“If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.” 

Unfortunately for the employees of the Burlington Coat Factory in Columbus, Ohio yesterday, at least 1,500 shoppers apparently forgot that little nugget of wisdom.

After a woman, later identified as Linda Brown, pulled up to the store in a rented limousine and loudly announced that she had just won the lottery and would pay for everyone’s purchases of up to $500, shoppers, convinced that they were being treated to free merchandise, began snapping up as many clothes as they could carry and bringing them to the register to have them rung up. 

It didn’t take long for the shoppers to call their friends and relatives to inform them of the “great deal”, and in no time, the store was filled with at least 500 shoppers, with another 1000 outside trying to get in. Registers were ringing up purchase after purchase. One customer, Candace Jordan, informed Ms. Brown that she didn’t need new clothes; she needed money to pay the rent. Ms. Brown wrote a check for the requested amount for her on the spot. 

I want you to remember Candace Jordan’s name; I’m coming back to her later.

Well, to make a long story short, it turned out that the entire thing was a hoax. Linda Brown had not actually won $1.5 million in the lottery. In fact, she had nothing, but by the time the customers had realized it, she had taken off in her rented limo. Unfortunately for Ms. Brown, she had made a crucial error; if you’re going to use a limo as a getaway vehicle, don’t rip off the driver. The driver turned her in to the police after he had realized that he was not going to get the $900 that she owed him. 

What Linda Brown did was reprehensible, and it turns out that she is a repeat offender; this was not her first brush with the law. Likely, she’s going to be spending some time in jail. However, in my opinion the behavior of the customers was even worse than Ms. Brown’s. 

You see, when they found out that they weren’t getting free merchandise after all, they decided to not only run out of the store with their ill-gotten gains, but vandalize whatever they couldn’t carry out. It was the looting in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina all over again. They were promised free merchandise, and by God, they were going to get it. The employees of the store lost hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars worth of stolen merchandise, not to mention a huge mess to clean up once the riot was over. 

The worst part about this riot was that it was completely senseless. These customers technically weren’t ripped off; the purchases weren’t under their names, they were under Linda Brown’s.   It wasn’t their money at stake. The worst that would’ve happened is that they simply wouldn’t have gotten the clothes for free.   If they really wanted them, they only needed to pay for what they actually could have afforded. They did plenty of ripping off of their own though, figuratively and literally.

Linda Brown, as bad as her behavior was, at least has an excuse; the woman is reported to be mentally disturbed to some degree. She has a history of odd behavior, centering on a desperate need for attention. The customers, however, have no excuses. 

So what would possess 1,500 people to act like sharks at a feeding frenzy?   It’s simple, really… the promise of free goods combined with the “entitlement” mentality that’s on the rise in America. It’s this mentality that has contributed to the drain of not only our finances but to the rise of the Democrat Party in general, along with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank (not that I believe people like the above shoppers have any idea who these politicians are) and most notably, the election of Barack Obama. 

I think it’s a pretty safe bet that most of those rioting shoppers are Obama voters, or vote Democrat in general. To the Democrats, there’s no better tactic than convincing the masses that not only do they “deserve” or “have the right to” various goods or services, but that they can actually deliver these to them; anything to keep the masses voting the Dems back into power. After years of such indoctrination in our government-run public schools, the media and entertainment industry, the result is incidents like the one in Ohio. 

Promise the world, blame the opposition for anything they can’t deliver, keep their delegates angry enough at the Republicans to vote for you again. Rinse and repeat. 

The liberals have done their job well.

Now, remember Candace Jordan? The woman who asked for money to pay her rent? In my opinion, she’s the worst moocher of the lot. This woman actually went to the store, not to buy a coat (she said she didn’t need clothes, remember), but for the express purpose of getting free money from someone she thought was a millionaire. Kind of reminds me of the woman who cried to Obama that she needed a house, or more recently, the unruly crowd who thought they were being handed “Obama checks” a few days ago.

Oh well, at least in the end the joke was on her, but like the other shoppers, she didn’t actually lose any money, she only didn’t receive something that she was promised (which she really didn’t earn in the first place). She’s no worse off than when she started.

Perhaps, in her own twisted way, Linda Brown was trying to teach us a lesson about just how selfish and irresponsible we’ve become. Unfortunately, she’s also demonstrated just how gullible we can really be. It’s just a shame that so many people have such a sense of entitlement, that they will learn absolutely nothing from this.

Sources:

Lottery Hoax Causes Riot at Ohio Coat Factory: Mehgan Barr, AP Writer, Associated Press, 10/14/09

I’m going to be blunt about this. Military recruiters have a hard enough time filling their quotas as it is, especially now. Ending this policy is going to make it tougher. 

I’m not suggesting that gays are incapable of serving their country with pride and honor. This has a lot more to do with the psychological factor of heterosexuals than the performance capabilities on the part of homosexuals. 

So-called “open minded” straights can brag all they want that they don’t care what homosexuals do behind closed doors, but I’m willing to bet that their tunes would quickly change if they were forced to share that same room with them while they did their business. 

As someone who has served in the navy, I can tell you first-hand that I’ve heard conversations between a few of my shipmates bragging about exactly what they would do if they ever found out that a fellow sailor was gay. Trust me, their plans weren’t very nice. Most of those stories would end with their victim doing an unplanned swan dive over the side. 

You can’t just force most people to change their psychological wiring, no matter how many new laws you introduce. Laws that are created to control one’s behavior do not change his beliefs, it just suppresses them.

Now, there may be some gays (or “open minded” straights) reading this who will say “So what if the recruitment of straights goes down? They’ll be plenty of gays perfectly willing to take those homophobes’ place! The recruitment numbers will barely change.”

