The former Vice President was quick to point out that marijuana does not cause global warming.

See, graduation is the pinacle of academics. A Senior on graduation day is at the height of their achievement. The next day, however, they're at the bottom of the working world. No experience, little pratical skills, and competing with hundreds of new grads for entry level jobs.

I don't bring up this point to be negative, quite the contrary. It's this fact that pushes us to achieve. Being knocked from the top to the bottom constantly gives us a taste of what it is to be the best and motivates us to work hard to do it again. It's a wonderful thing, and its what keeps this country great.

Congratulations to all of the grads this year, from kindergarten on up. It's a bright future ahead, take advantage of every possible opportunity and don't be discouraged by the low points, they're what makes the high points so worth it.

Setting: A small building in early Biblical times. Abraham kneels praying to God for a son, as he's been doing for many years now.

Abe: God, I'm faithful, please honor me with a son.
God: Okay. Yea, you're right, you've been faithful. You'll have your son. As a bonus for making you wait, your son will be special. Revered above all other faithful. How's that sound.
Abe: Sweet. Thanks, God.

Abe to himself: Wait a tick, I'm REALLY old, and so's my wife. How can we have a son? God must have made a mistake. I think I've still got it in me to have a son but I doubt she does. I gotta find someone younger.
(Abe spots a maid nearby)
Abe: Hey there! Wanna come to my place and view my etchings?
(She follows him home, there are no etchings)

(A bit later)
God: Abe!
Abe: Yes God?
God: When I said you could have a son I meant you could have a son with your wife, who you promised to honor forever, foresaking all others. You remember that little bit right?
Abe: Well, yea, but I figured I'd hedge my bets with a younger gal. Hope you don't mind.
God: I mind. A little tip: When the Creator of the cosmos tells you to do something a certain way, you do it that way, without your own private spin on things. Got it?
Abe: Yea I got it.
God: Further, your son by this maid will not be honored. He'll be cursed, and his offspring will be cursed, and their offspring will be cursed, and down the line for all eternity. They'll be warlike and never know the true faith of God, though they'll think they do. But to show I'm not completely heartless when it comes to you, I'll give you another shot at a son. With your wife this time!
Abe: Seems kinda harsh, but thanks for the second chance. What are you going to call this race of peoples my accursed son will create?
God: Muslims.

This story got me interested in what other industries are doing better than 99.9%. Here's some examples:

At 99.9% the airline industry would have had 431 crashes last year.
At 99.9% 1200 babies would have been given to the wrong mother.
At 99.9% 26,000 surgeries would have been performed on the wrong limb.
At 99.9% over a million major medication errors would have occured in hospitals.
At 99.9% a fatal car wreck would happen every 11 second is California.
At 99.9% I would have been involved in 2 helicopter crashes in the past year while at work.

These are just a few numbers but they illustrate my point. 99.9% seems like a great success rate until you look at how many incidents are involved in that 0.1% failure rate. Most of our major industries enjoy a safety and success rating much higher than 99.9%. Despite that fact it's still a major media event when they make an error and someone gets harmed.

Main Street, Susanville is two lanes in either direction all the way through town. They're narrow lanes, and really poor quality streets, so I can understand touching the line now and again, but what I describe here is a literal strattling of the center line. I can excuse the huge trucks and things doing that, there's really not enough room for them in one lane, and when you're hauling an Abrahms tank through town out to Sierra Army Depot you can pretty much do whatever you want, but is there any reason why a Miata needs two lanes to cross town? I think they like the beatings!

The parking is what's really amusing. People just scoot into the parking lot and stop their car. Maybe they're in one space, maybe they're in six....maybe they're still in the thoroughfare, it doesn't really matter. When the voices say "it's time to turn off the car" they turn the key and get out. Sometimes they even put the car in Park and set the brake, sometimes Neutral is good enough. That really adds to the excitement, considering there's not one inch of flat ground in all of Lassen County.

The key to parking around here is to park AWAY from everyone else and walk to where you're going. You'll know where to go when you get into the parking lot. Off in the distance, in the farthest, most obscure section of the lot is a group of cars and trucks parked normally, usually accompanied by a few nervous looking drivers looking back at their cars like it's the last time they'll see it in that condition ever again.

I, personally, think every member of congress should be made to watch this video at least once daily.

GIGANTIC/ENORMOUS/HUGE: We see these words used to describe everything from a used car lot to "huge savings" on an item that really only adds up to a few dollars.

TRAGEDY: The news stations love this word. Everything's a tragedy. Now, I agree that the VA Tech shooting was a tragedy, but Sanjaya being voted off American Idol was certainly not.

FAIR: I hate this word. It gets used a lot in arguments. "That just isn't fair". Guess what, life isn't fair! It's never been fair. It'll never be fair. Besides, what's fair and what's not is entirely subjective. To the rabbit being eaten by the eagle, life's not fair. From the eagle's point of view life is wonderful. Unless of course he'd rather have had squirrel.

EMERGENCY: A friend of my wife's recently said she had a shopping "emergency". What she meant was that she felt an urgent need to go shopping because shopping makes her feel better. I've seen real emergencies, and they involve dead and horribly maimed people.

GINORMOUS: A cross between Gigantic and Enormous. Created because the other two words got over used, this word has now been so over used that it has no meaning either.

There are others, of course, but these are the ones that really bug me. A broad grasp of the English language is a fine thing to posess. It allows us to more effectively communicate and say what we mean without using the same over used words.

