Ptolemy's Tribute

The year in review

2010-12-22T08:52:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a year for the books. Both Heidi and I are still working, I am still studying IT Security, My son is still in school and has declared double majors in Music Performance and Psychology. He is still percussion section leader in sports band, plays drums at church, plays drums in the Dixie Land Band, is in the percussion Ensemble and has auditioned for the Wind Ensemble. He is a busy guy all the while maintaining a B average. He was awarded a $4000.00 scholar ship that he will get every year for 4 years if he stays at SCSU.

There has been a leadership change at our church and we have taken the opportunity to fill a couple of voids that were left as the dust settles so now i am running the sound booth and Heidi is helping with the worship team. With our new pastor there has come a focus on increasing the 'wow' factor of our services, this means reworking the sound system to support in ear monitors and purchasing shiny new LED lighting with control software. we had projectors to display announcements, lyrics and sermon presentations already. Our pastor also put in a 'smoke machine' not to put a carpet of smoke down but to put a haze in the air. I like the changes that have been made so far. I think the Smoke machine may be a bit much but i like the effects that we can produce with it.

There have been events that have happened this year that has woken me up. First i have something to confess. I have had little desire to get to know my family in my home state of Texas. to be honest most of my Mom's sisters had always treated us kids with a but of a holyer than thou attitude. In fact when i was considering changing my last name to my mother's maiden name, my Grand Father had told me to my face that i would have to improve my self GREATLY to be worthy of such a name and told me he would be surprised if i were not in jail or dead by the time i was 35. He was surprised many years later when my son was better behaved at 2 than many in the family were. He never apologized to me for his statements but he did tell me he was proud of me.

So that is probably to much of of a history lesson as it pertains to me and mine. We had been in contact with some of the family off and on over the years but no where near all of them. It is a BIG family down there. This year a cousin that i didn't know, never had the chance to meet, never made an effort to meet, was murdered. looks like someone broke in to their house and shot her 4 times. The end seems to have been mercifully quick as all 4 shots were to her head.

Now i know you are thinking 'whats the big deal? you didn't know her.' and you would be right. I didn't know her. Her mom is my cousin and i know here even if we have not spoken in YEARS. (yeah it has been that long) but that event and highlighted a problem i have, a hole if you will in my story. the part of the story where your family is one of the biggest influences in your life. I the months since this tragedy, i have tried to get to know her. I found her face book page, i have talked to some people that knew her and of her and here is what i have learned.

I missed out because i didn't know her, because i didn't know her brother, who now stands accused of her murder(i do not think he is guilty) she was smart, fun and full of life! she was the sweetest girl you would want to meet. Conservative, fiery and outspoken. She loved God with all her heart and was, by all accounts, ready to meet her maker. She worked in her church and was attending college studying toward an English lit degree. She has God fearing parents and they did everything they could to instill this same reverence in to their kids as it was in them.

Mark wrote a piece on Thanksgiving about what he has to be thankful for. Here are a couple of exerpts from what he wrote.

I wanted a boy, Stacie wanted a girl, and God gave us both in one little bundle of TNT. To every one who ever knew Amanda she was the epitome of joy and laughter. As she grew up she would permit no negativity or self pity around her. Her limitless joy, curiosity, and zest for life repelled the blues like an invisible force field. She laughed because she loved it. She screamed because she could. She jumped and danced because you wouldn’t. And by just being around her, you would be taught that life was meant to be savored. It seemed her motto in life was “Take a really big bite and enjoy! And if a little bit ran down your chin, that was just fine too”.

And I got to be her Daddy. I was blessed to spend countless hours talking with her about every conceivable topic you could imagine. Amanda had a penchant for randomness. Her mind was used to taking and even sought out the path less traveled. We talked about life, love, God, horses, evil, happiness, sorrow, right, wrong, the sky, chemistry, ancient history, horses, the origins of the earth, writing books, politics, nature, horses, snakes, scared people, scary people, funny people, serious people, cars, industry, english, travel, Scotland, France, French toast, French fries, Whataburger, steak, beacon, cute boys, dorky boys, fun girls, weird goth girls, church, music, scuba diving, sharks, eating squid, sushi, camp fires, fishing, farming, horses, work, school, marriage, and her hair. Then she would be quite for a little while, I would catch my breath, and she would start talking again.

I am thankful for God’s grace to go through this horrible experience and keep my eyes on him. I am thankful for those I work with who love and support us. I am thankful that I am not and have never been ashamed of the richness of this country. I see the bountiful spread on the table at thanksgiving and unlike many, who only see gluttony, selfishness, and arrogancy because others in the world do not have what we have, I understand that that bounty exists because many people, for many generations before me, took great risk and bore great sacrifice to build a nation under God. And God has blessed it for their sakes.

