kevin922

Article here Wow this is great! And bush likes ipods.. very cool. WASHINGTON, DC—Amid growing anti-war protests and polls indicating eroding public support for an invasion of Iraq, President Bush is offering U.S. taxpayers a rebate in the amount of $300 if we go to war. Above: Bush entices war opponents with a $300 tax rebate. "My proposed tax rebate will serve to stimulate the economy," said Bush, waving a sample check made out to John Q. Public at a White House press conference Monday. "Americans will get a generous infusion of cash that can be used however they choose—all in return for simply supporting a first strike against Iraq. Now, who wouldn't want an extra $300 in their pocket next month?" Under the Bush plan, single taxpayers would be eligible for a $300 rebate, married filers $600, and heads of household $500. Attached to the proposal is a rider, penned by Bush himself, stating, "Plus, we also will invade Iraq right away, everyone promises." Pending passage of the bill, titled Economic Growth And Tax Relief Reconciliation Act Of 2003 And We Bomb Iraq (H.R. 1936), some 91.3 million checks could be mailed as early as March 31. "The plan is almost identical to the tax rebate offered in 2001," Bush said. "With the minor exception, of course, of the provision that Americans react favorably to the deployment of 210,000 troops to the Persian Gulf." "Which reminds me, have you seen these new iPods?" added Bush, pulling an Apple-brand MP3 player from his pocket and holding it up to the crowd. "It costs $299 for one of these little buggers, but it holds a thousand songs. They're amazing." Citizens are excited by the prospect of having a little extra spending money. "Things have been pretty tight lately, so this sure would come in handy," said Ray Kilty, 48, an Akron, OH, screen-door-factory worker. "I don't know much about what's going on with Iraq, but I do know what's going on with my truck. The brakes are set to go any day now." Bush has been pushing the rebate, part of his ambitious $1.4 trillion tax-cut agenda, in a series of TV commercials. One such ad, which made its debut last Tuesday during Fox's American Idol, features the slogan, "Free Iraq Of Hussein, Free Rent For A Month." Another upcoming spot asks the question, "War: What Is It Good For?" and answers, "$300, Is What." In recent weeks, Bush has also met with key lawmakers in an effort to win their support. "I get the green light from the American people, and they get 300 smackeroos," Bush told members of the Senate budget committee last Friday. "Any questions?" "I'll tell you what," Bush added. "Just because I'm feeling generous, I'll throw in another $20 per dependent if we invade by the end of next week." To ensure public support, the following will appear in fine print below the endorsement line on the back of each check: "By signing and cashing this check, the above is hereby indicating his or her consent to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, and will refrain from attending protest rallies or committing any other act that could reasonably be construed as an expression of disapproval of said war." "Americans need two things right now: economic relief and the elimination of the threat of terrorism." Bush said. "These rebates take care of both. I can't think of a better way to show the citizens of this nation that war truly pays."

My god that is a shitload of beads.. you're going to make lolie jealous!

Hey I thought you weren't posting in war threads.

Dude post them to the gold coast website :)

Holy crap.. sounds like it's time for a recurrency jump :-)

Well US Air wasn't much better.. :)

Mwah ha ha.. i had that feeling last year when I got mine.. i learned my lesson, just ordered my new skyflyer today so it will be here just in time for SUMMER :)

So let me get this straight, they cut up a sheep on stage at a concert and threw it's head into the crowd? WTF?

I added a gallery item on goldcoast's website (http://www.goldcoastskydivers.com) under gallery where you can add your own mardi gras pictures. So if you were there and got the images, post them! (the system will automatically resize the picture, though if you want to go ahead and resize it to save on uploading time by all means doso). Kevin

Man that sucks! Sounds worse than when I was coming down and got re-routed and whatnot. Can't wait to see the pics! Btw can I post the video I got of you? :-) (or do you even remember that??) Kevin

Hum... i can't believe you've hid it from them for a year! After I bought a motorcycle for my 18th birthday without telling my parents and bringing it home ON my birthday (telling them I had a new girlfriend I wanted them to meet) my mom didn't talk to me for a week.. after that she pretty much gave up on things I do :) So when i started skydiving she didn't even say anything.. (my dad used to skydive, but before he had me). When they came down this past weekend and I was talking about my reserve ride I had the day before (the backwards stiletto 120) my mother was not impressed. My dad was laughing though :) Have fun! Let me know how it goes.

