MSNBC  has a live poll to grade Obama’s performance as  President, and we need to get some conservative  voices showing up in the results!  Here is  the site: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093/

At  this moment he is rated 58% “A” and 28%  “F”  PLEASE VOTE AND THEN PASS  THIS ON!!!

SPREAD THE WORD TO YOUR OTHER CONSERVATIVE  FRIENDS, ASSOCIATES, AND FAMILY AND  SITES!

We live everyday in the country that invented the Super Bowl. said Obama We are not about to lose this Great American tradition in the wake of these difficult times. Obama’s plan calls for the Steelers, who are a successful NFL team, to give half of their Super Bowl trophies to teams that are not successful or have not been as successful as the Steelers. The Detroit Loins are just as much a part of the same fiber of the NFL as the Steelers and they should, no rather will, be entitled to a Super Bowl Trophy as well. Obama explains in his plan that he has imposed on Godel and the NFL.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, who by virtue of hard work, excellent team play, stellar draft choices, responsible investing of free agents, careful hiring of coaches and excellent community service and commitment to their fans, has prospered greatly during the past 30 years and have won six Super Bowl Trophies. But President Barack Hussain Obama’s plan calls for the Pittsburgh Steelers to carry the larger burden of the NFL’s less successful teams. Obama went on to further proclaim, In these difficult times we are all in this to work together. We must reclaim the NFL Championship Dream for every team, for every city and for every fan.

My plan will not affect 31 of the 32 teams in the league. Obama assures. That’s over 95 percent of the teams in the NFL will not have to worry about loosing any Super Bowl Trophies. The worst teams in the NFL and the teams that can’t seem to get a break and win a championship will no longer have to worry about going without a title. Obama promises. We are a country and league of hope. We all need to make a change. It does not matter the color of the teams uniforms, the personal decisions that the teams make or their performance but rather if they are a member of this great American league.

The Super Bowl XLIII trophy will be redistributed to the 0-16 Detroit Lions. Through no fault of their own incompetence, the Lions could not manage a victory all season and this trophy will help ease the pain of their lack of performance and give them hope once again. The redistribution of Super Bowl XL trophy will go directly to the Steeler’s division rival the Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals who also have fallen on hard times have never won a Super Bowl. This victory will bring a smile to hundreds of Bengal fans all over the world as they can now celebrate. Finally, one of the Steeler’s two Super Bowl victories over the Dallas Cowboys will go back to the Cowboys since the league needs to provide hope in the face of difficulty and provide hope in the face of uncertainty. This is a heavy burden for the Steelers but together we can all prosper.

All hope is not lost for Pittsburgh fans, Barack Hussain Obama has another plan in place. Obama has meet with MLB and commissioner Bud Selig on a similar plan. The New York Yankees will redistribute two of their world series trophies to the Pittsburgh Pirates as a supplement to their loosing 16 straight seasons and counting. This plan will help stimulate the Pirates and enable them to regain the American Dream. Barack Hussain Obama will be meeting with the NHL and Michael Phelps in the upcoming weeks as this issue is high on his agenda for Hope and Change.

2. The U.S. Congress rushes to confirm a black Attorney General, Eric Holder, whose law firm we later find out represents seventeen Gitmo Terrorists.

3. The CIA Boss, Leon Penetta with absolutely no experience, has a daughter Linda we find out, that is a true radical anti-American activist who is a supporter of all the Anti-American regimes in the western hemisphere.

4. We got the most corrupt female in America as Secretary of State; bought and paid for.

5. We got a Tax Cheat for Treasury Secretary who files his own taxes.

6. A Commerce Secretary nominee who withdrew due to corruption charges.

7. A Tax cheat nominee for Chief Performance Officer who withdrew under charges.

8. A Labor Sec’y nominee who withdrew under charges of unethical conduct.

9. A Sec’y HHS nominee who withdrew under charges of cheating on his taxes.

And that’s just the first two weeks . . . But who’s counting.

America is being run by the modern-day Three Stooges ~ Barrack, Nancy , and Harry ~ and they are still trying to define stimulus.

Stimulus is where the government gives a smidgen of your tax dollars back to you making you feel so good about yourself [stimulated] that you want to run out to Wal-Mart and buy a new Chinese-made HDTV and go home and watch Telemundo!

