There’s a Brady Bunch episode where Bobby brings a toy gun to school. I remember this thinking it would be one of those moments, kind of like the instructional video in Dodgeball, when you realize how gullable/innocent our society was at one point.
So here’s a kindergarten student who was suspended for 10 days after bringing a gun to school. The story was forwarded to me with two discussion topics:
- Parenting-responsibility-guns in the home?
- 10 days?!?!
Kindergarten student brings gun to school
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Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 5:29 AM MST
7 Comments »
The British haven’t been as ruthless in classifying documents pertaining to the pre-Iraq War negotiations as our government has. Bad for President Bush and the tens of thousands who have already died, as intent is no longer a question. Documents now prove that our President even proposed painting an American surveillance plane in UN colors in hopes that it would be shot down by Saddam, hence providing a clear cut justification for what was inevitable from day one of his first term. His mind was made up long before 9/11, and that fact alone makes him a criminal in my opinion.
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Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 6:25 PM MST
4 Comments »
H. RES. 717 Resolved, That the Secretary of Commerce is directed to transmit to the House of Representatives, not later than 14 days after the date of the adoption of this resolution, a copy of the final draft report, produced by the professional staff of the Technology Administration, entitled: `Six-Month Assessment of Workforce Globalization In Certain Knowledge-Based Industries’.
Congress requested this assessment, spent $335,000 to have the analysis done, and the result was a 200 page report. The administration did not like what the report had to say, so they cut it down to a 12 page summary, which the analysts say misrepresents their findings. This resolution is up for a vote tomorrow morning.
Taxpayers are concerned about the outsourcing of jobs overseas, so we urged our leaders to find out more about it. We paid for the study. The truth concerning the state of our economy shouldn’t be something so easily ‘classified’. That is…unless our leaders are taking notes from Russia and China!
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 11:58 PM MST
12 Comments »
In the Texas thread an interesting discussion broke out over the correct punnishment for a DUI. Personally, I think hard time should be handed out for crimes where there’s a victim, but when the victim is oneself, society is basically wasting time and money by throwing years at the problem. It’s a fact that prison teaches people how to be better criminals, and like a child receiving a spanking, if the punnishment doesn’t fit the crime, remorse isn’t the result…instead it’s anger.
How about these crimes, generic, but ballpark what you think is an appropriate sentence:
- Possession, 1 ounce of pot
- Possession, 1 ounce of methamphetamine
- DUI, 1st offense
- DUI, 4th offense
- Vehicular Manslaughter (driver was impaired)
- Vehicular Manslaughter (driver was on their cell phone)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 8:24 PM MST
38 Comments »
To understand how the finest military in human history could continue to fail in this war, one could create a list or perhaps listen to Donald Rumsfeld speak on any topic for a few minutes, only to be informed afterwards that the man speaking was in charge of the operation. However you go about it, the end result is normally confusing, and for the ‘just tell me the good news’ crowd, anything more complicated than ‘O’Doyle Rules!’ simply won’t work.
No, it’s not a topic one can remain positive about for long if any of the pre-war quotes are matched up with what actually happened. Yet there’s a good contingent of hard working Americans who insist on believing that our reason for being there is just, and that the lack of results simply makes no sense. It’s the American who’s sick of hearing about how much life sucks for the Iraqi.
This American most likely hasn’t gone three days without electricity, nor have they gone out for their morning walk to find twenty decapitated bodies on the side of the road. These ‘details’ of what life is like for those living in Iraq come to us daily, and whether we like to acknowledge it or not, over 80 journalists have already given their lives to bring the news to us. Heroic indeed, but a scapegoat is needed, so for political reasons, it’s just 80 dead liberals. Good for them.
I’d like to go around all of that and instead focus on the question of ‘why’ hundreds of billions of dollars in equipment, training and expertise hasn’t gotten us anywhere versus the insurgency. Books have been written on this topic, many in fact, because Vietnam presented the exact same situation and provoked the same lame excuses from those in charge. I’m going to sum it up for you in one paragraph…
One ring, two fighters. The insurgency has great footwork, speed, and despite lacking that one punch that can turn the entire fight around, it’s jab is constant and damaging over time. The US military is slower to react, often chasing it’s opponent around the ring, launching haymakers that hardly ever land, yet always draw a positive response from the crowd. Over time the wear and tear shows, and even though the judges’ scorecards are unanimous, the beast continues to stand up and fight the next round.
