Sorry guys...

Hey there. Sorry that I haven't been posting as often as either of us would like.

Personally, I'd like to post at least three times a week. A couple of you post three times a day, and I would dearly love to be able to write at that rate, but I can sometimes barely find the time to do what I do as is.

Work is exceptionally hectic right now, and I spend 2.5 to 3 hours a day in the car just getting there and back. I barely get 3 hours of personal/family time afterwards before I crash, so I just don't get to squeeze in enough writing. Thankfully I have a pretty patient wife who understands (mostly) how much I love doing this.

Y'know...I never talk about my Day Job and what it is that I do for a living. Any of you interested in knowing what it is that I do all day instead of writing? Let me know.

Gatesgate and beers with my homie (From Guest Blogger Jim)

Note from MojoSteve: Guest Blogger Jim has over 21 years experience in law enforcement


I actually wrote this a couple of days ago and goofed up posting it and getting it to Steve. S’okay; works out better this way.

The internet, and now TV, brought news of the arrest of Henry Gates Jr., in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for disorderly conduct after police responded to a 911 call advising of a burglary in progress. There are some facts and truths surrounding this incident, and here is my take.

Gates, a professor of African and African-American studies at Harvard, returned home and was unable to gain access to his residence by the front door, even with the assistance of his driver. A citizen saw this and placed a 911 call. Prior to police arrival, Gates unlocked a rear door, disabled an alarm and then, curiously, forced the front door anyway. Upon arrival, officers discovered the damaged door and, according to close friend Lawrence Bobo and police reports, a pissed-off Gates.

Gates refused to initially ID himself, and taking umbrage to the officer asking him to step out to speak with him, showed ID and asked," Is this because I’m a black man in America?” Gates then called the officer a racist and offered to speak to the officers mama(!) outside. Gates ended up being arrested for disorderly conduct although those charges were later dropped.

In reading the Boston Globe’s reporting on this, I noted that Gates was defended by Lawrence Bobo, a sociologist from Harvard, and S. Allen Counter, a neuroscientist, also from Harvard. Bobo bailed Gates out on the disorderly charge and drove him home, offering insight to the incident prior to Gates hitting the talk show circuit. Bobo stated that Gates asked pointed questions of the officer, like; "Is this because you're a white cop and I’m a black man in America?". He said that Gates was angry, and opined that the situation didn't end as he felt it should, when Gates presented ID, (we have no way at this time of knowing if the ID shows the residence in question to be on Gates’ ID), and felt it continued because," the officer (felt he) had not been deferred to sufficiently."

Counter, who has an axe to grind with police over a 2004 traffic stop, (not arrest or cuff-and-release), stated to the Globe that he had spoken to Gates and they feel that the incident would not have occurred if the professor in question had been white. Notice a trend or pattern emerging here?

Gates later stated that if the officer apologized sincerely and admitted his error he would forgive him and, as a bonus, educate him about the history of racism and racial profiling. NO SHIT. That is what Gates does for a living. Gates, during the exchange, also told the officer that this would not be the last he heard for him and that he did not know who he was messing with.(The old "Do you know who I am?" routine)

I'll say. On Wednesday, Mr. Obama stated on national TV that Gates is a friend and thinks that, “The Cambridge police acted stupidly." He made that remark after saying he did not have all the facts. He also stated that racial profiling is a problem in America, as it causes blacks and Latinos to be stopped, (more often than whites).

For his part, the officer involved stated that there would be no apology.

Good job, as it deprives them of a real live evil white racist cop to parade in front of the media. Gates continues to sling the shit, saying he now has a prison record, and that the cop is a rogue, disturbed, and has a broad imagination. Gates further stated that he could not have yelled at the cops as he was/is suffering from a bronchial infection. Guess that was before the pic made its debut in the Globe, showing Gates with mouth agape, and a cop off to the side giving the universal "keep it down" hand signal. The Lincoln of our Times™ went on to state on Thursday that he really wasn't calling the cops stupid, even if that's how it looked Wednesday night.

Still with me? Here’s where the truths kick in. This cop did nothing wrong, as apparently Massachusetts law allows for arrest in just such an incident. Oh yeah, the officer in question is a hand-picked trainer for (how not to do) racial profiling. The guy who hand-picked him is a black police commissioner.

This guy, Gates, has been waiting his whole life for just such an opportunity. Guys like him and his defenders appear to walk around with a chip on their shoulder, praying for the day a white nudges it off, or even walks by fast enough to stir a breeze and make it fall. Gates teaches about racial profiling. Counter can't move on about a contact 5 years ago. Bobo thinks the cop arrested Gates because he didn't defer to him sufficiently. And as a community organizer, Obama cried foul whenever whites got jobs or loans or drew breath from what I can tell. As a senator in Illinois, he sponsored legislation in regards to racial profiling. Let’s not forget Mr. Obama’s connection to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of “U.S. of K.K.K.-A.” fame.

Guys, I hate to tell you, but you got to give this up if you really expect the rest of America to move on. You can't scream racism every time something does not go your way, and expect that no one will feel or act out with resentment. Grow up. You’re showing your own bias, and in danger of falling on your own sword.


