Get it straight: I don't hate Obama

Real quick-like, I just want to set the record straight. I don’t hate President Obama.

Some of you have gotten the impression that for the next four years, all I’m going to do is bash Obama 2-3 times a week here, and a couple of my friends have dubbed me a Hater and ask why “I be hatin’ on Obama”…..

Look, I’m not an Obama fan. I didn’t drink the Liberal KoolAid and I didn’t buy into all that Hope and Change drivel. I didn’t vote for the man, but he’s still the duly-elected President of the United States. Contrary to public opinion, I don’t want him to just utterly fail. Why? Because if he fails, and his policies fail, we’re all royally screwed.

As much as I am skeptical of the plans, schemes, and policies of this new administration, the smart thing is to hope that he succeeds. As my buddy Jim says, a rising tide floats all boats. If he succeeds then the nation as a whole will succeed, because sure enough if he fails, we all fail right along with him.

If President Obama does something right, I’ll mention it here. And rest assured, if I think he’s buggering it all up I’ll also let you know. I called out President Bush a few times in the past too, y’know, but by the time I started blogging regularly, he’d already botched it up past FUBAR that it wouldn’t have made a bollock’s bit of difference to add my own 3 cents.

So, while I’m not a fan, I’m also not a hater, either.

I may as well go on ahead while I have your attention and say something good about His Obamaness, albeit with some caveats attached. The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended last week that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights. The Justice Department argues that Bagram is different from Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and the prisoners there are being held as part of a military action. The government argues that releasing enemy combatants into the Afghan war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their legal cases, could threaten security.
The government also said if the Bagram detainees got access to the courts, it would allow all foreigners captured by the United States in conflicts worldwide to do the same.

Sounds reasonably sane to me. However, they still plan to close Guantanamo and most likely just let all those scumbags go, deporting them to Allah-knows-where to hook back up with the Taliban and Al Qaeda and go back to killing us. Why, just this week we set convicted terrorist Khalid Al-Jawary free. In a week, he’ll be back amongst his cronies like a returning hero and then the countdown starts to the making of car bombs again.

So, Mister President, thanks for not giving rights to all the scumbags we have in custody around the world, and thanks for maintaining our Renditions policy going (finally saw the reason of reality, huh?) but no thanks for letting go the really nasty elite scumbags in Gitmo, etc.

And while I’m at it, I like how you’re tap-dancing around the whole Iraq redeployment thing. All during the protracted election process you prated on and on about bringing everyone home from Iraq within weeks of your coronation. I guess reality took a fat bite out of that, eh? So now you’ll placate your fellow LibDems by saying you’ll bring them home in a year, but with the provision to keep 50,000 of them behind to maintain the peace. Dude, that’s still the equivalent of two and a half heavy mechanized divisions.

But bringing them home is just a cover, because you’re shipping them right back to Afghanistan, since there’s a pestilence of Taliban and Al Qaeda all over the countryside and another 15,000 of them right next door in Pakistan. Reality’s a bitch, Barry.

If you succeed, we all succeed. Good luck. We’re all watching.

Free to Good Home: Stealth Warship and Spy Barge

Holy crap, Batman. It seems that the US Navy is trying to just up and give away two Top Secret ships that it no longer needs. Ostensibly, they should go to some type of museum, but if someone doesn’t speak up soon, they may end up in the scrap yard.

One of the ships is the Sea Shadow (IX-529). Picture a stealth fighter-turned-catamaran. It looks pretty bad-ass, and it was built as a test bed for seagoing stealth technology. According to one former crewmember, they were able to sail up to other warships undetected at night, all the time, in exercises.

The other vessel is a bit more infamous. The Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1) was originally built by Howard Hughes as a partner for his Glomar Explorer, which was a high tech drilling platform capable of keeping station on the surface while raising and lowering a huge mechanical claw three miles to the ocean floor. The two ships were part of Project Jennifer, the CIA’s mission to retrieve a sunken Soviet nuclear missile submarine, the K-129. Part barge, part submarine, the HMB was equipped with a retractable roof, and was also capable of submerging to allow the Glomar Explorer to position itself over the barge to retrieve its giant grabber claw and transfer any sections of K-129 it recovered. (Go read the book Red Star Rogue by Kenneth Sewell)

Sea Shadow has been using the HMB as its Mother Ship, hiding inside it parked like a fighter in a hangar, to avoid overflights by satellites.

So…any museums need a couple of freaky secrets? Granted, any gift ship from the Navy comes with lots of strings attached. A naval museum, the Historic Naval Ships Association warns, is "a bloodthirsty, paperwork ridden, permit-infested, money-sucking hole..." Because the Navy won't pay for anything — neither rust scraping nor curating — to keep museums afloat, survival depends on big crowds. That's why many of the 48 ships it has given away over 60 years were vessels known for performing heroically in famous battles. Our own Patriot’s Point Naval Museum here in South Carolina needs about $66 million dollars immediately to repair the ships in its collection, including the Coast Guard Cutter Ingham, the WW2 submarine USS Clamagore, the famous destroyer USS Laffey (known in WW2 circles as The Ship That Would Not Die after fending off several kamikaze attacks), and The Fighting Lady, the carrier USS Yorktown. Sadly, Yorktown sits in 26 feet of mud and has as much as 18 feet of water in her lower spaces, and Laffey is disintegrating at her berth.