Lots of fighters never know when to throw in the towell, and unfortunately for them, often times their speech patterns remain altered forever. The body never knows when to stop, but the brain has been sending it signals for years already.
(Not the best one to date - but I’m getting over a case of food poisoning - I suspect Taco Bell is responsible)
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 7:44 PM MST
4 Comments »
You can be staying in a Dallas hotel, drinking at the bar downstairs and if you’re having too much fun (judgement call), an undercover police officer will run you in. The dragnet is an attempt to lower the amount of DUIs in the state, but of course, whether or not you drove yourself to the bar is inconsequential. Texas Logic, it’s a state of mind, with this being just the first example…
Next month the state is planning a series of sting operations aimed at lowering the number of prostitutes operating within major cities. They’re going to bust women purchasing condoms in bulk if they appear to be ’skanky’ at the time. Governor Rick Perry hailed the two initiatives in a recent speech, “if you plan on being sloppy or skanky ’round here, there is a place for you…and the name of that place is Oklahoma.”
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:00 AM MST
37 Comments »
Basically a bureau chief in Vermont submitted a column written by one its own, Senator Patrick Leahy, on the “growing threat to our democracy by infringements imposed by the Bush administration on America’s hallowed Freedom of Information Act”, and was abruptly fired after 27 years on the job! The man’s name is Chris Graff, someone who was “easily the most respected voice in Vermont journalism, running the AP bureau here and hosting the weekly journalist roundtable discussion on Vermont Public Television”. His grave sin apparantly was “moving an item written by a ‘partisan politician’ without including a rebuttal from a partisan politician of a different stripe”.
So in America today, a state bureau chief cannot run a column written by his own Senator. The man has to search out a counter-point to the piece or whatever the Senator has to say cannot be heard. In other words, the voters of Vermont don’t deserve to hear Leahy’s opinions on government unless certain unstated conditions are met beforehand. Either that, or whatever Leahy has to say angers a higher-up on a personal level, and in today’s US media market, that’s enough to warrant the termination of a career 27 years in the making.
The column wasn’t written by a liberal version of Ann Coulter, it was written by the US Senator these readers happened to vote for several times already. Leahy’s chief of staff was quoted as wondering, “how open government could be partisan?” Well, there’s a lot at stake at this point in our republic’s history, and the amount of criticism aimed at our President has become downright inconvenient! The very notion of our elected leaders expressing their thoughts and ideas in opposition to the President wouldn’t fly in Russia, so why should it in the United States of America?
Indeed, what’s good enough for Russia is good enough for the USA! Just like we all learned in school growing up. If Senator Leahy wants to be heard, he just needs to fill out the proper form, get all the required stamps, say twenty “Hail Bushs” and it wouldn’t hurt to donate $10,000 to the Republican National Committee. It’s the system our founding fathers fought for, and the tradition of freedom our soldiers are dying to protect at this very moment…in Iraq.
First, since former USA Today president and publisher Tom Curley took over the reins at AP in 2003, things have taken a turn for the worse. Graff isn’t the first veteran AP bureau chief to get axed recently. Curley’s new Gannett-style policies and guidelines are being imposed with an iron fist by his new team of managers. There are complaints the news is being dumbed down by corporate, and the AP gold standard is being turned into cow flop.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 8:18 PM MST
26 Comments »
- Is illegal immigration responsible for higher energy costs?
- Is illegal immigration responsible for the escalating national debt?
- Is illegal immigration responsible for the Iraq War?
- Is illegal immigration responsible for low test scores in schools across the country?
- Is illegal immigration responsible for an increasing amount of household debt?
- Is illegal immigration responsible for global warming?
I don’t think 6 million out of 300 million represent the cause of most of our problems in America. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 8:49 PM MST
44 Comments »
Did I call this or what? Worse than just Iran (in the mail), we’ve got “allies” (rich scumbags in charge of countries full of oil and uneducated, jobless, mosque-folk) now shifting cash reserves from dollars to euros. Don’t expect this to get a moment of domestic air-time…I’ll keep my eyes peeled for more developments.