---------------------Additional input from The Lightning Man------------------------

Well, now that the dust has cleared a bit (not necessarily even settled), we have Obama getting blasted from all sides for sticking his dick into the blender, so to speak. He really should have kept out of it because now we’ll have every grievance for alleged profiling brought to the White House. This was a civil matter best handled quietly, by which I mean that if the President was to have been involved at all (and I sure as hell don’t think he should have) then a quiet phone call should have been enough.

Instead, we now have the President of the United States getting involved in something only slightly above the level of a Traffic Stop.

I think both guys escalated the situation, Gates more so than Sergeant Crowley. Gates makes his living, and a VERY substantial one, teaching about racial profiling and as Jim stated above has been waiting for this moment his whole life. His classrooms will be booked solid for the next 10 years. Talk shows, book deals…hell, in a week we’ll see his face on giant oversized 5XL tee shirts in airbrushed red/white/blue with “HERO” under it like these asstard Obama shirts. He’s a friend of Obama’s and of Oprah’s…

The cop asked you outside so he could A: ascertain your identity for his own safety, and B: clear you out of the house for your safety as well. The 911 call mentioned two people breaking in; if all we see is one guy, then where is the other? Let’s step outside so we can both be safe in case there’s two guys in your house, or in case you ain't who you say you are. As a former cop, trust me when I say that NO CALL IS ROUTINE, no matter how simple it first appears.

Sergeant Jim Crowley is a good cop by all accounts. You don’t get hand-picked to be your department’s go-to guy on how to prevent racial profiling unless you’re good at what you do. Personally, Jim and I both agreed on the phone yesterday that we both would have just radioed it in as “Homeowner’s being a belligerent ass and refuses to cooperate” and cleared the scene, leaving the homeowner to his fate had their been anyone inside his house. He should have just dropped it and left instead of escalating it, so yeah, I’ll hold him partially accountable, and NOT because I am a white former law-enforcement professional or that Jim is a white, current law-enforcement professional, but because we both think that the situation escalated on both ends.

So what does Obama do next? Invites the boys over for a beer. If Crowley declines, he gets bashed forever as a racist evil white cop and local Klan representative. He more or less is forced to accept, and some will say he’s being brought there to force him to apologize. So here you are, a hated & reviled white cop accused of racism by an upstanding member of the black community, a Harvard professor no less, and he calls up his buddy the PRESIDENT, who then calls you and “invites you over for a beer”. Yeah, this has escalated way too far. Of course, Obama just wants to get everyone off his back for his remarks, too.

First of all, you should have refused to comment. Then, you admitted you didn’t know the facts and STILL said they acted stupidly. This is what we get when Obama says what he thinks instead of reading it off a TelePrompter. Then instead of apologizing for making a bad situation worse, you simply say you should have recalibrated? WTF does that even mean? Dude, you’ve flown around the globe, tens of thousands of miles, to apologize to every tinpot dictator and oil-rich sheik that you could find, yet you can’t say “Ooops, my bad.”?

And, since no one else wants to say it, I’ll risk personal attacks and just address the other thing Obama said. He mentioned that blacks and Lah-tee-noze get targeted more than whites. Maybe that’s because they’re committing more crimes than whites?

There, I said it.

And now I’ll back it up with a 2007 report from the New Century Foundation in Oakton, Virginia titled “Race, Crime and Justice in America: The Color of Crime”, Second, Expanded Edition

Major Findings:
• Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.

Crime Rates:
• Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder,
and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
• When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely
than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.
• Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and
Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.
• The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of
the population that is black and Hispanic.

Interracial Crime:
• Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving
blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.
• Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Fortyfive
percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are
Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are
black.
• Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against
a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
• Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes
against whites than vice versa.

Gangs:
• Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.
• Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs.
Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.

And the US Department of Justice stated that in 2005, offender rates for homicide in the USA for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites.


And for once, Al Sharpton seems to be keeping his mouth shut. Go figure.

Maybe I wanted a beer too?

Told You So (from Debonair Dude)

This was written and posted by my fellow blogger and fellow Army vet, Debonair Dude. Please go check out The Debonair Dude's World at http://ourworldasweseeit.blogspot.com/


My Democrat friends were right.

As much as it pains me to say this, I have to admit it,

My Democrat friends were right.


They told me if I voted for McCain, the nation's hope would deteriorate, and sure enough there has been a 20-point drop in the Consumer Confidence Index since the election, reaching a lower point than any time during the Bush administration.

They told me if I voted for McCain, the US would become more deeply embroiled in the Middle East and now, tens of thousands of additional troops are scheduled to be deployed into Afghanistan.

My Democrat Party friends told me if I voted for McCain, that the economy would get worse and sure enough unemployment is approaching 8.8% and the new stimulus packages implemented recently have sent the stock market lower than at any time since the Islamic Terrorists attacks of 9-11.

They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "crooks" in high-ranking positions in Federal Government and sure enough, several recent cabinet nominees and Senate appointments revealed resumes of scandal, bribery,and tax fraud.

They told me if I voted for McCain, we would see more "Pork at the trough" in Federal government and sure enough, 17,500 "Pork Bills" showed up in Congress since January 2009....

I was also told by my Democrat friends that if I voted for McCain, we would see more deficit spending in Washington DC , and sure enough, Obama has spent more in just 30 days than all other Presidents together - in the entire history of the good ole USA ....

