOU AND ME!!
REMEMBER THEM TODAY, EVERYDAY!!!
I should have saved this post for Veterans Day but I was afraid that I might not remember it.
Let me just add that by and large most of them came home and resumed their lives. The real heroes among them did not brag about their military service. Real heroes do not brag. Their deeds speak for themselves. Most of them put their medals away in a safe place. They did not mount them on walls or openly display them. I have some and I haven't seen them in years. But then, I wasn't a hero. I was just a lowly squid.
Before you look at this Saturday's Boobage, Suze sent me this Boob Test you may want to take. For the record, I got 17 out of 20.
Her boobs are in the test. Her boobs are fake.
Dear Dimocrats,
For your next foray into forging documents from 1972, here are two useful items:
1. Hardware
Link courtesy of Robert.
2. And this Microsoft upgrade:
Sent to me by Danny who got it from this guy.
To compete with Fox News CBS has come up with a new motto: Fake and Biased. They've also hired a new news reader. As long as your credibility and reputation are shot, why not go all the way?
Sent to me by Charlie.
I originally published a picture of this guy a while back demonstrating the downside of Casual Dress Fridays. Jesse just sent it to me as a warning as to why women should not have online affairs. I decided that this was also an example of someone who brought CBS News and Kenneth down.
Warning! This guy is not a blogger in pajamas.
Click on the cartoon for a larger version.
Sent to me by Reiggin.
It's pouring down rain here at GOC Central in beautiful Dunwoody Georgia and I still have power. My friend Cindy called me on her cell phone. She is without power and they do not have one of those old fashioned phones that doesn't need electricity. I, on the other hand do. We had made a deal earlier in the week that whoever had power would have to host the other. Unfortunately, the tree that fell down has blocked them off so they'll have to live with flashlights and candles. They stocked up on Sunday for just this occasion.
Speaking of Cindy, she came up with a very good line about Flipper having the memory of Christmas in Cambodia (Sounds like a good name for a musical about the Poodle's war days) seared ... seared in his memory. It turned out it wasn't seared after all. It was just lightly sauteed.
And Blathergate continues. It turns out that CBS is now saying the memos may have been forged, but the information in them is still true. Huh? WTF? I hear CBS just hired Jayson Blair. Calling Edward R. Murrow.
Look what they've done to CBS Ed.
Look what they've done to CBS.
They presented forged memos
and got the story all wrong, Ed.
Look what they've done to CBS.
I love what M. H. King at Ramblings Journal said: What's the typeface Kenneth?
So I guess the question is: Is Ivan gonna do as much damage as Hurricane Dan?
Sent to me by Ric.
Which one of these guys would you like to invite to a cookout at your house?
These were sent to me by Jerry who told me he got them from the Nine Dwarfs web site.
Oh Crap! I didn't properly vent my typewriter expert. Y'see CBS found an old IBM Office Products Customer Engineer who said that the memo could have been typed on an Executive typewriter. All they needed to do was order the special key that did the little th and have it installed in the field since that was not sumpin' that was shipped with an Executive typewriter. Also all they needed to do was order the special paper feed indexing mechanism which also needed to be installed in the field since it was not an option shipped with the typewriter. So I guess now we have to go ask IBM to prove that this was never done to prove the documents were forgeries. I'm sure those were features that they really needed at the Texas Air National Guard. I just don't understand why sometimes they used the th as a superscript and sometimes they didn't.
Here are two tasteless Alabama jokes courtesy of Neal Boortz:
The USS Alabama which is currently in Mobile Alabama is gonna move to Birmingham this weekend.
Because of Hurricane Ivan they're gonna hitch up the governor's mansion to a truck and haul it out of the path of the storm.
Every day in the Atlanta Urinal and Constipation they have a feature called The Vent, where people call or e-mail cute little witticisms to the paper. Needless to say there is lots of Bush bashing by clueless individuals. Here is an example of liberal illogic from Tuesday's Vent:
If crime is at a 30-year low, how come the prison population is at an all-time high?
Maybe because all the criminals are in jail?
Speaking of liberal illogic listening to the Dimocrats squawking about Bush's National Guard service when they supported a draft dodger is the height of liberal illogic, not to mention blatant hypocrisy.
And one more thing. Robin challenged me to find people who voted for Gore in 2000 who will vote for Bush this year. Off the top of my head I came up with James Lileks, Steven Den Beste and Zell Miller. I'm sure some of my readers voted for Gore who this year will vote for Bush. And aren't ya glad Gore didn't win? With the way he's gone off his rocker now, think what 9/11 would have done to him.
Walt sent me an interesting e-mail about Oprah. Here is part of it.
The cars are valued from $21,000 to a maximum of $28,000 depending upon options selected, and Pontiac says that they will be paying the state sales taxes and license fees for each car. The total value of the car, taxes, and fees paid will be included on an IRS form 1099 for each recipient who will then have to file an esitmated federal return and make payment of the taxes due. A car worth say $25,000 at 7% sales tax = $1750, plus est. license fees of $500 would result in a taxable gain of $27,250 reported on the form 1099 and at the 28% tax rate equals a federal tax of over $7600 due on filing. Oh, and don't forget the insurance premium on the new car as well.
Uh Oh! There may be a problem here as Walt continues:
A followup show a year from now with the 276 winners "of what they wished for" would be very interesting. One would guess is that most of them will rue the day they ever heard of Oprah, as (1) they will no longer have the car of their dreams after having had to sell it, or (2) had it reposessed by the finance company that loaned the money to pay the income taxes due, and/or (3)will owe the IRS a huge sum in taxes, penalties, and interest that grows daily.
Long time readers will know that I say that 90% of the poor people in this country are poor because they do the things that make them poor. They drop out of school and they have children they cannot afford. Walt is right. They will wind up having to sell these cars just to pay the income taxes. Look at the history of many winners of the lotteries in this country. Three to five years after they've won they are broke and in debt. If 75% of these people have their cars a year from now, I'll be surprised.
The Dimocrats are well on their way to becoming a big time minority party. Contrary to what my buddy Robin thinks, you cannot run a campaign based on hatred of George Bush. The Republicans tried that with Bill Clinton and we all saw how successful that was.