Above: Patriot's Point Naval & Maritime Museum. Go visit.


I suppose, in lieu of someone taking the Sea Shadow and her floating Bat Cave off the Navy’s hands, there’s always a free listing on Craig’s List, and if they put them up on eBay they can at least turn a buck. That’d open up allllll sorts of cans of worms, no?

The Taliban needs a navy…wouldn’t they just love a stealth ship? They can call it the Glorious Jihad, or Allah’s Fist, or Mohammed’s Martyrboat. The winning bid on eBay was Al Kayda of London, UK…they'd pack that sucker chock fulla fertilizer and jet fuel and sail it right up the frikkin' Potomac.

Or some idle rich redneck here in South Carolina who won the Powerball can buy them. The barge looks like a rusty-assed overgrown trailer anyways, and with that black paint job, Sea Shadow makes a perfect floating tribute to the dear departed Saint Dale the Intimidator. Y’know, if you close one eye and drink a few Buds, she does sorta resemble the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia…



Stealth Redneck Houseboat? Maybe....

Absolut AWOL

WARNING: THIS POST IS LONG!

Culled from AOL News and AP stuff:

SAVANNAH, Ga. (Feb. 10) -- Sporting a dragon tattoo on his forearm and skulls on both biceps, Cliff Cornell looks tough. But he dissolves into tears as he reflects on his return to the Army four years after he fled to Canada to avoid the war in Iraq.

"I'm nervous, scared," Cornell said, wiping puffy eyes beneath his sunglasses Monday at a Savannah hotel after a three-day bus ride from Seattle. "I'm just not a fighter. I know it sounds funny, but I have a really soft heart."

Cornell, 29, of Mountain Home, Ark., turned himself in to military police Tuesday afternoon at nearby Fort Stewart, where he'll likely face criminal charges for abandoning his unit before it deployed to Iraq in January 2005.

He said he fled because he doesn't think the war has improved the lives of Iraqis, and he couldn't stomach the thought of killing.

"During my training, I was ordered that, if anyone came within so many feet of my vehicle, I was to shoot to kill," said Cornell, who enlisted in 2002 but never deployed to war. "I didn't join the military to kill innocents."

He had joined the Army with the promise from the military recruiter that he would receive $9,000 sign up bonus and job training. He found out that “Ninety per cent of what the recruiters tell you is a pack of lies,” he said. “They know you’re from a poor family. Army recruitment techniques amount to entrapment, targeting young men from poor families”, said Cornell.

“Well, that was part of my agreement I had with my recruiter. I told him what I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to go to war, and he more or less guaranteed I would never be shipped to war, “Cornell said.

The Army artillery specialist made it to Canada in 2005 and soon started a new life working at a grocery store on Gabriola Island in British Columbia.

Cornell's attorney, James Branum of Lawton, Okla., said Cornell was assigned to a unit after meeting with military police, but it was still unclear if the Army would hold him in pretrial confinement. "He was visibly shaking when they came to pick him up," Branum said.

Cornell's exile ended last week when he crossed the U.S.-Canada border into Washington state. He left voluntarily to avoid deportation.

The first U.S. service member forced out of Canada after the government denied him protective status as a war objector was 25-year-old Army Pvt. Robin Long of Boise, Idaho. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison last August after pleading guilty to desertion charges at Fort Carson, Colo.

Michelle Robidoux, spokeswoman for the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign, said the group has worked with about 50 U.S. service members seeking refugee status or political asylum in Canada. The group estimates more than 200 have fled to Canada, most of them hiding out illegally.

"There are probably another three or four who are imminently under threat of deportation, and we're trying hard to fight that," Robidoux said.

The lower house of Canada's Parliament passed a nonbinding motion in June urging that U.S. military deserters be allowed to stay in Canada, but the Conservative Party government has ignored the vote.

During the Vietnam War, thousands of Americans took refuge in Canada, most of them to avoid the military draft. Many were given permanent residence status that led to Canadian citizenship, but the majority went home after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty in the late 1970s.

The Army has listed Cornell as a deserter since a month after he left, but he hasn't been charged with any crimes, said Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson.

Larson said Cornell was being given a billet and a new uniform and would begin drawing pay, at least until commanders decide whether to charge him. Their options include dropping the case, seeking administrative punishment or pursuing a court-martial. "We're going to treat him courteously and professionally, like any other soldier," Larson said.
The unit Cornell was assigned to when he fled — the 1st Battalion, 39th Field Artillery Regiment, Third Infantry Division — disbanded in March 2006.