Well I voted for McCain in November and my Democrat friends were right... all of their predictions have come true!

Got any pliers?

We begin our adventure at 1915 Hours Eastern, 23 July 2009……

Okay…it’s T-minus 45 minutes and counting until once again my television viewing is interrupted and curtailed by an address from The Messiah, His Obamaness. This week’s interruption is so we can all be lied to about Health Care, or at least fed enough mushroom food (i.e. bullshit) to keep everyone appeased until it’s too late. It was slated to be a 9:00 PM address, but it was moved forward so that NBC can air its interview with Susan Boyle. Moving a healthcare reform speech from a jumped-up community organizer in favor of a frumpy Scottish woman who sang her way to stardom on “Britain’s Got Talent”…this country seriously has some ate-up priorities.

The basic crux of things (and admittedly I have done very little homework on this because it’d drive me batshit to read all the articles) is that we are looking very shortly at being forced into “free” government healthcare. That, my friends, is Bad Medicine.

Why? Well, the glaring question when it comes to Free Healthcare is of course: who the hell is gonna pay for it and how?

The answer is simple. You & me. The American Taxpayers. We’ll pay for it by getting jacked by the Feral Gummint™ into paying higher taxes. And then we’ll pay by receiving shitty healthcare.

What’s that, you say? This is America, Steve; how can we get shitty care from the greatest healthcare system of doctors and other medical professionals in the galaxy?

Because, friends, you get what you pay for. When you ain’t paying for it, you tend to get crap.

Wait…let me clarify. Generally, when you pay a bit more for quality, in general quality is what you get. And when you buy cheap shit at the Dollar Store, you’re getting some cheap trinket painted in lead-based Chinese paint that’ll break in a week.

In other countries where socialized medicine has been the norm for many moons, the quality of care kinda, well, sucks ass. And that’s what awaits us: Generalized Suck-Assedness. Why do you think that everyone who can afford to COMES HERE for treatments?

Wake the hell up and smell the Oxycontin, America. Why the hell do you never really hear about people packing their shit and leaving America for heart treatments overseas, or cancer treatments overseas, or brain surgery or reconstructive plastic surgery or to have 600-pound tumors removed or giant hemangeomas removed? That’s because we have the best here, and other places have Generalized Suck-Assedness.

Why do so many Canadians hop the border and pay for treatment here out of their own pockets rather than stay at home? Because Canadian facilities either suck, or you’re waiting weeks/months for a doctor visit. I have family in Toronto that have run down to Buffalo rather than wait. For many years the Fraser Institute in Canada has published a list of waiting times in the various Canadian provinces based on the care needed. In some cases the wait can last for months.

The problem with socialized government-controlled healthcare is that you have no real say-so in anything. Some governmental bureaucratic wonk will decide by committee whether or not you need an MRI or need to see a specialist or if you’re sick enough to have a surgery. Doctors will have a certain number of patients that they’ll be allowed to see on quota and after that, well, then “Screw the next patient because I can’t see any more no matter how sick they are”….


Over in Jolly Olde England, the headlines concerning the National Health Service (NHS) scare the shit out of me:

FROM LONDON'S DAILY MAIL, June 2008: “Twice Katie asked for a Pap smear test, but was told she was "too young" to need one. Now 24, she is dying from cervical cancer…”

FROM THE YORKSHIRE POST, March 2008: “A man with terminal cancer has been refused a drug by the NHS that could extend his life, despite offering to pay part of the cost himself. ... David Swain's offer to meet the monthly £2,000 cost of Erbitux was refused, he said, because the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence ruled it was too expensive.” (Well, that comes out to be $3294 a month; a bit steep admittedly, but the dude was gonna pay for it. However, they said "Go ahead and die)

FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON, March 2008: “Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care. ... Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7 million people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.”

Indeed, The Times of London ran a story in 2006 asserting: “Patients are being denied appointments with consultants in a systematic attempt to ration care and save the NHS money, The Times has learnt. . . . Leaked documents passed to The Times show that while ministers promise patients choice, a series of barriers are being erected limiting GPs’ [general practitioners] rights to refer people to consultants.”

FROM LONDON'S DAILY MAIL, July 2009: “Thousands of rheumatoid arthritis sufferers face a lifetime of agony because they are not being treated quickly enough, a report says. Guidelines state that patients should receive treatment within three months of the first symptoms appearing. But the average wait is nine months - and GP’s are not trained well enough to know what help to offer.”

Back in February of this year came the story of 42-year old Iraqi War vet Ian Boynton who asked more than two dozen dentists in East Yorkshire to take care of his teeth, which were causing him severe pain. But since he couldn't provide private insurance, he was turned down, he said. Instead, the former British Army medic removed a tooth with a pair of pliers in 2006, and eventually removed 13 of his own teeth inside of two years. The dude couldn’t find any local dentists who wanted to take on any new patients with the government health insurance and he had no other form of insurance, so he took matters into his own hands.

Ian Boynton and his Magical British Smile. Dude is 42 but looks 72. Gotta love free healthcare!


