Category: BullShit

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Really? This is an issue?

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Over the past several days, I’ve noticed the press slowly picking up and more breathlessly repeating the story that Prince Harry said that he has killed Taliban in Afghanistan.

Let me see,

He’s serving in his nations military — Check!

He’s in a gunship — Check!

He’s in a war zone — Check!

He’s being shot at — Check!

In my book…

It goes without saying that he’s killed some Taliban. The question shouldn’t have even been asked. It was probably asked by some asinine reporter looking for something sensationalist. Problem is this isn’t sensational it’s a grim reality of war.

People die. 

Prince Harry is doing his job, which is to take orders from his commanding officers, and to protect his crew if that means opening up with a 30mm chain gun on a pissant Taliban fuck so be it.

What answer would you expect?

Do you suppose the troops in war zones have been planting posies? That somehow RPG and AK-47 fire magically turns into rainbows and happy fairy sprinkles?

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Prince Harry answered the question. Now he’s being criticized for answering the question.

Had he evaded answering the question he’d have been criticized for evasion.

The man was damned either way and like most men backed into a corner by slimy scum bags (in this case liberal reporters) he decided to answer 100% truthfully. After all with the truth, you don’t have to remember what lie you told which person.

I say good for Prince Harry. I’m glad he’s doing his job and not getting much in the way of “Special” treatment. In future, he may be more connected with the common man and will be in a position to suggest or represent the common mans interests back home.

Aside from his mother not being terribly happy about him being in the military, (name a Mom who is happy about her children being in harms way) I personally think that the young prince is a good man.

His mother shows through in all the best ways. In general, I imagine she’d be proud of both her boys.

I guess the article pissed me off because of the fucked up connections that the writer and then the Afghan and Taliban leaders made.

I suppose I can perhaps excuse Hamid Karzai and the Taliban leader Zabihullah Mujahid for not knowing what a PlayStation or Xbox is.

After all they still think fire is the magic of the gods.

You need to have electricity to use a PlayStation. Most of Afghanistan is barely into the stone-age just slightly above flinging their excrement at each other…

Prince Harry making the comparison to his childhood game controls is completely logical.

After all if you make a sophisticated high tech weapon system similar to a familiar game interface then you don’t have to waste a lot of time training your soldiers how to use the weapon. It save time, money, and minimizes practice time.

But that doesn’t mean that the Prince was referring to the war as “Fun”. Unfortunately that’s the spin Harry’s comment is being given.

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Hamid Karzai is concerned about troop withdrawals. Others are concerned about the erosion of relations between the troops and locals…

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t this a problem in Afghanistan already?

Don’t we have the locals and our troops stationed in separate areas because of friendly fire incidents?

Isn’t this the place where “Friendlies”  walk in to cafeterias and blow themselves up or shoot men they’ve spent months or years training with, working with, and living with? 

I’d say that the relations are already well and truly fucked up. I’m all for getting our people the hell out of the place and letting the locals cannibalize each other if they wish.

We have the asshole Taliban guy Zabihullah Mujahid calling the Prince a NewImagecoward for “speaking when he was out of harms way… “

Uh yeah, dumbass. The interview was done while Harry was on duty in your shit hole country. Oh by the way, when was the last time you poked your head out of a cave?

Why the fuck do we even know what you think? I’d suspect that most of us couldn’t give a crap less.

Then there’s the Peacenik Lindsey German of the “Stop the war coalition” asking how the Prince knows the people he killed were Taliban.

Well Lindsey… the Prince probably had a fairly good idea when the people on the ground were shooting at his helicopter.

In my reality someone shooting at me is an enemy… I’m not going to take the time before I shoot back to ask for confirmation of their political or religious affiliation. You Lindsey are perfectly welcome to go talk to the people shooting at you if you’d like. 

Hey before you go… let me put this pretty vest on you. Uh no, Lindsey it’s not body armor It’s 30 lbs of C-4 explosive. Here, hold this button down while you’re talking to those very angry people waving the guns at you…

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So that Lindsey, has some ability to sleep at night… Let me offer this logic to you.

You’re in a helicopter

You’re flying over Taliban occupied territory

People on the ground are shooting at you (Or flinging poo)

ergo

They are in all likelihood Taliban… in deed if not in actual political/religious affiliation.

Which means… It’s perfectly acceptable to squeeze the trigger on that shiny 30mm chain gun until the people on the ground stop shooting! 

It’s completely ridiculous to ask or publish a question asking how the Prince knew they were Taliban.