As of right now, Southeast Asia continues to fund the cost of runing our government and a parasitic military industrial complex (over 40% of all federal $ spent), but as others sell off their reserves for euros, the value of what these countries currently hold diminishes. We can raise interest rates, but whatever it takes to satisfy buyers following a sell-off of dollars will certainly not benefit the United States. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:28 AM MST
5 Comments »
With a higher cap and McGuinest already going to the Browns, it seemed automatic that Belicheck would have enough cash to lock this guy up. The franchise tag was used on him in the past, and perhaps that’s the reason he’s going to Indy…regardless, I’m about to drink myself stupid over this. Cheers.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 7:46 PM MST
9 Comments »
A shiny gold donkey to whoever knows what inspired me to use this title.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 5:10 PM MST
28 Comments »
Task Force 6-26, a unit whose name and location changes based on how much heat they’ve got on them at a given time, whether it’s the Pentagon, CIA, FBI or the slabs of meat known to most of the world as ‘Iraqis’, is a group of sadists apparently armed with paintball guns, car batteries and jumper cables. The people they torture often have nothing to do with anything, but then again, the life of a sadist can get boring from time to time. As a token of appreciation though, each of them are presented a hood by the company commander, one that might have been used to cover the head of one of their victims (no lie!). Their mission is to capture Zarqawi, and by all accounts it’s going very well. In fact, a taxi driver and his family were just apprehended for ‘looking Arab in Iraq’, and as the story goes, the guy is a psychic who can predict where Zarqawi is going to be at any time, but the catch is…to make it work he has to smoke an entire ounce of BC kind and have a Zionist pelt his naked body with paintballs.
Turns out that guy was just jerking them around, but they’ve got a lot of good leads anyway. Like the guy who lives next door to the taxi driver, a fan of Allah (also someone who repeatedly stole his copy of the Baghdad Times each morning) who apparently is a distant cousin of Zarqawi on his mother’s side. They striped this guy naked, dumped a bucket of ice water on him, turned on the air conditioner and blasted Marilyn Manson as loud as it would go…just to see what would happen.
Yes, we’re really on top of things over in Iraq, and the closet S&M homosexuals of America have an incredible opportunity now to let loose and do their thing, while also being able to come home and march in a parade that doesn’t feature Cher impersonators. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Al Swearengen, Military at 1:01 AM MST
33 Comments »
Montana is putting up a fight, but against BC they closely resemble jello on the inside. Craig Smith is tearing these guys up, yet because of Montana’s outstanding shooting from beyond the perimeter, the halftime score is 32-30 BC.
At 11:30 ET tonight there’s a heavyweight fight on HBO, Rahman vs. Toney…I know, doesn’t exactally make you want to go out and buy a big screen TV, but it should be an entertaining bout. Can Rahman land his right (the one that droped Lenox Lewis)? Can Toney make this fight something to remember?
Our friend Washington is not fond of ‘leftists’. I’ll save my rant on ‘rightists’ for another day.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Sports at 7:46 PM MST
39 Comments »
With mid-terms coming up soon, I wanted to share this list I came across at my local library:
- 1933 Unemployment Relief
- 1935 Social Security
- 1938 Minimum Wage
- 1944 GI Bill
- 1945 United Nations
- 1947 Marshal Plan
- 1949 NATO
- 1964 Civil Rights Act
- 1965 Medicare
- 1965 Voting Rights for all
- 1965 Head Start
- 1965 Federal Aid to Education
- 1967 Freedom of Information Act
- 1993 Family Leave Act
- 1990’s Federal Aid to Education
- 1990’s BUDGET SURPLUS
By my count, there are quite a few things on this list that the Republican Party is either against or is currently cutting while in power: Balanced Budgets (let alone creating a surplus), Social Security (GOP has hated this from the jump), Minimum Wage, United Nations (sending Bolton pretty much says it all), NATO (GOP bashed Clinton for participating in NATO missions), Head Start & Federal Aid to Education (funding reduced under Bush)…
This list represents what I’m proud of in terms of being an American, and in a lot of ways, it’s why I vote Democrat in most elections.
Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:41 PM MST
8 Comments »
