I will not be doing any real posting in the next few days, my travel itinerary is on the cusp of becoming busy and brisk and next week I’ll be at a convention in Orlando whose days will be filled with seminars, workshops and exhibits that will require every iota of my attention.

The rescheduling of the rally that brought me here to Washington, D.C. coincides directly with the convention schedule and I have to attend no matter what. If I can, I’ll try to get back up here a little early so as to participate for at least some of it. I had really looked forward to going at it with the LWAGAA (Leftard Wingnuts Against God And America), but the regrettable loss of Chief Justice Rehnquist, rest his soul, resulted in the change of many plans.  

Some great people named Phin, Sadie and Pixy are moving me to a brand new location with a brand new face, and when the dust settles, the new and vastly improved Hard Astarboard’s URL will be

http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/

Ah’ll be bock!  

I’m one of those people who snort novels. My favorite novelists are(some living, others deceased) Tom Clancy, Desmond Bagley, Robert Ludlum, Jack Higgins(ne Harry Patterson), Leslie Charteris, John Sandford, Adelaide Manning and Cyril Coles, David Morrell, Patricia Cornwell, Larry Bond, James Clavell, Janet Evanovitch, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, Eric Von Lustbaader, John LeCarre, Len Deighton and… Stephen J. Cannell.

Here’s a genius: He’s created a whole lot of successful TV series’, among them The Rockford Files, The A Team, Renegade, Silk Stalkings and Hunter. He’s also appeared in various guest roles, most notably as Lt. “Dutch” Dixon, the corrupt cop who framed fellow cop Reno Raines(Lorenzo Lamas) for murder and pursues him throughout the series.

I’d be derelict if I didn’t mention lovely Renegade co-star  Kathleen Kinmont, just on GP.

Cannell’s written a number of novels, all of which I’ve read and enjoyed tremendously. His books are refreshingly original and he researches his topics so that they are based in situations and details that smack of reality, and they are fluid reading, easy to read cover to cover, never a dull moment, constantly absorbing. Their genre is mostly crime/mystery.

Of all his novels to date, my favorite by far is King Con, a simultaneously amusing and riveting story about a man named Beano Bates who is the acknowledged master of the confidence game — the Bates clan, scattered throughout the U.S., are a family of proficient con artists and in King Con, Beano brings them all into a megastakes, high-ticket con to bring down a major mobster.

Cannell provides a graphically detailed look into the dynamics of the con game, including the insiders’ terminology such as “telling the tale”,  the different types of cons and how they work and the book is filled with great, well defined and often amusing characters. The novel is full of pleasant surprises yet also has its share of realistic brutal violence.

Cannell has a remarkable sense of humor that manifests itself in all of his books and I have yet to read one that isn’t fun to read.      

Another article at CENTCOM(U.S. Central Command)’s website, titled Isn’t fighting fires dangerous enough? tells the story of yet another Iraqi patriot that you would never find among the Bush hating, political left motivated Mainstream Media. Those partisan assholes want the American public to believe we’re(therefore the Bush Administration is) failing in Iraq, and they tailor their “news” to fit that template rather than telling us the truth.

Actions speak louder than words - particularly in Iraq. Such is absolutely the case, every morning, when Baghdad Fire Chief, Laith Abbas, gets out of bed and heads to work. 

Each day, he faces the reality that there is a significant “price on his head” by those who would destroy efforts to build a democracy in Iraq. However, for the good of the country, there are those - like this intense, wiry professional - who strive each day, one difficult step at a time, to build their part of what they hope will soon become an active, viable democracy.

Read the rest.

Any real American patriot who believes in our form of government and the spread of democracy would be encouraged by this man’s story. He is the embodiment of the Iraqi people, a nation that wants its chance to be free and is willing to take any risks necessary for the privilege.

The people in the U.S. who would deny the Iraqis the same freedoms we have because their success would be a success for W, mostly Democrats, are profound fucktards who don’t belong in a free society, they should have their U.S. citizenship yanked and be flown to someplace like Zimbabwe, never to return. Here are anal cavities who, just to realize their cheap anti-Bush political agendas, have no problem consigning an entire country, finally free after centuries of one kind of dictatorial government after another, most recently the rule of the sociopathic Hussein family, back to the kind of hell we’ve only recently liberated them from.

Liberals must be tough as nails if they can look in the mirror without vomiting all over themselves.   

If you’ve ever wondered how Starbucks Chairman Howard Shultz built the coffee concern into such a dynamo, try considering the employee loyalty factor as one element of his success. Until I read the bio linked above, I actually gave no thought to the man.

According to the bio, he came from poverty, got out of the projects with a college football scholarship and never looked back.

He worked for Starbucks and during that period of employment, when they only sold their coffee in bean or grounds form to take home, he tried convincing the company that they would do well to open a chain of cafes. They declined to act on his suggestions, he left and later bought the firm, then metamorphised it into what it is today. 

What kind of employee loyalty do you suppose you enjoy when you give 20 hour per week part timers full health coverage, and health coverage to unmarried spouses and institute a generous profit sharing plan, especially in these times when most employers go for the cheapest benefit packages they can scrape up and treat part timers like red headed step children(in fact a lot of companies, including the one that picks up and delivers most packages sent in the United States, I won’t reveal  the name of that company whose acronym is the opposite of ‘downs’, keep most of their rank and file employees on part time status so they don’t have to give them any benefits).  At any rate, Shultz is a great American success story if I’ve ever seen one, and he shares with his employees. The reason, he says, is because he wants to give others the chance to work for the kind of company his father never got to work for. Here’s the link again, check out his bio.

What actually brought on this curiosity about the Starbucks chairman was a link emailed to me by my good friend Steve who, like me, is an avid supporter of Israel. It is a long post on a Muslim website inciting readers to boycott Starbucks because Howard Shultz is also an avid supporter of Israel. He’s done business there, raised funds for Israel and is a very good friend of the Jewish state, so naturally, it stands to reason in the convoluted minds of members of The Religion Of Peace, he is the archenemy of Islam.

The Islamic site’s post begins:

Research Findings  Howard Shultz, chairman of Starbucks is an active Zionist.

Read and enjoy.

The U.K. website must have a more sedate readership than we’re accustomed to on Islamic forums, since there hasn’t been anything in the news as yet about anybody hijacking buses or eighteen wheelers and crashing them into Starbucks coffee houses, or anyone like Mr. Emoticon, here, setting up shop in a nearby mosque. 

This ain’t just a weekend for Barbecue, Beach, Blue Angels and fireworks(though as my old Bomb Search and Recognition course instructor reasoned, “Why would anybody want to go someplace where people are playing with high velocity explosives?”) with an extra day off from work thrown in.

It’s a time to honor the men and women who have given their lives preserving the freedom that is the hallmark of our country’s way of life, soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, coast guardsmen and the largely unsung heroes of the Merchant Marine.

So don’t forget to say a prayer for those of our military personnel who are in harm’s way today, a prayer of thanks and an appeal for their safe return when their respective tours are up, and say a few words of gratitude to those who gave their lives for us, their country, in past theatres of war.