I’m all for leaving the Afghans and for that matter the whole stinking shithole known as the Middle East squarely in the middle of the stone-age.

Their belief structures are a threat. They are a prime example of religion retarding human development and their civilizations (such as they are) are examples of retrograde development.

Yeah, I have no pity, sympathy, or concern for those people. I’m for complete isolation of the area.

Quarantine it, let the infection of their religion of hate burn itself out.

Call the Middle East the Spanish Influenza of thought processes.

Quarantine the area and wait a 100 years or so for them to quit twitching. Maybe then you nuke ’em from orbit just to make sure…

We don’t have to be nice to our enemies.

Let’s stop deluding ourselves, no matter what we do in the Middle East we will never be liked.

The best we can hope for is that the people there understand death comes on swift wings if you screw with the west.

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Another week has gotten behind me

How did that happen?

I guess some of the time was chewed up dealing with trying to find health insurance. What a nightmare!

Transitioning from the Obscenely expensive COBRA Plan to something less obscene isn’t as easy as you’d think it would be.

I can’t imagine what people do. I’ve been quoted as much as 1200 a month.

I’m Healthy!

But due to my age and the fact that I’m actually addressing some of the age related issues, health insurance feels that they need to rape me.

When one of them quoted me $1200 I lost it. I mean really? That’s my house payment! It’s also 600 a month more than COBRA.

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Then theres the HIPAA plan which is supposed to make sure that everyone has access to health insurance. And it does that…. At rates that are more obscene.

Basically I’ve been quoted rates form 202.00 a month to 1200 a month.

How the hell is that reasonable? I’m looking for nothing more than the ability to go to my doctor, keep getting the prescriptions that I need, and have hospital coverage. I see my doctor maybe twice a year and haven’t been in a full on hospital since I was 16.

I’ve had minor outpatient surgery once in the last 4 years and that was to tend to an issue before it became a problem… You know, the way it’s cheaper and easier to replace your brake pads before they destroy your brake drums or rotors on your car. No reason we shouldn’t look at our bodies the same way. Fix minor stuff while it’s minor. Dental care is a prime example. Get the filling… before you need the root canal. It just makes good sense.

I find myself wondering,  is this yet another situation where my having been a responsible individual is screwing me? 

Because I’ve taken care of myself and work at remaining healthy, am I paying the price for all those people who haven’t? 

I can’t even explain how frustrating this is. 

Ironically, the most expensive of the insurance options is the HIPAA plan. HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

In what reality can someone coming off of COBRA possibly still unemployed, or returning to the workforce in a part time position or to a company that  doesn’t provide group insurance afford 700 – 1200 a month in health insurance?

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COBRA and HIPAA are the two main reasons that I question the efficacy of the Obama Care plan.

Both of these “services” are made available and administered due to government intervention and regulation.

Yet they are without question the most expensive options. It’s a pretty funny racket too. Before you’re eligible for HIPAA you have to exhaust your COBRA benefits. After exhausting your COBRA benefits then you get to pay higher rates to maintain a  HIPAA plan.

It doesn’t make any sense at all since our politicians run around wringing their hands about how “Our Children” don’t get the care they’re supposed to.

Those same politicians seek to criminalize the lack of health care insurance but at the same time they do nothing to reduce the cost of the government mandated plans. 

Better questions are why does health insurance cost so much? What is driving that cost?

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Why can I go see a doctor pay cash for his services and pay less than the negotiated insurance rate? Why do doctors and hospitals always charge the maximum negotiated rate to Insurance providers?

Is it really all about the administration costs that doctors incur, while insurance companies screw around trying to deny claims?

If that’s the case then the problem isn’t the cost of services being rendered. The problem is that the patients, AKA consumers are caught in the middle.

Perhaps the solution isn’t a 16 trillion dollar health care plan that just stokes the fire allowing more and more abuses driving the cost of even basic services up. Perhaps the solution is to terminate all health care insurance.

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We’ve seen what happens when an artificially inflated price for goods or services collapses. It was called the housing bubble. Maybe it’s time for a similar “correction” to happen in healthcare and health insurance.

I can tell you that if my only choice is a 1200 a month health care policy, the insurance companies can put it where the sun don’t shine.

I’ll go without insurance pay straight up for my doctor, and the prescriptions I need and if it comes to me being hospitalized I’m guess I’m going to die.

After all I’m just a useless, misogynistic, testosterone poisoned, moronic, dumbshit, racist, republican, gun totin, white man, who’s responsible for the oppression of all the other races, global warming, inflation, and who deserves to die horribly.

