On my way home from the funeral mission for Spc. Jeffrey Nichols in Marble Falls, I stopped to meet my wife at the new Hill Country Galleria’s Outdoor Amphitheater (free!) Concert Series.

Loudon Wainwright III was the featured artist, and Amy Cook was scheduled to open the show around 6:00 p.m.

The Hill Country Galleria is just a few miles west of our house in West Austin, and a nice addition to the area. This was my first time to visit the small outdoor amphitheater in the middle of the mall, and was really impressed with how nice it was:

The amphitheater is on a nice grassy hill, with rows of grass terraced between rows of limestone walls — perfect for sitting and enjoying the show.

Unfortunately, only 4-5 songs into Amy’s set, the sky opened up and a torrential rain and hail storm shut the show down. As I was on my bike, I threw on my rain gear and headed home.

I’m sure we’ll attend many other shows out there this summer.

Austin, Music, Texas | No Comments »

A blatant rip off of Rachel Lucas’ Daily Dog feature — but my dogs are much more awesome then her mutts, so I don’t feel bad at all about ripping off borrowing her idea.

This is Otis, our 5-year old Yellow Lab/Bloodhound laying on our newly renovated kitchen floor:

Dogs | 3 Comments »

Spc. Jeffrey Nichols, 21, of Granite Shoals, Texas was killed in action on May 1 in Baghdad from wounds sustained when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device.

Today, I joined with more than 60 members of the Patriot Guard Riders to honor Spc. Nichols as his family laid him to rest at Lakeland Hills Memorial Park near Burnet, TX.

Spc. Nichols is survived by his wife and son, of Marble Falls, Texas, and his mother, of Granite Shoals.

It was especially gut-wrenching to watch his mother and the mother of his infant child have to bury their husband, father, and son on the day before Mother’s Day.

Small town Texas always reaffirms my faith in my fellow man — as we escorted Spc. Nichols and his family through Marble Falls, every single vehicle was pulled to the side of the road, and many people were outside of their cars with their hands over their hearts. As we passed the businesses on Hwy 281 through Marble Falls, almost everyone was outside lining the streets to pay their respects.

I’ve been to numerous PGR missions in Austin, San Antonio, and Houston — and you almost never see people paying respect the way they do in a small town. Everyone is in just too much of a hurry in the city.

Spc. Nichols’ sister, Kara (on the left in the above picture) came over to our group after the burial service to invite us to join them and the community at the VFW in Marble Falls for dinner and fellowship.

Military, Motorcycle, Patriot Guard Riders, Texas | 2 Comments »

Carl Hunter of the New Orleans suburb of Metairie personifies what it means to be a real man.

The 73-year old Hunter is the owner of a small construction company in Louisiana — most of America’s best success stories are about men just like Hunter who learned a trade, then parlayed it into their own small businesses.

About 4 months ago, Hunter won the largest Powerball Lottery in the history of Louisiana — $97 million. He took a one-time lump sum payment of $33.9 million (after taxes).

And why did Mr. Hunter wait 4 months to collect his winnings? Well, he still had responsibilities and obligations to his customers, his business, and his employees:

Asked why he waited so long to turn in the winning ticket, Hunter said he wanted to wrap up some of his construction work and finish his outstanding contracts. In fact, Hunter’s wife Dianne said he was still at work this week.

“I don’t think about buying elaborate cars or homes,” Carl Hunter said.

I’d bet you dimes to nickels this guy votes Republican.

Random | 3 Comments »

While we’re on the “what the hell is the matter with people?” meme — this is one of the most sickening things I’ve read in quite sometime:

TYLER, Texas — A jury again needed just four minutes Thursday to convict an organizer of an East Texas swinger’s club where prosecutors say young children were forced to perform sexual acts for an audience.

Shauntel Mayo, 29, was then sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty on charges that she forced three siblings, ages 7 through 10, to have sex with each other or perform sexual acts for club members who paid to watch.

In March, Mayo’s 36-year-old boyfriend, Jamie Pittman, was also found guilty in four minutes and then sentenced to life in prison after just two minutes of deliberations.

