WHEN A SOLDIER COMES HOME

WHEN  A SOLDIER COMES HOME (Read to the Very End!)

This email is being  circulated around the world~~~please keep it going.

When  a soldier comes home, he finds it hard......to listen to his son whine about  being bored.

 

....to keep a straight face when people complain about potholes.

To  be tolerant of people who complain about the hassle of getting ready for work. 

...to  be understanding when a co-worker complains about a bad night's  sleep.

 

  ...to  be silent when people pray to God for a new car.

 

...to  control his panic when his wife tells him he needs to drive  slower.

..to  be compassionate when a businessman expresses a fear of  flying.

 ....to  keep from laughing when anxious parents say they're afraid to send their kids  off to summer camp.

 ....to  keep from ridiculing someone who complains about hot  weather.

....to  control his frustration when a colleague gripes about his coffee being  cold. 

 

  
....to  remain calm when his daughter complains about having to walk the  dog.

.....to  be civil to people who complain about their jobs.

.....to  just walk away when someone says they only get two weeks of vacation a  year.

 ...to  be forgiving when someone says how hard it is to have a new baby in the  house. 

The only thing harder than being a  Soldier...  

Is loving one. 

I was asked to pass this on and I will gladly do so!! Will  you???

 
No  one has been able to explain to me why young men and women serve in the U.S.  Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get  50% of their pay on retirement. While Politicians hold their political  positions, in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men  and women, and receive full-pay retirement after serving one term. It just  does not make any sense.  

If  each person who receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days,  most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one  proposal that really should be passed around.

Proposed 28th  Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that  applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to  the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that  applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to  the citizens of the United States."

You  are one of my 20+. I passed it on, will you?

"If  you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice," and these brave  soldiers have given you that choice.  

This from my cousin,

Pass it on!

Free Concerts...

...and a Flash Orchestra!!  (Updated and bumped!)



Via The Anchoress.

Merry Christmas!!

Update:  How they did it, from The Blaze.

I Knew This...

...from way back!

My personal rule has always been, "Do not interrupt the person you are talking with for someone else."  Unless. of course, it's the boss, or my kid (or her mom) with an emergency.  After that, flames, not smoke, and only for arterial blood.

I watched a fair number of folks get real uncomfortable when I ignored my phone and continued our conversation.  I never actually timed anyone, but my best guess is that it was less than a minute before I was asked "Aren't you going to get that?"

I suspect that anxiety is behind the compulsion to be in constant contact (and not the other way around, as stated above).  So I suspect that some people are just not comfortable in their own skin.

Via Drudge

Demon's Nest...

...this week's installment.

From Brooke's Pibgorn

Juxtapositions du Jour...

First this...


...from the daily Caller


Then this...

Going Boldly

December 5th, 2013 - 7:25 am

Faster-than-light travel — made real?

And explained in layman’s terms for those of us (especially me) who struggled through these things in high school and college.

...from the ever-suave Mr. Green!

Sexist Study du jour...

The hardwired difference between male and female brains could explain why men are 'better at map reading' 

And why women are 'better at remembering a conversation'

It's what, I think, most people have known all along (in the intuitive sense, anyway).  And if the theory of mis-wiring in autistic kids is substantiated, it blows the hell out of the "inoculations cause autism" theory.

Thank God!!
 
From the U.K. Independent, via Rodger!

Demon's Nest of the Week...

 

...at Pibgorn.

Demon's Nest...

I guess I'm not checking as well as I shood - gocomics sometimes gets a day or two behind, and I miss "episodes" unless I go look for them explicitly.

Here are the last two installments:

For 11/24...

...aaaand for 11/17

One Man's Take...

...on the Catholic Mass



WARNING: Unclean language in spots!

Thanks to The Anchoress!

Demon's Nest of Sentiments

This week's installment:

Whimsey du jour..

