Gold Star Christmas

Last week as I was driving into Charleston for some Christmas shopping, I spotted a license plate in front of me that I hadn't seen before here in South Carolina, the Gold Star Family plate. It was accompanied by a back window decal that was in memory of a fallen Marine, gone before he was 25.

It filled me with a profound sense of grief and sadness and left a little black cloud over my day. I actually had to wipe away a tear or three.

If your state doesn't remember the sacrifices of their Gold Star Families with a special plate, then you need to get with your local state representatives and ask them why.



Today is Christmas Day, and as we gather with our families, friends, and loved ones, there are over 5800 families who lost a family member in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today there's an empty place in their hearts. Today they're missing their lost troop. Today I say a huge thank you to those families for your sacrifice, both as an American and a Veteran.

I wasn't able to catch the name of that fallen Marine memorialized on the back window of that car last week. I only saw that he was born in 1986 and died this past March. I can't thank his family here personally. However, I can thank the family of another South Carolina Marine who joined the ranks of the Gold Star Families this week.

Lance Corporal William H. "Billy" Crouse IV of Woodruff, who grew up in Indiana, lost his life along with his bomb dog Cane in Helmand Province, Afghanistan on Tuesday. Billy was just 22, born a few days before I graduated from Military Police School with the Army, and had only been in Afghanistan for about 6 weeks. His mom was quoted by a newspaper as saying that her son's dying concern was for his dog. "My son was coherent for a brief period, and his biggest concern was 'where is my dog? Save my dog. Put him in the Medevac with me. Save his life,'" she said. The dog was put in the helicopter with Crouse but died.

Billy Crouse returned home yesterday when his flight touched down at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware. Welcome home, Marine. Semper Fi.

Merry Christmas to our Gold Star Families, and to our Blue Star Families who have a service member overseas right now at the holidays. God Bless You All.

Nothing says "peaceful socialists" like riots

A little more than a week ago, crazed young Brits decided it was in their best interest to attack the car carrying their future King and scaring the royal piss out of his wife.

You sad, sorry, spoiled socialist bastards.

For the first time in recent memory, England has turned on the Royal Family with physical violence. I was stunned. I was appalled. For my entire life the House of Windsor has been respected, revered, and generally much loved by the people of England no matter who was mucking it up as PM.

The car carrying Prince Charles and wife Camilla was set upon by a rioting mob that pounded on the doors and windows, fired paintballs at it, beat on the bullet-resistant glass till it cracked, and shouted “Off with their heads!”

The picture of a horrified Camilla, her mouth agape, is destined to become one of those iconic photos along the lines of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a suspected Viet Cong in the head in 1968, napalmed children running down a road in 1972, a Chinese protester in Tianamen Square blocking a tank in 1989, a fireman carrying a child’s body in Oklahoma City in April 1995, or the April 2000 raid to seize Elian Gonzalez.

And you little turds are rioting over what? Tuition increases at your effete Liberal universities where you’ve been molly-coddled for so long with little to no up front tution costs, subsidised by the British government. That same British government that’s broke from paying out for nationalized medicine and myriad other social welfare programs.

Unless I am reading the data wrong, you ungrateful cretins go to school on the government’s dime and then pay back the loan when you start to make a certain amount, right?

A recent independent review of the tuition structures and repayments is the dcrux of all this, it seems. The independent review recommends that the current cap on tuition fees of £3,290 a year be removed. A new system of financing universities will allow for a 10% increase in student places to meet rising demand for a degree-level education, the Browne review proposes. Graduates will start repaying the cost of their degrees when they start earning £21,000 a year, up from £15,000 under the current system.

For those of us is the United States, that translates into Brit universities having a tuition cap at $5,110. Yeah, a paltry 5 grand a year, that you don’t currently start paying back till you’re making at least $23, 295 a year instead of just a few months after you graduate like we do here. That new plan would start repayment when you start making $32,613. Not bad.

