Rite of Passage

   Well, it’s official.  My son has decided to become a Marine.  The papers are signed, no turning back now.  I’m not the happiest parent in the world right now.  His grades would’ve gotten him into college, but peer pressure is unbelievable.  The number of kids listening to the bugle amazes me.

   There is a certain amount of pride.  You can’t raise children to be independent , and then not be proud of them when they are.   He listened while I explained the negatives.  Then he expressed his positives to me.  They aren’t bad.  He seems to have thought it through.  Having been one I know that being a marine is going to profoundly impact the rest of his life.  The decisions he makes are going to determine whether in a good way or bad.

   I would have to say this is the first truly adult decision I’ve ever seen him make.  He took a couple of months with it, and we talked about it more than any other topic, with the exception maybe of his decision to become Catholic.  I felt that one was pretty important as well.  It was inspired by a girl though, so I kind of felt the motivation was wrong.He doesn’t always agree with my viewpoint, and I’m thankful for that.

   I only have to do this “this one is a grown up now” two more times, then I can take my old rickety ass to Hawaii and live on Mahi Mahi and Mai Tai’s.

Ron Paul;

  Howdy, bub.  How goes the race for the white house?  I have some questions, and no, I’m not one of your supporters so the same old schlock answers aren’t going to make me say “you go Ron” as I continue cleaning my bazooka.  You want to be president so that you can return us to liberty.  To the freedom our forefathers intended

1.  Your followers have me a little confused, and so do you.  Are you for states rights, or individual rights?  I ask because I don’t see the difference between having a state dictate to me what I can and can’t do versus the federal government doing that.

2.  Are you for or against gay rights?  you get a little uncomfortable it seems talking about it, but as a libertarian, don’t you think they should have the same individual liberties as everyone else?

3.  When you say “it’s not in the constitution” are you advocating a government that does only what is expressly permitted in the constitution, or for a federal government that does what is not proscribed by the constitution>  It may seem semantic, but it isn’t.

4.  when you advocate free trade, do you understand that countries like China use slave labor, and a host of other unfair business practices, and as president would you be willing to attach appropriate taxes and tariffs on the import of goods to ensure a level playing field for American industry?

5.  What would you consider justification for use of America’s military?  would it be enough for a foreign entity to attack U.S. citizens abroad, or would they actually have to attack U.S. soil?  Would you be willing to honor America’s longstanding mutual defense treaties with such nations as Taiwan?

6.  up until now, the government has known that cigarettes are a deadly product, and have chosen to tax them at incredibly high rates instead of making them illegal.  How do you feel about products known to cause death in a high percentage of their users being sold legally?  If you approve of the practice, do you consider it proper for the government to profit off the sales of such products?

7.  The gold standard or backing currency with gold has caused most experts to consider you a bit of an eccentric.  Do you feel it’s sensible for the U. S. Government to buy up trillions of dollars worth of a precious metal when our deficti is already alarmingly high?

8.  By placing the responsibility for governing so heavily on the states, it seems that the federal government would become a referee in disputes between the states and individual rights. Is that a sensible role for an advanced societies central government to be playing?  We are not living in the age of our forefathers, and in  fact it strikes me that for states to be controlling almost everything it would put the U.S. at a decided disadvantage when it comes to competing with other nations.

9.   If you could change only one thing by becoming president what would that one thing be?  Your underwear is not an option.

10.  Are you for the seperation of church and state being treated as the constitution intends, or for the watered down variety we see in use today?

Sincerely,

C. Jicket

founder of the Grape Party

lets do the news

  first the really important story…It’s a human interest story from the Grape Gazette.

Roscoe, fluffy and mollie seem to be hitting it off.  In fact I’m almost certain there may be a little inter-species lesbian thing going on if you know what I mean.  Roscoe is happy because someone speaks his language, mollie is happy because she has someone to snuggle with, and If I’m not mistaken the two of them being happy means FLUFFY IS A FREAK.

Maybe the rat bastards won’t kill me and grill me after all.

   the new intelligence estimate is out.  I’m willing to bet half of the readers here could’ve done as well.  Why do they always play politics with our security?  you would think on this at least they would all speak with one voice.  they can’t though.  You can’t be the most important if you agree with someone else.   Here’s the link…you shouldn’t bother…nothing new here

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070717/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_terror_threat_39;_ylt=AjjTS5Ima.DS.aCafPZKAGsL1vAI

  Pakistan is trying to take the lead in the death by suicide bombing category from Iraq.  Man what a mess they are, and our assistant secretary of state is calling for more military action from Pervez .  Man, we do have some seriously militaristic type s running our country.  Unfortunately, the ruling party in the congress (the democrats) have no balls, so it will continue.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070717/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_74;_ylt=AjbIywqw550DxJcms7ct2jyWwvIE

I don’t know about you, but I love poker.  I’m a huge 7 card stud fan, but the game of choice has become texas hold ’em.  Probably because any idiot can figure it out.  It’s preschool poker, but its big time money.  The world series of poker main event final table is playing, and the winner is going home over $8M richer.  Only Lee Watkinsoon is recognizeable, and the players come from all over the globe.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19777938/