Some jurors cried during testimony in Mayo’s three-day trial, the Tyler Morning-Telegraph reported.

Mayo, of Tyler, was convicted of engaging in organized criminal activity and two counts of sexual performance of a child. Jurors deliberated six minutes in the punishment phase, and state District Judge Jack Skeen Jr. ordered that Mayo serve a minimum of 25 years before becoming eligible for parole.

During the trial, the children testified how Mayo and other defendants began teaching them at age 5 how to dance and perform sex acts. They were also given drugs, which the adults called “silly pills,” to help them perform.

Just like the last post about the two idiots smoking dope out of the skull of a corpse that they dug up from the cemetery, the answer to “what the hell is the matter with these people?” boils down to this: drugs.

The story doesn’t say — but it begs the question: where the hell are the parents?

Crimes like this are why the death penalty should be expanded to include crimes other than capital murder.

Crime, Death Penalty, Texas | 4 Comments »

What the hell is the matter with people?

Seriously.

From the Houston Chronicle: 3 accused of using corpse head to smoke pot

Two men and a juvenile are accused of digging up a corpse, decapitating the body and using the head to smoke marijuana, according to court documents.

Matthew Gonzalez and Kevin Jones have been charged with the misdemeanor offense of abuse of a corpse, said Scott Durfee, a spokesman for the Harris County District Attorneys Office.

According to documents filed in the case, Gonzalez, Jones and an unnamed juvenile on March 15 went to an Humble cemetery, dug up a man’s grave, left with the head and turned it into a “bong.”

The next time anybody tries to tell me about how harmless marijuana is or how we should legalize it…I’m bringing up this story.

What’s worse — how the hell is this considered only a misdemeanor? How is this not a felony?

Is there really any chance in hell that anyone of these pieces of shit is ever going to turn out to be a decent member of society? I’d bet my next 100 paychecks that say they don’t.

Crime, Texas | 7 Comments »

This is how our troops are greeted in Texas when they return home from war:

As heroes.

Now imagine the reception at the San Francisco International Airport…the boos would probably be deafening.

Military, Texas, Video | 1 Comment »

Q — Will Hillary still be campaigning on Obama’s Inaugaration Day?

A — That’s pretty funny stuff. But the answer is No.

Though she still might be campaigning on John McCain’s inauguration day — never too early to roll out the Hillary2012  campaign!

Barack Hussein Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Politics | 2 Comments »

An Austin woman, 58-year old Connie Thiele, won 21-million dollars at a slot machine at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

I’ve corrected the report from the Houston Chronicle:

The casino said Thiele works worked as a travel coordinator for the Texas Department of Information Resources and regularly visits Las Vegas with her husband.

Austin, Texas | 1 Comment »

Despite 10s of thousands of people dead and dieing in Myanmar, their government is still not letting the US help:

YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s isolationist regime allowed the first plane of a major international airlift to land today with aid for cyclone survivors, a U.N. official said, amid fears that lack of safe food and drinking water could push the death toll above 100,000.

But the junta was not allowing U.S. military planes to fly in critical relief goods and continued to stall on visas for U.N. teams urgently seeking entry to ensure aid is delivered to the victims.

You know what? They don’t want our help? Fine. Then let’s not give it to them. There are plenty of deserving people in our own country who could use the assistance.

Anti-US idiots are always blathering that the “United States is not the world’s police” (even though we really are). Ok, fine — then we’re not the world’s Emergency Room, Disaster Relief Agency, and Food Bank either.

How about letting the rest of the world take the reigns on this disaster, and we’ll sit this one out and take a breather?

We could use the money we were going to send to Myanmar to start our effort to pull the US out of the UN.

The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said some donors were delaying aid for fear it would be siphoned off to the army.

Just one more reason not to help out there anyway — I’ll bet you dimes to nickels that the percentage of money and supplies that actually went to victims rather than the military junta would be less than 50% percent.

Politics | 1 Comment »

My wife and I recently just applied for your concealed handgun licenses, and will be taking the handgun course in a few weeks.

Though we’ve owned several handguns for quite some time, we have not yet taken the class. The primary reason for our decision to get our licenses now is the possible election of the anti-gun zealot Barry Hussein Obama.

