This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Ex-PH2

  • Weekend Open Thread (UPDATE on Jonn)

    Well, bye!!

    And so, the last eight years are over and done with. The sun sets on the past. We have a new day ahead of us. Let’s move forward and make the most of it.

    Here’s your Weekend Open Thread. Have some fun, play nice with the other kids and be home before the street lights are on.

    UPDATE:

    Jonn is doing very well.  Sadly, he will not have nurses fawning all over him in the near future.  Someone who I will keep anonymous (TSO), made a painfully long ride to sit lovingly by his side.  It was all so sweet.  Feel free to press the little clicky button up in the corner and help get Jonn a membership to Dollar Shave Club.  All is well, he should be home soon.

  • Inauguration Day Schedule

    For anyone who is uninformed, today is the day some slacker in a suit walks away, and the new President is installed in office.

     

    Here’s an article from the New York Times with a nice shot of the inaugural area from a different time, and a complete schedule of the activities this weekend.  N.B.: the ceremony itself is at 11:30AM Eastern time, and all times are EST.  Just click on this:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/inauguration-day-guide.html?_r=0

    You have all those recipes from Thursday’s “Recipe Day” to set up a potluck buffet, so enjoy your day knowing that we do have a smart team in the White House.  I believe GEN Mattis will be approved by the full Senate, since his hearing with the committee went smoothly.

     

     

  • It’s Thursday – Recipe Day

    Last one of the day, I promise, and with the weekend coming up, it may or may not be a weekend to be indoors. So I”m suggesting that you post a favorite recipe that is filling, flavorful, good for cold weather and can feed several people, requires no real cleanup, and uses simple ingredients.

    Mine is smoked sausage with barbecue beans.

    Crock pot

    Kidney beans in mild chili sauce – 2 cans (for one or two people, more if needed for more people)

    Chopped onion

    Smoked sausage links (2 will make 4 meals for me)

    Barbecue sauce – your own recipe or a favorite brand, plus a very small amount of chili powder

    Put the beans and chopped onion in the crock pot first, add the barbecue sauce and stir.  Put the smoked sausage links on the beans, cover and  cook on low for 6 hours.  Goes well with cole slaw, chips, dill pickles, and a dessert like apple pie with ice cream.  Make sure plenty of hot coffee, tea and/or cider is on hand, too.

  • Banning Manning and Freeing the FALN Guy

    Well, now, it really is Good News Week.  The Platoon Sergeant appears to be fighting the Good Fight and good news has appeared on the horizon, as follows.

    As a great many people had speculated on what would happened to Mr. Manning, once he’s released from Ft. Leavenworth (or wherever he’s sitting on his bony ass), I am pleased to tell all of you that it’s official now.

    Mr. Manning will, per this USA Today story  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/18/chelsea-manning-lose-transgender-benefits-dishonorable-discharge/96742180/

    receive a Dishonorable Discharge and as a consequence of that, lose ALL his military-related benefits, including VA TG surgery.

    He is, in effect, banned for life.  You can quit giggling now.

    However, as there is always a balance to things, the balance for the good news about Mr. Manning’s loss of benefits and his Dishonorable Discharge is that the soon-t0-be unemployed lame quacker in the White House has commuted 209 sentences, one of which was Mr. Manning’s, and the other is FALN Oscar Lopez Rivera.

    In regard to the commutation of the 55-year sentence of Oscar Lopez Rivera, a former member of the Puerto Rican terrorist group, the FALN, the Chicago Tribune has a brief history of what he and his companeros did in the 1970s and 1980s.  They bombed 140+ buildings, killing at least 4 people. Their worst and nastiest episode of bombing was Fraunces Taven, Four people died in that bombing and more than 60 people were injured. 16 of those bombings took place in Chicago in 1977. Four government buildings were bombed by the FALN, severely injuring 3 police officers.  Not once has Lopez Rivera expressed any remorse for anything he did, any more than McVeigh or Nichols did.  The only difference between him and them is that his headcount of the dead was lower.

    The Tribune’s story is here, and there is a video included. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-faln-leader-sentence-commuted-0118-20170117-story.html

    And I still don’t understand the linkie thingies, so my apologies for the length, but the links do work.  And no, no photos.

