Category: Who knows

A couple of you sent us links to the news that Tom Laughlin, who made the Billy Jack series of movies died last night at the tender age of 82. I loved those movies when they came out, but, I voted for Jimmy Carter back then, too. They’re tough to watch now, though, not just for the tortured acting but for the politics of the things. I didn’t know it but, he also ran for president in 1992, 2004 and 2008. He didn’t like the Bush family, I guess. But, hey, some of you wanted to talk about his passing, so here you go.

TSO sent us a link from WebProNews which reports that government forces have parachuted into Guam. An entire brigade, by the looks of it;

It was an odd site in Guam on Sunday, as two thousand mice floated down from the sky on tiny cardboard and tissue paper parachutes. Why were mice flying through the air? They were dropped from a plane over the Andersen Air Force Base in the United States territory of Guam on a mission to kill the brown tree snakes that have invaded the country.

The mice were already dead before being dumped, and had been pumped full of 80 mg of acetaminophen. An $8 million United States program was approved in February to help eradicate the snakes and save the wild life and exotic birds that have become the snake’s favorite snack. Sunday’s drop marked the fourth rodent air assault, and the biggest so far.

Of course, the brown tree snake invasion of Guam began under the Clinton regime and the Bush administration completely ignored the problem – so it stands to reason that the Obama Administration would take the bull by the horns and commit troops to the war.

Ex-PH2 wants an open thread where she can spin her yarns, and I always do what she tells me to do. So here you go.

And to open the discussion, there’s a story going around the internet about 60-year-old Beula Montgomery who supposedly ventilated two street thugs who tried to play the “knock out” game with her. I’m calling BS on the article because there’s no media coverage of the incident, there’s no city listed in the story, so I can’t verify it with the local PD, and a lot of the blogs that linked to the story initially yesterday are taking down their links today. And the story sounds too good to be true. I passed on the story yesterday, so please stop sending me links to it. If you want to read it, the whole thing originated at the Mixed Martial Arts forum.

The folks at Make-a-Wish sent us some pictures and a brief story about 5-year-old Miles who has just finished his battle against leukemia. His wish was to be a crime fighting superhero and his wish came true in San Francisco in front of 13,000 witnesses;

5-year-old Miles celebrated the end of his battle with leukemia today, and over 13,000 San Franciscans joined him. Make-A-Wish made it happen by granting his wish to be Batman, and the young caped crusader battled the Riddler, rescued a damsel in distress, and freed beloved San Francisco Giants mascot, Lou Seal, from the Penguin.

I just thought it was a different story than what we’re used to, and I needed a break this morning after yesterday’s flood of phonies.

Twist wanted to tell everyone about some folks that helped him out, so….

As you all may know my spelling and grammar are not the best (I’m looking at you MCPO “smile”) so please forgive any mistakes.

Last month I had a pretty rough week. We have been taking care of my Mother, who has severe Dementia, for about three years now. She is finally to the point where she needs more care than we can provide so we decided to put her in a home. We had just started the process and the next day we got a phone call. My Father-In-Law, who is a Vietnam Veteran, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and throat Cancer and give three to six months to live. So we started making plans to get up to Alaska and help out up there and let the kids see their Grandfather while he is still with us and can remember us. Then about a week later I got a text from my wife while I was at work that said call home now. When she answered the phone I could barely understand her she was crying so hard. She was finally able to choke out that our two year old Granddaughter had a fatal accident. My LTC sat me down until I was safe to drive and then sent me home. My unit was great. Within 30 minutes of getting the Red Cross message I was on emergency leave. The reason I’m telling you this is not for sympathy, it is to give the back story about what happened next.

There is a Veterans charity called Wish For Our Heroes here in Indiana. They usually grant small wishes for Service Members and Veterans like giving them tickets to sporting events or help with small repairs on vehicles. I never contacted them, but they found out what was going on and then my phone started ringing and them saying they usually don’t do this kind of thing, but will see what they could do. Later that afternoon I got another call from them asking If I would be home in an hour and I said sure. An hour later one of them pulled into my driveway and gave us a gift card with $500 on it so that we would have spending money on it. I thought that was the end of it. A couple of days later I got another call from them while I was up in Alaska saying that they are going to help pay for my Granddaughters funeral. It wasn’t a ton of money, but I was touched. The next day I got another call from them asking if I was going to be in Indiana around Christmas time to which I replied sure. I asked why and they would only tell me that they wanted to do something for my family. I was deeply touched since all that they did is out of their usual scope. If you all want give them some loves.

Twist

They’ee also on Facebook.

TSO Adds:
I met Wish for Heroes about 3 weeks ago, and they are awesome. Just fell in love with the group. They set up obstacle courses at events for little kids, and when they finish the kids get their pictures taken with flak vest and helmet on. The kids were SO wound up. I helped them a little that day, and would have helped more, but I was in a lot of pain.

Anyway, I liked them enough that when my wife asked if I would be Santa Claus for pictures with all of the proceeds from the door going to that organization, I reluctantly agreed. I look like a complete lunatic (see below if you want) but they are such a great cause I even gave up my beard for them. I am glad they helped Twist, and feel better now about losing my viking look. Even though I can’t go to work looking like this, so may call in dead tomorrow.
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Well, conservatives may have lost the Virginia governorship, but we won in the Montgomery, Somerset County, NJ Board of Education. Nick Hladick, an eighteen-year-old student won the seat in the election the other day and he wrote to tell us about it;

My name is Nick Hladick and this past year I was a candidate for Board of Education in Montgomery, Somerset County, NJ. I have lived in Montgomery for my entire life with my parents and sister and graduated from Montgomery High School in 2013. I am an 18 year old college freshman attending the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Last night, with 1765 votes, I was the top vote-getter in a five way race for three seats, beating incumbents Shalini Bhargava (1427 votes) and Sandra Donnay (1594 votes) as well as newcomers Ramesh Durvasula (1126 votes) and Dharmesh Doshi (1692 votes). I filed my petitions one week after my May 27th birthday.

In my campaign I emphasized:

* returning to fiscal responsibility by cutting wasteful spending from the annual budget evaluating teachers more fairly by adding more evaluations by administrators; and including evaluations by teachers, parents, and students so that Montgomery only keeps the best teachers and measures are taken to improve under-performing teachers.
* expanding educational opportunity for high school students so that they can learn valuable life skills such as interviewing for a job, writing a resume, and other life applications. Part of this includes an internship for credit program which would give students the option to get an internship in the community and use the experience as credit in substitution of an elective class.
* engaging students, parents, and other members of the community in Board of Education decisions by forming specialized committees that include board members, parents, students, and other community members, that would help guide the Board in its votes on important decisions.
* rejecting Common Core curriculum so that Montgomery Schools is able to maintain its nationally recognized standard of education without the intervention of the federal government.

I hope you could include this in one of your publications about the 2013 election. I am fighting to help the students, parents, and members of the community so that we can improve the educational standards while keeping costs to taxpayers low. Here is a link to my candidacy statement in the Princeton Packet http://bit.ly/17FxY4c