I was sitting at my desk when I remembered a phone call I”d forgotten to make. I found the number and dialed it. A man answered, saying “Hello.”

I politely said, “This is Chris. Could I please speak with Robyn Carter?”

Suddenly a manic voice yelled out in my ear “Get the right f***ing number!” and the phone was slammed down on me.. I couldn”t believe that anyone could be so rude.

When I tracked down Robyn”s correct number to call her, I found that I had accidentally transposed the last two digits. After hanging up with her, I decided to call the “wrong” number again. When the same guy answered the phone, I yelled “You”re an asshole!” and hung up.

I wrote his number down with the word “asshole” next to it, and put it in my desk drawer. Every couple of weeks, when I was paying bills or had a really bad day, I”d call him up and yell, “You”re an asshole!” It always cheered me up.

When Caller ID was introduced, I thought my therapeutic “asshole” calling would have to stop. So, I called his number and said, “Hi, this is John Smith from the telephone company. I”m calling to see if you”re familiar with our Caller ID Program?”

He yelled “NO!” and slammed down the phone. I quickly called him back and said, “That”s because you”re an asshole!” and hung up.

One day I was at the store, getting ready to pull into a parking spot. Some guy in a black BMW cut me off and pulled into the spot I had patiently waited for. I hit the horn and yelled that I”d been waiting for that spot, but the idiot ignored me. I noticed a “For Sale ” sign in his back window, so I wrote down his number.

A couple of days later, right after calling the first asshole (I had his number on speed dial,) I thought that I”d better call the BMW asshole, too.

I said, “Is this the man with the black BMW for sale?” He said, “Yes, it is.”

I then asked, “Can you tell me where I can see it?” He said, “Yes, I live at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax.

It”s a yellow ranch style house and the car”s parked right out in front.”

I asked, “What”s your name?” He said, “My name is Don Hansen,”

I asked, “When”s a good time to catch you, Don?” He said, “I”m home every evening after five.”

I said, “Listen, Don, can I tell you something?” He said, “Yes?” I said, “Don, you”re an asshole!”

Then I hung up, and added his number to my speed dial, too. Now, when I had a problem, I had two assholes to call.

Then I came up with an idea… I called asshole #1. He said, “Hello.” I said, “You”re an asshole!” (But I didn”t hang up.)

He asked, “Are you still there?” I said, “Yeah!” He screamed, “Stop calling me,”

I said, “Make me,” He asked, “Who are you?” I said, “My name is Don Hansen.”

He said, “Yeah? Where do you live?” I said, “Asshole, I live at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax, a yellow ranch style home and I have a black Beamer parked in front.”

He said, “I”m coming over right now, Don. And you had better start saying your prayers.” I said, “Yeah, like I”m really scared, asshole,” and hung up.

Then I called Asshole #2. He said, “Hello?” I said, “Hello, asshole,”

He yelled, “If I ever find out who you are…” I said, “You”ll what?” He exclaimed, “I”ll kick your ass,”

I answered, “Well, asshole, here”s your chance.. I”m coming over right now.”

Then I hung up and immediately called the police, saying that I lived at 34 Oaktree Blvd, in Fairfax, and that I was on my way over there to kill my gay lover.

Then I called Channel 7 News about the gang war going down in Oaktree Blvd in Fairfax .. I quickly got into my car and headed over to Fairfax.

I got there just in time to watch two assholes beating the crap out of each other in front of six cop cars, an overhead news helicopter and surrounded by a news crew.

NOW I feel much better.

Anger management really does work.

To make sure this never happened to me, I got an electric fence and ran a single wire along the top of the fence. Actually, I got the biggest cattle charger Tractor Supply had, made for 26 miles of fence. I then used an 8 ft. long ground round, drove 7.5 feet into the ground. The ground rod is the key, with the more you have in the ground, the better the fence works.

One day I’m mowing the back yard with my cheapo Walmart 6hp Bigwheel push mower. The hot wire is broken and laying out in the yard. I knew for a fact that I unplugged the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached down to grab it, to throw it out of the way. It seems as though I hadn’t remembered to unplug it after all.

