Amazing Python Photos

Cattle To The Slaughter

American Scofflaw
And for those that do make it back alive, there is THIS

Americans Learn To Forget

Mỹ Scofflaw

Those who do not understand the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

With the US military stressed almost to the breaking point with current commitments around the globe, one has to wonder where these additional troops will come from.

And if you think that the reinstitution of the draft would never happen under this President's watch, think again.

The sheer muscularity of Obama's foreign policy objectives may well make it impossible for him to achieve them without this happening.

You cannot win a ground war from the air; there should have been a bitter but crucial lesson from the Viet Nam War for US civilian and military leadership on that, but it has, apparently gone unlearned.

In another article on Afghanistan from the GLOBE AND MAIL, it is reported that "Tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers may soon be needed in Afghanistan to quell the raging Taliban insurgency, top American generals are preparing to tell President Barack Obama."

However, just where these troops are supposed to come from appears to be a big unknown.

One has to wonder if a draft will be reinstituted in this country to even begin to come up with the numbers potentially necessary to do the job.

The old Soviet Union couldn't "pacify" this area with 500,000 pairs of boots on the ground.

And the reasons the old Soviet Union was in Afghanistan are, essentially, the same reasons the US and NATO are there right now: the installation of pipelines, to control Eurasia's oil, and protect the drug trade, from which so many profit so handsomely.

We are coming, at some point to a "Saigon moment" in Kabul; the only question is when, and how many more American, Afghan, and NATO lives will be lost to this military misadventure. And the most ghastly reality about this war was that the Bush/Cheney administration decided that this war would be "cheaper" than actually paying the Taliban the price they demanded for the pipelines in August of 2001.

I want Bush and Cheney to go on national television, and make that decision perfectly clear to the moms, dads, kids, relatives and friends of our Vets who have died, become permanently physically or psychologically maimed for life, committed horrendous acts of violence upon coming home, or committed suicide as a result of this war. For once in their wretched lives, they should tell the American people the truth.

And a small memo to SecDef Gates: I know of no thinking American who understands the geopolitical outcomes desired here, and supports the US presence in Afghanistan; not one, period, end of discussion.

Neden Merhaba sahtekâr

My Sunny Beatdown

American Scofflaw

Two burglars in southern Florida got more than they bargained for when they broke into a couple's home early Monday morning.

Two men broke into a home around 1 am Monday morning. One pointed a gun right at the resident's face while he was in bed.

"Screamed at me don't move, don't move, with vulgarities involved, that wasn't happening in my house. He came to the wrong party."

The victim, who wishes to remain unidentified, is a retired special operations officer for the coast guard. His fiance who was also in bed is a former maximum-security corrections officer.

"We weren't just going to let them rob us, absolutely not. I work too hard for the things I have and people who don't have jobs who make a living off of robbing people, not me."

The male victim and one of the suspects got in a fight, both trying to get control of the gun.

"When the victim and the suspect were fighting in the corner of the bedroom, a shot fired from the gun, went through the wall, through the medicine cabinet, and right into the bathroom mirror."

The other suspect ran out of the house.

Meanwhile, the victim's fiance grabbed their own rifle and beat the other suspect so hard the rifle broke in two. Then the male victim got a hold of the suspect's gun.

"At that point I was going to take his life, and he begged for his life, 'I don't want to die, I don't want to die, please don't kill me, let me go.'"

That's when he took the suspect outside-- and bashed his head into this truck before the man ran away. But not before the suspect was able to fire two more shots at the house, one going through the door and grazing the male victim's shoulder.

The Lee County Sheriff's Office is still searching for the suspects.

As for the victims, they say what they did was risky, but because of their law enforcement training, they knew how to react.

It's Your Fault, Not Mine

by Gary Fleming

So, I’ve done it to you again. My gay marriage series this week has lit a fire under you, and I took all your punches.

This series was designed to do just that. The goal was to challenge your notions of both sides of the gay marriage debate and make you think about things you may not have considered before. I didn’t ask you to agree, just to think.

