CommentsDisplaying Ailius's 10 most recent comments.

Here’s TheBlaze’s Start-to-Finish, 24-Hour+ Coverage of Dramatic Manhunt of Alleged Boston Bombers — It All Started With Reports of Gunshots at MIT

April 19, 2013 at 12:58pm

In reply to erinmchugh.

This actually relieves one of my fears since Afghanistan. Over there, when somebody does something like this, it’s never like this. All they have to do after planting the bomb is make it to the nearest building, and they are home free.

I actually thought they could use the same tactics here, and we wouldn’t be able to stop them without some draconian martial law. I’m pleasantly surprised in that there is a huge difference between Afghanistan and here.

Here, when a civilian sees a suspect, they call the cops. Or, try to apprehend the criminal themselves or whatever. The point is, contrast it with over there, where nobody sees nothing.

The thing I’m worried about at this point is that in Afghanistan IED cells, the bomb makers are skilled assets that they try to protect, so they have one guy make it and another guy plant it. These two suspects planted the bombs, which doesn’t confirm or deny that they made the bombs.

A take-home lesson for this event, in my opinion, is that we have got to get serious about our private security. A place like MIT shouldn’t be protected by college kids making minimum wage. Large scale private events like the Boston Marathon should as standard practice hire security contracting firms that can specialize in this sort of thing and then contract to another event when not needed.
NY Times Publishes First Person Acct. of Gitmo Prisoner: ‘I Would Not Wish This Cruel Punishment Upon Anyone’

April 15, 2013 at 1:02pm

In reply to wickerman1227.

Why is it that we interpret the Geneva conventions as we would a bowling handicap? It’s like we think they were put in place to handicap whoever has the stronger military so that every war is interesting.

Isn’t an ‘interesting’ war the exact thing we don’t want? In my opinion, the “best” wars are completely one-sided so the damn thing can be over quickly.

Besides, even under Geneva, fighting while disguised as a civilian = spy = summary execution. The signers put this provision in there because if you have combatants disguising themselves as civilians, it turns into chaos. It causes every skirmish between a superpower and a third world p___hole to turn into a decade long quagmire with millions of *real* civilians dying.

And if a few people end up falsely executed, that sucks. War is by its very nature the doing of the lesser of two evils.
Do You Think McDonald’s Needed to Apologize For This Parody Ad?

April 14, 2013 at 10:53am

In reply to ares338.

Actually, the National Coffee Association recommends only brewing at 195-205 degrees. They do recommend serving “immediately” but when you look in detail it says 180-195 degrees, so McDonald’s was not serving below NCA recommendations. They were actually right on the mark.

Nobody bury this thread. This is important.

…yeah, I’ll admit it. I was a little too sympathetic because she needed to be hospitalized. Then I remembered that people do stupid things to land themselves in hospitals all the time, and not every case is lawsuit material.
Do You Think McDonald’s Needed to Apologize For This Parody Ad?

April 13, 2013 at 12:31pm

In reply to ares338.

It wasn’t ‘millions’, and the settlement money was to cover medical bills for skin grafts to repair the third degree burns. By the way, the coffee was crazy stupid boiling hot enough to cause third degree burns. She had to be *hospitalized* over that coffee spill. As Paul Harvey would say, that’s “the rest of the story”.

Oh well, you probably aren’t going to read this and are going to cite this case in a few months anyway.
Jay-Z Finds Himself in Rap Battle With… Fox News Host — Seriously, Listen to This ‘Funky Fresh’ Rap

April 12, 2013 at 1:03pm

In reply to scrapadapolis.

I don’t know if “bought and paid for” isn’t as accurate as “under control”.

I left the Army recently. Partially out of principle, partially because of the sequester, and partially because I got a “bad boss”.

The problem I have right now is that with the economy, and the fact that all of my “hard skills” aren’t useful to non-military companies, I’m having a lot of trouble getting a professional job. Yes, Obama has set up a grand Transition Assistance Program that we all have to go through. Its about as useful as every other government program. In it’s defense, I haven’t looked into Helmets to Hardhats or Troops to Teachers – I suspect those programs are very effective at getting people into unions or academia respectively.

The career officers who stayed in quite simply have no other option. They have invested 10-20 years of their life to the Army, and are too old to drop everything and start another career from the ground up, which is impossible to do in this economy. They have families too which they can’t support working at Walmart.

As it stands, many of these guys can’t afford to oppose the administration. Their own thoughts and opinions are irrelevant. If Obama’s administration doesn’t end in 2016 (not a certainty), then they might as well swear feudal oaths to the Democratic Party.
Man’s Stolen Laptop Sends Him Secret Photos of Its New Owners — In Iran

April 12, 2013 at 12:20pm

As for the “thieves”, buying stolen/pirated merchandise is common practice in that part of the world, and *all* the merchants sell that stuff. It’s not like they have Walmart.

Moralistically, they don’t really have a concept of a “fence” or “purchaser of stolen property”. Furthermore, thieves generally have to either be caught red-handed, or they are free. If a modern laptop suddenly shows up in a farmer’s market kiosk next to local produce and locally found scrap, everyone may be suspicious but nobody will make the accusation.

These girls are not doing anything remarkably different than their peers.
Man’s Stolen Laptop Sends Him Secret Photos of Its New Owners — In Iran

April 12, 2013 at 12:08pm

In reply to Alex404.

Bad idea.

Hackers would crack such a program in order to vandalize computers remotely.
What Odd Items Did DHS Try To Purchase (And Then Suddenly Cancel)?

April 11, 2013 at 12:52pm

They probably needed this equipment for some sort of covert action. The CIA, FBI, etc. has a tendency to require off-the-wall stuff like this when they gather intelligence.

The real problem here is DHS’ ever-expanding mission. All they were supposed to do was to co-ordinate between the *other* three-letter agencies to *share* intelligence. Now, they are apparently gathering intelligence of their own.

What’s happening is that their managers are allowing them to expand into a redundant version of the FBI. So, the *entire* agency, except for the three or four office clerks still assigned to share intelligence, is turning into waste.
Obama Is Set to Become the First President to Ever Do This

April 11, 2013 at 12:18pm

In reply to ALL4FREEDOM.

@meteors

Okay, I’ll agree with you. Bush did rack up too much debt.

How does that in any way justify Obama’s overspending? All he’s done is made the problems he has inherited worse. It’s like he started off in a hole and he’s convinced he can get out of it if he keeps digging deeper and deeper.

Right now, that headline is an understatement. Obama currently stands as the most indebted world leader in the history of human civilization.

Ever.

Let’s be honest, if Obama was any kind of good, you’d be trying to compare his positives to FDR, but you can’t.
Army Email Allegedly Labels Christian Organizations That Oppose Gay Marriage as ‘Domestic Hate Groups’

April 10, 2013 at 3:17pm

That reminds me…I’ve been looking for my bible. It must have been in the glove compartment of the car that went into the river with my guns in the trunk.