Yeh blackhawk down was intense... I liked behind enemy lines, even though I knew it was a little flaky.. it was well done in the cinemetography. The whole "incident" in behind enemy lines I thought was awesome! (the part where the plane gets shot down) -- that's the CGI (computer graphics) nerd in me.. the dvd shows how much of that scene is computer generated.. simply amazing. Tears of the sun sucked in the cinemetography as well Kevin

Woo hoo! My SF3 is in the werks.. i got all alumnized silver.. what did you guys get ?

My god michele.. and I thought my posts were long.

I saw it too i thought it sucked. The acting was horrible, the plot was unrealistic - defying the orders of your commander, putting your team at unncessasary risk to do something you weren't even supposed to do? .. bleh -- i am not military though my dad is, so I know that stuff is crap. Previews were much better. It was slow too. Kevin

Damnit, i didn't get any sex from her...but she did let me squeeze her boobies. I filmed her getting some.. dang I wish I put the camera down for a second now :-) Kevin

Great to meet you too! Maybe i'll see you in rantoul.. found out that I can take tank on amtrak as long as he is in service dog mode :-) Can you pick me up? Kevin

What are we shushin?

Very cool, but it is too big. I'd slice it so that other sections are seperate flash files. make load time smaller. Kevin

Peanut butter patties rawk, tagalongs suck! (they ARE different.. i found out the hard way)

Must post video also send me some pics ya took Kevin

Are you serious!! I missed that?? jeez.. I did see chopper john get the dually stuck in the mud during a drunken party. Got that on video :-) Kevin

bump

Dunno! You going to any boogies this year? I'm pondering WFFC :)

