Sometimes it just doesn’t go every 88 minutes like it used to. Something happening underground so they tell us.
More on the trip through the park later…we’re not home yet.
…oh…you knew?
Mean lil shites, aren’t they?
One woman in the row in front of me actually had to leave the theater.
Boyo thought it was “cool when they were blowing stuff up.” I swear they could make a movie simply called “Explosions” and the lad would be ecstatic. No one tell him about EOD, ‘k?
You think that by now I’d not be suprised that Tom Cruise can act. Yeah-yeah-yeah, he’s a meltdown in real life, but I’m okay with that. It’s not like he lives in my neighborhood.
Dakota Fanning is one of the coolest little kids on the planet.
I really liked the way the sound effect(s) from the original movie underlies the sound effects in this version. Very nicely done.
Eowyn’s pregnant? Way to go Farimir.
Whenever I see “SCOTUS Watch” I’m waiting for a vet to come out and give me a progress report on a sick animal’s diseased body part. I blame Will Ferrell.
We Are Not Afraid. Got this link from various sites. Perhaps the London Bombings didn’t have the effect the terrorists were hoping for?
I have no desire to see “The Fantastic Four” but Boyo does. He’ll have to wait until next week though. Today, the entire family is going to see “War of the Worlds.”
Other than this little blurb I simply refuse to even acknowledge the fools that are blaming the U.S. and U.K. for the London Bombings. My only advice to them is, “Please crawl someplace out of the way and die, the terrorists have already beaten you.”
On the flipside, anyone who thinks 7/7 means “the flypaper strategy is working,” I can’t help you either, please join the losers in the corner.
No, I don’t have an answer, but I know what it’s NOT. It’s not either of those.
One of the things that makes me pissier than normal after a terrorist attack is waiting for the Islamic community to express their outrage at the senseless killings…and waiting…and waiting still.
No…we don’t know who did it yet, I know that, but still, the silence is defeaning.
Granted, I’m on vacation and not watching as much news as usual but I’ve cruised my usual keep up with the world websites and other than a couple of references over at Dean’s World, (start at the top and scroll down through the past couple days) I’m not finding any reports of any Islamic leaders speaking out against the attacks.
How about the rest of you? Seen any outrage from the Islamic side of the world or is it pretty much business as usual?
Update 1: Via Blackfive. Global Voices Online.
Update 2: Voice of America News: American Muslims Condemn London Bombings.
Packing the van and heading West until we leave cornfields and run into soybeans and ‘taters and sagebrush and mountains and jackelopes and huckleberries and fields of mint leaves and jerked elk and pans full of breaded croppie and sunfish.
I might blog while we’re gone, but don’t count on it.
Wow…Connors can happy dance…who knew?
I don’t think everyone who’s against the way America is fighting the War on Terror is a traitor or an enemy but, like it or not, I believe they’re still aiding the enemy. Not intentionally. I’m not judged by my intentions, I’m judged by my actions and by the results of my actions.
Better?
…who thinks moving the war on terror to Iraq is a traitor. They’re just wrong.
Via Dean Esmay who’s got a lot of other links debunking the things that “everybody knows.” Oh…and where did the WMD go? I don’t know either, but it’s coming from somewhere.
For me it’s this simple. I’m an American. America is at war with Islamic Facists who want me and my family dead for whatever reasons they’ve been sold this week.
Am I going to conduct myself in a fashion that supports my country and its leaders as they try to battle these evil fuckers, or am I going to conduct myself in a manner that aids the enemy?
Yeah, I need to keep it that simple. Otherwise they’ve already won. They have a singleness of purpose, defeat America. We have…people complaining that we’re not being nice enough to the bad guys…people saying we’ve already lost…people saying that we’re doing it wrong without providing any answers for a better way…and these are people who claim to be on our side.
I’ll leave comments open for you all to wrestle if you want. I’ve said all I’m going to say about this.
Wizbang’s Caption Contest is Up.
Rodney has one going at OTB.
Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, said in a speech Wednesday that “liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.” Conservatives, he told the New York state Conservative Party just a few miles north of Ground Zero, “saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war.”
From Fox News.
This on the same day that Senator Kennedy calls Iraq a quagmire and calls for Secretary Rumsfeld to resign, and Senator Pelosi says that the war in Afghanistan is over.
