Life in 3D

In the WTF section of the news

Well, all the liberals who think the government can do a better job of raising our kids than we can should all move to Canada now.

OTTAWA (AFP) – A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl’s grounding, overturning her father’s punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself online using a friend’s computer.

The father’s lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl’s “own protection” and is appealing the ruling.

“She’s a child,” Beaudoin told AFP. “At her age, children test their limits and it’s up to their parents to set boundaries.”

“I started an appeal of the decision today to reestablish parental authority, and to ensure that this case doesn’t set a precedent,” she said. Otherwise, said Beaudoin, “parents are going to be walking on egg shells from now on.”

“I think most children respect their parents and would never go so far as to take them to court, but it’s clear that some would and we have to ask ourselves how far this will go.”

According to court documents, the girl’s Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.

Beaudoin noted the girl used a court-appointed lawyer in her parents’ 10-year custody dispute to launch her landmark case against dear old dad.

I know how I would handle it, I would just cancel my Internet service.  Maybe there’s more going on that was reported here but for the courts to get involved in a girl being grounded is insane.  So what happens when the kid want to go to a party and dad says no?  Another court battle?  How much of a nanny state do people have to put up with before we decide enough is enough.

The scary part is that this kind of thing could happen here.  And with some activist judges out there it could become ‘bench law’ – laws that no one voted on but some judge decided was a good idea. 

Don’t believe me?  Just take a look around.  Gay marriage in California was not accomplished by passing a law, it was done by some judges ‘finding’ new rights in California’s Constitution.  Enemy combatants now have access to our courts, not through law but through a courts ruling.  And if you pass a law that a judge doesn’t like they can declare it null and void – despite the will of the people.

It won’t be Congress that legislates our rights away, it will be the courts.

Dr Who is really Batman

There are too many similarities for you to deny this:

1 – Both of them have a tragic past – The Doctors race was wiped out in a genocidal war leaving him the sole survivor of it. Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed in a senseless crime leaving him the sole survivor of his family.

2 – Both have secret bases that hold state of the art technology – The Doctor has the Tardis, Batman has the Bat cave. Each one has a massive computer and are large, roomy and super secret.

3 – Both have secret identities – The Doctor never really tells anyone who he is, just “I’m the Doctor”; Batman doesn’t tell anyone who he is either, just “I’m Batman”

4 – Both have sidekicks – For Batman it is, of course, Robin; For the Doctor, it’s any number of women that he has tromped around the galaxy with – My favorites though are Rose and Martha.

5 – Both have inspired others to follow in their footsteps – Batman inspired the original Robin to become Nightwing and inspired the original Batgirl as well. The Doctor inspired Captain Jack to take over Torchwood to protect the Earth, and recently the Doctors daughter Jenny (yea, he has one – haven’t you been watching??) has taken up space hopping and adventuring too – the Time Lord’s Batgirl

6- Both have a utility device that does everything – Batman’s utility belt contains everything he needs to fight crime, how it all fits we have no idea, but it does. The Doctor has the sonic screwdriver which can disable alien devices, open up a bottle of Champagne, and even fix a cell phone so you can get reception in those far off corners of reality.

See, when this started you thought I was nuts didn’t you. But I have proved my point, they are the same person just with different hair styles, clothing and accents

Next I shall go and prove that Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore are really the same person….

Semper Fi, Marine

Another Marine has been cleared of wrong doing at Haditha leaving only one left to go to trial.  All the other Marines involved have either had the charges dropped or were cleared at court martial.

Military Judge Col. Steven Folsom dropped all charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was accused of violating a lawful order and dereliction of duty, at a hearing at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in Southern California.

Folsom’s decision means that, out of eight Marines originally charged in December 2006, six have won dismissals of their charges and one has been cleared at court martial.

The accused ringleader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faces court martial. The proceedings against him, however, have been put on hold pending the appeal of a pretrial ruling.