I bought my ticket for the Mardi Gras boogie months ago – the Mardi Gras boogie is something special for me, not only is Gold Coast my old DZ but also MS is where I’m from. I don’t make it back to MS much, so getting back there to see old friends is always a plus. I began counting the days, and as the day got closer I started looking at the weather – it was bad, didn’t look like it was getting much better either, but I had my ticket so I was going rain or shine. I haven’t traveled much commercially with my rig since September 11th so I was a little worried. I got USPA letters, TSA letters, SSK letters, everything I could find to take with me and prepared for the worst. I packed my gear in a carry on suitcase and away I went. I put my rig up on the xray, walked through the walk-through xray, and waited for my bag to re-appear on the other side. Unfortunately it didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. To start off with, when the X-Ray screener got to my bag his words (and I kid you not) were “oh shit” almost as if he had just found a bunch of plastic explosive or something. They shot the bag out the side said “we’re gonna have to open this up” so I of course was thinking “here we go” so I open it up, pull the rig out and then they say “well we’re going to have to x-ray these 2 items separately” so I’m like okay whatever… he walks back to put the rig back in the x-ray and the x-ray technician notices it is a parachute.. he turns around and says to me “You jump at skydive orange???” Boy was I stunned! Was he a jumper??? He tells me he’s a marine (or former marine) and was thinking about coming to make a jump at my DZ. So I’m thinking man this is going to be easy! He’ll let it through and I’ll be on my way – well not exactly. He did let it through but unfortunately 3 other TSA reps came over and look at it scratching their head and asking “is that a parachute??” I responded with “yes, and they are okay to take on” to which a reply of “I’ll have to check with my supervisor, please hold” he came back and started to say it was okay as long as there wasn’t one of those “automatic opening dev…” I interrupted him and said “it doesn’t have any compressed air” and he said “oh okay” and off I went. So whew I made it! Off I go to my connecting flight in Charlotte, NC. We start taxing to the runway and sure enough hold-up number 2 comes. The pilot shuts the jets down, comes over the PA and says “folks, there is too much turbulence between here and Charlotte, we’ll have to sit here for a while” – I’m thinking GREAT now I won’t be able to make my next flight. We finally get going I make it to Charlotte, run to the gate and find out my flight has been CANCELLED! What now?? Mechanical Problems.. we’ll have to put you on a flight to ATLANTA! Ugh! So I go over to get on a flight to Atlanta which is now full and there is no room for carry on (yes, my rig). I tell the lady I’m not checking it, so I take the rig out and give her the bag. So she checks my bag and now I’m walking around with a rig. Go through ATL with it on my back and get some strange looks but get on the plane to mobile and away I go. I get to mobile and call my friends from Orange only to find their bus broke down 50 miles from the DZ so I end up taking a $55.00 cab ride to the DZ. Skies were.. well covered in industrial haze, ended up making one jump, talked to the PD reps about demoing a stiletto, so they hooked up a 120 to my rig.. no more jumping for today but tomorrow was looking better. The next day (Friday) I get on a load to do a hop-n-pop (test out the stiletto). I jump out of the plane dump and what do I see?? A stilleto 120! What’s weird? IT IS ON BACKWARDS! (video) I could not believe my eyes. I had a weird feeling this exact thing would happen, but figured “well PD hooked it up I’m sure they knew what they were doing” so I cussed it a few times then decided to play around with it a while – the uppers were kicking and I knew if I cut it at altitude I’d never see it, or more importantly my freebag, again. So around 3 – 4k I chopped it, dumped my reserve and stood the landing up. I believe I was the 1st or 2nd cutaway of the boogie. Kudos for PD for taking full responsibility – they paid for the reserve repack, 2 jump tickets, AND had their HQ fedex next day a vengeance (what I originally wanted to try) for me to take home and demo. While my reserve was being repacked the cool guy from Jump Shack handed me a rig with their new elliptical canopy the “FireBolt” to try out. I went up did another hop and pop and was impressed with it – had a lot of flare. It was a 128, I also tried their 110 both are very responsive. I did a birdman Jump with Kevin from PD (birdman-kim’s boyfriend) very fun – very nice guy. Did a smoke jump with the birdman that really didn’t work that great (the smoke was outdated, didn’t really smoke that well). Met a lot of DZ.comers, can’t list them all but some that stuck out were Lolie, Sunshine, Chili, N2, Travis.. jumpergirl was there too but I had met her back on my X-Mas trip. Lolie had never been to the big easy so she agreed to go with me and some of my old friends who had come down to see me, so after I landed on the beach I dumped my gear in the trunk and away we went! We hit up Café Du Mon (sp?) first, Lolie had her FIRST ben-yay which she enjoyed and after flashing the café du mon workers, we hit up burbon street – lolie earned her beads, learned that Jesus loves her, and learned what a hand grenade tasted like. Back to café du mon we went where my friends decided to see what snorting powder sugar was like. Yes the delirium was officially here. We spent the night in New Orleans, in the morning we were greeted with overcast skies. Made the trip back to Moss Point (most of which Lolie slept during. ) and just hung out and bitched about the skies. My parents came down from Jackson to see me so we went and saw a movie and ran some errands. I made it back for the wicked party (got a lot of good video, including a few tipsy DZ.comers (jillr, lolie, etc..) and a lot of boobies! The jumping sucked because of the weather, unfortunately this may be the 10th and final Mardi Gras boogie for GoldCoast due to similar outcomes with previous MG boogies. For anyone I forgot, I’m sorry! It was great fun, I now have some nice new friends and can’t wait to jump with you guys again! (or for the first time for those of you who never got the privilege er opportunity to jump with me because of weather.) The trip back was much easier – didn’t have to go to 4 airports, and the TSA guy in Mobile actually knew what the hell he was looking at. I overheard him telling the xray screener “see that right there, that’s the deployment bag” and was explaining other things about the parachute to the person who had summoned him over there. They didn’t even ask for me to open the bag up. A lot of pictures are posted here and more video is to come.