Ya gotta ask

What kind of motorcycle?

Not that I need one, especially not that fast. I'm not that good of a rider for one that goes that fast.

But I am curious.

Finally!

Someone is taking Pakistan to task for their duplicity.

While I realize that I am a midwest conservative and therefore am not nuanced enough to understand the geopolitical issues here, I gotta ask.....What is Pakistan prosecuting this guy for? Exposing a person who had not been granted asylum in the country? Or for exposing the fact that people highly placed in the Pakistani government were hiding (and aiding) the number one wanted man by one of their allies?

And the fact that the US has abandoned the guy? We should be ashamed of ourselves.

I fully support senator Rand Paul's plan to cut off all aid to Pakistan.

I'd screw 'em to the wall, were it me. Especially after OBL was found in the country....and then this? And all the other issues with transport routes and such?

Pakistan is no friend of the US....and it is about time we realized that...And acted accordingly.

Senator Paul's plan is a good start.

Straining for the sky

Just one last flight!

Please!

Was this what those folks fought and died for?

Illegal search

Was this the "Freedom" those folks we remember and honor today gave all for?

Methinks many of them would lock and load and stand against it.

I find it shameful that this happens in the US at all, and especially on Memorial Day weekend. 

A final thought for Memorial day

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived." 

 George Patton

cost

How much did your weekend cost:

This much

Remember

Go here.

Remember them

It's all they ask.

Memorial Day

Think about what is for.

A day of rememberance. A day to honor those who have paid for your freedom.

Don't like your government?

That's ok.

Like the freedoms you have?

Good.

Like the country in which you live? (yeah, it could be better, but lets face it...It is still the best in the world).

Then thank those who paid for that freedom. for the freedom to criticize, who protected this country from others.....Those who chose to take the post, to put themselves in the way of those who would damage, destroy, overcome the country, it's government, and it's citizens and change it into something else.....

Just say thank you. Appreciate the sacrifice that they made, the price they paid, and the dedication which they exhibited to protect you, your freedoms, your rights, and your life.

Too many of our citizens forget that too many men (and women) chose to make sacrifices in order that those under their protection could enjoy their lives and holidays such as this

Thank you to all who did so. I, for one, appreciate what you did that I may enjoy this weekend. And my life that you made possible.

It ain't just about hot dogs, hamburgers, doing yard work, camping by the lake, and having a few drinks with your friends and watching a race. It has a meaning....a special meaning. 

Remember.

Remember our heroes today. (and the other days too).

Don't mourn the loss of those who died to protect what you have....
 
Praise them instead.

Spend a moment....

Say thank you to the countries heroes. .....They'll hear you. Trust me.



(In my opinion, Memorial Day should not be a day which "moves" in order to create a convenient three day weekend , but should be a fixed day, a day of remembrance, and a special day which we use to memorialize those who did what needed to be done and paid the price....in order that it would be remembered for what it is, not just a "holiday".)

So where are the charges

for "hate crimes" for this guy?

Oh yeah, he's protected. Special treatment by Holder and the DOJ.

If you or I said similar things (with the opposite polarity), we'd likely be in jail right now.
 


And, Mr. Shabazz?:

All that posing with guns and such? The tough looks and the quasi-military garb and all that? It don't impress me.

But ya wanna kill white folks?

Try it. Bring yer homies and try it. You won't like how it ends.

It'll be the last thing you ever try. We white folks can shoot, and likely better....and there are more of us.

Bring it.

I'll dance with ya.

Thoughts

One can measure the character of a man by the enemies he makes.

Thanks for the support

It is greatly appreciated.

Dog update

MC says I should do an update on our dog...The good news?

Well:

Her falling problem can be fixed with OTC medication from Walgreens.

The bad news?

Likely she has cancer. We will know more when the samples get to the cytologist and we get the report.

I got nuthin else right now. Kinda numb.

She's 14, so it isn't like I didn't know it was coming some time in the not too distant future.

But it still isn't pleasant news.

Say a prayer for Schmoo....and Midwest Chick, who loves her dearly. 

A terrible night

Spent Saturday night with my dog, Schmoo.

She fell about 3 am, and was unable to stand on her back legs. Tried to walk, but couldn't stand and just fell over.

She is 14 years old.

If there was a decent emergency vet anywhere closer than Lafayette, I'd have taken her in then, but there isn't.

So MC and I waited up all night with her. Carried her outside to do her business. Carried her back in. Comforted her. Tried to calm her fear. Held her close. I cursed my inability to help her.

