Happy Easter!

Its Easter Sunday, the single most important day in the Christian Tradition.
It is not the birth of Christ that is important to Christians like me. It is his death and Resurrection that are important. Let us all celebrate the resurrection.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
John 3:16

I've been watching Netflix...

Specifically the TV Show "Deadliest Warrior" . I've noticed that they have a real problem with confusing soldiers and warriors.
A warrior fights as an individual.
A soldier fights as part of a group.
Some warriors/soldiers blur the lines and can/could fight as both individuals and groups. Others however, cannot/couldn't.
Warriors are individually better than soldiers, but it was soldiers who conquered the great empires, not warriors.

Lasers are not Toys

A guy just got 30 (well deserved) months in prison for shining a laser at an aircraft.
Lasers and aircraft is a serious issue. Lasers can temporarily or permanently (depending upon laser strength) blind a person. A blind pilot cannot fly, so pointing lasers at aircraft is roughly equivalent to walking around with a loaded firearm and sweeping people with the safety off and your finger on the trigger - it is unsafe, malicious/negligent, and could easily lead to someone dying (it also violates every firearms safety rule ever). Pointing a laser at aircraft is either reckless endangerment or attempted murder.

Fiscal Irresponsibility and Intellectual Dishonesty

CBS just pissed me off. In a recent article about a Republican Senator attacking the Democrat budget plan, they mentioned taxes that were raised on incomes over $400,000 at the beginning of the year, but conveniently forgot to mention that taxes went up for everyone.
I am no high income earner. My yearly income is a rather small fraction of $400,000. Yet my taxes went up too.
At the beginning of this year, I got a $30 raise (I'm assuming it was inflation based). My Social Security taxes went up along with my pay. I now pay 35 dollars more in Social Security taxes than I did before.
Last year I paid $247.22 in total taxes a month (Federal Income, Social Security, Medicare, and State Income).
In January of this year I paid $284.87 in total taxes.

Given that my pay also went up, the increase in taxation is hardly backbreaking, however, it indicates a clear dishonesty upon the part of CBS. The end of the "payroll tax holiday" is a tax increase on everyone.

And in the end, the federal government is just going to continue wasting the money.

North Korea and Human Rights

Apparently North Korea has condemned a human rights probe from the UN. Maybe its because North Korea is one of the biggest human rights offenders in the world and they don't want their dirty laundry getting exposed?

Wars are Better than Certain Kinds of Peace

North Korea continually threatens South Korea and the US with nuclear war. Its makes propaganda videos about nuking Washington D.C. It has fired artillery into South Korean territory without provocation.
If North Korea was any other country, we'd already be in the process of uniting the Koreas. Unfortunately, North Korea's closest ally is China, with one of the largest armies in the world, and as the Chinese demonstrated in the Korean War, quantity does have  a quality all of its own.
However, despite the US's reservations about going to war on the PRC's front porch, the North Korean government seems bound and determined to end up in a war of some kind. Either the US and South Korea are going to attack in order to end the threat of North Korea, or China is going to intervene in order to prevent nuclear war.
The current "peace" is unstable, dangerous, and will probably not last much longer.

Pride

Being an American, a citizen of the US, is something that I'm very proud of. Yesterday was the anniversary of an event that, though sad, is yet another reason to be proud of the US. We didn't participate in the Al-Anfal Campaign (or Kurdish Genocide), nor did we have anything to do with the Halabja poison gas attack which occurred 25 years ago on March 16, and was part of the Al-Anfal Campaign.
 Instead, we deposed the mad dog who was ultimately responsible for those atrocities and brought him to justice. No matter your opinion on the US's former presence in Iraq, one must admit that the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein and Ba'ath party that he led.

The New Assault Weapons Ban

The new Assault Weapons Ban is one step closer to being ratified by the Senate.

Here's a question: If the Second Amendment to the Constitution says "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"(emphasis mine), how then is any law that regulates firearms in any way Constitutional?

Anyone with an answer, please feel free to post in the comments.

On CPAC and the Future of Conservatism

Apparently the leaders in the Republican party are debating about what they need to do in order to keep on as a party.

My suggestion is to stop nominating two types of candidates: The bigoted idiots who drive independents to the Democrats and the RINO's who fail to inspire, especially among the fiscally conservative and libertarian minded Republicans and independents, because their only commendation is "he'll grow government slower than his opponent" and "he's inoffensive".

First there was John McCain, famous for crossing the aisle, a well known moderate Republican, who lost to Barack Obama, a man then new on the political scene in Washington.
Then there was Mitt Romney, who signed Romneycare into law in Massachusetts, who lost to Barack Obama, a man who, by then, had a proven record of failure, with not one, but two failed "stimulus packages" which provoked enough of a backlash to put the House back into Republican hands.

The lesson from those two is that RINO's don't make good presidential candidates. There are plenty of other lessons from the several election years from 2008 to now, most of them having to do with candidates who need to keep their fat mouths shut.

The Budget

Paul Ryan wants to reduce spending and simplify the tax code (leaving us with only two tax brackets) in order to balance the budget. His plan cuts spending by 4.6 trillion over the next ten years.
The Democrats want to raise a trillion in taxes by closing "tax loopholes" on the "country's highest income earners" and spending another hundred billion on "stimulus".

