Don’t forget to vote, as long as you are a Republican or Democrat. Otherwise you are SOL (disenfranchised) under the Texas primary system.

Gotta love it when an advertisement for The Great American Grill is placed on the same page as a story about a bunch of kids getting their hogs burned to death in a building fire.

Seems Obama has done such a crappy job to date that he is actually having to attempt to keep his campaign promises. In this (one single isolated case) I have to agree with him. His (poor) state of (dis)union address brought up a subject I have been meaning to comment on for a while, Don’t ask don’t tell. This stupid policy is almost as unfair and unAmerican as “separate but equal”.

Back in the day when I was younger, dumber and ….. well you get the idea; I was fairly homophobic. When I was a young grunt in the Army I was totally against gays in the military. Now that I am a few (ha ha) years older and hopefully a little wiser I realize how stupid I was on this particular topic. There are a few gay folks around my PD and there is not one that I would not want backing me up on a dangerous call. Most of them are (ta da) veterans. I believe it is completely hypocritical of anyone to say they support America and the Constitution and then try to deny gays their rights. How can anyone not want to be on the side of someone who knows they are going to be discriminated against, but still wants to serve their country.

What really chaps my ass ( no pun intended) is the fact that the .gov is the only one allowed to discriminate. Let a private company try to fire someone for being gay and you are subject to all sorts of sanctions and lawsuits, but the .gov shows once again they are above the law. There is a police dept in my neck of the woods that is attempting to institute a mandatory, military type, physical fitness test. However, unlike the military, they are not allowed to take age into effect on the requirements to pass. The .gov says this is age discrimination. This is the same .gov that allows for a reduction in performance standards in military fitness test based on your increasing age.

Don’t ask don’t tell also seems to me to be a violation of the separation of church and state, as it is mostly religious types who oppose gay rights. I realize that your particular religion may oppose homosexuality, but the same Constitution that protects your freedom of religion protects gays from discrimination. The 14th Amendment is fairly clear.

I agree with Robb over at Sharp as a Marble that being homosexual is not for me, but that does not mean I won’t defend your right to love who you want.

I also agree with Jennifer’s Head on two points. The first is that the .gov needs to stay out of peoples bedrooms. SCOTUS has already ruled that laws against homosexuality are illegal, yet it allows the military to discriminate on that very basis. My own State of Texas still keeps homosexuality in the Penal Code as a class C misdemeanor in spite of the law being illegal. The second is that homosexuality is not a conservative issue, it is a personal issue and therefore not open to legislation.

So, I had just gotten home from work and changed. I was sitting in my recliner drinking a Bud Light and eating some Tropical Trail Mix. Tropical Trail Mix consists (allegedly) of dried pineapple, banana, raisins, papaya and coconut. As I was consuming my tasty snack, I came across this post over at Baboon Pirates.  I slowly look at the packaging and find: product of Philippines and Thailand. Whew, that was close. I almost consumed dried fruit from an Asian country with low food standards.

Barring anything unveiled at SHOT 2010 I haven’t seen yet the firearms industry is in a great big rut. If you want over priced ARs and .380 pistols you should be happier than a fat kid locked in a candy store. If you want something else, too bad. Seems to me the only folks thinking outside the box these days are FN and Kel-Tec. I really thought the sunset of the gun ban in 04 would lead to new and exiting things, not everyone making the same damn gun.

Don’t get me wrong. I own and AR and am maybe looking to get another (not in 5.56) but come on. I have to agree with Tam on this one.

Since Monday pretty much sucks unless you don’t have to work, I will be changing Happy Friday to Happy Monday in an effort to make Monday suck a little less and also because Friday doesn’t really need any help.

In my humble opinion there were only about 3 or 4 good commercials during the game. This is ok, because the game itself was great. No, I’m not just saying that because the Saints won. I really didn’t care one way or the other, but was kind of glad to see the underdog win. The entire Budweiser advertising staff needs to commit hari kari for the millions of dollars they wasted on mediocre commercials. Snickers on the other hand scored a win with the commercial where Betty White got tacked.Doritos also pulled off a funny with the little boy slapping the would be boyfriend. The other commercial that got me laughing was this one with Megan Fox. Also, it had Megan Fox.

I just finished watching Zombieland and it was hilarious. If you have any sort of twisted, off, or sick sense of humor you will love this movie. Woody Harleson’s character is the best.

I found this the other day while looking for a new duty knife. I can’t decide if this is the coolest thing I’ve seen lately or the stupidest, but I still think it would be funny to have.

Laserlyte

Can you imagine the looks you would get when you pulled this out at the range?

I just found out that one of my favorite authors passed away on the 18th.

Robert B Parker wrote some really great detective stories. My favorites are the Jesse Stone novels, but all of his books are terrific. He is also well known for the Spenser novels that led to the television show Spenser for hire (the books are way better than the show). Here is a link to his website.

RIP

Robert B. Parker

So we’re a whopping 29 days into the new year and my department has already worked 235 accidents. That doesn’t even count the minor fender benders that don’t require a report, it’s 235 crashes that required a wrecker, ambulance, or both. Judging the way some people drive around here I’m thinking it would be cheaper for insurance companies to give free driving lessons.

Going to be a good year for the body shops.

I apologize for my lack of posting during the last year. I had no idea how much time would be absorbed by moving to a new town, buying and moving into a home, and completing the police academy and field training for a metropolitan Police Department.

That being said, I am going to attempt to begin regular postings. Please bear with me, some weeks are better than others.

People are stupid.

Shortbus

Let me begin by saying, I didn’t watch it. I didn’t have to. I am not interested in being baffled by bullshit.

Lots of folks like to point at the defense spending of Uncle Ronnie as increasing the national debt, but he won his cold war. He didn’t increase the debt to increase deadbeats.

The only thing you can do by underspending is lose a war.

The only thing that seems to be happening in DC is that the Dems are HOPING to hold onto enough seats to bring about Socialistic CHANGE.

Oh, and I bet Nobama continued in his push to ruin the healthcare system in the face of overwhelming objection of the American voters.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to blame Bush for his incompetence and lack of progress even though he has been in charge for over a year.

I also imagine that he blamed his inability to bring about his promised socialistic changes on politics and the Republican party instead of the resistance of the American people to his ridiculous ideas.

Sorry for the long hiatus. Things have been pretty crazy on my end for the last several months. I am officially an “only one” in training. I am about 3/4 of the way through my licensing process. I will then enter the field training portion of my departments certification process. The entire process takes almost a year, which means that I will be just about qualified to get myself or someone else hurt around the first of 2010.

Merry Christmas

Never try to move during the holidays. The holidays are enough hassle with out trying to move all of your household goods at the same time. That is the reason that posting has been nonexistent for the last few weeks. The more things I put into boxes, the more I think we should just walk away and start over. We have moved pretty much everything into storage but the bare essentials and the things that we are going to cram into my parents house while we look for a place to buy. The whole thing would be lot easier if the bank would have just let us buy before we moved so we could just move our junk from one place to the next, but thanks to the housing mess they want proof that we are employed in the area where we want to purchase. Oh well, if the housing market hadn’t gone tits up we would not have been able to afford much of a house anyway. So we just have to be patient. I will try to get back to posting on a regular basis as soon as we get moved (or I give up and sit down to drink a beer).