...lifted bodily from Gerard:

Bay Bridge's mysterious protector out of hiding

The troll, who has no name, was created and surreptitiously installed in 1989

on a quickly fabricated section of bridge deck that replaced the pieces that collapsed in the Loma Prieta earthquake. He remained out of sight - only bridge workers and boaters could see him on the north side of the span - and cast his magic to protect the bridge and its users. In early September, when the new eastern span opened, the troll was spirited away by ironworkers, who wanted to make sure he was free before demolition of the old span began. - - SFGate

Thanks, man.  I needed that.

Comfort Food

...presented without comment.

Carefully lifted from Gerard!

Merida Grown Up...

...and the feminists don't like it!

Apparently, someone at Disney/Pixar decided to upgrade Princess Merida for the Disney "Princess" collection.  So, she's a bit older, and a bit curvier, which can happen when girls grow up.  Watching a daughter turn into a young woman can be startling (if not downright shocking), but that's what they do!  Especially if, like me, you put a kid on an airplane, and four months later the young woman returns in her place.  Sadly, growing up to be attractive seems deemed 'sexualization' by the feminist cohort. But it's what little girls (and little boys) do.

The most quoted critic is the film's former co-director, Brenda Chapman, who was replaced during the film's production.(See the UK's Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter for more.)

From all the heat, light and noise, you'd think Disney had let Merida go the route of Miley Cyrus.
 Speaking of whom, I couldn't find quite the same outrage about her VMA appearance as I did about Merida.  Here are my searches at the Guardian and the Reporter.  Yes, there were critical articles, but no one was espousing that Miley turn back to her Hanna Montana persona, either.

Silly me.  I still think beauty in any form should be celebrated, not denigrated.  Yes, not every girl will grow up to be a Hollywood "princess" (which is actually a Good Thing).  And not every boy will grow up to be a leading man, which is also good.  Parents need to instill a solid sense of self-worth (not self-esteem) in their children, and teach them how to be the best person they can be.  I have seen both men and women who are outside of the leading man/princess ideal, who have learned to be their best, and who present  themselves quite well.  As a result, I find them handsome or attractive.

It's much more about character,  and much less on looks.

Happy Halloween!!

For your delight, Witch Hazel after hours:

Rachel Mariana Morgan??

Liberty Maniacs

From Ars Technica:

For 10 years, a Minnesota man has been selling T-shirts, mugs, and other items with slogans like “Department of Homeland Stupidity” and “The NSA: the only part of the government that listens.”

On Tuesday LibertyManiacs owner Dan McCall sued those agencies, arguing that he has a First Amendment right to parody the DHS, the NSA, and other government offices, and that he should be allowed to use the relevant seals.

Go.  Support them.

Death By Indifference

From Rabbi Benjamin Blech at aish.com:

Researchers at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have just released documentation that astounds even the most informed scholars steeped in the previously known statistics of German atrocities. Here is some of what has now been conclusively discovered:

• There were more than 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe from 1933 to 1945.
• There were 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1000 prisoner of war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.
• The best estimate using current information available is 15to 20 million people who died or were imprisoned in sites controlled by the Germans throughout the European continent.

 The take away:

The “decent” people were somehow able to rationalize their silence.

I contacted the good Rabbi about his references.  He was kind enough to answer.  He said he had read about this in Erich Lichtblau's  New York Times Sunday Review article on the Holocaust Museum's discoveries.

I've Been Remiss...

...in keeping up with Brooke and Dru.  Here is this Sunday's installment, with the missing ones below the fold.

Go read the rest:

Obamacare In Five Pictures

I was reading an article on Tech Crunch about the tech debacle that is Obamacare, lamenting how start-ups were ready to have a go at it.  It mentioned, in particular, eHealth, one of the few companies certified as a "web based entity" authorized to act as a alternative to government web sites.  I got curious, and here's what I discovered.

My options for this year:

They say starting at $52/month, but...

...79 plans, starting at $209.75/month.

