+++++ "There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and there is nothing so gentle as real strength." St. Francis de Sales +++++ "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. " H.L. Mencken +++++ Axiom #2: "Ability to type on a computer terminal is no guarantee of sanity, intelligence, or common sense." +++++ Removing the straw that broke the camel's back does not necessarily allow the camel to walk again. +++++ “If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878 +++++ "No greater wrong can ever be done than to put a good man at the mercy of a bad, while telling him not to defend himself or his fellows; in no way can the success of evil be made surer or quicker." - Theodore Roosevelt +++++ "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." - John 1:5 +++++ "Illegal flowers, illegal loitering, illegal web surfing. When the word 'illegal' is abused like this, that's the day when the dignity of the law is stepped on." +++++ I don't carry a gun to kill people. I carry a gun to keep from being killed. I don't carry a gun to scare people. I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place. I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid. I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world. I don't carry a gun because I'm evil. I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world. I don't carry a gun because I hate the government. I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government. I don't carry a gun because I'm angry. I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared. I don't carry a gun because my sex organs are too small. I carry a gun because I want to continue to use those sex organs for the purpose for which they were intended for a good long time to come. I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone. I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon. I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy. I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a cowboy. I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man. I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love. I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate. I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am inadequate. I don't carry a gun because I love it. I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me. Syd +++++ *The government asks us to behave like dependent children at exactly the moment our best adult skills are demanded of us. * +++++ He has shown you, o man, what is good. And what does the Lord ask of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly before your God? +++++ Lessee-This month I'm a racist-Last month I was a nazi-the month before that, I was a right wing terrorist. Back a few months, I was a Bible and gun clinger. I've got more badges than an Eagle Scout or a Nascar driver! +++++ The most important thing I have ever learned, is that the most valuable commodity in this world or any other, is time. +++++ "Consider it pure joy, my brethren, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." - James 1:2-4 +++++ Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know "why" I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved. - Will Rogers +++++ * Cherish victories, even small ones. Years of drought may lay ahead. * If something seems wrong, something is. Listen to your feelings. * When in doubt, double check everything. Repeat as necessary. * Negotiating with mean, stupid people is generally pointless. * Diplomacy for peace always resembles a Missouri Iowa Class battleship. * On combat. Start out nuclear, then escalate. End it fast. * Forgiveness is an option. Forgetting is not. * Any government is a somewhat retarded giant. Forget at your peril. * Barbarians cannot feign civil for long. You can feign barbaric as needed. * Speed and clever can trump relentless bureaucracy. * Persistence can wear down a problem your intellect cannot. * Different tends to scare people. Pretend conformance is calming. * Armistices are temporary. Unconditional surrender, not so much. * Evil is like insanity. You may not understand, but you can figure it's plans. * Make damn sure the people you love know that. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. +++++ "We pay too little attention to the reserve power of the people to take care of themselves. We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong." - President John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. +++++ QOTD: "I used to be lost in the shuffle, now I just shuffle along with the lost." +++++ "As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble." - Ralph Waldo Emerson +++++ "When you come for the Sioux you need bring no guides. You will easily find me. I shall be right here. I shall not run away." Sitting Bull +++++ It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears. -- Marcus Porcius Cato +++++ "It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I am readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I will, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact." - Robert E. Lee, 1863 +++++ "Well, in the words of my favourite poem, For all its sham, drudgery and brken dreams, its still a beautiful world In this fantastic place, which I count myself lucky to wake into every day, there are still laughing children, singing birds, the smell of fresh bread and a new sun rising over dew soaked grass. Mankind is a bit of an errant child, for children we surely are, and I feel sure our steps will falter. I prep so that, when they do, I can support those who I love. In that strength and security, I aim to have the capacity and the strength to help those around me and to let more eyes witness another beautiful day. Many people have helped me and mine through their visions - from the surgeon who saved my ladies life to the teacher who guided my daughter to a love of learning. I don't see these people as "sheeple" any more. Just good honest folk who maybe don't know things I know or lack skills I have. When and if it comes to it, of course I will protect and care for my family, but it is also my intent to be able to help some of the great people who have shared their skills with us. Some I've reached already, others it may be after the event. I do not see a future of a bunker and isolation, although I'm not foolish enough to believe that a collapsing world will not need strength and defense. I do see a world of hard times, but those times should be managed with strength but also honour and compassion - it may fall to us to be a light in the darkness and if so, we must be the light - not a shadow in the dark" -Red +++++ "The homeopathic remedy for a .45ACP wound is a .22LR wound if my reading of homeopathy is correct." -Tom +++++ Wisdom of the ancients says best way to correct misaligned “chi” is with Sex, Gunpowder, and a fast motorcycle ride down a curvy road. If that don’t fix ya, you ain’t fixable. -Raven +++++ The quickest way to end a war is to lose it. - George Orwell +++++ "A cynic may ascribe the worst motivations to the actions of others, and may decry those actions -- but acceptance of them is antithetical to the cynical mind." +++++ "A long time ago, I made the conscious choice to not be dependant