I know this is a long read and i thank you for reading this far. For a cousin that i did not even know in life, this girl has touched my life. I tear up even now just writing this.

Thank you and God Bless

LOOK WMDs!!!!

2010-12-09T14:12:00.000-08:00

so it looks like there were WMDs found in Iraq that we never heard of... Not sure why this would be the case but. WikiLeaks has shown evidence that it is so...

Lerry Elder over at TownHall has written a piece that shows WikiLeaks has vendicated the war in Iraq. You will find the piece here and here is an exerpt.

Bush, in building the case for war against Iraq, lied to the nation. He falsely claimed that Iraq was attempting to purchase yellowcake from Africa. Time magazine specifically referred to the yellowcake "lie" in accusing Bush of fabricating the case for war. Therefore, were Iraq to have had yellowcake -- an assertion called a "lie" -- it would have confirmed the presence of WMD, giving credence to Bush's declaration of Iraq as a "grave and gathering threat."
But ... there ... was ... yellowcake. This brings us back to WikiLeaks.
Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."
In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk."

I think someone is owed an apology...

2010-10-04T10:43:00.001-07:00

Where is the outrage of the Native born Minority over Illegal immigration???

2010-04-30T07:17:00.000-07:00

Where is the outrage of the Native born Minority over Illegal immigration???
Lets face it! The truth is that the majority of the academic, white collar, high paying, and managerial jobs etc… are still held predominantly by the Caucasian male. While I say that it takes a generation or two to recover economically, educationally, and socially from the severe racism of the past. I am sure there are many arguments that demonize “The man”.
Yes, there are also many a white man holding these positions too. But my point is that still today, a high percentage of the jobs held by the minority worker, are entry level, low skill, and/or labor intensive jobs. With this in mind, the native born, Hispanic and Black workers wages are affected by illegal immigration significantly more than The white worker. A much larger share of minorities as appose to whites, are in direct labor competition with the illegal immigrants. Wouldnt you think that this would be a concern? It is not that Americans won’t do the menial, and labor intensive jobs; it’s that they won’t do them at the wages, and absence of benefits that an undocumented worker will do them. You think we are addicted to cheap oil??? I say we are addicted to cheap labor. I say that the Native born marching in the streets with fists raised, fighting for the Illegal immigrants are being used by the Liberals to further their agenda, and intimidate the average conservative citizen with threats of a racist accusation.
Even the beloved Cesar Chavez recognized that Illegal migrant workers undercut, and undermined the field workers that he so vehemently championed.
Like Cezar, if the Minority leaders were truly concerned for the minority, Illegal Immigration would be top on the list to oppose

What happens if and when the Native born minority figures this out? How then will that liberal minority stand?

The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord

2010-04-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

Been a while sinca ANYTHING was posted here... got to busy i guess. Here is a fun bit of something to chew on.

Being an Evil Overlord seems to be a good career choice. It pays well, there are all sorts of perks and you can set your own hours. However every Evil Overlord I've read about in books or seen in movies invariably gets overthrown and destroyed in the end. I've noticed that no matter whether they are barbarian lords, deranged wizards, mad scientists or alien invaders, they always seem to make the same basic mistakes every single time.

