I'm pissed again

A Concerned Citizen

2008-04-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

After long and serious thought, I have decided to endorse Senator John McCain for President. I have always voted for the person and have not voted for anyone because some political party was telling me who I should vote for.

We all know the choices by now and, that said, I do believe that the process of selecting a chief executive is deeply flawed. The words "money" and "special interests" come to mind, among many others.

Here's the way I see it:

Barack Obama, you are a fine public speaker. You are also an extremely liberal Senator from the State of Illinois , which has a long and rich history of political corruption of the first magnitude. You are indeed a child of that system.

You have finally insulted my intelligence far beyond my capacity to tolerate your insults. It has nothing at all to do with your skin color. As a matter of fact, it would be so COOL to finally have an African-American for President. What a great statement that would be to the entire world that we are indeed the greatest country on earth!

But, unfortunately, General Colin Powell is not running, and YOU are NOT the man for this job!

Barack baby, you want me to believe that you have never heard the sermons of your own pastor, the Right Reverend "G-- D--- America" Jeremiah Wright. It is a matter of record that this has been your church for over 20 years. It is a matter of record that you were married there by this very pastor, and that your children were baptized there.

The good Reverend saw fit to visit Khadafy in Libya with you and to give a lifetime achievement award to Louis Farrakhan, of all people.

We have all now seen excerpts of his sermons all over the airwaves by now. And you have publicly stated that this man IS your "spiritual mentor".

BUT, your pastor is NOT the reason I am NOT voting for you. His words were disturbing enough, but it is your own HUGE church congregation, seen jumping, hooting and howling to his words in the background that disturb me the most. And please don't tell me you attended church there and never once heard a "discouraging word" in the 20 years you attended there. Don't tell me, that in addition to the good reverend, that you are now not having anything to do with all those other people seen hooting and howling out in the audience in the background of his fiery tirades.

Even Oprah Winfrey got disgusted and walked out. I am no Oprah fan, but still she did the right thing.

Now YOU look me in the eye and ask me to believe that you never heard such language in all the years you attended there! This is like me telling you that I attended dozens of Klan rallies and never once heard the "N" word. Yep. And Bill Clinton "did not inhale".

Yes, Mr. Obama, we all have friends who have said stupid things that embarrassed us, but NOW you have asked me to believe something that is so incredibly stupid that you are telling me that I am just stupid enough to believe you. THAT is the main reason that I will never vote for you. I am deeply sorry, that in a county teeming with enormously talented African Americans who would make a good President, that the political system has chosen YOU. You are a pathetic and plastic excuse for an American, who will not even salute the Flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. God forbid you ever get near the Oval Office.

Now, did I mention Bill Clinton?

AH YES! This brings us to MRS. WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, who this candidate really is, in spite of all the other names she may care to call herself. This "feminist" piece of work of course would like to be referred to as MS. and we all know who wears the pant suit in that family.

MS. Clinton, (sugar), it is just as depressing to realize that there are dozens of women who would also make great Presidents. But, fortunately, the horrible state of the selection process has selected YOU. Ms. Clinton, I'm sorry, but you could not tell the truth if we water boarded your worthless A--!

Still you play the role of the "embarrassed but dignified noble wife". What utter malarky! I am not voting for you for a world of reasons, but the main one is the same as my not voting for Senator Obama. You persistently insult my intelligence. It COULD be conceivably possible that you did not know about Monica Lewinsky, extremely remote, but possible if we stretch our imaginations a bit. But you turn around and then ask me to believe that you also did not know about Paula Jones and the legion of other women who were chewed up and spit out by your lecherous excuse for a husband. Puleese turn off this broken record !!!

But let's set aside your hubby's flagrant pecadillos. The real reason I will never vote for you is that I don't think the country can survive EIGHT MORE YEARS of Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Sandy Berger stuffing his socks with classified intelligence, Janet Reno's goon squad, and the myriad other corruptions that seem to stick to you like your ugly face. So our former President can't keep his d### in his pants. The REAL issue is that he committed perjury under oath when he lied about it and the pathetically-attempted coverup that followed.

Like you, he is totally incapable of telling the truth. He could not do it if you tortured him, and in voting for you, we would get the BOTH of you, all over again. The same folks who could have taken out Osama Bin Laden over 3,000 dead Americans ago !

