6:05 PM on May 21, 2011 - So Now We Know

I guess now we know who's the one looking foolish right about now, huh?

Guess that means I'm gonna have to start paying on my credit cards again...darn it.

IHC

Somebody's Gonna Look Awful Foolish in Two Days

If you've had even a passing interest in the news over the past few weeks and months, you know that there's a group of folks out there who are claiming that the end of the world will take place on May 21, 2011, just two days from now. I'm sure you've seen either the billboards or pictures of the billboards, the ones that proclaim in great, big letters that the end of the world will take place on that date, and that "THE BIBLE GUARANTEES IT!" or "THE BIBLE COMMANDS IT!"

Yeah, well, I'm not so sure about that.

Anyone who has been reading my blog over the past few years knows my feelings on the Bible and those who follow it to the extreme, and this is a prime example. For those of you who haven't been reading my blog that long, let me spare you the time and trouble of researching through the old entries to see what I'm talking about. In a nutshell: I don't believe most of the Old Testament. Sorry, I just don't see how it's possible for one man to gather two of every species of living creature on the planet, put them all in one boat, and survive at sea for as long as he did. I also have a problem with the part about woman being created from man's rib - I mean, if man was created out of sand or whatever, then why did He need a rib to create woman? Why not just do it again? These are just two of the reasons why I have a VERY hard time believing the Old Testament.

But I have no trouble believing the New Testament, up to the whole Revelations thing, that is. That's the part I have trouble with, and honestly, my problems with that part is not what it says, but how people have interpreted and intentionally misinterpreted it to mean whatever they want it to mean.

Like saying the world will come to an end on May 21, 2011 that is.

I got curious about how they came up with that date, so I spent about an hour doing some research on this a few nights ago. Ya know what I came up with? There is not one specific thing in the Bible that specifically names the date of the end of the world; rather, there are several verses that people have interpreted - or misinterpreted - as saying the world will end on May 21.

There's that whole "interpretation" thing again.

For those who may not know it, I've also long said and believed that the Bible is one of the two most misinterpreted and intentionally misinterpreted documents ever to be printed, the other one being the United States Constitution. Both of these documents have been interpreted in so mnay different ways, with each interpretation saying different things, that as it is now in some instances it's hard to fathom just what they say.

So exactly where these folks are coming up with the exact date of the end of the world is beyond me. I know they believe it, although why is a mystery to me, but I just can't bring myself to buy into it. I don't think badly of those who believe it; actually, I feel kinda sorry for them because in two days they're gonna be awfully disappointed.

On the other hand, I may be the one in for a surprise. I guess we'll just have to wait and see, huh?

All I know is that in two days, somebody's gonna look awful foolish.

IHC

One Less Thing on My Bucket List

Ah, the "Bucket List," the list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket." The list was around long before the movie of the same name came out, people just called it something else; mine was always "Things I Want To Do Before I Die." "Bucket List" got popular because it sounds, well, a little less drastic, and I'm okay with that.

I was fortunate enough this past week to cross off the #1 thing on my "Bucket List," that being to ride with my son. I didn't get to ride quite as much as I wanted to or as much as we had both planned, thanks to the flight schedule of the Air Mobility Command, but we did get to ride and that's the point.

A little history: I've always had motorcycles throughout my life, but my son was never old enough to have a driver's license much less a bike when I had one. When he did get old enough to have a driver's license I was busy raising him and his sisters, and a motorcycle just wasn't in the cards at that point in time. Of course, as fate would have it we both got bikes after he had grown up, married, joined the Air Force and moved away (not necessarily in that order). He was stationed in Texas when he finally got his first bike, a Harlye-Davidson 883 Sportster, which he quickly traded up for a 2002 Softail Deuce. In the mean time I was living halfway across the nation in New Jersey, and had three bikes while I was there. I got my Harley, a 2003 100th Anniversary Edition Heritage Softail Classic, in February of 2003, and shortly after that my son, "Sparky" as we call him, got his Sportster. So now we both have bikes, we both want to ride together, but we're literally 1500 miles apart. We both knew that sooner or later fate would conspire to let us ride together, but it would be a long time coming.

Like, about 10 years or so.

In the mean time my son gets stationed in Germany and I relocate to South Carolina, and because the TMO office in Texas screwed up he had to leave his Deuce behind with a friend in Texas. So what does he do? Well, he goes out and buys himself a Road Glide while he's in Germany! Gotta have something to ride, after all, and why pass up a chance to bike through Europe?