What has been little discussed is the subject of American Extreemists. I think the reason the main-stream media has been ill at ease to discuss the subject is that it suggests that citizens of this country are in the same camp as the crazies in the Middle East that walk into a market and detonate themselves. Don't get me wrong, if they want to all stand in a circle and explode, I'm for it. I'll buy the DetCaps even, but don't involve anyone else. Again, I digress.

More than the fact that American Extreemists are, well American's, is the fact that they are the ones running the country. Yea, our elected officials. Many, not all, lets be fair here, there's a few good politicians, but they're tough to find. Most of our elected officials are Extreemist Americans. They're extreemly to the left, or extreemly to the right. The funny thing is the vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the purple haze that falls within the vivid blue and the deep red. Yet, despite our lavender hue, we continually elect these nuts to REPRESENT us.

Now, countries that have free media can educate themselves and probably know that most Americans are rational, even keeled people. But for nutty countries that keep their people like mushrooms (in the dark and fed bullshit) the populace only knows what their media tells them. And what their media tells them is that we are all either granola eating, limp spined, tax-and-spend wimps or meat-headed, militaristic, corporate pushovers. Why not. That's what the people that WE HIRED to represent us portray us as.

Don't be in such a rush to blame the politicians though. While they have to accept responsibility any fair person with half a pound of brain in the skull will have to accept the fact that the blame lies mostly with the rest of us. We hired them, after all. Every election we're faced with the choice of a number of qualified candidates, liberal and conservative, and repeatedly we narrow it down in the primary to either the "death by a thousand cuts" candidate or the "water torture" candidate. Then we hire one of them to rule the free world. We do this in every election, not just the Presidiential. Look who we just hired! Can any lib out there really tell me that Nancy Pelosi (all bow down before her greatness) represents their views? I certainly won't confess that Georgie represents my views as a Republican (I'm an Independant, really, I just play a Republican on TV).

I guess the point of my story is this: If we as American's don't want to be pegged as American Extreemists by the media of our enemy then we need to quite hiring people to represent us as such. There are a number of qualified politicians in the Presidential primary that's coming up here next year, and not a one of them has the last name of Clinton (God help us), Obama, McCain, or Guilliani. I encourage you, as a person who's not as dumb as politicians make you look, to quit hiring American Extreemists and start looking into representatives that actually represent who you are as an American.

When I mentioned to people that I was from Northern California 9/10 responses went something like this, "Oh, like around the San Jose area?" These weren't from Hawaiian's, or from people outside of California. These were responses from Californians who lived in the LA area. Apparently if you live in L.A. the State ends somewhere around Vallejo. Hey, that's fine by me. Draw a new border, let them have all the freaky libs and then they can buy all the water they currently steal. Sounds like a plan.

Besides being an example of now not to write a newspaper headline, this further lamentation by a particular writer on the subject of getting money for Lassen county proves how ignorant she is about the importance of NOT accepting bills that include pork-barrel spending. I've said it before but it warrant repeating: Lassen County needs money to fix it's roads and fund it's schools, but if that money comes from a pork project it's not money worth having. This is a classic example of House Democrats throwing up a red herring to try to get support behind a war funding bill that won't pass and then duck out of their obligation to fund rural counties. Once this bill fails, and it will, the Dems can wash their hands of Lassen County and counties like it while pointing the finger at the President for not supporting the bill. For shame.

BAY AREA MAN DIES WHILE STUCK IN SNOW STORM

It's tragic but it's not the story here. A man from the Bay Area suffered medical complications while touring Lassen County and died while driving. His wife ran from the vehicle, flagged down another motorist to alert EMS, but then couldn't remember where she left her vehicle. Personnel from Mountain Life Flight, South Lassen Ambulance, Lassen County Sheriff, and SEMSA Ambulance responded to the call. Eventually it was the Mountain Life Flight crew who spotted the vehicle and alerted other responders to the scene. While the patient was pronounced dead at the scene this is an example of how when local emergency personnel put aside political issues for the beterment of public safety more can get done. Had the helicopter not been involved in the incident it would have prolonged the search, cost more money, and had the man been sick instead of deceased, imperriled his life.

FFA TEAMS WIN BIG

I love seeing news about teenagers doing something well. FFA and other youth organizations like it teach teens about discipline, hard work, acheivement, ambition, success, and failure. These particular teens are an example of a team that worked hard, set their sights on a goal, and proceded to acheive that goal. Congratulations are in order.

So far we've been kicking the shit out of the taliban over in the ghorack valley. for those of you who are following my posts, thats the area where we had that big air assault which was on the news. That operation has resulted in us pushing the TB further to the west. Counter attacks from them have stepped up as well. They've been using alot of hastily emplaced IED's to slow our ground guys down. I personally got to see one of these, as you all know. luckily they havent resulted in any coalition casualties.
we're now planning on pushing harder into the west, in hopes of pushing them even further than we've already have. Unfortunatly this means we're going into an are where there have been alot of SAM's reported. This could mean bad news for us flyboys if these reports are true. we're still optomistic though. The spring offensive that we've heard so much about, hasn't been nearly what was predicted. And the mortar attacks on our base have slowed down as well. I know that there is still alot of time, but hopefully we keep pushing the way we are and these guys will have to regroup and resupply themselves. by which time me and my friends will be out of here.
I know i just jinxed myself but hey.