British dentistry has long been the butt of jokes. Here in the States, dentists generally recommend that you get at least a cleaning every six months, and a full exam in addition at least once a year. Most private insurance carriers, including mine, are cool with that. Over in Dear Olde Blighty, the NHS guidelines call for a checkup every two years and they find it almost absurd that a dentist would want to see you that often, calling it “exploitive”. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/1815032/Steve-needed-198-of-dental-work-so-why-was-he-charged-more.html)

They tried to make me brush with flouride but I said No No No...


Recently Dave Gahan, the singer for my favorite band, Depeche Mode, came down sick with gastroenteritis in Greece on tour and they had to cancel some shows. Dave is an English citizen living in L.A., but rather than go back to the UK for some free healthcare, he didn’t even stay in Europe. He flew back to his well-paid doctor in the U.S. of A., where in addition to the gastroenteritis his docs found and removed a malignant tumor in his bladder.

Look, in countries with socialized medicine, you’re waiting days to weeks to get an appointment, and weeks to months for treatments if you even get approved. And then you’ll get your illegal immigrants or transients who drain the system even farther.

Does that sound like your idea of a great health-care system? The British press — as well as the media in other countries with socialized medicine — regularly runs stories about patients who are denied treatment because they are too old or too young or too sick or just too costly. Do you want some government hack determining whether or not you get a referral to a specialist, or a second opnion, or an? expensive test? Or if you’re really sick enough to get your gall bladder out now or two months from now?

Granted, our health care system here isn’t perfect. Each week I watch 15% of my paycheck get swallowed by insurance premiums. I very very seldom use my insurance, but I gotta have it, just in case. It was quite handy when I had my vasectomy last year, a procedure that cost me only $70 out of pocket instead of a grand. But each year my premiums go up, oddly enough at the same rate as my annual pay raise. What the fuck is THAT all about? I never actually see my pay raise because the extra ducats just go to Blue Cross.

Try pricing out an ambulance ride. In looking around the web, I read where one patient was charged $6200 for a 110-mile ambulance trip. Another source said that the average trip was about $645. Hell, if you need a helicopter medevac flight, you’re looking at a good $50,000 or so. An aspirin that costs me $4 a bottle at WalMart for 24 pills costs you like $16 a pill in the hospital. My mother in law paid $13,000 for her gall bladder surgery a couple years back. Her husband is a self-employed trucker so without insurance, it was a major devastating expense. But they cut her a break; if she’d had insurance the carrier would have been billed over $15,000.

We’d be better served to reform the healthcare system as it exists today rather than gutting it putting us all on the Gubmint Tit™. Sure, The Messiah can say all he wants that we’ll all still be able to choose to have our own private insurance if our employers provide it, or we can use the government’s…but face the facts.


In today’s shitty economy, where everyone is cutting employees and cutting wages and cutting benefits, how many semi-scrupulous employers are gonna say “Hey, why should we offer up insurance when you can get it free off the government?”, and just up and eliminate the expense of offering insurance? Trust me, kids, it’s gonna happen.


Fast-forward to 2138 Hours Eastern on 24 July.

No, I did not watch the speech last night. Why watch bullshit when I could watch something better, like “Rescue Me” on FX?

However, my buddy Guest Blogger Chris offered up this recap when I asked him via text message what I missed:

“OK, in a nutshell: I am the best; healthcare is good; immigrants good, U.S. bad; we’re sorry; blah blah blah ad nauseum. Rinse, lather, repeat.”

*sigh* seems I didn’t miss shit last night.


The government can’t bugger it up too badly, can it? I mean, it’s gotta be just like running the DMV, right? That’s always a pleasurable experience. They do great with the postal service. I mean, they only raise the rates every three months or so. And folks is just lining up to get on Amtrak. My local train station in North Charleston looks like Beirut circa 1984.

Yeah. Can’t wait to have this big, open-faced turd sandwich stuffed down our throats. It’s coming. It’s inevitable, just like it’s a shoe-in that Her Wise Latinaness will ooze her Jabba the Hutt-looking ass onto the Supreme Court. They own the House. They own the Senate. They own the Oval Orifice. Soon they’ll own the Supreme Court.

And you know what we’ll own?

The fucking bill.


Someone should bring the Wise Latina Solo & the Wookie...

PaleoCon Command Center: Dhimmitude on the Down-Low:

PaleoCon Command Center: Dhimmitude on the Down-Low:

Ya'll gotta go read this posting from my friend Brooke. She's got the nail whacked right on the head.

Axl Carrot Top and the Evil Downloaders

Cripes…this is 2009, right? For a minute I thought I was sucked back into 1999 or 2000 in the Bad Old Days of Metallica threatening to sue anyone who had ever made, traded, shared, or even listened to an MP3 of one of their songs. Then Dr. Dre and Madonna jumped on board and began producing the names of thousands of Napster users and promising to crucify every single one of us to large wooden crosses and throw stones at us. If you used Napster, knew anyone who used Napster, or could spell Napster, you would soon burn in Hell.

And after awhile, they shut their sucks and moved on. Napster sold out, just like Metallica did. Madonna became a Jewish wizard and began gathering children for a new Noah’s Ark. Dre found a goofy white kid and made him an angry rap comedian.

And people still traded files.

And people still bought albums and went to concerts.


Fast-forward to last Monday when the past and the present clashed again as a blogger who admitted to leaking part of the Guns N' Roses album "Chinese Democracy" was sentenced to a year of probation.