So this past April he takes leave to come back to the States for the first time in three years to go down to Texas and ride with a group of friends he has down there that call themselves "Cloud Riders." A great group of folks, if I do say so myself. I seriously looked at riding my Nightster down to Texas to ride with him and the other Cloud Riders, but fate stepped in again and screwed that up for me. So Sparky takes leave, flies in to Texas, and goes on the ride with his friends. Then, having done that, he gets on his Deuce and rides from Texas to North Carolina via Virginia, a road trip that is a biker's dream!

Of course you see the opportunity here, as we both did. His mom lives in North Carolina as does his sister, both of my sisters and my parents, and they don't live all that far apart. So we quickly conspire to meet up at my parent's house in North Carolina and then the three of us - Sparky, my sister Dorothy who also has a Sportster, and me can go ride. Sounds like a plan, right?

Everything works out great, even though my son, who just drove from Texas to North Carolina without benefit of a road map and didn't have ANY trouble, gets lost in my parent's town. No sweat, me and my sister just jumped on the bikes and went and got him to lead him to the house.

I don't need to say that the reunion between me and my son, after an absence of three years, was an emotional one. I'm not ashamed to hug another man in public, especially if he's my son, and I proved it then. So then we led him off to my parent's house with my sister in the lead, then him, and me flying tail gunner. The sight of the two of them ahead of me on their bikes was one I'd dreamed of for years, and my sister later said that it was "so great" to be able to look in her rear view mirror and see both Raymonds riding behind her!

I share the sentiment, believe me.

This was on Saturday and we had planned on riding some on Sunday, but the weather and other plans got in the way. The long ride for the three of us will just have to wait until next year when Sparky comes home for good. But in the mean time the rest of the plans was for he and I to putz around town on Monday, road trip down to my house in South Carolina on Tuesday, ride around Lake Murray on Wednesday, and then take him to Charleston AFB on Thursday to catch a hop back to Germany. Monday went off as planned, and we had a great time riding around Raleigh and going to see the house where I lived for the last three years of high school and came back to for the first three years of my military service. Had a simply great time all the way around!

Then Tuesday we saddled up and hit the road for South Carolina. I gotta tell ya, it's a 4 hour trip that is usually long and boring after you've made it as many times as I have, but this trip with Sparky in my rear view mirror went by in a flash! Before I knew it we were at my house, pulling the bikes up into the garage where his Deuce would be spending the next year until he gets back to claim it again. The ride down was just fabulous, a dream come true, and thinking back on it still makes me smile.

One less thing on my "Bucket List."

Then Fate stepped in again and screwed things up, courtesy of Air Mobility Command. Charleston had NO flights out of there to Germany for at least 72 hours, and since Sparky absolutely had to be back in Germany by Friday he put Plan B into operation. He caught a civilian flight up to Baltimore, then rented a car and drove to Dover AFB and caught a flight out of there; only bad thing was he had to leave on Wednesday.

So much for riding around Lake Murray. Dammit all, anyway.

Well, if it's one thing life has taught me is that you have to be grateful for the things you have, and I am most certainly grateful for having had the chance to ride with my son even for the short amount of time we did actually ride. And it makes me look forward to the time we can ride again even that much more.

It's just gonna be hard to wait for a whole year, ya know?

IHC

NO, He Didn't!

It never ceases to amaze me how people will follow a celebrity or a politician blindly, regardless of facts, like lemmings going over a cliff. It also never ceases to amaze me how people who dislike a celebrity or a politician will invent, create, or twist facts to slam this person, regardless of the truth.

Case in point for both: the killing of Osama bin Laden. Let's talk about the "haters" first, shall we?

Anyone who knows me or who has been reading my blog for the past two years knows that I absolutely despise Barack Hussein NObama, and am counting the days until he's out of office. And everyone should also know that my dislike for the man is based on many things, NONE of which are the color of his skin. (He's half-white, you know.) But as much as I dislike the man, I absolutely refuse to believe or take an active part in spreading bullshit lies and misinformation for the sole purpose of having something to bitch about. I am many things, and I like to think that "fair" is one of them. Besides, he really does do enough stupid, inane shit on his own, so why should I have to make up stuff about him?

Anyhow, nearly as soon as the news of bin Laden's death was announced, Facebook filled up with people bitching and complaining that NObama had taken credit for the kill, claiming that HE killed bin Laden. The haters were all over this, blasting away about how he didn't have anything to do with it, that bin Laden was killed by an American soldier (uh, NO, actually, he was killed by a SAILOR) and that NObama didn't have anything to do with it.