It costs £3,290 a year to go to freakin’ Cambridge. The same for King’s College London. The same for bloody Oxford. (Admittedly the fees to foreign students are markedly higher)

Some of these sniveling wretches want to hop up to Scotland & avoid the higher tuitions. However, the Scots are ahead of the game.English students could be charged as much as £6,500 ($10, 094) a year to attend a Scottish university under plans outlined by the Scottish National party.Scottish ministers fear that measures in London to allow English universities to charge students up to £9,000 ($13,977) a year will dramatically increase the number of "fee refugees".

Under the Edinburgh plans, Scottish students and students from other EU countries would still have all their tuition fees paid by the state. But English students could be charged more, in part in an attempt to address a deepening funding gap at Scottish universities.

About 22,500 English students currently study at Scottish universities and pay annual fees of £1,820 ($2826) , or £2,895 ($4495) for medicine. There are 11,895 Scottish students at English colleges.

Yeah…did you just choke on that? I almost did when I saw that a year at med school was under 5 grand a year.

Lawyers from the Matrix Chambers in London have warned that charging students in England up to £9,000 a year was contrary to human rights law because it discriminated against students from poorer backgrounds.

Excuse me…but I don’t see education as a human right. The right to pursue an education and better yourself is a basic fundamental right but you have to work for it and make it happen. No one should just hand it to you. Just like here in America, we have the right to PURSUE happiness, but happiness is not guaranteed.

You liberal assclowns think everything in life is a basic human right. Wireless internet is not a human right. Cell phones are not a human right. HiDef satellite TV is not a human right. A free college education is not a human right. Get off your pampered asses and get an effing job and work for it. Guess how I paid for college? I did 4 years in the Army, serving my country and getting back valuable skills, experience, and college funding. Perhaps you people over there in Europe might want to consider enticing your young people to serve your countries with tuition assistance…..giving each soldier a certain amount to use towards repayment of those loans when they come due in addition to taking classes while they serve.

You’re also crying about the police using the technique of “kettling” to simmer your riots down, calling it yet another breach of basic human rights. No, violating basic human rights would be gunning all you little shits down in the street as an example to the rest. The London Metro Police did not shoot tear gas like the French. They did not shoot rubber bullets into the crowds like Israeli or South African police. The peaceful Swiss police recfently quelled a riot over banking bonuses with water cannons on trucks, tear gas, and rubber bullets, scoring a trifecta. No…you were kettled. Kettling, also known as containment or corralling, is a police tactic for the management of large crowds during demonstrations or protests. that involves the formation of large cordons of police officers who then move to contain a crowd within a limited area. Given the choice of an ass-whoopin’ or stiing in a cluster for awhile, most rational people will sit down and STFU.

So by American standards you get to sit on your asses at venerated institutions of higher learning with 300-year old ivy-covered stone walls at a bargain rate as you learn state capitalism, art history, or equally useful poetry theory courses, wearing your trendy Ché Guevara pins on your blue blazer lapel and a hammer & sickle tie tack. Come on over here to the former colonioes, old chaps, and see what it’s like to pay a good $20,000 (£13,000) a year to go to a school locally like, say, Clemson University. By the way, 20 grand a year is in-state tution. As an out of state student it’s closer to $55,000 a year. (just under £36,000). I did say earlier that Oxford charges more for foreign students, right? It’s £17,892, or $27,786. Costs twice as much for you as a foreign student to go to Clemson as it would for me to attend Oxford. Wow. Life’s hard over there isn’t it?

Want to have fun in the sun and go to the University of Miami? It will cost you the same roughly. Or go to Duke University where the in-state tution was approximately $55, 690 for the 2010-2011 academic year. That’s just over £42,000. Still wanna bitch about tuition?

But take heart, you peaceful rock-throwers; there are more Marxists in U.S. university faculties than there ever were in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

The University of California at Berkely….the school of choice for budget-concious socialists. California residents and illegal aliens from anywhere can go there for their undergraduate indoctrination for a mere $6230.75 (just over £4000). Non-residents and legal aliens get gouged for $17, 670.25 a year. That’s £11,378 for you riot-prone British kids.

Now, over here, blueblood socialist elitists go to Liberal Arts Colleges like :

Colby College (about $54,090 or £34, 829)

Bates College (about $55,350 or £35,640)

Vassar College (about $55,615 or

Columbia University (about 56,681 or £36,497)

Stanford University (about $54,446 or £35,058)

Yale University (about $54,950 or £35,383)

Harvard College (about $53,856 or £34,678)

Yeah, it costs money to learn to be a proper elitist Lefty over here, mate.