John Kerry has now been talking about Viet Nam longer than he served there. - Michael Reagan
If it turns out that someone from the Kerry campaign duped CBS with those memos then the Kerry campagin is toast.
Some dickhead in the old media sneered that bloggers were people in pajamas sitting in front of computers. What a booger eatin' moh-ron! I don't wear pajamas. Right now I'm wearing running shorts. Sometimes I blog in my underwear. Yeah, I know. Too much information.
Thirteen more working days until I retire from TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name).
For those with severe cases of BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) like my buddy Robin, this should get them foaming at the mouth. Can't we all just get along?
Duncan ran the Kerry Web site through a web filter at this site. and this is what he got. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
On another note, for all the divers out there, I use a weight integrated BCD. It is a pain in the ass to remove and try to put back on at the bottom of the pool. Since I don't have a weight belt on, as soon as I remove the BCD I want to shoot to the surface. Of course, this is also exacerbated by me being a cripple. Arrrrgggghhhh! On one try I got a kink in my regulator hose. That was fun!
Anyway, I'm all ready to go diving, but we don't know where we're going yet.
Since I'm going to the pool and didn't have time to write anything original here is sumpin' Jim sent me.
WASHINGTON, DC (AP)
Congress approved sweeping legislation, which provides new benefits for
many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA), signed into
law by President John Kerry shortly after its passage, is being hailed as a
major victory by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real
skills or ambition.
"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive
necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said
Kerry, a longtime AWNAA supporter.
"This is why many of them voted for me. We can no longer stand by and
allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this
legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors
to a small group of workers, simply because they do a better job, or have
some idea of what they are doing", said Kerry.
President Kerry pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has
a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to
performance. Approximately 80 percent of postal employees
lack job skills, making this agency the single largest US employer of
Persons of Inability.
Private sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against
the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%),and home
improvement "warehouse" stores (65%)
President Kerry has also set an example, personally selecting hundreds of
Nonabled people for top government positions, including many cabinet-level
jobs.
Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million "middle
man" positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little
real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and
performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given, to
guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The
legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations which maintain a
significant level of Persons of Inability in top positions, and gives a tax
credit to small and medium businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker
for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult
to discriminate against the Nonabled, banning discriminatory interview
questions such as "Do you have any goals for the future?" or "Do you have
any skills or experience which relate to this job?" and "Are you awake?"
"As a Nonabled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have
something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a
lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, MI due to her lack of notable job
skills. "This new law should really help people like me." With the passage
of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens can finally
see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Kerry, "It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American
citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take
up in this great nation."
Now isn't this special.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey celebrated the premiere of her 19th season Monday by surprising each of her 276 audience members with a new car.
Where is the outrage from the liberals about this? I mean there are people dying of AIDS in Africa. There are homeless people in our cities. American children are going to bed hungry every night and Oprah wastes money by giving away 276 cars? What kind of a liberal is she anyhow? She should have given all that money to poor people.
"Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!" Winfrey yelled as she jumped up and down on the stage.
That's a mental picture I can do without: Oprah jumping up and down on the stage.
On another note I've got other things to take care of so it's a short post tonight. Tomorrow will not be much better. I'm going to the pool tomorrow night to get some more refresher time for my upcoming dive trip. Unfortunately, the trip may be postponed due to Ivan the Terrible. Y'see we were leaving to go to Cayman Brac a week from this Friday. Our fearless leader called the Divi corporate office this morning and they didn't have any up to date information yet so our trip may be postponed or we may wind up going elsewhere. We'll see.
In the meantime I hope Oprah's audience enjoy their cars and don't think about how that money could be better spent on the poor. They're probably all Republicans. Heartless bastards!
This should piss off my liberal readers.
Man
Girly man
Love the daisy Flipper.
Back to puns from my buddy Richard.
An entomologist was up for tenure at his university. But he had had
nothing accepted for publication in several years. He knew this would
be a problem. One day, depressed and working in his garden, he
discovered his roses were dying. They were infested by an insect. He
recognized the bug as one that infested animals, not plants. Excitedly,
he took specimens to his lab, where he studied them. Soon, he had
written an article. It was accepted for publication, and made a huge
splash. The entomologist got tenure. All this, because...
...he discovered a new lice on leaf.
Saturday night my friends Michael and Cindy had me over for dinner. As usual we drank lots of good wine. Cindy grilled some t-bone steaks. It was a real nice evening so we ate out by their pool. They had a little waterfall installed on one end of the pool this summer and it creates a real nice sound.
Afterwards, we went inside and had some cheese with a nice red wine. We turned on the television to see what was on and came across the dedication of the Underground Railroad museum in Cinncinnati. They had what looked like Buddhist monks chanting and strewing flower petals. We kept it in that station because we wanted to watch John Fonda Kerry speak to the Congressional Black Caucus.
We watched the entire speech. It was dull, dull, dull. It should be relatively easy to get the CBC involved in a speech. Clinton could do it. Algore could do it. Howard Dean could do it. Hell, even Babyface could do it. At no point in his speech did he get his audience to rise to its feet. There was polite applause to some of his talking points but that was it. The camera panned the room and we saw that some members of the audience had fallen asleep.
I now know how Flipper plans to win the War on Terror. He's gonna bore the terrorists to death.
Now on to Blathergate. Dan (What's the frequency Kenneth?) Blather and CBS are no longer even trying to hide their bias. Out comes the dead horse of Bush's National Guard Service. The Dimocrats have been beating this dead horse every election since 1994.
This horse has been flayed to death, buried, dug up, beat to another death, buried, dug up, beat on again, buried, dug up and now all that's left are a few bones, but that doesn't stop Blather and CBS trying to beat what's left of it.
Newsflash! The memo is a fake. How do I know? Because I have my own expert.
One of the liberal sites (I'm not linking to it. Little Green Footballs has the link.) stated that there actually were two machines available in the early 70's that could have created the memo. They were the IBM Selectric Composer and the IBM Executive typewriter. I just happen to have a very close friend who was a Customer Engineer with the IBM Office Products Division in the early 70's and he was trained on both the Selectric Composer and the IBM Executive typwriter. I asked him if either of those machines could have created the memo. His answer? No. Here's what he told me.