Larson disputed Cornell's contention that he would have been expected to kill civilians. "Indiscriminately shooting people is not what the Army does. That's not how we train and not how we fight."

Branum said he expects Cornell to be charged with being absent without leave, punishable by up to 18 months in prison, or desertion — a more serious charge with a maximum prison sentence of five years.

He said he hopes the Army shows some leniency since Cornell avoided the war because of his political convictions.

"This is different from someone leaving for selfish reasons," Branum said. "This is someone who said, 'I'm not going to kill civilians.'"


Holy crap. Where do I even begin?
Part of me feels sorry for this guy. I’m not a complete monster. I understand not agreeing with what you feel is/was an unjust war and not wanting to kill innocent civilians. No one in their right mind wants to kill innocents, and no soldier particularly enjoys killing. Those that do should get help. Quickly.

However…I am not about to believe the hype. I take umbrage with a bunch of what Cornell is saying, and the tripe that is being tossed about by several blogs and websites that are part of the Liberal Ass-Circus (www.tomjoad.org/warheroes4.htm, www.wmtc.blogspot.com, www.couragetoresist.org, to name a few) that are pandering to his story like he’s the next Jesus Christ, crucified for defying Rome.

I was a soldier, and specifically I was a Military Policeman during the end of the Cold War and during the first Gulf War, and one of those above-listed sites had the audacity to claim that MP’s were torturing people in Iraq. I find that so hard to believe that I view your accusations with incrudulity bordering on vehement contempt. That ain’t what we do, pal. Wanna read how I feel about Abu Ghraib? Go here: http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2007/11/who-pulled-strings-at-abu-ghraib.html

Back to Cornell. Dude, recruiters are salesmen, and you bought what they were selling. No one forced you to sign up at gunpoint. No one forced me to sign up either. There’s not a draft going on, like during Vietnam when no one had a choice. You went willingly, pal, and you pocketed that nine grand along the way. No one gave me nine grand to join up. According to what I read, you’re an artillery specialist, right? Dude, did you think that gun-bunnies and cannon-cockers never deployed and sat in the rear with the gear? It’s a branch of Combat Arms. Their nickname is "The King of Battle". Those big ole’ shells that go boom from the pointy end of the big gun? They kill people. Did you not learn that at Fort Sill? I’m pretty damned sure you knew what you signed up for, homeskillet.

Nowhere in any of the training I received did anyone tell me to kill anyone who got too close to my vehicle. In fact we were constrained by so many layers of mung and crap under the Rules of Engagement that those people would have pretty much climbed inside the vehicles with us before we were given permission to fire.

You claim the recruiters hit up poor people? Again, I take umbrage. I came from an upper middle-class home, and my stepfather was, at the time, an officer in the Navy. We were hardly poor. Looking at the classmates of mine who enlisted around the same time as me (at least 10 of us enlisted within a year of graduation from our class of about 80 in a small Maine high school ) none of us were poor. In fact, pretty much everyone I served with came from middle-class backgrounds. None of us came from dirt farms, washing in streams and eating sawdust, as implied. If you look at the latest recruiting statistics, you’ll find that the vast bulk of today’s recruits are well-educated and predominantly upper-middle-class kids. The military is no longer the option of last resort for miscreants and delinquents. Those days were long over by the time I enlisted in July of 1987.

Finally, I’m really not so sure that we need to be locking these guys up. Sure, they were following their conscience, but they were in the wrong to just cut and run. Instead of spending taxpayer money to house/feed/clothe these prisoners for a year or so, just cut them loose with an Other Than Honorable Discharge, or even a Bad Conduct Discharge. The Army will be rid of them, and they’ll still have a “big chicken dinner” on their permanent record, as well as forfeiting their college money and bonus pay. I deserted during wartime and all I got was a big chicken dinner and this lousy t-shirt......yeah, that works.

Vote for my buddy Wil's blog, okay?

Hey, faithful readers. Do me a favor, would you? Go to this here link and vote for my friend Wil Whalen's blog as Best Blog in Portland, Maine.

http://thephoenix.com/theBest/Portland/Vote/

Wil is the guy who got me started on BlogSpot. Prior to going global I was just putting my blogs up on my MySpace page, and maybe 5 or 6 people would read them. Now I'm reaching a global audience and I get almost a thousand hits a week. Sometimes people even leave me comments (ha!)

Seriously though, Wil is a very talented guy, as both a writer and photographer. He's won Best Blog in Portland once before, and this is his third nomination. Feel free to peruse his works here:

http://www.wherethereswil.blogspot.com

You don't have to live in Portland, or even Maine, to vote. Show my friend some love, guys! Support a fellow blogger, support a fellow Army veteran, and support a really decent human being. Thanks!

Don't be so protectionist, or we'll send more lead-painted toys...

