Kickin' ass and takin' names

Transgender Navy SEAL 'Warrior Princess' Comes Out

Then and now....I think I've found the person who should be in charge of cleaning up the sexual misconduct scandal now rampant in our military.  ;)

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It's been five years since the banks rolled the dice one time too many and just about took down the world's financial system, and three years since Congress passed the Dodd-Frank bill that was supposed to bring the bankers back into line with sane, sensible practices.  (Note:  Isn't it ironic that the former Senator and Congressman the bill was named after were two of the banker's most egregious enablers on the way to their going over the cliff?)

Three years, yet only 38% of Dodd-Frank has been implemented.  According to today's USA Today, the bankers have so far been successful stonewalling 62% of it.  The fox is truly in charge of the henhouse. 

Think after the "Warrior Princess" kicks ass and cleans up the military she can go after the bankers?  

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Yesterday the Supreme Court hit a home run.  They've managed to piss off just about everybody.  They narrowly ruled 5-4 that people charged with a felony can be required to submit to a DNA swab.  The original argument for DNA testing was to prove the identity of the accused, but the dissenters say the test results will go into a database and be used to possibly solve other past, present, or future crimes.

The big outrage is that this is (some say) a violation of the Fourth Amendment which forbids searches without reasonable suspicion to gather evidence for an unrelated crime.  Ummm....hold on there Kemo Sabe.

How is this any different than people charged with serious crimes giving up their fingerprints to a database?  That's been used to solve crimes and is admissible as evidence in court for as long as I can remember and nobody seemed to get their knickers is a wad over that one.  Isn't DNA evidence just a newer, state-of-the-art version of fingerprinting?

To me the issue should be whether DNA swabs should be taken and entered into a database from those charged with a serious crime or only from those convicted of a serious crime?  Big difference!

Just something for you to think about.  :)

S

Fish camp humor

Talk about luck!

My wife has an abundance of it.  Several months ago she was out walking the dog and she found money blowing down the street.  Then just a few weeks ago she was walking the dog one Sunday morning and found a watch.  A pin on the band had broken and apparently the guy it belonged to (drunk?) didn't feel it fall off.  This morning K was walking the dog again and she found a cell phone.  Fortunately it still works, even after the rains we had last night, so she can trace it back to it's owner.


Hmmm....it just dawned on me.  Maybe the DOG is the lucky charm here.


Anyway, the only person I know luckier than K is my daughter, Andrea.  She spent 5 years in the US Navy, and I refer to her as "the Forrest Gump of the Navy" because she could just luck into more good situations.  Once she was inspecting a helicopter and found something amiss, so she called Quality Assurance over to take a look.  Turns out it was a HUGE deal....the Navy had a 24-hour safety stand down of their entire CH-46 fleet so they could be checked out worldwide....and this got her the award for "Sailor of the Quarter, Air Wing Pacific Fleet" (or something like that).


Then later she volunteered to help bring the USS Nimitz from its old home port in Norfolk, VA to its new home port on the west coast.  Back in San Diego she was at the gym one evening wearing sweats and a "Nimitz" baseball cap when the middle-aged guy running on the treadmill next to her said, " I see you're on the Nimitz?"  She explained she was with a helo squadron and he said he'd heard they were having trouble with their very elderly helicopters.  She said, yes, everyone thought the problem was blah blah, but she thought it was a different blah blah.


The next day she reported to work and was told to go immediately to the Admiral's office (usually not a good thing).   She arrived there to find the Admiral was the guy on the treadmill from the evening before!  He put her on a conference call with the engineers at Boeing and she told them how to fix their helicopters.  Turns out she was right, something all their "experts" couldn't seem to get a handle on.  Again, another big award came her way.  Now is that Forrest Gump-like or what?


Yep, I think I've been blessed with some lucky women in my life.  Maybe I need to get them to direct some of that "luck" towards picking winning lottery numbers.  :)


S

Dogs and loyalty

I love dogs.  They ask so little of us, yet give us everything they have without hesitation.  This fact was brought back to me this morning when I read this in USA Today online:

At the funeral for one of the 30 Navy SEAL's recently killed in Afghanistan, the dog of a fallen SEAL refused to leave the body of his owner/friend.  During the service he walked up to the casket and lay down beside it.  Such loyalty is virtually impossible to find in the human world.

I remember a few years ago I was in bed recovering from having my tonsils out.  What misery!  My little dog Tara Belle (at the time about 13 years old and slowing down considerably) could sense I was hurting and somehow jumped-climbed-clawed her way up onto my bed and lay down beside me.  In normal times she couldn't jump that high if her life depended on it, but when she thought she could provide me some comfort, she was there for me.

Dogs don't ask or care what color you are, what zip code you live in, what labels are on your clothes, what kind of car you drive, or how influential your friends are.  All they want from you is a pat on the head, a tummy rub, someone to throw them a ball, some food...any brand will do, thank you...and of course your love.  Pretense doesn't exist in a dog's world.  In a dog owners world it does, but not in a dog's world.  

You know the old joke about "dog" really being GOD, just  spelled backwards?  Maybe it's not a joke.

S