Author: TSO

Action News 19 really has something here….

I am woeful in American History that doesn’t deal with some war or another.  But today I have been watching a 2 hour special on the dustbowl, and I just saw footage of this:

Holy Shitload of Rabbits Batman. Are you kidding me with these things? I know Claymore has declared a fatwa on all squirrels, but damn. I’ll take squirrels 6 days a week from swarming jack rabbits.

By now everyone has likely heard about Bruins goalie Tim Thomas declining to go to the white house because he disapproves of Obama. Frankly, I would have just gone, only because he was representing the Bruins, but whatevs. Then this assmonkey decided to open his piehole:

Look, if this cretin wants to stand outside the White House and spew his drivel, that’s free speech. But standing up the president? All that does is show that Thomas has the class of a swamp rat.

What’s worse, you know Thomas would not have done this with the liberal Democrat Bill Clinton in the White House. Truth is, he felt free to dis Barack Obama, because Obama is black.

Assmonkey here also wrote a book about his experiences in Viet Nam Nebraska and Canada.

In 1969, Jack Todd was twenty-three and happy beyond his dreams. He had left behind a hardscrabble youth in a small Nebraska town, had an exciting and enviable job as a reporter on the Miami Herald, and was wildly in love with his beautiful Cuban-American girlfriend. As the war in Vietnam drew closer, he assumed that he would fight, as the men in his family had always fought, though he was increasingly troubled by America’s role there. His oldest friend had just returned from Vietnam and was already showing signs of the war-caused trauma that would destroy him; he had seen and done things too terrible to describe. He begged Jack to dodge the draft, to go to Canada. Nevertheless Jack entered the army and completed basic training. On leave before his departure for Vietnam, he agonized over a momentous decision. By now deeply opposed to the war, he crossed the border into Canada, leaving behind his family, the girl he loved — and his beloved homeland.

Now one of Canada’s most successful journalists, Jack Todd is a remarkable writer of great power and vibrancy. It has taken him thirty years to come to terms with the guilt and shame of desertion, to break the silence, to tell this controversial, important, profoundly American story. In a dark century, when many “only obeyed orders,” he chose not to. This is an intensely moving personal story told with passion and literary verve, as well as an eloquent account of a tortured time in American history. It is hard to put down, and impossible to forget.

Yeah, you loved your girlfriend so much you ran away. And now you’re going to lecture us on how to act? Really Dick? Here is his email, perhaps you could write to him and suggest he engage in autofallatio with himself until he asphixiates, however unlikely that is:

jacktodd46@yahoo.com

OK, not really, but the Village People are playing here in Indy tonight. 

I have to go there right? What do I dress as? With the facial hair I figure the Indian is out, and I don’t own any chaps.

Got a few things, none of which actually warrants it’s own post.  However:

1) For some inexplicable reason, the Army wants to award me a GCM 6 years after I got out.  There is no way I can accept it, right?  Although technically I suppose my conduct might be construed as “good” it takes a pretty liberal interpretation.  Among my highlowlights were helping to start up the Sniper newsletter that accused our command of gross incompetance, getting VTWoody off on charges of assaulting a superior by arguing self defense, and then arguing the other guy as self-defense as well, and managing to piss off my 1SG to the point that he “1” blocked me on my NCOER and my complaining in response that I felt I deserved even less than that.  Anyone thinking I deserve a GCM must be high.

2) Speaking of getting high, WTF is Demi Moore doing?  Seriously, don’t rich folks have any better way of getting high than Whip-Its?  I remember my best friend doing Whip Its at the 4th of July Dead Show in Rich Stadium (Buffalo) in like 1992(?) and he walked up an off ramp and didn’t ajust his body accordingly and just kind of rolled down the ramp.  But come on, we were just dumbasses, she should have better means, no?

Either way, as I remarked last night on Facebook, maybe she is trying to ressurect the Askesian Society.  That comment was responded to with the greatest compliment I have ever receieved from Loopy Libertarian who said: “you’re turning into quite the Dennis Miller, with your obscure references.”  If there is one person I would like to be in this world besides the Tom Brady’s manservant, it would be Dennis Miller.  Nonetheless, regarding the Askesian Society (from an excerpt from the greatest book on Science that exists:

“In the early 1800s there arose in England a fashion for inhaling nitrous oxide or laughing gas after it was discovered that its use ‘was attended by a highly pleasurable thrilling.’ For the next half century it would be the drug of choice for young people. One learned body, the Askesian Society, was for a time devoted to little else. Theaters put on ‘laughing gas evenings’ where volunteers could refresh themselves with a robust inhalation and then entertain the audience with their comical staggerings.

“It wasn’t until 1846 that anyone got around to finding a practical use for nitrous oxide as an anesthetic. Goodness knows how many tens of thousands of people suffered unnecessary agonies under the surgeon’s knife because no one thought of the gas’s most obvious practical application. …

“A brilliant young man named Humphry Davy was appointed the Royal Institution’s professor of [the burgeoning new science of] chemistry shortly after its inception in 1799 and rapidly gained fame as an outstanding lecturer and productive experimentalist. … Soon after taking up his position Davy began to bang out new elements one after another – potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, and aluminum or aluminium, depending on which branch of English you favor. He discovered so many elements, not so much because he was serially astute as because he developed an ingenious technique of applying electricity to a molten substance – electrolysis as it is known. Altogether he discovered a dozen elements, a fifth of the known total of his day. Davy might have done far more but unfortunately as a young man he developed an abiding attachment to the buoyant pleasures of nitrous oxide. He grew so attached to the gas that he drew on it (literally) three or four times a day. Eventually in 1829 it is thought to have killed him.”

