when you're ugly inside, it doesn't matter how you change your outside... the ugly still comes through. to quote the Tom Sellick character in a western: "You don't know how little your problems concern me..."

my understanding is that the two travelers on the stolen passports were teenagers... how would they have gotten such training & experience at such a young age?

it's the crew chief's fault for not putting a PT belt on the bird as soon as they landed. /white smoke

the few times i saw commanders, officers or NCO's relieved in my Guard or Reserve units over the years, it was usually a weak commander throwing subordinates to the wolves to cover their incompetence. the one time my commander was relieved, it was him being blamed by the BN CO for the lack of support to the company from the HHC slugs (no chow, insufficient chow,etc) while i applaud the premise behind the idea, and sympathize with the frustration, i lack the faith that even such drastic measures would be evenly enforced, and thus would more likely serve as further maskirovka for incompetence and piss poor leadership than improve things. i'd suggest we get rid of "up or out" and allow truly competent professionals who maintain technical and tactical competency and who innovate, not coast, to stay where they are happy and useful, rather than pushing them out to let a slug in to get their ticket punched while throwing away all the hard earned w*rk of their predecessor because they felt the need to make changes to put as bullet points on their NC/OER.

he had nothing to do with the voter outreach, and we have this fine Florida swamp, excuse me, crop land to sell you. Obamamerica is a third world country.

i can't imagine for a moment that AlQ would want to hurt, let alone kill the SCOAMF... why on earth would they want to harm the one person who has done more damage to the US in less than four years than all the other enemies of America in all the years since her birth combined? even Slow Joe isn't that fing stupid.

when one starts with the premise that the primary goal of Ear Leader's defense spending cuts is to weaken America, they suddenly make a whole lot more sense. that's why they killed the F-22 first, saying we had the F-35, because it was up and running, albeit with a few minor problems (like oxygen for the pilot),whereas the F-35 was still very much an iffy thing. so they kill the Raptor, and now that reviving it is no longer an option, they can kill the F-35 too and presto, we are stuck with an aging fighter force. now they want to cut the Warthog force, because gawd knows we wouldn't want to keep the world's best CAS platform in service when that looks to be what we're going to need for the foreseeable future. a pox on that jug eared bastage.

i had to laugh at the "strongest military in the world" comment. do you have any idea what the manpower numbers are for the DOD? i'm guessing not: Army Active 562,400 Mobilized 48,331 Guard 358,200 Reserve 205,000 Navy Active 324,239 Mobilized 10,818 Reserve 65,500 Marines Active 203,075 Mobilized 2,261 Reserve 39,600 Air ForceActive331,700 Mobilized16,451Guard106,700Reserve69,500 (from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/end-strength.htm civilian strengths deleted DOD page only gives AD numbers ) now, it is difficult to get solid numbers on total numbers of gun owners in the US, in part because many of them refuse to discuss their status for reasons of security, but gun and ammo sales have been up dramatically over the last few years, and it is not unreasonable to point to studies that say at least 4 out of 10 people have them, even if they are a few years old, as a conservative estimate. the census web page says that the current US population is approximately 311,000,000, so 40% of that is over 124,000,000 people, making the total number of GI's above who are theoretically available for suppressing an insurrection much less than 3% of the total number of potential insurgents, which is a sufficiently large enough numeric disparity to give even the world's strongest military pause. further more, that's without allowing for the fact that many of those GI's are not "shooters", i.e. "combat arms", but other MOS's that are not usually involved in combat. it also assumes that none of them will refuse to take up arms against their fellow citizens or, worse, from the government's POV, defect to the rebels. also, since many of those gun owners and potential rebels are former military themselves, with an intimate knowledge of the strengths and weakness of the services they might be facing, many of the advantages our military has would disappear when the OPFOR has that sort of insight. as Stalin said, "At a certain point, quantity has a certain quality all its own." so anyone arguing that the 2nd Amendment has no bearing on securing individual liberties from government intrusion by force either doesn't understand what the numbers are, or is engaging in wishful thinking. the American populace has the means at hand to liberate itself from any government that creates a situation where a sufficiently large enough portion of the population thinks such an act is necessary, unless the government in question was willing to literally destroy vast swaths of the country by massive use of WMD to kill them off. now, as to the rest of the arguments, what part of "shall not be infringed" do you people not understand?

calls for a log in, but teh back to main page where a registration link ought to be link no w*rkie... that's what you get for letting officers do anything besides go to meetings and sign for shit. /white smoke

typical: spend who knows how much money to prove something isn't w*rking, and the response is that we should spend more money on finding a way to prove it w*rks. since you can't get LAPD to come to a TA unless there is a major injury, or one of their vehicles is involved, the "records" of accidents at any intersection are junk. the city has no more idea what happens at these intersections than they do on how to run a city efficiently. enough already.

