Saturday, February 10, 2007

Sunday Ugly Gun Post



Sometimes, I just wonder "why?". This stock belongs on an M1 Garand like a thong and halter top belongs on George Patton.

Friday, February 9, 2007

The Funniest Blog Post Ever

Iowa Hawk has some incredible writing skills, but this is some of the finest writing I've seen since reading National Lampoon back in the '80s.



I guess that's what happens when people with Tourette's dabble in political blogs.

Thursday, February 8, 2007

Personally, I Prefer "Cooter"

No, I'm not talking about Ben Jones. Came across this (ahem) over at Garfield Ridge.


ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. -- A modified marquee in Atlantic Beach has been drawing some attention. "Hoohaa" replaced a word in the title of a play after a driver complained about finding the previous wording offensive.


The marquis for Atlantic Theaters advertises a number of plays including, the Masquerade Ball, Band Jam, and now The Hoohaa Monologues.


Some said hoohaa is a strange word and that its definition depends on its context, while others said it sounds like a country band.

However, it's not a band at all. In fact, most people know hoohah by a different name -- vagina.


"We got a complaint about this play The Vagina Monologues," said Bryce Pfanenstiel, of the Atlantic Theater.


The Hoohah Monologues is a replacement title for The Vagina Monologues -- a well-known play about that part of the female body.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Serious Stones

As both a (former) medic and rad tech, a salute to these docs, medics, and rad techs for putting themselves on the line.




FORT HOOD, Texas (Army News Service, Feb. 1, 2007) - It was a busier day than normal at the Camp Aned Battalion Aid Station on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border when Maj. John Oh, a general surgeon attached to the 10th Mountain Division, found himself wondering if he would live to see another day.

It was March 2006 and Oh, only four months into his deployment, had just realized the shrapnel sticking out of a wounded Soldier's stomach was actually an unexploded Rocket Propelled Grenade.

"The medics had just started cutting the clothes and dressings off the Soldier when I saw the metal bar with fins protruding from his belly," Oh, now chief of general surgery at Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood wrote in an e-mail. "I ordered everyone out of the (Battalion Aid Station) and put on my ballistic helmet and body armor."

Oh received the Soldier's Medal at a Jan. 25 ceremony honoring CRDAMC staffers for risking their lives to save others. Lt. Col. William Brock received an Army Commendation Medal with "V" device for assisting Oh. And, Sgt. Troy Galvan was awarded the Soldier's Medal for his saving the life of a women trapped in a burning vehicle.

"This is something we do every day - taking care of patients," said Oh, 35, of Beltsville, Md., then assigned to the 759th Medical Detachment, Forward Surgical Team, Task Force Med. "Our primary focus was to just take care of the patient. Everything else was secondary."

Once the Soldier was intubated - allowing necessary fluids to replenish the patient's body - explosive ordnance personnel examined X-rays to determine if the warhead was still attached to the rocket propelled grenade. Although the potential for explosion was less without the warhead, the fuel rod and detonator still carried the potential to blow-up at any point during the grenade removal surgery, Oh said. Despite the remaining risk, the battalion aid station operating room was prepared for an emergency surgery to remove the grenade.

Oh, along with a team of six, conducted the surgery wearing their usual surgical scrubs beneath Kevlar vests and ballistic helmets.

As Soldiers around the aid station and in the operating room uttered quiet prayers for success, Oh gently removed the grenade without detonation under the watchful eyes of the two explosive ordnance personnel.

Later in June, Oh said he visited the Soldier at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who recently witnessed the birth of his second child.

Assisting Oh was Brock, 53, of Dallas, Texas, also assigned to the 759th Forward Surgical Team, Task Force Med. Brock intubated the Soldier. The 19-year veteran received the Army Commendation Medal for Valor for his actions.

While caring for the patient under these circumstances was difficult to do, "...anyone else would've done the same thing," Brock said.

Brock has been at Fort Hood since 2000 and has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I felt the seriousness from the moment I saw the RPG hanging out," Brock said. "So at that very moment I knew what we were up against."