The truth that these folks don't want to realize or admit is this: NOBAMA NEVER SAID THAT. I heard the announcement, I've read the news articles and the transcripts, and NObama NEVER said that HE killed bin Laden, nor did he try to take credit for anything that he didn't actually do. He DID NOT try to take credit for the operation; he DID NOT try to take credit for the actions of the SEAL team; he DID NOT try to take credit for killing bin Laden. What he DID take credit for were the three things he actually did: he was given credible information by our intelligence agencies, he evaluated the information and made a decision, and then he gave his approval for the operation to proceed. A few hours later a Navy SEAL put a bullet into bin Laden's head just about his left eye.

So the fact of the matter is that all of the folks out there who are blasting NObama for taking credit for killing bin Laden are talking out of their collective asses, and are intentionally ignorant of the truth. Give credit where credit is due, I always say.

Now, about the lemmings and the cliff...

The people who blindly support NObama are being just as fast as the haters to say that "NOBAMA GOT OSAMA," which of course is a bald-faced lie. All NObama did was get intelligence information, evaluate it and make a decision, and give the approval for the operation to proceed. The operation to kill bin Laden had been going on for TEN YEARS, spanning the terms of two Presidents; NObama just happened to be the one sitting in the White House when the opportunity finally came to grease the raghead asshole. So the truth of the matter is that NObama didn't "get" anybody; the SEALS did. Seal Team Six, specifically, and I hope they give a medal to all of them.

So there you have it, the simple truth about the events of the last two or three days concering NObama and the late bin Laden.

Like it or not.

And I still can't wait for November 2012.

IHC

What Are You Prepared To Do Now?

I'm sure by now all of you have heard that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Queda and the mastermind behind the terror attacks on the United States on Sept 11, 2001 was killed early this morning by a United States Navy S.E.A.L. team at his "secure" compound in Pakistan. This is the day that all of us have been waiting for since 2001, and now that it's finally come, all I have to say is "REST IN PIECES, ASSHOLE!"

I will admit that I was dubious of the reports at first, especially when it was reported that the body was buried at sea within 12 hours of the attack on the compound, but any doubts I may have had were resolved when the reports that DNA testing had been done on the body, and it was in fact bin Laden and not one of his many doubles.

So now I have another doubt, one that I don't think anyone will ever be able to resolve, and if our President - I'm sorry, THIER President, because I didn't vote for the man - ignores what I'm about to address, then he truly is a fool and an incompetant buffoon.

Rather than simply name my doubt right away, let's walk through the logical thought process I had that led me to have this doubt to begin with, shall we?

So, here's this country called Pakistan, a Muslim country that has been a somewhat less-than-stalwart supporter of the United States over the past ten years or so. Just about the time that the terror attacks were being planned and the terrorists were being trained in that country, by the way. In an affluent neighborhood just 35 miles from the nation's capital, a neighborhood filled with retired Pakistani military men, a compound springs up. And when it's finished being built, it is readily apparent that this isn't just any old compound, it's a compound built for a specific purpose. The walls are very high and very thick, they're topped with barbed wire, there's a guarded gate, guard towers on the corners, and it's surrounded by support buildings. In the words of an American intelligence officer, this is a compound that was specifically designed to hide and protect someone of "significant importance."

Gee, I wonder who that could be?

So I sit back and think to myself, 'Self, how in the living hell can anyone build such a compound with those types of fortifications and those kind of support buildings, and NOT have the Pakistani government notice it?

Simple answer: you can't. There's absolutely NO doubt in my mind that that Pakistani government, to include their President, knew about the compound, knew who it was built to protect, and knew he was there for the past TEN YEARS or so. What's more, I am absolutely certain that the Pakistani government LIED to the American government and the past two US presidents when they said they didn't know where bin Laden was.

They knew exactly where the murdering bastard was. I'd even go so far as to say they'd entered into a deal with bin Laden, guaranteeing the Pakistani government's cooperation and protection if need be.

Tell me I'm wrong, I dare ya.

Now, y'all have to remember that I'm just Joe Ordinary Citizen out there giving his views on things from downrange, but I gotta tell ya that if I'm smart enough to realize all this and have these doubts without a covert intelligence agency working on it and reporting back to me, then you bet your ass that NObama knows for a fact that what I've said herein is true.

To quote a line from "The Untouchables," what I now ask NObama is this: "WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO NOW?"

There's NO WAY that Mubarek and the Pakistani government should be allowed to get away with harboring the world's leading terrorist and mass murderer for ten years. Justice, in my opinion, will not be fully done until those who hid the bastard for ten years are brought to account. Then and only then will the full measure of justice have been meted out.

So I ask you again, Mr. Obama: "WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO NOW?"

IHC