The Selectric Composer was a machine designed to do layout printing like you would see in a newspaper. It could do proportional spacing. But, if the memo had been typed on the Selectric Composer, not only would the left margin be straight, but the right margin would be also, just like you see in newsprint. This didn't occur in this memo. Also, the Selectric Composer was a very expensive piece of specialized equipment. There were not a lot of them built. Not many companies used them and I doubt if a National Guard unit would have one.
The Executive typewriter model C4 and Model D4 could do proportional spacing like we see on the memo. But it was not capable of the little th superscript. Plus it also was more expensive than regular typewriters that IBM made at the time. Once again, it would not be very likely for a National Guard unit to have purchased one. This memo was not typed on an IBM machine. It is a fake.
Straight from someone who repaired those machines.
How could Blather and company have been taken in so easily and why do they still insist these memos are genuine? Because they want them to be. Still think there is no media bias?
They apply different standards of proof to items damaging Bush than to items damaging Lurch. How much coverage do you think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would have received if not for Fox News and the Internet? Damn! I'm so glad that Algore invented it. Do you think we would have heard about Monica if not for Drudge?
Remember Bush is not running on his National Guard record. Anyway, as I have said many times before and will continue to say, Viet Nam service became a nonissue as soon as we elected a draft dodger in 1992 and 1996. Military service or lack thereof should no longer be relevant and the Dimocrats, and their friends in the lamestream media who, as I have said, are not even trying to hide their blatant bias anymore are displaying rampant hypocrisy by bringing it up.
So why is what went on during Flipper's four months relevant? Because he made it an issue. He can't run on his record in the Senate because not only did he not introduce any legislation in his 20 years, he also has the most liberal voting record in the Senate.
He has voted against every major weapons system and has continuously voted to cut not only military spending but also intelligence spending. He was hoping that running on his status as a war "hero" would innoculate him from his weak voting record on defense and intelligence.
It turns out that there are a lot of veterans (and I'm one of them) who are pissed off about his Benedict Arnold act of lying about made up atrocities before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And yes he lied, at least by Dimocrat standards. The Dimocrats claim that Kerry was merely repeating what veterans in Detroit had told him so that's not lying. Then why is Bush repeating what British Intelligence and the CIA told him lying? Because there is a double standard.
If he doesn't want to talk about his phony Purple Hearts he should not have brought the subject up. If he wants to stop this crap all he has to do is release all of his military records. Or is there something in there he doesn't want us to see?
Another example of media bias. The lamestream media keeps hounding Bush about his National Guard records, but gives Lurch a pass on producing all of his records. Bush is not basing his campaign on his National Guard Service. Flipper is basing his on four lousy months in Viet Nam.
Want another example of media bias? This time it's NBC. The Today show is devoting three segments to Kitty Kelly to publicize her new book. One of the juicier bits of dirt is her contention that Bush used cocaine at Camp David when his father was president. Kelly claims she got this information from Sharon Bush who used to be married to Neal Bush. Sharon Bush denies this. NBC doesn't care. If it can hurt Bush, it's news. Like I said, they're not even pretending not to be biased anymore.
Remember, it was NBC that sat on Lisa Meyer's interview with Juanita Brodderick until after the Senate impeachment hearings. Bias? Nah.
As the major networks get more and more blatant with their bias, less and less people are tuning in. Their ratinga are dropping and Fox's ratings are going up and they can't seem to figger out why.
If CBS were smart they would cut their losses and put Blather out to pasture. Maybe then he could find the frequency. But they won't and their credibility will contine to slide and less and less people will tune in.
It couldn't happen to a nicer network.
For all of you ladies who like Italian men, this is Greg Stigi who served with me on the USS Iredell County, LST-839.
Three years ago today war was declared on this country. It's amazing that we have a political party that does not seem to realize that fact. They are a party in thrall to an anti-American "disingenuous film maker". What has happened to the party of Harry Truman?
This is a party that believes going to war with thirty allies on our side is a uniilateral action because France and Germany are not among them.
This is a party that would give France, Germany, or the United Nations veto power over our foreign policy.
This is a party that is against "unilateral" action in Iraq but is for unilateral action against Korea.
This is a party that believes (or at least worships someone who does) that we went to war in Afghanistan so an oil company could build a pipeline. Construction started when?
This a party that believes, like the "disingenuous film maker", that Iraq was better off being ruled by Saddam Hussein and it was an idyllic place where children flew kites and women were free.
This is a party that believes some washed up Hollywood actress pointing to her genitals while referring to our president represents "real American values".
This is a party that believes that Hollywood nitwits like Barbra Streisand and Cher are intellectuals.
This is a party that worships a president who every time we were attacked by terrorists during his term in office bit his lip, vowed revenge and went back to the Oral Office and got a blowjob from a fat stupid intern.
This is a party that believes that Jimmah Carter was a great statesman and listens in awe to his advice on foregn policy.
This is a party that believes an incompetent Secretary of State like Madeleine Alldumb knows how to fight terrorism.
This is a party that believes Hillary Clinton, who allowed her husband to publicly humiliate her and her daughter because of her thirst for power and who has depended on her husband for all of her success and used her victimhood as her qualification to be a United States senator is a model for a strong independent woman.
This is a party that believes the United Nations which stood by watching genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, and now the Sudan is competent enough to handle international problems. The only United Nations "successes" have occurred when American soldiers did the work.
This is a party that believes dodging the draft was OK but Bush possibly missing some National Guard meetings, and it has to forge documents (Yes, they were forged. I have my own expert and I will present his evidence tomorrow) to try to prove this, makes him unfit for office even though he has already been president for four years.
This is a party that trotted out Tom Harkin, who lied about flying jets in Viet Nam, to call the president a liar.
This is a party that has a certain extremely partisan senator from South Dakota who has opposed all of President Bush's programs who now has to pretend that he is behind the president, even going so far as to film a commercial hugging him. What an example of rampant hypocrisy.
This is a party whose candidate for president missed over 50% of the meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee (Now there's an oxymoron) probably by going windsurfing and criticizes the president for going on working vacations. He also "didn't have time" a few months ago to be briefed on current intelligence.
This is a party whose candidate criticized the president for spending seven minutes reading to children after being notified of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center but admitted that he had spent forty minutes in Tom Daschle's office "unable to think" when he was notified. I'll take seven minutes over forty minutes.
