If you read the comments below about children and ever believe that there is anything worse, then you need to reevaluate your existence.
"Wildfires
in the American West, child abductions, corporate greed and plummeting markets,
and strip-searching grannies in our airports. Where should I begin?
Let’s take it from the top.
"After decades of protecting the wildlands & forests of the American
West, the Greens are getting burned, literally. It seems as if everything
west of the Mississippi is going up in flames this Spring & Summer, and the
worst part is that it could have been prevented. While I salute the
ecologists & naturalists & botanists & Earthie-crunchies of all
descriptions for their truly passionate battle to preserve all that is green, I
must also give them a collective “Hello, McFly!” swat to their foreheads for
failing to also include the acts & processes of nature in their efforts.
Natural fires, sparked by lightning strikes, abnormally dry conditions,
excessive bovine methane bursts, flaming extraterrestrial objects and,
yes, even carelessly discarded cigarettes & ‘Dear Jane’ letters, could
ALL be kept to minimum damage & impact levels by using CONTROLLED BURNS.
Now, I need to first explain that I have no formal background in forest
management, but I love the woods as much as the next guy, and I wouldn’t just
spout-off on this topic if I didn’t have at least a shred of experience, and a
possible solution to offer. Here on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the Army
has been using controlled burns for years, and has maintained this sprawling
1,200+ square mile post in the true spirit of forest stewardship. And if
there was ever a place where the conditions were ideal for a conflagration,
it’s right here: five years of drought, longleaf pines & a bed of
dry needles, small-arms & artillery ranges, all kinds of pyrotechnics &
simulators, frequent & routine aircraft operations throughout the training
areas, and 40,000+ troopers and their vehicles & equipment utilizing nearly
every square inch of the environment. By executing regularly-scheduled and
closely monitored controlled burns, and incorporating firebreaks (dirt roads)
into the forest footprint, rangers can keep ahead of the accumulating detritus
of the forest floor, which could easily fuel a major wildfire, such as we’ve
seen in places like Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, etc…. What many people
may not realize about the major fires goes far beyond the charred landscape
& the extermination of local wildlife. When a wildfire has sufficient
fuel is will actually burn hot enough to sterilize the soil by burning off the
nutrients and microbes, which are truly the foundation of any ecosystem.
Recovery from such a fire takes years, if not decades, whereas in the controlled
burn areas the fuel is limited to a thin layer of pine needles and dead twigs
& branches. The flames rarely grow above knee-height as they march
across the forest floor, and are bound by the firebreaks which grid the forest
at regular intervals. Impact upon the fauna of the forests appears to be
minimal, as there’s just as much roadkill as ever, and I still see plenty of
deer, fox, & possum on my predawn trail runs. True forest stewardship
involves much more than trying to build a deep, rich, green garden;
keeping the forest in its most natural state means letting Mother Nature run her
course…and Mother always knows best!
"The American public has agonized all summer long over the recent rash of
child abductions. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where to
begin on this topic. I am so sickened & heartbroken to think of the
poor little girls whose last moments on this Earth are spent at the hands of
such depraved & heartless pieces of walking shit. I cried when I heard
that they found the little Runnion girl’s body. Although I am not a very
religious man, I prayed for her safe return. I prayed that she might get
to play again in her driveway & get to give her Mom another hug & flash
another big smile for her Mom’s camera. But that dirty, rotten
son-of-a-bitch took it all from her. He took her happiness, he took her
future, he took her innocence, and her very life, and dumped her beside a
deserted road for the animals and the elements. That dirtbag preyed upon her
innocence and her helplessness in order to get a few minutes of perverse
pleasure from her suffering. When I heard the news the only word I could
think of was ‘alone.’ Can you imagine how alone a 5-year old feels
waking up in a dark room in the middle of the night? Or when she steps
around a corner in a supermarket & realizes that Mommy isn’t right beside
her? Well, this poor little girl (and thousands like her) was swept away
by a stranger, driven off in a strange car, out of her neighborhood, and
subjected to such unspeakable acts. No one would hear her scream; there
would be no comforting hugs or reassurances. This rotten, filthy, fucker,
Alejandro Avila, needs to be hanged from his balls. He needs to be thrown
into a crocodile pit. He should be drawn & quartered. He should be
skinned alive & cast into an anthill. If I had one wish, it would be
that I would be allowed to beat this fucker to death with my bare hands.
And it’s not just him; I wish the same upon ANYONE who would commit such acts
upon any child. Of course there are those of you who would appeal for
mercy, who believe that he can be rehabilitated. I’ll tell you what...if
you think pedophiles can be rehabilitated, then you can go shut your dick in a
door! He did it before, and a lazy, anti-justice, anti-police California
jury took his word over that of his two young victims. I hope the jury
members live through a personal Hell for their decision, and that they be
surrounded in their neighborhoods with registered sex offenders. There is
no rehabilitation for these fuckers. Cut off their cods and throw them to
the dogs! (dingos)
"On corporate greed and plummeting markets. What can I say? I
wonder if Sir Isaac Newton would have put all his eggs in the NYSE /
NASDAQ baskets. After all, what goes up must come back down, right?
