The Church of the Blinding White Light of Stupidity

She Loves Her Trees...

I have a friend that send me jokes... really good ones... I just got this via email...

A rich lady from California, who was a tree hugger and a vociferous anti-
hunter, purchased a piece of timber land in Oregon.

There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted
to get a good view of her land so she started to climb the big tree.

As she neared the top, she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her.

In her haste to escape, the lady slid down the tree to the ground and got
many splinters in her private parts. In considerable pain, she hurried to
the nearest country doctor. Being a hunter himself, the doctor listened to
her story with great patience and then told her to go into the examining
room and he would see if he could help her.

She sat and waited for three hours before the doctor reappeared. The angry
lady demanded, "What took you so long?"

He smiled and then told her, "Well, I had to get permits from the
Environmental Protection Agency, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land
Management before I could remove old-growth timber from a recreational area
and I'm sorry, they all turned me down."

Advice for the Lonely Single Guy...

I wasn't always married to Righteous Rita. I spent many years as a single guy, most of them in sunny Southwest Florida, in Beautiful Naples on the Gulf. As teenagers we called it Bountiful Nipples on a Goof.

It seems that Steve of Little Tiny Lies and Adam of Single Southern Guy think they have had the worst dating experiences of all mankind.

Not so, young fellows, simply not so.

I, The Right Irreverent Mike, spent many a painful night with many a high-maintenance power bitch during my formative years. Wandering in a desert of ignorance, I caught women I never should have chased.

Guys, I got custody of the kids because her customers agreed to testify and her signature on the decree was witnessed by Joe and Jane Jail Deputy... get my drift?

So, as a service to the younger generation, as a duty to mankind and just because I want to, here are...

Mike's Pointers About Dating for Men

1 - Sex is like money, even when it's bad it's good.

2 - Sex is like work, sometimes the job just doesn't pay enough, the hours suck and the boss is an asshole.

3 - That pitty-pat of your heart is not true love, it's gibbering fear. Your subconscious mind recognizes that this is the bitch that will rip your heart out and pin it to the floor with her spike heeled mule. She does look good in that pose though.

4 - The proper response to "But will you respect me in the morning?" is "I don't respect you now so what are you willing to do to change my mind?" Say, is that a square knot you tied in that cherry stem with your tongue?

5 - Never sleep in the same bed with a woman who will not indulge in "Hanky-panky" with you. She will not respect you in the morning and she might accuse you of rape.

6 - When out alone at a club, be nice to the plain girls early in the evening so they don't think you're just trying to get lucky when you ask them out to breakfast at closing time. That is what you're doing, but you don't want them to know that.

7 - Another thing about being dateless at a club, always sit where you can see the women's bathroom door, they all have to go sometime. Everybody loves a parade...

8 - Never date a woman who will not leave the house without makeup or without "doing" her hair. You could never love her as much as she loves herself.

9 - It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor girl... but the divorce is a completely different story.

10 - If all you are looking for is one night of fun, a fake wedding ring is the perfect accessory. Just don't mention the fake kids

11 - If she has slept with all your friends, she will continue sleeping with all your friends. DUH!

12 - Prostitutes are not the marrying kind. Trust me on this one

13 - Tattoos are OK as long as she doesn't have other women's names tattooed on her arm. Sara... Jennifer... Caroline...

14 - If she shows up for the second date with your name tattooed on her arm... Run like the wind, my son, run and don't look back...

15 - Never try to sober up a drunk or clean up an addict. She will just wreck your car, steal your money and call you a "Control Freak".

Now, with these fresh thoughts, go forth and prosper... and post the pics

Home Sweet Home...

This is what we see from our front porch

It's one of the nicer things about this house. We are less than five minutes from Dickson Street, the center of Fayetteville, and yet we are all but in the country.

Oh, yeah... that is a graveyard across the street... I've never had to call the cops on those neighbors, though they do have some weird parties. Dozens of cars and right in the middle of the afternoon but they keep the music down.

I also posted some pictures of Rita's birds here. They feed right outside her office window.

It Must Be Tough to Argue From No Position...

Janean Garofalo was on Fox this morning with Tony Snow.

Two words:

Quality Confusion

Rita and I watched in bemusement as she spluttered and barked her way through it. She doesn't do so well without a script.

It's Snowing again...

