After several days of rain, fog, and the resultant mud swamps the sun has made it's presence felt at long last. Today would be perfect with a grill , a few beers , bratwurst , and maybe even a fishing pole but I will settle for the chow hall , a coke, some fries, and an M-16

     Gulf Daily News reports that Syria has begun withdrawing troops from Northern Lebanon as a result of international pressure led by the United States, France (yes France), and others. This should be heralded as a good thing but over at the Democratic Underground they are frantic to paint in any light that would avoid giving President Bush any credit for this let alone giving any credence to the Democratic Domino theory (Afghanistan then Iraq and so on..) ...

     Just saw Maine-R Rep. Brian Duprey on the O'reilly factor discussing his bill that would protect fetuses with the "Gay Gene" from abortion should such a gene ever be discovered . THe part that caught my ear was the quote that constitutes the title of this post. "Women Are So Shallow They Would Abort a Gay Fetus" He certainly has an interesting opinion of women!  

Note : None of the figures here attempt to adjust for inflation so I used some very low estimates for earnings and returns to shoot for the low end of the spectrum) Note: All calculations done using these tools . Note : I didn’t start this as a bash of Social Security but it ended up that way.   I am going to start at very low rates of contribution and work up from there. Had I started contributing to the TSP (or any savings program) over the course of my 14 year career: V...

     Ok so even though I was quite proud to have climbed the top blog list this last month I have to point out that the darn thing is totally broken. I noticed one blog which I had never read climbing the ranks until it reached number one tonight. Clicking on it I discover it has exactly one article and zero referrals. Some screen shots : and Note that this is in no way the fault of the blogger shown here just posting this as a sort of bug report.

          Update : Thanks to Michelle Malkin and OutsideTheBeltway for the links.            The military has a problem. The problem is that the incentives being offered for military service are too low for the venture to be considered a business and the standards that the military holds their soldiers to are far too low for the venture to be considered as a function of elitism. The pe...

     JU has changed it's forum view quite a lot and I have spotted a strangeness... In the forum view you can select your own comments for Trolling or Insightful ratings (something you never used to be able to do) and clicking on the buttons have strange effects... The first time it raised my score by a few points and the 2nd time I tried it it lowered my score by the same amount (perhaps a half finished guard against self-given Insightful points-whoring?). Anyone else notice...

Some sentiments from a peaceful and tolerant blogger in response to this post . I won’t put their handle in this blog (although you can of course find it on the original thread).   pretty sad commentary on this individual who uses one of the better anecdotes as a mockery. And sadder is how this person had a response of "wow man that was great ha ha ha". Sickening. Tolerance would be a good thing in these turbulent times. And it's unfortunate because attitides like that ma...

Look folks if the U.S. Army wants someone dead as Sgrena insists we did, there would be no story here. Why? Because there would be no body leftover that’s why. No one would ever know she had been killed by anyone because the car she was in would have been reduced to nothing more than smoking rubble. The Army would have targeted the car with a lot bigger weapons than a couple of soldiers with M-16’s. They would have used something like this:   or this:     or this. ...

     Now online quizzes and suchlike are normally Chiprj's purvue but I found this one interesting . 1SG Calangelo brought me the results from this personality sorter as he evaluated both his and my own personality (from his perspective). His evaluation of his own personality ended up being scored as "Field Marshall - Rational" (ENTJ) : "As the organizing capabilities the Fieldmarshal increase so does their desire to let others know about whatever has come of their or...

Jihadprints in the Sand One night a shahid had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with Allah. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. During each scene he saw two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him and the other to Allah. However, during the last, most desperate scene, he saw there was only one set of footprints. This troubled him and he turned to Allah and said, "Allah! You swore that once I decided to follow you, you would never leave me. W...

Jihadprints in the Sand One night a shahid had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with Allah. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. During each scene he saw two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him and the other to Allah. However, during the last, most desperate scene, he saw there was only one set of footprints. This troubled him and he turned to Allah and said, "Allah! You swore that once I decided to follow you, you would never leave me. W...

An excerpt from A Short History of the Non-Commissioned Officer … “In the early days of the American Revolution, little standardization of NCO ditties or responsibilities existed. In 1778, during the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Inspector General Friedrich von Steuben standardized NCO duties and responsibilities in his Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States (printed in 1779). Among other things this work (commonly called the Blue Book) set do...

          What happens when you are done with your honorable service in the military? Will you receive an honorable discharge? Certainly. Will you be eligible for veterans benefits? Of course you will be. Will you receive severance pay or a retirement parachute? Nope. Unless you are fat or out of shape that is. Sound stupid? You bet your ass it does.           This might come as a shock to t...

      Democracy will never catch on in the Middle East? Hmm seems like she has something else to say about that :      Think Syria would be reacting like this if there wasn't a nice avenue of approach now on it's border? Think The Lebanese protest might have ended in blood rather than the ouster of it's government? I do.