Now I’m standing there, I’ve got the running lawnmower in my right hand and the 1.7 gigavolt fence wire in the other hand. Keep in mind the charger is about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside-down cow on fire on the cover. Time stood still. The first thing I notice is my balls trying to climb up the front side of my body. My ears curled downwards and I could feel the lawnmower ignition firing in the backside of my brain. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine. It seems as though the fence charger and the POS lawnmower were fighting over who would control my electrical impulses.

Science says you cannot crap, pee, and nut at the same time. I beg to differ. Not only did I do all three at once, but my bowels emptied 3 different times in less than half of a second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel movement, where time is creeping along and you’re all leaned back and BAM BAM BAM you just crap your pants 3 times. It seemed like there were minutes in between but in reality it was so close together it was like exhaust pulses from a big block Chevy turning 8 grand.

At this point I’m about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the fence wire. My hand is wrapped around the wire palm down so I can’t let go. I grew up on a farm so I know all about electric fences… But Dad always had those POS chargers made by International or Whoever that were like 9 volts and just kinda tickled. This I could not let go of. The 8 foot long ground rod is now accepting signals from me through the permadamp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this point I’m thinking I’m going to have to just man up and take it, until the lawnmower runs out of gas.

‘Damn!,’ I think, as I remember that I just filled the tank! Now the lawnmower is starting to run rough. It has settled into a loping run pattern as if it had some kind of big lawnmower race cam in it. Covered in poop, pee, and with my balls on my chest I think ‘Oh God please die… Pleeeeze die’. But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the go command from its owner’s right foot.

So here I am in the middle of July, 104 degrees, 80% humidity, standing in my own backyard, begging God to kill me. God did not take me that day… He left me there covered in my own fluids to writhe in the misery my own stupidity had created.

I honestly don’t know how I got loose from the wire… I woke up laying on the ground hours later. The lawnmower was beside me, out of gas. It was later on in the day and I was sunburned. There were two large dead grass spots where I had been standing, and then another long skinny dead spot were the wire had layed while I was on the ground still holding on to it. I assume I finally had a seizure and in the resulting thrashing had somehow let go of the wire. Upon waking from my electrically induced sleep I realized a few things:

1- Three of my teeth seem to have melted.

2- I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not the left, just the right).

3- Poop and pee, when all mixed together, do not smell as bad a you might think.

4- My left eye will not open.

5- My right eye will not close.

6- The lawnmower runs like a sumnabitch now. Seriously! I think our little session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it was better than new after that.

7- My balls are still smaller than average yet they are almost a foot long.

8- I can turn on the TV in the gameroom by farting while thinking of the number 4. (Still don’t understand this)

That day changed my life. I now have a newfound respect for things. I appreciate the little things more, and now I always triple check to make sure the fence is unplugged before I mow.

The good news, is that if a burglar does try to come over the fence, I can clearly visualize what my security system will do to him, and THAT gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling all over, which also reminds me to triple check before I mow.

So he called one of His angels and sent the angel to Earth for a time. When he returned, he told God, ‘Yes, it is bad on Earth; 95% are misbehaving and only 5% are not.

God thought for a moment and said, ‘Maybe I had better send down a s second angel to get another opinion.’

So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time.

When the angel returned he went to God and said, ‘Yes, it’s true.The Earth is in decline; 95% are misbehaving, but 5% are being good.’

God was not pleased.

So He decided to e-mail the 5% that were good, because he wanted to encourage them, and give them a little something to help them keep going.

Do you know what the e-mail said?

Okay, I was just wondering, because I didn’t get one either.

The newest member of our subvets North Jersey Base was a LTjg on San Francisco when this incident happened. He left the Navy and is now working with the research vessel ” Alvin “.

There is a serious breach of classified information in this account of the incident. I wont say what it is, so if you notice it please don’t pass it on to non submarine people.

The following was received from shipmate.

Subject: The Final Account of USS San Francisco [SSN 711]
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008

This is a pretty chilling account of the San Francisco grounding in the Pacific.

APRA HARBOR, Guam - Blood was everywhere. Sailors lay sprawled across the floor, several of them unconscious, others simply dazed. Even the captain was asking, ‘What just happened?’ All anyone knew for sure was that the nuclear-powered attack submarine had slammed head-on into something solid and very large, and that it had to get to the surface fast.

