John Cole has a great post up summing up the way those of us who used to be in the GOP camp have been abandoned completly by the party we grew up with. I liked it so much I wanted to quote his statement of belief right here. It is excellent.
What’s on my mind, Facebook? I will tell you. For decades I was a Republican, but they lost their shit, and I left the party in 2005. I was always pro gay rights and pro-choice and anti death penalty as a Republican, but they decided I did not belong, so I left.
And now, I am happy to say I am a proud liberal who will stand up to right-wing douchebags who have decided that 2/3 of America doesn’t deserve the right to exist.
I support gay rights and the ability for gay people to marry.
I am pro-choice. Not pro-abortion, but pro-choice.
I am against the death penalty. This used to be a libertarian position, but they are so corrupted by right wing money that they no longer are worried about the state executing the citizenry. Because, you know, freedom.
I think marijuana should be legal and taxed. Obviously, alcoholics like Orange John Boehner think this is crazy as he leads the House with a BAC of .20 every day.
I think religion can be a good thing, but I think religious people should respect that many people do not share their faith nor need lists of commandments to understand they shouldn’t fuck their neighbor’s wife or murder or steal. Some of us kinda figured that shit out on our own.
I don’t think video games or movies make people kill people.
I do think easy access to guns makes it really easy to kill people.
I think gay people should be able to adopt. In fact, I think we should stop calling them gay people and just call them, well, people.
I don’t think taxes are a punishment. I think they are what gives us roads and part of a great societal pact; an obligation for all of us to fulfill so we can be so lucky to live in this country.
I don’t think people who are poor are evil, stupid, or lazy. I just think they have no money and could use some help from me.
I think that this world is basically lacking in human compassion and empathy, and that bothers me. “I got mine” seems to be a refrain that is repeated too often.
I could go on, but these are the basics.
Kind of meek red meat but what the hell.
I love that he favors unrestricted killing of the unborn but as a Republican he favored unrestricted killing of the unborn.
I'm amused that it's not enough that its illegal for criminals to own guns or use guns but that's not enough for a good republican like him. No sir, he wants for nobody to have any guns. It's hysterical that he doesn't believe that violence begets violence but somehow believes that guns whip themselves out, haul off and shoot people all by themselves. Must be the very hand of God moving them.
WTF is a right to gay? Do we care about that? Is that something you do at home? Is it anything like locking up kidnapped girls for 10 years in your house because I'm against that.
Since I believe in recycling, I'm in favor of the death penalty. So is my hero Obama who believes the only good muslim terrorist is a dead one. I don't believe he's ordered one taken alive since he took over.
When you have a great societal pact in a democracy you must accept that people who vote against it don't want it. You should not demonize them because they disagree with you. Until you understand that you shouldn't be allowed out of 1st grade.
When did the republicans throw you to the ground and rape you for helping others? Were you doing a robin hood kind of help scheme where you stole other people's money and gave it to the poor?
Please no more of these utterly farsical used to be republican but saw the light stories. I cannnot help myself
Curtis,
I don't think you carefully read what he said. At its heart he gave voice to the same frustration that I feel-I am tired of being told that I don't have a right to my opinion and that 2/3 of America is supposed sit docily by while our Galtian overlords tell us what is the correct path forward. It is not that they disagree with me that is the issue-its the way they disagree, and the fact that they refuse to find middle ground.
Skippy,
My philosophy is not difficult to articulate. It just takes time. I might write it at my place someday. The two things I am not are modern Democrat or Republican. Those words are a meaningless description of the vile government that we have now. But let us look at his points in the light of reason and action.
pro-gay, pro-choice, anti-death penalty. OK. I don't care at all about any of that and manifestly neither does anybody in the legislatures. It must have escaped his liberal notice that there is not one single fight in the legislature on any of these items at all. Some may argue that DOMA is a fight but its not about some phantasm of gay rights, it simply says marriage is defined just like it is in a dictionary. Just as the word man and woman are defined. Nobody gives a damn what people do to each other as legally consenting adults. That ended without so much as a legislative whimper ages ago. [I still get a kick out of the story about it now being legal in this country to marry your son and thus let him inherit without paying any taxes.]
I don't care about drugs and I'll go the distance on that one as I always have. You get cited for driving under the influence or flying or operating heavy machinery and you cause an accident that kills or injures any person then you pay whatever the injured party accepts as fair. In the middle east it's called blood money. You pay or die trying. Works for me. Think how much damage we'd have avoided if Ted Kennedy paid for his killing ways. That said, I fundamentally disagree on paying tax on weed. You don't pay taxes on any other weeds you raise so why pay tax on this particular one? If you do pay taxes can they not be offset by the carbon credits you earn for growing the crap? Or, how about the government pays me NOT to raise weed? Pay one fiction with another fiction.
He's an idiot about killing. People kill people. I favor killing those that kill only because I don't believe I owe them 3 meals and a cot for the rest of their natural {extended by free medical care} lives. I think guns are OK. They're OK because this nation was founded with them as our sovereign right to arm ourselves. Anybody who doesn't like that can MOVE. Why should I give up MY right?
