User:SpartHawg948

About Me
My name is William, I am 26, and I am a Staff Sergeant (SSgt) in the US Air Force Reserve. I live in Santa Clara, California, and I LOVE Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2!!! I aim to do whatever I can to improve this site, as I feel it's a great resource. Also, I am an Bureaucrat (both here and at a secret side project...), so if anyone has any questions or needs help with anything, please just let me know!

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but I have no patience whatsoever with crybabies, whiners, speculators, and boors. If you are going to be rude to someone else, plant purely speculative info, or insult others but then start crying when someone calls you on it, you WILL be hearing from me.

Now that the seriousness is taken care of, it's my goal to make this the most informative site possible, while also keeping it a nice, friendly environment for users. Any assistance in furthering that goal is, of course, greatly appreciated, and I try to acknowledge people for their efforts as much as possible. So I hope you all enjoy the site, and hopefully you'll be hearing from me (for something good, of course!)

Words to live by

 * "Let him who desires peace prepare for war"- Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (more commonly known as Vegetius) from De Re Militari
 * "An armed society is a polite society"- Robert A. Heinlein
 * "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"- Winston Churchill
 * "Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity- in short, of tyranny- and is committed to making tyranny universal."- Adlai Stevenson
 * "The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage."- Alexis de Tocqueville
 * "The world is not going to be saved by legislation."- William Howard Taft
 * "A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company."- Charles Evans Hughes

Featured Quote
This section will just be for quotes I like that aren't necessarily as concise and pithy as the ones featured above. They don't even necessarily have to be relevant to anything, I may just choose quotes from sources I like (such as George S. Patton, who provides the first of these) or works I like (such as the Anabasis by Xenophon). Good times!

Special event time! - So, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, an outstanding organization founded in memory of a truly extraordinary woman, labels January "Protect Life" month. Being of a similar mindset, I'd like to do my small part to help. Now, I know abortion is a contentious issue. If you disagree with me (or rather, with the persons and entities I quote) and wish to express this on my talk page, go right ahead, just be respectful about it. That said, let's see how some great luminaries throughout history felt about the subject, shall we?

Feminists today often decree abortion a fundamental right for women. Let's start by seeing how some of the "Founding Mothers" of feminism in America felt about it:


 * "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women." -- Alice Paul, one of the most outspoken, well-respected, and successful of the suffragettes. Paul was one of the key players in securing the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, securing the right for women to vote. (In an aside, if you wish to learn more about Alice Paul, I highly recommend watching the film Iron Jawed Angels. Great flick.)

Featured Bio
In the spirit of Election Day, let's start a series on Presidential almosts. Today, we look at the loser in 1936... Alf Landon.

Alfred Mossam Landon was born in 1887 in Pennsylvania. At the age of 17, Landon and his family moved to Kansas, the state Landon would later be most associated with. Landon graduated from the University of Kansas in 1908 and attempted to pursue a career in banking. However, within four years, Landon had entered the petroleum industry, starting his own oil production facility in Independence, Kansas. Landon temporarily left the business behind to serve as a First Lieutenant with a chemical warfare unit in the United States Army during the First World War, returning to the oil industry at the end of the war. Bu 1929, Landon had become a self-made millionaire.

Landon had made forays into politics before this. In 1912, Landon, who was a lifelong Republican, broke briefly with the Party to support Theodore Roosevelt in his run for president with his Progressive Party (aka the Bull Moose Party), and in 1922, Landon served as private secretary to Kansas Governor Henry Allen. During this time, Landon became associated with the liberal wing of the party. In 1928, Landon was elected chairman of the Kansas Republican Central Committee, in which capacity he coordinated the successful presidential and gubernatorial campaigns in the state.

In 1932, Landon himself achieved elected office when he won the race for Governor of Kansas. Landon proved to be a popular governor, resulting in his being reelected in 1934, making him the only Republican governor in the country to be reelected. Landon cut taxes and balanced the budget, earning a reputation as a strong fiscal conservative, while at the same time supporting many of the social reforms of the New Deal. In 1936, Landon was nominated for the presidency by the Republican Party, with Frank Knox as his running mate.