on other people, and I was willing to forgo some of the luxuries of life in order to accumulate the stuff and the skills to prepare me to take care of myself and my immediate family for any likely emergency that may occur in the region where I live. I would be happy to help you figure out how you can do the same thing most efficiently." +++++ "A good plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite point in the future." - Gen. George Patton +++++ What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. +++++ "To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. ...it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world." -Mark Steyn +++++ “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.” - The Dalai Lama, in The Seattle Times, May 15, 2001 +++++ With listening comes wisdom, with speaking repentance. +++++ "It's a parent's job, including these parents who are protesting, to teach their children the difference between two thugs who murder their classmates and a soldier who died fighting for their freedom," she said. "Danny represents every soldier and sailor who has fallen, and for them to take this stand, well, that's offensive to me." Patsy Dietz, wife of Danny P. Dietz, posthumous Navy Cross winner. +++++ One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain. +++++ The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground. ~Author Unknown +++++ I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday. ~Author Unknown +++++ Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before. ~Jacob A. Riis +++++ "In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college." - Joseph Sobran +++++ To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson +++++ A lot of growing up takes place between "It fell" and "I dropped it. - Anonymous +++++ You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership. It might help if we ran the MBAs out of Washington. - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper +++++ "Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction." - Will Rogers +++++ "Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society. We don't celebrate dependence day on the Fourth of July. We celebrate Independence Day." - Ronald Reagan (1984) +++++ "There was a time when the American people roared like lions for liberty: now they bleat like sheep for security". Norman Vincent Peale +++++ "In the questions of power, then, let no more be heard of the confidence in man, but bind him down by the chains of the Constitution." - Thomas Jefferson +++++ Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea--massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. --Gene Spafford +++++ "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." George Orwell +++++ With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd Garrison +++++ Fall 2001 Ken Lay needs to provide something he wholly owns as loan collatoral, Cheney disappears, Coincidence? +++++ Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy- think about such things. Philippians 4:8 +++++ As Admiral Hyman Rickover said, "If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't." +++++ The problem with any non-realistic medium is that it attracts people who have problems dealing with reality. +++++ "Oom you are the real fighter, the Superior. You are the Mighty Mega-power Worrier, the LORD of all fish in the Oceania. Your dynamic crystal scale is as tough as armour diamond. The four quartz teeth as sharp as Shiva's spear Hanumana, Oh the great fish, no one can defeat you, the Destroyer." Thai ancient magic matra for Betta fish. +++++ A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. -Herm Albright +++++ Paranoids: Some people rightly think everyone is out to get them. Some people wrongly think everyone is out to get them. Some people annoy everyone else until they are out to get them. +++++ "For all the days of your life prepare, And meet them ever alike. When you are the anvil bear, And when the hammer strike." +++++ Everything that can be counted doesn't necessarily count; Everything that counts can't necessarily be counted. (Einstein) +++++ "Just living is not enough"said the Butterfly, "One must have sunshine,freedom and a little flower" Hans C.Anderson +++++ "Goldfish are gregarious, bettas are charismatic... and both are beautiful to behold." +++++ "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, seea fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe +++++ It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that my thoughts acquire speed. My hands begin to shake. The shakes are a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion. +++++ Just a man with a man's courage / He knows nothing but a man But he can never fail No one but the pure in heart / May find the golden grail oh oh oh oh +++++ As their [Muslum] ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming? ---Salman Rushdie +++++ The one unforgivable sin, the offence against one's own integrity, is to accept anything at all simply on authority -- Maureen Johnson Long +++++ Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. -- Publilius Syrus +++++ "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) +++++ He who does not oppose evil by all means in his power becomes its accomplice. +++++ ~The bubbling brook would lose its song if you removed the rocks.~ +++++ "Ineffective, unfocused violence leads to more violence. Limp, panicky half-measures lead to more violence. However, complete, fully-thought-through, professional, well-executed violence never leads to more violence because, you see, afterwards, the other guys are all dead." -- Larry Miller, The Daily Standard, 14 Jan 02 +++++ I exist in a web of relationships - links to nature, people, God. I trace out these links, giving thanks for the life that flows through them. Some links are twisted or broken: I may feel regret, anger, disappointment. I pray for the gift of acceptance and forgiveness. +++++ "Dude, They're not using the internet to express their freedom of speech. They're using the internet to express their freedom from being punched in the mouth." Illiad in User Friendly 3/24/03 +++++ You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't count of having both at once. +++++ "We're giving them a real lesson today. Heavy doesn't accurately describe the level of casualties we have inflicted." Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information +++++ My friend, when I asked you to serve Me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all of your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. +++++ I know that God won't give me anything I can't handle. (I just sometimes wish he didn't trust me so much...) +++++ The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness. - Edvard Teller +++++ Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. Galbraith's Law +++++ The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw +++++ The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. Hubert H. Humphrey Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order. John V. Lindsay The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Machiavelli A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. Mahatma Gandhi When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. Plato "Every time I think I am sitting in a nice, relaxing chair, a bar comes down in my lap and I hear a vioce saying, "Keep your hands and arms inside the car at all times! Enjoy your ride!" Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910) A fish that will not eat a pl*co is easy, considering that plecos are a cross between a dinosaur and an armoured tank. -NetMax My mother peddles opium, my father's on the dole. My sister used to walk the streets, but now she's on parole, My brother runs a restaurant with bedrooms in the rear, But they don't even speak to me, 'cause I'm an Engineer. "Sex is the Tabasco sauce which an adolescent national palate sprinkles on every course in the menu." -Mary Day Winn "Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, as that ten thousand men descending from the clouds, might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?" - Benjamin Franklin-1784 "People are more violently opposed to fur than leather, because it is easier to harrass rich women than it is motorcycle gangs." - Bumper Sticker Dicing with Lady Luck. Chance favors the prepared. A blade in my boot. The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly - Wallace Stevens "According to the instruction book, 'The meek shall inherit the earth'. Well, they have done that long ago, and you're just having difficulties adjusting to the fact." Jeff Liebermann to Tim May "The problem with Googling the net is that anyone can put up a hot looking web site. If you don't already know something of the company their site doesn't tell you much so I much prefer to get input from the readership if I can." -A.T. Hagan "The Ten Commandments display was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court building, But here was a good reason for the move. You can't post 'Thou Shalt Not Steal' in a building full of lawyers and politicians without creating a hostile work environment." -Edna H. "I would categorically tell you that this is not another Vietnam." Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "Oneness is not achieved through conformity or subordination, but through the full expression of everyone's unique piece of the puzzle." --AM Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece. One should rather skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- "WOW! WHAT A RIDE!" "If Darl McBride was in charge, he'd probably make marriage unconstitutional too, since clearly it de-emphasizes the commercial nature of normal human interaction, and probably is a major impediment to the commercial growth of prostitution" -Linus Torvalds One is not defined by the people to whom you were born. You are not defined by past events, good or bad, in your life. Nor by membership in some club or special group. Nor by your past acts, events, or glories, good or bad, done by yourself or others. You are defined by what YOU do ... today, and in the future. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. 1Thes 4:11-12 In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship. The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus this person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved." -Confucius "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." -- Edward Everett Hale *Teenagers: first clean up your rooms—/then/ clean up the world.* "How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." - Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." - President Calvin Coolidge As the process unfolded, I’ve seen yet again how, in a large institution, those who focus on instantaneous minutia often impel serious and damaging repercussions to the collective goal. When looking up as the avalanche they started rumbles directly at them, they often redouble their defenses. But if they had maintained a wider field of vision, escape routes would have been clear. "Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children." -Kahlil Gibran You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down— up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order— or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course. "To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying 'Amen' to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive." --Robert Louis Stevenson I am the alpha to the seventh power/ omega its last hours, electrical, towers and meteor showers/ all gettin in powered. expose the cowards/ chaos in power the devil is yours the lord is ours animis opibusque parati (prepared in mind and resources) "Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - George E. Woodberry "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." -Churchill "Yes we did produce a near perfect Republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty , lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson. "We may not all have the opportunity to be a hero, but, nearly every day, we all have the opportunity not to be a coward." - John Farnam "In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it." - Robert A. Heinlein ******************** “Ezekiel 25:17” - Pulp Fiction “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides By the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, Shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger Those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” I been sayin’ that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker ‘fore you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin’, it could mean you’re the evil man. And I’m the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could by you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is you’re the weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin’. I’m tryin’ real hard to be a shepherd. ************** "If the soldier is not returned in 24 hours, Israel will not allow the Palestinian government to survive." +++++ "The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) +++++ ”...the sheer percussive thrill and stately measured cadence of sending six rounds of .357 downrange is a siren song not to be dismissed.“ +++++ "While you recently had your problems on the run, they've regrouped and are making another attack." +++++ Darkness is the absence of Light, Evil is the absence of Good, and Panic is the absence of preparation. +++++ "We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth. Whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it. Let us not, deceive ourselves longer." - Patrick Henry +++++ as my fellow soldiers and i decided back in the storm, whatever it takes...we make it through... +++++ "Safety first, and in the middle, but risk at the end." -- C.A.Pennell +++++ “Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity and hardihood – the things that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life." - Theodore Roosevelt +++++ "It is customary in democratic countries to deplore expenditures on armament as conflicting with the requirements of the social services. There is a tendency to forget that the most important social service that a government can do for its people is to keep them alive and free." - RAF Air Marshall Sir John Slessor +++++ "The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." - George Will