Galvan, 38, of San Antonio, Texas, was also awarded the Soldier's Medal for pulling a Fort Hood Soldier out of her burning vehicle before it exploded on U.S. Highway 190 near Nolanville - close to Fort Hood - in February 2006.

Driving home after a shift in the CRDAMC Mother-Baby Unit, Sgt. Troy Galvan had no idea what awaited him. Little did he imagine that Feb. 13 afternoon that he was about to lay his life on the line for another Soldier.

"I thought I was coming up on a dead person. And thank God she had a pulse," Galvan said. "We got her out. That was my main concern. The fire is there - get her out."

Galvan's medic and vehicle extraction training kicked in.

The woman awoke and started pleading with Galvan and two other men who stopped to help, saying, "Please don't let me burn." Luckily, one man had a fire extinguisher which temporarily lessened the fire, he said.

"So I jumped back in. I got the seat to recline, unbuckled her safety belt and started pulling her out. Then another guy jumped in the seat and helped me pull her out through the back. Another guy came up underneath, so there were three of us taking her up the embankment."

Less than one minute later, the car exploded in flames, Galvan said.

"As a medic, we train for this day-in and day-out. We're here to sustain life," Galvan said.

The rescued Soldier has since recovered and is serving in Iraq with the 1st Cavalry Division.

"I really don't have words to tell you how proud I am," said Col. Loree Sutton, CRDAMC commander.

"As a commander, it's a very rare honor to be able to bestow this level of award" on our Soldiers, Sutton said after the ceremony. "As they said, they were just doing their job. They were doing their duty. A very sacred duty."

The Soldier's Medal is America's highest decoration for heroism not involving actual combat with an enemy force.

The "V" device denotes awards of a particular medal for heroism.

(Jon Connor, Phillip Washburn and Mollie Miller contributed to this article.)

For an idea of the size of an RPG, here's a photo for reference purposes.




Taken from here.

Environmental Activism

"Most of the environmental movement is composed of white, upper-middle class people who are, I think incorrectly, telling people in the rest of the world what to do, where people don't live in nice houses and don't have good drinking water and good health standards. I think the environmental movement is basically elitist."



An interesting post at The Smallest Minority.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Journalism and Society

Blatantly copied from

Small Dead Animals


Journalism blithely builds bridges for others to use to transport troops into the heartland. It has lost the skill to differentiate behavior that is antithetical to any society. As a surrogate for readers, it chases what it claims to be objectivity so hard it can no longer identify and label misbehavior. It does so because journalism -- and the programs that teach journalists -- can't see what they can't see. When they can't see what they are missing no traction exists to convince them what must be done to recover their purpose.
[...]

Journalism does not see a society at risk. Thucydides, wrote "The History of the Peloponnesian War" 2,400 years ago about the war between Athens and Sparta. Thucydides warning to readers is that just as Athens' weaknesses became its strengths and her strengths became her weaknesses, so do those lessons apply for all nations even today. The great strengths of America have been the roots of her foundation, her liberty, her wealth and her isolation, her unfettered press, her education, and her political processes. These strengths are the weapons turned back against us so long as we fail to recognize our strengths can be double-edged.

Two hundred years of stability have left America believing the freedom citizens enjoy is more permanent than it is. Her liberty is presumed to exist by nature rather then the product of constant vigilance. Her wealth and her isolation have let citizens become complacent. Her education has turned into schooling of easily-tested clichés that supplant honing skills to think. Her unfettered press allows propaganda to be injected unchallenged into every corner of the country into minds unprepared to defend themselves against it. Her political processes have become adversarial, tuned more towards winning power than serving principle. She is, as Athens was, at war with herself as much as with any external enemy, yet does not anticipate the consequences.


We've been starting to pay for this attitude, and I think there's worse to come.

End Profiling?

In the name of Political Correctness, we must not differentiate between anyone, anywhere, anytime, for any reason. So at the airport, this:



will be equally suspicious as this:




See the summary with link to the full text: S2132

It's been a long time since I've bothered to write my senators; looks like a good time to start up again.