Here we are, deep in the south, and it's snowing like crazy. Big, poofy flakes, about a half inch each, piling up in the yard, on the tree branches and atop the car.

I just refilled the bird feeder and they are all eating it up. Mostly cardinals and sparrows but a few snowbirds and finches.

Sassy wants to go OUT but not yet. She will sit in the middle of the yard and collect snowflakes till you can't see her, then chase the birds away from the feeders. For some reason she acts like the birdseed is hers and the birds should leave it alone.

At least she doesn't get that hound smell when she is wet. I'll let the birds feed for a few hours then cut the girl loose.

Good G*d, the World is Full of Morons...

I found this over at the Washington Times.

Pepsi is anti-g*d.

Proctor and Gamble is owned by sat*nists.

Saddam will disarm himself.

Idjits!

I've Reverted to My Youth...

This was just way too much fun...

I am going to do some with Sollie (our pug) saying something offensive about the French.

Link shamelessly stolen from Acerbia 4

Home is the hunter, home from the hill and home is the sailor from the sea...

We are back from the hospital and Rita is recovering (stoned that is, glassy eyed, numb and zoned) at her laptop, blogging away over at Res Ipsa... all went well and the Doc said he thinks he got what was ailing her.

I'm now off to Wal-Mart to get the queen her drugs...

We're off...

It's off to the hospital... be back in a while... wish us luck...

Ahhh... youth....

For all those who were wondering what I looked like in high school...

... that was not my shirt, tie, sport coat... I was a hippy dammit and I couldn't find any Visine!

Waiting...

Rita and I are sitting here waiting till it's time to go get her face cut open.

Yeah... I'm nervous....

I'll let you know how it goes....

I Love Strawmen...

From a commenter at Michele's,

STRAWMAN ALERT!

"What would happen if Saddam fully complied with UN inspectors, fully disclosed all the WOMD's, and fully disarmed tomorrow?What if he did everything required of him but step down? Would we still go to war?"

What if I could sh*t ice creme and p*ss chocolate syrup? Would you come over to my house for a sundae?

Honest, that's Rocky Road ice creme... dig right in... don't mind the smell, I hear the French love this stuff...

Protesting the Protestors...

I found this little clip over at Brain Terminal and got a big yuck out of it. Evan Coyle Maloney does a bang up job of interviewing "peace" protestors in New York and got it all on film.

If these mental midgets are the best the left has to offer this is going to get sadder and sadder.

Remember, you cannot hate someone you pity. Hate requires at least a small quantity of fear.

I hate Saddam.

I hate Osama and his henchmen.

I pity these morons.

MacArthur Park...

When I was five we moved from Pennsylvania to LA and the only place we could rent, with seven kids, was in the projects, just over the hill from MacArthur park. That first summer, before school started, we used to walk through the nice neighborhood at the top of the hill, cross the railroad tracks and spend the day in the park.

There was a carousel there, with brightly painted horses and a real calliope that could be heard throughout the park. I used to watch it go 'round and think about riding one of the large horses on the outside aisle and dreamed about grabbing the ring. They actually had a brass ring, far enough away from the side that you had to really lean out to even attempt the grab and the reward was a free ride. I only got to ride it a few times and, oddly enough, I cannot remember of I ever got the ring.

There was also a small lake in the park, on the west side, near the road. A boathouse on the east shore had a booth where paddle boats were rented by the hour. Flocks of ducks and swans nested in the bushes on the island to the south end of the lake. We often snuck out to the island to steal the eggs, throwing them into the traffic speeding by on the street.

This all flooded back into my mind just now. I ate a tangerine and the taste and smell brought back 45 year old memories of East Los Angeles. We used to stop on the way and buy produce at a stand across the street to the west of the park.

Bananas, a penny a pound.

Tangerines, ten for a nickle.

Grapes, two cents a pound.

My brothers and I would spend a dime and get enough fruit to put us into a coma. We would then run through the traffic of the busy street and into the cool darkness of the park. There we would eat all the fruit, the acid from the citrus stinging our lips, the sweet grape juice making our hands stickey and dirty, then stuffing our mouths with the bananas.

Lying in the grass in the shade as the hot breeze from the cars rushing past kept the flies from settling. Before it got too dark, we would wash off in the drinking fountain and head west, into the red sunset, afraid of being caught out in the dark.

We were small eastern boys in a huge western city and hadn't quite figured it out yet.

There are times when doing nothing is the worst thing you can do...