And please stop telling me that you have "8 years of experience" to lead us. You were the freakin' first lady already, not the Commander in Chief. Jeez ! The sum of your "experience" is that of the most worrisome and incompetent meddling in the history of the White House. You even cursed your pitiful staff and the Secret Service agents who were and still are unfortunately charged with risking their lives to protect your worthless, thieving hide, and all at the expense of other people who have to work for a living.

Your single pathetic platform is to finance the illegal drugs, alcoholism and bad habits of the very lowest and most irresponsible freeloaders in America and to then "garnish the wages" (your own words) of every law-abiding and hard-working American to pay for it. This disaster you refer to as "Universal Health Care". Where have you been the last 30 years? Did you not see that socialism is a failure wherever it has been tried? Did you not notice that the Soviet Union has collapsed since it gave no reward to those who worked the hardest for the fruits of their own labors to pay for those who will not??

It is interesting to see all the dead bodies that you and your hubby have left in your wake. Suicides, mysterious deaths, cover-ups that make Richard Nixon look like a rank amateur. The utter contempt and unbelievable arrogance of some of your strongest supporters, most notably the recently resigned and disgraced Governor Eliot Spitzer, the epitome of hypocritical and malevolent arrogance gone wild, one of your most ardent, wealthy and powerful political supporters. A man the news media refuses to admit IS a "super delegate" in your own political machine, a fine example of your own "adopted" state of New York No wonder you moved there to run for Senator ! The environment there is perfect for the likes of you !

Yes, I would vote for a woman, but I will NOT vote for YOU !

Which leaves us with Senator John McCain.

John, you are a flawed man. You are a bit old, a bit looney, and you have a notoriously bad temper. This perfectly qualifies you, in my humble opinion, to lead us for the next eight years. I WANT your trembling hand on the nuclear button.

Think about it.

We have Kim Jong IL, Chavez and Ahmadenijad all running around like lunatics, threatening America and threatening to plunge the world into nuclear Armageddon. We have Putin and the Chinese blustering and rattling their sabres at us. I want John McCain in the Oval Office and I want him to be really pissed off at all these other nut jobs around the planet.

John, once you are elected, I want you to go into the Oval Office and throw one of your perfect FITS. Jump up and down and throw something through a plate glass window. Rip the drapes down and foam at the mouth a bit. And I want the whole thing on camera so that Ahmadinejad can see it. I want ALL of these "world leaders" to lay awake at night and to break out in a cold sweat every time they think of messing with the United States of America

I want the nuclear button sitting right next to the alarm clock on your night stand. I want pictures of this to be sent to Iran , Russia , China , Venezuela , Cuba , Libya , Syria , Pakistan , and those other a%$holes in the sheets, the Saudis.

On the domestic front, poor John did try and reach across the aisle to the opposition in a desperate effort to compromise and to get the Congress to do something. You may not agree with his efforts, but at least he TRIED. For all his efforts, all he got handed to him was his head in a basket. The liberals are pissed at him and the conservatives are pissed at him. Just my kinda guy.

I predict that John will select Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Good choice. I want a JEW whose memory of the Holocaust is still fresh in his mind and who is royally pissed off at all of these towel-headed morons in the Middle East to be the next in line if something should happen to John. Shalom, Vice President Joe. One heartbeat from the Oval Office.

Finally. John McCain knows on a most personal level what it is to suffer horrible torture for years and to see others die, right in front of you, for their love of America When you ask him about it, he will tell you that what he did was "nothing special". Even more incredibly, he states that ANY American who truly loves his country would do exactly the same as he did in that situation. You and I will have a hard time believing that, but the real point is that John McCain believes that about the "average American", and that, dear friends and neighbors, is why I will cast my one poor ballot for on election day for John McCain -- warts and all.

God Bless America,

A Concerned Citizen

House Hunting: Spiders In The Dark

2008-04-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Let me preface this story by telling you that I have no phobia's. Spiders, snakes, heights, the dark, etc. None of it bothers me. I have no unwarranted fears that I am aware of.

