It was the right thing for it’s time… but it was never more than a transitional step toward the US military finally figuring out what other nations already knew…that it doesn’t matter one way or the other.

Whatever rump you range or muff you dive… you follow the rules of conduct and everything will be fine.

Oh… and about the marines, who some suggest are more against this… it really depends on the way it’s presented. If people are asked to confront something that makes them uncomfortable… they will answer to what is familiar and comfortable.

However, if you get a bunch of marines in an assembly and ask them if would be willing to fight next to a soldier that is homosexual who wants to kill the Islamic scum that would cut our throats, enslave our women and bring our nation to it’s knees… then you will hear a rousing yell of affirmation that would rip the roof off.

I bought this shirt from a local Head shop. I walked in and saw this groovy shirt, snatched it up and sauntered proudly to the cashier…one aged person of the long haired variety. As I freed my plastic to purchase my booty, said long hair commented that they are a “cash only” establishment… nodding sagely, I collected my minions and drove to the nearest ATM machine, which was in a corner Walgreens drug store.

After paying the small homage fee for the use of the convenient box, I collected my duckets and migrated back to the home of my soon to be adopted shirt. With a fistful of dollars, I bought the shirt… and as the long haried one was bagging my wares, I commented that it was very convenient to have an ATM a block away as the nearest bank was about a mile distant… to which the unwashed one snarled “Dude, you just paid a fee to get your own money! And you paid it to …A BANK” (said with a snarl best kept for child rapists).

I was in shock at the stupidity of what I had just heard. Here I was…enriching this dirty hippy and helping to put bread on his table and a roof over his deadhead, and he is giving me grief for paying a bank 3 dollars for providing access to my money by installing and maintaining a very expensive piece of telecommunication banking hardware in a local drugstore! That 3 dollar fee put food on the table for that technician who works on that machine which is allowing me to buy this shirt and keep this dirty hippy in business. Look around you, oh dirty hippy… see the houses and the shops and the organic foodstores… and know this… there would be none of these things without “banks!”.

… and I wouldn’t have to have done so if you ponied up a card machine in the first place!!!

Geez…

Well, anyway… I had a great Halloween…

IMO, it is not even defensible by the left that Barry’s entire Ivory Tower view is anything other than a fraud and suicidal. The academia mind-set of world affairs is WRONG. It ignores first principles…which is not harmony and social “progress”. It is national defense which allows all the virtues of an enlightened society. That “enlightenment” doesn’t create the foreign policies. It is teh security of a strong foreign policy that allows the luxury of academic fancies.

This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

Hollywood churned out dozens of in-the-trenches, pro-America extravaganzas such as Wake Island and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo while World War II was being fought.

But the portrayal of the U.S. military during its current engagements has been more subdued and even critical.

Game makers have stepped into the breach. And they’re making huge bucks crafting patriotic entertainment pieces for which the movie industry used to be famous.

Most notable of the new virtual epics is Modern Warfare 2 and its predecessor, both from California-based publisher Activision Blizzard Inc.

Activision’s top executive made it clear where the company stands when he announced an endowment to help military veterans find jobs.

“Business leaders have an opportunity to … reverse an alarming trend of not recognizing the sacrifices made by the men and women of our military service,” CEO Robert Kotick said.

Ah… the good old days.

"I want my two dollars!"

The days when creepy dead kids would float  outside your window, whispering to you to open it and invite them in.

Back then, you were pretty damn sure that seriously f*cked up sh*t would go down if you opened that window. Hell, I had nightmares about that evil kid, and every scratch sound from my window kept me up at night. In those day vamps were things to be terrified of. They would murder you… and becoming one meant the REAL you… your mind and soul… would be destroyed and replaced by an evil spirit that would likely kill everyone you loved. Your mom, your wife… your kids.(even babies)

Now we have euro-trash metrosexuals AT BEST… and sparkly emo angst-wussies at the bottom of the genre barrel. And they are being sold as the thing we all aspire to. Now, I’m not a stick-in-the-mud.(how many hyphens can I put in this post? I-Don’t-know!!!) I totally dug Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat, even if both of them made me long for the taste of a fresh taco, what with all the Sausage Lover’s Pizza Anne was selling me.

