Which do I do first? Here’s what I have going on my painting table:
1. Polish off my Blood Bowl Amazon team, I just finished basing them last night. I have to paint their bases, then touch up where the ink and paint have worn off in the past couple of years due to handling of them.
2. Start and finish my Blood Bowl Undead team. I have one Wight 98% finished, and I have 11 unpainted models to go. That’s two mummies, one more Wight, two ghouls, and three each zombies and skeletons.
3. Three Rhino APC’s for my Sisters of Battle. I need them to make my mechanized list complete.
4. Base my Battlefleet Gothic escorts. I can kinda friction fit them onto their bases, but I really need to glue them on so they stay.
The problem is I’m a slightly above average painter on quality, but way below the curve in painting time. It takes me forever to paint anything.
I have a 40k tournament in 30 days down in Jackson, MS, another 40K tournament in June at Gamerz Depot, and then The Big WAAAGH! in 78 days. For the WAAAGH I’ll need my Undead Blood Bowl team, my Battlefleet Gothic ships and my 40k army of choice.
So, I have a lot of painting and playtesting of armies and teams to go, and not a lot of time to do it. So, I’m trying to “parallel paint,” which means assemble the Rhinos while painting Undead, then base coating the Rhinos and painting some more Undead.
It’s going to drive me beserk, I tell you right now. Right over the edge. Keep your eye on the evening news, you just might see me.

For those of you who are living in a cave around Memphis, long-time Conservative talk radio host Mike Fleming has been unceremoniously kicked off the air. He has disappeared from WREC’s website like he never even existed. No “good bye,” nothing. Just gone, and a hole in their schedule between 4 and 7pm.
It almost feels like he went down 1984’s memory hole.
I listened to Mike Fleming when I first listened to talk radio back in the mid 90’s. I got hooked on a guy by the name of Oliver C. Reed, whom I liked very much. Mike had the afternoon spot after Rush Limbaugh in those days.
When Oliver retired, Mike moved to WMC AM 790’s mornings, and he coined his phrase “A little napalm in your morning coffee” or something close to that. One day he did a morning remote from Dyer’s Hamburgers, when they were in Bartlett around the corner from my home. This was long before my illness came about. I got to spend about 5 minutes on the air with Mike, and I got a coffee mug from him for the effort. I listened to him whenever I could, and even called in occasionally to voice my opinion on his subject du jour.
Then my illness came about, and my calling stopped. He also moved over to 600 WREC and alternated between the morning and afternoon shows. I never made it back to listening to him. By the time I got back into talk radio, he had picked up a shrill grating quality that put my teeth on edge.
Love him or hate him, Mike is an iconic personality and he will be missed. I doubt very much he will go quietly into the night.

Okay folks, I am currently reading “Rightwing Extremism:Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalism and Recruitment.” This is the big hullabaloo document calling everybody on the Right “Extremists.”
Let’s take a look.
Here is the scope:

This product is one of a series of intelligence assessments published by the
Extremism and Radicalization Branch to facilitate a greater understanding of the
phenomenon of violent radicalization in the United States. The information is
provided to federal, state, local, and tribal counterterrorism and law enforcement
officials so they may effectively deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks
against the United States. Federal efforts to influence domestic public opinion must be
conducted in an overt and transparent manner, clearly identifying United States
Government sponsorship.

After reading it a couple of times, I am not going to sully my blog with the words from this “report,” and I’ll tell you why.
This document takes 9 pages to say that some, some disgruntled ex-military members have joined right-wing extremist groups. This has the government concerned because of these vets training in military affairs.
The document lists many reasons for such things to happen, from the current economic climate to Obama’s ascension and basically revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge.
That’s it. If you boil the political jargon and simplify it so even a politician can understand it, that’s what it said.
But that’s not the end of it. I’ve done a search on Left wing extremism and came up with another document, done by DHS that talks about the resurgence of left-wing extremism and their possible use of Cyber-attacks.
So DHS is not coming out only against the extreme Right, it has reasons to go after the extreme Left as well.
But let’s put things into perspective. Here is a document produced for the Department of Energy labeled: LEFT-WING EXTREMISM:The Current Threat
Here is the money quote:

Left-wing groups were responsible for three-fourths of the officially designated acts of domestic terrorism in the United States during the 1980s.

Everything else is just explanation.
But what confuses me is this, just above what I just quoted you:

While the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and a number of other incidents attributed to right-wing extremists indicate that the major threat is from the right, leftist extremism remains a concern within the United States.

I don’t understand. It says this, then the other quote? It could be the scale of the damage caused by right wing extremists is greater, while the actual number goes toward the left. Maybe that’s what he is talking about.
But to get back to the document. Here is another quote, just showing you that we are a representative sample of the world:

From an international perspective, of the 13,858 people who died between 1988 and 1998 in attacks committed by the 10 most active terrorist groups in the world, 74 percent were killed by leftist organizations.

