Rush Limbaugh Phony Soldier

On my way to Sonic this morning I was listening to some talk radio show. It was whatever is on 105.3 in the AM. They brought up the Rush Limbaugh scandal, which has to do with him calling any soldier that disagrees with the situation in Iraq a “phony soldier.”

This peaked my interest so I kept listening. According to the show Rush had made this disparaging remark right on the heels of the General Patraeus scandal. The show proceeded to rail on Rush and brought up how the response from Rush that this was taken out of context was nothing more than a spin job.

So, now I am really curios as to what is going on. They then played a very small clip from one of his shows and he did indeed use the term “phony soldier.” So now I’m a bit irritate and somewhat incredulous, but I figure there has to be more to the story or that I should at least investigate it some.

On the talk show, one guy called in and tried to explain the situation and was quickly dismissed and cut off. The hosts of the show would hear none of it.

It would really make me mad if he said these terrible thing. I believe that as an American you are entitled to not only your opinion but the right to speak your opinion. AND, that it does not make you unpatriotic to disagree with something. If you are over there fighting for me and the right to speak my mind, you certainly have the right to speak yours.

In any case, I get back to the house and am sucking down my elixir of caffeine, cola, an sugar also known as the Nectar of the Gods, or Dr. Pepper as it’s more commonly known and start doing a quick search on this.

What I find out in my investigation is that the Media Matters for America group flaunted portions of a transcript of the Limbaugh show that fairly purposely would mislead one to the conclusion that Rush did indeed say these things in negative light. But even MSNBC admitted that they researched the exact transcript of the radio show and that what Rush said and what Media Matters reported are not the same thing.

In short, Rush was referring to a specific person that had lied about their service record and called him, as well as anyone else that did the same thing, a phony soldier.

What really irks me is not only the typical partisan slander of one group to another, but the media’s quick attention to blow the issue out of proportion without investigating it to any real extent.

If a sap like me can take 10 minutes to figure this out, why can’t someone else? Perhaps we hear what we want to hear.

Lazy Scammers

You know, I don’t mind the occasional scammer. They are fun to mess with. In fact, there are several web sites dedicated to seeing how much time you can waste for these people. Some of them are pretty funny as they get the scammers to take humiliating photos of themselves in an attempt to prove their sincerity and that they are legitimate.

However, the other scammers you don’t see much of are the ones that pretend to be some hot chick from another country looking for the love of their life. Normally, I think this is pretty funny as they don’t speak English very well and have a very hard time communicating. This morning I was toying with one that found me (who knows how) and finally got “her” to send me some pics. How lazy can you be? The least you could do is REMOVE the portion of the pic that advertises the web site you stole it from.

At least they didn’t try to tell me that was really them and that they were the model and those photos just happened to be on the web site. Of course, that would have required some thought and creativity to try to pull off a lie like that one.

What is the Balance?

Is it that we are here for an undefined moment of time, and in time? That we should "make the best of it" while we are here? That we should, perhaps, try to better the things around us? Or simply live in the moment and enjoy what we have before us?

I suppose these are questions that have been asked for thousands of years. And I am no different, other than I am not an ancient Roman philosopher.

Quite simply, I look at the moon with my neighbor and discuss the way we think things should be. That's not to say that we even believe everyone should live the way we do. But the simple thing to say, or ask, is "couldn't the world be a better place?"

Sweet Factory!

In this case literally! I was just on a job doing a wireless site survey for a company that I cannot acknowledge here. They wouldn’t let us take any pics out that even showed any equipment or the facilities. Let’s just say that they make ice cream and other cold treats in mass quantity!

I am not much of an ice-cream fan (I don’t like cold things on my teeth, and I don’t have a big sweet tooth), but this place was really neat. They produce about five or six major items or “lines” in the factory. I really enjoyed watching how all this stuff is made up close and personal. We were on the factory floor, hence the garb I am wearing such as the booties, smock, beard net, hair net, safety glasses and hard-hat. I think it would be pretty neat to be in engineering and design systems like they use there.

Most of the areas we worked in were at about 30 ~ 40 degrees. We only had to work in two areas that were kept at roughly 0-degrees. Let me tell you, when you are on a lift approximately 30 feet up in the air and the chillers are blowing directly on you that is some cold ass air!!! My co-worker was taking readings and I was just thinking “hurry up…hurry up….” As my beard net froze to my face and clothes because of the water vapor in my breath,

This was one of the neatest places I have seen in a long time and they kept things very clean! I was impressed with the whole process and how big the facilities were. A few quick observations:

Pallets (and I mean pallets) of 50-lb bags of sugar

A whole room called “the chocolate room”

50-gallon drums of peanuts on pallets.