It looks like she had a stroke. The vet I use finally returned my calls (She and I are gonna talk about that when things are over), and told me to wait and see if she recovers. She was right. Schmoo is recovering. How far she will recover remains to be seen, but progress is progress.

She can stand, but barely walk. (the dog, not the vet). We'll see how tomorrow goes.

I am afraid that sooner rather than later I am going to have to make the decision all pet owners dread.  May God grant me the strength and wisdom to know when, and the fortitude to make that decision.

I was supposed to do an NRA instructors class Sunday. That didn't happen. Dunno if it will any time soon.

Gotta have priorities.

And nothing takes priority over my friends....2 legged or 4.  Especially one of 14 years.

Jesus, I was so frightened for her. Still am.

you really should read

This article.

and, even moreso,

This article.

Things are changing. And when they are finished, I doubt that many of those who have been hiding behind racism will like the way they turn out.

Facing the truths is hard. Dealing with those truths will be even harder.

Facing the aftermath of the revealing of the truth will be harder yet.

Ya gotta wonder

What leverage they used to get to this guy. What pressures were brought to bear.

Someone, somewhere, has a great deal to lose if Zimmerman walks. 

I still don't know if he was guilty or innocent of murder, or was merely defending himself.

But I do know that this whole thing smells.....Worse and worse as it goes forward.

Read this!

It is a LONG post, and it will take half an hour or more to read it and follow the links (and you should).

I've been preaching this for years, and Peter and I agree on the basics, and most of the details.

Prepare. Plan, Expect things to be less than idyllic in the near future.

Governments can only paper over the cracks for so long.

What Peter doesn't mention is that when the governments can no longer keep the nanny state going, with the payouts in welfare and other government handouts. THAT is when the real fun will begin.

Better have a plan for that eventuality too.

'Cause that is when the real ugliness will begin:  less (or no) policing, and a subset of our population who is used to handouts no longer receiving them...who has little or no respect for the social contract, who lives in the moment, who believes in "getting theirs" and who believes in "might makes right".

That is when the real fun will begin. 

Bet on it.

Heh

If only

So the news media

is making a huge deal about the losses from JPMorganChase's trading.

$2 billion. Billion, with a B. 2 times ten to the 9th. 2,000,000,000 dollars. Think about how much money that is.

That's a LOT of scratch. Really, it is. Seriously, a LOT of money. More than you and I (and most of our friends) together will make in our lifetimes...combined.  And I would expect that heads will (continue to) roll over the bad trades/derivative/screwup.

But the fact is that the US runs nearly twice that deficit EVERY DAY.

And no one seems to care about that.

Would you buy 'em?

I might. 

If you feel that this represents you, then it is you that has the problem.

Racism is sometimes in the eyes of the beholder.

And if yer dressed like Mr. Obama's mythical son and in my neighborhood, then I'll treat you with suspicion too.

But what we really need are some New Black Panther targets.

Happy Mothers Day

To my Mom and all the others.

Hint to those email forwarders:

Chances are, if your email to me has FW:FW: FW...3 or more times,

Then I've likely already seen it on the internet..

I might even already be on the list of thousands of people whose addresses are there for the reading in all the previous forwards......and for harvesting by the spambots.

Please, at least have the courtesy, if you must forward me another email with an endless chain of FW in front of it, then hide my address from all the other people you are sending it to (BCC)...and all the people that they will send it to...and all those folks that they will send it to...and so on and so on...

I get enough spam already.

Srsly. 

Nother good one gone

Carroll Shelby goes the the big junkyard in the sky.

When he wasn't cozying up to big car companies and selling out, he made some pretty cool machines.

Yeah...like thats gonna happen

So back a few years a go, I TRIED to buy a laser from Wicked Lasers.

Tried.

Waited for 5 months, promised delivery dates missed, then a new one then another.

Then, when I finally got them to cancel my order, it took another 90 days to get my credit card refunded.

And these assholes have the nerve to offer me their newest and best laser....In an email. And I understand that their media push is big. Don't be fooled. They lie.


Fuck you, Wicked Lasers.

Your service is shit, your promises are not worth anything, and I will never do business with you again, no matter how neat/cool your product may appear to be.


I would strongly advise that if you receive and ad from them, like the one below....Just Say NO.

Good

We need more like this.

Or, get rid of immunity for public officials/police officers altogether.

And then spread it to the feds.