In the control room, a senior enlisted man shoved the ‘chicken switches,’ blowing high-pressure air through the ballast tanks to force the vessel upward. Usually, the submarine would respond at once. But as the captain, Cmdr. Kevin G. Mooney, and top officers stared at the depth gauge, the needle refused to budge.

Moments before, they had been slipping quiet and fast through the Pacific. Now, they were stuck, more than 500 feet down.

Ten seconds passed. Then 20, 30.
‘I thought I was going to die,’ Commander Mooney recalled.
It would be close to a minute, but an excruciatingly long minute, before the submarine’s mangled nose began to rise, before the entire control room exhaled in relief, before the diving officer, Chief Petty Officer Danny R. Hager, began to read out a succession of shallower depths.

‘I don’t know how long it was,’ Chief Hager said, ‘but it seemed like forever.’
Last week, Navy investigators reported that a series of mistakes at sea and onshore caused the 6,900-ton submarine, the San Francisco , to run into an undersea mountain not on its navigational charts. One crewman was killed,

98 others were injured, and the captain and three other officers were relieved of their duties as a result of the Jan. 8 crash, one of the worst on an American submarine since the 1960’s.

But what is becoming clear only now, from the first interviews with Commander Mooney and 15 other officers and enlisted men, as well as a review of Navy reports, is how much worse it nearly was, and how close the San Francisco came to being lost.

The submarine crashed at top speed - 33 knots, or roughly 38 miles an hour
- about 360 miles southeast of Guam . The impact punched huge holes in the forward ballast tanks, so the air being blown into them was no match for the ocean pouring in. The throttles shut, and the vessel briefly lost propulsion. As the emergency blow caught hold, mainly in the rear tanks, the sub was just drifting in the deep, its bow pointing down.

Luckily, the thick inner hull protecting the nuclear reactor and the crew’s quarters held. But within was pandemonium - bodies pinballing, heads striking steel in the warren of lethally sharp surfaces in impossibly tight spaces. There was so much blood on the instruments and on the control-room floor that the place, Chief Hager said, ‘looked like a slaughterhouse.’

Then chaos gave way to improvised heroism and a perilous, and finally futile, effort to rescue the most grievously injured sailor.

The merely battered ministered to the badly hurt, turning the mess hall and the officers’ wardroom into instant clinics, ripping off shirts to use as tourniquets and creating splints from cleaning brushes. When they realized that the only hope for the dying man, a young machinist’s mate named Joseph A. Ashley, was to get to a hospital, sailors cut off railings and fixtures to thread his stretcher through narrow areas. They then rigged pulleys in an effort to hoist him through the sail, at the top of the submarine, and onto a helicopter hovering just above.

To avoid detection, submarines travel silent and largely blind, relying heavily on charts, and their interpreters, to navigate the undersea landscape. The meeting of this submarine and that mountain beneath the Pacific was in many ways a stroke of hauntingly rare bad luck: everyone relied on the one chart, from a panoply of them, that lacked even a hint of the looming danger. But the submarine’s fate was also the result of a confluence of simple shipboard errors.

The Navy has placed the blame on the captain and the crew, and Commander Mooney says, ‘I accept full responsibility.’ He acknowledges several critical mistakes, including going too fast, taking insufficient depth soundings and failing to cross-check the route with other charts.

Yet the fact that those errors happened on a boat with a highly rated commander suggests a more nuanced calculus of responsibility, raising questions about the relatively primitive state of undersea charting and the training and support of submariners.

Petty Officer Ashley’s father, Daniel L. Ashley, a Navy veteran, refuses to let the Navy off the hook. Sitting in his home outside Akron , Ohio , one recent morning, with a memorial of flags and photographs on the family organ, Mr. Ashley said he had forgiven Commander Mooney and the crew.

‘I know what these men have to live with for the rest of their lives,’ he said. ‘I feel the same pain.’

But if the Navy’s systems for supporting submarines had not also broken down, he said, ‘this would not have happened, and my son would be alive today.’

A Normal Saturday
As the San Francisco prepared to shove off in early January, spirits were high. Since taking over in December 2003, Commander Mooney had pushed his

136 sailors through four months of repairs and two intelligence missions. The San Francisco , previously known as a troubled boat, was winning praise in the Navy as a ‘Cinderella story.’

