Twenty years old and he’s scared to die.
His body is riddled with shrapnel and the bleeding just won’t stop.
The Corpsman doesn’t think he’ll make it but tries anyway.
Gunny keeps telling him to hang in there, it’ll be alright.

The young Marine finally passes in his sleep.
A Landstuhl gurney serves as his death bed.
His buddies all tell how brave he was, jumping on the IED like he did.
His second tour over there ends two months too early.

His medals were all pinned upon his chest.
Purple heart and Bronze star with Combat V.
His dress blues immaculate on his lifeless body.
Face cleaned and shaven, inspection ready.

Small town America calls him a hero.
His pastor tells how unselfish he was, helping all he could.
His girlfriend says he proposed when last home on leave.
Through teary eyes she tells how she never answered him.

A parade through downtown memorializes his life.
Flags waving, yellow ribbons everywhere.
Casket drawn by horses, people lined up to honor him.
Tears line the strangers faces as they pay tribute to their hometown boy.

Mom and Dad at graveside crying.
Eulogies read by friends and family.
He was too young they say, it wasn’t his time.
Grief-stricken faces say goodbye.

Taps is played, guns are fired.
A hero’s tribute given.
His casket flag folded smartly.
The Gunny hands it to his Mom.

Through a veil of tears she cries out NO!
His Father sobbing asks God why.
No easy answers on this day.
His casket lowered to its final resting place.

The reasons for this war are still unfolding.
Critics and supporters could debate it for years to come.
But his parents’ grief won’t be abated.
Another Marine has died for what now seems like lies.

This week’s Asshat Award goes to the pair of Mark Webb, 20, and Shelley Mandiville, 17.

3 ingredients were necessary to gain them access to this not-really-prestigious award:

• Fire
• Gasoline
• Fluorescent bulbs

The pair decided it would be cool to stage their own horribly painful deaths lightsaber fight AND film it! Well, their effort paid off with Rod Roddy* giving them a no-expense paid trip to the hospital burn unit. Alas, I cannot stop laughing at these poor idiots, although I do feel a bit sorry for them. Dressing up in costume for your favorite movie, event, etc. is fine. Hell, folks my age have been doing it for years with Rocky Horror. But these deserve just what they got. I mean, who knew that gasoline was flammable or that it would cause the bulbs to explode? Not them apparently. So anyway, enjoy this week’s Asshats.

CNN.com International Edition - ‘Lightsaber Duel’: two critical

* Who can forget Rod Roddy from The Price Is Right?

Wednesday night’s season finale of Law & Order: Criminal Intent has Tom DeLay fuming mad. And I can understand why. However, he doesn’t understand why the reference was in the script.

I won’t bore you all with the details, but this line appears to offend him:

“Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.”

The apparent controversy centers around comments made by DeLay during the whole Terri Schiavo ordeal. In case you have forgotten, good ole Tom got upset when the judges consistently blocked attempts by the religious right and finally Congress to circumvent the law. Tom had this to say concerning Wednesday Night’s show:

“I can only assume last night’s slur was in response to comments I have made in the past about the need for Congress to closely monitor the federal judiciary, as prescribed in our constitutional system of checks and balances.”

Sorry Tom, that’s not why that line was there. This is why:

“The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior,” said Tom DeLay, the Republican leader who moved the Florida case to the federal arena.

Perhaps if Mr. DeLay had not made the above thinly-veiled call for action that could be construed as a call to violence against the so-called “activist”* judges, the line from Law & Order: CI wouldn’t have been included in the script. But apparently Tom can’t see that.

Hat tip to the following articles for info used in the post:
Common Dreams - Tom DeLay threatens Judges: You Will Answer For This
CNN.com - DeLay angered by ‘Law & Order’ mention - May 27, 2005

*(the judge in the Terri Schiavo case is a religious Republican judge who has since been kicked out of his church for his multiple rulings against Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri’s parents)

Can I touch ‘em? Huh, huh? Can I please? Just let me touch ‘em!