U.S. District Magistrate Judge Paul L. Abrams also ordered blogger Kevin Cogill to serve two months of home confinement, subject his computers to government scrutiny and record a public service announcement for the Recording Industry Association of America.


What bullshit.

The far crueler route would have been to make Cogill listen to the album repeatedly.

Cogill pleaded guilty earlier this year to one misdemeanor count of copyright infringement for posting nine tracks from the long-awaited Guns 'N Roses album last year. In court Tuesday he said he didn't mean any harm by posting the tracks online, and apologized for his actions.

"I never intended to hurt the artist," Cogill told Abrams. "I intended to promote the artist because I'm a fan."

A federal prosecutor pushed for a short prison term to act as a deterrent to others.
"This is the type of case where I believe the court needs to send a strong message…Too many people think of posting copyrighted work online as a "victimless crime," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian. he said.

Cogill's attorney argued against a prison term, saying his client realized his wrongdoing and had suffered serious repercussions already.

"He did lose his job as a result of this case," defense attorney David Kaloyanides said.

Abrams said he thought Cogill had learned his lesson, and did not think he would repeat his mistake. As part of his plea deal, Cogill will have to allow authorities to search or seize his computers.

Cogill will have some input into the public service announcement he records for the RIAA, which has used lawsuits to pursue people it suspects of illegally downloading music. Kaloyanides said he hoped the ads would target fans who upload and download copyrighted works by explaining to them that they're really hurting their favorite bands.

Ugh…this is such a load of shit. Let’s rehash this old debate, shall we? Are we gonna go after anyone who ever made his buddy a CD without giving any money to the artist? Will black helicopters swoop in and SWAT teams burst through the door if I download a song from someone’s blog site?


I mean, it’s a serious priority to jail downloaders. We need to empty the jails out of drug dealers, murderers, and rapists to accommodate the downloaders. Hell, empty out Gitmo to make room for these evil creatures.

Y’know, it costs virtually nothing to print a CD, yet it still costs as much today to buy one as it did 20 years ago. Back in 1986 or so, when it was around $20 to get a CD we were told that prices would come down, and they did, to around $12 or so for awhile, and then once computers started coming equipped with CD-writer drives, then the price shot back up again.

If indeed CD sales are down, artists are certainly making up for it in online sales and the outrageous prices charged to see a concert. The last show I saw was at the Hard Rock in Orlando, general seating/first come first serve, and those tickets were still $50.00 a pop to stand up crammed in a pile of sweaty people for a couple hours, and then I dropped nearly $40.00 on what could be the thinnest t-shirt I have ever worn. The shirt cost about 50 cents to make.

I know people paying anywhere from $150 to $500 to see Depeche Mode on tour right now. My favorite band, and I couldn’t afford those tickets to see them even if they did come to within 6 hours of me. I think U2 has been getting $150 a ticket for ten years now. Let’s not even get into Madonna or Eagles tickets. It’s expensive to buy kids in Africa and take them to the Paris Ritz and $17,000 a night, I know, but c’mon Madge…you had people paying a couple GRAND a pop to see you. Tickets were 6 bucks each at Woodstock.

And when you buy the songs off of a legal paid download site, they get this thing called a DRM encode that keeps you from copying the song to share with anyone, even yourself, so even though you bought the song you really don’t own it.


But back to Axl Rose and his latest bunch of session backups. That goofy shithead kept talking about this "Chinese Democracy" album for like nearly 15 years. I remember a couple three years back when they dragged him out on stage at the MTV awards to crash through a medley of songs he sang when GnR was still relevant. He looked like shit.

I thought they were pranking us. I thought it was Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit wearing a braid wig as a joke. Axl’s face was pulled so tight he looked like Carrot Top channeling Milli Vanilli.


Dude, you quit being relevant a long time ago, and coming on stage with a masked wannabe Slash with a KFC bucket on his head to sing your old songs while jerking everyone off waiting for this alleged masterpiece of yours to materialize certainly didn’t help your credibility.


So the album FINALLY came out and it seems to have flopped like a fat chick’s teats. I think I might have heard one song on the local rock station, and they intimated that they were playing the track out of curiosity more than anything. So chasing after one of your fans for promoting your album just smacks of desperation and money-grubbing.

Try going after people selling bootlegs of your stuff overseas, or on any street corner in L.A. or New York. Or try going after Ticketbastard for screwing your fans, unless you’re in cahoots…

I knew a couple dozen people who had digital copies of the latest Depeche Mode CD a couple weeks before it came out, and y’know what? They still went out and bought the actual CD. In fact, 90% of them didn’t just spend $18 on the standard release or $27 on the CD/DVD combo; they bought the deluxe package for anywhere from $75 to $110.

Real fans will still buy something after it’s released even if they have a downloaded preview to whet their appetites. And if someone downloads a track off someone’s blog and decides that they like this band and go buy the CD, then you come out ahead, right?

I just found the whole thing kinda funny, since it involved a guy who’s a shell of his former self and album that was hyped for ten years at least, took like 17 different band members to make, and was quickly forgotten in favor of the freakin’ Jonas Brothers and Britney Spears.