I heard a random news blurb during the past few days about how China was bitching about the verbage in the recently-passed Succubus Package, complaining that it was “protectionist” for its “buy American” vibes.

To whit, I have a reply for our corporate owners across the Pacific: go piss up a rope. Yeah, you. I’ve got a package you can stimulate, Chairman Hu and Company.

How much more of our economy do you want to monopolize? Are you just not satisfied with exporting $321.5 BILLION in goods to us last year, while importing just over $65 billion from us? (That’s a $256 billion dollar trade deficit, guys.) How many more lead-painted toys and melamine-tainted cases of baby formula and pet food do we need to buy before you’re happy? Is it not enough that the three most common words in the English language are “MADE IN CHINA”? (Followed closely by High-Fructose Corn Syrup)

A few years ago I worked in the steel building industry. I sold pre-engineered steel buildings to general contractors around the country. Long about 2004 it became nigh on impossible to sell a building because the cost of steel went through the roof due to a huge demand for steel in China for infrastructure projects like the Three Gorges Dam project. (It was also in part due to the greedy policies of my employer, but I digress). The price of buildings quickly doubled. China was snatching up steel from all over the world, Australia to America.

Now we have steel plants idle in this country far & wide. Here in South Carolina, just up the road in Georgetown, there’s a pile of unemployed steel workers and a closed plant. And what do I see behind me at work every day now?

For the next year or so, there’s gonna be ship after ship docking in Charleston unloading hundreds of thousands of tons of steel beams and pipe from a plant in Shanghai being used to construct two facilities in NC and Virginia. American steelworkers are out of work and we’re importing Chinese steel. Granted, there’s work in it for the port longshoremen and for the army of truckers who are transporting the steel to the construction sites, but the longshoremen could have been making the same huge union wages unloading the other 20 or so vessels a month that dock here from Chinese companies (in addition to the other ships from around the world. Go to www.scspa.com to see the vessel reports. It’s public info.) The truckers could still have been hauling the steel from American mills instead.

And remember, just because you buy American doesn’t mean it’s actually American made. Nike is based in Beaverton, Oregon. Those Nike sneakers in the corner are made in Indonesia. Wrangler Jeans? Their parent company, VFC (also parent to Nautica, Lee, and JanSport) is in Greensboro, NC, but the jeans are made in Mexico. The Hanes skivvies I have on right now, with that great comfort-soft tagless waistband? Hanes is in Winston-Salem, NC and my drawers are made in India, as if there are no cotton plants in the American south. The Fruit of the Loom t-shirt? Made in Honduras despite the company being in Bowling Green, Kentucky. My Dell laptop came from Malaysia, and Dell is based in California.

Ahhhh, the miracle of the global economy. Buying American doesn’t mean buying American, and buying Chinese doesn’t mean we’ll live to buy Chinese tomorrow. Meanwhile, I get to look out my back window at work and see that famous red flag with yellow stars on it for the next year or so waving in the sunny South Carolina breeze



Chinese cargo ships Lu Xun and Li Bai (both named after Chinese poets) unloading Shanghai-made steel in Charleston. Note the communist flags in the breeze.

Depeche Mode premieres new single on German TV

My favorite band of all time, Depeche Mode, premiered their new single, called "Wrong", on German TV tonight at the 2009 ECHO Awards. Scheduled for worldwide release in a couple weeks, the track is the first single off the upcoming album "Sounds of the Universe".

The Mode are still making kick-ass music 28 years after releasing their debut single in 1981. They pioneered electronic music, and dozens of bands owe their very existence, let alone their sounds, to Depeche Mode. The band looks to be returning to a more elctronic sound on the new album, and to me "Wrong" has a very classic late-80's/early-90's DM feel to it.

How much do I like Depeche Mode? Enough to have three of their images tatooed on my right arm...

Once an attention 'ho, always...

Well, once again attention-whore Al Sharpton is screaming the Race Card crap that he’s famous for. This time he’s bringing all kinds of reinforcements crying Racism, jumping to the conclusion that a political cartoon in Wednesday’s New York Post referencing police shooting Travis The Insane Chimp and the Obama Succubus Package in the same breath means that a white man is calling a half white man a monkey.

"How could the Post let this cartoon pass as satire?" said Barbara Ciara, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. "To compare the nation's first African-American commander in chief to a dead chimpanzee is nothing short of racist drivel."

State Sen. Eric Adams called it a "throwback to the days" when black men were lynched.

Sharpton called the cartoon "troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys." He added: "Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama ... and has become synonymous with him, it is not a reach to wonder: are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?... The Post should at best clarify what point they were trying to make, or in fact reprimand their cartoonist."

Go back under your rock Sharpton, and take your asshole friends with you. You’ve had zero credibility ever since the Tawana Bradley episode and you’ve been milking the tit of racism for 20 years to stay in the spotlight. You liberal flakes spent 8 years calling George Bush everything from a war-mongering baby-killer to an outright retard and then you look for any and every reason to cry racism if anyone dares disagree with your Chosen One.