Corn syrup stored in vats that were about 10 feet in diameter and went up two stories!

If you walked four times around the plant it was the equivalent of doing a 10k!!

They take delivery of milk each day by NINE semi’s trailers!!! That’s approximately 47,551 gallons of milk each day and it takes approximately 9,510 cows to produce that much milk!

And one of their production lines could produce up to 500 “items” per-hour!

You people eat way too much sweet treats! No wonder we are all a bunch of fat bastards!

Illegal Aren’t Stealing Jobs!!

Ok, maybe they aren’t stealing jobs but it’s made it a lot harder for anyone except an illegal alien to get a job here in Texas if you work in any type of manual labor trade.

If you just break it down to raw numbers it’s no wonder that non-illegal aliens can’t hardly get a job here. A few years ago Texas became a minority state. Somebody too scared to print factual information concluded that the minorities are now the majority in Texas. The Department of Homeland security estimates that there are 1.64 million illegal aliens in Texas. That doesn’t include the legal aliens or other resident and non-resident Hispanics.

Break it down even further and you will find that a lot of blacks don’t want the jobs that the Mexicans are doing. I don’t blame them! It’s hard work, and if you can make cash under the table it’s a lot better than busting your ass only to have the government take a huge chunk out of it at the end of the day.

One of my good friends moved back here from Alabama. He’s got about 10 years experience doing trim work (he helped me with my floors!) and he can’t find a job here. He’s been looking in the paper and going to construction sites. The Mexicans have made it very difficult for non-Mexicans to find employment. All the contractors and workers that we’ve talked to while out and about all say the same thing – “you can’t get a job here because of all the Mexicans.” Usually there are a few colorful expletives thrown in as well. Folks are not happy.

In Forbes I am reading about how everyone is whining and complaining about the new crack-downs on illegal aliens. “Oh….booohoooo! We are going to lose our workers and go broke.”

First off – if you hadn’t been hiring illegal aliens you wouldn’t be in this position.

Secondly – let’s take all the illegal aliens and remove them from this country. That’s 30-some-odd million illegal aliens. Do I think there is going to be some far-reaching economic impact? Of course. But it won’t last forever. Think of how many jobs would be available to good ‘ol US Citizens or at least people that are here legally!! Economics would eventually reset and equalizes wages. People, like my friend, could go back to regular and steady work. And you, Mr. employer, wouldn’t have to worry about the IRS, INS, or any one else coming down on your ass because you have a bunch of illegal aliens working for you.

But it can’t be one or two companies that are nailed and held responsible. That just won’t cut the mustard. We have to hold all companies accountable. And, we have to prevent them from starting up their own companies and seeking refuge by proliferating the underground economy. We have to get them out and we have to keep them out.

And what is up with the new proposals in congress to give in-state tuitions to illegal aliens? Out-of-state US Citizens have to pay a premium to go to school out of state and yet we are going to give illegal aliens the same relief on tuitions??? At what point do we finally put OUR country first?

New Floors!

Over the last week I was juggling putting in new floors and getting work done all at the same time, but finally it’s all about to come together.
My friend, Droid, is up from Alabama and looking for work. He does carpentry and trim work and so it was an excellent opportunity for me to have some help putting the floors in and giving him a place to stay and putting a few bucks in his pocket.

Needless to say, he did an excellent job on all the detailed work with measurements and trim. I couldn’t have done a job like that, and it’s looking great!

Trimming things throughout the hallways took a long time, but the main body of the floor went pretty quick.
The floor is a true tongue-and-groove hardwood maple. It’s glued down to the slab with some pretty heavy-duty polyurethane glue that pretty much makes you high just looking at the bucket.

Stripping the carpet and padding out took a few hours. But we took about a week getting the flooring in with the majority of the time spent on those tedious trim pieces.

The transitions from the hardwood to the carpet is in, but I’m waiting on a piece of wood to go from the hardwood to the tile due to the height difference. I could have gotten a 6-foot piece of transition, but I needed 10 ½ for my front entry way. Not only that, but all the shops had the cheap laminate crap. The ones I have in, now, and the stuff on order, is a solid piece of maple. It just has to be cut and lacquered before installation.

So that’s about it….but like many projects, it escalated. Because the floor has a gap we had to get some shoe-molding and install it. Bling let me borrow is air nailer and that made quick work of that particular part of the project (Thanks Bling!). That also meant caulking and painting the baseboards. That was OK, because the ones in the kitchen needed it from the tile job.