According to the article Ill. Library Getting Fingerprint Scanners - Yahoo! News, there are a hell of a lot of concerns in my mind over the potential privacy invasions that could stem from this. The fact of the matter is that the Naperville Library system could have found other means to restrict the Internet access other than fingerprinting their patrons. Do you think it had anything at all to do with the fact that the company providing the scanners is based in Naperville?

Even though the library says this is needed to control costs from those who would “abuse” the system by loaning their library card to a family member or friend to do research on the library’s computers, the ACLU begs to differ:

“We take people’s fingerprints because we think they might be guilty of something, not because they want to use the library,” said Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union in Illinois.

I think Mr. Yohnka has a very valid point. The USA Patriot Act brought up similar concerns that our government could pull the library records of anyone they deemed a “person of interest”. While the context that they tend to shroud it in makes it sound like we’re doing what we can to prevent any further “terra attacks”, the truth is much scarier. The Patriot Act gave specific government agencies the ability to pull these records at will without the notification of those being investigated. This is what they are saying:

The Justice Department has repeatedly said the government has never asked for anyone’s library records.

What is left unsaid, however, is that they don’t say they never will, just that they never have.

I often wonder what it takes to become a “person of interest” to our country’s crime-fighting entities. Does anyone know? Is there a list of offenses that qualifies? Do you want to worry about what checking out a certain book might say to the authorities? I happen to value my privacy. That’s why I will be against any such invasion of privacy as this.

About 2 weeks ago, we adopted a new kitten from the Humane Society. Our cat didn’t seem to take to well to him at first, but things are MUCH better now. The problem is that the little beast is a glutton. That’s not that big of a deal, but compounded with that is the fact that he is the first cat/kitten I have ever heard audibly fart and I have owned numerous cats throughout my life.

He is NASSSSTTTYYYY!!! If you’ve never smelled a kitty-fart, count yourself lucky. The smell of half-digested Kitten Chow™ is not one I would wish on my worst enemy. It’s even worse when you’re holding him and he lets loose.

Humans passing gas is a normal occurrence that, while odoriffic, can be dealt with. Dog owners know the fun smells associated with canine flatulence as well. But I swear, I have never smelled anything as F O U L as a Kitty Fart. Have you ever experienced this?

Filibuster.

It’s a term that has been a part of our nation’s history since the beginning. But now, some people want to get rid of it as it pertains to judicial nominees. They say that every judge nominated “deserves a simple up or down vote on the Senate floor”. If only the fight were that simple. The act of filibustering has long been used as a last resort for the party in the minority to express their disapproval with whatever was being presented. The potential repercussions of eliminating the filibuster rule are far-reaching indeed.

Let me break it down for you. During the Clinton Administration, the party in the minority, the Republicans, used the filibuster so successfully they prevented 65 judicial nominees from every being voted on. Conversely, this year’s batch of Republicans are moaning and complaining about a mere 10 nominees the Democrats don’t agree with. Seven of them have already been rejected during President Bush’s first term.

The Republicans say they are being forced to use the “nuclear option” because Democrats won’t let these shady (my term) judges get to the federal bench. The Democrats say that eliminating the filibuster rule amounts to a flagrant abuse of power. I tend to agree with them. Herman Schwartz, from The American Prospect, gives us this tidbit of history:

Senate rules and practices since the early 1800s have confirmed the institution’s counter-majoritarianism. Both Republicans and Democrats have invoked this protection, especially when the other party controlled both the presidency and the Senate. In such circumstances, protection for the minority with respect to judicial nominations becomes especially important, for senators rarely oppose their own party’s judicial nominations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, well, well. It seems that a previous post (Get Over IT!) has generated quite a bit of controversy. By far it has been my most popular post to date. For your reading enjoyment, we get co-Asshats. To summarize the post:

1. Kerry Lofy. The heterosexual teenage male athlete who decided to wear a dress and accompany a gay “friend” to prom is denied admittance by the school’s administration.
2. Kerry’s subsequent antics after sneaking in to prom include “dry-humping” a mentally challenged student as well as a mock strip-tease.
3. School throws Kerry out of the prom, has police issue a $249 disorderly conduct ticket and then they give him a 3-day suspension.

