Y'know, I gotta say this: If the TSA is scared of Bruce Schneier, one of the *good* guys, then they'd wet their pants and burst into tears if they ever encountered a bad guy. Not that they ever will, because the TSA has caught a grand total of, err, *NO*, terrorists, in its entire ten-year existence...
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Twenty-two Naval hospital corpsmen have received the Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery in saving the lives of soldiers under fire. I don't know if any of you have ever had anybody fire a gun at you, but your first instinct (especially if unarmed) is to run like hell and hide for the next hundred years -- *not* run towards the shooter in order to save someone's life. The kind of person who would run -- unarmed -- into the path of enemy fire in order to save the lives of their fellow soldiers is someone who is well deserving of the Medal of Honor, and the twenty-two Naval hospital corpsmen who have so earned it over the past 100 years did so fair and square.
Well, unless you're a right-wing religious fucktard by the name of Bryan Fischer, "Director of Issues Analysis" for the conservative "Christian" group the American Family Association, who complains that awarding the medal to someone for "merely" saving lives somehow "feminizes" the medal and diminishes it. This right-wing chickenhawk has never served in the military, has never had a shot fired his direction in anger, has no idea of the bravery it takes to run *towards* bullets rather than *away* from them, but apparently he feels that spitting on the faces of the families of those twenty-two medical corpsmen who received the Medal of Honor is all fine and dandy because it allows him to attack his darky President for granting the Medal of Honor to *another* of those darkies for, err... saving the lives of American soldiers while killing at least one of the Taliban fighters he faced.
So I have a medal for Bryan Fischer here, a medal he has truly earned and deserved. And here it is:
Yes inded, Mr. Bryan Fischer, you have earned the Chickenhawk Medal of Honor. Your conspicuous bravery in criticizing the courage of our proud Naval Corpsman recipients of the Presidential Medal of Honor, accompanied by your conspicuous bravery in having "other priorities" whenever the possibility of serving in the military yourself arose, has well earned you this prestigious award. Congratulations, dear sir! I'm certain this medal shall find a prized spot on your fireplace mantlepiece :).
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The police were called by a homeowner reporting a suspicious package. The cop who responded took one look at the package, asked the homeowner one question, and then closed the incident.
Question to the reader (without peeking at the link): What was the question the police officer asked? And what was the home owner's response?
I bet 99% of you can answer that one without even peeking at the link, heh.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
That's what the guards at the Nazi death camps said. They didn't have anything against Jews, they said. They just had to do it or they'd be put into the death camps themselves.
So cry me a river about TSA screeners whining that they shouldn't be targeted for abuse because "we're just following orders". If they don't follow orders, all that happens is that they have to get a job reciting "will there be fries with that order?", they don't get shot like the guards at the Nazi death camps would have been -- guards who, remember, were hung for following illegal orders.
So color me unsympathetic about the poor, poor employees of the Department of Vaterland Security. They chose to serve a heartless bureaucracy and choose every day to obey orders that their very own superiors admit are probably illegal, and have nobody to blame but themselves if people get pissed about being subjected to illegal procedures.
-- Badtux the Sympathyless Penguin
Anne Laurie over at Balloon Juice points out a major penis substitute fail at Balloon Juice: Gun nuts, rather than exercising their legal right to open carry in Virginia to go into biker bars and redneck icehouses or take a stroll through the worst parts of Richmond, the parts where drug deals go down on street corners, decide they're going to demonstrate their manliness by walking into... Starbucks.
Yes, Starbucks. Home of latte'-sippin' elitists, pencil-neck geeks with laptops, and other such obviously threatening people. And they walk in, six-irons on their hips, to order... what? A black coffee with a shot of whiskey? Nope. A banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. How... manly, bwahahaha!
I guess open carrying into McDonalds was too threatening for them. Why, one of the mommies watching their tykes at the kiddie play area might have seen them come in, surmised that an armed robbery was going down, pulled out her concealed weapon, and blown them away -- or worse yet, said mean words to them and sent them home crying to Mommy. Alrighty, then!
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
