Stormbringer's Thunder

Buona sera. I was able to catch some of the usual Christmas movies that I like to watch every year. Now, wait a minute! I am not going to be going on about Christmas, exactly, and then I'll drop it. I'm as glad the season is winding down as much as almost everyone else. So anyway. Hard-hearted and heavy-handed employers make labor burdensome. Labor, by its nature, is seldom a joy. But treating your employees poorly, or even neglecting opportunities to bring them a little joy, is a good part of what causes labor to be a burden. In National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Mr. Shirley suspended the Christmas bonuses. He was becoming a miser and was more interested in saving a few dollars than in the best interests of his employees. In this case, the Christm as bonus was expected every year, and they counted on it as part of their salaries. When he had to look at the Griswold family, he said, " Look, uh, sometimes things look good on paper, but lose their luster when y...

Buon giorno, Pardners! Do you ever have that experience where something occurs to you and you ponder it for a while, then it finds its way to the back of your mind and camps out for a while, then it comes back so you can consider it again? It happens to me occasionally. Sometimes, the cycle repeats itself several times. Well, one of those thoughts seems to have come to fruition. Tommy the Knocker and Nicky hate it when I talk that way ("comes to fruition"), and they don't like my title. Too bad. There are people that put "The State" above all else. Your liberties do not matter to these Statists . All that matters is government control, making you bow to the state. According to Mark Levin, Statists are not necessarily liberals. I see it that liberals are more likely to be Statists (so I have a slight disagreement with the great one), and in America the extreme leftist liberals do not believe in the rights of the individual. All that matters are their own ...

Buon giorno. While doing some follow-up research on my " Arrogant Atheist " series, I came across some interesting bits of projection (where you do something, deny doing it, and then say that someone else is doing it). Also, I find some interesting rationalizations for arrogance. While skimming an atheist group, I saw some comments by someone that is a "Christian" (I put the term in quotes because this person is so liberal in theology, it's pretty much "anything goes") tells the atheists, "You're so much nicer than the so-called 'Christians' that I run across", and how Christians shame themselves, etc. Meanwhile, the sneering and condescending approaches of the atheists is excused. Why? Because the ultra-liberal "Christian" had more in common with the atheists than with people that believe the Bible to be true. Of course there was agreement! Also, use of deliberately antagonistic expressions such as "xians" ...

Buoa sera. Not too long ago, I was involved in a discussion in an online forum regarding things that we find irritating. One fellow is upset about anti-intellectualism, and wondered why it exists in the first place. I felt that I was bright enough to attempt to offer a bit of an answer (it was a public forum, after all). After I gave that answer, I kept thinking about the subject and have more ideas to offer. Why are people anti-intellectual (or dislike those who call themselves intellectuals)? Smug. The "intellectual class" is so much more clever than those of us who actually have to work for a living, and they let us mere mortals know it. Here is a smug, arrogant article that is just reeking of attitude and helps prove my point. Impractical. They gather together to discuss "ideas" and "knowledge", but appear to be unable to take care of even their own needs. Hey, Mr. Brain! Can you change a tire, or only discuss the physics involved? Torque this , Pa...

Edited content for clarity on Tuesday, November 24, 2009. Buon giorno. Yes, I think my title is funny. This past weekend was an emotional, mental and physical roller coaster. It was time to reformat my hard drive. Dump the scraps of leftover software and things I really do not need, reload it with stuff that I know is better and go at it with my increased knowledge. Reformatting has been a source of bad news for me for a long time, mainly from trying to get the computer to resemble what I had before. I have no problem helping someone else with it, but for me, I get anxiety attacks based on experiences with my first Windows computer (HP does this to people). It happened again. First, I could not get anything to show up on my monitor. After checking some things on Nicky's computer, I decided to reformat it again. Still nothing, just a flashing cursor in the upper left corner. I looked up some more "solutions" online and tried them. No dice. I connected with a Hewle...

This post is long overdue. I am going to go on record and say flat out that I am against abortion. If you have the courage, hear me out. Warning: This discussion is going to be very direct and some people may find it offensive. "Offended" in this case is wimp talk for "I can't handle the truth". My facts are confined to the United States. The principles still apply wherever you are, though. But first, I have to tell you that I am not so extreme that I say "no" to all abortions at all times. The exceptions that I accept are when the life of the mother is in actual danger (none of this philosophical nonsense, I want facts), rape or incest (only one percent of abortions occur because of these factors). Ninety three percent of abortions are for social convenience. Millions of abortions are performed, and most of those are because women can't keep their legs together. Sure, it's OK in their lust-crazed minds to do the bang tango, unprotected, w...

