Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Who Should I Vote For?

The Democrats are clearly not my party... 

Democratic Party Platform

Just watch this "Party of Inclusion" video...

I am a white male, a hunter, and I own guns.  Clearly my vote is not being courted there.  I'm not gay or Hispanic or poor.  I don't believe in big government or  in the progressive tax (where your tax rate increases as your income increases).  On the other hand, President Barack Obama is an eloquent speaker and the party is protective of  individual rights and freedoms (except the one to own guns, strangely).  

An awesome SNL video... Obama vs. Romney Cold Open


The Republicans are clearly not my party... 

Republican Party Platform

I think evolution is a valid theory, I don't care if homosexuals get married or not, I think reproductive decisions belong in the hands of the individual, and I don't trust anything Paul Ryan says after the 2-hour marathon comment.  On the other hand, Mitt Romney came closest to winning my vote with his comment that 47% of Americans act like victims, pay no taxes anyway, and he has no hope of reaching them.  It is little moments of clarity and truth like that that make me trust a candidate.  The media thinks he should hide it.  I think he should shout it from the mountaintop.






Are the Libertarians even running? 

Apparently, there is a guy named Gary Johnson running on the libertarian ticket.  I had to google it to find that out.  Is voting for this guy the same as not voting at all?

On the other hand, this is sort of convincing...


This is actually a pretty damn good commercial...



I'm the guy you're after, politicians.  The undecided voter.  And you aren't exactly blowing my skirt up.  I have no idea who I should vote for.  I have a buddy who says he'll write in Ron Paul, but that sounds very similar to not voting to me.  Somebody help me, or I'll be standing in the booth for a long time come November...

I'll Still Say What I Want

My last post was about the tendency of the Arab world to blame the United States for everything, no matter who does it.  My example was the outrage over the Muhammad Film on YouTube the other day.  I had a few of my more liberal friends try to explain to me that I am generalizing too much, that I took my combat experiences too personally, even that I am prejudiced or even racist.  Well, maybe so.  But I have at least been to the Arab world, and I have spoken to these kinds of folks one on one.  So excuse me for forming a opinion.

Perhaps I lacked enough examples to make my case properly.  Here are some more.

Point #1- This isn't isolated, and there are plenty of them.

The Philippines:

Marawi Muslims burn US, Israeli flags


This one is ironically funny:

This one is in Turkey.  Read the link to see a timeline of the violence.

How outrage against anti-Islam film unfolded 

Sudanese demonstrators attack the U.S. embassy in Khartoum. 

Photograph by: BAZUKI MUHAMMAD
Muslim demonstrators shout slogans and carry Malaysian flags as they march to the U.S. embassy, protesting against an anti-Islamic online video, in Kuala Lumpur.



This "Terrarist" has bad spelling.


Here's an article in the Christian Science Monitor that is taking the usual tactic of the United States these days, arguing that the demonstrations and attacks of the last week or so are the work of radicals, a small minority of the Islamic world.  This may or may not be true, but I will tell you this--the Islamic world includes almost two billion believers.  That's a ""2" and eight zeros.  A small minority of a number like that is still a giant problem.  Also, if there are so many more "moderate" people in these countries, why don't they get a handle on this crap?


Point #2- Their logic is stupid.

Sudan Embassies Attack: Protesters Target British, German Embassy In Khartoum



This film was made by immigrants to the United States from Egypt.  It was not made by an American or Israeli film company.  If it was, it would have been a shitload better and more clever.  It certainly doesn't involve freaking Germany.  Here's a mental model for you-- a retarded Spanish kid comes up and tells me I'm ugly and my mother dresses me funny.  I get my feelings really hurt and I go set fire to a dumpster behind the Chinese embassy and burn a Pakistani flag.  Wouldn't that be random and kind of stupid?  Well, that's what these protesters are doing, only more violently and with less provocation.

Some more examples:

Photograph by: MOHAMMAD ISMAIL
Nato soldiers arrive at the site of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul September 18, 2012. Afghan insurgent group Hezb-e-Islami claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the suicide bomb attack on a minivan carrying foreign workers that killed 12 people including eight South Africans saying it was retaliation for a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad.
Photograph by: STRINGER
Lebanese Islamists wave Syrian Opposition flags to express solidarity with Syria's anti-government protesters as they burn an Israeli and a U.S. flag to protest against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam and insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, in Tripoli, northern Lebanon.
Photograph by: OMAR SOBHANI
An Afghan protester shouts slogans near burning tyres during a demonstration in Kabul September. Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Afghan capital, setting fire to cars and shouting "death to America", in a demonstrations against a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad.