This is a party whose candidate is so weak on defense that he has to base his entire campaign on his four month service in Viet Nam that we are now finding out was not as heroic as he claims. There is nothing about his false testimony before the Senate when he lied about atrocities. Now liberals will say that he did not lie. He was only repeating what others had told him in Detroit. These same liberals claim Bush lied because of what the CIA and British intelligence told him. Consistency dudes! If Bush lied, Kerry lied. If Kerry told the truth, Bush told the truth. Oh yeah. This is the party with no standards and no consistency.
This is a party that believes a murderer (Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy) is a respected elder of the Dimocrat Party. By their standards, he is.
This is a party that also believes noted racist, Robert "Kleagle of the KKK" Byrd, who used the word "nigger" on national television is a respected elder statesman. By the standards of the Dimocrat Party he is.
This is a party that was on the wrong side of history during the Cold War. They wanted to acccomodate the Soviet Union. They were against all of Reagan's policies; policies by the way, that won the Cold War.
This is a party whose propaganda arms, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, not to mention NBCCBSABCNPRPBSMSNBCCNBC, refuses to acknowledge that we are at war with radical Islamic terrorists.
The funadamentalist Muslims believe that the reason their civilization is in such decline is they have strayed away from the true belief of Islam and Allah has deserted them. Only by holy Jihad will their marvelous civilization be restored. That leads to their nihilistic beliefs that tells them that it is all right to kill defenseless women, children, and old people in the name of their bloodthirsty god.
The Dimocrats, likewise believe that they have lost power because they have deserted their leftist, anti-American values. That is why they adore people like Michael Moore and all the Hollywood leftists. That is why their leaders in Congress are obstructionist liberals like Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle (who is now running for reelection as a moderate). A moderate Dimocrat (another oxymoron these days), like Joe Lieberman, is ignored. Instead they nominated the most liberal person in the Senate who refuses to run on his own voting record there. Since the lamestream media has stopped even pretending it is not biased, without Fox News and the internet he would have a very good chance to succeed.
Finally this is not a party I trust with national security. Their actions in the three years after 9/11 have proven that over and over again.
Zell Miller was right.
Suze sent me this link and said I should use it for Saturday Boobage. No way. I like ones like today's.
Ah! The great outdoors. BTW, they're real.
Sorry. I really want to write sumpin' about CBS and Dan Blather and how they are no longer even trying to pretend they're not biased, but I had to watch The Avengers and now I'm watching football so I'll give ya a joke that Tina sent me.
It was a little girl's first day of school, and the teacher asked her what her name was. She replied, "Happy Butt. "
The teacher said, "Honey I don't think that's your name. You need to go to the principal's office and get this straightened out. "
So she went to the principal's office and he asked, "What's your name? "
And the little girl replied, "Happy Butt. "
The principal called the girl's mother to get this straightened out once and for all. After getting off the phone, he looked at the little girl and said, "Honey, your name is Gladys, not Happy Butt. "
The girl then exclaimed, "Glad Ass, Happy Butt, what the hell's the difference?"
Yeah I know. It's an old one and I really should have saved if for a Monday pun.
When I'm retired I won't be able to use any of these lame excuses for not posting original stuff. I guess then I'll have to come up with original excuses.
Another one sent to me by this guy. Check out the coaches laughing at Flipper.
It wasn't my fault I fumbled the snap. It was the fault of that stupid center who didn't hike the ball when I told him to.
That sure happened fast! I sent an e-mail to my manager about a month ago announcing that due to my declining health I was planning on retiring before the end of the year. Last week she came into my office and offered me "a package". That's one of the euphemisms we use for incentives to leave the company. This particular "package" was 13 weeks pay to leave.
I think this "package" goes along with another announcement they just made called Redeployment. It's a program where they will help you find a job in another part of TCIDNN. What it really amounts to is layoffs.
This is just another name. Over the last few years we have had Resource Action and Skill Rebalancing. Now it's Redeployment. They all mean the same thing.
Knock. Knock.
Who's there?
Not you anymore.
They've even gotten cheaper on "the package". Had I taken the last one, I could have received 26 weeks pay.
Anyway, it turns out that I'm gone by the end of October. I have a lot of vacation to take so my last day will probably be October 14. Then I'll go in October 31 and do all the paper work.
Even I was amazed at how fast I'm going out the door, but I suspect my ex-CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager) who is now my manager's manager is behind the acceleration of the process. He's been pissed off at me for the last three years and is probably pulling a boner at the thought of me leaving.
Just think, it will not be too long and all of you will finally know which company TCIDNN is. Some people already do just by reading what I write. Resource Action and Skill Rebalancing were dead giveaways.
I've started letting the users I support know that I'm leaving and they're wondering if I'm gonna come back and contract part time. According to my team lead the answer to that is "no". They're not gonna replace me. When I'm gone, I'm gone and from my ex-CDSMŽ"s perspective, good riddance.
They are gonna bring the old network guy back part time so they'll recover that skill. I've been doing most of the work the new network guy was supposed to do.
They are gonna lose configuration planning, sysplex, and base system install. I've been in early ship programs for OS/390 and now z/OS and for the last five years I've had a system up and running by general availability. I will pass on my IBM contacts to my team lead so he can pick that up. Don't know how he'll find the time.
I'll be the first one to admit that I haven't busted my ass for the last three years, but, since I am very good in my particular areas of expertise, I can be very productive with very little effort. Someone is gonna realize that sometime in November.
I'm not bitter 'cause I have had a very good career with TCIDNN. After I'm gone and can reveal the true name of TCIDNN I can write a chronicle of my corporate odyssey. I do feel bad for my team lead who is overworked as it is and now will have to pick up some of the stuff that I do.
So let's see. I'm gonna leave, my team lead is gonna have more work dumped on him, the users I support are gonna get pissed, our headcount will go down by one, and my ex-CDSMŽ will probably get a bonus for cutting staff.
What a company!
It seems, Jimmah Carter, the worst president of the 20th Century, is just a little bit pissed off at Zell Miller for speaking at the Republican Convention and for supporting Bush. His letter to Zell is printed in Wednesday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation. Unfortunately, they did not post it online, but they did have this article about President Peanut's hissy fit.