But, enough is enough. We NEED the return of the Vampire as The Thing To Drive A POINTED STICK INTO! We need Sarah Michelle Gellar in all her golden glory, using her awesome slayer powers of shapely splendor to drive a few stakes into the hearts of the entire cast of Vampire Diaries… and set fire to Edward and his band of fruit f*ckers.

I *heart* Penny Arcade.

And now… cry for the lost vampires of old.

an article in the UK newspaper Guardian  by Simon Jenkins (Thursday 12/11/2009) speaks out against the over-criminalization of Britain in an effort to “be tough on crime”.

Quote: Only the Americans among civilised democracies love prisons more than the British. For imprisonment Britain leads Europe, jailing convicts for non-violent crimes that most countries handle with non-custodial sentences, or do not regard as crimes at all. Thousands of British offences are for the “crime” of not obeying a government official.

Hat-tip to Wendy McElroy.

Reason TV interviews the authors of If We Can Put a Man on the Moon: Getting Big Things Done in Government in this 10 minute video.   The book is a serious analysis of the failures of government action from conception to design to implementation.

In a long string of embarrassing e-mail exchanges, CRU scientists discuss with friendly outside colleagues, including Penn State University’s Michael Mann, how to manipulate the data they want to show the world, and how to hide the often-flawed data they don’t. In one exchange, they discuss the “trick” of how to “hide the decline” in global temperatures since the 1960s. Again and again, the researchers don’t object to just inconvenient truths but also inconvenient truth-tellers. They contemplate and orchestrate efforts to purge scientists and journals who won’t sing from the same global-warming hymnal.

In one instance, Phil Jones, the CRU director, says a scientific journal must “rid (itself) of this troublesome editor,” who happened to publish a problematic paper. In another, Jones says we “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

These documents reveal the trick behind how they hide the dissent. Climate-change activists often dismiss critics by noting that the skeptics haven’t offered their arguments in peer-reviewed literature. Hence why they work so hard to keep dissenters out of the literature! Indeed, whatever the final verdict on the CRU’s shenanigans, two things are already firmly established by even a sympathetic reading of these documents.

And when you loss the Daily Show…

]]> http://abjectgeekery.com/geekery/2009/09/just-the-facts-barry/feed/ 0 http://abjectgeekery.com/geekery/2009/08/can-you-truly-be-recession-proof/ http://abjectgeekery.com/geekery/2009/08/can-you-truly-be-recession-proof/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:13:08 +0000 MrElectro http://abjectgeekery.com/geekery/?p=369 Over the last few jobs I have had (over the last 20+ years) I have been one that has taken on as much responsibility as I can. When I got hired on as a full time employee where I work now, my boss, the president of the company, hadn’t had a vacation in about 7 years. My goal was to take enough responsibility away from him so that he would be able to take a vacation without having to worry that something would go wrong while he was gone. My philosophy is, the President of the company should only be doing the things that only he can do. If he is doing something I can do, then I will do it, or get someone else to do it for me. After I worked here for two years, he took a one week cruise. Mission accomplished!

The last few jobs I have had, I have increased in responsibility and pay faster than anyone else in the history of those companies. When you take on more responsibility than you are required to, you make yourself an asset to the company. Essentially, you create job security.

When the recession hit, my company had to reduce the number of employees they had in order to cut costs. Definitely not an unfamiliar action in today’s world. However, since I spent my time taking on responsibility and pushing my comfort zone way out there, I have become indispensable. I would venture to guess that I would be one of the last people to be laid off because I do so much for this company.

People need to realize that they do control their destiny. Things don’t just happen, unless you let them.

I have been working on getting debt free for a while now. You see, while I have a good work ethic, I have shown laxity in my finances. I wish I would have found someone like Dave Ramsey when I was in high school, instead of just a year or so ago. Although what he preaches is common sense, sometimes you just have to be hit upside the head with a 2×4 of common sense before you get it.

Now, making myself indispensable with the company I work for sounds like some really good job security, right? What happens, though, if the company goes out of business? That is the possibility I am facing now. How’s that for a 2×4 of common sense. It doesn’t matter how indispensable you are if the company no longer exists. That’s why you need to be debt free, and have an emergency fund in place. Once you have indispensability, no debt and an emergency fund, then you are “recession proof”.