If Barry has his way, the entire United States will have the same (or worse) unconstitutional regulations and laws as his hometown of Chicago. You know — where people are shooting and killing each at a higher clip than they are in Iraq. Where there’s a war going on.

And we’re not alone. My fellow Texans are legally arming themselves at an even faster rate:

AUSTIN — Demand for concealed handgun licenses has risen nearly 40 percent in Texas in a year, an increase being attributed to many factors, even presidential politics.

Though the exact cause may be unclear, what’s certain is that the spike in applications has caught the Department of Public Safety unprepared.

The state is taking a month longer than the 60 days allowed by law to process original applications and 80 days longer on renewals, which are supposed to be handled within 45 days.

“We’re trying really hard, but there have been delays because of the tremendous increase in applications,” said Tela Mange, a DPS spokeswoman.

She said the department is paying overtime and hiring temporary workers to reduce the backlog. Mange said she doesn’t know why applications last month were 39 percent higher than they were in April 2007.

But Ross Bransford, who trains 1,000 Texans a year to qualify for a concealed handgun license, said he believes the looming 2008 election is a big factor.

“People are not sure what’s going to happen after the election,” said Bransford, who owns Austin-based CHL-Texas.com. “Both Democratic candidates are anti-gun in one fashion or another.”

He said Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading the race for the nomination, is a “friend of (Democratic Senator) Ted Kennedy, and that scares everybody to death.”

Other instructors mentioned an increased interest from young adults after last year’s Virginia Tech massacre and recent changes in Texas law about carrying concealed weapons.

Interesting that instructors — the ones who actually talk to the students who are taking their classes — think the reasons are because of the fear of an Obama presidency AND the recent spat of shootings in “gun-free zones” on college campuses.

Anybody who seriously believes Texas is “in play” for a possible win for Obama is dreaming. His stance on the 2nd Amendment alone are going to sink him like a rock. And that 39% increase in concealed handgun licenses is not coincidental.

2nd Amendment, Texas | 4 Comments »

Back in November, I wrote that if I were the Election Law Czar:

…the very first law that I would pass would be to prohibit sitting US Senators or Representatives from running for President of the US.

If they want to run for President — fine. Resign your seat.

Why? Because Senators and Representative were elected (and are paid) to do their jobs.

NOT to campaign full time.

As if I needed actual proof and facts to back up my opinion — Cheri Jacobus has counted up the number of days that Sen. Barry Obama has actually worked as…you know…a fucking US Senator. Instead of out looking for a better job.

And how many days has Barry actually logged?

Just how much Senate experience does Barack Obama have in terms of actual work days? Not much.

From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.

After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

143 days — I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.

In contrast, John McCain’s 26 years in Congress, 22 years of military service including 1,966 days in captivity as a POW in Hanoi now seem more impressive than ever. At 71, John McCain may just be hitting his stride.

E-M-P-T-Y S-U-I-T.

Combined with his self-proclaimed superior “foreign policy experience” based on the 4 years he lived (though NOT as a Moooslum) in Indonesia as a child — the guy has exactly zero non-hopey and non-changey experience to be our next President.

I’m looking forward to watching Sen. McCain hammer this neophyte in face-to-face debates. Obama hasn’t had to face many any real men in the Democratic party (with the possible exception of Hillary, of course), so this will be fun to watch.

Barack Hussein Obama, Election 2008, John McCain, Politics | 6 Comments »

More typical Liberal tolerance — which usually amounts to “Free Speech for Me, but not for Thee”.

Funny how Liberals believe that the right to destroy someone else’s property amounts to “free speech”.

This student (a student government senator named Roderick King) at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point thinks it’s actually his right to “free speech” that allows him to vandalize a pro-life/anti-abortion display on campus.

I don’t think “free speech” means what this cryptorchid thinks it does.

Honestly, I don’t know why someone didn’t just jack him up. Someone should have stepped up to him and made him stop destroying the display. If he refused to stop, they should have physically stopped him.

Are there no real men who attend UW-SP?

At least there were none apparent in this video.

The Unhinged Left, Video | No Comments »