Brutally Honest covers it very well too:

Many people speak of the terror and agony of combat. And of how it affects the psyche of men for the rest of their lives. Some call it post traumatic stress disorder. But what do you call a betrayal of faith and confidence by the service and the country that you served. Or the injury inflicted when your nation brands you a murderer up front, then slowly works it’s way toward the truth. Is there a medical diagnosis for that or an identified service connect disability condition? What about a treatment. Can you restore a man’s self pride, his honor or his feelings of honor and duty, after he has  been publicly shamed by his own country and vilified by those in the media and the US Congress? Those who had been all to eager to strip away his rights and condemn him of a crime for eternity, are now deafeningly silent.

These same people who were willing to scream ‘Murderer’ without knowing any of the facts are they same ones that  condemned a certain lacrosse team before an investigation was even finished.  People who are more interested in being right, even if they are wrong, than the are with truth and fact.

People like John Murtha are a disgrace not only to the uniform he used to wear, but the system of law he supposedly believes in.  I’ve gone to class with people like him, even when I showed them evidence that contradicted what they were sure happened at Haditha and Duke University they would not budge.  Evidence that did not fall into their pre-conceived ideas was summarily discarded and considered irrelevant.

Let’s see if Murtha will offer a public apology for what he said.  My guess is going to be a big “no”.

Bored, bored, bored…

I’m bored. 

There’s a lot going on that is just begging to be commented on, but I’m just bored and lack the motivation to do it.  I guess blasting through the semester and doing finals and a store opening at the same time must have given me a delayed burnout or something.  I haven’t even done any modeling in the last week or two.

And look at all the stuff out here to comment on, The AP is showing their ass in a big way (and Michelle Malkin is putting her foot up it) so I could probably do a whole post about that, but it’s already done so why bother?

Obama’s Security Advisor thinks that Winnie the Pooh is the way to look at national security and that is just ripe for some good bashing

In arguing that the country should back off a policy that causes too much pain, Danzig said, “”Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

He read a section from the children’s book where Pooh Bear hurts himself going down the steps because he hasn’t stopped to think of another way.

But again, I’m too bored to do it so you’ll have to make up your own snarky comments.

I could talk about Jennifer’s post on Al “I’m saving the planet” Gore and how Gore is just a blow hard with an agenda to make some cash, but we already know this so I’ll pass.

What I need is something different, exciting, and unique.  Something that has sex, the law, lies, and more sex….. Well, the best I could find was this

As she was attempting to put on a Victoria’s Secret thong, a Los Angeles woman claims that a decorative metallic piece flew off the garment and struck her in the eye, causing injuries and a new product liability lawsuit against the underwear giant.

My first thought when I read the whole thing was “Here is a 52 year old woman wearing a thong with decorative metallic pieces on it???  WTF? 

Second, she’s putting the underwear on and the piece come off with enough force to give her an EYE injury?  Yea, maybe you should check and make sure you got the right size in the first place before you start saying the thing was defective.  I do find it very interesting that her lawyer would not let Victoria’s Secret see the garment at all – I would think if their case is valid that they would have nothing to hide.

I’m going to jump out on a limb here and say that I bet she and her lawyer are thinking they have an easy payday with this one which is why they are pushing it forward, and I hope they get spanked hard in court over it.

Well, that’s that then. I’m done blogging for the day.  Now I’m bored again.

bored, bored, bored…

Real Men

I popped over to Jennifer’s site today and saw her post on Real Men and since it is also Father’s day it got me thinking of my dad.

My dad is a cowboy, plain and simple. Every image I have of him is in Cowboy boot, jeans and his hat. He’s done just about any job you can think of from truck driver, freight loader, security consultant, police officer, Naval Investigative service, private security, US Navy Underwater Demolitions, and a bunch of jobs scattered throughout. I remember when I was a kid, he was always kind of restless, he would get bored at a job or his boss would be an ass and he would start looking for something new to do. It drove mom crazy but he always brought home a paycheck.

There were plenty of times that dads job took him away. As a trucker he would be gone for 3 or 4 days a week on the road and I know he hated it because he wasn’t around for us kids and mom, but it paid the bills so he did what had to be done. When he was a cop he worked the night shift a lot to – nature of what he did. So, while we were up he was sleeping and the only time he saw us was as we were going to bed and he was getting ready for work. I remember watching him put on his uniform and being so proud of him, my dad was a policeman, just like a sheriff in the old west. He’d put on his black shirt and pants, then the black gun belt and boots and he looked ten feet tall to me. I remember he would spend part of his day off sitting in his chair watching the game and he would polish up all his leather and then clean and oil his service revolver and I always would run and get him whatever he needed so I could be a part of that.