You shoulda’ stuck with Slash, Axl…he’s got his own deal with a video game, and he was a mentor on American Idol this year. His band Velvet Revolver is doing quite well. They put out two albums in the time it took to braid your hair and get another face peel. The best deal you got was Dr. Pepper offering a free can of soda to everyone if you finally released that album in 2008.

Pull up your damned pants....

Several times in the past three weeks I’ve looked out my windshield to see some skinny young wannabe-thug sauntering by with his wifebeater t-shirt rolled up at the waist so that I can see him holding up his ginormous pants. The pants look to be about a 42-waist on his 30-waist frame, so oversized that this fashion disaster is quite literally having to physically hold his pants up to keep them from falling down around his ankles as he walks.

The pants are purposely slung down that far so that we can all marvel at his plaid boxers, with the tops of the pants tucked firmly under his ass cheeks. Yes, dear readers, his ass is hanging out of his pants, and just what the hell this is supposed to signify or impress us with is just beyond me. Seeing the little turd trip over the pants and fall would just be awesome.


This isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been going on for the past few years now. I’m sure you’ve all encountered it. Maybe I’m just being a middle-aged conservative white guy, but I really just don’t get this shit at all.


Many communities around the nation and even in some other countries, too, are passing laws to ban the practice. In Charleston, State Senator Robert Ford introduced legislation in a bill that would make it illegal for people to wear pants more than 3 inches below their hips. He wants civil fines ranging from $25 for the first offense to $75, plus up to six hours of community service, for three or more offenses.

In Tennessee a proposal remains alive in the Legislature to levy a fine of up to $250 and 160 hours of community service for wearing pants “below the person’s waistline ... in a manner that exposes the person’s underwear or bare buttocks.”

In Flint, Michigan, the war on sag by police chief David Dicks enacted a “crack”down so to speak, and the varying levels of ass exposed will get you varying fines.


Locally, Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten said Friday that 19-year-old Dionta Cochran was shot in the chest by a .32-caliber pistol in the back pocket of his low-hanging pants. Cochran's death was initially considered a homicide. The North Charleston teen was found dead in a driveway Monday. Authorities say the bullet passed through Cochran's clothing and struck him as he bent forward, possibly to shut the door.

Look, if you lack the self respect to look presentable, don’t bitch when no one will give you a decent job or a house loan when you show up with your drawers hanging out, half your ass exposed, black no-show socks in bedroom slippers, and a baseball hat turned at some ridiculous angle. If you don’t want to be treated like shit, don’t look like shit.

I say, Ted...who won the regatta?

Mary Jo Kopechne would be 68 today and would have turned 69 in about 2 weeks or so.

Unfortunately for her, and for her family, she went for a drive with Ted Kennedy a couple months after I was born…

Today is the 40th anniversary of Ted’s drunk ass driving his 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 off a bridge and into the water on Chappaquiddick Island. He got out, and she didn’t.

Hey, Libs…more people died driving with Ted than at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo combined!

He crashed the car, swam free, claims to have fished around for Mary Jo, swam to shore, rested up, and walked back to his hotel, where he got undressed and went to bed. He awoke to loud party noises and complained to the hotel manager, and then went back to bed.

By 7:30 the next morning, Ted was seen talking casually to the winner of the previous day’s sailing regatta, and by 8:00 he still hadn’t even reported the incident. In fact, he eventually called Kopechne’s family and told them she was dead before the authorities even knew.

Hell, two fishermen spotted the car in the water around 8, and by 8:23 the police had been called from a nearby cottage. A diver was sent down and discovered Kopechne's body at around 8:45 am. The diver, John Farrar, later testified at the inquest that Kopechne's body was pressed up in the car in the spot where an air bubble would have formed. He interpreted this to mean that Kopechne had survived for a while in the air bubble after the initial accident, and concluded that:

“Had I received a call within five to ten minutes of the accident occurring, and was able, as I was the following morning, to be at the victim's side within twenty-five minutes of receiving the call, in such event there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car.”

On July 25, seven days after the incident, Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. Kennedy's attorneys suggested that any jail sentence should be suspended, and the prosecutors agreed to this, citing Kennedy's age, character and prior reputation. Presiding judge James Boyle sentenced Kennedy to two months in jail, the statutory minimum for the offense, which he suspended. In announcing the sentence, Boyle referred to Kennedy's "unblemished record" and said that he "has already been, and will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose".

That’s bullshit lawyer-esque legalese doublespeak for “You’re a fucking Kennedy, dude, there’s no way we’re gonna send you to jail.” Teddy drunkenly staggered away, scot free, because he’s a Kennedy, and in Massachusetts, a Kennedy can literally get away with negligent homicide without any real recourse other than “you don’t get to be President but you get to still be a Senator for 50 years”.


As an aside, being a Kennedy doesn’t let you get away with literal murder. Michael Skakel, a Kennedy offshoot, was finally convicted in 2002 of murdering Martha Moxley in 1975.



Ironically, Ted was once quoted on illegal immigrants dying while crossing the Rio Grande to sneak into America. I believe this picture says it all…


Have a great Saturday, Ted. Knock back a few dozen and enjoy the healthcare as you know it that’s treating your brain tumor, because when your Messiah’s governmental free healthcare crap takes effect, the quality of care will suck so bad you’ll wish you’d stayed in the car where you left Mary Jo to die.


