Oh, and another thing.

What the fuck is up with all these fake "country" motherfuckers? Where the fuck do these Neanderthals get off with their "proud to be a redneck" bullshit? Believe it or not the term "redneck" is not synonymous with being a White Trash Piece of Shit (or a WTPS). A redneck is a person that earns their living toiling in the fields or other such hard labor. The "red necks" coming from heavy tan on their necks from being over under the sun in the fields all fucking day long. This is an honorable and dignified profession and one that is due respect. Most of the Mexican immigrants that these fake rednecks love to hate for “stealing their jobs” and diluting their bullshit cracker culture? Yeah, those are the real rednecks, the ones that work the fields that put food on your table. They are the ones that should carry the title with pride, not the frauds with their phony act.

My bet is that most of them (especially the women) haven’t done a day in the fields in their lives. Being some trailer bound, NASCAR watching, 3 broke ass cars on the lawn owning, hygienically challenged, obese, grammatically inept, inbred piece of human waste makes you WHITE TRASH. You are not a redneck if your sorry fucking ass works at the bottom of the service industry and you are an uneducated, uncultured piece of rural living shit. Don't steal the title of "redneck" from men and women that make an honest living in the agrarian/farming industry. I blame things like "Larry the Cable Guy's" fake ass bullshit comedy act. This entire Blue Color comedy movement is an attempt by more intelligent non-White Trash folks to make a buck off stupid uncultured and simple fucks by giving them a gold star for being an embarrassment to our species.

What’s even worse than white trash trying to pass themselves off as some proud breed of agrarian aristocracy, the inheritors of the traditions of Jefferson or the honorable hard working character of the southern yeoman or tenant farmer or more commonly the bad Western or romance novel persona of the independent rancher/cowboy? (Most real cowboys were, by modern standards, disreputable figures or even worse Mexicans). The wanna-be, the lowest form of live on Earth. Just because you were born in or raised in Texas or the South does not make you "country". Because you had pretty horses on your bedroom wall as a kid and daddy raised you to vote Republican and watch NASCAR does not entitle you to some confused pride in being "country". Because you wear trucker hats and drive a gigantic goddamned truck does not make you a fucking cowboy. Or cowgirl. What the FUCK is a cowgirl? 90% of the missed blow job opportunities that claim to be "cowboys" or "cowgirls" haven't been on a fucking horse in their life. 90% of the ones that have rode them around for leisure and fun because their daddy could afford to buy them one (a mustang at 14 and a Mustang at 16). You do not herd cattle for a living; you are not a cow-fucking-anything.

Take down your stupid Confederate flag, the war is over, your ancestors are Scots-Irish from Jersey and you live in a Charleston suburb. WHY are you "proud to be a Southern girl/boy"? What great contributions has the South made? What does even being "Southern" mean? Newsflash, the most southern people I've met are all black people. Again, being white trash, or worse wanna-be middle class suburban white trash, is not an accomplishment. All that proud to be a redneck/country boy/southern boy/Confederate/country bullshit that you plaster all over the place is the creation of people who are just trying make a buck of your ignorant ass. It's a fucking pop culture caricature of a culture that didn't exist until it was created by the media. You are the consumer of a mocking stereotype. You suck at life. Fuck you.

Take your stupid "Git-R-Done" stickers off your car, get those retarded flashing pictures and icons off your MySpace page, take off the cowboy hat, stop saying reckon, nobody gives a shit if Dodge/Chevy/Ford makes the best trucks ever. You wanna know who makes the best fucking trucks ever you fucking tool? Toyota. Toyota makes the best fucking trucks ever. Don't think so? Ask the thousands of mujahedeen, insurgents, Special Forces soldiers, rebels and far ranging academics and explorers of the world which brand of stripped down machine they use to get their asses over mountains and forests and every shitting place in world and they'll tell you nothing's good for a Jihad like a Toyota. But Toyota's don't have the cup holders that will accommodate your Big Gulp, do they? Better make it a Ford after all. You're "redneck" ass will need those cup holders for all those grueling highway miles.

Should have bought stock.

Actual military members don't do manual labor in a war zone anymore unless it's in direct connection to a war fighting capability (which in the end all labors are). For instance you can still expect to see Marines filling sandbags in a guard post or securing a perimeter with concertina wire. While that kind of work still happens a lot even after all the years we've been having our little neocon world building experiment over here in the sandbox but in the big scheme of things it is also a very small piece of the pie. Marines don't burn or empty shitters, fix broken doors, run wiring, put up internal barricades, pave roads or fight lines, paint buildings, do any site beautification (yard work), dig ditches or any of that other shit much anymore. Of course it still happens but mainly at the most forward of out posts and when working around sensitive equipment (that’s where I do most of my ditch digging). This means that all the thousands of military personnel that were once tasked with doing all of the tedious shit are now occupied with complaining about being bored. Better bored than over worked is my motto.

