Canadian MADDness

"Those people have committed a criminal act by driving impaired, whether it's by drugs or alcohol and as far as I'm concerned they've lost their rights," said MADD Canada president Margaret Miller.

One Drop of Slave Blood

Anyone who has any familiarity with the SCLC know what a joke they are. I've heard they used to be a respected organization, but that all happened before I was born. In my lifetime, it's a been a bunch of kooks.
The latest pearl of wisdom from the kook factory is this:

Michelle Obama is treated more roughly than her husband, because of her slave heritage.

That was according to Charles Steele Jr., president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Saturday.

"Why are they attacking Michelle Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and not really attacking, to that degree, her husband?” Steele asked. “Because he has no slave blood in him. He does not have any slave blood in him, but Michelle does."

Southern RoadTrip!

I was listening to the radio this morning, and they mentioned that there is an Uncle Remus Museum in Georgia. I googled it when I got in, and THERE IS!

Ow

I don't usually go to the Saturday morning aikido class because it starts at 9AM. That means I have to leave the house at about 8AM and drive all the way up to Gainesville. It also doesn't jive well with my typical friday night.
But, there are two people with belt tests coming up and they need support. Mrs Schwartz and I packed up the girls and headed up on Saturday. One of the people testing is a mother of two little kids, so Mrs S took the kids for a walk while we had our class.
We spent the first hour having me get thrown around by the guy that's testing soon. We spent the second hour having me get thrown around by the woman that's testing soon.

That's two full hours of getting my ass kicked.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of Saturday on the couch.

Should we be Drilling?

This image is from the Energy Information Administration, the official energy statistics from the US government.

I am Against School Vouchers

Have I turned into a raving liberal?! Not exactly. The way I see it is like this:

Do we have to have some kind of socialized educational system? Sadly, yes. Sure, if the world were perfect, people who had children would have to provide for their education the same way they provide for their food and clothing. Unfortunately, most of the people in the country are morons and far too many of them breed. The cold reality is that if we left this seemingly obvious responsibility to them, they'd fuck it up. We'd end up with a nation of even bigger morons that we'd then have to deal with.
So we have to bite the bullet and tell these dopes that they have to actually, ya know, educate their kids. Even that largely fails.

So anyways, now that we're stuck with socialized education, it seems proper that everybody pays into the system. So everybody (even me, Grrrr) pays into it, but then!
Along comes vouchers. Now these people want to put their money in and then take right back out, like the hokey pokey, so they can put it into a private school.

Tough cookies. You want to send your brat to private school, go for it, but you still gotta pay into the system. If I, who has no kids, has to pay into it, then by Jeebus, so do you.

They call it vocalizing

Here's a bit of Beagle trivia for you. Beagles were bred to hunt rabbits. It's not that a Beagle is faster than a rabbit; it's that they are so scent driven, and so tenacious, that they follow the rabbit until it's exhausted. In order to aid their owners in following them, they have also been bred to hold their tails straight up in the air so you can see them in brush; and to make noise when they get a scent. This allows their owners to locate them by the sound. They call it vocalizing. The stronger the scent, the more intense the vocalizing. And it's continuous. Don't think you can wear them out by "letting them howl". They are bred to do that shit all day. My two girls are only about 18-20 lbs and they easily hit 120 dB.

Vocalizing sounds like the dog is being fed into a grinder, tail first. It's this spine-chilling mix of a bark and howl that blends into a cry of pain, fear and despair. Banshees yearn for a howl like this.

Mrs Schwartz is such a helicopter parent, that she can't even begin to deal with listening to it indoors. That's the reason why we are so far behind on the crate training. They howl, she comes running.

On the other hand, it's pretty fun to watch when we take them to the local cemetary. They take off out of the car, nose to the ground, cutting back and forth like a bat in flight. A few seconds of this, and one of them will start in with the howling. The other one will rush over and join in as soon as she picks up the scent.

The Missus and I will start walking while the girls stay in our general area, cutting back and forth with their noses to the ground. Depending on the value of the scent trail, they follow, then abandon, one scent after another. This is the funniest part, because their movement is always the same. It's just that every now and then they'll start with that horrible howl, then it will stop for a minute, then start up again.

Good God!

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- Jack Lucas, who at 14 lied his way into military service during World War II and became the youngest Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, died Thursday in a Hattiesburg, Mississippi, hospital. He was 80.

Jacklyn "Jack" Lucas was just six days past his 17th birthday in February 1945 when his heroism at Iwo Jima earned him the nation's highest military honor. He used his body to shield three fellow squad members from two grenades, and he was nearly killed when one exploded.

He was left with more than 250 pieces of shrapnel in his body and in every major organ, and he endured 26 surgeries in the months after Iwo Jima.

Your Papers, Please

With great pride and fanfare, Georgia has announced the launch of its OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER.

Not so ironically, this was also the name of the carpet bombing operation of Vietnam.

In order to save all of us from ourselves, we get to go through an increased program of random stops and harassment, including ramped up checkpoints.

So be a good jew Georgian.