RIP, Walter Cronkite...that's the way it is...

The product of affirmative action?

I almost spit my tea across my windshield today. Whilst listening to the Schnitt Show on the radio, host Todd Schnitt kept playing the now infamous quote from soon-to-be-Supreme Court Jester Sonia Sotomayor, who looks like a bad copy of Mindy Cohn playing Natalie from Facts of Life.

"I'm the product of Affirmative Action..."

What a zipperhead. So you freely admit that you aren't really all that qualified to be a judge, let alone a Justice, and the only reason your ass got where you are today is because of Affirmative Action?

No wonder you voted against letting those firefighters in Connecticut get their promotions based on merit and test scores because no blacks scored high enough to get promoted...you believe in promotion based solely on race and not ability to do a job.

Wise Latina, my ass.

It's so stealthy, it inserted itself into the budget unseen!

Y’know, Democrats just hate it when you use their own tactics on them, and by that I mean the tactic of taking an approved bill and sneaking shit onto it before anyone notices it and hoping that it passes through before anyone can stop it. Perfect example: underhanded scumbag Democrats adding 300 pages (yeah, three hundred) to the Climate Bill at 3:09 AM, 12 hours before it was being voted on in Congress. Anyone up at 3AM doing governmental paperwork shit is up to no good; just ask the boys from Watergate.

Well, when Georgia’s Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss tried to add an additional $1.75 billion to the Obama-approved defense budget to purchase seven additional F-22 Raptor fighters for the Air Force, everybody threw a shit-fit. With The Obamessiah threatening to veto his own budget, a hastily drawn up amendment to the budget to yank that money was ushered forth by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, Michigan’s Carl Levin, and Uber-RINO Turncoat Turd John McCain.

Sure, Chambliss can say he wants the extra seven jets to bolster our defense, but face it; his district includes the plant where Lockheed makes the $350-million dollar wonder-jets and he wants those 2,000 or so employees to vote for him, plain and simple.

It seems that Obama wants to keep with the recommendation of former President Bush and cap the purchase at 187 jets, and Secretary of Defense Gates and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Mike Mullen, both want to keep their cushy jobs so they sure as hell ain’t gonna argue with His Obamaness, so they, wrote to senators Monday to express their dismay at the 11th hour addition of the extra money. "We strongly believe that the time has come to close the F-22 production line. If the Congress sends legislation to the president that requires acquisition of additional F-22 aircraft beyond fiscal year 2009, the secretary of defense will strongly recommend he veto it…," the letter said.


Wonder Twin Powers......activate!

Gates earlier said the insertion of more money, into the already $680 billion defense budget, for F-22s posed a "big problem" for him. Analysts say it would be unprecedented for a defense secretary and chairman of the Joint Chiefs to urge the president to veto their own defense bill.

But they, and Obama, have made clear that they view such expenditures as wasteful.
"We do not need these planes. That is why I will veto any bill that supports acquisition of F-22s beyond the 187 already funded by Congress," Obama said in a letter Monday to senators.

Okay. We have a small amount of F-22’s now, a plane that was slated to replace the F-15 Eagle, which has been around since 1976. And yes, the Raptor is filthy expensive and requires 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flying time, and costs the taxpayer about $44,000 an hour to fly according to confidential Pentagon test results.

Hmmm, Air Force One costs us over $57,000 an hour to fly and Obie takes that pig everywhere, and it’s neither stealthy nor capable of either offensive or defensive actions. The Raptor, on the other hand, is the baddest mother in the sky…anyone’s sky.

Critics are arguing that we don’t even need the Raptor since we’re soon to be getting the first production airframes of the F-35 Lightning joint-services strike fighter. The F-22 took a long time to develop, as did the F-35, but let’s not be short-sighted and think that just because the F-35 is newer that it’s necessarily better. The two planes are vastly different in their roles.

The Raptor is a pure air-superiority fighter, with all-aspect stealth capabilities. It’s made to go forth and shoot down other planes. The Lightning is a strike fighter, meaning that it is primarily an attack aircraft to bring ordnance to bear against ground targets but still be able to act as a fighter aircraft. It can fight its way in, engage its target, and fight its way out, much like the Air Force’s current F-16 Falcon or the Navy and Marine F/A-18 Hornet. The F-35 will augment and then eventually replace both aircraft in service-specific variants starting when the first production models reach units sometime next year. The F-35 is partially stealthy, virtually invisible from radar from above, whereas the F-22 is pretty much invisible anywhere, anytime. The planes are not interchangeable, but rather will work together as a combined force.

"This plane has never flown over Iraq or Afghanistan -- the two wars that we are in," McCain said in criticism of the F-22.


Well, no shit, Johnny. Maybe that’s because the fucking Taliban doesn’t have a fucking air force, you numbnuts. It’s a waste of gas to fly them around those two Third World shit holes when they won’t really be doing much of anything. We invaded Iraq in April of 2003 and the Raptor entered active service in December, 2005. By then, there wasn’t anything over Baghdad to shoot down. Dude, you used to fly a strike fighter over Vietnam; surely you haven’t forgotten the concept of fighter cover for the attack planes as a guardian against enemy fighters? Oh, wait…you used to be a Republican, and you forgot what THAT means, too. Asshole.

