We are all Racists?

Happy Days

HELLO Everyone!

Sorry for my incredibly long sabbatical from the blog, work has kept me locked away in a very cold, dark, wet place for the past few week working on a few high priority projects. However, I"m baaackk!


And what better way to be come than to show off a new addition to my family. Last weekend my wife and I drove up to Maryland to get a new puppy as a playmate for Xena (our other dog). So, last Saturday we jumped in the jeep and headed north to Maryland.
As this point, I will impart on you guys some very helpful advice: Never, Ever, under ANY circumstances try to go anywhere near D.C. when the Cherry Blossoms are blooming. Apparently, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in a 5 state radius just HAS to make a pilgrimage to see the "wonderful" site. Now, not that I have anything against Cherry Blossoms I do think they are pretty, I just don't want to sit in traffic for 4 hours trying to get past D.C. And to make matters worse, the bi-directional HOV lane was going away from D.C. So while your sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, playing the horn like your a conductor in a symphony, you gaze across to the other side of the highway only to see 1) traffic zooming along at the speed , 2) Very Light traffic & 3) Only the occasional car in the HOV lane.....going the other way.

Anyway, I digress. With out further due, I would like to introduce you to the newest member of my family.. Ares.
Ares is a tri-color Australian shepherd who is turn 8 weeks old tomorrow and currently weights 9 pounds.


P.S. Going forward, I promise to start updating my blog on a stanard basis.

Snowed Under

I have been completely snowed under at work as of late. I will have a new story up within a few days. Sorry of the lapse in postings.

Red Bear

While everyone has been fervently focused on the Iraqi war and battling terrorism around the world (which we should), I hope we are also paying equal attention to our old adversary; Mother Russia. There has been allot of very disturbing events happening of recent that concerns me. Truth is, I/we have no idea what Russia is actually planning. What, do you ask, am I talking about?

Recently, Russian bombers have resumed their cold war practice of flying long-haul missions to areas routinely patrolled by NATO , U.S. and other allies. Every week or so it seems that the Big Bear bombers (Tupolev 95 to be exact) are spotted in force pushing the air space boundaries round the world. Most recently, two bombers decided it would be a "good idea" to buzz the deck of the USS Nimitz, twice. Flying about 50 miles apart, one tupolev 95 flew at an altitude of 2,000 ft directly over the deck of the carrier, and then doubled back for another pass. The last time I checked the "kill zone" surrounding a U.S. Carrier is about 150 miles. Needless to say, it seems we are attempting to give the Russians allot of rope in which to hang themselves. Even with the peace that currently exist between the U.S. and Russian stunts like this do not seem like a very smart move. This instance along with similar events that have happened in: Alaska, Guam, Nato, UK,& Norway just to name a few starts to boggle the mind a little bit as to what exactly are they trying to accomplish. Are they simply attempting to divert our attention for the briefest of moments so they can pull something else off, or are they systemically trying to push airspace boundaries of NATO and our allies until some cowboy accidentally fires on them? Are they trying to push the world into another War? Are they trying to get everyone comfortable to the point that we drop our guard, and then *WHAM* get hit by a surprise attack? I don't know, but I hope people with much higher pay grades have.

On top of their bombers buzzing the world, Russian has told Ukraine that they "May" set their (Russian) missiles to target Ukraine if they join NATO and accepted deployment of the missile defense grid. Frankly, that doesn't sound very diplomatic... or intelligent. Someone should brief Putin on what exactly an "Anti-MISSILE defense grid" does. On top of that, in the same story Putin proclaims that a "New phase in the Arms race has begun." Very Scary. Of course, compared to the current war of fighting non-state gorillas, fighting a war with a very big (and formidable) state-sponsored military would be cake walk by comparison, unless a liberal is in the white house. By "cake walk" I'm not implying that we would simply roll over anyone. The death toll would probably be a shit load higher than the current war. But, it is a hell of allot easier to fight a country than it is to fight a militant group within a country where friend and foe look alike. Hopefully Russian remembers the difference (Afghanistan?).

Ohh the Irony

So last week the Brady Campaign came out with their state-by-state "Score Card." Of course this "Score Card" was based on a number fascist factors:
_______________________________________________________________________________________
"The Brady Scorecards are designed so that states can score up to 100 points across five major categories of laws:
Curbing Firearm Trafficking;
Strengthening Brady Background Checks;
Child Safety;
Banning Military-style Assault Weapons;
and making it harder to carry Guns In Public Places."
_______________________________________________________________________________________
As you can see, it's pretty much A: How well do you infringe & restrict the 2nd Amendment, while not preventing crime, and disarming you citizens to be defenseless to criminals, all the while not doing a damn thing to help and protect your people, score card. Which most logical people would find, I hope, completely asinine.