1. Obama didn’t write the Succubus Package. You know it and I know it. Nasty Pelosi and Dirty Harry Reid wrote it.
2. With the monkey dead, the caption refers to the old maxim of a hundred monkeys banging away on a hundred typewriters, they’d eventually come up with the works of Shakespeare, or more appropriately: The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. So the cartoon pokes fun at the ponderous 11,000 page stimulus that would have one less author, were there to be a sequel. Which I'm sure there will be.
3. I have something in common with President Obama that you don’t, Al. We both have white mothers.Everyone loves to say that President Obama is black while forgetting he's half white.

Granted, I'm a white guy of European ancestry, and I can't exactly say I know what it's like to grow up as a black man in America. I did grow up the only white kid on the block though, and believe me when I say that I've seen my own share of descrimination directed towards myself in my nearly 40 years, whether it be anti-white or even anti-American.

But quit looking for racism that isn’t there. The man won the election fair and square, by a big margin, so quit playing some bullshit conspiracy theory. And as you all read this, save your accusations of racism against me. Yes, I think it’s great that America elected a man with African heritage. As a kid, I really did figure I’d see it in my lifetime, and I was right. But quit emphasizing the African, and instead focus on the American. He’s an American first, regardless of ancestry, just as I’m an American, who happens to have European ancestry. Things work a lot better when we worry less about what makes us different instead of seeing what makes us the same.

Serious Monkey Business

So, unless you’ve been living under a frikkin’ rock this week, you’ve heard the truly messed up story of the poor woman who was mauled by her friend’s pet chimpanzee and how the crazed beast was shot dead by police after a frantic 911 call.

While it is horrifying that the animal went berserk and pretty much ate the hands and face off of 55-year old Charla Nash, I really gotta say that someone should have smacked owner Sandra Herold with a frozen codfish a long time ago for keeping a wild animal as a pet.

Look, I could really give a shit less that she raised 15-year old Travis the Chimp from infancy. Despite sharing 98% of our DNA, a chimp is not a child. That remaining 2% of the DNA is the part that swings from trees, throws its own shit at passers-by, and chronically masturbates all day. When humans do that, we lock them away in asylums. When apes do it, we think it’s cute. At least until they snap and eat our friends.

A veteran of TV commercials, Travis was the constant companion of a lonely suburban Connecticut widow who fed him steak, lobster and ice cream. He could eat at the table, drink wine from a stemmed glass, use the toilet, and dress and bathe himself.
He brushed his teeth with a Water Pik, logged on to a computer to look at photos and channel-surfed television with the remote control.

Y’know, chimps in the wild don’t get to do things like this. They wake up, eat a ‘nanner, spank the human (only humans spank the monkey), swing from a tree, and throw crap at each other…then repeat as necessary. Perhaps the poor boy’s instincts were just getting a tad mis-wired from being treated like a pet and not like a wild animal.

Siberian tigers don’t normally dance or jump through hoops of fire, either. Just ask Siegfried & Roy. Of course, after Montecore the Tiger ate half of Roy’s head onstage, all Roy could say was “Don’t shoot the cat.”. Yeah, Kitty was just doing what kitties do, especially when the kitty is a 400-pound TIGER. Suuure, the nice kitty was trying to protect you, Roy....

There’s conflicting reports as to whether Travis was on Xanax, too. Great, a chimp with anxiety problems, all drugged up on Xanax, and also allegedly suffering from Lyme Disease.

Maybe he needed a piece of tail. Maybe he’d been surfing Internet porn when no one was looking. Maybe he caught that marathon of the Planet of the Apes flicks on cable and decided that the Revolution would be televized. He saw Charlton Heston ranting about damned dirty apes, and he just went off.

Or… maybe he was a wild freakin’ animal and shouldn’t have been wearing Pampers, sitting in a freakin’ Barcalounger with a cold can of Coke, watching the Jerry Springer show?

You want a pet? Get a dog. But don’t get a hybrid wolf mix. You want a fish? Don’t get a pirhana. A bird? Fine, but let’s not get an ostrich. Get a kitty, but not a tiger or lion or liger or saber-toothed velocikitty. Everything looks cute till it tries to EAT YOU.


See what I mean?

Air Farce One?

A week or so ago, President Obama took his first trip in Air Force One. It was a short trip, just down to Williamsburg, Virginia. The trip took a whopping 37 minutes. The wheels barely had time to go up before they came back down.

Previously, the President had flown the same aircraft from Chicago to Washington for the inauguration but remember, it’s only Air Force One (or Marine One for the helicopter) if the President is on board.

Over the weekend he took AF-1 to Chicago, to take the missus out for Valentine’s Day, and back again. Today he took it to Denver for the ever-so-dramatic signing of The Succubus Package.