And now that you heaps of offal have run amok through London on your tantrum spree, you have given a free pass to all of your own organically-grown (and imported) radical Islamist fundamentalists. You know, those nice, quiet, polite, Religion of Peace shitheads who seldom need a reason to riot or protest. It’s why they get out of bed in the morning; that, and to kill Westerners. Just watch…they’ll soon be tossong their own Molotovs and igniting car bombs and littering the streets with corpses, all in the name of Allah and the Caliphate of England.

Yes you, the rioting children of England, your tantrums will give rise to violent upheaval from the Muslims you shelter and allow every day to usurp British law and British culture and replace it with their own. Get used to the word “dhimi” and learn your roles, you twunts, because they will gladly enslave you once they take over. Living under Sharia Law will make your current situation seem a walk in the park, and you’ll be too busy beating your foreheads against a prayer rug five times a day to worry about replacing the burka-clad Queen with your own socialist kommisars.

The American flag is under attack again.

Sadly, I used to live a couple miles from where this story takes place. Prior to moving to South Carolina, I lived just off Main Road in Hampden, a suburb of Bangor, Maine.

The following article is lifted from The Bangor Daily News, written by Renee Ordway.

Hammocks? Yep.

Wreaths? Sure. Pick your size and shape.

Christmas trees? You bet.

Lawn chairs? That’s fine.

Welcome signs? Why not?

Flower pots? Of course.

Those are many of the things that one may find on any front porch.

Perhaps an American flag?

Not so fast.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” That was Darla Coombs’ response when she was told that the Highland Ridge Condominium Association wanted her American flag removed from its mount on the front of her condo.

“They told me if I felt I needed to fly the flag that I could do so as long as I put it in the back where it can’t be seen,” Coombs said during a recent telephone interview.

The Highland Ridge condos are located on Main Road South in Hampden.

The 16 or so units are all alike. Beige with white trim and white mailboxes lined up ever so neatly along the main access road.

And that, Coombs was told at a condo meeting, is how it shall stay.

With the obvious exceptions, of course.

A quick trip through the development this week showed that some of the condo owners like big wreaths. Some like small ones. Some like bows on their doors or garland on their banisters. Some like welcome signs on their porches and some don’t.

Individuality is allowed for flowers in the summer, Coombs said.

But there shall be no flags, and it says so right in the condo bylaws.

Coombs put the flag up, with the blessing of her immediate neighbor, when her son enlisted in the Army last spring.

The grumbling soon began, and by late summer a survey had been passed around. At a meeting last month, the American flag received the official Highland Ridge Condo Association heave-ho.

If you have a flag, then we all have to have a flag, the members argued.

“Fine. I’ll pay to have a flag mounted on each and every condo,” Coombs replied.

But I want an Irish flag, argued one member.

I’d like to fly a California state flag, argued another.

There can be no flags, they told her again.

“But it’s an American flag,” she pleaded.

Aware that she did sign the lease and in an attempt to reason with the board members, Coombs asked whether they would agree to have a flagpole put up somewhere in the development if she paid for the pole, the cement pad and a light.

That idea got nixed as well because the Highland Ridge Condo Association didn’t want to get stuck with the additional electricity fees that the light would generate.

“I’m not a rebellious person by nature,” Coombs explained to me apologetically, “but it’s an American flag.”

Coombs herself is a veteran. Her father is a veteran. Her sister and her brother-in-law are both veterans. Her uncle is a veteran, and her son is in the Army.

“I never play the veteran card,” she said. “It’s not something I talk about to a lot of people, but I got angry enough at that condo meeting that I did, and then I was angry at myself for doing that,”

Venise Bard is the property manager for Highland Ridge Condos. When I asked her about the reason for the concern with the American flag hanging on Coombs’ condo, she said only that the rule is clearly written in the condo bylaws in the lease that Coombs willingly signed.

She’s absolutely right about that.

Coombs held her ground for a while and left the flag up, but knew what she had to do in order to avoid any further controversy.