War sucks. No shit. It's bloody and dangerous and sometimes people who go to war don't come back.

One day soon I will watch as friends of mine go off to Iraq and into war because the alternative is to wait until that bastard gets strong enough to kill us all. My heart wishes there was an easier way, some magic wand to wave that would make Saddam and his boys stop what they are doing and destroy all their WMD then give up power but my head knows better. My friends will hunt down Saddam, Orsay and Uday and kill them, along with as many of their buddies as they can find and it may stop the madness.

It may stop it.

The terrorists will not stop if we do nothing, so we step up to the craps table and throw the dice and hope for the best, having done everything we can to improve the odds.

Surgery sucks. It's bloody and dangerous and sometimes people who have surgery don't survive.

But next Friday I will watch the woman I love go under the knife because the alternative is to wait for an infection to kill her. My heart wishes there was some easy way, some magic pill or spray but my head knows better. The doctor will cut her face open and remove the bad part and the infections may stop.

May stop.

They will not stop if we do nothing, so we step up to the craps table and throw the dice and hope for the best, having done everything we can to improve the odds.

FEAR...

I was told something by a mentor a few years back (about 16 years ago) in response to a question about how to deal with fear.

"Fear is just False Emotions Appearing Real"

At the time I was fearful of a lot, going through a divorce from a crack addicted wife, newly clean and sober, afraid of losing custody of my children, suffering from a ruptured disk (L5-S1) and unable to work. I had no faith in my ability to make decisions after taking a hard look at the situations my decisions had got me into. I was paralyzed by the fear of doing the wrong things and by thinking about all the ways thing could go bad.

We sat and talked about this for a couple of hours, and after reflecting on his experience and my own over the years, this is how I came to see fear.

Fear is an emotion and as such, does not always reflect reality.

Emotions can be reactions to shadows from the past, misperceptions or subconsious evasions. My mind is not always honest with me and I have had to learn to be critical of my emotional reactions. At times I misinterpret patterns because I have seen those patterns before. Sometimes the consequences of facing a fear is so great that my mind wants to pretend that it is not there or it is something that it is not.

Emotions can also be looped through a feedback mechanism in the mind, which can magnify the intensity. The feedback mechanism has nothing to do with the emotional stimulis, it is a separate function. A trigger, which would have no effect normally, may send a person into a tizzy if it coincides with some other stress situation. I had to learn how that feedback occured in my mind and how to control it.

Fear is the means my mind uses to tell me that something I value is at risk.

Fear is the most useful of emotions, when used properly. If you are standing on a ribbon of blacktop, in the dark, a solid white line to your left, a broken white line to your right, the roar of a diesel engine growing louder in your ears and two bright lights getting slightly farther apart in front of you, the fear of becoming a bug on the front of a semi is what gets your ass out of the road and onto the sidewalk.

But that is rational fear, an emotion parsed and moderated by a rational appraisal of the situation, a balancing of the perceived threat and the reality of the threat.

Fear undefined could be as large as the Pacific, defined it may be just a puddle.

Imagine yourself blindfolded and standing ankle deep in water. You hear water movement but you cannot tell which direction the sounds are coming from. You feel the water splashing on your calves but it remains about ankle deep.

You could be standing on the peak of a mountain in the middle of the ocean and a step in any direction would put you into the deep or you could be standing in an ankle deep puddle in a parking lot and a step in any direction will put you on dry pavement.

Name the demon

Pull your fear close, know what you are afraid of and why. Define it and give it a name, a face and a voice. Study that thing until you know its every facet. Test it to define what is real and what is imagined. Use that knowledge to do whatever you can to avoid the object of your fear, to contain the consequences, to guide your actions.

Dad used to tell us that brave men were not without fear, that they had overcome their fears, that courage was not lack of fear but mastery of fear. It took many years but I now understand.

Thanks, Pop.

Bah...

Sorry for the light posting...

another tough week at work and I'm coming home ready for the feedbag and bed...

more better stuff Friday...

I was just sayin'...

Valentine's Trip from Hell

The upcoming Valentine's Day has made me remember a Valentine's trip from hell. It's 1998, I hadn't been divorced too long & wasn't interested in seeing anyone yet, so I had plans to spend a quiet V-day weekend alone. My best friend from law school calls...her husband had made plans to go to the races at Talledega Valentine's Day weekend, she can't go because she's pregnant & can't travel that far. Needless to say, she's pissed....that evil, pregnant woman pissed. "He's going without me, that's just fine," she snaps. "I'm going to Tulsa for the weekend, and you're going with me." I can already tell this will be a fun trip.