I ranted about this initially because it sounded like the school was just being prudes and overly conservative toward what I thought was a possible gay-rights issue. Well, commenters who actuallty attend Badger High set me straight on some of the details. After being confronted with a more accurate and full description of what took place and Mr. Lofy’s past antics (He wore a duct tape tux last year, apparently created his own “Dumbass” spinoff home movie, and wandered around downtown Lake Geneva, WI dressed as an Indian claiming to be hunting buffalo), I have decided to honor him with the first of this week’s Asshat of the Week Awards.

As the comments got longer and longer, we discover our co-winner of this week’s prize, a commenter who goes by the name an enemy of Kerry Lofy. This Asshat apparently doesn’t know when to quit. By including comments such as the following, he has earned a place of (dis)honor here at The Bulldog Says.

…who is comparable to that nightmarish first grade teacher I know is teaching you right now, Bulldog.

John Kerry and Al Gore both were way bigger bullshit artists (especially Kerry) than Bush will ever be.

There is no point in reading your other stupid, pitiful excuse at what you call writing.

After writing the last comment above, enemy, proceeds to return 4 more times to post his ridiculous comments. Kind of like a crack whore returns to his dealer to get another rock. He just can’t stay away.

So, cheers fellas. You earned this.

You, sirs, are GUILTY of Asshattery!

Just as the war was ending, Scotty, Gage, and myself took great pains to bury his cache of old-time weapons. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, except that the government and their goons have some pretty sophisticated scanners. Some of which are still classified as “black”. Most of the work for this project took place beneath a waning moon and a “canopy of darkness”. It took us 3 nights to finally get everything buried and concealed in such a way as to not be found. Among the group of us, only Scotty, Gage, and I knew the location. When you work with technology in the military, you have ways of getting access to Top Secret projects, even ones deemed ineffective by the government. Fortunately for us, Scotty was a mastermind. He was able to take one of these failed projects and tweak it so it would function. His work on the “Canopy of Darkness” project enabled us to hide our stash permanently.
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Once again, conservatives in Lake Geneva, WI show their intolerance and adherence to their Politics of Discrimination™. This time to a high school student attending his Senior Prom. It seems that Kerry Lofy, a senior at Lake Geneva, WI’s Badger High School, decided to show a little support for his openly gay friend, Victor Anderson. Anderson didn’t have a date to prom, so Lofy, decided to go as his date. While the school says there isn’t a problem with two males attending prom together, it was Lofy’s choice of attire that apparently irked some of the prudes in the school’s administration. Lofy wore a black dress, blond wig, and open-toed shoes.

The part that pisses me off the most about this whole thing is the fact that, even though they are charging him with disorderly conduct, the whole affair is nothing more than a slap in the face, once again, to gay, lesbian, or transgendered students. The actions taken by the school and apparently reinforced by the school board ($249 disorderly conduct fine and 3 days suspension) serve no other purpose than to continue to foster discrimination toward gay students.

I could see if Lofy had pulled this prank during his homeroom or any of his other classes. Whether appropriate or not, doing it then would most certainly disrupt the learning process. But as Lofy himself admits:

“I wasn’t hurting anybody,” he says. “I wasn’t preventing anyone from learning in a school environment.”

Where is the harm? Where is the disruption to the learning process? On what grounds does the administration have to suspend him? For years, at schools all across the country, there have been events such as Powder Puff Cheerleaders where, typically, the football team dresses up as cheerleaders and hosts different events during, I think, Homecoming Week. If that kind of behavior is tolerated then, why not now?

I only have one thing to say to this school’s administration:
Gays are everywhere. In your schools, in your churches, in your communities, even in the military although Bush and Co. won’t admit it. Get over it. They are no more a threat than anyone else. When you finally shed your discriminatory ways and try being more tolerant toward others, you’ll see that the only ones that had a problem with Lofy’s attire were you.

I challenge any of the conservatives that read this blog, few though you may be, to chime in about this. Tell me what was so wrong about what this kid did. Please. Because, for the life of me, I don’t see it.

Here’s the article from JS Online: Crossing the line?

Here is Badger High’s homepage: Badger High School