My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.
I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.
When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."
After I kidnap the beautiful princess, we will be married immediately in a quiet civil ceremony, not a lavish spectacle in three weeks' time during which the final phase of my plan will be carried out.
I will not include a self-destruct mechanism unless absolutely necessary. If it is necessary, it will not be a large red button labelled "Danger: Do Not Push". The big red button marked "Do Not Push" will instead trigger a spray of bullets on anyone stupid enough to disregard it. Similarly, the ON/OFF switch will not clearly be labelled as such.
I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum -- a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.
I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
The hero is not entitled to a last kiss, a last cigarette, or any other form of last request.
I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.
I will never utter the sentence "But before I kill you, there's just one thing I want to know."
When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.
I will not have a son. Although his laughably under-planned attempt to usurp power would easily fail, it would provide a fatal distraction at a crucial point in time.
I will not have a daughter. She would be as beautiful as she was evil, but one look at the hero's rugged countenance and she'd betray her own father.
Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.
I will hire a talented fashion designer to create original uniforms for my Legions of Terror, as opposed to some cheap knock-offs that make them look like Nazi stormtroopers, Roman footsoldiers, or savage Mongol hordes. All were eventually defeated and I want my troops to have a more positive mind-set.
No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field bigger than my head.
I will keep a special cache of low-tech weapons and train my troops in their use. That way -- even if the heroes manage to neutralize my power generator and/or render the standard-issue energy weapons useless -- my troops will not be overrun by a handful of savages armed with spears and rocks.
I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)
No matter how well it would perform, I will never construct any sort of machinery which is completely indestructible except for one small and virtually inaccessible vulnerable spot.
No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive who is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bedchamber.
I will never build only one of anything important. All important systems will have redundant control panels and power supplies. For the same reason I will always carry at least two fully loaded weapons at all times.
My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.
I will dress in bright and cheery colors, and so throw my enemies into confusion.
All bumbling conjurers, clumsy squires, no-talent bards, and cowardly thieves in the land will be preemptively put to death. My foes will surely give up and abandon their quest if they have no source of comic relief.
All naive, busty tavern wenches in my realm will be replaced with surly, world-weary waitresses who will provide no unexpected reinforcement and/or romantic subplot for the hero or his sidekick.
I will not fly into a rage and kill a messenger who brings me bad news just to illustrate how evil I really am. Good messengers are hard to come by.
I won't require high-ranking female members of my organization to wear a stainless-steel bustier. Morale is better with a more casual dress-code. Similarly, outfits made entirely from black leather will be reserved for formal occasions.
I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.
I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
I will not imprison members of the same party in the same cell block, let alone the same cell. If they are important prisoners, I will keep the only key to the cell door on my person instead of handing out copies to every bottom-rung guard in the prison.
If my trusted lieutenant tells me my Legions of Terror are losing a battle, I will believe him. After all, he's my trusted lieutenant.
If an enemy I have just killed has a younger sibling or offspring anywhere, I will find them and have them killed immediately, instead of waiting for them to grow up harboring feelings of vengeance towards me in my old age.
If I absolutely must ride into battle, I will certainly not ride at the forefront of my Legions of Terror, nor will I seek out my opposite number among his army.
I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
Once my power is secure, I will destroy all those pesky time-travel devices.
When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.
I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.
I will only employ bounty hunters who work for money. Those who work for the pleasure of the hunt tend to do dumb things like even the odds to give the other guy a sporting chance.
I will make sure I have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what in my organization. For example, if my general screws up I will not draw my weapon, point it at him, say "And here is the price for failure," then suddenly turn and kill some random underling.
If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.
If I learn that a callow youth has begun a quest to destroy me, I will slay him while he is still a callow youth instead of waiting for him to mature.
I will treat any beast which I control through magic or technology with respect and kindness. Thus if the control is ever broken, it will not immediately come after me for revenge.
If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper.
My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess' cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.
I will hire a team of board-certified architects and surveyors to examine my castle and inform me of any secret passages and abandoned tunnels that I might not know about.
If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
I will not strike a bargain with a demonic being then attempt to double-cross it simply because I feel like being contrary.
The deformed mutants and odd-ball psychotics will have their place in my Legions of Terror. However before I send them out on important covert missions that require tact and subtlety, I will first see if there is anyone else equally qualified who would attract less attention.
My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.
Before employing any captured artifacts or machinery, I will carefully read the owner's manual.