I went to look at a bank repo house yesterday afternoon. It's been for sale since early November and I suspect the owners or previous tenants must have abandoned it sometime late last summer. They left behind a lot of junk and old furniture. I don't believe the electricity has been on in the last 6 months. When we looked into the kitchen sink, there was an amazing spider web stretching across the entire sink area. It was milky white and extremely thick. You almost couldn't see through it. It was similar to the web a wolf spider makes, but on a much grander scale. The desiccated bodies of flies and other unfortunate spiders lay scattered about. It was in the mid 60's yesterday, but inside the house it was about 10 to 15 degrees cooler so it was a bit cool for the spider to be stirring.

I decided to go inspect the basement. Armed with the realtor's small, weak flashlight, I slowly descended the debris littered stairs into the darkness. Upon reaching the bottom I panned the flashlight across the floor to discover that the debris had reached the first step. Unsure of the risk involved in stepping into it, I paused to examine more of my surroundings. As I moved the flashlight across walls and ceiling, a scene that could have come straight from the movie Arachnophobia was slowly revealed in the dim light. The entire ceiling and every crevice and crack in the walls were covered in layer upon layer of spiderwebs just like the one in the kitchen sink. In places you could barely make out the floor joists, the webs were so thick.

Ducking low to avoid brushing any of the ceiling dwellers constructions, I carefully stepped onto the debris and from there to the concrete floor of the basement. Continuing on into the dark reveled more and more webs. To my left, the basement wall opened at about shoulder height to reveal dirt floored crawlspaces stretching off into the darkness. A musty and dirt covered couch hid in a dark corner ahead and to my left. What little light in the basement other than that provided by my pitiful flashlight, came from a broken basement window behind another massive pile of broken furniture and assorted junk ahead of me to the right.

Cautiously moving to the most open area of the basement, I glanced nervously to the ominous couch on my left with the dirt floored crawlspace cave opening above it, to the massive debris piles forming in front and to the right of me. Far ahead dark shapes and shadows loomed. Looking upwards provided a reminder that hundreds, perhaps thousands of spiders had found this basement an inviting place to spend the winter. I began to wonder what else may have chosen to take up residence here.

This was surely something straight out of a horror movie or an episode of the X-files. This is the part where you're screaming at the person to get out of there because they're about to be killed or eaten in the most horrendous way. The air was still, the silence deafening. This was the point at which I wanted 2 things. One was a bigger, stronger flashlight. The second was a pistol.

Of course this wasn't a horror movie, it was a house showing. My biggest real concern was encountering a pissed off raccoon (or perhaps several hundred hungry rats). I decided to retreat and not return without a bigger flashlight.

Will the President Defend the Constitution?

2008-01-08T09:18:00.001-08:00

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." That's the oath of office for the President of the United States. Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. S

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Firearms Refresher course

2007-11-14T09:35:00.000-08:00

1. An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.

2. A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.

3. Colt: The original point and click interface.

4. Gun control is not about guns; it's about control.

5. If guns are outlawed, can we use swords?

6. If guns cause crime, then pencils cause misspelled words.

7. Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.

8. If you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

9. Those who trade liberty for security have neither.

10. The United States Constitution (c)1791. All Rights Reserved.

11. What part of "shall not be infringed" do you not understand?

12. The Second Amendment is in place in case the politicians ignore the others.

13. 64,999,987 firearms owners killed no one yesterday.

14. Guns only have two enemies; rust and politicians.

15. Know guns, know peace, know safety. No guns, no peace, no safety.

16. You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive.

17. 911: Government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer.

18. Assault is a behavior, not a device.

19. Criminals love gun control; it makes their jobs safer.

20. If guns cause crime, then matches cause arson.

21. Only a government that is afraid of its citizens tries to control them.

22. You have only the rights you are willing to fight for.

23. Enforce the gun control laws we ALREADY have; don't make more.

24. When you remove the people's right to bear arms, you create slaves.

25. The American Revolution would never have happened with gun control.

"Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who do not."

~ Thomas Jefferson

Interesting Perspective

2007-09-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

I was sent this in an email and believe in the perspective, instead of passing this along in email I have elected to share it in this blog.

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War 2 owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
Very few people were true Nazis he said, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools.
So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.
We are told again and again by experts and talking heads that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.
	Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill.
It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority the silent majority is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia comprised Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people.
The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population, it was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War 2 was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were peace loving?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awake one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, can contribute to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on!! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.

