Aloha Dump

Times are tough in the Middle East right now- well, they have been tough for over 2000 years, but you know what I mean. Israel and Palestine are going at it like feral cats fighting in an alley. I never really understood the whole thing until a few years ago- most conflicts based on religion are confusing to most people anyway. To me, it seems like an asinine premise (for any religion) to kill people in the name God, and it seems like every religion has this dark period in its past.   This guy later died from, you guessed it, a snake bite. "But, TK, those snake handlers seem like a level-headed group, and they haven't started a holy war with the Westboro Church people, who also seem like they have a grasp on what God really wants." True, but there are really only a few religions in the world, but many spin offs based on philosophy differences. I am definitely no theologian, but when reading about the major and minor religions it looks like they are all pretty mu...

“Let’s bring this hot pepper pack to the cook out,” she said. “It will be fun!” she said. My in-laws had a 4 th of July cook out yesterday so the whole family went up to the mountains to visit, tell stories and eat some of my father-in-law’s grilling. My wife went to the store that morning to get a few things and came back with a pepper tasting kit. There were 6-8 peppers in there, mostly resembling habaneros, but there were a few smaller ones that looked really potent. After we had finished eating the BBQ, my wife brought the package of peppers out, along with some paper plates, and announced that we were going to have a pepper eating contest. Only 4 of us committed to the contest and the rest of the family gathered around with cell phones poised for photos and video. The package had a list of the peppers along with their heat index, not a Scoville rating, but a scale from 1 to 10 with a picture of the peppers and a brief description of each. We were going to start out on ...

Fast food workers in Chicago rallied for higher pay, something all hard working American can get behind. For the 11 million of you without jobs please disregard. I struggled with this dilemma for a while before coming to the conclusion that it should be put in  the "Stupid Spoiled American" pile. I can appreciate workers uniting for the greater good of their paycheck, but  who do these people think they are, the Pullman Strike of 1894 ?? Also happened in Chicago I make no apologies for this remark, but these people are burger flippers . Here a few of their complaints: "It doesn't pay my bills, I can't buy my kids anything for Christmas. I can't even celebrate Christmas." "We can't survive on $7.25." Let me address complaint #2 and offer some solutions. Get two jobs Don't work there Get an education and become more marketable Get rid of unnecessary assets - TVs, cable, iPad, extra phones, eating out, bling, fancy clot...

Scandal, schmadal At this point in his presidency, I hope that Obama is a pathological liar and not as inept and clueless as he appears to be. Of course he could be a puppet for a super-secret, string pulling Freemason-esque agency, but if we want to go that far, I prefer the chain smoking, creepy old guy from The X-Files. When I examine the scandals surrounding the Obama administration I fully expect a Wachowski styleuprising to drive these people out of office. Wishful thinking, I know. People are comfortable where they are, the voters made their decision and will stand by it, either out of ignorance or by sheer head-in-the-sand prideful stubbornness. To prove this point one just needs to look at the President’s approval rating, which is now at a historic low of 41% . Whoopty freaking doo. So he has low numbers, so Bush’s approval ratings (despite dragging us into a decade + long war and running our deficit up to historical highs) are higher than Obama’s, so what if ...

There aren't too many things that come out of Sacramento that actually make good news and, unfortunately, this is one of them. Receiving over 12,000 comments in the first 24 hours of hitting the blogosphere, Maria Kang has become an international story for posting a picture of her and her three kids: I read about this story over the weekend in Yahoo News and the comments overwhelmingly fell into a singularity: Haters gonna hate. Here is her response to the attacks:   Hot Mom Defends Herself Against Facebook Haters Personally, I gave the same look the 3 year-old has when I saw this picture, however many did not share my reaction. If you want to see the effects of Internet bravado and courage read a few pages of the Yahoo comments. People can say the first thing that comes to their mind in the comments section with no backlash or consequence. The disparaging remarks against Kang ranged from bragger to bully and only got worse when her personal life came to light.  ...

Far be it from me to get all political on The Dump, however this piece by Mark Stein is one of the best I've seen in a while. This short article pretty much sums up the United States military diplomacy amateur hour last month when the our arch nemesis turned the tables on us and Putin's propaganda machine cranked out a brilliant KGB-esque op ed. "Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history. President Obama and his fellow Democrats are either idiots or deliberately trying to destroy their own economy." - Vladimir Putin The US government has been a cesspool of waste, fraud and abuse for many decades now and Americans don't seem to care that the pay more-get less attitude of our elected officials has grown to unprecedented proportions. This is not a D vs. R issue, as I've pointed out time and time again- it is a government issue and our elected officials on both sides are sticking it to us...

