Amon Amarth - Fate of Norns….

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Wow.

I am telling you guys - this will be the first blow on the stake in the heart of feminism.  You would be in charge of your reproductive destiny.  You.   No more “Oopsies!”  No finding yourself supporting a kid she conceived with the guy she ran off with.  No more traps into marriage and relationships.

Serious business. Watch the power shift when this happens.

Thanks to those who serve, and thanks for those who serve.

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment, or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.

“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright,
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget.
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

A 92 year old woman was gunned down by the Gestapo Police when they executed a midnight, no-knock raid on the wrong house.

A drug raid.  For fucking what - GERITOL?!?!?! And on a drug warrant.  Not searching for a kidnapped child.  Not trying to nab a murderer.  A rapist.  A gang of fugitives.  A kick down your door, midnight raid by commandos in jackboots for what basically amounts to a non-violent offense, and because Granny had the nerve to defend herself when armed hoodlums busted down her door, she is on a slab.

Before you argue with me, I want you to think about this - someone dear to you winds up having to live in a crime infested area.  However.  They have to move, take what is there, the crime moves in - however it happens, they sleep fearfully at night.  So they get a gun and keep it by their bed.

In the meantime, some flatfoot swears out a warrant for a pot dealer, and some government employee flunky mistypes the address.  That night, the police move in, tired, annoyed, and not wanting to do a two or three operation plus paperwork.  Next thing you know, they bust down the door, and are doing the usual thing you see on “COPS”  - sixteen fucking grown men screaming as loud as they can as they pour into the house.  Your loved on hears the noise, pulls the gun from the nitestand, and starts hollering “I have a gun! I’ll call the police!” next thing you know, the bedroom door is kicked open, in the dark - and your loved one opens fire.  A few seconds later, their bullet riddled corpse - which you cannot even have an open-casket funeral for now because one of the police .45 rounds exploded their head - lies in a pool of blood.

The police response amounts to “oops” and “Good Faith” - and you’re fine with that?  It’s your own house - you are away on business, and that is your wife, son, husband, daughter?  Still jiggy with it? “Gawrsh, well, mistakes happen! Huh-huh-huh-huh-huh!”

What these are are Gestapo-tactics, plain and simple.  It is what you do to violent felons.  You check, double check, and recheck the house number.  You keep it under surveillance.  You make sure no innocents are inside.  There is no damn excuse for crap like this, and everyone involved in that raid in a leadership position should be shitcanned - and anyone else put before a civilian review board.

While I may respect the hell out of good cops - and I do know a few - this is utter garbage.  Yes it is “easier” to do it this way.  Less dangerous.  So is lobbing mortar rounds from a quarter mile away, and we don’t do that either.  So is gathering evidence without warrants.  So is prosecuting these people without the pesky inconvenience of a jury.  Yes the job is dangerous.  Yes, cops “risk their lives every day.”  And that is part of the job.  Blockbuster is looking for a night clerk if you have a problem with that.  It’s your job to do that.  And what seperates you from the gangstas - and earns that respect - is asking questions first and shooting later.

This was not done in this case, and rather than closing ranks and letting the blue wall of silence descend you all have to  - pardon the pun - police your own.

I’m telling you right now - and it is already happening - people on juries are losing patience with you.  You want to talk about the things you need to do your job?  Okay.  Two words.  “Public Trust.”

Believe me - piss that away, and all the gadgets in the world won’t help you.

So Charlie Rangel wants to have a draft again.

Had a discussion about this with some gung-ho ex-navy Seal once.  He had three daughters, and a son.  All for the draft, he was.

So I asked him what he would think if the draft included his girls.  That was terrible, of course.  He didn’t want his girls exposed to the horrors of war.  He loved them.

Yeah, I said.  But you have no problem with exposing your son to it?  Don’t love him?

Lot of rationalizing.  No answers.

Understand, people.  I come from a family with a proud military tradition.  I weep at military funerals.  I celebrate such days as Memorial Day by laying wreaths and flags at tombstones of soldiers.  Start ragging on the military?  Start in with the “baby-killer” or other such nonsense?  Don’t do it around me.  You’ll see me salting my fist before I feed it to you.

But I don’t think anyone should be forced to fight for a cause they do not believe in. And were I in and on active duty somewhere, I’d not want someone with me who didn’t volunteer to be there.