Harry Potter book available in its entirity online.  ok, this is really cool.   First….read the blue box on the left with the guys picture on it.  Then read the story.  Then go, well what the hell does that ….

http://redtape.msnbc.com/2007/07/pirates-say-the.html

In keeping with the Bush Administrations policy of attacking anyone anytime, parachutists jumped on the fremont prison in colorado.  I think its about time we attacked colorado.  whats interesting is these guys, when asked for identification gave the guards a paper that said they were defense department employees…that may not seem like much to you civilians, buut any former military man or woman reading this is going HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289551,00.html

A pro wrestling story just for MDVP..its the chris benoit thing, and it lays out a pretty good run on how it all went down…Yes, he had steroids in his system

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/17/wrestler.murder/index.html

  I told you text messaging was from hell.  This story is one you gotta see…then tell your kids to watch it.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/07/17/snow.texting.and.driving.cnn

Obama girl vs. giuliani girl…this is pretty dumb, but I’ve never linked to booty on my blog so here yuh go

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2007/07/16/moos.obama.rudy.affl

maybe the first step toward proving me right, Iran and the U.s will hold direct talks about Iraq in Baghdad.  The pauliacs will hate this, and Ron Paul must be shuffking his scare mongering feet a little too.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/17/us.iran.iraq.ap/index.html

ok, that does it for the news…lots of murders, a dude burned his wife to death, Michael Vick indicted for dog fighting (what an asswit he is), those nurses accused of spreading HIV in children in libya are getting their death sentences commuted to life in prison, etc. etc.  It just oges on.  I think next time I do the news I’ll only do the good stuff.  Which means this post would’ve been one paragraph long

the troops support Ron Paul?

  The numbers are in.  They have been crunched, and it appears the military supports Ron Paul. The numbers do not tell us why, but it stands to reason that people who choose to bein the military tend toward patriotic views, and Ron has that market fairly well cornered now that John McCain has done his typical step-on-the-dick campaign for president.

  So what do the numbers tell us?  I’m going to round way up (thats in favor of Ron Paul, pauliacs…climb out of my rectum.  We’re going to call it 30,000 dollars the troops gave paul.  If we just count the troops in Iraq, thats about 20 cents per head.  Not exactly an overwhelming number is it folks?  How much you bet I can find you 100 blogs right now crowing about it like it was manna from heaven?  whoops, thats not the whole military though, and this counts veterans…woof…that blows…lets see….call it 2.8 million in the active and reserve, and lowball it at the same number of vets equals 5.6 million.  Well folks…thats substantially less than a penny a piece.  Damn, No wonder the blog is blowing up about this.

the irrepressive pauliacs are at it again.  Don’t laugh at them.  They get way defensive

Dad, can I join the military?

     I  know its unpopular to say, but most people in America we’re hoisting the flag, and rattling there sabres when we went off to bash the heathen muslims. I wasn’t. It wasn’t out of some humanitarian hand wringing impulse, but self serving as hell. I have a son that was 13, and I knew, yes knew, that we would still be there when he turned 18. Which happens soon.Today that son asked me how I felt about him joining the military. It seems the pied pipers of bloodshed and gore were at his school. I don’t have any particular problems with recruiters, except they talk about college tuition, exciting travel opportunities, and not the incredible drudgery of garrison life, or the horrific trauma of their stock in trade. Thats called salesmanship, and hearkening back to my last post, well, for lack of a more accurate description,disingenuous.

So I sat and discussed it with my eldest progeny. I explained what a green stick fracture was, and how to apply a tourniquet to what remains of the leg of your best friend. I waxed nostalgic about the sound a bullet makes as it pierces the flesh of a human being lying next to you, or the pitiful moans a grown man makes when he knows he’s hit bad and isn’t going to make it. Not the “tell susie I love her crap” but the begging, pleading, making deals with god if your able to speak reality of it. I didn’t mince words with him, as he’s almost a grown man, and i confess the description of the smell of a 3 day old corpse covered with dried feces, and urine, and blood and shredded into something that didn’t really resemble a human corpse at all was not proper pre-dinnertime conversation.

Unfortunately it was all lost on him. As were the descriptions of the sounds of screaming and explosions, the raw terror of that near miss buzzing sound, or the agony that folllows being waxed by a hand grenade. The fact is he is a man, and men for whatever reason have this urge to run to the sound of the bugle.

All over the world people are fielding that same stupid question from their children, or picking up the remains of children that asked it last year. I’m sure smart people can explain in detail how its instinctual and dates back to when we were writing on cave walls; this desire to go out and conquer our fellow man. I’m not one of them. The only explanation I have for it is that the ignorant often make bad choices, and war seems a hell of a lot more glorious when you watch it on tv than when you’re wiping the shit off you after you luck out and don’t die when it all goes horribly wrong.

and it always does.sooner or later.

    If you don’t wish to have this conversation with your children, exercise your right to vote.  All of the democratic candidates, and at least one Republican (Ron Paul), have pledged to end the war.  Of course they only said one war.  We have several that we’re involved in.