D'ya know who Jimmah Carter reminded me of during his presidency? Didja see the Star Trek episode where Kirk was split into two Kirks during a transporter malfunction? You had the good Kirk who really meant well but was totally indecisive. That's Jimmah Carter in a nut shell, pardon the pun.
Nobel peace laureate Jimmy Carter has waded into the war of words against Zell Miller, firing off a scathing letter to the maverick U.S. senator accusing him of betraying fellow Democrats.
Better to betray Dimocrats than to betray the country which Jimmah did by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. The only reason he was awarded the Prize was to slap the United States in the face. He should of told them to take the Prize and shove it. He betrayed America so he has a lot of damn gall to talk about Zell betraying the Dimocrat Party when he betrayed his country. Jimmah you are an asshole!
In a two-page missive, the former president blasted Miller for his "rabid and mean-spirited speech" to the Republican National Convention last week in New York.
Rabid? Or did he mean rabbit? We all know that Jimmah has some issues with killer rabbits.
"By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust," Carter wrote in the letter, which Miller's office received Tuesday.
And we could say the same thing about Jimmah for violating the "Politics ends at the water's edge" rule, but WTF, he is a Dimocrat, after all. I hope you are proud that the only reason you got that Nobel Peace Prize was due to anti-American sentiment. Once again Jimmah, you are an asshole!
Carter wrote that he had known Miller, a former legislator, lieutenant governor and governor, for 42 years and considered him a friend. But Carter's letter accused Miller of choosing "the rich over the poor, unilateral pre-emptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause."
lies and obfuscation over the truth and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections
Straight out of the Dimocrat Party's playbook. See James Carville and Paul Begala.
The letter was signed, "Sincerely and with deepest regrets, Jimmy Carter."
Which is pretty much how we feel about the four years that Jimmah Carter was president.
Miller commented:
"John F. Kennedy warned about the dangers of extreme party loyalty and once said, 'What sins have been committed in its name.' My first loyalty is and always will be my family," Miller said in a written statement.
James Carville stated that the Republicans wrote Zell's speech but if they did, Zell belongs in Hollywood. Love him or hate him he was speaking from the heart and he meant what he said. That was no act. If it was, he deserves an Oscar.
Georgia Republicans said the tone of Carter's letter showed that Miller scored a direct hit."You wouldn't write a letter like this unless Senator Miller's comments really hit home," said Alec Poitevint, chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia.
Yep! It caused girly man Jimmah Carter to throw a hissy fit.
And what do Georgia Dimocrats have to say?
Only Carter "could write that letter and generate the kind of respect and the kind of reaction that is appropriate," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta), president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. "He is the grandfather of the Georgia Democratic Party."
Which could be one reason the Dimocrat Party is in serious trouble in Georgia. For the first time since Reconstruction Georgia has a Republican governor. The Georgia Senate is controlled by Republicans. The Republicans have a good chance of taking the Georgia House. When Zell retires this year he will probably be replaced by a Republican, giving Georgia two Republican Senators. The "grandfather of the Georgia Democratic Party" is not doing a very good job.
In his letter, Carter scolded Miller for his comments about his tenure as president."I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the Navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way," Carter wrote. "I don't believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacifist."
greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way.
Let's see. He drastically cut defense spending which Reagan had to reverse and, of course, we all remember how well he dealt with Iran. Maybe he wasn't a pacifist, but howza 'bout incompetent boob?
Jimmah Carter truly lives in his own world. He is the Millard Fillmore of the 20th Century except he even makes Millard Fillmore look good. Maybe we should say that Millard Fillmore was the Jimmah Carter of the 19th Century.
Here's John Fonda Kerry's real Band of Brothers.
Another gem from Charlieb.
Now here's an interesting link. What's neat about it? Take a good look out the window in the third picture down.
This link came from Dan S. Altho' some of my readers think he is a troll, which he is not, y'all have to admit he does have a warped sense of humor which makes him welcome here. Thanks for serving your country Dan.
For my latest GMAFB moment I came across this item from Sunday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
Students don't like to see red marks on their papers.
Who does?
And neither do their parents.
Then they should have their kids do better work.
Which is why schoolteachers around the country are switching from red to purple or other tamer colors when grading exams and homework, according to research examining buying patterns at office supply stores.
Other tamer colors? WTF? Just what we need in our gummint schools: tamer colors.
"It's just too harsh," said Debbie Levin, who teaches eighth grade at Simpson Middle School in Cobb County. "I will use purple or green, but never red. I think it's very demoralizing for a child to have written a creative paper and to have it marked up all in red to show that it's awful."
Maybe the creative paper was a piece of crap! The educrats have done a right proper job of farking up the school system and now they want to save little Jason and Jennifer from any harshness and use purple on their papers. I guess a big ol' F doesn't look so bad if it's in purple. What a crock of shit!
Ruth Martin, a second-grade teacher at Brumby Primary School in Cobb County, isn't surprised. In fact, Martin, 28, who's in her sixth year of teaching, said she's never used red to grade papers."When I was younger, I thought about it, that the teachers always used red, and I don't want any certain color to be associated with a mistake or something negative," said Martin.
Huh? I just cannot believe what I am reading. This has got to be some of the silliest shit I have ever read in my entire life. How did I make it through twelve years of school and three years of college without being scarred for life because teachers graded my papers with red ink? A certain color associated with a mistake? A mistake is a mistake.
Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of six books on color,
Six books on color? She gets paid to write books on color?
said teachers are changing because purple "is a way to soften the blow."
Yeah. You turned in a piece of crap but we want to soften the blow. I got news for you Leatrice, out in the real world no one worries about softening the blow. If you do crappy work you get fired. I think we've been spending too much time softening the blow on children and building up their self-esteem. Out in the real world no one really cares about their self-esteem.
"A lot of studies have been done that show how colors influence people, and red signals danger and warning, and anthropologists have found this has been true down through the ages.
Warning! Your work sucks. If you don't improve you're in danger of failing. Danger and warning. Yep! Red is appropriate. It gets their attention.
She pointed out that it's been well-documented that seeing red raises blood pressure, causes adrenaline to flow and makes the heart beat faster. "It's just embedded in all human culture."
The only reason my heart beat faster when I got a paper back marked up in red is because I knew I was gonna be in deep shit when I got home.