Sure, I know that the plane is one of the perks for being the President. So is the million-pound gas hog armored limo. So is the helicopter that gets him to the plane.

However……

That plane costs about $57,000.00 an hour to operate, according to a 2004 study.

When Nancy Pelosi took command of the House as Speaker, she demanded that she be given a 767 to be at her immediate beck & call rather than a Gulfstream or Lear. She demanded a plane that didn’t have to stop and refuel on the way to dragging her back to San Francisco whenever she wants and she demanded something big enough to bring along her entourage of serfs, retainers, vassals, straphangers, and lobbyists.

Remember, America, these are the same Democrats who crucified the guys from the Big Three automakers for flying corporate jets to DC from Detroit instead of carpooling.

Four Tools in one post!!!

The Tool Box gains some new members this week.


One hit the bong.

One hit Rihanna.

One hit the juice.

And one took a hit by lying to Congress about others hitting the juice.


One lost his deal with Kellog’s.

One lost his deal with Wrigley’s.

One is about to lose his deal with Nike.

And one lost any shred of credibility he had left.



Michael Phelps, uber-swimmer who won 8 gold medals at last summer’s Olympics, surfaced on the Net smoking up in a picture taken at a party up the road from me in Columbia, SC at the University of South Carolina, where we stress the HIGH in HIGHER LEARNING. The Richland County Sheriff’s Office went bugfuck over this, declaring a jihad on Phelps as a menace to society and fugitive from justice. Junior, we’re in hot pursuit! One of Phelps’ buddies, in a true dumb pothead maneuver, put the bong in question up on eBay for a hundred grand. The cops raided the house and arrested 8 people, and vow they will not stop until Phelps sits in the electric chair at Lieber Prison in Ridgeville or until Fox gives them a reality cop show, whichever comes first. What do you expect from a police department whose office is located, I shit you not, right next to a pastel purple strip club near the notorious Two-Notch area of Columbia?

Phelps was banned from competitive swimming for 3 months and lost his deal with Kellogg’s, maker of Wheaties. Dude, pot ain’t exactly a performance enhancer. He ain’t gonna swim faster. If anything, he’ll swim slower and eat himself silly. He’ll tread water and think he’s swimming a thousand miles an hour. And maybe Kellogg’s should make a new cereal for hungry potheads called WEEDIES. Put Phelps on the box with Bob Marley and that kid from the Dell commercials that lost his own deal after a pot bust.


Squeaky-clean nice kid Chris Brown lost his fucking mind and smacked the shit out of his girlfriend Rihanna. I’m sure he’ll claim self-defense, even though she’s like five feet tall and weighs 98 pounds. The entire nation of Barbados has declared jihad on Brown and he was promptly dropped by sponsor Wrigley’s gum, a company that continues however to sponsor a ball field in a city that’s so corrupt that it makes Hugo Chavez look like Moral Orel.

Alex Rodriguez broke under pressure and admitted he used steroids a few years ago. The Yankees really needed another distraction, didn’t they? The citizens of Boston rejoiced, Nike may drop him as a sponsor, his records are tarnished and tainted, and Madonna only called him back to get Jeter’s number.

And finally, Miguel Tejada admitted he lied to Congress about having knowledge of steroid use among his fellow players. Yet another marquee player loses his credibility and baseball is stained like a motel sheet in a Vegas whorehouse. He’s not an American citizen so I guess the worst that Congress can do to him is send him back to the Dominican Republic. Whooptie shit; in 2 weeks he’d have another fat contract with a team in Japan.

Darwin's birthday slid past uncelebrated

Charles Darwin is my homeboy...


I found this a couple days ago while trolling the news sites.

A new poll released just in time for Charles Darwin's 200th birthday found that only 39 percent of Americans say they "believe in the theory of evolution," and just 24 percent of those who attend church weekly believe in that explanation for the development of life on Earth.

The Gallup survey, released Wednesday, found a quarter of those polled do not believe in evolution, and 36 percent said they don't have an opinion either way.

The Gallup poll of 1,018 American adults found strong ties between education level and belief in the theory of evolution.

"Among those with high-school educations or less who have an opinion on Darwin's theory, more say they do not believe in evolution than say they believe in it," Gallup found. "For all other groups, and in particular those who have at least a college degree, belief is significantly higher than nonbelief."

Just 21 percent of respondents who had up to a high school level of education believe in evolution, compared with 74 percent of those with postgraduate degrees.

So, it’s safe to say, the more educated you are, the more you believe Darwin?

Believe what you want, but I’m pretty damned convinced that evolution happens. Things grow & evolve.

Case in point: the dead bird in front of my office.

One Friday morning I came in to work and found a dead bird in the parking lot. It was a woodcock, and it looked like it had just fallen out of the sky and landed with a flop, with no visible signs of trauma. I left it there for the local turkey vulture, since buzzards gotta eat too. Over the ensuing weekend, the ants and the buzzard made short work of he remains, and I actually forgot about it until a week or two later when I found the skull bleached in the sun. All I could think about was how much it looked like the skull of a dinosaur, most notably a pterosaur.