This work still has to be done but now it's done by contractors imported to Iraq for just this purpose. Even our (low risk) internal security check points are manned by armed contractors (or mercs) by a company that raises its forces in Uganda. (I find that I very much like all the Ugandan people I've been exposed too.) Therein lies "The Thing". You see "The Thing" is that most of the contractors that do all the manual or skilled labor in Iraq are not Americans, they're mostly Asians i.e. Nepalese, Indian, Pakistani, Indonesian, Pilipino, etc. KBR is contracted to do these jobs so they go and hire a fraction of the Americans it would take to do the work and use them as supervisors and foreman for the sub-contracted Third World sub-contractors. I was talking to a man from Nepal who used to be in the Nepalese Army. A quick historical note: the Nepalese are famed soldiers. They have a reputation for being tough and tenacious; the British have fielded Gurkhas (Nepalese tribesmen) or centuries and they are even now fighting Maoist guerilla in their country. This man paid a labor agent $3,000 to get a slot to come over to Iraq and work. He was expecting to work as a security contractor but instead found that he was to be doing labor (in this case assisting an American electrician). He cannot leave until he has paid back his $3,000 and with the amount that he gets paid by his company it will take almost 3 years of work for him to pay back the fee, pay his way back home and have enough money left over to make it worth the trip (and separation from his family).

Is Mike Huckabee a drooling retard or just a whore?

Answer: whore. To be fair almost all politicians are, by the nature of their trade and the fickle votes and pocket books of their countrymen, whores. Huckabee knows that unless he can get the American Evangelical movers and shakers behind his campaign in the form of grassroots exposure and fundraising than his campaign is over. He needs to convince the Fundie Farm that he has a chance and deserves their support. The problem is that in order to have a chance he first needs to get that support. This causes him to wave the Fundie flag and say crazy, confused and foolish shit like the following in order to get their attention:

(From CNN)
Speaking before a gathering of Christian conservative voters, GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee said legalized abortion in the United States was a holocaust."Sometimes we talk about why we're importing so many people in our workforce," the former Arkansas governor said. "It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973."Huckabee also spoke adamantly of the need for conservative lawmakers to show no compromise on fighting for a constitutional amendment that defines marriage between a man and a woman. "I'm very tired of hearing people who are unwilling to change the constitution, but seem more than willing to change the holy word of God as it relates to the definition of marriage," he said.Huckabee, spoke before the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. Saturday.

Now harkening abortion to a "holocaust" and the legal institution of marriage as some sort of supernatural bonding of souls (those of the same gender lack a certain adhesive celestial quality it would seem) is nothing new but totally going off the deep end to pander to the irrational xenophobia and fear of outsourcing of the lowest common denominator of American society is a pretty sad place to be. If you're going to play on people's ignorance and bigotry at least try to make some sense while you're doing it. You know, like Reagan did. Huckabee has pretty much managed to make all of the following statements:

1.)There are more jobs than people in the United States
2.)Filling undesirable jobs with immigrants is a bad thing.
2.)The labor pool is shrinking.
3.)More people in the U.S. would be advantageous, as long as they aren't Mexicans.
4.)Abortion is to blame illegal immigration.

And this guy is running for President of the United States? The funny thing is every single one of the above statements, with the exception of the first, is wrong. Not debatable or even spinable, simply flat out, laughably wrong. I understand that when you are following on the heels of a President as bad as George W. Bush that you have to dig a little. Bush hurt his party so badly that this guy who was by most measures a good Governor (Executive experience), popular and a shoe in for the millions of white Evangelicals and so called "value voters" in this country has to get on his knees and beg. Sure, his name is Huckabee and that hurts but still, come on.

Tick-tick Doc, I'm watching the clock.

I can't even get into work, I'm so fucking angry about this shit that even thinking about it makes me apoplectic. Never again will I chain myself to the dictates of another. Ever. Fuck them.

I'm getting my shit in order to get out of the shit heap and move on with my life. I looking into putting in for more than the 2 months of terminal leave than I was already planning on asking for. Something I was not aware of was that the Marine Corps will pay me a monthly housing allowence when I'm on termial leave status as they no longer put me up in a barracks. This muct be a DoD wide thng because the Marine Corps would never go for that without being forced to do so by higher ups in the bureaucratic food chain. This means for me that it makes more sense for my pocketbook and my mental health to take a much in terminal leave as I can as opposed to selling back 40 days and only having 60 left over in terminal leave. I'm looking at something at more like 80-20 depending on how soon I get back from Iraq. The issue is getting this extra terminal signed off on.

Bottom line: this doesn't really mean I'll get back to Washington alot sooner than March. Maybe even April. It does leave me more time to see family and friends on the way back. I expect to split up about 4-6 weeks between South Carolina, Texas, Arizona and California. I'm also entertaining the idea of doing some sight seeing on the East Coast before I head out. DC and Philly maybe. Always wanted to get really fucked up and make poor choices in New York and Boston too. Then again maybe I'll just make a run for it and head West at first chance.