So on Friday, she dutifully went home on her lunch hour, removed the flag and tucked it away.

I’m sure the place looks a hell of a lot neater now and I’m sure that the members of the Highland Ridge Condo Association will sleep better tonight knowing it is gone.

That’s surely not a battle they want to have to fight again. They won and they can take their Saturday morning stroll through their impeccable development this morning and stand taller for it.

I strongly encourage all of my readers to contact the Highland Ridge Hampden Luxury Condominiums...and make your feelings well-known.

Contact Venise Bard

Office: (207) 942-6711
Mobile: (207) 745-3555

E-Mail: vbard@tcreal.com

Town and Country: 800-639-4905

Was ist los mit Große Schwester? (What's up with Big Sis?)

Man, it seems that the furor over the Gropenfürher sure died down quickly after Thanksgiving weekend. After the biggest travel weekend of the year, we've heard nary a peep about heavy-handed TSA tactics. I find this a bit curious and damn near suspicious.

Being government functionaries, I sincerely doubt that in 2 short weeks they've completely retrained everyone and stopped their overbearing Gestapo searches.

Oh, wait... that's because the Lamestream media is covering other things instead. Fickle and possessed of the attention span of a fruit-fly, they seem content to bring us things like Bill Clinton's triumphant return to be Obama's Dress-Stain Czar and Timmy Geithner's kidney stones.

But while we were otherwise distracted, whether by radicals rioting in London or by Democrats eating their own, the TSA continued to do stupid things.

Among these would be selecting the sari-clad Ambassador to the United States from India for a feel up pat-down. Nothing like causing an international incident by feeling up a foreign diplomat. Ambassador Meera Shankar, 60, was selected for a pat-down last weekend by a TSA screener at Mississippi's Jackson-Evers International Airport. In fact, this was the second time in 3 months Shankar was selected for a pat-down.

(Hey, TSA.....a sari is not a burka...oh, wait, you wouldn't check anyone in a burka; that might offend someone).

India has protested, and Shrillary Clinton said she'd look nto it but offered no immediate apology.

Former Playboy Playmate and Baywatch actress Donna D'Errico was singled out & forced to go through a full body scan at LAX. Golly gee, I wonder why? Everyone wanted to scope the hottie. When asked by D'Errico why she was being scanned, the screener said "Because you caught my eye.". D'Errico further stated that after the search she noticed that the agent who pulled her out to be scanned was smiling and whispering with two other TSA agents and glancing back at her.

Has the TSA really stopped anything with these Draconian searches? I mean, we seem to be finding all these airborne attacks by accident or through FBI setups and stings. Dude screws up setting his shoe on fire; now we have to take our shoes off in a germ-filled public place. Dude tries to mix liquids in-flight to make a bomb and fails; now we can't take anything more than an eyedropper with us and have to buy all new stuff at our destination that we can't bring back with us. Dude sets his underwear on fire and fails; and almost a year later we've got Holiday Gropefest 2010. It's all reaction, not proaction. They do something, botch it, and TSA scrambles to make life harder on everyone without PROFILING THE PEOPLE THAT DO THIS STUFF. Old ladies, babies, Playboy models, and amputees....but heavens forbid we pat down Muslims in burkas.

Dude fails to set his bomb off properly in Times Square, gets caught after an observant person on the street alerts authorities. Dude is a naturalized American citizen and a Muslim. Hmmmmm. Dudes send bombs disguised as printer toner cartridges and bombs are found by alert people overseas, not by TSA. Dude tries to blow up a tree lighting and fails; young Muslim from Kenya. FBI stings a dude (an American Muslim no less) trying to blow up a recruiting office. Instead of stopping terrorists, the TSA is terrorizing the general public.

TSA has about 60,000 employees, and today there are about 350 full-body scanners in operation in about 70 of our nation's airports, with about 1,000 expected to be operational by the end of 2011. All of this costs more that $10 per passenger per screening. (That doesn't count fees that airlines charge passengers for everything under the sun) That also means that those of us who pose no danger will be forced into enhanced scans at the airports that have them, but the terrorists will simply choose to begin their flights at airports that do not yet have those procedures or equipment. Reactive, not proactive.