My options for next year:

eHealth estimates that I would get a subsidy of $451.00/month.  (They caveat the hell out of their numbers, solet's take this figure as a SWAG* for now.)

Now, my premiums start (supposedly) at $192/month.

 

And I find a whopping thirteen plans, starting at $593.11/month, pre-subsidy.  Post-subsidy, $142.11/month

I have no idea where they got the $52 and $192 numbers.  After poking about a bit by changing ZIP codes, I found that they changed, but stayed the same when I changed birthdays.  In any case, what's important is the final cost to me.  And I didn't even try to figure out overall cost based on deductables, co-pays and such.

It's a bloody mess...

Veteran's Day, 10/13/2103 - Washington D.C.

Then...

...and now!

 

Meanwhile, at Gettysburg...

Park Police Mounties...

 

...face a hostile and dangerous force.

Mmmmmm, Could Be...!! (Updated)

This is probably not exactly true (he is speculating, after all), but it sure sounds plausible!

Head fake! Is Healthcare.gov only an

empty shell MOCKUP of a working

Obamacare exchange?

Wednesday, October 09, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Obamacare exchanges, programming failure, mockup

(NaturalNews) As the days of glitches, snafus, down-time and critical errors mount up, evidence is mounting that the Healthcare.gov Obamacare exchange is not actually a fully-formed online application. More and more, it appears to be a mockup of a health care exchange enrollment system.

Go.  RTWT!!

(Via Mr. Taranto)

Update:  Added the "giggle du jour" tag so you all know that I'm not taking this article seriously.  You'll understand if you read the first few comments.  And, "The Health Ranger"?  Too cute...

Twenty-five Things

I found myself at Never Yet Melted, who has a list of "25 Ridiculous Things Obama Shut Down".

The first commenter posed a challenge, to which the second commenter responded:

JackOfClubs

We need a companion list: 25 things Obama could have shut down instead but didn’t.

leelu

25 things…, let’s see
Obamacare
HHS
EPA
Homeland (In)Security
HUD
IRS
Dept. of Energy
Dept. of Education
FEMA
Any non-DOD/DOJ/Treasury group that has its own weapons stash.
Post Office
NEA
PBS
NPR
Dept of Agriculture
Dept of Labor
Dept of Commerce
Reduce Social Security back to a simple retirement program
DEA*
BATFE*
NSA*
CIA*
The “Secret” Courts” approving NSA activities
All positions of “Czar”
Presidential and Congressional staffs

*Consolidate under the FBI, well-scaled down!

What do you think I've missed??

(Via Gerard)

xkcd du jour...

...presented sans comment:

Dakota Has Passed On

Koda (as he was affectionately known), went into convulsions at about 2:30 this afternoon.  I took him to the 24-hour emergency vet, after trying a few first aid things at home.  They pumped him full of valium, which reduced the convulsions to mild tremors.

The vet was straight up with the prognosis - based on what the expensive tests that I can't afford might tell us, she was not optimistic that he could go home and be OK.  So, I made the decision to let him go.

He passed peacefully.  The med they use anesthetised him immediately, and continued on to an overdose.  He slipped away in less than a minute.

Pax vobiscum, Koda.

Dakota (Updated)

Tuesday, Dakota took a pretty good tumble down a full flight of stairs, spine first.  Nothing was broken, but I noticed yesterday that he seemed to have lost balance and strength on his left side.

Last night, he went into full-body convulsions for a minute or so. 

We are off to the vet at 3:30.  Koda is resting on the air mattress down here on the first floor.

I don't like how this day is shaping up.

Update:  Back from the vet. We are treating "symptomatically", as the diagnostics for Koda would cost more than mine!  He now has industrial-strength steroids (Dexamethasone) to take over the next two weeks.  If his symptoms are caused by swelling resulting from the fall, this should clear them up.

I'm cautiously optimistic, which is a big improvement.

Happy...

...Broderick Crawford Day!