Hi! I’m a retired Command Master Chief of the United States Navy. Veteran of Submarines, Veteran of an Aegis Cruiser, Veteran of the Cold War … Gulf War (Round 1), Operation Noble Eagle (9-11), Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Veteran of the White House Military Office (last 6 months of George H. W. Bush and the first 3 years of Bill Clinton).
I’m retired now – still work around ships doing work for national security and with the extra time on my hands I spend it with my family, my guitars, and my HONDA V65 MAGNA!
I’ll die a Republican – after seeing Algore’s lawyers disenfranchise military absentee voters in the 2000 election in Florida – Democrats can burn in hell for all I care. I’ll never forget that.
Look at this …
HV65…simply wanted to say that your post on AofS (post #71) was spot on. Well done.
v/r,
rindini.
(mini-bio: F-16 driver, ONW, OSW, ONW, OSW, OEF, OIF, currently working real-word ops not in a cockpit…)
out.
Your post on Laura W’s economic optimism was facing reality, something a lot of people of our age, the WORST GENERATION, just don’t want to do. I’ve fought them for 30 years myself. I’m hoping to make retirement in 4.5 months myself. Oh, very nice pic (the girl is nice too).
What kind of guitars?
Fender Telecaster and Peavey HP Signature for electric. Taylor 110 for Acoustic.
I take it you heard about Les Paul checking out today. If not, stop by. I have a nice little film about him in the comments
I suspect that you knew my uncle who was in the White House those same years. I believe part of the time was as a contractor with Sverdrup.
No I didn’t know him – the section of the White House I worked in consisted of about 700 uniformed personnel alone. I may have run into him a few times but I don’t remember it.
Hey, just wanted to pass this oddity/monstrosity along to you, since I once owned a 1984 V65 Sabre.
Some enterprising human in Cali decides he doesn’t like the new helmet law, head gets hot, etc., etc.
So, there’s only *one* way to deal with a hot head in CA, right?
You got it.
Air condition your helmet!!!
Here’s the links to his bike pics (think of one of those bicycle light generators that roll against the wheel, on massive Major League Baseball steroids) and his explanation of why he did it.
Explanation of why he put an air conditioner on his Honda V65 Sabre
Pictures of the “air conditioned” Honda V65 Sabre
Oh, and I do enjoy your comments on HotAir. I post there as Wanderlust as well.
-Bill
Hey!! It’s nice to know I’m not the only sane Honda rider in the country.
Nice bike, by the way… What size is it? My ‘85 Rebel’s a 250.
It’s an 1100 V-4.
I love it!
My ‘83 V65Magna will always have a special place in my heart. I put oodles of miles on it between AZ and CA back in the late 80’s. That picture brought back a lot of memories. Thanks!
I play an American Strat HSS thru a Marshall. Ovation when unplugged.
… and I just about can’t stand anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh
I just saw your post at HotAir (Re: Obama privacy invasion.). This is brilliant, and quite funny:
I’ve already planned my strategy for this …
“How much is my home worth?” Answer $10,000,000
“Does it have flushing toilets?” Answer “No”
Yes, that is my plan and I will have fun filling that questionaire out. The best way to stop these idiots from asking these questions is by giving them bullshit answers that do them no good.
I’m also considering calling myself a “Hispanic” this year on the Census.
Just to skew their data.
Actually, no – maybe I’ll be a Native American
“Oh well then – if Ed Rollins says this is strange it must be.
The man should know – he ran the strangest campaign of my lifetime – for Ross Perot.
How’d that work out for ya Ed?”
Rollins was Reagan’s campaign manager in 1984 when he won 49 states.
And that was his high-water mark. What we’ve gotten from him since has been pure strangeness.
Howdy, see you over on Hot Air all the time. Was also in the Navy…submarines…boomers to be specific. Only did 6 years and called it a day. Did have Regan for a CIC …bonus!!!
Gore’s lawyers stupidly didn’t ask to recount all ballots, and some soldiers’ totals weren’t in the recounts.
But Bush’s lawyers argued against counting all the soldiers’ ballots.
Why are you angrier at Democrats than Republicans?
Well … where’s your source for THAT information?
I have the letter from the Democratic Lawyers that outlined how soldiers could be disenfranchised legally up on my blog. Check it out – that’s MY source.
Now just check that memo out … it systematically outlines to Democratic lawyers all of the legal ways they can throw out a soldier’s ballot. Bear in mind now – they were directed by the DNC to throw out the ballots of overseas soldiers on technicalities like postmarks – all the while they were insisting on counting “hanging chads” in Southern Florida.
Democrats are despicable – now they’re out there trying to prosecute CIA agents who kept us safe for eight years while they have just Black Panthers off the hook who intimidated voters at polling stations with their billy clubs. They had to be embarrassed into voting to pull funding from their criminal vote-rigging organization ACORN – and the final chapter isn’t written on that story. Oh yeah – and who’s fault is it for exposing the ACORN corruption? Why it’s the Conservative videographer who did the work in exposing them. Nice.