If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.
I will never build a sentient computer smarter than I am.
My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
If my advisors ask "Why are you risking everything on such a mad scheme?", I will not proceed until I have a response that satisfies them.
I will design fortress hallways with no alcoves or protruding structural supports which intruders could use for cover in a firefight.
Bulk trash will be disposed of in incinerators, not compactors. And they will be kept hot, with none of that nonsense about flames going through accessible tunnels at predictable intervals.
I will see a competent psychiatrist and get cured of all extremely unusual phobias and bizarre compulsive habits which could prove to be a disadvantage.
If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.
My security keypad will actually be a fingerprint scanner. Anyone who watches someone press a sequence of buttons or dusts the pad for fingerprints then subsequently tries to enter by repeating that sequence will trigger the alarm system.
No matter how many shorts we have in the system, my guards will be instructed to treat every surveillance camera malfunction as a full-scale emergency.
I will spare someone who saved my life sometime in the past. This is only reasonable as it encourages others to do so. However, the offer is good one time only. If they want me to spare them again, they'd better save my life again.
All midwives will be banned from the realm. All babies will be delivered at state-approved hospitals. Orphans will be placed in foster-homes, not abandoned in the woods to be raised by creatures of the wild.
When my guards split up to search for intruders, they will always travel in groups of at least two. They will be trained so that if one of them disappears mysteriously while on patrol, the other will immediately initiate an alert and call for backup, instead of quizzically peering around a corner.
If I decide to test a lieutenant's loyalty and see if he/she should be made a trusted lieutenant, I will have a crack squad of marksmen standing by in case the answer is no.
If all the heroes are standing together around a strange device and begin to taunt me, I will pull out a conventional weapon instead of using my unstoppable superweapon on them.
I will not agree to let the heroes go free if they win a rigged contest, even though my advisors assure me it is impossible for them to win.
When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.
I will instruct my Legions of Terror to attack the hero en masse, instead of standing around waiting while members break off and attack one or two at a time.
If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)
If I have a fit of temporary insanity and decide to give the hero the chance to reject a job as my trusted lieutentant, I will retain enough sanity to wait until my current trusted lieutenant is out of earshot before making the offer.
I will not tell my Legions of Terror "And he must be taken alive!" The command will be "And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical."
If my doomsday device happens to come with a reverse switch, as soon as it has been employed it will be melted down and made into limited-edition commemorative coins.
If my weakest troops fail to eliminate a hero, I will send out my best troops instead of wasting time with progressively stronger ones as he gets closer and closer to my fortress.
If I am fighting with the hero atop a moving platform, have disarmed him, and am about to finish him off and he glances behind me and drops flat, I too will drop flat instead of quizzically turning around to find out what he saw.
I will not shoot at any of my enemies if they are standing in front of the crucial support beam to a heavy, dangerous, unbalanced structure.
If I'm eating dinner with the hero, put poison in his goblet, then have to leave the table for any reason, I will order new drinks for both of us instead of trying to decide whether or not to switch with him.
I will not have captives of one sex guarded by members of the opposite sex.
I will not use any plan in which the final step is horribly complicated, e.g. "Align the 12 Stones of Power on the sacred altar then activate the medallion at the moment of total eclipse." Instead it will be more along the lines of "Push the button."
I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.
My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.
If a group of henchmen fail miserably at a task, I will not berate them for incompetence then send the same group out to try the task again.
After I captures the hero's superweapon, I will not immediately disband my legions and relax my guard because I believe whoever holds the weapon is unstoppable. After all, the hero held the weapon and I took it from him.
I will not design my Main Control Room so that every workstation is facing away from the door.
I will not ignore the messenger that stumbles in exhausted and obviously agitated until my personal grooming or current entertainment is finished. It might actually be important.
If I ever talk to the hero on the phone, I will not taunt him. Instead I will say this his dogged perseverance has given me new insight on the futility of my evil ways and that if he leaves me alone for a few months of quiet contemplation I will likely return to the path of righteousness. (Heroes are incredibly gullible in this regard.)
If I decide to hold a double execution of the hero and an underling who failed or betrayed me, I will see to it that the hero is scheduled to go first.
When arresting prisoners, my guards will not allow them to stop and grab a useless trinket of purely sentimental value.
My dungeon will have its own qualified medical staff complete with bodyguards. That way if a prisoner becomes sick and his cellmate tells the guard it's an emergency, the guard will fetch a trauma team instead of opening up the cell for a look.
My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.
My dungeon cells will not be furnished with objects that contain reflective surfaces or anything that can be unravelled.
If an attractive young couple enters my realm, I will carefully monitor their activities. If I find they are happy and affectionate, I will ignore them. However if circumstance have forced them together against their will and they spend all their time bickering and criticizing each other except during the intermittent occasions when they are saving each others' lives at which point there are hints of sexual tension, I will immediately order their execution.
Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size.
Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access.