Levin, a teacher for more than 25 years, agrees."Red in our culture is bad. It's the devil. It's mean," said Levin, 50. "A lot of other teachers I know don't use red anymore either."
These are the people teaching your kids.
Purple, on the other hand, is a mixture of red and blue, which makes it appear less harsh, Eiseman said."The blue side of the color brings with it feelings of authority. That's why uniforms are often navy blue."
Maybe if these people would spend more time thinking about actually teaching than this stupid psychobabble bullshit our education system would not be in the mess it is in now.
Stu Cohen, a 54-year-old Atlanta psychotherapist who often lectures teachers in Fulton and DeKalb counties on how to improve classroom environments, said the use of red in correcting papers dates back to the 1700s.
And amazingly enough the students survived and learned.
"Red isn't going to go away," he said, "but purple's popularity is here to stay."
Quick! Someone call Sammy Haggar!
Am I supposed to write sumpin' tonight? I did next to nothin' today except listen to the wind howl. We're experiencing the northern edge of Francis. My friend Cindy called earlier today and a tree over by her house had been blown over on to power lines and they were without power. Fortunately GOC Central still has power.
I did get all caught up on bill paying and other financial stuff. One of the things I did was submit a claim to my health care reimbusement account.
What dipshit thought up the idea of these accounts? Let's see, I have to figger out what my out of pocket medical bills are gonna be (Like I'm some kind of psychic) for the next year and have TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) deduct that money from my paycheck. Then as I incur those expenses, I fill out a form and send it in to the company that handles this account. The company decides if these are legitimate expenses and then reimburses me with my own money. I have actually had to fight with the company on what was considered a legitimate medical expense.
Me: I have a problem with your denial of a request.
Them: What's your name.
Me: Tell them my name and pertinent information.
Them: Let me call up your records on the computer. Here it is. What's the problem?
Me: You denied my request on the Jay cushion. (A special cushion we cripples need to keep from getting sores on our butts)
Them: I'm sorry. This is not a legitimate expense.
Me: Why not?
Them: Because it was not approved by your insurance company.
Me: Like hell it wasn't. It was a $300 Jay cushion and the co-pay was $150. The insurance company paid for half of it. How could it not be approved by my insurance company? They paid for half of it.
Them: How would we know that?
Me: Because I submitted the form that showed you that they paid half of it.
Them: Uh. Well .... uh. It's not covered.
Me: Listen up! This is my money! This is a covered expense and I want my money!
Them: Uh ... Please hold while I talk to a supervisor.
Me: Let me talk to the supervisor.
Them: Uh ... No. Uh ... Please hold.
Wait on hold for three minutes.
Them: I talked to my supervisor and she said we'd approve it this time.
Bastards!
The nice thing about these accounts is it allows you to pay out of pocket expenses with pretax money. The bad thing is if you don't use all the money, you'll lose it. I've never had that problem since with my declining health, my out of pocket expenses go up every year. My prescriptions alone are now over $1000 and that's just the co-pay. Being a cripple costs money.
What I would like to see to get rid of this bullshit program is just make all out of pocket medical expenses tax deductible. I hate having to estimate in advance what I'm gonna spend each year. I really hate having to argue with someone about my own farking money. If you have to pay for your own health insurance, make the premiums tax deductible. That would go a long way to cutting down on the number of uninsured people in this country. It would also allow many people to have control of their own health insurance. Of course, that's too simple so it will never happen.
The gummint is gonnna come up with some very complicated single pay health insurance plan (Hillary Care) that's gonna cost more than a simple solution (Make health insurance premiums tax deductable, make all medical expenses tax deductible, and tort reform to prevent ambulance chasers like Babyface from driving obstreticians out of business. You did know that there is now a shortage of obstreticians in North Carolina didn't you? Thank Babyface for that.) and put gummint bureaucrats, ya know, the same people who run the IRS and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in charge of what is right now the best health care system in the world. We're gonna let the same people who wrote the federal tax system set up a national health service.
Remember what P. J. O'Rourke once said: "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see how much it will cost when it's free."
And that's it for Labor Day. I'm going to bed early for a change.
Oh. Here's to the American worker. The most productive worker in the world. I'm gonna drink a glass of wine in your honor. This will probably be the last year I am among you. Retirement is in sight.
In honor of school starting in most of the country this Monday's pun will be about a school bus driver.
Barney had just got a job working for the Sesame Street School Bus Company and this was his very first day on the job.
At his first stop a mother was waiting with her two daughters. She told Barney that these were her twin daughters and their names were Patty Ann and Patty Sue. The girls were more than a little overweight. They got on the bus and took their seats.
At the next stop the mother introduced her son Josh and said that since he was a very special boy he needed to sit in the front of the bus. Josh got on and took his seat in the front of the bus.
At the next stop the mother told Barney that she was Mrs. Cleese and her son's name was Lester. He had trouble walking because he had bunions on his feet. Sure enough, when Lester got on the bus he removed his shoes and started picking at his bunions. Eeeeewwwww!
The rest of the stops were uneventful and as soon as all the children got off the bus, Barney immediately drove back to the bus station and told his boss he was quitting.
"But why are you quitting?"
"Because ...
I cannot take two obese Patties, special Josh, Lester Cleese picking bunions on a Sesame Street Bus!"
Am I gonna take Bush's speech apart like I did the Poodle's? No. Did I agree with everything in Bush's speech? No. He presented a laundry list of compassionate conservative (socialist lite) programs that we cannot afford. The difference is Lurch wants to spend even more.
I wish the writers of the Constitution had made the presidency one six year term. The president should be running the country, not running for reelection.
One thing I like about Bush is he has a sense of humor. He is able to poke fun at himself. Kerry doesn't know how to do that. When Kerry fell off his snowboard he should of made a joke of it. Instead, he blamed one of his Secret Service agents.
Bush has a thick skin. Look at all the negative stuff that has been thrown at him by the 527's and the Dimocrats. Maybe his momma raised him with the adage "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me"
Do parents still raise their children that way? I doubt it because our current society is so easily offended. The only people you can make fun of nowadays are white men. Political correctness! What a crock of shit! That's why I refer to myself as a cripple. It pisses off politically correct people.
Bush is not the best speaker in the world and he would be the first to admit it, but he can rise to the occasion. In the first part of the speech, when he was talking about social programs, he was stiff. He did get better and when he started talking about national defense you knew he meant what he was saying.