This little guy ended up getting stuck to the wet paint. I could just imagine him thinking “what the fuck do I do now?” I thought he was dead and would come apart when I peeled him off the paint but he started twitching so I took him outside and let him go. I never saw him again, so I don’t know if he made it but there is a nice gecko imprint on my closet baseboards, now. No point in re-painting it. It just adds charm.

Done!

Now the problem is that I had to get rid of my old Oak stereo cabinet and replace it. So I have new one of those on order….and as long as I was doing that, how about a new CD rack to hold all of my CD’s and the DVD’s that used to be in the old cabinet? Maybe I’ll have it all wrapped up next week. I hope so!

I’ll post one or two more pics once I get everything put back together. For now, though, I am just really excited that the house is coming together this year. I have some new furniture, new tile floor in the kitchen, new hardwoods in the common areas, and my brother in law was installing sun-screens as I left to get on my flight.

Drama and Stripper Chicks

I had to fly out to Maryland today. No big deal, but I was woken up at 4:00am. Hopper was calling me and needed help. No, he wasn’t in jail….and I knew better than to think he would call me needing a ride because he was too drunk.

Somehow, he had ended up at the gas station a few miles away from my house with two chicks and one motorcycle. Unless you get really creative, you can’t get three people on a bike, and certainly not in a way that wouldn’t get you pulled over by the local po-po’s.

I end up getting out of bed and driving over there and sure enough, two chicks…one bike. One of the chicks was pretty upset. Apparently, the guy she was riding with took her to a park and tried to force himself on her. When she wouldn’t give it up he took her to the gas station and dumped her off. She got some bad pipe-burns on her leg from the bike.

There is always two sides to every story, though, and it certainly sounds like she was all over this guy prior to the incident. Does that justify forcing yourself on someone? Not at all, but there is obviously more to the story than meets the eye.

We all came back to my house and woke up ‘Droid. Or rather, he was already awake. So we stayed up until they could get another ride back to N. Dallas. Typical stripper chicks. Drama, drama, drama….. the one was pretty upset, but had no problems showing us various parts of her body while explaining the whole ordeal.

“Did you get a look at her pussy?”

“umm….yeah, who didn’t?”

And for her, it was all about her….. she was fishing for a ton of affirmation that she was good looking, etc. etc. I couldn’t deal with a chick like that for too long. Maybe a few hours.

Give me a beer, I’m going back to bed because I have a flight to catch…..

INS Crawls up Guys Ass!

A friend of mine does fairly consistent contract work with a guy that we’ll call “Festus” for lack of a better name. Well Festus has been hiring illegal aliens for years as crews for the jobs he does. Sure, he gets paperwork on them so he can feign innocents, but he knew they were illegal aliens.

Festus also supports allowing more open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. It’s all an effort to keep his costs low so that he can put more money in his pockets. He’s the same kind of person that complains about rising costs, taxes, etc.

Not too long ago, Festus had his crew working at a government in the Metroplex. Well, one day the feds came and hauled off Festus’s van, with his tools and Mexicans in it. All but one of the Mexicans didn’t come back as they were illegal.

Needless to say the IRS and Feds were all over him demanding records, tax records, etc. He wasn’t very happy about it, but it looked like it was finally over.

Just recently, the INS has started crawling up his ass and investigating him, too! Well, I say screw him!!! I hope they give him such a hard time that he never thinks about hiring another illegal alien again!

It’s amazing to me that the same people who favor this complain when their world is negatively impacted by having so many people flood into the country.

Remember 9/11!!!

Yesterday I intentionally didn’t post about 9/11, but I have not forgotten. I haven’t forgotten sitting in front of my TV with my jaw on the floor. I haven’t forgotten visiting NYC when the airports opened back up. I haven’t forgotten the people that I talked to there that had lost a piece of themselves. I haven’t forgotten the little kids that I met that would never see their mom’s or dad’s again. I haven’t forgotten conversations I had with people that were in or near the towers when it happened. I haven’t forgotten the people that did this or what their objectives were, and still are. And most importantly, I haven’t forgotten the thousands of people that lost their lives and that for a brief moment in time, America came together to mourn and heal.

More Global Warming Dumbasses!

http://politicalangstinamerica.blogspot.com/2007/09/global-warming-is-fickle.html

Ever Have One of Those Weekends?

Where things just seem to go right for a change? We always talk about them going obscenely wrong, and I’d say that if you make plans then most of the times things are going to happen that don’t fit in with your plans.

Last weekend was one of those rare times where things not only went as planned, but they turned out better than planned!

I had to be up in Montana to do some work, and while the work-week was hectic my friend Hopper was flying in to come party with me over the holiday weekend. He’d never been to a place like Montana before so I wanted to show him how beautiful it was and to give him an idea of “my world” for the 2 years that I lived there.