Can you find me one credible source that claims that Bush’s lawyers sought to disenfranchise soldiers? I don’t think so.
Assuming your letter to be accurate, I note that it doesn’t say anything at all about not counting soldier’s ballots — except illegal ones. Bizarre that you’d argue for fraud to be committed in the name of soldiers. Under that memorandum, if any ballot were challenged, it could be kept out only if it were illegally cast.
Is that an admission that Bush couldn’t win except by fraud? No, probably not — since you don’t seem to appreciate what the memo said, a tiny part of the larger drama.
On the other hand, you seem to miss the big picture. Bush argued that all counting should be stopped, period — and it was. Absentee ballots that were not yet opened — including those from soldiers overseas — simply were cast out by the Supreme Court.
There’s a good lay explanation of the case at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore
The end result was that counting was stopped, and in my view, arbitrarily.
It’s really odd to me that you complain about Gore’s questioning to prevent fraud in the name of U.S. soldiers, while winking at Bush’s wholesale dismissal of hundreds or thousands more soldiers’ votes.
Probably should have said, “. . . while winking at Bush’s wholesale dismissal of hundreds or thousands more soldiers’ votes, and thousands of other citizens’ votes.”
You seem to be really wound up on this aren’t you? Coming to my little obscure blog to push a falsehood about Bush and the Florida vote count.
First … the letter from Mark Herron … head of the DNC’s efforts to disenfranchise military voters is 100% accurate … cut and pasted from the original transcription.
The purpose of the memo was to inform Democratic lawyers of all the ways they could challenge overseas military ballots. They were observed by many polling observers challenging military ballots. They got many thrown out. In order for your hypothesis to be true – i.e., the DNC lawyers were “looking out” for military folk – then they would have been arguing to INCLUDE absentee ballots instead of nit-picking reasons to exclude them – which is what they were doing.
What makes this even more of a betrayal of our servicemembers, of which I was one at the time – is the way they seemed to know the weaknesses in the military voting system. The system is not administered by professionals overseas – it’s usually administered by voting officers who are, in fact, Commissioned Officers of whatever service they belong to. “Voting Officer” is a collateral duty – it’s something that a warfighting officer does “on the side” in addition to his normal duties. He’s not a lawyer. Further – he’s tasked with keeping up with the voting rules of fifty states – which is impossible really.
The DNC lawyers knew this. And they disqualified valid military ballots on trivial grounds while arguing to include “hanging chads” that could benefit Al Gore.
The DNC didn’t call for a state-wide recount because they didn’t want the Republican districts to be recounted – because doing so may have revealed even more votes for Bush. Instead – they concentrated their efforts on heavily Democratic counties where they could arguably get more votes from the “hanging chads”.
It’s a good thing the Supreme Court stepped in to keep Al Gore from stealing that election.
I know I’m arguing with a “wall” when it comes to you – you’re probably a “truther” too. So these points are useless. But since this is my blog – I get the last word. Thanks!
Hey Honda–it’s Niere from HotAir. I wanted to address your reply to me regarding Belmont Abbey. I wanted to respond at HotAir but was worried by now that you might not see it. I hope it’s okay if I post it here.
You said:
“I disagree – the people you’re speaking of are Catholic – but you say they don’t really live the faith.
However, I believe even though they don’t “live” the faith – they still identify with it and will be horrified to see abortion thrown down the throats of the Catholics that are living the faith.
I’m one of those people of whom you speak. I’m Catholic – but I haven’t been inside a Catholic Church in 25 years except for purposes of tourism. I’m Pro-Life, not because the Church says to be – but because the Pro-Life position IS the intellectually superior position. If we cannot define when human life begins (and we can’t – even Obama says we can’t) – then we should not be destroying a human fetus in any stage.
But I get quite angry that my more pious brethren in the church are being forced to take a pro-abortion position.
I remember a scene from a movie once. It was some Nazi movie and Vanessa Redgrave played a Jew in a concentration camp. She was starving and the Nazis gave her a pork sausage to eat. She was so hungry she devoured it. Redgrave is an idiot – but that scene was very compelling to me – she was forced to give up her religious prohibition on pork to survive. It was a scene that pissed me off – and I’m not even Jewish.
Forcing Catholics to support abortion should be equally outrageous.”
I have to tell you I thought about this response of yours all day (and I do mean all day!), and I mean that in the best way possible. I found your post compelling and I found that it sparked a cascade of questions for me regarding my faith, most of which centered around the idea of “what does it mean to be Catholic?” and “how does the Church define someone who is Catholic?”
I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I plan on researching them.
So basically I just wanted to write to thank you for spurring some of my thoughts to go in a direction they might not have gone. I always appreciate it when people challenge me to think in a different direction and you’ve definitely done that.
By the way–thank you for your service. And nice blog!
Best wishes,
Niere
Thank you Melissa.
I enjoy reading your blog sir. Found you on the comment page on Hot Air.