Two stories particularly grabbed your attention. The first was about a gay black man who is struggling to awaken the black community — which largely opposes gay marriage — to gay rights.

In his eyes, many African-Americans are being hypocritical by not supporting gay rights, considering their own background of oppression and prejudice.

I received buckets of letters saying I had no business equating the civil rights movement to the gay rights movement. So let’s be clear: I made no such argument. I brought you the story of a man who makes that argument. It’s up to you to decide whether you agree.

The second story that got you fired up was one featuring gay marriage opponents who say their stances don’t make them bigots. I brought you three people who voted for Proposition 8 in California but who also say they don’t think being gay is immoral, despite the way they voted.

Well, you just ripped me a new one. You told me that if I was willing to run such a story, I must be willing to run a story on backing slavery and the like. You said I was giving credence to hatemongers and that I ruined your gay pride month celebrations.

So, another point of clarification: For those who said I’m supporting “hatemongers” by printing a certain side of the debate, talk to your fellow readers who told me the opposite the day before.

More importantly, the opinions of the opponents are theirs, not mine. I simply brought you the story, and let you decide for yourselves. By presenting both sides of the debate, I was bound to irk some readers one day, and others the next.

If the story ruined your good time, that’s your fault for letting it get to you that much.

Head Slam

Got More fraud If You Need It

Okay, Obama Scares Me

The Gay Secretary
Okay, I’m officially getting scared.

For now, let’s just call it a nonspecific, even remote, sense of dread – like the foreboding that often accompanies the first bark of an approaching thunderstorm: hardly an irrational unease, but often a harbinger of nothing worse than a dusting of rain.

Just a sense of unease — yeah, that’s what we’ll call it — for now.

It isn’t that Barack Obama hasn’t been liberal enough for my tastes. He hasn’t, but that’s not what’s unnerving me. It isn’t that he’s starting to break some of his most important campaign promises to the progressive base of the Democratic Party. He’s doing that certainly; but, no, that’s not the source of my unease either. It isn’t even that his administration seems to be placing a higher priority on protecting the pirates of the financial industry than on defending the rights of ordinary workers. They do seem to be doing that and yeah it’s awful, but once again it isn’t what’s scaring me.

No, what’s scary is how often — and in such a short time — he’s simply been wrong — dead wrong. And what’s even more disconcerting is how often this wrongness has been the result of his growing tendency to default to inside the Beltway status quo thinking. Time after time, faced with a choice between new directions and conventional wisdom, Obama has been taking the conventional route.

But the scariest thing of all is Obama’s growing default to the Military/Beltway Complex on Iraq and Afghanistan. Did you hear we’re going to win the war in Afghanistan? We’re going to kick us some Taliban butt and bring peace, capitalism and democracy to the region. No outside force in history has ever had much luck in trying to pacify this tragic but fiercely independent nation, but apparently we’re going to do it. And what’s more, we’re going to do it while at the same time carrying Iraq and Pakistan on our shoulders.

When I think about this ever increasing expansion of our military presence in Afghanistan, I can’t help but hear the echoes of LBJ in Vietnam. He was a president who wanted desperately to pursue other priorities: to do great things; to build a Great Society. But he found himself increasingly sucked into an intractable war he could never win. And just like Obama, he marched into this hell armed to the teeth with the wisdom of the finest minds conventional thinking had ever produced.

As a strong supporter of the president, it pains me to say this, but Barack Obama is dancing with disaster: a potential catastrophe born of a refusal to truly embrace the change he’s come to represent. He is doing much that’s good, but the good can so easily be swallowed up and destroyed by the bad. It isn’t too late to put things right, but the signs that he is willing to do what’s needed have so far been frighteningly few.

American Scofflaw
Obama is simply an infinitely more telegenic and intellectually gifted "pitch man" for precisely the same agenda we got from the Bush Republicans; nothing more, nothing less.

Which is why I wouldn't bet against Obama re-instituting the draft before the end of his first term in office. The military requirements for the campaigns he's signed up for cannot possibly be met with an all-volunteer army, and draft boards have already been set up, very quietly, across this country.