Of course, the downside is we'd have thousands of state local and federal workers being sued into bankruptcy....





It'd make 'em behave better....

Takin' out the trash

See ya, Dick.

Tam says it well

Don't let your our  (thanks OG) office door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Shoulda happened years ago.

When wielding power becomes more important than actually doing your job for your constituents...then it is time to go.

RNC: Take note.

Voted

at 5:30 PM.

Turnout was very low for the primary.

circa 22%

No wonder we get the kind of politician we do.

I did my part to vote against the poor examples of humanity that wish to rule us.

Sadly, with one exception, I was unable to find anyone to vote FOR.

I didn't vote for Romney, as his annointing is a foregone conclusion. 

Stupid should hurt

So Sunday night, we had a fair bit of rain.

Actually, a LOT of rain for our area.

So much rain that I had to look again at the rain gauge (after starting on my coffee) to be sure that my eyes had seen the correct amount displayed Monday morning.

I left early for work, and stopped by my local range to check that the pumps were working to keep the entrance from being under water (they weren't). I reset the pumps and prepared to leave..

When I had driven down the road to the range (county road) a car had turned in behind me...

Now I had known that with the large amount of rain, and what I had seen on the way to the range that the county road to the range would be flooded. However, even I was surprised at the amount of flooding. The water ponded at the low point was nearly 4 feet deep. My truck is a 4wd Dodge diesel. But this water was close to the max that I can ford even with this truck. I idled across the low spot and proceeded to the range.There was a reason that I had taken the truck instead of the prius.....

Upon leaving the range after resetting the pumps , I had a choice: either go back the way I had come, or try the other way. As there is another low spot that might actually be worse, and as I knew the water level along the route I had come, I went back the way I had entered.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the same red monte carlo that had turned behind me....he had made it almost all the way across the 100' pond across the road.

Almost.

He was sitting in about 2 feet of muddy water. (in the center of the road).

I was able to get beside him, and I told him I would turn around and push him out of the water with the truck.

I did. I thought about leaving him there, but figured he might drown or something.

Got him to the higher point, and got out to make sure that he had a cell phone and could call a tow truck.


The first words out of his mouth were "life just keeps fucking me in the ass...I can't get ahead....it's always something like this which gets me...."

I replied that he might want to think about where the blame lied, as he had seen me drive into the water, and had known how deep the water was. much too deep for his car.

His reply? "I figured if you could do it, I could"

Truck.....7 foot tall, air intake at 51 inches 34 inch tall tires...car at what??? 20 inches? 25 inch tires... Diesel, with no coils to short versus gas with easily shorted spark system. I think he locked up a cylinder, 'cause the car wouldn't even turn over, much less start or run. Water is, after all, non-compressible. If he's lucky, it didn't bend any engine parts.

Fool. I told him that stupid should hurt so that the lesson would be better learned, then left as he began to get steamed up.

Look: Stupid SHOULD hurt. At best, he ingested enough water to lock his engine...at worst, he damaged it badly. He's looking at a hundred bucks at a minimum, plus the tow....Lots more if he bent a rod.

I bet it'll cost him a pretty penny. And I bet that he is incapable of learning either.

But he did it to himself.  Bet he blames someone else though. I wonder if the stupid hurt enough. 

Chasing me away

Not that I intended to vote for Dick Lugar anyway, but the last few days.weeks have made me sure that I don't want him as my representative to Congress.

A few weeks ago, I received a couple of calls from earnest folks supposedly wanting to solicit my opinion for a poll.

Supposedly...... 6 times they have called, each one a variation of the "poll" thing..

They used this lie to get the time to tell me how "conservative" Dick Lugar is....as if I could not see from his record that just the opposite is true.  The last 2 times, I simply asked....Is this a political call for Dick? And when they said yes, I hung up after requesting that they not call me again..

Apparently, they think all of his voters have the memory of a mouse as well as the intelligence of a gnat.

(that may well be true, as he has been elected 6 times...each time with no opposition to speak of).

 And I am not terribly enamored of his opponent, Mr Mourdock.....But his single winning point that He.  Isn't.  Dick.  Lugar.