Now the submarine was headed for Brisbane , Australia , and its first liberty stop under the 40-year-old captain, a graduate of Duke University and a submarine officer for 19 years. One thing, though, was bothering him, he recalled: the basic routing instructions seemed to be late. So he told his navigators to call the Seventh Fleet in Japan and hurry them along.

The goal of the routings was to ensure that no other Navy ship would cross the submarine’s path, and they laid out a wide track to follow. But some officers had come to view these navigational guides as suggesting a measure of safety. And as the San Francisco left here on Friday, Jan. 7, the team plotting the precise route within that track focused on a single set of charts that, Navy officials agree, usually gave the most detailed view of the seabed.

Since submarines generally do not use active sonar, with its telltale pings, a good picture can be critical in avoiding mountain ranges rising from the seabed. Relying on charts, though, has always been somewhat hit or miss. Only 10 percent of the oceans have been charted by Navy survey ships. Many charts only include obstacles spotted by warships, commercial vessels or even 18th-century explorers like Captain Cook.

One poorly charted area was south of Guam , where the Navy started basing subs in 2002. So by Saturday morning, when the San Francisco entered the Caroline Islands mountain chain, there had been talk of special precautions among some of the men. But to the plotting team, the winding route down to Australia looked wide open.

To the rest of the crew, it was just a normal Saturday, which meant cleaning the boat. Lunch began at 11 a. m. - hamburgers, French fries, baked beans - and at 11:25 Commander Mooney went to the wardroom, where the officers ate. The crew’s work shift changed five minutes later, and when a line formed outside the mess, several men, including Petty Officer Ashley, decided to have a smoke first in the vessel’s tail.

Sailors said this was typical of Petty Officer Ashley, 24, an unabashed country boy who loved motorcycles, Jeeps and the boat’s diesel engine, which he cared for.

His nickname was Cooter, after a mechanic on the old television show ‘Dukes of Hazzard.’ He was also known for his wicked Michael Jackson imitation, which one sailor called ‘moonwalking in cowboy boots.’

That afternoon, the plan was to slow down for drills, so with everything humming along, Lt. Cmdr. Bruce L. Carlton, the navigation officer driving the submarine, decided to get ahead of schedule by bumping up to full speed and going deeper.

A sounding taken at 11:30 a. m. confirmed what was on the charts - the ocean was 6,000 feet deep there - and the submarine began to glide down to 500 feet from 400 feet. At 11:38, a decision was made to go to 525 feet, and a junior officer recommended another sounding. But Commander Carlton did not think that was necessary, the Navy reports indicate, and none was made.

Blood and Chaos
Chief Hager, wry and wiry at 39, unbuckled his seat belt and hopped up to jot a note on a card taped to the jet-black control panel. Suddenly - it was just after 11:42 - he felt his grip on a drawer handle tighten as the submarine shuddered.

Then ‘came the real deal,’ he said, a thunderous blast and what felt like a warp-speed gale whipping through the submarine as it froze in its tracks.

The force spun his body around - like Spiderman twisting against a wall, he said - and his hand punched through a plexiglass gauge cover. His seat ripped out of its runners and crushed his leg. Then one of the quartermasters, who had been monitoring the charts 15 feet away, came catapulting into view. He ended up knocked out on the floor, blood pouring from his forehead.

A few feet away, three more men were unconscious. One - the junior officer who had just suggested the extra sounding - was bleeding from his head and leg, and could hardly breathe. Commander Carlton, who was still in charge, had been thrown into a passageway, and blood streamed from the right side of his face as he scrambled back to the command center.

In the wardroom, Commander Mooney had been pinned into his seat, while a cook came over his shoulder and crashed into a television screen 10 feet away, cracking it in two places. Within seconds, the captain was rushing up a ladder to the control room, where the effort to blow the submarine to the surface had just begun.

Hundreds of papers that had popped out of binders were streaking dark red on the floor, and the microphones were crackling with injury reports. By

11:44, the submarine had finally broken the surface, with the captain scanning through a periscope. No ships. No wreckage. Nothing.

‘I realized at that point that we had survived a collision with the bottom that was just unbelievable,’ Commander Mooney said. But, he said, he ‘literally had no idea’ what it was doing there.