But if you’re going to do a draft - do it for everyone.  Only drafting men, when you separate all the bullshit, excuses, and rhetoric out; is morally identical to only drafting, say, blacks.

Something long time readers will know - I have fought a battle with chronic, recurrent, clinical depression for decades - literally.  And we aren’t talking seasonal affective disorder, or the blues, or any number of things - we are talking deep, dark, suicidal thoughts that come from nowhere and for no reason, and which really mess me up until I go through the day on robotic function, and at night - well, dark and solitude are both constant companions and hateful ghosts that haunt me.  Yeah, I put on the Buckwheat wig and perform in public, and to the world.  When I leave that world, I am a mess, emotionally, and mentally.  And physically too - there are physical symptoms.
And I am going through this right now.  God help me, the last time it lasted for months.  And that is with the damned medication, which I hate, because it takes the edge off of everything, including joy.  It is a hell of a price to pay to continue existence, and I have too many people depending on me not to live.   I have to go on.  Suicide - as much as I obsess over it sometimes with this mental illness - is not an option for me morally, or any other wise.  It is a straw death.

I am realistic enough, though, to amend that with “When I can summon clarity.”  Often this is not the case.  Paranoid thinking is a characteristic of this disease in forms as severe as I have.  I have accomplished exactly zip this weekend.  My house is a mess - well, not compared to many, but when I have clothes just now being washed, and dishes from Friday, and a stack of newspapers in the living room, that is a mess to me.  I just now shaved and showered for the first time since Friday morning.

And I have tried to take the long dirt nap with two credible attempts in my life.  So, I do have that living inside me.

It’s odd - I could go on and on with all kinds of vivid symbolism right now to describe this feeling, but I won’t.  I can wax very prosetic in this state - in fact, I have done some of my best writing when in a funk such as this.  When you live with horror, it is summoned very easily.

Look around you.  Chances are, at least one of the men you know is going through this and hiding it right now.  Hiding it because “Stiff upper lip” is one of the hallmarks of masculinity. Or at least masculine behavior.

Yeah, I can hear the femherroids right now pulling their soapboxes out, preparing to preach about “socialization” and other bullshit.  And I hear many other women preparing the “There is no shame in…”   Well, I tell you - ya’ll can be the worst about this.  Every blessed time I have been through this while in a relationship, the woman involved has been unable to handle it.  The more “Feministed” they are, the more so.  I’ve never met a single self-proclaimed feminist who actually could handle the idea that men are people too and have feelings, let alone be concerned enough about them to handle with care.

So, what I am going to do is plug a site right now, which has helped me in the past : Steve Imparl’s “Male Depression” Steve has run this sight for almost five years and has helped a lot of guys.  And I am leaning on it a lot right now.

If ya’ll are of the praying bent, I could use some now.

I’m reminded this morning of an incident which happened in my younger days when I was still whoring myself out for the pimp named Corporate America.  I was a cog in the machie, at the time - so I was no more than a functionary.  But the tale of two managers serves well.  We’ll call them Alan and Bob. A and B.

Alan was a plodding and pedantic paper pusher.  He had no ability to inspire or lead.  Zero. Zip. Zilch.  He was the butt of many jokes, and was often referred to as “The Dalek” (Look it up.  Philistine.)  He never met a form or report he didn’t like, and insisted ever on more of them, despite the fact he never read them.  I know this for a fact, but another story - suffice it to say in a corporation somewhere there sat in a box of records, for the requisite seven years, several bundles of misprints and cover sheets disguised as reports.  What was the cruelest blow of all is that the month long runing joke was never, ever discovered.

Bob, on the other had, was a maverick.  Mr. Results, he could have given Captain James T. Kirk lessons in inspiring his troops to charge blindly into hell.  He was adroit at having his eyes elsewhere when a rule needed to be broken to achieve the goal.  His copy of the procedures manual, I kid you not, sat under his monitor to change the angle of it, where, he proclaimed, it would actually serve some purpose.

It all came to a head one early summer when a big project was due.  The exact details aren’t important.  Bob got his end done, ahead of schedule. Alan failed miserably.  As a result the inevitable question of “Why?” came up, and the dreaded “After Action Review” was conducted.  Alan had a complete paper trail.  Bob, on the other hand, though performing brilliantly in the output, had skipped steps such as not retesting a previously tested piece of code (Waste of time) and was called on the carpet for it.  As a result, Bob was demoted to one of us for his success.  Alan was promoted for his failure.  Bob left thereafter to form an internet startup, and gained a fortune, lost one, and gained another one, lost that, and every time I hear of him he is living on the edge, daring and failing as often as he succeeds.  Alan is still plodding away, safe and secure - but still working for the man.