Isn’t that the Über Liberal party line? Did I get it right?

If Obama wants to criminalize me for not having medical insurance… well he can come and arrest me. 

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At least then, I’ll have 3 hots & a cot… ohhh and state supplied health care.

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It’s that time of year again

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I live above the snow line. 

That means that unlike a lot of Southern California I really do see a change in seasons. Well usually, this year has been a very strange year.

We’ve had a couple of snowfalls and that’s great for the ski resorts and for the town itself.

The down side of having snow is that the traffic on the weekends is nightmarish.

I think it’s actually worse than Huntington Beach on July 4th. I can say that because I lived in Huntington Beach for a number of years and while I love the town and the ocean, I planned to be gone during the Summer.

There were days when it could take 45 minutes to drive 4 blocks. If I wanted a carton of ice cream, I walked because that was the only way to get home with the ice cream unmelted. 

Yep, walking to the grocery store was faster than driving.

I have the same problem where I live now.  Only it’s magnified a bit, see there’s only one major road coming into town and all it takes is one idiot who thinks they don’t need chains on an icy road to screw everyone.

The other problem that we have is people who think it’s perfectly ok to drive up into a neighborhood, park wherever they want and let their children run rampant through yards to go play in the snow.

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Aside from the general damage done to landscaping, there’s the liability issue. If one of these uninvited assholes gets hurt on my property, technically i’m liable. If they get hurt on the private road, my neighbors and I maintain, then all of us are liable.

So I find myself in frequent exchanges with our uninvited guests.

I want to give them a chance to leave of their own free will and hate to bother the Sheriff. But if they don’t leave I’ll make the call.

The exchanges always go one of two ways.

ME: Can I help you?

THEM: No we’re just here to play in the snow.

ME: That’s nice, there are several public play areas down just off the highway. You’re parked on private property and the rear of your vehicle is blocking the road.

THEM: We’re just going to be here a few minutes. We have children who’ve never seen snow.

ME: If the lady whose property you’re parked on, or the residents up the street who can’t get past your car decide to call the police you’re going to be towed. It really would be better if you went to the public play areas and then you could spend as much time as you want.

THEM: The traffic is really bad down there on the highway. Besides there are 50 people just down the block playing in the snow.

ME: Your choice, you’re telling your kids that it’s ok to invade a neighborhood without permission to do what they wish,  but that’s your business. Stay the hell away from the fence line my dogs don’t like strangers. Dogs on queue start barking.

The second way this conversation goes is 

ME: Can I help you?

THEM: No comprende

ME: No es amusment publico, Estans Casas private, Por favor vamanos.

THEM: FUCK YOU, We have a right to be here.

ME: Not really. This is a neighborhood and these driveways are cleared by the residents so that they have a place to park not so that strangers have parking.

THEM: Fuck You, come on lets go play up on that hill.

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I soft peddle it a bit because on more than a few occasions the visitors have gone to their car or truck and pulled a gun on the homeowner asking them to leave. This hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m sure that it will at some point in the future.

Sadly it’s the nature of the people we’re dealing with. Which is not to be construed as racist. It’s more a statement about people that feel they don’t have to play by the rules.

What bothers me is the subtext of these exchanges.

(I’ve even fallen for it a couple of times because I can see the little faces pressed up against the windows of the car and I really do understand how excited they are.

In the situations where I’ve fallen for it I’ve let the people park in my driveway and sent them out back to play. I’ve been repaid for my kindness with trash on my lawn, and in one case dirty diapers left on my deck.) 

The first exchange type, these people assume that I haven’t heard this story before.

I do understand the kids. They should have an experience and I really am torn about telling them no. It’s that old programming my parents gave me. Children are to be protected and cherished and is it really any skin off my nose to let ’em play in the snow out back?

But come on, You’re using your kids to con me… 

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I didn’t have anything to do with making your kids. Perhaps if you, or your wife / girlfriend  offered to entertain me I’d feel differently.

Like all men I’m about a little sexual gratification. Someone on their knees in front of me, might persuade me to change my mind.

You’re telling me that traffic is bad?

Look dumbass I know traffic is bad because I can’t leave my house!

Weekends and holidays I plan to stay put because I know that it’s going to take me minimum 2 hours to get home if I go more than 20 miles away.

The second exchange type is just as bad if not worse.

They start the conversation with a lie. They try to make the dumb white guy think that conversation is useless because they “Don’t understand what he’s saying”. 