Our Dog Bear Died: Dog Food -- A must for Dog owners

2007-08-26T08:34:00.001-07:00

I'm a somewhat skeptical person by nature, so much so that I'm often accused of being cynical and negative about things. I'm really not all that cynical and I'm not really negative, but try to keep a healthy amount of skepticism in my thinking. Yet, in spite of this I continue to be surprised by the things I believed and the groups and organizations that I've trusted. The most recent splash of caustic reality I've had to endure relates to dog food.

We recently had a dog die of bloat which is something that I had never heard of even though it is a very common and very lethal condition that afflicts large breed dogs. You can read more about bloat here: http://freezone.ssan.com/Pet_Care/Bloat_in_Dogs/index.html During my investigation of bloat and it's causes, I learned that diet can have an impact on it. Since we still have 2 large breed dogs and 1 medium breed dog, I began investigating dog food and what I learned was shocking.

First off, please keep in mind that there is a lot of contradictory information about dog nutrition available on the Internet. Also, every brand of dog food devotes several web pages to explaining why their food is the best food available on the market. Even the people who talk strictly about dog's nutritional needs often disagree with each other and push their own feeding plan. What I've done in the past week is read a lot about dog nutrition and dog food and I've made some of my own conclusions about the subject. I've decided which arguments to believe and which to ignore. I think that I've struck a pretty fair balance and I think I've made some sound decisions. Here are the conclusions I've drawn:

Dogs are carnivores by nature. As such, their food should be meat based. All dry dog food will have some type of grain or cereal filler in it, but you need to limit the type and amount. Corn and wheat should be avoided as much as possible as they can not be digested by dogs and thus provide no value. They can also actually cause problems in many dogs. Soy products and brewers rice should also be avoided. Many people will tell you that dogs need to eat a diet containing 30% protein and 18% crude fat minimum. While that may be true to a certain extent, I think that the actual ingredients in the food are far more important that the final percentages. A very good food that is 24% / 14% is going to be better for your dog than a 30% / 20% food full of corn, wheat, and soy. A lot of people also tell you to avoid meat ingredients called "meal" and to avoid the meat "by products" as well since they are generally scraps and you don't know everything that's in them. I don't really agree with that so much. Sure, whole, human grade meat is better but come on, so what if there's some feathers and beaks. It's been cooked and it's better than another grain in the food. Besides, my dog would eat all of the feathers if it found a dead chicken and so would yours.

So the quest begins to find a meat based dog food with no corn or wheat fillers, no soy, and preferably no brewers rice. Keep in mind that when reading the ingredient list on a bag of dog food that they are listed in descending order by weight. In other words, the main ingredient is first. If you focus on the top five or six ingredients, you get a pretty good picture of what the food is made of.

I chose the food that I've been feeding the dogs for the past 11 years based on what the professional breeder I bought my first dog from was feeding all his dogs. I assumed that it was good food and it certainly cost more than most of the other foods . Where was that skepticism when I needed it? It turns out the food I've been feeding the dogs was horrible and next to worthless nutritionally speaking. In fact, I've learned that almost all commercially available dog food is seriously lacking in one way or another. I have been feeding my dogs Pedigree. It turns out that it's main ingredient and 2 of it's top three is corn! Pedigree is in fact no better than Alpo or Old Roy, although it is significantly more expensive.

The next shocking thing I discovered was that the "Veterinarian recommended" brands, Science Diet, Iams, and Eukanuba are also a bunch of garbage. They are only marginally better than generic store brands and even that is debatable. In fact some formulations of Wal-Mart's high end store brand, "Maxximum" are probably a little better than the three veterinarian brands. I really feel sorry for anyone who's been paying the exorbitant prices for those dog foods. Here's the first 6 ingredients in Science Diet: Chicken, Ground Whole Grain Corn, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Ground Whole Grain Wheat, Chicken By-Product Meal, Soybean Meal. Did I mention that soy is one of the worst things that you can feed a dog? I'll give Science Diet some credit for using whole grains, but this is still a grain based food and corn, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans are not things that a dog needs.