We all know an Alan and a Bob.  It serves as an illustration. They are extremes, and may both be counted as successes - and failures.  Admire whom you will more.  Bob is of the Romantic School - he seeks bold and dramatic victory, and often achieves it.  Alan is a Classicist - his goal is decisive and enduring victory, and though he has fewer, he wins with an almost disturbing regularity.  Bob leads an interesting life, to use the ancient Chinese curse.  Feast or famine.  Alan is secure.  Even in lean times, he still lives well.  It remains, though, that there is always a trade off.  Bob constantly scrambles.  Alan - he is able to take vacations and actually not work while on them. He has family, and roots, a thing Bob has never been able to achieve for lack of time to make the requisite connections.  He does live large, though, and with gusto.

Fortunate for them, then, that their temperaments are well suited to their methodology.

Most of us - myself included - are not so extreme in personality.  I admire both Alan and Bob, personally.  There is much to value in each of their approaches.  Bob is capable of quick and decisive action; he’s highly intuitive, and is possessed of great insight into people and corporate organisms.  Alan is a spider in his web, though.  He never has to repeat things.  Never scrambles to tie up loose ends. He never has the same problem twice, or makes the same error repeatedly.

Being pure form archetypes, though, they both wear me out.  Every now and again you need to push Alan lest he take root and become a tree.  He can be pedantic and tedious in the extreme, and can hold up things beyond endurance with nitpicking over petty details.  He’s the type of guy who will agonize over “Cream or Parchment” for the report - I kid you not, an action item on one of his meeting agendas.  And Bob - you never know where you stand when you are working on him.  This morning’s “Urgent Priority” can become this afternoon’s “Scrap that, we need to focus here…”  You’re alaways on the clock, and he thinks nothing of dragging you out of sleep at 3 am to “brainstorm” over some harebrained scheme, and what makes matter worse, over something he knows full well and good will be a %@$#*&! disaster if it actually gets implemented.

There is a balance between the two that one has to achieve.  When one fails to dare, one risks stagnation.  When life is always one constant dice roll, though, one never knows which ruination might be the one from which you never recover.  Alan passes so many things by.  And Bob has so many failures that could be avoided by a little laying of groundwork.  And I am not talking about extremes, here, either.  Alan passes opportunities by which are easily achievable, but which he regards as a “distraction” in his monomania.  And Bob can be infuriatingly reckless - he will declare a thing to be implemented in X many days time, and not even take the intervening time to take step one to prepare; he often reminds me of someone disrobing while they are falling from the high dive, and then wondering why their Italian suit is ruined.

I’m an engineer, so I see a lot of value in process at times.  Not always - you can’t design a process to take care of every contingency, and when I work for the Alans of the world I can do well untill they start with their “planning for the unforeseen” nonsense.  Sometimes you have to wing it - life is like that.  Plan? Yes.  But life is not a timetable.  Some things happen when they will; especially when your input is dependant on a third party’s output.  If you need the doohickey to produce your product, you have to wait until it gets delivered.  Work on something else.  Don’t obsess and let the whole of your operation come to a screeching halt because of one hiccough.

But dammit, Bob, doing “something” isn’t enough.  Patchwork and slapdash jerry-rigging, and “making it work” is just plain nuts.  Let me get this straight - if the parts can’t be here till tomorrow, pushing delivery back two days, it makes more sense then to cancel the order and rig some half-assed thing up that will push it back three for certain, and that is assuming it even works? For what end?  The world is what it is - not what you want it to be.

There is the heart - both of these gents are successes, but as much by luck as anything else.  Become too much of an Alan and you can usually rely on being a scared rabbit, living a life of quiet desperation.  Most Bobs, though, spin their wheels and get nowhere because if success and gratification isn’t instant, they regard it as not worth the effort.  You have to plan to succeed, as well as strike while the iron is hot.  These sayings do not contradict each other, they complement each other.