Lots of scientific study has shown just how birdlike the later dinosaurs were. It’s pretty much accepted in the paleontological community that today’s birds evolved from dinosaurs. A light film of down first kept them warm, and light hollow bones allowed them to later fly with actual feathers. The so-called “terror birds” were the T-rex of the post-dino prehistoric days. They more or less became today’s ostriches.


Look at an ostrich skeleton. Now add a tail. Dude, that’s a dino…like a Gallimimus or Struthiomimus. A leggy, running dino that became a leggy running bird.


Why do whales have vestigial hip bones from where their rear legs used to be? Whale front flippers have fingers in them too. I’m sure you already knew that, right? Whales started off as something that was like a primitive cow or elephant, and started swimming, and went from there. If we didn’t derive from some monkey offshoot, why do chimps have 98% of our DNA?



Look, I’m not saying that there wasn’t some form of Creation. But please don’t deny that things evolve based on environment and natural selection, either.

OctoMoron loses her PR firm and gains an agent

This'll probably be my last thread about Nadya Suleman, unless she does something new & stupid.

It seems though that the public relations firm that has represented Suleman is stepping down because of death threats, according to its president.

Joann Killeen also said OctoFruit now has an agent: Wes Yoder, the same man who arranged book and music deals for the McCaughey septuplets a decade ago and publicity for controversial pastor Rick Warren.

The Killeen Furtney Group was ending its free representation after receiving at least 100 graphic e-mailed threats and swarms of nasty voicemails that went to the Los Angeles agency, Killeen said.

Meanwhile, Killeen said Suleman told her that she had reached an exclusive representation deal with Yoder.

His Ambassador Agency, Inc., bills itself as the oldest Christian-based talent agency in the United States.

At this point, I'm done with her. She's a fruitcake, nutty as a squirrel turd, and us taxpayers are footing the bill for her lunacy.

Do Illegal Aliens Count Towards the Stimulus?

dot-dot-dot.....dash-dash-dash.......dot-dot-dot

In accordance with the Flag Code, Title 36, U.S.C., Chapter 10, as amended by P.L. 344, 94th Congress, Approved July 7, 1976:

The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of America……

We used to be called simply the United States of America. Not “The Republic of…”, not the “People’s Republic of…”, not the “Socialist Republic of…” or “Democratic Republic of…”, because the last time I checked any country name starting with “People’s” was never even remotely ruled by the people, a nation starting with “Democratic” was anything but democratic, and in general, “Republic” meant “socialist”. (Think People’s Republic of China, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Korea…)

Riddle me this, would you? When did American citizens start to lose all their constitutional rights in favor of granting rights and privileges instead to terrorists and illegal aliens? We have all these wingnut asstards trying to bestow all of the same legal rights and protections that I as a taxpaying United States citizen am guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States to Gitmo terrorists who, up until their capture, had been doing their level best to kill all 300 million of us?

Dude, apart from the confinement, those guys are living better in Gitmo than they were in their mountain caves or desert tents. They’re warm, dry, fed, receiving medical care, and they all got new prayer rugs and Korans upon arrival. That beats freezing your ass off in an Afghani cave heated by burning camel shit, picking lice out of your beard as you plan your next car bomb attack. It also beats sand fleas and camel spiders and scorpions in 140-degree heat building those car bombs with sandy grit in your eyes and your teeth and your hair.

Of course, we’ve already been invaded from the south by the millions, and the same wingnut asstards want all the illegal aliens (oh, wait, I’m sorry…undocumented immigrants) to have rights and privileges and free tuition and welfare and free health care and free legal representation and even amnesty as a reward for sneaking into my country without permission.

Ladies and gentleman, I submit for you the story of our continued downward spiral…

An Arizona man who has been waging a 10-year campaign to attempt to stop a flood of illegals from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals, who are seeking $32 million in damages, mind you, accusing him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the Mexico border.

The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash gully on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.

Attorneys for the immigrants (five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States) have accused Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape. Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch, near the Arizona border town of Douglas, is well-known by federal and county law enforcement officials as "the avenue of choice" for those seeking to enter the United States illegally, according to reports.

Trial continues this week in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, where the Barnett family live. Mind you, these people are not American citizens, but rather invaders sneaking across our borders, yet they seemingly have civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution. And note that they want 32 million DOLLARS, not pesos....chances are that the Mexies get about 5 grand and the rest goes to the scumbag lawyers...

The immigrants are represented at trial by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which also charged that Sheriff Dever did nothing to prevent Mr. Barnett from holding their clients at "gunpoint, yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women." At least 12 of the plaintiffs are listed as “anonymous”. This makes it even more outrageous since the plaintiffs’ attorneys are purposefully hiding their identities.