Within the last few months, in light of crooked accounting practices, over $1.5
TRILLION have evaporated from the US economy. Gone. Poof.
Someone, somewhere should have been screaming, 'Show me the money!' Energy
corporations, internet giants, telecom companies---what do they make? What
product can I put my hands on? Maybe I’m a financial dumbass, but the
whole stock market & futures & speculations deal seems more than a bit
abstract to me. It really is a big gamble, and for most of us, it involves
nothing more than luck; being in the right place at the right time. (I
still kick myself when I see Krispy Kreme trading around $50, when I could have
been in for $9 in 2000….damn) But for the likes of Martha Stewart &
Kenneth Lay, there seems to be a little more than luck involved. These
folks are crooks, plain & simple. Martha Stewart, granted, she was
just looking at her own portfolio & taking a little early inside info to
save her silk shirt. The big problem with her is that same info is not
available to all. Her only advantage in the market SHOULD be that she
could afford to buy more shares than the rest of us. However, the same
rules SHOULD apply to all. Kenneth Lay and the other sheisters at Enron,
Global Crossing, Worldcom, etc. were encouraging their employees to keep buying
company stocks even while the companies were going tits-up. All the while,
the big wigs were selling their shares as fast as they could. Kenneth Lay
is a multimillionaire, if not a billionaire, and gave the giant meat-pipe to his
thousands of loyal employees, who, by the way, are NOT millionaires, and relied
upon their stocks for their 401Ks for their retirements. Now you have
hundreds & thousands of folks, facing a lean if not impossible retirement
while Mr. Lay’s biggest worries are which houses to sell & which jet to
have repo’d. He should be making license plates & have all his
assets seized, but he’ll probably end up giving his guards stock trading tips
in a cushy federal pen. That such an abstract institution such as the
world economic market can really act as the engine that drives the world, is
almost beyond my comprehension, and I do find it a bit unsettling. Being
so abstract & intangible, and the fact that so much success or failure is
based solely upon the confidence or anxiety of investors & consumers, almost
sounds like something from the mind of Steven King.
"Dude, what is the deal with Manuel & LaShawnTiquah, and their Gestapo
tactics at the nation’s airport security posts!? Now, I don’t know
Manuel or LaShawnTiquah personally, nor do I know of their existence in fact.
They are only composites of airline security buffoons, which I have seen, dealt
with, or heard about. I realize they work hard for their money. You
can’t blame them if they leave the X-ray machine unplugged. You can
understand their anxiety over having to learn English, so that they can
effectively interact with the thousands of English-speaking passengers every
day. You can understand that they don’t want to offend or unnecessarily
delay Osama’s nephews on their ‘vacation.’ And I do understand that
it would just be such a long, drawn-out process to have to go apply for friggin’
citizenship! Let me give you a few examples of recent stories I’ve read
in major news outlets: a wheelchair-bound grandmother is singled-out from
the line & forced to stand up from her chair, lifting each leg &
wobbling about while her shoes are inspected. Her young niece is
sequestered from the woman throughout the incident, so she is unaided as she
teeters precariously in front of hundreds. A young mother, with a baby in
her arms and a diaper bag is singled-out from the line-up. She has to hand
her child over to a guard & empty out her DIAPER BAG! Fearing that the
woman may be smuggling flammable milky liquids in the three tiny nippled
bottles, two guards (1 man, 1 woman) issue the woman an ultimatum: take a
sip from each bottle or find another flight. An octogenarian retired
Senator is forced to strip down to his friggin’ underwear after guards find a
military medal for wartime heroics in his possession. Finally, a young man
with his broken jaw wired shut is not allowed to carry a small set of wire
cutting pliers on his aircraft. He even had the forethought to get a note
from his surgeon, stating that he needed the pliers in case he got airsick in
flight; the young man would need to snip the wires to prevent him from choking
on his own vomit. The guards made him check the pliers, in the very
inaccessible belly of the aircraft. Luckily, the man completed the flight
without any problems. Oh, did you want to know what the young man did for
a living? He was on his way home to California after a brief stay in the
hospital for his wounds received in Afghanistan! This guy was a Special
Forces Medic, fighting & taking bullets for his country!!! What do
these four people (and the hundreds who are harassed on a daily basis) have in
common? They are NOT Arabic Muslims, between the ages of 19 and 45!!!
Profiling works. All nineteen September 11th hijackers were Arabic Muslims
between 19 and 45! Profiling may step on a few toes from time to time, and
if left unchecked, could lead to resentment among the groups being profiled.
But in the short term, while we try to get a handle on this War on Terror, we
need to PROFILE in addition to random spot checks. The responsibility in
this situation, to weed out the terrorists & potential hijackers rests as
much upon the Arabic Muslim community as it does upon the FAA, the DOT, and the
US Government. Good, peaceful Muslim people need to identify the crazies
in dirty nightshirts among them. They need to decry terrorist acts.
And they need to condemn those who commit them."
---SGT MAC