I'm sorry, but it is difficult to have respect for people who think like this.  What they are really attacking is our very FREEDOM.  That's what blasphemy laws are all about--making it illegal to speak out against religion.  That is the polar opposite of freedom of speech.  The fact that we allow people to express themselves is what offends these people.  That is what they are really protesting.  They think the American government should control what you say, so that you don't say anything that offends them.  Fuck that.

I also heard the argument that the anti-Muhammad film protesters are no different than the "tea-party" groups in the USA.  To that I say--BULLSHIT.  They may be just as angry, and even just as religious, but they don't set fire to any embassies or murder any ambassadors.  I'm no teabagger, but let's be honest.  

The Daily Show's take on it...

And this one...

Saturday, September 15, 2012

I'll Say What I Want

All over the Middle East this week, violent Muslim extremists are protesting at embassies and storming consulates and attacking diplomats.  They are burning cars, throwing rocks, and even murdered an American ambassador.  This is happening in Libya, in Egypt, in Yemen, and in Indonesia.  It is far from an isolated incident, sparked only by a few radicals.  These people are indeed radical, but you can bet that they aren't few.
Explain to me how peaceful and understanding you are again.  


Why did they get so upset? Because of this ridiculous video that was posted on YouTube:




Now, if you were able to withstand the horrible special effects, the abysmal writing, and the nearly unbearable acting, you would see that the film is pretty unflattering to Islam in general, and to Muhammad in particular.  But the most offensive thing about the movie is its horrible production quality.

The film was made by a radical Coptic Christian man living in California.  What is a Coptic Christian, you ask?  Why, that is a sect of Christianity that formed in Egypt.  As such, Egyptian Christians view themselves as Copts, or Coptic Christians.  For a more detailed description, click these words.

So what does that mean?  
It means that the makers of the film are freaking EGYPTIANS.  Think about that for a minute.  Why are the crazies storming the U.S. embassy, when the people behind the film (directed by a man called Nakoula) claim to be Coptic Christians?  Riddle me that, Cairo.

This is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.  Or The Shadow.
I'm not 100% on that one.


Sure, the guys behind the movie moved to California, and have become American citizens.  But this was hardly a production of the American government, or even of an American religious group.

This really means that these wacky radical groups are just anti-American, and that no amount of "cultural sensitivity" will make them behave peacefully.  Apologizing to these assholes is exactly the wrong way to go.

This guy wasn't teaching kindergarten before the evil video made him crazy...


The U.S. government has exerted a ton of effort to convince me and a lot of other people in the military, the state department, and other agencies that we should be more sensitive to the viewpoints of Muslims, and that then they wouldn't be so motivated to attack us.  Basically, we simultaneously adopted the Bush Doctrine of preemption and the practice of apologizing to everyone for offending them with our freedoms.  This makes no sense.

So our policy is that if you harbor terrorists, we will come and destroy your country, but we will carefully tiptoe around your religious leaders and mosques.  That way we can still be friends, right?  Wrong.  

Since when is it such a big deal to offend people?  I'm offended by some things, too.  I don't like the treatment of women in many of these countries, the use of medieval punishments for minor crimes,  the wearing of man-dresses, etc.  But I take the position that different people view the world in different ways.  Live and let live, right?  If my little blog offends you, don't read it.  If your shitty you-tube video is insulting, I won't watch it.  Simple.  
I find man-dresses offensive.
Let's storm the Sudanese Embassy.


What makes these guys terrorists is that they don't argue against the video's ideas, and point out how terrible it is.  Instead they try to scare people with their craziness to prevent behaviors they don't like.  Why should we try to placate bullies like that? Because they say they are religious?  Bullshit.


These guys used a lot of religion in their platform, too.

The ironic thing is, if all these protesters hadn't made such a huge stir, I would never have watched that little silly film.  Even if I'd stumbled onto it on the internet, I wouldn't have made it more than a few minutes watching that piece of crap, and wouldn't have ever even seen the offensive parts.  Now it has like 5 million hits, thanks to you guys making such a big deal about it.  Way to go.
Jihad!!!