3) Jonn is about to bust out some phony busting on reporters that should have known better.  I am salivating at the thought.

4) I am headed with my wife to St Louis to the Iraq Vets Welcome Home Parade thing this weekend if anyone will be in attendance, you should come share a Guinness with me.

5) I don’t generally read Foreign Affairs.  It just seems like the kind of mental masturbation that only people who read the New Yorker and dream of owning a summer place in the Berkshires would give a shit about.  Virtually unreadable.  But there’s a semi-interesting piece in there today which I read because I had nothing else to read while at lunch.  It is entitled The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the?Middle Class?  From the summary:

Something strange is going on in the world today. The global financial crisis that began in 2008 and the ongoing crisis of the euro are both products of the model of lightly regulated financial capitalism that emerged over the past three decades. Yet despite widespread anger at Wall Street bailouts, there has been no great upsurge of left-wing American populism in response.

There are several reasons for this lack of left-wing mobilization, but chief among them is a failure in the realm of ideas. For the past generation, the ideological high ground on economic issues has been held by a libertarian right. The left has not been able to make a plausible case for an agenda other than a return to an unaffordable form of old-fashioned social democracy. This absence of a plausible progressive counter­narrative is unhealthy, because competition is good for intellectual ­debate just as it is for economic activity. And serious intellectual debate is urgently needed, since the current form of globalized capitalism is eroding the middle-class social base on which liberal democracy rests.

 

 

 

Everyone always asserts, I believe incorrectly, that the law is boring.  Oh hellz to the no.  Dude, nothing funnier than a good law suit.  So a buddy of mine shared a case with me today that illustrates this perfectly.  You don’t need to read the whole thing of course, but a taste of this shows you the kind of humor you can find, even in the relatively mundane area of Tort law.

“Sex on the Internet?,” they all said. “That’ll never make any money.” But computer-geek-turned-entrepreneur Gary Kremen knew an opportunity when he saw it. The year was 1994; domain names were free for the asking, and it would be several years yet before Henry Blodget and hordes of eager NASDAQ day traders would turn the Internet into the Dutch tulip craze of our times. With a quick e-mail to the domain name registrar Network Solutions, Kremen became the proud owner of sex.com. He registered the name to his business, Online Classifieds, and listed himself as the contact.

Con man Stephen Cohen, meanwhile, was doing time for impersonating a bankruptcy lawyer. He, too, saw the potential of the domain name. Kremen had gotten it first, but that was only a minor impediment for a man of Cohen’s boundless resource and bounded integrity. Once out of prison, he sent Network Solutions what purported to be a letter he had received from Online Classifieds. It claimed the company had been “forced to dismiss Mr. Kremen,” but “never got around to changing our administrative contact with the internet registration [sic] and now our Board of directors has decided to abandon the domain name sex.com.” Why was this unusual letter being sent via Cohen rather than to Network Solutions directly? It explained:

  (more…)

Crossposted.

On August 22, 2008, Army Special Forces soldier Kelly A. Stewart made a huge mistake: he had a one night stand with a woman who was not his wife (who is herself another soldier). It’s a mistake he’s been paying for over the intervening 3+ years, and will be paying into the future. But was the punishment equal to the mistake? That’s the central question posed by “Three Days in August: A U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier’s Fight for Military Justice” by Bob McCarty.

I actually read this book on my vacation in Cabo all the way back in October, but haven’t really been able to get thoughts on paper about it until now. I can’t say it ruined my vacation or anything, but the book is incredibly troubling on many different levels. I’ve tried to get some ancillary information from sources I have within the military justice system, but most folks were either ignorant on what happened here, or happened to be somehow involved, and were thus loathe to discuss it.

Either way, the book excellently identifies an issue that needs to be addressed. After the one night stand, two months went by before the woman that SFC Stewart met at the discotheque and brought home decided that she had been kidnapped and raped. From the website devoted to the book:

During court-martial proceedings one year later, Stewart faced an Army court-martial panel comprised of soldiers who had recently returned from a 16-month deployment with the Army attorney serving as Stewart’s lead prosecutor.

Despite a lack of both physical evidence and eyewitnesses to the alleged crimes, it took only two days for the panel to find Stewart guilty of numerous sex offenses and another day for them to sentence him to eight years behind bars.

Incredibly, the conviction was based almost entirely on the testimony of Stewart’s accuser, a one-time mental patient who, with the backing of the German government, refused to allow her medical records to be entered as evidence.

The first complaint of Mr McCarty in the book with regards to the jury seemed interesting to me, and it was the one point that an Army JAG took issue with in an email. As he pointed out, this isn’t entirely out of the ordinary for the military justice system, and also has an analogous occurrence in the civilian court system. In many areas, voters will elect a County Prosecutor who work cases within his jurisdiction, and thus folks on the jury will have either voted for the prosecutor already (thus having positive feelings towards the prosecutor presumably) or have voted against him, and thus likely be predisposed to oppose him. The JAG I talked to didn’t think much of this argument. Admittedly, I was with McCarty on this when I first read it, but I also see the point the JAG was making. I don’t know that if I was on a jury that the presence of the JAG I had in the army would make any difference. To be honest, I don’t even know who our assigned JAG was.

(more…)

My team is coming to me.  The news reporters here made it sound like Satan was Indy bound.

 

Billy Norwood Cundiff, you just made my Christmas card list bud.