Hi all,
Disclaimer: if you're not in the mood to read a long winded rant, just
delete this message and I'll totally understand.  There's just
something that happened tonight that I have to get off my chest.
All right, here goes:
So tonight, I've been up sitting in my office reading a book with my radio on.
There are these two guys who get on late on a local repeater most weekends.
They're not the most likable of characters at the best of times, but
tonight they were just completely beyond all sense of propriety.
First off, they were talking about politics.
I know this isn't like a cardinal sin or anything, though personally I
try to stay away from politics on the air.
So these guys are talking about politics for a while, and it just
devolves into an all out racist, ignorant, unbelievable rage fest.
These folks were going on about how Obama is just in the white house
to take revenge on white people, and how the government is full of
terrorist democrats who got into politics just so they could take
innocent people's money and use it to abort babies and take our guns
away.
They went so far as to say that the president is a peace of trash who
hasn't gotten over the fact that black people used to be slaves, and
just wants to destroy America.
Now, while I don't agree with that thesis, I know there are people out
there who do, and it's a free country, so you can have whatever
opinion you want and it's fine with me.  What really angers me is how
these guys are getting so pissed off on the radio that they're
screaming and ranting nonsensically for hours and hours over the air.
This kind of thing reflects poorly on the ham community as a whole,
and just seems like terrible manners.
And the sad thing is that isn't even the worst of it.
There's a repeater in another town about 20 miles away that has a net
every night that I frequent.
You seriously couldn't find a better group of guys than that are on this net.

So these two guys who had just finished ranting about politics finally
stop, and the one guy says to the other, "so yeah, how bout that
pathetic bunch of idiots who hang out on the .825 machine every
night..." and so on and so on.
Then, they started in on talking shit and laughing at one of the guys
on the net, who not only did they name in person over the air, but is
another blind ham.
I think this particular ham they're talking about, who is also the
blind ham, might have a minor intellectual disability or something, as
sometimes he can be a little hard to understand, but said ham is one
of the nicest guys on the net, and always has a good word for
everybody he talks to.
So here are these guys, who aren't even in the local club or anything,
never to my knowledge volunteer or do anything with any of the ham
outfits in the area, and they're talking for 2 straight hours on the
open air and laughing at other hams, calling them out by name, who
haven't even done anything wrong.
It took every ounce of self-restraint I could manage not to get on the
repeater, but I knew doing that would just feed the fire.
Ok, that's it. Thanks for listening.
I just had to get this out there.  I was literally so pissed off my
hands were shaking.
73,
Zach, kk4ruz