That is all beside the point, however.  The real point is that here in America, we have this thing called the constitution.  Perhaps you've heard of it.
This is why YouTube shouldn't pull the video,
and it's why the White House shouldn't ask them to.


The thing is, the constitution doesn't just protect the speech you like.  That speech doesn't need protection.  The constitution is there to protect the speech you hate.  
If reading the constitution is too hard, you can watch this movie...

In order for a society to remain free and open, it cannot allow its freedoms to be restrained by intimidation.  It is very important to remember that the kooky Egyptian guy in California didn't hurt anybody.  Some assholes in Egypt did, and what they did isn't understandable or pardonable just because they were offended.  




Thursday, September 13, 2012

Vegans Suck



Devilishly Handsome 
Red-blooded American Omnivore

Skinny-fat Vegan Sissy-boy

Today I met a vegan, and I believe he may have been the most misinformed and stupid person I have ever met.  He observed me eating my lunch, which was a leftover flank steak that I grilled last week. I was eating it cold, out of a plastic sandwich bag, without the aid of utensils as I often do.  Caveman-style, if cavemen had had plastic sandwich bags, that is.  It was delicious, but apparently this guy thought it was pretty offensive, which actually accentuates the flavor to me.  He began talking to me about the dangers of red meat consumption, the horrors of the livestock industry, and the wonderful benefits of the vegan lifestyle.  He did this with complete sincerity, even though he looked to be suffering from some sort of rickets or scurvy or some other major illness.  I don't want to brag, but I'm a pretty healthy-looking guy.  I lift weights, and can generally hold my own in most physical endeavors.  I'm pretty sure that in an arm-wrestling contest with this particular vegan, I could rip his arm completely off his body and stick it up his sanctimonious ass.  Which is what I fantasized about the entire time this little vegan spoke to me.

You may wonder why my musings suddenly turned so violent.  Well, let me explain why I hate vegans so much.  First of all, vegans are almost always hippies, and you know I hate hippies.  Second, veganism is more than a choice they have made to not eat meat or use animal products.  It is a philosophy that they have adopted that is, frankly, retarded. They also almost always choose to then project that stupidity onto me.  That's when I get upset.  If you want to go off and eat a weird diet of bean-sprouts and kale, go ahead—knock yourself out.  But don’t try to ruin my lunch, you anemic little turd.

I like to examine both viewpoints...
I can respect vegetarians.  They are wrong, of course, but all they are doing is choosing not to eat meat, and I respect people's personal choices.  You can choose to live off a diet of nothing but Twizzlers and Cool-Ranch Doritos if you want.  Just keep it to yourself.  It’s like being gay—it’s fine with me, as long as you don’t try to make me be gay with you.

MMM...Fortified soy alternatives.
That sounds delicious.
Read this guy's blog...


How do I know the vegetarians are wrong?  Because you have teeth in your head that are called canines, and they wouldn't be there if you hadn't evolved to eat meat, dumbass. 
Canines are the pointy ones.
The ones that wolves and bears also have.
You know who doesn't have canines?  Cows.

The Circle of Life.
Simba knows what I'm talking about.
Just how exactly do you suppose that people got by in the days before farming?  Before we had corn to make into Doritos and Twizzlers?  If you think people wandered around in the Stone Age finding berries and melons under every bush, you are very mistaken.  Go out into a forest sometime and take a good look around.  Take a close inventory of everything you find that you can eat.  It isn't going to look like the produce section at Wegmans, I promise you.  If you are lucky, you might find a grape vine or a nut-producing tree, maybe a rotten log full of grubs (those are animals too, by the way) but that's about all.  There's lots of grass and leaves and acorns, stuff like that, but you can't digest it very well, even if you cook it.  But you know who CAN digest that other stuff?  The insects can.  The deer can.  And your digestive system is perfectly designed to digest the deer.  You can eat nearly every single part of that delicious little bugger.  And you know how to make weapons to kill the deer.  See my point?  It's the friggin' circle of life, for goodness sake.  Watch The Lion King sometime.  This is how people lived for eons until they learned how to farm about 10,000 years ago, which is just about a heartbeat in evolutionary terms.

Explain to me again how the banana is spiritual.