I started getting sick on Friday morning at about 4:00am. At 6:15am Hopper called me to let me know he had his first beer and was getting ready to catch the flight.
“What’s up?”
“mhrem…sleeping…”
“I got my first beer and getting ready to get on the plane!!! IT’s ON!!!!”
“great. See you later.”
*CLICK*

Then he gets in and we proceed to start off with Elk burgers and Blue Moons. From there, it’s pretty much a blur. Suffice it to say that we had very little in the way of a plan. The loose plan was this:

• Shut the bars down at night
• Hike up to Palisades Falls
• Hike the M
• Play horse shoes with my friend’s Fuego and Bentley.
• Go to Big Sky

Whatever else would happen would happen. Other than that, we put no constraints on doing other things or even sticking to a schedule. The closest we got to that was playing shoes up at Fuego’s just because of trying to get everyone together up there.

• The fires had been burning up in MT for quite some time, but when Hopper flew in the winds shifted and cleared out the skies for the weekend.
• We got to enjoy Palisades Falls almost all by ourselves.
• Our friends came out to see us and party with us almost every night.
• Fuego’s place was awesome and we had a great time throwing shoes and checking out the amazing stars that came out. We even saw multiple satellites with the naked eye.
• We got to check out a 700+ lb black bear that was someone’s pet.
• We saw milfs and young college chickie-babes on the M
• We shut the bars down just about every night.
• Our friends let us borrow motorcycles and ride with them up to Big Sky as opposed to doing it in a car.
• We had a lot of laughs, and nobody got arrested!

It was a bummer getting up and catching the flight out on Tuesday and both Hopper and I were done by then anyway. It was a long, but very good weekend. I really enjoyed sharing what I think is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen with a close friend, and having them appreciate it as much as I do! Cheers, Hopper!

Worst Beauty Pageant Response Ever?

This is truly pathetic. I'm not sure she even makes one complete or coherent sentence.

Texas Whacks the 400th Inmate

Today, Johnny Ray Conner was put to death by the State of Texas. Conner marks the 400th inmate to be executed since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume. Three more are scheduled for next week.

A recent acquaintance of mine and I were talking and she indicated that she was against the death penalty. She is an admitted liberal. I don't personally share her viewpoint. I struggle a bit with the moralistic side of the equation, but I completely agree with the philosophy behind it.

My father was telling me that one guy was proposing that if you are against the death penalty that you could "sign up" to make sure that if anyone ever committed a capital offense and you were the victim, that the state would fore go the death penalty based on your personal beliefs. I don't think that is a 1/2 bad idea. I think that we could do apply this same type of "put your money where your mouth is" behavior to a lot of different ideas.

Anyway, I'm tired....outta here!

Shit Man!

Today we are in class and we are getting ready to break for lunch. One of the guys (student) gets up and I notice something dangling out from the waistband of his jeans that looks suspiciously like toilet paper.

I tell the guy about it and he is kind of big so he blindly reaches back there and pulls it out and it falls on the floor. it IS toilet paper, and it also has shit on it. Now I'm not talking a lot here, but clearly there is a nice brown smear all over the paper. Ick.

The guy reaches down and GRABS the paper and wads it up in his hands and then throws it away without being mindful at all about not getting shit all over himself.

So now I am standing there, kind of in shock at what just happened. I am fully expecting him to excuse himself to go wash up.....but he doesn't!!!!! He goes to lunch just like that. Not once did he go and wash his hands or anything.

Needless to say I made sure I didn't touch a DAMNED thing that this guy was near for the rest of the day.

How gross can you be?

Pillow Fight!

Sometimes when I am eating and I am bored I check out what games are available for download on my phone. If it's free for a little while, I might get it and play it until it expires.

One of the games featured today was "Pillowfight." I love the description:

"Join an elite and sexy crew of hot women in the exclusive world of competitive pillow fighting."

No, I did not make that up. I am not sure I am creative enough to make that one up.

But as it turns out, I did Google it and there is an "official" sport of pillow fighting.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=competition+pillow+fighting

About God***n time!

The title is a direct quote from Bling!!! A while back he sent me a fairly interesting article and I am just now getting around to posting on it. Sorry for all the delays, but it’s just been nuts lately.

The article is from http://www.politico.com/ and is entitled “Bush Orders New Crackdown on U.S. Border.” The article goes on to mention and list various elements of the newly proposed package. It also has several quotes from bush.

One of my favorites is:

After the announcement, President Bush released a statement in Kennebunkport, Maine, saying that despite the failure of Congress to pass a new law, his administration "will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws, keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers, and helping new Americans learn English."