This brings me back to the title of this article, which states that removing this policy will contribute to lower recruitment numbers. It is not the end-all. There are a few other policies that Obama has promised that concern me… policies that will affect the recruitment of both straights and gays.

One of the big attractions for a potential recruit is the promise that upon completion of his service, he will receive a large sum of money for his college tuition, notably the Montgomery G.I. Bill. When I enlisted back in 1990, it was $10,000 (for 4 years of service). Currently, it is now around $47,556. 

Guaranteed college money... sounded good to me at the time!

Another big attraction is the guarantee that many of your medical expenses will be taken care of under the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (commonly called “VA Benefits”) for life. Trust me when I tell you that in my experience as both a veteran and as a kid raised in a military family, VA medical care is not as great as it sounds… I prefer the private sector.  However, to most young recruits who have little to no military experience, this sounds like a good deal. It certainly did to me when I signed up.

Here’s the problem… President Obama has pledged that not only would he like to see a “single-payer” health care system in place (a government system in which everyone’s health care is provided for by taxpayer dollars, a practice embraced in socialist countries), but he has also stated that he wants the government to provide the funds for a student’s college education. After all, as his supporters would say, “everyone has the right to an education”.

What happens if these policies were actually put into place? The fact is, there are plenty of young folks who join the military not out of a sense of pride, duty and honor to serve their country, but because they’re getting ready to graduate from school, they don’t know what they’re going to do with their lives, and they want a chance to get some money for college. The military seemed to be a good solution to that problem. 

I hate to admit it, but this was true in my case. Patriotism and a sense of duty weren’t instilled into me until years after I had joined at the age of 19. 

Your typical teenage candidate, when approached by a recruiter, would probably be thinking along the lines of “Why should I join the military and risk getting killed for something I’ll automatically be getting as a civilian under President Obama?” 

As if I hadn’t made enough enemies already, the last policy that I’m about to discuss will probably have our fine servicemen and women ready to form a lynch mob against me. 

President Obama has also made a promise back in February to give a military pay raise of about 2.9 %. If anyone deserves a pay raise, it’s our service members, especially the ones serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Unfortunately, wanting to give someone what you think they deserve is a lot different than what is actually practical. 

Where is this extra money going to come from? True, Obama claims that it will come from cuts in wasteful military spending, such as on what he claims are “Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use” (I’m assuming that he’s referring to nuclear missiles), but who determines what we need or don’t need? Some would argue that it is those very missiles that prevent us from being attacked to begin with, but Obama has pledged to reduce our arsenal, an ideal that awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Too bad North Korea, China, Iran and Russia don’t share those dreams. 

Just as in the private sector, when you’re forced to raise the minimum wage for employees, you’re going to need to sacrifice something in order to achieve that goal and still maintain the bottom line, whether it means cutting programs, services… or employees. 

I wouldn’t be so concerned about the pay raise if our economy was booming, but unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past year like a certain Saudi terrorist leader has, you know that we’re not doing so hot right now. I hate to suggest this, but the pay raise may have to wait.

Let the accusations of “homophobe” and “Obama-basher” begin.

Sources:

Obama reaffirms will end ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’: Christine Simmons, Associated Press, 10/11/09

Obama’s budget calls for 2.9% military pay raise: Jeff Schogol & Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes, 02/27/09

Active Duty GI Bill User’s Guide: Military.com

Obama on Single Payer Health Insurance:  (Video) Posted by 6y2o12la, 06/29/08

In the event of an emergency landing, dumping excess fuel to lighten the weight of the aircraft was at one time a standard procedure. Now, a Japanese airliner is asking their passengers to do some dumping of their own before they even take off. 

A new policy introduced by All Nippon Airways (ANA) has encouraged their passengers to pay a visit to the restroom before boarding their planes. The reason? No, it’s not because their restrooms were removed… not yet, anyway. The logic behind it is that passengers with empty bladders will be lighter, which would add less weight to the plane, which in turn, would burn less fuel. The result is… you guessed it; lower carbon emissions. The things people will do to save the planet. I can’t help but wonder what the penalty is for using the restroom on the plane. 

On second thought, never mind.  I don’t want to know.

While I was reading this story, I looked at the picture that was provided on the website. As I observed the blue and white airliners, I couldn’t help but wonder; wouldn’t it have made more sense to simply have scrapped all that heavy paint off? How many pounds would be shed? However much weight would have actually been lost, it has to be more than anything the passengers could have… shed. 

Unless, of course, one of the jetliners was transporting a sumo wrestling team to their next meet, but that’s another matter. 

Believe it or not, this actually isn’t the most bizarre story I’ve heard about our attempts to lower our carbon emissions. That honor goes to the Australians, who were trying to figure out how to genetically re-engineer their native kangaroos (by replacing their stomachs with a cow’s stomach) so that they wouldn’t, to put it politely, pass as much gas. One scientist even urged Australians to eat kangaroo burgers as opposed to cow burgers, since a kangaroo’s flatulence emits more carbon into the atmosphere than a cow’s. Result… fewer kangaroos poisoning the atmosphere with their… ahem… farts.

Seriously, how many more stories like these are we going to see until these global warming nut jobs are laughed out of the public media? To be honest, I hope we see a lot more of them. The more stories like these are aired, the more people will realize just how ridiculous these folks are. I can hardly wait for the next one, keep ‘em coming, you tree-hugging wackos.

And remember… save the planet; eat more kangaroo.

Sources:

Airline Asks Passengers to use Toilet Before Boarding…. : Mail Foreign Service 10/06/09

Kangaroo Farts: Susan Reed, All About My Planet.com 12/15/07