My taxes have already gone up once this year due to all the BS going on in Washington. If they go and muck around in the tax code I'm pretty certain that my taxes are going to go up again - and I'm not exactly a high income earner.

And for the stimulus... If stimulus was the solution to the economy's woes then we probably wouldn't have needed two stimuluses, and this third one would be entirely redundant. Since stimulus isn't the solution, it can only be taken as an excuse to spend more money.

The Democrat plan will just make us miserable while doing the government equivalent an individual setting a gold-covered Hummer filled with hundred dollar bills and napalm on fire, and then trying to put it out by throwing buckets of hundred dollar bills at it.

Let us all vote for fiscally responsible Representatives and Senators in the next election.

Sources:
The budget battle: What the heck is going on in D.C.?

Senate Democrats release first budget in four years, includes $1 trillion in tax increases

North Korea leads...

In the unofficial contest to see which dictatorship is the biggest mad dog. War may not be far behind.

Foolishness in Syria

US-born former Army vet known as 'The American' fights alongside Al Qaeda

He's a U.S.-trained soldier turned Muslim warrior who moves between America and countries where the winds of the Arab spring blow, fighting alongside jihadists and America-hating terrorists while celebrating his bloody exploits on YouTube videos.

...

Darryl Harroun said his son is seen as an adventurer by friends and relatives, who call him "Arizona Jones."
"He just loves that part of the world," said Darryl Harroun, who said his family has been in the U.S. for several generations and is not Muslim. "We scratch our heads and wonder what the hell he's doing. I told him, 'You're never going to change those people's minds over there.' But he says they treat him like a hero.
"I know one day I'm going to get a message from over there, telling me my son is dead," he said.
...

He isn't  a "Muslim warrior", or "Arizona Jones", he's a terrorist, fighting in a conflict, not of black and white morality, but of black and black morality. The Syrian regime is totalitarian and corrupt, and the end result of the civil war will probably be to replace it with a regime that is also totalitarian and corrupt - if they're lucky, it'll be less totalitarian and corrupt, if not, they'll end up suffering at leas as bad as they have under their current regime.
Honestly, if I was his father I wouldn't "wonder what the hell he's doing" I'd disown him.

 

Nuclear Insanity

North Korea is starting to piss off its single close ally. They should realize that, while they can get away with pissing off the US so long as they have support from the PRC, the instant they lose that support the US will begin planning for Korean reunification.
They should also realize that if they piss off the PRC, the best that they can hope for is a short, bloody, destructive war that they'll lose, and which will be conducted entirely on their soil. Kim Jong-un and the rest of the North Korean leadership have drank deeply from the fountain of insanity.

Capture of Al Qaeda Spokesman makes Headlines

BBC:

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith to be tried in New York

CBS:

Osama bin Laden's son-in-law caught, brought to N.Y.
Fox News:

Bin Laden's son-in-law captured, charged in US with conspiring to kill Americans

Every single one of them is treating it like a victory. It isn't. Unless the enemy organization unravels without that leader, all you've done is leave an opening for someone. With Osama bin Laden's death, Al Qaeda has not gone away. As we take out Al Qaeda leaders, others will rise to take their places. The media needs to stop trumpeting their deaths/captures and let others do something constructive, such as killing all the terrorists, without obstruction, and without giving the enemy any media coverage at all. The enemy depends upon media coverage, take that away and they're just a bunch of murderers and bandits. Do the world a favor and ignore them entirely.

Also, we're trying this *sshole in a civilian court when we should be trying him for violations of the laws of war.

On Women in the Military

My military experience with women is rather limited, so I usually defer to those who have actually been with females in a combat zone when it comes to discussing females in, for example, the infantry.
I have little sympathy for those who continue to push to get women into those few places in the military where women have, until recently, not been allowed.
My lack of sympathy stems from the fact that there is a double standard concerning women in the military. The same people who want to open up every rating and MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) in the military to women want to keep the current PFA (Physical Fitness Assessment) standards as they open up the formerly closed ratings and MOSs. They say that women can do everything that men can do while at the same time having lower standards for women than they do for men.
They need to sh*t or get off the toilet. Either women are just as capable as men, and they should be held to the same PFA standards and allowed to do the same jobs, or they aren't as capable as men and shouldn't be held to the same PFA standards and allowed to do the same jobs. Pick one, stick with it, and stop dancing around the issue.

Something to Feel Good About

A Korean war veteran got one last visit to the ship he served upon, the USS Laffey. It brightens my day to learn that people are willing to help fulfill the wishes of dying veterans.

Just one member of Al Qaeda has died

When a high ranking member of any enemy organization, be it military or terrorist, dies, it should not be celebratory news. Celebration should be saved until the enemy has surrendered and troubles you no more. The Soviet Union survived the deaths of Lenin and Stalin. The People's Republic of China survived the death of Mao. The Macedonian Kingdom survived the death of Phillip II. Rome survived the death of Julius Caesar. Carthage survived the death of Hamilcar. The British Empire survived the death of Nelson. When Osama Bin Laden died, Al Qaeda continued on.
Sometimes, as in the case of the Macedonian Empire, the structure does not survive without the one who built it. Often however, all that has been done is to clear the way for another to take over. This other might be more or less capable than their predecessor (compare Phillip II to Alexander the Great), but you cannot count on the threat to end with the leader.
So don't tell me when Al Qaeda leaders are killed. I just want to know when they're no longer a threat. That is when I'll celebrate.