Are you kidding me? Does the Bush administration really believe that everyone is that stupid? Well, perhaps, but let’s face it America….most of you have earned it. Aside from that fact, let’s pick this one apart a bit.

“….Every possible step….in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws….” Ok, let’s just take that little tidbit and work with it a bit. The Bush administration has been consistently weak and lackadaisical with any regards to protecting our borders. If anything the administration has gone out of its way to allow illegal aliens IN to the U.S. The administration has also been great at ensuring that local law enforcement has been hamstrung and not allowed to create, enact, or enforce laws that would make it tough on illegal aliens to reside in the U.S.

How about some more of this quote…. “….keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers…” See my above paragraph. The Bush administration has worked hard to ensure that illegal aliens are practically protected by allowing cities to pass their own laws with regards to making it very difficult to investigate illegal aliens and have them deported as well as fining business owners. This stuff isn’t new. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while I have cited this type of behavior by cities and municipalities over and over again.

And I love the last part – “…and helping new Americans learn English.” Let’s get a few things straight, here. Number one, these are NOT Americans. They are illegal aliens that have violated federal law by being in our country illegally. I don’t care what the color of you skin is, and I don’t care where you come from. If you enter the United States illegally you are committing a felony. Most of these illegal immigrants are making an exaggerated effort to circumvent United States law and culture. Mexican immigrants are borderline hostile towards the U.S. and are trying to reclaim it for their own. They are doing a good job, too!!!! Muslim immigrants are already having laws bent and created for their own means including trying to impose Shira law and having local, state, and federal funds used to build schools just for them. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

And last, but certainly not least…. Where, just WHERE do we mandate that anyone has to learn English? It’s not the official language of the U.S. and as far as I can tell there has never been any real political pressure to make it so. We now have municipalities making Spanish their official languages. State and Federal governments are mandating that school systems have bi-lingual teachers available. Hospitals and health-care institutions are also doing the same thing. This is not a push to learn English. Look around you and open your eyes.

I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. This is an insult to my intelligence and is not appreciated.

To take it a step further, why is Bush suddenly trying to do something about all this? Well, in short, he’s trying to butter people up. His last effort at granting amnesty to illegal aliens and increasing the number of illegal jumping the fence every year failed. A large reason for that failure was due to poor enforcement of existing policies. So, now Bush figures he can throw us a bone to appease us and then try to push it through again. It’s coming, so watch out!!!

Political T-Shirts

Thanks to Bling! for one of these, and the other is something that I found. One for each political preference......Can you guess which one of us contributed which shirt?

ARRRGGHHHH!

FUCK! I am kind of pissed off right now. I am VERY stressed out from work. I am getting a whole whopping ONE day off from the 6th up until the 31st. Out of all that time I am going to be out of town predominantly the whole time.

Let's also pile up all my regular work, plus the extra stuff I am trying to take care of. Then consider that ALL of my professional certifications expire at the end of the month. I told work about this MONTHS ago and requested extra time to study. I was allocated TWO fucking days, and they are passing and I have barely gotten anything done because I can't get ONE hour to myself without being interrupted.

But, that doesn't matter because I only ONE free day to take the exam anyway, and if I don't pass I have to wait a week to re-take it..... but due to the only day available, if I don't pass then I am history because my certs expire before I can re-take. Nice, huh?

I also have to still get ready to fly out of town tomorrow, I have a client that is having severe problems and keeps bugging the shit out of me, the guy there barely 'spaks' English, and I am supposed to be meeting up with friend tonight, but i can't do that, yet, because I can't get in the goddamn shower to clean up!

And Bling! and I may be cancelling our trip to the Dragon because of the LEO's being a bunch of cocksuckers http://www.tailofthedragon.com

So, I am REALLY not in a good mood at the moment and there are so many other things I wanted to write about on here but I just haven't had the time.

Crazy Schedule

I am getting ready to fly out to Chicago as I write this. I JUST came from San Jose (about a day ago)

Wed - back from Chicago
Sat - Fly to North Carolina
Get back from NC and then fly to Montana
I may be in Montana for about a month, but it's not known for sure as of yet.

If I do that, I'll have to fly home to get things prepped for my vacation!!!

My Pointer Is Too Small!

The last class I taught in San Jose was interesting. It was a little too large and difficult to manage. I had about 25 students. I like it when it's about 15 or less.

In any case, I actually had a student ding me on my evaluation because.....

“Recommend instructor replace his current laser pointer with one that displays a larger light point….”

I've never had anyone tell me that my pointer was too small!!