But who is actually more dangerous? What are the stated goals of these groups?
Right-wing groups are more law-and-order types. They want the United States to be restored to its Constitutional roots. Freedom of speech, no political correctness. Freedom for law-abiding citizens to own firearms. To be safe from Government intrusion into one’s affairs, and so on.
Granted, the white supremacist groups want to kick the Blacks out of the country, but then again, some of the radical Black Left-wing groups want to form a Black state out of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.
But what do the Left-wing groups want? Look at their mission statements. You have Anarchists, Marxist/Leninists, Communists and so on. They want to actively overthrow the government and replace the Constitution with either no government, or some kind of Socialist state.
Hm. It’s a tough choice, but I think I can live with the Constitution. Granted, I want the same freedoms to be enjoyed by all citizens (note that I did not say all people. Citizens are people who were born or followed the rules to come into this country. Throw out the illegal immigrants). I don’t care what color you are. I don’t have any “black” friends, because I don’t care what your skin color is. If I like you, it’s because of the content of your character, not the color of your skin.
So, while DHS has released reports that has concerns about the extremes of both Left and Right, I am going to hold back and reserve judgment until I start seeing action. If I see them stepping all over the Rightwing extremists and not doing anything about the other side, I’m going to say something. And the other way around as well, if there are terrorist type attacks from right wing groups while DHS is smashing Leftists left and right, then I am also going to be saying something.
Let’s wrap this one up. Extremists from both sides of the spectrum are dangerous. Both have used violence to achieve their goals. Both need to be brought to justice when they step over the line. Let’s just make it sure that when that line of violence is crossed by ordinary citizens, it’s because a true majority believe it’s time to change the way how our Government runs and who is running it.

After a long week, and a hectic weekend, this evening I signed up for Twitter. That should be obvious since I installed a Shockwave Twitter window so you can see what I am up to. I also installed an application called TwitterBerry so I can twitter from my Blackberry. That should make it easy to see what I am up to.
One small problem. The Twitter image is 176 pixels wide, and the column is only 145 pixels wide. I am mucking around in the styles sheet to see if I can’t expand the column width. That may take a day or two. In the mean time, I will keep the lines short so you can see all of the message.
Now all I need is a Facebook page and I’m all set with this latest generation of technology.
Heh. I’ve always said that instant gratification is not fast enough.

I have finally located a PDF of the DHS memo about “right wing extremists.” Fisking to follow.

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, anymore than standing in your garage makes you a car.”

Have too much time on their hands. Here is a video of a 100,000 brick Lego IJN Yamato.

I haven’t read Bill Whittle, author of Eject! Eject! Eject! for a while, but I just happened across this post, where he begs the rich to leave America. His reasoning is sound, his documentation is flawless, and his story tear-jerking.
What are you still doing here? Go and read it!

This recession is hitting everyone hard, some harder than others. And soon it will hit even harder.
The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities (TDMHDD) will be enacting a 15% cut in its budget come the 1st of July. This department has provided monies to several organizations that have employed me over the past several years. If I was still employed by these agencies, I would be losing my job about then. Friends of multiple years are losing their jobs because of these cuts.
Organizations that do good work may have to shut down entirely, simply because they no longer have enough money to keep going.
Which leads us to why I am writing today. As a part of my job, I do presentations. In one part of my presentations, I show the example of what’s known as “front end” vs. “back end” dollars. You can also call it “prevention” and “crisis treatment” if you would like.
I show that for a small investment on the front end, many lives can be made a whole lot better, versus treating the inevitable crisis that happens when the front end investment is not made.
For example: My local suicide crisis center takes about $95,000 a year to operate. That crisis center helps an average of 60 people a day who are potentially on the verge of suicide. They call the help line and are talked down from the attempt and steered towards the appropriate resources. In the course of a month, that adds up to 1,800 people potentially saved by the expendature of $95,000. If someone actually does attempt or succeed in committing suicide, it costs about $5,000 each incident, for police, EMS and Fire Department resources to either talk that person down or clean up the mess. And that is not including the loss of income over the rest of their lifetime and other income potentially generated by the person who commits suicide.
Now, which is the more efficient expendature of money? The crisis line, of course. If only 3% of the calls were serious attempts at suicide, that’s still about 700 attempts a year. Dividing the operations costs versus the number of lives saved makes it out to be $135 a serious attempt. So we are talking $95k front end, versus up to $3.3 million on the back end. Actually, if you divide the operating costs by the total number of calls, that is less than $5 a call.
And that is exactly where Tennessee is heading. Every one of the groups that I network with are screaming at the top of their lungs. Some may have to shut down entirely, while the others will experience deep cuts in services and personnel.
Everyone is urging myself and others to write, fax and call our state represenatives, senators and the Governor to ask for this money back. The loss of services to those who can afford it least will only cause more trouble in the long run.
Crowding the jail beyond capacity with those who can’t get into a mental facility, wasted resources to clean up what could have been prevented, the list goes on and on.
There is an old saying, “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance.” Well, if you think cutting services saves money, wait until you have to clean up all of the preventable messes caused by these “money saving” initiatives.

I have always said that there is a difference between good, sound ideas and ideas that sound good.
This came to me via email. My apologies if this has been published somewhere, as I do not know where it came from.

Dear Mr. President,
Patriotic retirement:
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force – Pay them $1 million apiece severance with the following stipulations:
1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.
2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.
3) They either buy a house/pay off their mortgage – Housing Crisis fixed.
It can’t get any easier than that!
PS If more money is needed, have all members in Congress and their constituents pay their taxes!

Did you spot the hole in this argument? No? Think it sounds good, right?
Well, you are talking about giving 40,000,000 people $1,000,000 each. Do your math. That would work out to $40 Million Million dollars, or $40,000,000,000,000. That’s just a little more than we can spend, considering we already have a $10 Trillion debt.
Remember this the next time someone talks about spending someone elses money.