So now I've told you that you can't buy good dog food at the grocery store and you can't buy good dog food at the vet's office. So now what? Well, if you listen to certain folks on the internet, you might start tossing raw chicken breasts to your dogs and maybe an egg or two now and then. I must admit that I was tempted to give it a try, but that seems a little extreme. I'm sure there are a lot of dog owners out there doing quite a good job feeding their dogs a raw food diet, but I don't think that's for me. There's got to be something wrong with a meal plan referred to as BARF (Bones And Raw Food).

So I began searching for dog food recommendations. Recommendations are few and far between for dog food and if you just read the ingredients you'll understand why. I found a lot of recommendations for off brands like Eagle Pak and Bil Jacs, but when I checked their ingredients they weren't much better than Maxximum. Also, home delivery of those foods was extremely expensive and let's be realistic. Money is going to play a factor. Another food that is often recommended is Innova and initially, I thought I'd found the answer. Innova's top six ingredients are turkey, chicken, chicken meal, barley, brown rice, and potatoes. That's pretty good! The first three ingredients are meat and while there are 3 grains, none of them seem like really bad ones. However, when I look at the "Large Breed" formulation of Innova, I notice that it contains citric acid. Citric acid has been linked to bloating in large breed dogs. So Innova is putting one of the worst ingredients for a large dog in their large breed formulation!

That's another thing to keep in mind. Just because one variety of a company's dog food is pretty good, that doesn't mean another will. In fact there are often incredibly wild variations in ingredients from one formulation to another. Just one more thing to confuse you.

So I still haven't found anything that's any better than Maxximum which is about as good as Eukanuba: Chicken, Corn Meal, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Ground Whole Grain Barley, Chicken By-Product Meal, Fish Meal.

Enter the feed store. Despite many Internet warnings to never buy dog food from a feed store, I decided to ask a co-worker who also owns a feed store what types of dog food she had. Amongst the medium grade foods and a couple really bad foods, I found that she sold a real gem: "Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul". Yeah, I agree it's a really lame name, but the ingredients are: Chicken, turkey, chicken meal, ocean fish meal, cracked pearled barley, whole grain brown rice. That's pretty good! It also has some probiotics added as well. (That's hippie-talk for good digestive bacteria).

I'll be getting my first bag of the Chicken Soup on Monday and I'll be transitioning the dogs to it over the next week or two. It's a little more expensive ($25 for 35 lbs versus $18 for 40 lbs), but being better food, the dogs don't actually have to eat as much of it, so I don't think I'll see much of a difference. Also, that's still a lot cheaper than the vet brands and the stuff you'll find at a pet store.

I'm sure that there's a lot of other good dog foods out there. In fact Innova's regular adult formulation is pretty good, just stay away from the Large breed variety. We'll see how the dog's do on the new food. If you're currently feeding your dog a store variety of food, I would certainly recommend that you at least check the ingredients. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to help. There's a lot more stuff I learned in the past week that I haven't gotten around to sharing, but this blog's getting long enough as it is.

Stay tuned for my cat food evaluation in the next couple weeks.

You can not say Rape in A Rape Trial?

2007-07-17T08:20:00.000-07:00

Can you believe this nonsense?

A Nebraska judge bans the word rape from his courtroom.
An accuser can be prohibited from using the word rape on the witness stand

Usually we leave it up to the linguists and philosophers to muse on the crazy relationship between words and their meanings. In the law, words—the important ones, at least—are defined narrowly, and judges, lawyers, and jurors are trusted to understand their meanings. It's precisely because language is so powerful in a courtroom that we treat it so reverently.

Yet a Nebraska district judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, suddenly finds himself in a war of words with attorneys on both sides of a sexual assault trial. More worrisome, he appears to be at war with language itself, and his paradoxical answer is to ban it: Last fall, Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004.

Safi's first trial resulted in a hung jury last November when jurors deadlocked 7-5. Responding to Cheuvront's initial language ban—which will be in force again when Safi is retried in July—prosecutors upped the ante last month by seeking to have words like sex and intercourse barred from the courtroom as well. The judge denied that motion, evidently on the theory that there would be no words left to describe the sex act at all. The result is that the defense and the prosecution are both left to use the same word—sex—to describe either forcible sexual assault, or benign consensual intercourse. As for the jurors, they'll just have to read the witnesses' eyebrows to sort out the difference.