However, today (Sunday), I received a call from an earnest volunteer..(again)..at a time guaranteed to disturb what little serenity I enjoy.  Again, a call for me to vote for Dick...despite the fact that I have requested (via voice and email) that he and his volunteers stop calling me.. And he tried to keep my attention by deception (again)....I find this offensive..(I am on the Do Not Call list , but isn't it interesting that the politicians who formed that wonderful, unenforced bit of legislation exempted themselves from it?) This harassment is enough to make me consider taking action that I cannot  describe here, for fear of a visit from the Secret Service or some other agency very angry...angry enough to decide to NEVER vote for him. I actually felt sorry afterwards for yelling into the phone....


All Dick's campaign is doing is guaranteeing that, should Richard Mourdock drop dead of a heart attack or suffer some other debilitating malady, I will vote for whomever else opposes Dick. (but that was already a foregone conclusion anyway...)

What is interesting is the desperation from his campaign....

(desperation..... linking The Opponent with Obama...Surprised Hitler isn't in there somewhere)

Perhaps had he ever bothered to find out what his constituents wanted/felt they needed/wished for in legislation, he'd not be in the pickle he is in now. But then again, he hasn't lived here in like 20+ years.

What we are witnessing is the same sort of desperation we see each time an old-guard politician finds out that once someone can muster up the resources to run against him, the dinosaur loses. He can't run on his past record, because it doesn't look very good once it is examined in the light of day....All the power he/she brokers in the Legislative Body which he has been a member of cannot shield him from the wrath of his constituents...no matter what spin is put upon it by his political machine.

Nice try, Dick....But you'll (hopefully) lose...

Because you are running against a terrible opponent....Yourself.

That new shooter smile....

I spent the bulk of yesterday helping teach an NRA First Steps shooting course.

The range I belong to charges only for course materials and ammunition, and we had a good turnout.

At the end of the class, after each shooter had used up 200 rounds of .22L.R., I brought out several firearms and 250 rounds or so of assorted .38, 9MM and .45ACP in order to let the class members shoot larger firearms, if they so desired.

They did.

Everyone enjoyed shooting the larger calibers.

At the end of the class, several of the students offered me money for the ammo they had expended.

I replied that the smiles on their faces more than made the cost of the ammo worthwhile.

And it did.
It was worth a Saturday, and a few hours at the reloading bench to see the smiles and the confidence in their faces.

Besides, I owe those folks who started me on that path, who did so for nothing, who donated THEIR time, and THEIR ammo and firearms. Now I know why they did it.

The smiles make it all worthwhile.

Death penalty

Is too good for the man who started the chain of events leading to the death of Bob Strait after the beating and rape of his 85 year old wife.

I, personally, cannot think of an appropriate punishment.

And I have a very vivid imagination. I can come up with all sorts of slow, painful, agonizing, drawn out ways for a man to die.

None of them are adequate punishment. None.

But I can come up with ways that would be a good start.

Yep

Read THIS. All of it. Follow the links.

(I may not agree entirely with Og, but he is hard to argue with.)

Borepatch has it right. And, while I may not think that Obama is going to be the train wreck in his second term that most folks feel it will be, I also believe that Romney's core values are not that different from Obama's....and are indeed as far from many of us as Obama's are.

Romney will be as bad a train wreck as Obama, just on a different set of tracks, going in a different direction. With a diesel locomotive rather than an electric one.

I fear for the future of this country....Obama's vision of our future is frightening, and Romney's may be worse. At best, Romney's is no better, just a different path in the descent into hell.

Aratae's suggestion may be the best one.

For the next four years, this country is screwed. What we have to do is to decide what happens after that.

And Borepatch may have the right of it.

Fame.......

I know some of the folks in this video...

So I thought I'd give them part of their "15 minutes of fame"

Y'all look good.

It's better than

"Fuck You"

Or

"Bend Over"

or

"It won't hurt too much"

or

"We are gonna take this country down"

or.

 "We are gonna get you, Whitey"

or:

"Socialism for all!"


instead, we get:


"Forward"

This oughta suck worse than "Hope and Chains Change"

Not good...not good at all.

Seems Romney is cozying up to another east coast big government quasi-Republican guy....

One who can't run for Mayor again.

Oh, and he is as Anti-Gun as Romney was when he was governor of Massachusetts

Wonder if  they talked about the Vice Presidency?

Scary

Link tip: trainwreck

Someone needs to think about taking the entire RNC leadership for a long walk on a short pier...holding lengths of chain.

Still think Romney is the guy?  He's likely to be worse.

I can't argue with any of

THIS

You may disagree, but I don't.

half done

Finished my class for the NRA pistol instructor certification.

Has taken a fair amount of my time.

The things I do for my gun club.