Ya know, I don’t trust any of them but if I’m going to listen to rhetoric, I want the folks who sound like they have my back.
“Race you home.” was what the young lady in the gym parking lot said to her young man as they kissed, let each other’s hands squeeze for a moment, before they walked away from each other to climb into their huge, gas-guzzling trucks from hell. Huge monstrosities that the farmers in my family would give body parts to be able to afford.
It was just so…decadent. They actually drove to the gym in separate behemoths. I’m talking the Transformer-inspired Chevy thing and the Dodge with the flaired fenders that almost clear my head. There were no trailer hitches…I was flabbergasted enough to actually look.
I must be getting old. I cringe when I fill the Hyundai and almost weep when we fill the van. I don’t get it. And I won’t ask if I see them again. I don’t have to. I mentioned it to a group of younger folks at work and one of them said, “Me and my husband do that all the time…we like different radio stations.” blink-blink A younger guy kind of nodded like, “Yeah, we do that.”
Is it just me or does that just seem like one of the signs that a culture is imploding?
Senator Durbin really apologized for his comments comparing us to Nazis etc.. I’m not finding any other text but what the AP put out and that’s kind of sad. It was a better speach than they’re making it out to be. He quoted Lincoln and he did it well.
I’m not sure that it’s anything more than regretting the political fallout, but it’s much more than I ever expected and it was done with much more grace than I thought he was capable of.
Well done sir. I know that had to hurt.
As for a bi-partisan, independant, commision, investigating supposed wrong-doings at Gitmo and elsewhere. Go for it. I have no doubt that our folks haven’t done a damn thing wrong. If any of them have, they need busted.
As I was eating lunch yesterday, sitting at the break room table, eating my Robin Hood #3 in a wheat wrap (ranch, everything but olives, pickle only) and watching a bit of TV, getting caught up on the headlines. Fox took a break from their coverage of Natalee’s misadventure on the ostrich farm and David Asman was reporting on the little boy scout who’s missing in Utah. He’s on the phone with a lady who somehow knows the little boy, I missed how, but she’s becoming more and more emotional as they talk, barely holding it together and Asman simply pushed her over the edge with, “And we understand he’s just the sweetest, nicest little guy…?” She turned into Holly Hunter in “Raising Arizona” in the “I love him so-o-o-o-o…” scene. Those of us at the table looked at each other like we’d ate a bug.
I just wanted to point it out. Asman, you’re busted. There was no good reason to shove that lady over the edge. Further, you didn’t have to sound so pleased with yourself when she had her melt down. It was like watching news porn or something. You were practically vibrating right there on the screen when you got her to cry. Dude, if that’s what gets you off, seek therapy, ‘k? That was creepy. All I’m sayin’.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a press conference on 14 June 2005:
The Department of Defense, working through the National Security Council interagency process, established procedures that would provide appropriate legal process to these detainees, procedures that go beyond what is required even under the Geneva Conventions. These included combatant status review tribunals to confirm that, in fact, each individual is, in fact, an unlawful enemy combatant. Every detainee currently at Guantanamo has received such a hearing. As a result, some 38 individuals were released.
Military commissions, trials with full representation by defense counsel for those suspected of committing war crimes. The commissions have been temporarily suspended pending further review by the U.S. federal court system.
And third, administrative review boards that annually assess the remaining potential threat and intelligence value represented by each detainee. These boards are designed to reexamine detainees regularly in order to identify detainees who can be released.
From All American Patriots.
Via Malkin who’s got a LOT more on this strawman being thrown up by the hand wringers.
This is Socrates (The Cat) and Katie (Did NOT). They chose to stay in Germany rather than spend a year in a kennel when we went to Oahu. Apologies for not posting the picture of Socs washing Katie, but that one’s too blurry.
In honor of everything Dad’s have to put up with, here’s one of my favorite pictures of Miko. What you need to understand is that she has not been lazing there forever as she would have you believe, no, she slid in there and posed as I was grabbing a soda.
Carnvial of the Cats will be at Elisson’s this week.
I mostly enjoy Jeff Harrell’s writing for his weekly bloggy roundup of Survivor.
On Friday he made the case that Senator Durbin may have been right:
To Americans today, the Holocaust is remembered, when it’s remembered at all, as a time when uniformed guards were cruel to prisoners in camps. The details are forgotten. Which makes the comparisons between Auschwitz and Camp Delta not merely inevitable, but actually reasonable.