Well, this didn't have quite the impact they were hopping for, at least one state.
Oklahoma. It seems that Oklahoma has been trying to lure a big gun manufacture to their state for quite some time now, and this report card has given them the "2nd Amendment protector credibility", since the scored a 2 our 100, they needed in order to live up to the hype. Now, I'm not sure about you, but this is absolutely F'ing hilarious to me. The Brady camp comes out with this score card as a smear tactic, and it actually helps the people they are trying to snub out. ROFL. I can't wait to hear the Brady camps reaction.


Check out the whole article here

On a side note, Gun manufactures should pay special attention to this report, and all these states that are making it so hard for them to do their job, they should just pack-it up and move to a state that will appreciate them. Why should they continue to be both: A huge source of revenue for the state & the state's number one target? It doesn't make sense. They are plenty of states, Oklahoma included, that would welcome the Gun Manufactures with open arms, and probably a few tax breaks.

Primary Absurdity

Hopefully, I am not the only person that sees all of the flaws that currently exist within our current Presidential Primary System. I can picture a time when our archaic primary system could have been necessary. Years ago, before the aid of optical scanners to automatically count ballots, and only limited ability to get poll totals to the next poll station (via Telegraph or rider). In that day, a tiered voting approach of nominating a presidential candidate made sense. Information didn't move all that fast, and for that matter neither did the candidates. A 100 or so years ago, a candidate campaigning in two (or more) states in one day meant they were on state lines. Hell, by the time a candidate made it to the next primary state (Iowa to N.H, for example), it was time to vote.

However, in "today's age " where a candidate can literally make it to 3 or 4 campaign locations, in different states, on the same day. In a time where campaign squabbles can be read about in the U.K. before lunch, this "tiered" approach only does one thing for the American people: "It ensure Americans choose the candidate(s) we are suppose too." Now, before you start screaming how I've fallen off the rocking horse into conspiracy lunacy, here me out. I'm not saying we no longer choose or vote for the next Nominee, we just vote the way the media tells us too.

While your digesting that, I'll give you an example. If you take a group of 1000 people, place a jar full of marbles on a podium and ask everyone to write down the number of marbles in the jar. On a whole, if participates answered in the blind they will guess correctly more often than if they were showed how their peers were guessing. By showing how people guessed or voted, you can change the outcome of their guess/ vote total(for better or worse).

This is exactly what happens in todays presidential primaries. We know instantly how the polls in New Hampshire closed. Then the media comes out and says: "So & SO gaining momentum in N.M or Iowa,etc Primary watch out for him/her!" Wait, what? How does this give people momentum? So what if New Hampshire thought this guy was better than that guy, different place, different state. However, what we aren't paying attention to is how much our elections are being shaped by the people who are supposed to be brining us the information. The media. Call me stupid, but I thought the job of the media was to bring the American Public an Unbiased report of whats happening. How are they able to keep an Unbiased view when Newspapers and News Stations are ENDORSING CANDIDATES! They endorse candidate A, then for the next x days, weeks, months all they print / talk about is Candidate A. Geee, I wonder why that person is coming up in the polls.
Every time you read / listen to the news all you every here about are the top 2 or 3 candidates of each party. The response of media outlets has always been "Their the front runner, of course we are going to talk and print stories about them."
However, Which is the cause, and which is the effect? (Front runner = More Stores or is it More stores = front runner)??

My whole point in witting all of this, besides ranting, was to say that the tiered primary systems has outlived its usefulness. It is now causing more harm than good. The American public deserves to hear what all of the candidate have to say. After which, the entire country holds a national primary on one day, not over the course of 3 months. I know the politicians will bitch and moan, but what else is new? This would level the playing field, the media will not longer be able to give a candidate "momentum", and the people will ultimately choose the candidate they like best. We could even take it one step further and say that all Mainstream news sources should give each candidate x min per month to come on and be heard, above and beyond all other news stories. What a concept!

Joe Horn

I'm Having a pretty good debate over at the Patterico's Pontification Website. Check it out. Click Here I started to chime in at at around comment 100.

Of course, I will have more to comment on this later.