Dad wasn’t perfect back then, not by a long shot. He had a temper and didn’t handle it well when things went wrong. He would yell a lot and slam things around and I was more than a little bit scared of him, but when push finally came to shove when I was around 8 and he and my mom had a blowout fight where she finally told him to straighten up or get out I saw my dad’s true character. It wasn’t an immediate transformation, but the next day I could see that things were different. By force of will my dad changed, the outbursts were gone, the throwing stuff was over with, done. It was like a switch had turned on in his head and he decided that moment to be a better person that he ever was before. It proved to me that you can do whatever you set your mind to, because he set his mind to changing who he was and he did it.

When Star Wars came out my dad braved the lines around the movie theatre with me and we saw it together. My parents were not the kind to just drop the kids off at the movies and then pick us up later; they actually wanted to KNOW what we were watching so that they could be involved with our lives. After waiting in line for a half an hour we finally got in to see it and dad made sure that I was sitting in a spot where I could see the screen – no six foot monster right in front of me blocking the view. After the Death Star was destroyed and Luke, Han and Chewie got their medals, dad and I were walking out and I asked him what he thought of the movie.

“Pretty good.” He said.” But I was rooting for Vader the whole time. I liked him.”

Then came Raiders of the Lost Ark. This time dad went with me because he wanted to see it too. I was 15 and as we were walking out dad asked me what I thought of it and I told him how amazed I was with the whip work that Harrison Ford did. I had never seen a whip used before and it was awe inspiring to me.

“You want to learn to use a whip like that?”

“Yea, dad, that would be so cool. You know someone who can do that?”

He just smiled at me “Yea, I can do that.”

And he could too. Over the next month dad taught me how to use a bullwhip. We would go outside and he taught me how to do a four point’s whip crack, a coachman’s crack, and how to target so you could take the leaves off a branch. It was at that moment I knew that I had the absolute coolest dad in the country. Dad taught me to shoot, use a whip, throw a knife, box, fight and wrestle. To top it off, he was the one who always took me to my martial arts classes.

When I was 17 I tested for my brown belt from purple belt. Now, let me explain how that works. When you are going for brown belt in my style you are not judged by one person, you are instead judged by a panel of black belts who all decide together if they think you are ready to be promoted. It is usually a year between getting purple belt and then brown and I was testing at six months. I was thrilled to be allowed to test and also scared out of my mind over it – what if I screw up? What if I get stomped in sparring? What if I’m just not that good?!

Mom and Dad were both at the testing and everything was going great until we got to sparring. I was matched up with a student from a different school who was also testing for his brown. We bowed to each other and began our sparing. For brown belt we were only supposed to be going half speed and half power and we didn’t do it by points, my school was about survival on the street so when you fought you kept going until you were told to break. So, when we were told to go he came at me but not at half speed and power, but full speed and full power so for the first 30 seconds or so all I did was block everything and kept moving.

I wasn’t running but was instead just drawing him out some. As I retreated though he charged in at a run and I reacted – I snapped my leg up and caught him with a side kick in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of him. I was sure I had failed because I broke the cardinal rule – I hit him full power, heck I knocked him out! Well, as I was starting to melt down in my head I glanced over and saw my dad off to the side of the mat smiling at me. He had seen that I could handle myself and end a fight with one punch, he was proud of me.

I did get promoted to brown belt and I asked my Sensei, Mr. Small, why I was promoted when I broke the rules. He told me that the only reason the fight wasn’t stopped was because they wanted to see how I handled the student who came at me like that. He said they saw that I could handle him no problem right away so they just waited for me to finish it and when I did it with one kick they all agreed that I did the right thing – stopped him without really hurting him.

I must say that it made me feel good that they were proud of me, but I was more pleased that my dad was. Even now I know dad is proud of me. He’s a cowboy and all this computer stuff is pretty much alien technology to him, but he knows I’m happy and he knows I’m doing what I love and I’m glad that he is proud of me.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

And you people wonder why

I love Pearls Before Swine.  This one is just dang funny – long trip for the punch line, but still ya gotta love it.