This came from my patriotic ex-marine buddy. (Hey, Don! I'm using your material again!) I am very selective on the scores of e-mails that I receive. Many are inaccurate or out of date. I checked this one and read a good portion of the text that is below is reproduced here . The shoe is on the other foot and the Mexicans from Sonora don't like it. Can you believe the nerve of these people? It's almost funny. State of Sonora (Mexico) is angry at the influx of Mexicans into Mexico . Nine state legislators from the Mexican state of Sonora traveled to Tucson in 2008 to complain about Arizona 's new employer crack down on illegals from Mexico. It seems that many Mexican illegals are now returning to their hometowns and the officials in the Sonora state government are ticked off about it. The delegation from Sonora said that Arizona's new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state. At a news conference, ...

Let me get something out of the way straight away. I am not saying that there are not bad people who call themselves Christians, both now and in the past. And I am not saying that there are not good people who call themselves Muslims, both now and in the past. I'm saying that Islam promotes violence and condones murder much more readily than Christianity. Capice? While re-listening to an audio book of Godless: The Church of Liberalism by my One True Love , I'm still pondering the situation involving Rifqa Bary . (Listening to Ann Coulter and thinking about Leftists makes me even more dangerous than usual.) In fact, I had a bit of a scare this morning when I saw a headline that said something like, "Fugitive Found Dead", but it was about someone that probably deserved it. Annie was talking about how liberals will often trot out a crying woman, or women, to make their case when logic doesn't work (and logic doesn't work for leftists most of the time). The World...

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised anymore. After all, I've been around for quite a few years and seen many things. But I'm going to be a rat and squeak loudly. This one is something. The sender claims to be "Benny Crocker" . False sense of security, huh? The nice lady image in your mind of someone that helps you with good food and feeds you brownies or something. The other part is a dead giveaway, however. The headers say more about the sender: Received: from mail.haosen.com.cn (unknown [59.46.168.60]). "CN" is "China". ChiComs are trying to trick me? The boys in the crew are laughing almost as hard as I am. The loser's subject line is, "List of small companies in the USA". And the rest is: "many different fields such as company income, email, number of employees and more There are 17 million total records and 2 million emails Reduced to only: $299 - from today until this Friday Email us at: Jerome@BestAccurateReliable.com ...

Buona sera. I've been going on about "humanists" and atheists lately, and off and on for several months. Those people irritate me with their smug "I'm smarter than you" attitudes, and their efforts to tear down the beliefs of others. Here are links to a two-part article by Frederick Meekins. This is more scholarly and less caustic than my articles ( here are a few if you want to have some fun), but contain a great deal of truth. I won't invite atheists to read them, because the number of atheists who have the intellectual honesty to examine the evidence against them, well, I can count them on one hand. (For instance, mention Intelligent Design and just sit back and watch them rant. Extra points if they turn red in the face.) Take it away, Mr. Meekins! http://www.newsbull.com/forum/more.asp?TOPIC_ID=74565 http://www.newsbull.com/forum/more.asp?TOPIC_ID=74637

Buon giorno. While poking around some online forums and communities, I happened across a nest of "Humanists". Humanists are essentially atheists; they believe there is no God, and have antipathy for organized religions, especially Christianity. They'll use derogatory terms like "Xtians" and refer to "Jeebus", and are more than happy to tell you how much smarter they are than the millions of us who believe in a higher power. They believe in "reason" and science, and constantly slam anything religious as being ignorance and superstition. As I constantly maintain, they do not bother to seriously examine the scientific basis for belief in God and the Bible. Some of the greatest scientific minds in history have been Christians, or "believers" to some degree (that is, being an atheist does not make you a better scientist). What do Humanists stand for? Oh, they say that they believe in people, or humanity or whatever similar word you want...

Buona sera. I'm going to keep this short and to the point. In my lines of work as well as my personal lives, I don't have much tolerance for having people waste my time or toy with my emotions. I think some of that is because I'm getting older, too. If my time is going to be wasted or my emotions are going to be toyed with, I'm going to be the one choosing to do it. What I'm going on about is having to guess what people mean. When one of my goomahs says, "We don't have to go out tonight", then fine, she doesn't want to go out tonight. If Tommy the Knocker says that he doesn't want the last piece of pizza, then it's fair game for me or one of the others in the crew to grab it. I don't want the babe whining at me later that she really did want to go out, or Tommy to grumble because he didn't get the last slice. What, I'm supposed to read between the lines? I'm a freakin' mind reader? (Besides, mind reading is illegal on...

Buona sera . This article is taking a different approach, and I'm posting it in several places at once because it doesn't fit just one Weblog theme. I’m suspicious of AskMen.com. Instead of trying to help men be better men, it often has articles written by women that tell men how to please women. And they have those online surveys. These are nowhere near scientific (like the “Top 48 Most Influential Men of 2008” putting B. Hussein Obama ahead of many other tried and true contenders; it was obviously repeat voting done to influence the election). Their “ Top 99 Women ” can also be influenced by repeat voting, but the motive is fan based. “...Our 2009 Great Male Survey , a poll that drew over 50,000 participants and more than 2 million responses. We asked our male readers more than 100 questions about their love lives, their jobs, how they spend their leisure time, and their thoughts on current events. The final results paint a surprising picture of the modern man -- ...