We hit the road for the 2+ hr. drive to Tulsa after work that Friday, and I soon discover that I am trapped in a car with a reckless driving pissed off pregnant woman & I can't smoke...It gets worse. She puts in a CD. It's John freaking Denver. It's her favorite. She listens to it for the entire trip. After the first hour, I'm seriously calculating what my chances of survival would be if I jumped out of the moving car even though she's driving 90 mph on the turnpike. I'm figuring I have a better chance of surviving the jump than if I tell a pissed off pregnant woman that her favorite CD sucks. I manage to stay in the car only by imagining all the ways I could destroy that damn CD.

When we finally make it to Tulsa, I discover that letting her make the reservations was a bad idea. This hotel had a special room rate for couples for V-Day, including a complimentary bottle of champagne. Yep, that's the one she got because it was cheaper. It was fairly obvious that the staff thought we were a lesbian couple. (I'm about 10 yrs. old than she is) I got the giggles. I had to explain it to her when we got in our room, because she had no idea why I kept snickering. "But I'm pregnant, why would they think that?" she said. I said "From the looks we were getting, they probably think I did you with a turkey baster." She cracked up, stopped being a pissed off pregnant woman, and we had a good time for the rest of our visit.

It was raining hard when we started home the next evening, after a long day of shopping....so hard that there were big pools of water standing in the road. She drove 90-95 mph almost all the way back. We listened to John freaking Denver the entire way. I sat back, and resigned myself to dying with John Denver warbling in my ears. Hell had to be an improvement.

My Girl and her Hubby...

Libby and Dave
They make a great couple.

Libby
This an example of "Ultimate Libby"

Now, try to imagine that girl in a burkha...

Nope, never happen...

An Epiphany, of sorts...

I had a bit of an epiphany just now... I was cleaning and thinking... its a zen thing... and I realized what is missing from the anti-war stance...

The Anti's do not seem to contemplate the consequences of being wrong... the pro-war crowd repeatedly opines about how we will have major work to do if we are mistaken in our belief that combat is required.

The Anti's rarely mention (I have not read one case of this) that if they are wrong and Saddam is in cahoots with Al Queda and bio, chem or (g*d forbid) nuclear weapons are loosed on the US, their apologies for being wrong will be moot, as there will be no US to apologize to.

Der Fuherer's karmic debt will look like nothing compared to ours if we are wrong.

On the other hand, if the Anti's are wrong, and Saddam uses smallpox as a weapon, it will spread throughout the third world. There is no way to stop it. America has enough vaccine to protect most of our own but some unknown percentage will die as a result of the vaccine as well as another group who will contract smallpox and die even with it. The dead will be the old, the young and the infirm.

Asia will be decimated and Africa may be completely depopulated. Eastern Europe will be marginally better off and Western Europe will do slightly better than that, but they stand to lose 10% to 50% of their population.

An outcome like that would make Hitler's karmic debt disappear.

So, to those of you who oppose war at any cost... think about that and try to imagine what you could possibly do to make amends for being wrong... are you willing to bet half the lives in the world on trusting Saddam?

Deja Vu...

I've been experiencing a lot of Deja Vu lately, just in the last three days.

In retrospect, this happens to me in times of great change, times when my life is undergoing radical changes, even if I am not aware of the changes until after the fact.

I have a sense of foreboding, maybe impending doom.

I'm hoping it is the quesadillas we had for dinner last night.

Snooooow.....

Its snowing again. Big poofy flakes. About two inches since 5 am and its supposed to continue most of the day. The phone and power lines are bouncing under the weight of the wet snow.

All the footprints and bare spot are gone again
the yard is a white expanse of monochrome

I like snow.

Its All About the OIL...

I came across this a few months ago and have been reading up on Thomas Gold's research.

If he is correct (and it appears that the facts are on his side), we are not running out of oil or gas. We are just siphoning off the uppermost regions and they are refilling from the reserves trapped deeper in the crust.

That puts a whole different spin on the world economy. The largest oil find ever tapped was the Oklahoma/Texas field and if those very old wells (1890's to 1920's) can be brought back into production we could tell the Saudis to kiss our asses.