And no time to figure it out: there were also serious injuries in the crew’s mess, the engine rooms and the smoking room - the other relatively open areas where men had gone flying. From the bridge atop the sail, Commander Carlton could see that the bow was damaged, raising fears of flooding.

‘We were in shock,’ Commander Mooney said. But everyone was running on instinct and training. Damage-control parties quickly reported that the inner hull was intact, the torpedoes and cruise missiles unscathed. The captain radioed for help and turned the boat back toward Guam . In the stern, men began bringing the injured forward, toward the wardroom and the mess.

In the smoking room, Petty Officer Ashley had been thrown about 20 feet, fracturing his skull against either metal equipment or a bulkhead doorjamb. Two sailors crouched over him.

‘I didn’t know what to do,’ said one of them, Bryan Barnes, a 22-year-old electrician’s mate. ‘So I just held his hand and talked to him until doc came back.’

When ‘doc,’ the ship’s medic, James H. Akin, arrived, he knew instantly that they had to get Petty Officer Ashley off the boat. Racing to Save a Life

A submarine at sea is a self-contained world in a steel bubble. One thing it does not have, though, is a doctor; the medic, an enlisted man with basic medical training, handles the run of everyday illness and injury. Now, in a full-out emergency, the medic’s first job was to get Petty Officer Ashley immobilized on a stretcher so he could be carried to the crew’s mess.

There, the chief of the boat, William Cramer, the senior enlisted man, was commanding the cleanup. His men unfurled large rolls of terry cloth to sop up the slippery goo of blood and capsized lunch, and shoved the broken plates and glasses into the galley. In the wardroom, Lt. Craig E. Litty, himself a former medic, quickly set up a triage center, where he helped bandage most of the injured men.

Corpsman Akin, at 6 foot 4 and 280 pounds the largest man onboard, set up his medical supplies on the salad bar in the mess. He stitched up the men with the worst lacerations. And he tried to keep Petty Officer Ashley alive.

The medic says he knew he was probably nursing a dying man. Still, Petty Officer Ashley held on. For 21 hours, Corpsman Akin monitored his vital signs, kept his air passages clear, and gave him oxygen and morphine. Sailors took turns holding his hand. At one point, someone brought in a CD player and put on some Hank Williams Jr.

The first rescue ship, the Coast Guard cutter Galveston Island , arrived at
4:30 a. m. on Sunday. But by then, squalls had moved in, and it seemed too dangerous to try to shuttle Petty Officer Ashley over in a small boat.

The alternative seemed hardly less daring: using a helicopter to lift the wounded man and his stretcher out of a hatch on the top of the submarine’s sail.

By now, a second ship, the Stockham, had arrived. It carried more doctors and two helicopters. Around 9 a. m., as one of the helicopters hovered 10 to

15 feet above the submarine, it dangled a doctor and a corpsman into the submarine to help prepare Petty Officer Ashley for the move. The pilots had to rely on a spotter in back to keep the copter clear of the pitching submarine.

‘He was giving drift calls, saying ‘Cut left,’ ‘Come right,’ ‘You’re getting too close,’ ‘ said one of the pilots, Ricke Harris.

Inside the submarine, Chief Cramer ordered a path cleared for the stretcher. Several men unbolted or cut off ladder railings and lockers. By late morning, men were stationed in doorways and stairwells to pass the stretcher along; one even crawled underneath and supported the stretcher on his back through the narrowest spots.

They climbed up one level and under the sail, and then another group took over, heaving on a rope and pulley to lift the stretcher up the 25-foot sail. The first effort failed when Petty Officer Ashley’s breathing tube came loose. With his condition deteriorating, a second try made it to the top.

That was when the men had an awful realization: the hatch atop the sail did not quite open the full 90 degrees. No matter how much they tried, angling this way and that, the stretcher would not slip through.

A surgeon, Chris Cook, was then lowered by cable from the copter. But Petty Officer Ashley’s heart stopped, and the men began CPR. Half an hour later, at 1:11 p. m., Dr. Cook pronounced him dead. Still, one of the sailors kept pounding.

‘I looked at him and said, ‘We’re sorry,’ ‘ Dr. Cook recalled. ‘ ‘There’s nothing more we can do.’ ‘

Hard Lessons
When the San Francisco pulled into Guam on Jan. 10, its bow slinking low in the water, the flags on other submarines were at half-mast, their crews lining the decks in tribute.