You keep those F-22’s as a trump card against all those shiny new MiG’s in Russia and their Chinese-made clones instead of utilizing other assets better suited to the conflicts at hand. Oh, wait...China and Russia are our friends, aren't they?

"While the administration is emphasizing winning current conflicts, its stance regarding the F-22 does not adequately account for other kinds of threats," Senator Chambliss said, and I gotta agree.

I have seen both planes up close. I also got to see an F-22 flight demonstration, and that thing is seriously shit-hot. History Channel’s “Dogfights” series did an outstanding profile of both aircraft in the episode “Dogfights of the Future”. Check it out.

The F-35 I saw in 2007 at MCAS Beaufort


Tell you what. It’s only seven airframes. In the grand scheme of things, I guess seven more won’t make or break the universe. Granted, we do need at least one extra to replace the one that crashed back in March, but if we have to make do with 186, so be it. I say we keep the $1.75 billion in the budget but redirect it towards something else, like Dragon Skin body armor or funding for the Veteran’s Administration to help take care of returning wounded vets with rehabilitation and counseling for PTSD. Perhaps we can use that money as an emergency relief fund for military families who are having financial hardships with their service members deployed, or for reservists who no longer have jobs to come home to because the economy sucks.

Keep the money in the budget, but use it to actually help the troops? What a novel concept.

Come one, come all to Obama's Czar Bazaar!!!

I find it a tad ironic that our Marxist-Leninist Prezidentski, Comrade Obama, has such a hard-on for Czars, since the communists overthrew the last Czar in Russia to make their Revolution complete. Every time I flip on the radio or TV, The Obamessiah is elevating some ACORN crony or bootlicking lackey to the exalted position of Czar, and by Czar we mean someone who is ostensibly universally responsible for some governmental activity or other, but yet on the flip side of that same coin it’s also someone in a paid position of power who reports directly to the president, does not require Senate confirmation, and operates outside of the Constitution and the authority of Congress. Hmm...shadowy people outside of any oversight, controlling our lives with arbitrary laws...transparency, my ass.


By some accounts, there are close to three dozen czars in the Obama administration, managing everything from closing Gitmo (Daniel Fried) to ending the genocide in Darfur (J. Scott Gration). One could jokingly say that Barack Barack’vitch has seated more Czars than the Romanovs.


Obama introduced Gil Kerlikowske as his "drug czar" while speaking to an urban policy group in Washington. With Steve Rattner leaving as head of the administration's auto task force, just days after General Motors emerged from bankruptcy, America will get a new auto czar in former steelworkers union official Ron Bloom. (Rattner is leaving under a cloud of scrutiny into his dealings with the New York state pension fund in a pay-to-play deal. Another Obama crony turns out to be a scumbag with legal problems...but I've covered that before)

We have climate czar Carol Browner, whose authority spans the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy, spreading the propaganda about “climate change” (ie: spreading the Global Warming bullshit. In addition to Browner and health care reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, presidential executive orders created an urban affairs czar (Adolfo Carrion, Jr) and a chief technology czar (Vivek Kundra) this year, along with faith-based czar Joshua DuBois, TARP czar Herb Allison, stimulus accountability czar Earl Devaney, non-proliferation czar Gary Samore, terrorism czar John Brennan, and regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. A couple weeks ago we also got a domestic violence czar when Lyn Rosenthal was appointed White House adviser on Violence Against Women.


We also have a host of special envoys that fall into the czar category including Afghanistan/Pakistan special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell (kinda like a Czar for Life now, what with how many administrations he’s served in addition to saving baseball from the ravages of ‘roids), special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia Dennis Ross, and climate special envoy Todd Stern. (You mean we get a second Czar to serve the Global Warming Kool Aid for the Bullshit Brigades?)


Perhaps we can take underemployed former NFL star Michael Vick and name him Animal Abuse Czar. Now that Billy Mays has shuffled off his mortal coil, Vince Shlomi can be the Infomercial Czar so that all the repressed proletariat can own a Shamwowski and a Slapski Chopski. Ron Jeremy can be the Male Enhancement Czar, or better yet, Comrade Smiling Bob can do it.

Puttin' on the Ritz

Madge, Madge, Madge.....starting a collection like Brad & Angelina are we?

Three weeks or so ago, the government of Malawi agreed to the purchase (err, I mean, adoption) of a local 3-year old to act as a matching book-end for her other purchased/adopted 4-year old. Chifundo "Mercy" James joins Madonna's other kids, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon, Rocco John Ciccone Ritchie, and David Banda Mwale Ciccone Ritchie.


Coming from a country where the average per capita income is $134 and change, it's gotta be a hell of a change to move from a mud hut to a $15 million place in New York, and to then go on tour with That Nice White Lady Who Says She's Mother Esther and her manageries of strap-hangers and handlers and nannies and mannies and bodyguards and spiritualists and dieticians.

And going from a mud hut to a $17,000 a night luxury suite at the Ritz in Paris must be almost terrifying.



I'm thinking that pretty soon, it'll be much more trendy to adopt Afghan kids and become Islamicly spiritual, or maybe adopt that other cool and trendy new ethnic minority, Chinese Uighurs. Or will it be really not cool to tell all your celebrity fans that your new kid is something that sounds a lot like "wigger" ?