The fool is blind about religion and morality. Morality and appreciation for right and wrong are not innate. They must be taught. I have no problems with anybody that knuckles under and accepts the commonly understood (in the West) Judeo-Christian code. I believe that honor killers have their place; in Hell. That boy doesn't get out much. The above code is pretty much a Golden Rule sort of paradise nowadays. He wouldn't like the imposition of Sharia or the code of honor on the SubContinent or Middle East or what passes for morality in Africa or South America. On the other hand he likes the eugenics thing and that was founded and is supported by some serious race haters.
The guy doesn't see taxes as punishment and yet that is ALL THAT TAXES are. The Tax Code punishes behavior. Sin Tax, Luxury Tax, Sales Tax, it's all revenue for the Man. It's paying a Police force to ticket your car because the City needs the revenue. Income tax punishes the wealthy or did he fail to notice that the poor pay no tax. Poverty is it's own reward according to the tax codes. Oh yes there must be taxes to pay for things but we shouldn't be paying for state, municipal, county bus drivers, teachers, librarians, mailmen, railwaymen, sanitation workers, prison guards, state pyschologists, basketball coaches, university professors or administrators, the list goes on. Now if he wants to pay for all that crap, let him. I'd like to opt out.
That moron doesn't understand how much Americans give. He clearly has no clue. But he is sure he has a right to TAKE what he wants from us in order to GIVE it away.
Y'all got Obama and Obamacare and taxes for and on everything and the repeal of DADT in favor of who gives a rat's ass what you do so long as its not sexual or under the influence or armed or demeaning, or sexist, or racist, or hurts somebody else's feelings.
You see what you got there? You got someone who always wants to take something from me and me? I don't want anything at all from you or him.
Still not a Republican. Never was. Just despise Democrats even more than I despise John McCain.
Which John McCain. There are several versions you know.
" A people that values its priveleges above its principals soon loses both"
D.D. Eisenhower
I used to like John McCain and think his views on torture and immigration are fair BUT his drumbeat for war in Syria is disturbing. One would think that WE would have learned our lessons from Vietnam and Iraq and soon to be Afghanistan.
Skippy.. questions please, and anyone else that has had experience on a long deployment.
What woould have been a typical day(one without war)_on a aircraft carrier in time of "peace"?
Is the Area of Deployment more important than the ship one is assigned too? (in regards to sailor morale and ports of call etc etc)
If you have shore leave in Singapore etc, is that based on time? 2 days or 2 hours?
What if there is an emergency, how does the captain get his crew back on ship when thay are on shore?
If you commit a crime in a port in a country WITHOUT SOFA are you sunject to local law?
Thanks
Richard
I'll let the more current readers answer the question-but a typical day on a carrier usually was a 13 hour flying day-with other things thrown in like a refueling at night, or a set of engineering drills when the Air Wing was not flying.
Hi Richard,
No carrier experience at all. But for the rest:
I don't understand the first question. I was assigned to a ship that never got underway and never deployed. I was going to graduate school. The ship was the CNO Test Platform for SSN-2 PINS and was underway a minimum of 4 days a week and I spent 9 months deployed to the Persian Gulf. You get lucky sometimes.
Liberty inport is based on the day or partial day. My ships would pull into a port and at the end of the working day the word would be passed for Liberty Call. Those that had the duty had to stay while the others could take off until Liberty expired onboard. It always did no later than 0600 the following day. If it was another working day than we worked until Liberty Call and repeat. If it was Holiday routine (weekend or Sunday) then Liberty would go down when the XO was happy that the ship was clean enough.
We had a couple of emergency recalls to get underway. We did our best to find our people ashore and then left without them leaving the lucky bastards in the Seychelles and the unlucky bastards in Jubail. Go to the Embassy or local Navy Shore Element and they'll get you back to your ship one way or another. No expense to you. You might have to swan about on your own dime until the arrangements are made.
Your final question. Answer is: Hell Yes! Always. It also is the case mostly with countries that we have a SOFA with since it is no gaurantee for the servicemember that anybody on base wants anything to do with some heinous criminals. In my comment about blood money above, I saw that paid by the US for a sailor on official duty driving in the UAE, safe and sober, who rear ended a car in front of him that stopped for no particular reason on the highway. The crash killed a little girl in the back seat of the car he hit and he was in jail until we paid the family blood money to get him out. I strongly recommend that sailors on liberty in foreign climes not consider themselves in U.S. states 1- 57.
Richard, you know? I forgot to add that me and 3/4 of the officers on ship were left behind once in Victoria, BC when our ship was ordered to sail immediately. We caught up with them the next afternoon down in Tacoma. Skipper made the transit with an Ensign onboard less than 10 days and the Chop who couldn't drive out of a wet paper bag so the skipper had the deck and the conn from Victoria all the way to Tacoma. Ha!
Curtis…..
thanks…Who acts as policeman aboard ship?
Master at Arms force-what in the Army would be MP's.
Skippy may well be correct. He served on the floating cities.
On my six ships we had no master-at-arms. The petty officers, leading petty officers and chiefs were the guardians of order with the CO being the judge, jury and executioner. That was on one flagship, one destroyer, one tank landing ship , one frigate and two mine sweepers. None of those classes of ships had MAs in the last century but MA is the second or third largest rating in the navy these days so they could be on all the ships now.