And he didn't sweat. The man is genuine. Kerry is a fake.
The balloons fell like they were supposed to.
The Poodle is starting to look desperate. He made a speech at midnight right after the convention was over and once again came out with the same old tired canard that Bush and Cheney were attacking his patriotism and what right do they have to do it since he served in Viet Nam and they didn't.
Of course they are not attacking his patriotism. Both of them said that he served honorably. The Republican Party is not attacking his patriotism unless pointing out that his weak record on defense issues while he was in the Senate is attacking his patriotism. I guess it all depends on what your definition of patriotism is. I guess to Lurch it means having a weak voting record on defense. The Republicans have never said anything about his patriotism.
Kerry, on the other hand has chosen to attack Bush on his National Guard service and Cheney on getting deferments. This is the same man who in 1992, when the draft dodger was running, said military service didn't matter. If he was not so thin skinned he could ignore all this stuff and have his surrogates do his dirty work.
Maybe a good commercial for the Republicans would be the 1992 Kerry defending Clinton versus the 2004 Kerry attacking Bush and Cheney.
Like I said, Lurch is looking desperate. I guess when your entire campaign is based on having served in Viet Nam and not being George Bush you may run into problems. Kerry is not very likable. He has no sense of humor. He's a patrician trying to act like a plebian. He has a thin skin. I think his supporters are voting against Bush and not for Kerry. If that's all you got, you're in trouble.
Kerry didn't get a bounce in the polls when he named Baby Face as his running mate. He didn't get the usual post convention bounce. Bush got as much as an eleven point post convention bounce depending upon which poll you believe.
The Poodle making his Viet Nam service the centerpiece of his campaign is turning out to be as succeesful as the Viet Nam War itself.
I wonder. If he loses will he throw away his medals again?
Duuuude!
Sent to me by a reader who got it here.
Sent to me by Nancy. A chance for the ladies to do some man bashing.
15 PIECES OF ADVICE TO BE PASSED ON TO YOUR MOM, YOUR DAUGHTERS OR GRANDDAUGHTERS, NIECES, AUNTS, GIRLFRIENDS, ETC.
1. Don't imagine you can change a man - unless he's in diapers.
2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks out? You shut the door.
3. If they put a man on the moon - they should be able to put them all up there.
4. Never let your man's mind wander - it's too little to be out alone.
5. Go for the younger man. You might as well, they never mature anyway.
6. Men are all the same - they just have different faces, so that you can tell them apart.
7. Definition of a bachelor: a man who has missed the opportunity to make some woman miserable.
8. Women don't make fools of men - most of them are the do-it-yourself types.
9. Best way to get a man to do something is to suggest he is too old for it.
10. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.
11. If you want a committed man, look in a mental hospital.
12. The children of Israel wandered around the desert for 40 years. Even in Biblical times, men wouldn't ask for directions.
13. If he asks what sort of books you're interested in, tell him checkbooks.
14. Remember a sense of humor does not mean that you tell him jokes, it means that you laugh at his.
15. Sadly, all men are created equal.
I thought Zell Miller was in the Marines.
Tan lines.
From Charlieb. Yeah. They're fake, but who cares?
Kerry wants to be Commander in Chief. Commander of what? A military armed with spit balls?!?
Classic!
There has been a rather heated discussion going on in my comments about this speech. Here are some of my thoughts.
Dan says that Zell was bitter because he was passed over for bigger things in the Dimocrat Party. Zell retired after his two terms of governor. As far as I know he was out of politics. He was content to go back to Young Harris and teach. It was Roy Barnes who talked him into taking the Senate job. According to Zell, he was shocked at the partisanship in Washington, especially after 9/11. After the 2000 election, the Dimocrat Party lurched strongly to the left. Nancy Pelosi as Minority Leader? GMAFB!
If Zell was not speaking from the heart last night he is one hell of an actor. Recall his speech on the Senate floor when he talked about finding a nest of copperheads under the porch of his cabin in the mountains. He could let them be and run the risk of having them bite one of his dogs or his grandchildren or he could kill them. That is what he thinks of the terrorists.
Dan also brought up Viet Nam. I really wish we could put that behind us, but it keeps rearing its ugly head. I really thought the issue would be put to rest in 1992 and 1996 when we elected a draft dodger. It's over. Give it a fucking rest! But no. The party that said it didn't matter tried to use it as an issue when they ran Algore who was actually in Viet Nam, behind the lines, with a cushy job with Stars and Stripes, with bodyguards to boot, and was there about five months. His daddy pulled strings. But Bush served in the National Guard so he was not qualified to be Commander in Chief even though we had a draft dodger serve as Commander in Chief for eight years. And remember, twelve years ago when the draft dodger was running against a genuine war hero, Kerry said it didn't matter. Now, all of a sudden, it does. WTF?
John McCain told the Poodle not to make Viet Nam the centerpiece of his campaign, but he couldn't run on his record in the Senate because, as Zell pointed out, he voted against every weapons program and was on the wrong side of history in the Cold War.
Dan is comparing the current war to Viet Nam but it's not. I understand that Dan is bitter about Viet Nam. It was a sorry moment in our history. It was a war we didn't enter to win. It was a war of containment against North Viet Nam. Big mistake. If you don't plan to win a war don't enter. I can understand his bitterness. I was pissed off that the politicians would not let us win, or at least try to win, the war. Kerry's testimony about free fire zones was full of shit. I went up the Bassac River twice. Our standing orders were if we were fired upon we had to get permission to fire back. A known policy of the VC was to try to make us fire when fired upon and inadvertently hit friendlies or American forces. Maybe his river was different.
As I said, I understand Dan's bitterness and I relate. As to us not being there, all I have to do is look at what happened after we left: The millions of people slaughtered or sent to re-education camps. The boat people. The killing fields in Cambodia. We cut and ran and the people we left behind paid the price.
Dan is not a troll. He sees things differently than many of us. He is understandingly bitter, but doesn't seem to understand why Zell is bitter. I think Zell spoke from the heart and made an incredible speech.
Was it good politics? We'll see. The Dimocrats are already spinning it as hate speech. I remember back in 1988 when the Dimocrat convention was a big ol' bash Bush fest. Remember , "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." Or Ted Kennedy with his "Where was George?" bullshit? Mary Jo Kopechne is still wondering where Ted was. Dukakis lost in a landslide.