The whole thing is well worth your time and consideration.
Hat tip to Jay Tea who makes his own points on relativism.
Update: Iowahawk has other writings of Senator Durbin’s that highlight the points made.
when a Marine looks at me and asks, “He’s yours isn’t he?” when the Marine is talking about my Senator from the State of Illinois, Dick Durbin. I’ve always been a rather proud son of Chicago Illinois…until this week. For the first time in my life, I’m ashamed of my hometown and state.
In case you’ve been missing the news this week, Senator Durbin compared our brothers and sisters in arms down at Guantanemo Bay to the Nazis, the Soviets running gulags, and Pol Pot, and he did it on the Senate floor.
I’m coming up on 21 years of service at the end of July and I’m starting to get “the questions.”
When are you going to retire?
Why don’t you retire?
Where do you plan on retiring?
Everyone seems to ask the first one out of just general curiousity. The second question is usually asked by folks who’ve let “the building” get so far into their heads they’ve lost all hope, although our daughter asked it when she found out I was probably taking her mother out across the Pacific yet again. The third one, usually by contractors who realize they’ve got an old guy with access in front of them. We’re like gold to contractor recruiters.
And to be honest the answers are: When they make me. Because I’m not done yet. Not here.
When they make me because I think I’ve mentioned before, I had a LOT of different jobs before I joined the Air Force, everything from a mover to a tin man to a chemical engineer in a photo processing plant, and this is still the best job I’ve ever had.
Because I’m not done yet. I don’t know what “done with the Air Force” feels like but I’m just not there yet. I don’t have a great deal of job satisfaction where I’m currently working so retiring from here feels too much like going out with a whimper. I’d much rather go out all beat up and tired, grinning from ear to ear, “Now THAT was fun.”.
Not here. Don’t get me wrong, the midwest is wonderful, it’s charming, it’s civilized, my son will probably coast his happy self through DoDDs schools after 4th grade here because they’ve drilled the basics into him. It’s just not home. Home is somewhere with desert, prarie and mountains. Home is somewhere my famiy doesn’t have to live on anti-histamines from April though November. I know it sounds weird for a Chicago street kid, but somewhere and somehow I got “The West” into my bloodstream and it won’t let go.
I was talking to my former functional manager the other day, she’s a retired chief and a GS-12 now and when I told her we were going to Kadena she punched me in the shoulder. “I wanna go!” And then she said something that’s given me a great deal of comfort. She got kind of wistful and said, “After almost two years of retirement, I wish I’d have stuck it out. I’m not having any fun.”
And that’s the deal right there. I might complain about job satisfaction and some of the old thinkers in my building, but for the most part I’m still having a very good time working with very good people. I’m not ready to give that up yet.
is a very possible destination for me and mine next year. Who’s been there? What did you think?
I keep hearing things like, “My best assignment ever.” and “Think Hawaii at half the price.”
I’m thinkin’ if it happens I’m finally gonna get myself dive certified, so is Beautiful Wife, and Boyo will be just about old enough to start as well.
From CNN:
Guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright will be on stage with bassist Roger Waters for their first public performance since they played at London’s Earls Court in 1981.
The rock legends will join a star-studded line-up including Coldplay, Elton John and Paul McCartney at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park, organized by activist rocker Bob Geldof to pressure rich nations to ease African poverty.
But will there be flying pigs?
I can, without any qualms whatsoever, vouch for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. They remain The Greatest Show on Earth. The clowns were funny, the dancers were sultry, the animals were cute, ferocious, and amazing, the acrobats took our breath away, the trapeze artists defied gravity, and the Ringmaster will probably have a career in professional announcing all the days of his life. If he were to get a catch phrase, he’d surpass Michael Buffer in no time.
Boyo was a bit of a butthead, but he’s paid the price for that. Beautiful Wife and I had a blast in spite of his losing his mind.
I’ll post pics as Beautiful Wife does her magic on them.
is up at Music and Cats.
to the next terrorist attack on American Soil.
I don’t mean to be an asshole, but not enough people are saying it.
What are we talking about around the water cooler? Jiminy Cricket in a pair of Gucci’s, we watched the police in L.A. stare at a mini-van parked on the I-10 for over an hour last week! Come ON!