I have been writing this blog entry for a few months now piece by piece as more examples are uncovered displaying the downfall of men in this country. Although there are volumes that can be written on the political discourse of some men and how poorly they have shown themselves to stand up for what is right and, instead, cave in to the furthest reaches of the political spectrum. No, I think those men are too far gone to help as is this next group. Over the last few decades I have seen the character of men degrade to the point that they think it is ok to cry over things that in prior decades would have wrought a showering of ridicule and bullying the likes few people today have been on the receiving end of. We had heroes back then like John Wayne, the Marlboro Man, Charles Bronson, Bear Bryant, Van Halen and the like. The idols I had as a young sprouting lad are much different than the ones trying to pass as legitimate teen idols we see forced down our throats today- Justin Beiber...

I know that I am not the smartest peanut in the turd sometimes, however I cannot wrap my head around this administration's economic recovery plan of getting more people on government assistance, specifically food stamps. Please explain to me how taking more of my money and giving it to bums will help my family and stimulate the economy by giving my money (the government took from me)  to someone who isn't working. The government takes from people and doles out the money. The government doesn't earn money like I do when I get a paycheck; the government takes money out of my paycheck. That is money I would have put back into the economy anyway, so how does taking that money and allowing someone else to spend it help anything except the lifestyle of a person who doesn't have to work for their money? Yes, that is totally fair. Here is a good summary of the last State of the Union address from last month from The Gateway Pundit: SOTU 2013: 2.6 Million More in Poverty, ...

I am a glutton for punishment and I enjoy a good verbal debate on the Huffington Post website. It is an overtly left leaning site but I like to know what people are thinking and how they think even if it is different than my own mold. I have found that the comments section of any news story will bring out the best and the worst society has to offer- again, another post for another time. I was recently bashed on HuffPo for my thoughts on God, a topic that these people both loathe and enjoy talking about, when I made a comment about the CT shooting. The internet is a marvelous thing- it gives us an unending library of knowledge, entertainment and anonymity. Internet Courage is a great boost to one’s self esteem. The conversation quickly fell into the classic, “Athiests are smart but Christians are stupid because they believe the Earth is only 6000 years old” routine.  I usually let these go since people are not going to be swayed by an internet Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em debate, but I wen...

Seriously. The frequency and grotesqueness of these events has stepped up over the last 10 years. No longer are they isolated incidents and they continue reveal a darkness of the human soul reminiscent of the Salem witch trial torture sessions. There is no palpable reason for these tragedies, and this one will haunt us for a very long time. In human history, never has an act been more despicable and more taboo even among the dissidents of society than that of harming a child – of course pedophiles, Baal worshipers of the Old Testament and radical Islamists would argue this point but for the most part you don’t harm kids. A deeper level of disgust and the taste of bile entered my mouth when I learned that most of the 20 children in this tragedy were between the ages of 5 and 8 years old. I have two children in that age range and it wasn't until I had time to think about this during my commute home yesterday that this latest shooting sunk in. It didn't...

On Friday afternoon Syria suffered a widespread loss of Internet sans a few off shore networks. It looks like someone flipped off a switch, if there really is such a thing. No Internet for you! The Syrian government, well known in the world for its civil rights leaders and progressive women's rights programs, explained they had nothing to do with the black out and that it was the targeted work of terrorist organizations. Despite well documented proof of Syria's involvment with Internet surveillance and malware campaign (starting in 2011), Syria's Minister of Information explains: "It is not true that the state cut the Internet. The terrorists targeted the Internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off," Forgive me if I am not convinced, especially after the comical reports from Saddam's Mininter of Information as the Iraqi army was getting bitch slapped by our troops: "I repeat, there is no US presence in Baghdad." Half of...

Time for a pop quiz! No, I’m not going to have you try and guess the combined tonnage of Rosie O’Donnell and Michael Moore, but it is something that will tax your brain just the same. What are the 7 Wonders of North America? And if you say, “The combined tonnage of Rosie and Moore”- you fail. How many of them have you visited? This idea came to me as I read the back of the Tasteeos cereal box, a blatant knock off of another popular but tasteless cereal. While it was refreshing to read something other than desperate attempts to get children to keep pestering their parents for the sweet and expensive cereal, I was reminded of a story I read about the Islamofacists and their jihad to control the world with their 7th century lifestyle. The article, in its entirety is an excellent recount of both Western and Eastern art, music, and architecture and how Muslims reject these influences. The article, found in The Brussels Journal, entitled Why Western Art is Unique, and Why Muslim Immigrat...