  • Thursday Open Thread (Temp)

    Putting another Open Thread here until Platoon Sergeant returns to duty station.  The flowers are for him, just in case he thinks anyone forgot to send him some.

     

  • Thursday Morning Feel Good Stories

    I see that the Platoon Sergeant has been busy ferreting out the whats, whys, wants and warrants on one of the better-known rascals in the AO of This Ain’t Hell, so the following is the regular Morning Feel Good stuff, courtesy of one Dave Hardin. (There can be Only One!)  Enjoy it, and if you have a story of your own that you would like to share, please feel free to post it here so that others may enjoy it, too.

    A man was charged with aggravated robbery in Columbus OH.  The suspect became especially aggravating to the off duty Police Sergeant who happened to be home at the time.   Seeing the intruder coming through the window, the officer executed his FPF.   The intruder was identified a short distance away as the man who was screaming, “I’ve been shot”.

    The next case comes from afar but deserves some recognition.  First of all, I love the URL name of this story.  Second, the title leaves us wondering how many times the suspect was killed.  Last but not least, you have to admire a man that uses a shotgun as a sniper rifle to save his daughter.  Even the Hans guy from that Christmas movie would be proud.

    Southern justice is not known to be verbose.  In Hartsville SC, somebody shot one of several intruders.  As  Buford Pusser was known to say, “Well… I told ya to stop.”  If y’all head to the Deep South, I’ma suggestin’ that  ya mind those words when ya hear ’em.

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    Thank you for your support.  And if you have stories of your own, as I said, please feel free to post them.

     

  • Is Obamacare Being Scammed?

    This is another good article by Poetrooper.

    A recent article in the Miami Herald reports that if Obamacare is repealed, the Miami area will be one of the most highly impacted in the country due to the high number of enrollees there.  The article mentions five congressional districts and, true to the Herald’s reliably liberal slant, tries to make it look as though the three Republicans who are opposed to Obamacare are hurting their districts while the two Democrats are championing their federally insured voters.

    Four paragraphs into the article, my antennae were twitching, sensing related, possibly pertinent data from an earlier source.  A quick Google search proved the antennae still reliable, finding numerous articles describing Miami as the epicenter of Medicare fraud.  In fact, the problem is so extensive that Miami has the distinction of being the site of America’s first and largest federal Medicare Fraud Strike Force.  That information just naturally elicits a deepening suspicion of a correlation between such widespread corruption and the high utilization of Obamacare.

    Admittedly, the two programs are substantially different, but they are also similar in the most important way: they are federally mandated and heavily federally regulated.  It requires no special genius to conclude that criminal specialists in defrauding one federal health program just might be the same criminals to devise the means to criminally defraud another federal health program that in its infancy has far less policing oversight than an older, more established, and better regulated program like Medicare.  With even investigators at the Government Accountability Office admitting that Obamacare is susceptible to fraud through fictitious enrollments, such high utilization of Obamacare in the same areas where Medicare fraud is most prevalent begins to whiff of something more than coincidence.  One has to wonder just how many of those high numbers of Miami area enrollees exist only on paper.

    That, folks, is another good reason for getting the feds out of the health insurance business.

     

  • Wednesday Open Thread (Temp)

    Good morning.  I’m going to keep a daily open thread going until the Platoon Sergeant gets back from his idyllic vacay with cigars and rum on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific.  This is mostly to keep the thread from getting lost in traffic, and also to add updates when possible.  Have some fun.  It is gray and trying to rain here in my kingdom and Miss Punkin Squawkypants has discovered that counter surfing results in getting a quick spritz from the spray bottle.

    Just remember: no knife fights. Hands in sight at all times. If you’re gonna have a throwdown, show your colors first or I’ll sic the squirrels on you.

    UPDATE:  Covert operatives from TAH have infiltrated a health care facility somewhere in MD.  Surveillance late this morning shows a patient still masked but resting and responding to treatment.  Squirrel team 3 is in place to disable the land line if it continues to ring.   Nurses will say anything for some Godiva chocolate.