Looking at a picture of that moment, Commander Mooney speaks with pride of the way his crew brought the boat home. But an image discovered on the voyage back also remains seared in his mind, he says, one that helped seal his dismissal and spark broader questions about the Navy’s navigational training and support.

That image is a small, light-blue circle on a white background. It signifies a potential hazard two to three miles from where the San Francisco crashed

- close enough, Commander Mooney says, that if he had known about it, he would have tried to skirt the area or asked for a new routing. Charting experts now believe that hazard was the mountain, and that its location was imprecisely reported in the days before satellites made navigational fixes more precise.

Commander Mooney said he first heard about the hazard from his boss onshore a few hours after the grounding. It is, in fact, on every chart of the area except for the one that the boat was using - the one that usually provided the most detailed picture of the seabed contours.

That revelation has been embarrassing to the Navy and the Pentagon office that prepares the charts. Moreover, investigators have found that the officer who gave the submarine its basic routing also relied only on that one chart.

Under Navy rules, the captain and his crew are solely responsible for the safety of their ship. After all, in wartime, submarines must operate without help from shore.

The captain acknowledged that he and his crew should have cross-checked the charts. But some of his officers say it was common to grab what seemed the best chart and run down the center of the basic track, as the San Francisco did. They also said they were not alone in believing that the routings were based on more substantial navigation checks. ‘I look at it as just a lot of really bad luck,’ said Lt. Cmdr. Rick Boneau, the San Francisco ’s executive officer.

Commander Boneau, Commander Carlton and an assistant navigator were relieved of their duties, and three enlisted men were reprimanded. Commander Carlton did not respond to requests for comment.

But Navy reports have found that the sea charts are not updated frequently enough and that the routings are often delivered late, limiting the time for onboard navigation checks. The accident has also stirred concerns - dating back to the advent of nuclear submarines under the legendary admiral Hyman G. Rickover - that Navy training places more emphasis on engineering than on skills like navigation. (dats a fact jack)

The approach to keeping the reactor safe is to build in redundant checks and test sailors constantly. But even though inspections had found some navigation deficiencies on the San Francisco in 2004, the reports said, squadron officials in Guam did nothing to make sure the problems had been fixed.

Since the accident, the Navy has briefed hundreds of officers on the lessons to be drawn. Capt. Matt Brown, the spokesman for the Pacific Fleet, said the Navy is also looking at other changes to improve safety.

Some of the younger sailors said they had not realized how close they had come to dying until they saw the San Francisco ’s mutilated bow at the dry dock here.

‘Your jaw just kind of dropped open, and you wondered why you were still alive,’ said Mr. Barnes, the electrician’s mate who held Joseph Ashley’s hand right after the collision. As many as 10 sailors have asked not to return to submarine duty.

Commander Mooney is working a desk job until he can retire next year. Last month he visited Petty Officer Ashley’s grave in a family plot on a hillside in West Virginia . The captain and the sailor’s father said a prayer together as they placed a Navy marker by the grave. They embraced.

Then, the captain left one final offering - his command star, buried in the dirt.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full.. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.

The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table And poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - God, family, children, health, friends, and Favorite passions — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else — the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

So…

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play With your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal.

“Take care of the golf balls first — the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked”.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”

Please share this with someone you care about.

Well, this is a picture of a cat who truly is the envy of most men I know, and some women for that matter.

No matter how you look at this picture, there is no way in hell you’d not want to be this little pussy resting so peacefully next to the nice lady. A nice lady indeed to let a cat be so warm, firm, and satisfied with her resting spot.

Yes, a lucky cat indeed, but let’s hope nobody scares the cat suddenly to make it jump from it’s resting spot

You’ll see, It’s a pretty good trick, probably nastier than others wearing nothing under their kilts. It’s somewhat of a Scottish tradition for men to go play in parades, pose for pictures, or march along the knoll while wearing a shirt and a kilt, nothing else.

This isn’t just for the men either. Many highland games have both women and men sporting nothing under the kilt. You just have to be one of the lucky spectators who actually notice it.

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Here’s a few pics to check out before the video plays!