Sweeeet....

Puppies....

I was wandering around and stumbled onto some pics of puppies from an odd perspective.

Damn funny shots, I must say...

An Engineer's Perspective...

I stole this off a thread this morning, link not provided as the thread was full of anti-semitic vitriol, but I found this to be a clear, engineer's viewpoint on NASA's difficulties.

This is an excerpt from "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
by Richard P. Feynman
The book can be ordered at Amazon

excerpt :

All right I said. Here's a piece of paper each. Please write on your paper the answer to this question:

What do you think is the probability that a flight would be uncompleted due to a failure in this engine?

They write down their answers and hand in their papers. One guy wrote 99 44/100% pure. (copying the ivory soap slogan), meaning about 1 in 200. Another guy wrote something very technical and highly quantitative in the standard statistical way, carefully defining everything, that I had to translate - which also meant about 1 in 200. The third guy wrote, simply, 1 in 300.

Mr. Lovingood's paper, however, said,

Cannot quantify. Reliability is judged from:

past experience

quality control in manufacturing

engineering judgment

"well" I said, "I've gotten four answers, and one of them weaseled." I turned to Mr. Lovingood: "I think you weaseled."

"I don't think I weaseled."

"You didn't tell me what your confidence was, sir; you told me how you determined it. What I want to know is: after you determined, what was it?"

He says, "100 percent" - the engineers' jaws drop, my jaw drops; I look at him, everybody looks at him - "uh, huh, minus epsilon!"

end of excerpt

Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle

by Richard P. Feynman

Introduction

It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?"

Conclusions

If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of originally conservative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle. In these situations, subtly, and often with apparently logical arguments, the criteria are altered so that flights may still be certified in time. They therefore fly in a relatively unsafe condition, with a chance of failure of the order of a percent (it is difficult to be more accurate).

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers.

In any event this has had very unfortunate consequences, the most serious of which is to encourage ordinary citizens to fly in such a dangerous machine, as if it had attained the safety of an ordinary airliner. The astronauts, like test pilots, should know their risks, and we honor them for their courage. Who can doubt that McAuliffe was equally a person of great courage, who was closer to an awareness of the true risk than NASA management would have us believe?

Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of reality in understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough to be actively trying to eliminate them. They must live in reality in comparing the costs and utility of the Shuttle to other methods of entering space. And they must be realistic in making contracts, in estimating costs, and the difficulty of the projects. Only realistic flight schedules should be proposed, schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met. If in this way the government would not support them, then so be it. NASA owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use of their limited resources.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

End of quote

Uncle Sam, Mr Fixit to the world...

I am a system engineer by trade and have found that in a crisis, when the system is down and not working, bitching about last years budget cuts does not get the system back up and running. It doesn't help to carp about who screwed up and got us here.

All that matters is :
What is broke?
How is it broke?
Who is going to get hurt?
How do we fix it?

Then you fix whatever is broken.

When the system is back up, doing what it was designed and implemented to do, you go after the asshole that got you into the mess. If he/she stands up early and takes credit for the mistake and appears to learn from the mishap, all can be forgiven.

If he/she weasles and lies, tries to hide their involvement? Crucify the schmuck. No punishment is too severe for someone like that. To do less will only expose you to their continued incompetence or malevolence. Fire their asses and run them out of town.

Yeah, I'm talking to you France and Germany... and the Saudis too... as well as Bill Clinton and Al Gore... Hey, Teddy, wake up... or should I say sober up?

Smoke This, Peaceniks

Saddam's bodyguard is allegedly spilling his guts to Israeli intelligence. (Link via lgf) Seems there's all kinds of little goodies hidden around Iraq, including:

AN underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad;

Mahmoud said those shells were on their way to be refilled and stored in the bunkers...Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are also concealed in a tunnel complex deep beneath the sewers of Baghdad and in an underground complex in Ouja, to the north of Tikrit."

Just imagine what he's disclosed that isn't being released.

Shit! Not again...

I'm sitting here, tears welling in my eyes...

As a boy I discovered science fiction and it that writing form I found sweet escape from the painful reality of my life. I drank in the fantasies of speeding through space, high above my nasty little world, far from anyone who could hurt me.

I remember sputnik, watched our first man is space, was mesmerized by the moon landings and wanted so badly to be there... to be released from gravity and to float around the world, seeing a sunrise every hour or so...