In the lawsuit, MALDEF said Mr. Barnett approached the group as the immigrants moved through his property, and that he was carrying a pistol and threatening them in English and Spanish. At one point, it said, Mr. Barnett's dog barked at several of the women and he yelled at them in Spanish, "My dog is hungry, and he's hungry for buttocks."

Good for him. They’re lucky he didn’t just shoot their asses and leave them for the coyotes and buzzards.

Roger Barnett: A true American patriot

The lawsuit said he then called his wife and two Border Patrol agents arrived at the site. It also said Mr. Barnett acknowledged that he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.

In March, U.S. District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett's attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Holy shit. The Voice of Reason. Thank you, Mister Hardy.

Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up his water pumps, killed his calves, destroyed his fences and gates, stole his trucks and broke into his home.

Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.

This man is protecting his personal private property, livestock, and home. Furthermore, he is assisting the government in curbing the tide of invasion. And yet, he’s being treated as a criminal. WTF?

Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch’s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers, and aluminum foil - which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers, known as coyotes, give their "clients" to keep them running.

Welcome to America. Please feel free to trash the place.

He said he carried a pistol during his searches for the immigrants and had a rifle in his truck "for protection" against immigrant and drug smugglers, who often are armed. Besides, the Arizona countryside is a haven for venomous snakes and Gila monsters. I’d go out armed too. Hell, if I go traipsing about the woods here in South Carolina I have my own pistol with me for snakes.

A former Cochise County sheriff’s deputy who later was successful in the towing and propane business, Mr. Barnett spent $30,000 on electronic sensors, which he has hidden along established trails on his ranch. He searches the ranch for illegal immigrants in a pickup truck, dressed in a green shirt and camouflage hat, with his handgun and rifle, high-powered binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

His sprawling ranch became an illegal-immigration highway when the Border Patrol diverted its attention to several border towns in an effort to take control of the established ports of entry. That effort moved the illegal immigrants to the remote areas of the border, including the Cross Rail Ranch.

"This is my land. I’m the victim here," Mr. Barnett said. "When someone’s home and loved ones are in jeopardy and the government seemingly can’t do anything about it, I feel justified in taking matters into my own hands. And I always watch my back."

Good for you, Roger. Maybe if our representative government would get off its collective dead ass and finish that border fence, you might have fewer problems. These illegals oughtta be happy that we’re so lax and lenient, because some countries out there shoot to kill when people attempt to infiltrate their country’s borders. Some countries have minefields along their borders. Perhaps we should spend some of this bloated stimulus package money on securing our borders? That’s jobs to manufacture the fences and jobs to put the fences up, right? Unless Homeland Security (now headed by former Arizona governor Janet Napolitano coincidentally) half-asses it and contracts the work to some company full of illegals working under the table, of course.

Here’s an idea for those out there planning to enter my country illegally: don’t. Ask us for permission, come in legally, learn English, get a job, pay taxes, and then enjoy our freedoms and lifestyle. When the time comes, become a citizen and vote. Don’t sneak in, work illegally, refuse to speak the language, sponge off us taxpayers, and then wire all your money back home where you came from.

Speaking of which, why even bother coming here illegall? Hell, there’s no jobs for you anymore. We’re hemorrhaging jobs by the tens of thousands. We don’t have any jobs for our own citizens, let alone you. Tell you what…go south instead. Sneak into Panama. Instead of digging ditches here, go dig another Panama Canal. That’d stimulate the world economy for sure. Plus…you already speak the language! Or go to Venezuela. They have a thriving oil-based economy, and you already speak the language.(Just don't mind the dictator) Try Bolivia or Colombia. They have thriving cocaine-based economies. If you go pick dope, we can stimulate our own economy by funneling more money to the supposed War on Drugs…jobs for cops, jobs for people to make helicopters and boats to use against the smugglers…or you could just pick coffee. Juan Valdez needs help, I hear. Plus, you already speak the language.

I’m not anti-immigration. I am the PRODUCT of immigration. My father’s dad was conceived in Poland and born here, and he married a woman from Wales during WW2 and brought her home. My mother came here in 1960 with her family. I helped her study for her own citizenship test in 1993. I’m all in favor of legal immigration.

But I also took an oath in July of 1987 to defend this nation and the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, when I enlisted, and I don’t recall anyone telling me that I was absolved of that responsibility or released from that oath. We’re being invaded, guys. Defend your rights and defend your country.


Wanna contact the judge? Have at it, chummy!
Roll, John M.
520-205-4520
United States District Court
Evo A. DeConcini U.S. Courthouse
405 West Congress Street, Suite 5190
Tucson, AZ 85701-5053
Clerk's Office
520-205-4235


It ain't much but it's a start. Minefield optional, provided we leave openings for migrating 3-toed dust frogs, or some other such shit. Can't piss off PETA now, can we?