And that’s a life lesson - in extremes, one fails to take in the human element of any endeavor.  It is insufficient to pronounce success because “You did everything by the book” but it is likewise foolish to justify any means to an end.  What you want to do has to take into account the methodology, and the effects thereof.

You arrogant schmucks?

How many years have people listened as you talked the talk, and failed to walk the walk?

Yeah - I’m one of “them.” I voted Libertarian, and in the few instances I actually voted GOP, it was a “Hold my Nose” vote. Understand, folks. I didn’t vote for you then or now because I liked you - but because I disliked the Dems more. Let me be blunt. I don’t trust you. I don’t believe in you. I don’t believe you. I just trusted the Democrats less. And anymore - it is immaterial whether I vote for you and them. A coin toss. Not even that. Sometimes I feel like if I am going to get a Democrat-in-RINO’s clothing, I might as well just vote for a Democrat.

So - how does it feel?

It isn’t your “vision.” It isn’t your “plan.” It’s the fact that for all of your articulation of it, you get in power, again and again, and fail to deliver on it. Government gets bigger. Corruption stays there. You don’t know how to govern as a majority party. If you’re not drunk with power, you are afraid of it. People ask you to do things - and you fail to give it to them. Immigration reform is an example. How many wanted it? How many of you just dragged your feet on it? And what you did finally pass is gutless and unfunded.

Somebody squawks - you cave. You try to please everyone; and wind up pleasing nobody.

Now, in the upcoming weeks there is going to be angst, analysis, and hand-wringing. Ignore it. Damn near all of it is going to be utter crap, the same thing Kos and his bunch did. Your message resonates with America. It’s not the plan. It’s the execution. And you got voted out because your execution sucked. It was non-existant. Compare your action with the words that swept you into power years ago, with the deeds of Ronald Reagan, who won in landslide victories.

Stark contrast, eh? Not a very pretty thing, is it?

Yeah, ya’ll are chock-full of excuses as to why you can’t do this, that, or the other. Let me tell you what: So what if “The Democrats won’t go along.” So what? BFHD. So it won’t pass. Vote for it anyway. Stand on principle. Tell George that if the Democrats will override him anyway - then veto it anyway. Put it on their head.

Your articulation of principles - after decades of unprincipled rule - got you elected. Your failure to take them to heart, and live them, got you all diselected.

And it really is that simple. Don’t overanalyze it.

Tyr - Regin Smiður

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Case number one:

Two Border patrol agents sentenced to 11 and 12 YEARS in prison for shooting at two invaders.

Case number two:

 Two Border Patrol agents sentenced to a mere six years each for taking bribes and helping invaders across.

Are the inmates in charge of the asylum or what?

A long diatribe about an old post I am not inclined to find about “gay marriage.”

*sigh*

Let me tell you “activist” types something - the whole reason you don’t “have” power is because you don’t understand power.  Because you are at heart, insecure, weak, cowardly children.

You want to live your life the way you want?

Fine.  Do it.

It is that simple.  And that easy.

You have to stop giving a fuck whether people “agree” with you, or “accept” you, or whatever other feel-good bullshit PC terms you use.  If someone doesn’t accept you - walk away.  Doesn’t want to rent to you? Walk away.  Doesn’t want to hire you? Walk away.  Your alternative is to try to shove your beliefs down their throat - which is precisely why you dipshits are in the mess you are.  You try to legislate yourself into everyone’s face, and you create the very backlash that is the wource of your trouble.  You are looking for an instant fix - not going to happen.  Hearts and minds take generations to change.

Childish and petulant.

You don’t have power if someone “gives” it to you.  It isn’t yours.  It is theirs.  It is only borrowed by you.  You look to Da Gubbmint to give you power, and don’t realize that what Unca Sammy giveth, Unca Sammy, he can taketh away.

The other thing to remember is that while power cannot be given you, it may be taken away as sure as the sun shines if you piss enough people off.  Ultimately, power is held by consent.  Use that power in a way that makes people angry - and watch them band together to strip you of it - or just ignore you in mass.

Your call.  But you sure are a bunch of stupid fucking boneheads the way you go about it now.

And it may seem odd that I am giving you advice, but know what?  You dumb bastards won’t listen to me no matter how much sense I make because I am not “Politically Correct” enough.  So - it is also my way of laughing at you; watching you stumble around in the light with your eyes closed.  Your failure to grasp the obvious is most entertaining to me.