So, like I said, even though it is obvious that vegetarianism is fundamentally wrong, and our ancestors evolved to eat meat and animal products as the primary source of calories, I can respect the views of other people.  I will not force them to eat meat.  I may make fun of their skinny-fat appearance and general weakness, but I won't make them eat dead animals.
-----------Now, as if that's not dumb enough... Vegetarian Spiritualism...Follow this link for proof that I'm not just making this up.  Apparently they think you can taste the cruelty in your food.  If you can, I must think it is yummy.

Doesn't he look absolutely delicious?
Just imagine how tender the meat must be.

I have never really gotten the basic idea of vegans, or of vegetarianism.  I mean, if you are against the killing and exploitation of living things, why is it okay to kill plants?  Are they not living things, too?  If your argument is based on self-awareness, I would say that a shrimp or an oyster (or a chicken, for that matter) is not too much more intellectual than a cabbage.  Can we eat the stupid animals?  What is the maximum IQ for being considered edible?  Do you hear how stupid this sounds?  
Nice tattoo.  

The fact is, we as human beings are consumers in the food chain.  Do you remember that from your science class in middle school?  We have to get our energy from food, and that food is made from other living things that are either producers, or other lower-level consumers.  You must kill another living thing and eat it, or you will die.  This is the way the world works.  So unless you are going to learn to photosynthesize, you better get used to it.  I for one did not fight my way to the top of the food chain to eat lettuce.

The main  reason I hate vegans is because they are almost all very militant about their weird dietary choices.  As if they are saving the world.  They think this is the Holocaust and they are Schindler.  I guess the cows are the Jews.


This is a real cartoon I found on a vegan website.
I think it is pretty offensive to equate farming with murder and rape.
Not to mention how incredibly naive it is...



Bacon makes the strongest argument.
Mmmmm....Bacon.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Poop Volcano


I haven't written in a while, I know.  I actually have a job, though, even if it is working for the government, so cut me some slack.  Anyway, one of my co-workers, a civilian charged to help the Marines overcome their writing disabilities, heard me telling some sea-stories a while back and has been after me to write down one of them in particular.  So here you go, Wounded Knee.

The United States military is the most advanced, best-trained, and best-funded force in the history of Planet Earth.  It is also the most expensive.  People are constantly going on about military spending.
These things are pretty pricey, after all.
  If you are a member of this force, however, you would get the impression that we are constantly on the edge of going bankrupt, or that we aren't getting any funding at all.  The Marine Corps in particular is always behaving as if it is on a shoe-string budget.  
Considered a luxury...

For instance, in Twenty-nine Palms, CA at the main camp for training units, Camp Wilson, everyone lives in metal huts with uneven dirt floors, no A/C, and worst of all, no partitions between toilets in the bathroom.  How much could a few sheets of plywood have possibly cost?  I get it that the Marine Corps wanted to make us tougher by making us deal with "expeditionary conditions," but I fail to see the training value of having to watch some hairy dude take a shit.  Then again, I'm a private pooper, so maybe I am more sensitive to that sort of thing.


This should be illegal.
Not a lot of good pooping spots here.
Here's a story:  Several years ago, when I was doing some training at the base in 29 Palms, we did what we called a "leader's recon," where the officers and Staff NCOs would go out to the live-fire ranges a few days before a big exercise to get the lay of the land.  It would just be a small group in a couple of Humvee's, out in the vast training area in the Mojave Desert, which is only slightly more inhabited than the freaking moon.  Anyway, there's this particular terrain feature there called the "Gator," which is a little finger of a hill that sticks out into the valley that has some old tank hulks and piles of tires that serve as targets for air strikes.  We took our MRE lunch break at this particular location, and I became aware of a certain intestinal requirement that could not be postponed.  The Gator is covered in big craters from the bombings, which just so happen to provide perfect hiding places for a private pooper such as me, so I counted myself lucky to have such a place available in this treeless wasteland.  I announced my intention to everyone and grabbed my e-tool, my pack of baby wipes, and my modified shitter-stool (fashioned from a 40-lb shaped charge stand-off stand), and I climbed the hill, finding the deepest bomb crater I could, and I prepared to fire one off.