this all could have been prevented if we simply protected our borders, deported illegals when they are found and prosecuted legal residents who hire them. dry up the demand by prosecuting everyone in this town with a "nanny", "housekeeper", "gardener" and anyone else who they don't pay payroll taxes on, seizing their bank accounts, cars and houses as needed to pay the taxes and penalties on. enough of this stupidity: if you pull a knife on a cop and refuse commands you DESERVE to get shot. i seriously doubt this would even make the news in Guatemala if it happened there. good riddance to bad rubbish.

i call BS: Uber Pig has a heart? no fing way..... as for the rest, why should the VA be different from any other big health care chain? some places are great, others suck, and people make st00pid errors. all that being said, the times i w*rked at VA Wadsworth in West LA with my reserve unit made me want to never be a patient there.....it struck me as kinda like a King/Drew Medical Center run by the Feds. County-USC might be better.

i'd point out that by carving out the NRA exemption, and the others that followed, the bill is likely DOA with the first Federal court it is challenged in, a situation that likely wouldn't occur had not the exceptions been shoe horned in. in short, first the NRA delayed the bill by carving out an exception, then caused additional delays and unhappiness as others demanded their pound of flesh too, then *IF* it gets through the Senate, they gave numeri challengers from all sides grounds to sue to have it overturned, without spending appreciable capital, either cash or favors. the bill was going to go through one way or another, but they managed to poison the whole process from start to finish. seems to me, as a Life Member, i got my money's worth from the folks at NRA HQ: well played ladies and gentlemen.

as i am fond of saying, you can't fix stupid, but you can mock it incessantly and mercilessly. %-)

all i have to say about YOUR president's performance is: "I Told You So!". you are the idiots that supported him, that refused to point out he had no experience, and refused to do even the slightest research into his background. well, you got what you wanted, so deal with it. but i'm not worried about y'all learning from your willful error, because you'll pick the incompetent liberal loser again in the next election too. its what you do best.

they should have tried one more "junk shot", this time sending the First Klingon's old clothes down the pipe: not only are they big enough to plug any hole, but they are so ugly that the oil would be scared back into the ground.

i find it greatly amusing that Steve is after the illegal alien vote, advertising in Spanish.

What does the photo to do with the story, other than the fact that there are rifles in the frame? It does remind people that, had the Soldiers killed that day been in possession of their assigned duty weapons, most or all of them would still be alive and their attacker dead. More likely, the coward would never have acted, knowing that his victims were not waiting to be slaughtered, but somehow I doubt that was what you had in mind. As for a "making the federal ban on assault weapons permanent.", true assault weapons are controlled under the NFA, as are all Title 3 firearms, and have been not been manufactured for individual purchase since 1986. The efforts by both the uninformed and the willfully misleading scaremongers amongst us to equate appearance with performance by demonizing certain design features as somehow magically imparting capabilities the weapons in question do not possess is typical of the dishonesty that is inherent in the "gun control" movement. You owe it to your readers to research and print honest, factual news stories in your paper, and leave the editorializing and opinions on the opinion page, where they are clearly identified as such. Such an approach might do wonders for your circulation.

if there was no "profit" or "gain" in pretending to be a Soldier or some sort of decorated "hero" people wouldn't do it. whether that "gain" or "profit" is material or immaterial shouldn't matter. the person perpetrating such a fraud should be prosecuted and punished as the law directs. holding them "up to public shame" presupposes that shame would w*rk on the sort of person who would commit such an act, i proposition i view as highly unlikely.

i'm with the SEALS: a REMF tried to railroad me while i was taking an AIT at Ft Sam, and the Bn JAG told me to take the Art. 15, cause it was only a "letter of reprimand" and "no big deal". he also told me he had helped set the charges against me. fortunately, i went to the AHS school JAG, a full bird with crossed arrows on his collar, and he was not amused. i walked, with a minor (deserved) ass chewing. the JAG CPT didn't. in the mean time, i still think a new TTP for handling prisoners in the GWOT is needed to replace the "Five S's" on occasion..... i suggest that the "Three S's" may often times be more appropriate: Shoot. Shovel. Shut Up. /Scouts Out!

this story rings true when one remembers that Barney Fife, before he got elected, said he wanted US troops to invade Pockistan to get at the Taliban and Al-Q..... great idea Ear Leader: our troops rely on a port and LOCs that run through a "friendly country" and you want to invade said country, thereby instantly cutting off their supplies. what a fing moron: i am *so* glad i'm retired.

thanks for the reminder..... and for encouraging me to finally get around to removing Google from my search engine list. Bing is now the default.

and now, some REMF will send out an order forbidding such mascots.

i suggest we adopt the "Three S's" as the TTP of choice for illegal combatant prisoners: Shoot. Shovel. Shut up.

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats." H. L. Mencken (and AoSHQ %-)