Christmas weekend is coming kids. Expect more lines. Expect more delays. Expect to hear about the TSA again, because while the Blamestream Lamestream isn't saying anything, some of us are.

Make sure you address your TSA storm troopers by their proper ranks and titles. This handy chart will help you out; just click it to see it better and save it to your desktop.

My new favorite Hoosier

The people of Indiana's 4th Congressional District are served currently by Republican Steve Buyer. Congressman Buyer has served the 4th and 5th Districts since 1993, and additionally serves as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. Buyer opted not to run for a tenth term in Congress and will be replaced by incoming Republican Todd Rokita. Buyer has been serving this current Congress as a member of the House Committee on Energy & Commerce and also as the ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Fast forward to just before 3:00 PM on Monday, November 29th , 2010 and the infamous Lame Duck Session of Congress, the Dems last stand of socialism before the Republicans take over in January and try to unravel the twisted wreckage of our country.

Nasty Nancy Pee is nowhere to be see and in her stead is Acting Speaker (ie: substitute teacher) is Representative Laura Richardson (D-CA). Funny how Comrade Pelosi's stand in was another California woman....the House seems over run with females from The Kellyfawnya Socialist State Red Bear Republic. Richardson is still somewhat new to Congress, assuming office in 2007 after a special election to replace the deceased Juanita Millender-McDonald.

When Buyer, sought recognition to speak for five minutes about some pending veterans legislation, Richardson, looking completely and utterly lost, said no. He revised his request to one minute.

Looking confused and taking verbal directions from someone off-camera, Richardson again denied the request.

Buyer persisted, growing outraged that one sitting representative was highhandedly refusing to recognize another, even for one minute. Gotta love Democrat elitism. Defiant to the very end, these creatures.

Buyer is finally permitted to speak on this video and quickly reads Richardson and the entire Democrat Party as a whole the riot act before ceding his remaining time, and Richardson notes this with complete disinterest. Afterward, there is a short gap before Richardson is told by her handler to call a recess. Keep watching the bottom of the screen then for an entertaining gesture of exasperation by Buyer, who leaves his seat to walk by where he knows the main House camera is pointing.

You see, the House's official camera only shows who is speaking, whereas the C-SPAN cameras show the yawning, bored House members in a Chamber that is surprisingly vacant quite regularly and, when a recess is called, coverage concludes on the House feed. You don't get to see the House members jaw-jacking and schmoozing each other during the recess.

C-SPAN has formally asked incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in the interests of openness, to allow the cable channel's independent cameras in for the new Congress. Independent video coverage Monday, for instance, would have pulled back to reveal the unelected person or persons guiding a lost Richardson and could have shown a twin-shot of Buyer seeking to get the chair's attention while Richardson ignored him. So keep watching the bottom of the screen then for an entertaining gesture of exasperation by Buyer, who leaves his seat to walk by where he knows the main House camera is pointing at the very end.

They're after me Lucky Charms!

Finally.

There finally seems to be some reasonable voices coming out about the Irish bailouts, bailouts that are being funded by you and me here in the Good Ole' U.S. of A. I mean after all, we have to help a fellow EU member, right?

Oh wait...we're not in the EU.

Well, we gotta help out our sister country within the United Kingdom, right?

We're not even part of the United Kingdom.

We don't share a border with Ireland.

We're not on the same continent even.

A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey. The only self-reported ancestral group larger than Irish Americans is German-Americans. In addition roughly another 3.5 million Americans identify more specifically with Scots-Irish ancestry.

In contrast, Ireland as a whole has a population of just over 6 million or so.

But hey, we love Saint Patrick's Day and we love a big-assed bowl of Lucky Charms in the morning! Whooo hoooo! Let's all save Ireland!

The first video is an amazing, blistering speech given at the EU Parliament by Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, Member of the EU Parliament representing Southeast England. The dude rips apart fellow members and reminds everyone that this notion of a happy one-world government is absolute crap.





The next video is a street interview with an ex-pat Irishman living in the States. The reporter is a bit of a dick and kinda eggs him on, especially at the end, but this guy sums it all up pretty well.
Enjoy!