Buona sera. Today's rant is a bit different. It's from the heart (I do have one despite what my ex will tell you), there are no hard facts — but some reasoning. Lemme 'splain, Lucy. I'm going to connect my conclusions with my observations, and I'm going to show a bit of "two can play at that game". Due to circumstances that I will not discuss, I had to watch some of a soap opera. (To be politically correct, "daytime drama". To be honest, "waste of time".) But I have to give some credit to the actors, actresses, writers and director because the cast was doing quite well in looking like the infant on the show really was in imminent danger of dying from a virulent disease. I almost wanted to reach out and comfort the sobbing babes. One scene set off a mental chain reaction for me. She was in a hospital chapel and saying to God, "Is this what you want? What are you doing? Spare the child" and that sort of thing. Well, that sort of...

Buon giorno. First, I wanted to say that I had a "rodeo visitor" the other day. I call it that because he only lasted eight seconds. Time for some thunder today, since yours truly is very angry indeed. This has been going on for a while, and now I'm going to let it out. A few months ago, I purchased a 500 mb "My Book Essential" by Western Digital. (Cowboys usually like westerns, right?) It's an external hard drive that runs through the USB. These are a great idea: Back up your regular hard drive, install a second operating system, store all of that music that you downloaded illegally, store all of that music that you purchased legally, save the scanned photos of your ancestors, hide pictures you don't want your kids to see in an encrypted partition next to the government secrets you're hiding, store whatever you have downloaded or created over the years. I say again that it's a great idea. It's a great idea until it fails, that is. Then all ...

First of all, I want to say that there seem to be quite a few people in Arab-type countries that don't seem to like women. They wind up hitting my article called " Man Bad, Woman Good " when they are searching with terms like "bad women" and so forth. I bet they're disappointed! Anyway, quite a few of my articles come about from discussions that I have. This one happened at bed time. (No, I'm not giving you her name.) And I'm sure that there will be people that get angry with what I say here. It's the truth as I see it. There are many American women that simply wind up hating men. They get angry and confused. "Where does the anger and confusion come from, Cowboy Bob?" Several sources. One of the main sources is the modern femi-Nazi movement. These are leftovers from the "women's liberation" movement that began in the 1960s. On the surface, it was "equal pay for equal work". But the broader (heh!) perspective was ...

Buon giorno. I was having a discussion with a co-worker from a sister agency, and that discussion sparked some thoughts that simply cascaded in my mind. And now, you're about to reap the benefits of that process. Consider yourselves fortunate. I believe that personal opinions can be "seasonal". They are not real because they only last for a season, and are not true convictions based on thought, experience and the heart. The easiest example of this was the disastrous attitude of, "Let's vote for the half black guy! Yeah! He's different! And the old white guy is more of the same. CNN and the New York Times told me so." That was simply jumping on the popular bandwagon, and I did not find many people who could find any actual substance in B. Hussein Obama. On a slightly aside note, I think one reason that I've been doing the cowboy thing is that those values (integrity, honesty, faith, standing for something in the first place, etc.) have always b...

No time for gay banter, I'm simply going to launch. I would like to know something. What foundation do atheists have for their morality? (I'm not talking to the arrogant atheists that simply want to destroy the faith of others and prove that they're so much smarter than the rest of us. This is for honest atheists that are capable of rational dialogue.) Since you believe that there is no God, what is your basis for any sense of right and wrong? You can't base it on "civilization" for several reasons, especially the fact that the values of individual countries in a civilization change over time, and differ over distance as well. You can't base your morality on your own conscience and beliefs, because it's highly subjective. You may feel that it's wrong for me to put a bullet in your head, and I may feel that executing you is for the good of humanity. No, we have to appeal to someone higher up to settle that dispute. Also, I'd like to know...

Buona sera. Nothing to thunder about this time, just some speculation. I had some things to deal with in Michigan, so I left Lela and Nicky in charge of operations in my absence. (I'm not blaming them for the CD/DVD on my primary computer not being able to "recognize" CDs, but still play DVDs. Any advice out there? And the external hard drive quit right after I got back, so my collection of hot cowgirls is gone. No more Western Digital products for me!) Things are running well, so my confidence in them was well-founded again. You've seen those commercials saying, "We know why you fly" for one of the airlines. Cute, but unrealistic. It would be nice, though. And it would be nice that hotels and motels knew why we used their services as well. The main thing that most of us expect is a dark, quiet, safe place to sleep. Other things come secondary. But the reasons we end up at a sleeping establishment are as varied as there are individuals to have those reason...