Today's Happenings...

I usually come across some pretty interesting people when assigned to Park Host over at Big Delta State Historical Park (something I do about once a week, usually on the heaviest traffic days). Today, I saw a fella with a hat with "F/A-22" embroidered on it.

I asked him where he got it. He said his son worked on the F/A-22 project with Northrop, and the hat came from an associate. His son also worked on the B-2 project in the late '80s. He couldn't speak much of it until it became more public, and once it did, he sent his father all sorts of paraphernalia--hats, collector pins, jackets, etc.

Neat stuff. Kind of like how I got my first HK hat--being in the right place at the right time. Met an engineer from Sterling, VA, who was in Delta while they were cold-weather testing the XM8 (which turned out to be problem-laden--I kind of wondered what a new 5.56mm battle rifle design would offer, since the G-36 was introduced only a few years ago and is still a pretty solid design). He sent us all sorts of promotional materials.

Next is a news article I got from a fellow Deagler. Comes from FOXNews, and relates to something I had already heard about from people who were there: that WMDs were found in Iraq. Over 500 of them.

It corroborates with what I heard from an officer from Wainwright this past winter, who specialized in the handling and disposal of chemical weapons. He said they moved a LOT of them in Iraq.

Finally, I want to comment on something set off by two emails sent to me from my parents. They passed along two accounts of exchanges, one dealing with a well-known story about a Christian's reaction to a pro-gay episode of "The Practice," and a webmaster who couldn't keep his comments to himself; the other dealing with Target's supposed anti-veteran stance.

Both incidents were rooted in a real exchange, and both, to a certain degree, either leave out certain details, or overly exaggerate them. Whatever the case, the facts were spun to provoke outrage by conservatives, something I took upon myself to correct, by pointing my parents out to an urban legends site addressing these very same exchanges.

To jump quickly to my point, it's a good idea to check out your sources before letting yourself be used to further someone else's propaganda. The nature of the internet in disseminating information is both blessing and curse--the accessibility is great, but ease of access can be exploited too easily by those with an agenda.

I find liberals to be worst perpetrators in this regard, promoting all sorts of rumors just by their sheer sensationalism, but conservatives are not immune to this, either. So, to avoid embarrassment, do your homework.

Otherwise, you join the ranks of morons like Ward Churchill and his league of Little Joseph Göbbels.

Final item--my copy of "Godless" came in today. Hooray! I think I got another one coming from NewsMax, but that's no big deal. I'll give it to one of my liberal friends--who also happens to own several of Coulter's books.