Damn, I'm Dead

A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones met with one of the students to talk about the incident.“Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all,” said student Charles Bailey.

Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.A neighbor heard the shots and heard someone running nearby.“And I heard someone say, ‘Someone help me. Call the police. Somebody call the police,’” said a neighbor.

The neighbor said she believes it was Lavant, who was found dead near his apartment, only one building away.Bailey said he is just thankful one student risked his life to keep others alive.“I think all of us are really cognizant of the fact that we could have all been killed,” said Bailey.

One female student was shot several times during the crossfire. She is expected to make a full recovery.Police said they are close to making the arrest of the second suspect.

Our Sweet Victory Over The US Taxpayers

Oh..Oh

Mr. Big

Get 'Em When Their Young

American Scofflaw
Us needs kids to fight all these wars

Crazy Man in Action

What's Up Dude

Scofflaw Grabbed Identities

American Scofflaw
A former New York state tax department worker was accused of stealing the identities of thousands of taxpayers and running up more than $200,000 in fraudulent charges.

Walter Healey gathered credit card, brokerage account and Social Security numbers that he used to open more than 90 credit card accounts and lines of credit between 2006 and 2008, prosecutors said.

Healey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to four counts: identity theft, unlawful possession of personal identification, tampering with public records and official misconduct. Healey, escorted into a Troy courtroom by two officers, posted $5,000 bail and left.

Propaganda Doesn't Get More Obvious and Heavy-Handed Than This

American Scofflaw
And just in time to deflect criticism for declaring returning veterans as potential domestic terrorist threats!



Massachusetts state police arrested a Marine on Sunday morning that was trying to bring bomb-making materials onto a flight headed for Charlotte. Officials say Cpl. Justin Reed, of Jacksonville, N.C., was booked on US Airways Flight 877 to Charlotte. The 22-year-old arrived in Boston on a flight from Las Vegas.

Screeners say they found the bomb-making materials and a gun and ammunition in his checked baggage. Reed was charged with possession of an infernal machine and possession of a concealed weapon in a secure area of an airport.

A Gay Man Asks: What's The Big Deal???

The Gay Secretary

I watched closely all the tea parties all over the country Wednesday. What a showing of national pride and solidarity. What a showing of subservient compliance and casual indifference. What a joke. In Lafayette Park, Washington D.C., of all places to protest, the plan was to dump one million tea bags in the park, but the brave dissidents never did it because they forgot to get the proper permits. Are you kidding me? What is civil disobedience without civil disobedience? They even went so far as to say that they were willing to put down plastic tarps and clean up after themselves.

That's like saying we don't agree with your oppressive, unconstitutional despotism of our nation and to show our ire in no uncertain terms we're going to break public law and disrupt the peace so take that, nah- nah-ne-boo-boo. But don't worry because we'll put everything back when we're done as if nothing happened cuz we don't want any trouble! Videos on the Internet of Lafayette Park show people standing around in their trendy turtlenecks and Tommy Hilfiger and North Face jackets, chatting, socializing, drinking coffee and talking on their cell phones. Some dressed in colonial garb (how cute) and waving flags. Others even break into a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner followed by a chant of "USA, USA, USA." What a terrific show of meaningless symbolism.

Who are they chanting to? The buildings in front of them? The birds in the trees? Themselves? What was this supposed to do, because it doesn't take a rocket scientist to surmise that it did NOTHING! All the politicians were inside, smugly and comfortably seated in their expensive leather chairs that we paid for. They were discussing their next round of special interest pandering and deficit spending at our expense while we mingled as if at a, well, tea party. But not the sort of 1773 but rather more like the sort at 4 p.m. in England that is served with crumpets.

The politicians could have cared less about the goings on outside and NO ONE took it to them. Shame on us. No one made sure they took notice. No one was put out one bit. No economic loss to the government whatsoever, as was the purpose of the original tea party, so why should they notice? Is this like giving to a charity? You write a check to feed a starving child for 10 cents a day in some far off, nameless, faceless country and you feel better about yourself?