In a convention you have to say what you are for, not what you are against. That's why Arnold's speech was so good.
Zell's speech was red meat for the party faithful. I loved it. All of my evil warmongering friends loved it. My brother-in-law woke up my sister to hear it. I haven't really looked at any polls to see what middle America thought of it. I know Chris Matthews didn't like it and I really enjoyed it when Zell told him he was not gonna be bullied like that girl (Michelle Malkin) was last week.
My friend Cindy is a rarity in Atlanta: a native. She does not talk like a Southerner except when she is mad. The madder she gets, the more Southern she sounds. When Zell was sparring with Matthews she told me she knew Zell was pissed because of one of the expressions he used. Damn! Can't remember what it was.
Second best line of the night was from Cheney's speech:
"Senator Kerry says he sees two Americas. It makes the whole thing mutual - America sees two John Kerrys."
Now on to Michael Moore. I had an informal bet with Robin about Moore vs. Ann Coulter. I said he would be just as bombastic. I was wrong on his first two columns. He committed a worse sin. He was boring. His first column talked about going on the convention floor and asking delegates questions and, by golly, it turns out that they must be Dimocrats because they felt just like Dimocrats about the issues. The main reason this is bullshit is how many Republicans do you think would talk to Michael Moore except to say to him what Dick Cheney said to Patrick Leahy? And here's GOC's little Michael Moore type survey.
I've been corresponding offline with a reader who has been taking me to task for some of my beliefs and saying that I cannot be a Libertarian (even one with a small l) because I'm not pure enough in my ideology. I'm not naming him and I haven't replied to his last e-mail yet but I will, but I'm gonna do a little Michael Moore here. Here is what he told me about himself in his last e-mail.
OK. Looking at all of his beliefs what political party do you think he belongs to? Be honest. I'll tell you right up front, I haven't asked him what political party he is a member of or how he votes, but looking at that information, knowing absolutely nothing more about him, I would swear that he would vote Republican. It would be a slam dunk. Does anyone disagree? In fact, other than his opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, I would say he was a real right wing Republican. Anyone disagree? Show of hands?
Now let me add one more thing he told me about himself:
I am African American.
Now how do you think he votes? Like I said. I do not know. In my next e-mail I shall ask how he votes and also if he does vote Dimocrat, like 90% of blacks, how that reconciles with his criticism of my not being ideologically pure.
Moore's second column attacked John McCain for making comments about his movie and is rather defensive. For example, he states that the idyllic scenes with the children flying kites in the park really was stressing all the innocent people that would die rather than trying to prove the point that Iraq was better off before the war. Golly! He's changing his movie? Is he gonna call up the French and tell them this? Is he gonna give back his award?
And then he gave McCain the Beavis and Butthead (sopmehow that seems to fit Michael Moore) finger salute for loser. Not really a good idea to insult the Dimocrats' favorite Republican. After all, he was the Poodle's first choice to be his running mate. In his column the next day, he said that he was giving the loser sign to the Republicans (Who were really Dimocrats, right? That's what he told us the day before.) on the floor. And then he had to tell us that according to a few cherry picked soldiers in Iraq, all the soldiers in Iraq were against this war. Just another lie by Michael Moore. I actually know a soldier over there. He's my nephew and he tells me a different story. Somehow my nephew has a little more credibility with me than someone who tells the rest of the world that "Americans are the dumbest people in the world". He's talking about you Robin. Your hero thinks you're dumb. Taking into account all the people who have spent money to see a move made by a person who thinks Americans are dumb, maybe he has a point. And I know which Americans he is talking about.
But his third column was vintage Michael Moore. Bush lied. No WMD's. It was all about the ooiiillll. How come no USA Today editor came down on him for repeating the same old tired liberal talking points? We have found WMD's. If it's all about the oil, how come we haven't stolen any of it yet? Robin, I win. Michael Moore finally became the liberal equivalent of Ann Coulter and USA Today printed his column. Liberal bias? Nah.
What kind of vitriol do we expect to read tomorrow from the man who gave John McCain, a war hero, the Beavis and Butthed sign for loser and said our soldiers in Iraq are against the war?
No time to write about Bush's speech tonight except to say that unlike the Poodle, he didn't sweat.
And for the Republicans the ballons fell.
I didn't have time to post much last night because I went to the pool to brush up on my SCUBA diving since in about three weeks I'll be off to Cayman Brac. I'm sure all the compassionate liberals without a sense of humor (Redundancy alert!) who didn't see the humor in my Purple Heart Band-Aids post last week hope I'll drown.
Let's see how we're doing so far on speeches.
Dimocrats:
Jimmah Carter - The most incompetent president of the 20th Century
Ted Kennedy - Noted swimmer.
Bill Clinton - One of the most corrupt presidents of the 20th Century. Was responsible for the Dimocrats losing control of both houses of Congress but the Dimocrats love him anyway. White trash made good.
Hillary Clinton - Feminist role model for letting her husband humiliate her and her daughter in front of the enitre world and parlayed her victimhood into a multimillion dollar book deal and a Senate seat.
Al Sharpton - Noted RWPP (Race Warlord Poverty Pimp). Tawana Brawley, Crown Heights riots, and Freddie's Fashion Mart fire are on his resume.
Republicans:
Ron Silver - Definitely not a Republican! A liberal who gets it.
John McCain - War hero. Good speech. Pissed off Michael Moore who, with a Beavis and Butthead hand gesture called him a loser. In a bit of revisionism He said he was calling Republicans losers and not John McCain. Yeah. Sure.
Rudolph Guiliani - America's Mayor. Brought the house down. I didn't know he could speak that well.
Arnold - What can I say? Fantastic Speech! So far the best speech of either convention. Upbeat. Optimistic. A rags to riches story from someone who is proud to be an American. Golly. Arrived penniless and could not speak English and became a movie star and governor of California.
Laura Bush - A very classy genuine lady.
Three comparisons to go. Barak Obama and Zell Miller will be close. Cheney is not known for speaking so Baby Face will probably come out ahead. Bush has a tendency to rise to the occasion when an important speech is called for. He will probably give a better speech than the Poodle. We'll see.
Back to the show.