When I try to converse with them in Spanish suddenly we have a miracle… They speak English just fine.

In both cases these people try to justify their actions (which I contend they know are wrong) by using the teenage fall back

“Everyone else is doing it” 

I’m so tempted to tell these folks what my Mother used to tell me.

“20, 50 or 100 people it doesn’t matter, if they all jumped off a cliff would you?”

Recently we actually had a proof of that statement at a lake near here.

As it turns out the answer is yes for some people. There was a situation where people were sledding down a short embankment then out onto a partially frozen lake. 12 of them ended up in the water and one of them almost drown / froze to death.

The amazing thing about it is that there are signs in multiple languages saying that the lake is dangerous and that you shouldn’t walk on the ice.

Even as the ice on the lake was cracking and people were falling through into the water below. More and more people were walking out onto the lake to see what was going on. Some of them obviously stepping over cracks in the ice. 

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I digress, the message these people are giving their kids is that they’re entitled to take what they want.

They’re saying that it’s ok to violate the social contract that says you respect other peoples privacy and property, if you’re tired of sitting in traffic and you want something.

At the same time these people will bitch loud, long, and hard if they feel even the slightest affront to their perceived rights.

Implicitly, these people teach a double standard. Their rights are important but no-one else’s rights matter.

Worse they’re teaching the very racist message; “because you’re brown you don’t have to obey the rules.“

It’s been suggested that everyone in our town pick another town down the mountain on a particular day. Then we saddle up with our picnic baskets and our bathing suits and simply occupy an area. 

We’d go have a nice party in some random neighborhood, use their pools and park all over the place, in driveways, on the streets, wherever.

Then when the cops showed up … and they would. We’d show the homeowners pictures of our driveways, and streets in the Winter time.

Maybe that would drive the point home.

More likely, my whole town would be in jail…

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Time for journalistic responsibility.

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I couldn’t resist the Reagan poster. But you have to admit if anyone aside from James Brady could speak to the subject it’s Reagan. 

CBSNews Is reporting the New York paper responsible for publishing a map showing the addresses of registered gun owners in two NY counties has added to their grandstanding by hiring armed security guards to protect one of their offices.

The so called “journalists” are kinda missing the point.

I love the irony in that they’ve turned to armed security to protect them.

Registered gun owners are law abiding citizens which by default means that these people aren’t likely to go to the newspaper to exact revenge.

Law abiding citizens are going to choose weapons of mass destruction…. LAWYERS!

The Lawyers will be far more devastating to the newspaper than anyone with a gun.

If I were one of the people affected I’d be seriously pissed off. Not because now the world knows I have guns, but because of the invasion of privacy for no good purpose other than headlines.

Essentially this newspaper has stigmatized the gun owners of these counties. What they’ve done is tried to equate gun owners to sex offenders. “Who are the gun owners in your neighborhood?”, Who are the sex offenders in your neighborhood?”

I’m sure that the editors of the newspaper have gotten some really negative mail and deservedly so.

The gun owners affected have committed no crime, they’ve done absolutely nothing that should have resulted in the forfeiture of their privacy and yet… They’ve lost their privacy. Their homes may be targeted for potential break-ins by criminals who would like to steal guns and resell them to other criminals.

Now the newspaper is trying to look like the victim, and spin the story that they’re scared of the gun owners. 

I have a few things to say to that;

1 Buck up. You published the piece, you must have thought about the invasion of privacy you were enabling and if you didn’t well you’re not very good journalists. You need to accept the consequences and responsibility for your actions.

2 You have nothing to fear from the registered gun owners. You need to fear their attorneys.

3 In the years to come you need to fear the criminal element that breaks into these houses and manages to steal the weapons. They’re the people that are going to mug you, rape you, and shoot you. The blood of innocent victims, and the blood of the home owners occupying these houses will be on your hands.

In my opinion, a single injury or god forbid a death caused because a criminal targeted these homes should result in prosecution of the journalists involved in the story.

I’m for freedom of the press, but with that freedom also comes responsibility. 

There’s a quote from one of the Star Trek movies. “Just because we can do a thing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should do a thing.”

Yes, it wasn’t said by a statesman, or a scientist, or a politician. But it’s nonetheless a wonderful cautionary statement.

I suspect that the movie quote is based on something Robert Oppenheimer said;

“When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. – J. Robert Oppenheimer”

The point is, sometimes it’s important to take a step back to look beyond your ability to act and decide if the ends are really justified. 

How many wars, how much harm would have been avoided if people had simply considered the ramifications of their actions?