This Evil Overlord List is Copyright 1996-1997 by Peter Anspach. If you enjoy it, feel free to pass it along or post it anywhere, provided that (1) it is not altered in any way, and (2) this copyright notice is attached.

A Word of Advice to Liberals

2009-12-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have liberal friends.

I try not to be seen in public with them, but I have them. One of them is my mother, which makes for interesting dinner conversations - but that's for another article.

I'd like to give my liberal friends, and my mother, some advice.

Seriously, we disagree on everything, and I hope their political efforts fail, but - friend to friend, son to mom - I'd like to offer them some advice.

Basically, here it is - don't trust the Democratic Party.

I'm not trying to cause trouble, I'm just giving a warning -- a warning based on experience.

Where the liberals are today is where we conservatives were a few years ago. We take turns having our day in the sun, apparently, and this is the liberals' day. They entirely control the federal government. They have the presidency and both houses of Congress. They are the bosses.

Only they aren't. The liberals don't control Washington, the Democratic Party does. That's where, for liberals, the trouble is.

Now, before I go on, let's make something perfectly clear: I disagree with liberals and hope that they get absolutely nothing of what they want. I disagree with them and believe that their philosophy will kill our country. They could not be more wrong.

But I respect them. I respect anybody who truly believes something. And I'm not bothered when people who truly believe something stand up for it.

That's what true conservatives and true liberals have in common -- they both passionately believe in things they think are very important. They both think that what they are doing is the right and best thing. They believe they have discovered and are advocating truth. After all, last I checked, the First Ammendment was still in the U.S. Constitution. That applies to both Republicans and Democrats alike.

Now, as a conservative, I believe my side is right and the other side is wrong. And I understand that liberals feel just exactly the opposite. Which is fine, we're both just being true to ourselves. But we're both also being exploited by our parties. More to the point, we both are played for fools by our parties. They take us for our money and our votes and then they push us to the side. They distance themselves from us and water down our priorities and pit us against one another and sting us along promising victories in the future. The things we believe in, the things that bring us to the political process, they never seem to completely get adopted. Always it's the next election, the next fight, the next round of fund-raising.

With both political parties, for true believers, it's all promise and no pay off. Which brings me back to the advice for liberals. You need to hold the Democratic Party's feet to the fire and make sure that it gives you what you want. Try to get a better deal out of your party than we conservatives got out of ours.

After we gave the Republican Party control of the White House and the Congress, it gave us exactly nothing. None of the issues that fundamentally matter to conservatives were addressed and several of our principles were directly assaulted and dismissed. We got the shaft. After all the years of work, the untold dollars contributed, the hopes and promises, and they spent their season in power doing next to nothing to advance that put them in office.

Conservatives gave the government to the Republican Party and the Republican Party defaulted on the debt just like the Democratic Party is defaulting on its debt to liberals now.

Liberals wanted the U.S. out of the war business. Yet their president has just escalated a conflict from which his secretary of defense has said we may not escape for 10 or 15 years. Liberals wanted the U.S. out of Gitmo. Yet their president has just suggested nothing more than simply moving Gitmo north to an Illinois backwater. Liberals wanted a single-payer government-run health system, or at least a dynamic and dominating public option. It's unclear what is going to pass, but it certainly won't include either of those things. Liberals wanted stringent rules to fight global warming. In Copenhagen, the Democrat government is pushing a policy that has the Third World walking out in a huff.

And how are gays in the military doing? And the illegal aliens?

Can you catch the scent in the wind? The supporters who worked most passionately for the Democratic Party and its candidates are the supporters who are getting nothing. Nothing but the back of the hand.

Now, personally, I believe that the amount of damage Barack Obama does to the nation will be directly proportional to how liberal he is, so I'm glad that he's flaking on some of his promises to the liberals. But - friend to friend, son to mom - I can understand that to the people who were chanting "Yes we can!" this failure to walk the talk is deeply disappointing.

From the liberal standpoint, the Senate health-care deal is not a compromise, it is a sell out. And, from the liberal standpoint, a lot of people who voted for the president and his party were sold a bill of goods. They are getting shafted just like we conservatives got shafted.

Thus the advice. Don't comprimise your principles. You fought this fight for a reason, and you ought not to surrender your victory. You ought not to let the Democratic Party flake on its promises to you. Because it's not conservatives or the Republican Party that are holding you back, it's the Democratic Party. We conservatives have no power. We are completely excluded from the health-care debate in both houses of Congress. And yet liberals aren't getting what they want or what they were promised.

And that's because of Democrats.

That's because of Democrats' dishonesty, and their manipulation of the liberal base that supports their party and gives it power.

I'm not gloating. The same thing happened to us. It was a betrayal that still hurts.

It is a betrayal the liberals should stand up and challenge. It is a betrayal they should not accept.

The death of Common Sense

2009-12-16T06:14:00.001-08:00

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years.
No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
Why the early bird gets the worm;
Life isn't always fair;
and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).
His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but
overbearing regulations were set in place:
Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate;
Teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch;
A teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental
consent to administer sunscreen or an Aspirin to a student; but could
not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot.
She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death
by his parents, Truth and Trust;
by his wife, Discretion;
by his daughter, Responsibility and
by his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I am a Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

A thanksgiving to remember

2009-12-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

Found this on the people's cube friggin hillarious!!!

Last Thursday a flying saucer landed in my backyard. A friendly, if slightly disoriented alien pilot told me he needed a drink. I had just what he wanted, since this was Thanksgiving and all. I was glad to have company so I wouldn't have to eat my famous fat-free vegetarian imitation turkey all alone.

