Voting: Guess what? It's a responsibility, and frankly, if you're an idiot, you shouldn't vote. Yeah, I know that would suck for the Dems, because that's about half of their voting base; I could believe that a few percent of the democrat voters actually believe in the their party's values, but the rest are ignorant, selfish, or insane. History doesn't lie, folks.
Debate 3: Who cares? Seriously, if you allow yourself to be swayed by the debates, don't fucking vote. If you're that big of an idiot that you will base your greatest responsibility on six hours of skewed television, and probably actually believe the ultra liberal media reports afterward (because you're too stupid to think for yourself and need to be told what's what), you should seriously consider becoming friends with your car's exhaust in the garage. Kidding. It's never too late to learn, but if you don't understand basic economics or the logic of not allowing our enemies (*cough* UN) to make our decisions, wait until 2008. In the meantime, get cracking.
Internationalism: Let's see, what's a good analogy for the US submitting to international law and international opinion, hmm... Okay, I've got one. Imagine Uncle Sam volunteering to bend over a barrel and take it up the ass from every single inmate in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Brilliant idea. We are at the top of the heap, and by considering the wishes of the rest of the world, many of whom wish only to destroy us, we're only stepping closer to the edge of the cliff. I don't just mean militarily; our economy would go to hell faster than Michael Moore can swallow a triple whopper, because the first laws drafted would mandate international progressive taxes or some such bullshit that would instantly cripple our economy. Oh, did I mention that it's unconstitutional for the sovereignty of the United States of America to be compromised?
United Nations: Kick 'em out of the US and leave the UN immediately. They're bloodsucking hypocritical bastards who, when not suckling the teat of corruption by collaborating with Middle Eastern dictators, wish only to tear us down. I'm not saying that every nation in the UN is corrupt, but simply that many of them are NOT our allies, and we should concentrate on our real allies... you know, the ones we unilaterally went to war on Iraq with. Without US support the UN would collapse relatively instantly; who's going to hand out large interest free loans then, and who's going to take up 95% of the burden in every single 'collaborative' effort?
John Kerry: It's almost unreal how unfit that man is for office. Besides the fact that he's a serial liar (Boston Marathon, deer hunting, ex-law enforcement person, Vietnam, Cambodia, I could go on but you get the idea), nobody has a fucking clue what he really stands for. Well, I guess we all really do, but he's so full of shit that he'll take whichever position is most popular for the moment. Worst presidential candidate that I've ever heard of, by quite a stretch. Back during the primaries I watched in disbelief as he won the candidacy, thinking the whole time that there was NO WAY this man would ever hold the office of President; I thought then, as did many others, that he must be a stalking horse, and he'd pull out two or three months before the election and Hillary would slip in. I'm appalled that so much of the nation seems to support him after all that he's said and done.
Hague Peace Conferences (1899 & 1907): As pertaining to military ammunition. First off, we didn't sign the stupid fucking 1899 accord, which was the one banning expanding ammunition. We DID sign the 1907 accord which forbids employing 'arms, projectiles, and materiel calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.' Well now. It seems to me that employing FMJ rounds and nothing else is a great way to cause unnecessary suffering. Think about it: would you ever shoot a deer with a full metal jacketed rifle bullet? Of course not. I'm not suggesting that using FMJ rounds is 'calculated' to cause unnecessary suffering, but it certainly does, for both our soldiers and the enemy. Look, people, deer die the same way people die, and hunters use expanding bullets because they kill much faster and more cleanly. It seems to me not a far leap of logic that humans would die faster and more humanly if we started shooting them with hollow and soft point bullets. I would never shoot a coyote, an animal 1/3 the size of the average human (if even that big) with a 5.56x45mm FMJ. If it's not even going to kill a coyote, come on now, how's it supposed to kill a human?
The suffering on the part of our soldiers comes in when you figure that they have to carry around a lot more ammo and possibly get wounded or killed simply because FMJ bullets aren't enough to incapacitate the target. 5.56x45mm + FMJ = bad, bad, bad. 7.62x51mm or 30-06 + FMJ = Not such a big deal. 5.56x45mm + JHP/JSP is probably not even equal to the 30 caliber cartridges loaded with FMJs, but it's an order of magnitude better than the varmint round and FMJ bullets. The 30 caliber cartridges with JSP ammo for normal use or JHP boat tails for longer range sniping is about as good as it gets short of an M45 Quadmount or a MOAB right on target, but I think our soldiers could make do just fine with JSP or JHP bullets in the 6.5-7mm range. I have something of a personal interest in this because I am planning on enlisting and it's going to suck big time to go into combat with an underpowered rifle; I'll talk about the specific problems with our military small arms later.
Speaking of our soldiers suffering and the military making shitty choices in caliber/bullet combinations, what the fuck were they thinking when they switched to the 9mm? Yeah, that's smart. I'm not going to go on a big rant about the 9mm vs Everything Else in a pistol, but let's just say I use a 9mm for defense only because my father bought it (and I also have a 12ga goblin whacker and a Marlin 336 30-30). I load my 9mm with +P 115gr hollowpoints, but I'm considering moving up to +P+ 124gr Hydra-Shoks or maybe Remington 147gr Golden Sabers. I haven't decided whether or not I prefer to maximize the speed of the 9mm or the mass, but I'm leaning toward mass. But that's yet another discussion for another time.