I accepted that I would never get to fly out into the black sky, that I would be earth bound but somehow it was OK because there were people going there for me. Folks who took cameras and let me look over their shoulder as they fixed telescopes and built the space station. I have been allowed to live my fantasy of space flight through these folks taking me along.

I saw Challenger explode and it shook me to my core. It was about lunch time and I was fire taping drywall in an insurance building in West Palm Beach. We had broke for lunch and were sitting on some scaffolding, watching the launch. Everything was fine for the first part of the flight but it became clear something had gone wrong.

I was crushed. I burst into tears and left. Me. A big old drywall hanger, a rough and tough he-man, trying to find my car in the parking lot through my tears. I drove home to be with my wife and kids, stopping repeatedly to get the tears clear enough to see. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the house, in front of the TV, watching the tape and crying. The smoke remained in the sky for hours, slowly wisping away.

I feel the same today. I would have gone along if that were at all possible. I would still give my left nut for a ride into space, even knowing the risk as we do now. Some things are just worth doing, no matter the cost.

I will cry tonight.

I will remember this day, that hour, that minute.

I still yearn for the sight of the world far below and a black sky full of sharp stars above.

My heart goes out to their families and may their souls rest in peace.

Will Armageddon be televised?

I've had this running through my head all week...

Encouraged by his success as a novelist, Saddam Hussein has released a pop tune he feels is destined to reach the top 40 on Islamist radio stations all over the world.

Sea of Glass
to Blondie's "Heart of Glass"

Started a war, used poison gas
Bagdad turned to a sea of glass
seemed like we could win
only to find
stupid idea
F**ked from behind

Tikrit glows
what in the hell was I a thinking
Allah knows
my ship of state was a sinking
and I wouldn't go
I stayed until the end
then missles struck
I am so truly f**ked

Ooooo-oooo-oooo glooow

Ooooo-oooo-oooo glooow

Started a war, used poison gas
Iraq turned to a sea of glass
seemed like we could win
only to find
stupid idea
F**ked from behind

Ooooo-oooo-oooo glass

Ooooo-oooo-oooo glass

but this is how I really feel...

I am so bummed about this entire mess. I write silly songs to keep from getting depressed about the poor folk that are going to die. I will lose no sleep over Saddam, any member of his cursed family or any member of his regime. Good riddance to bad trash.

I'm thinking of our soldiers, the Iraqi soldiers ("motivated" to fight by the threat of torture and death for their families) and the citizens of Iraq. I wouldn't be supprised if Saddam pulled a Jim Jones and gassed most of the major population centers of that country. The central defining trait of his personality is a childish attitude of "If I can't have it, no one can!"

"See what you made me do? I had to kill them to save them from you!"

I remember what my oldest brother told me about his tour in Viet Nam, that most of the civilians wanted nothing more than rain, a buffalo and rice seed. They didn't care about politics, they just wanted to plow their fields, feed and shelter their kids and cuddle with the wife. I can relate to that. I am happiest when I know my family is safe and secure. I don't need to be rich or powerful, I don't want to be king. I just want to die of old age before my wife and kids.

Dominance or submission.

Those are the choices.

Every age has had psyco bastards that feel its their destiny to tell everyone else how to live their lives and nothing good ever comes of it.

If we submit there will be no peace for the forseeable future. Islamists will never be satisfied with anything short of their total dominance and our complete submission. They have never deviated from their clearly stated goal, to convert the world to an Islamic State, complete merging of church and state, under the control of the church.

Compromising with an unyeilding enemy is surrender. If we give anything now, the other side will just come back for more concessions. Their goal is total dominance so no honest compromise is possible, only detours from a direct path to that goal. The goal has never changed.

Hope without reason is self delusion. If there was any indication that they could be satisfied with any compromise, I would entertain hope, but I have no hope.

This is going to get ugly and the only choices left to us are brutal victory or a slow, painful death. The Islamist interpretation of the Koran tells them that G*d has chosen them to convert and rule the world and its perfectly fine to kill all the non-believers to attain that goal. We will have to kill hundreds of thousands of people to stop this or allow them to kill even more of our own.

We didn't choose this, we don't want it, we have tried our damndest to avoid it, all to no good result.

Let Armageddon begin and feel the pain in your heart. Cry for the enemy as well as the friend.

Here's to a quick victory and may all your kin stay safe.