His name was Ollie and he came to Earth looking for an honest, self-reliant, optimistic, and technically inclined nation that could benefit from a contact with his more advanced civilization.
"Whoa, whoa!" I raised my finger. "To call yourself advanced you must take at least three diversity training classes. What planet are you from, really?"

"There's no such thing as a more advanced civilization," I said. "All civilizations are equally advanced; they just find different ways to express their advancement."
My guest laughed. "I just escaped from a planet where people eat their neighbors whom they kill with sharp rocks. Does that sound advanced to you?"
"That is a value statement," I objected. "Did you try to examine the cause of their anger? Could they, perhaps, be hungry? Could they be disenfranchised victims of unfair trading policies, exercising early forms of class struggle against the oppressive neighbors? They didn't kill innocent chickens; that we do know."
"They sure wanted to kill and eat me. Come on, they're savages."
Savages? Really? "If you must use the 'S' word," I said indignantly, "have the decency to modify it with the word 'noble' - as in 'noble savage.'"
"They threw me into the fire," he said. "I was saved by my asbestos spacesuit, which they thought was my shiny skin. They're savages alright."
"At least they didn't harm the environment with asbestos, " I quipped. "Nor have they caused Global Warming with industrial pollution. That alone makes them more advanced than most Americans who have no social consciousness whatsoever."

"Who are these Americans you speak of?"
"I'm glad you asked," I said. "Americans are the most biased, oppressive, exploitive, insensitive, homophobic, racist, sexist, bloodthirsty, greedy, capitalistic, environmentally-unfriendly people who live in the ugliest country on planet Earth. You just landed in it."
The alien moved his eyes from the vegetarian imitation turkey, bottles of Evian water and his scoop of Ben & Jerry ice cream to the flat-screen high-definition TV, computer, dishwasher, cordless phone, and a thermostat on the wall next to the bookshelves with collector's editions of Marx, Lenin, Chomsky, and Michael Moore.

"For a citizen of such a hideous nation you're doing alright," he said. "Are you some sort of a king or a dictator?"
"A king?" I rolled my eyes. "I work on an educational grant from the government."
"Oh. So you do work for the government."
"It's not what it sounds," I corrected him. "I only let the American government pay me because that takes money away from their illegal wars. Whatever the Department of Education shells out on my grant is obviously not enough."
"Do tell me about the nature of your work."
"I am a professional revisionist. Currently I'm rewriting old novels that are on the students' reading lists, bringing them in compliance with the progressive worldview," I said. "I turn classic villains into sympathetic characters with legitimate grievances. The readers no longer have to take sides, which promotes in them a correct attitude of non-judgmental moral relativism. Occasionally I also expose classic heroes as biased reactionaries who enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, blind to exploitation of the toiling masses. The grant is called 'Prosaic Justice.' It is meant to raise the next generation of Americans as kinder, gentler, more sensible and intelligent human beings, unlike the grotesque monsters they are today."

"It still sounds as if you're part of this government's elite," he insisted.
For someone claiming to come from a "more advanced civilization" his naiveté was rather insulting.
"Let me put it this way," I said patiently. "I belong to the heavily underpaid intellectual elite, working against this government virtually in the underground."
"The anti-government rebels on this planet sure have style," he insisted. "Look at all the things you've got."
"Don't you understand?" I exclaimed indignantly. "All these things have been stolen from the oppressed people of the world through neocolonialism, unfair trade agreements, and wars. And now we're supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving? Honoring the theft of resources from the world's poorest citizens? Personally I use this occasion to celebrate my immeasurable guilt for having all these things that I don't even really need."
"Why don't you just give them back?"
"The former owners are dead," I lied. "But to talk about my guilt for having these things feels just as good as giving them back. Especially if I succeed in making others feel as guilty as I am. Your spaceship for instance. Where did you steal the metal to build it? And what solar system did you rape to get all that fuel? See what I mean?"
"I see," my guest stood up. "Looks as if this planet is not ready for contact yet."

"Wait!" I said, running after him. "We have other countries, much better than America! Progressive, socially conscious countries! Members of the United Nations!"
"It doesn't work that way," the alien said, beeping the door of his ship. "If this planet has a group of people that match your description, it's damaged goods."
"Damn you, America!" I cried. "Now that we finally had a chance to build a mutually beneficial relationship with other planets you had to go ahead and ruin it for everybody!"