Landon sought to galvanize the youth vote, a strategy which ultimately succeeded in siphoning votes away from his rivals, chiefly former President Herbert Hoover. Unfortunately, while Landon had been effective in securing the nomination, he was a lackluster campaigner, preferring not to travel extensively, which hurt him against the energetic and charismatic Franklin Roosevelt. Landon was also hampered, oddly enough, by his respect for Roosevelt and support of many of the New Deal policies, rendering him unable to effectively distinguish himself from Roosevelt in the eyes of the public. Landon did campaign against the anti-business aspects of the New Deal, and also contended (quite reasonably) that FDR and his people were engaging in corruption, using their New Deal jobs programs to coerce people into voting Democratic. Landon was also effective in securing the African-American vote, being the last Republican to do so (as, prior to 1940, African-Americans had predominantly voted Republican, but switched to voting Democratic during FDR's presidency). Landon even secured the endorsement of legendary track star Jesse Owens.

Unfortunately, even endorsements from the superstars of the day could not save Landon's campaign. In the presidential election, Landon secured just shy of 17 million votes to Roosevelt's nearly 28 million, and only carried two states, Maine and Vermont, for a total of 8 electoral votes. Landon even failed to carry his home state, where his popularity as governor did not carry over into support for his presidential bid. Landon received 46% of the vote in Kansas, to FDR's 53.7%. Incidentally, the election also shattered Maine's reputation as a bellwether state. Roosevelt's campaign manager modified the famous phrase "As Maine goes, so goes the nation" to "As Maine goes, so goes Vermont" to reflect the election.

Following his defeat, Landon returned to Kansas and served out the remainder of his term as Governor, serving until 1937. Upon completion of his term, Landon returned to the oil industry. He remained active in the Republican Party, seeking to serve as a conciliator and mediator between various squabbling groups that had appeared following the 1936 defeat. Landon was also sounded out for a cabinet position within the Roosevelt administration, but Landon made his acceptance of any such position contingent on a pledge from Roosevelt to renounce a third term in office, which Roosevelt, as we now know, was unwilling to do. Landon remained active in politics for quite some time, combating isolationist groups during World War II and backing the Marshall Plan.

In 1966, Landon gave the first "Landon Lecture" at Kansas State University, beginning a series of lectures on public policy and issues that continue to this day. The Landon Lectures have become high-profile events, drawing numerous luminaries, including seven presidents (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush). On September 9, 1987, President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan extended to Landon their warmest wishes on his 100th birthday. Landon died on October 12, 1987 at the age of 100 years and 33 days.

Tongue-in cheek thought of the, ah, who am I kidding? I'm not gonna change this daily...

 * This just in: Yours truly is apparently a "water-cooler dictator" for having the sheer audacity to attempt an impartial mediation of a conflict, and for daring to have his own opinion! For shame! When will I learn that, when someone demands I do something, I should just do it, without taking foolish actions like forming my own opinions? Anywho, why don't you folks look for yourselves and form your own opinions about who was the real jerk here. Oh...wait, I forgot. Apparently forming your own opinions is a bad thing these days. Oops... SpartHawg948 19:00, January 3, 2011 (UTC)
 * No one ever thanks admins. Anyone else notice that? Why is this? A conversation I'm engaged in right now made me realize it. I mean, in all honestly, I shouldn't say I've never been thanked. I have, but it's been very rarely. I could probably count the number of times on one hand. Even when we're doing something where we are genuinely trying our very utmost to help someone, it's much more likely to result in complaint than in thanks. It's always "Don't undo my edits" (even when, strictly speaking, none of their edits were ever undone), never "Thanks for looking out for me". Because really, that's what being an admin is all about, looking out for everyone else. Best part of the gig, other than the power trip and the supercool hats and fleece blankets. Oops... I wasn't supposed to mention those in front of the hoi polloi. Darn. Now the cat's out of the bag, I guess. Oh well, enough of my self-indulgent, tear-filled self-pity-party. Back to whatever it is I do around here... SpartHawg948 03:11, January 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * Learn something new every day. I didn't know up until a few minutes ago that J. R. R. Tolkien was a Traditionalist Catholic. Makes sense though. I mean, he was already an old man by the time of Vatican II, so I could see him wanting to stick with the old ways. SpartHawg948 06:48, January 8, 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, I forgot how hilarious MST3K is. "Honey Bunches of death!" :D SpartHawg948 06:58, January 8, 2011 (UTC)