Now, let me set the scene more completely for you, Dear Reader...  I was in 10-foot deep bomb crater in the impact zone of a live-fire range in one of the most deserted training areas of the largest and least-populated base in the Marine Corps, which also happens to be in the doggone MOJAVE DESERT.  Think of the creepest parts of The Hills Have Eyes.  I felt very much alone.  So imagine how mad I was when the young lance corporal who was driving my Humvee crested the top of my private bomb crater, pulled down his trousers, and assumed a squatting position about five feet away and directly in front of me.  I was furious.  I was in mid-shit, but even so I started grabbing all the rocks I could reach and throwing them as hard as I could at that moronic devildog.  What kind of jackass does something like that?  This happened more than ten years ago now, but it still pisses me off.
No dog poop sign in Israel.  I just find this hilarious.

But I digress...
I didn't start this off intending to write about shitting in the desert.  I was going to tell you about shitting on a Navy ship.  Or, more accurately, about one particular unexpected hazard of shitting on a U.S. Navy vessel at sea.  It relates back to my earlier statement of how the military is always pinching pennies on the little things.

A toilet on a U.S. Navy warship looks pretty much like a toilet at your local high school or stadium or any other large public facility.  Nothing special-looking about it at all, except for one key difference--it flushes with sea water, not fresh water.  There's a good reason for this.  While the ship is floating on an unlimited supply of salt water, fresh water must be made by filtering and distilling the seawater before it can be used for drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to then crap into this limited supply.  So, things like flushing toilets and fighting fires are done with salt water.
The Navy really knows how to make you feel special.

Flushing toilets with seawater does have some consequences, however.  One is a weird and unpleasant smell, that I have never really found anywhere else.  The other is a buildup of a hard calcium deposit, caused by the reaction of the salt water and human urine.  This calcium deposit can, over time, restrict the flow of water through the lines and cause the toilets to back up.  This is remedied by treating the lines with an acid solution and then flushing them out with more water, which the Navy calls "hydro-blasting."  What that means is a few unfortunate sailors are hooking saltwater fire hoses up to the shit-pipes and flushing them out with massive volumes of seawater.  This activity is something that used to take place when the ship was in for refitting, but in order to save money and reduce turn-around time, they began doing it at sea in the 1990's.  This doesn't sound all that bad until you really start to think it through.
This never stops being funny.

When a ship like an aircraft carrier is at sea, there are a lot of people on board--somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000.  Those people all poop.  Even children's books are clear on this.  Just read Everyone Poops, by Taro Gomi.  So you can't just close down all the heads (sailor-talk for bathroom) at one time for hydro-blasting.  You have to do it in stages.  That means that when you are blasting the poop-pipes with fire hoses, some of the heads are still in use.   That means there is fresh shit in the shit-pipe.  A lot of it.


See also, Nobody Poops But You 
Another factor is this: when a job involves poop, nobody wants to do it.  This job involves washing fresh sailor-shit and piss-crust out of a pipe with a fire hose, so it's pretty damn bad.  Nobody wants to do this.  So the people who finally wind up with the job are the ones who either couldn't figure out a way to get out of it or are too inexperienced to realize just how disgusting it is going to be.  People like these often make mistakes with details like which valve is supposed to be in what position.  If you leave the wrong valve open, when you blast the pipe with water from the fire hose, there is a good chance that the high-pressure shit water could go back up the pipe to the toilet.  When this happens, you get what I call a "poop volcano."

Imagine, if you will, the absolute horror of actually being inside one of these heads during a poop volcano eruption.  All six toilets spraying brown chunky water with fire-hose force onto the ceiling above.  God forbid you were actually utilizing one of them at the time.  Talk about getting PTSD...  There are many terrible things I would prefer to having the toilet I am sitting on suddenly explode with the shit of a hundred people.

Thankfully, I was never actually astride an erupting poop volcano.  I have, however, opened the door to the head to find the entire space absolutely coated in liquid shit.  This is not a sight or a smell you will soon forget, let me tell you.  Especially when you are clad only in a towel and a pair of government-issue flip-flops (AKA shower shoes).


Shower Shoes.
Insufficient protection in the case of a poop volcano.

So there you have it.  The Poop Volcano.  This story really has no point, no moral, and no plot, but here it is anyway.  And there are plenty more where those came from.  These are far from my only poop-related tales from my Marine Corps experiences.  I have dozens more.  Hundreds, even.  You have been warned.