With a faint whirring the flying saucer leaped above the roofs, hesitated for a few moments, and then disappeared among the stars, forever. I went back to my vegetarian imitation turkey, suddenly realizing that all the anger and the guilt that had been haunting me all day were gone - replaced with a sense of an accomplished mission. Come to think of it, I just saved a whole alien world from the corruptive American influence! It felt almost as good as when the US Forces withdrew from Vietnam and Somalia, or when we defeated Republicans in the midterm elections.

I adjusted the electronic shiatsu massage pad on my couch and turned on CNN.

December 7th 'A Date Which Will Live in Infamy'

2009-12-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Today we remember the lives lost on this day in 1941. Well, some of us do. I have yet to see a blurb on the news, Google did nothing with their cutesy banner like they do on world earth day. In that day the Japanese were locked in a struggle with China and as thier conquests and brutality grew the west slowly choked off the oil and mineral supplies it desprately needed to continue their war. In July of 1941 The west shut off the spigot and cut the Japanese from the raw matireials that it needed. This caused the Japanese to begin to look to the conquest of the East Indys and South East Aisia to gain the resources it needed. In November of 1941 peace negotiations were clearly approaching an end, U.S. officials fully expected a Japanese attack into the Indies, Malaya and probably the Philippines. The prospect that Japan would attack east was unanticipated.

8AM on December 7, 1941 saw A Japanese task force attack the Island of Oahu and specificly Pearl Harbor. in the three hours that followed 2400 US servicemen and women were killed, 5 of 8 Battleships were sunk or sinking and the rest were damaged. Several othe ships were damaged and the bulk of the aircraft on the island were destroyed or damaged to the point where they could not fly.

The Japanese launched this attack to keep us out of the war. Ironically it was the deciding factor that galvanized us as a nation and gave us the backbone to keep fighting to the end. Even when the Japanese were defeated in the Coral Sea, the memory of this attack kept American spirit high and we pushed until we had erased the territorial gains they had made and forced them to surrender

Seems like everyone has forgotten this day. Like another day a little more recently in our history. but that is another post.

The Nobel Peace Prize: A Cheaply Earned Accolade

2009-10-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

If Obama had any integrity at all, he would have refused the Nobel Peace Prize.

Maybe in a couple years, Barack could have earned the peace prize. But certainly not now. Clearly not for the events between noon on January 20, 2009 and midnight January 31, 2010, for which this award is bestowed. None but the blindest partisans think he deserves the award.

Worse, he has now lost the chance to ever earn it fairly. A greatness he probably believes he has, and is eager to demonstrate, will go unhonored because some idiots in Norway had a crush on him. No true competitor wants the gold medal without running and winning the race, and that probably applies to Barack Obama.

Nothing truly good ever came on a silver platter, even if it was a gold medallion.

The harm done to Barack Obama by this award is similar to that done by praise too freely given to children and the unfair advantages associated with affirmative action.

Many children today, stewed in the self-esteem cult of contemporary homes and schools, are praised for everything, even failing. “Good try!” is shouted from the sidelines of countless athletic contests as a youngster has failed to make a play. High grades get smiley faces and low grades get smiley faces and everybody gets praised, and at the same time, equalized into the social common. Every child is the smartest and the prettiest and the result is a generation of talentless, lazy little narcissists with a massive chip on their shoulder.

But worse than being unexceptional, those children are deprived of praise truly earned. If you are a little hero for getting a "C", what does the praise really mean when you work hard and get an "A"? Like the movie says, “If everyone is special, no one is special.” And the child who excels, who works hard and achieves something worthwhile, hears praise that is cheapened by its ubiquity.

Affirmative action, passing out scholarships and jobs and promotions and praise on the basis of race or gender or handicap or religion, likewise cheapens genuine achievement. If someone in a favored class works and excels and earns a scholarship or a promotion or something of the sort, the victory is tainted to an extent because the same reward is given equally to those who have not achieved.

Unearned praise damages the person who has earned praise.

I kind of feel sorry for Obama... Kind of.

The Nobel committee ripped him off. As is always the case when something is given undeserved and unearned, he has lost the opportunity to prove himself.

The Nobel Peace Prize is probably something Barack Obama has daydreamed about. His astounding sense of entitlement and self no doubt had led him to believe that one day he would receive the Nobel prize.

And who knows, maybe someday he would have earned it. He certainly has a global view of himself, as a leader whose abilities and charms know no limit. And maybe after a year or four or eight he might actually have done something that, in honest assessment, merited the prize.

But now we’ll never know.

Now he’ll never receive it honestly.

His chance to prove himself was stolen by Norwegian propagandists.

They cheated not just history, but him.

You Can't Eat Gold

2009-10-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for being stupid. But what is it with gold?

Lately, with all the "change" rhetoric from the White House and the economic problems which seem to ensue, there appears to be this influx of ads to buy gold, as though gold is going to be the only way to buy anything after Obama gets done with this country.

Supposedly, the world is about to end or the sky is going to fall or something like that, and our only hope for survival is to own gold. Not the kind in your teeth, not the kind in your wedding ring, the kind in little ingots and coins.

Which is where I get lost.

I can’t quite understand how, in the event of social collapse or famine or blizzard or a Republican return to power, owning gold does me any good.

Follow me on this.

Something happens so that the normal course of life is disrupted. Your job goes away or the supermarket runs out of food or there is a nuclear winter or something like that. Money has no value, the necessities of life are not available, the proverbial crap has hit the fan.

And gold coins are supposed to help me? I don’t get that.

Don’t get me wrong, while I doubt any sort of calamity is around the corner, I do believe it is wise to be prepared. Seriously, I think that everyone ought to be prepared in case things get really, really bad.

I would point out, however, that every previous prediction of the end of the world has been wrong. Forecasting doom and gloom has, thus far in human experience, always come up empty. But history and my faith teach me that, hey, you never know.

So I am prepared, and trying to get more prepared all the time.

That’s what I think the gold buyers are trying to do. My problem is, I’m too stupid to understand their thinking.

My thinking is that if something bad happens, all that’s going to matter is keeping my family fed, warm and safe. We are going to need to eat, we are going to need to stave off the winter cold, we are going to need to make sure that nobody comes and does bad things to us.

I figure that, if things get really bad, a can of beans is going to be more useful to me than a Krugerrand.

One other thing that strikes me is cost.

An ounce of gold costs $1,000 plus whatever fees the various gold companies are going to stick you with.

For that same $1,000, you can buy enough basic food to supply two people for an entire year. Or, if you want fancy freeze-dried stuff that tastes good, your $1,000 will buy a year’s supply for one person. And the truth is, if you’re smart and willing to do some work, $1,000 can get together enough essentials to keep a whole family going for quite a while.

As I look at my $1,000, I have to ask myself: Do I want an ounce of gold or 12,000 pounds of wheat? In the event of a true emergency, which is going to be more useful? I can pick up a little bauble, or I can store enough food to keep me and my family from starving to death.

I figure that if the currency system fails – if the dollar loses all value – I’m going to be more concerned with preserving my life than with preserving my wealth.

So we store extra food when we can. Our local grocer here puts on a sale about twice a year called the "Case Lot Sale" where they sell various staples and food supplies by the case at great prices so we pick up a case or two of what we actually eat on a daily basis. We live on some of it and save the rest. Now that makes sense to me. I am pretty sure that when the going gets tough, our extra storage purchases will start coming in very handy - probably more than a few gold coins.

We’ve also got extra clothes, blankets, sleeping bags, a tent, a water filter, bathroom supplies and basic medicines.

Maybe I sound like a nut, but I think my approach makes a lot more sense than buying a shiny bit of metal.

My mind isn’t closed, however. If somebody can show me a recipe for gold, or a way I can make it heat my home, I might reconsider.

33 Minutes

2009-09-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

As I am sure you are aware if you have been listening to Limbaugh or any of your favorite conservative talk shows, yesterday President Obama made a decision which may well have compromised the security of our nation for the foreseeable future.

In one of the most stunning betrayals of modern diplomacy, Barack Obama announced yesterday that the United States is abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic. They are on their own against Russia.

And in what could not have been a coincidence, he did it on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. An invasion that led to two generations of Polish slavery and the widespread slaughter of Polish citizens.

Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Barack Obama lost it. The first bricks of the new Berlin Wall have been laid.

Here’s the background.

As the countries of central and eastern Europe emerged from a half-century’s domination by the Soviet Union, many of them sought to ally themselves with the United States. Why? Because they believed in freedom, because they believed that the United States stood for liberty.

And because centuries of history and culture have taught them that Russia is their enemy. In that part of the world, history has always been about one group conquering another group, and the aggressor has almost always been Russia. That giant nation has made a centuries-long habit of smashing smaller nations.

Like Poland and the Czech Republic. So we promised to protect them.

Specifically, we promised to give them the technology to defend themselves against the Russian nuclear missiles that even now are aimed at them. The purpose of the missile shield was to protect the Poles and the Czechs from Russian missiles.

Yesterday, the president and vice president said that the purpose of the missile shield was to protect those two nations from Iranian nukes. But Iran has never shown the slightest ill will toward either the Poles or the Czechs. Russia, on the other hand, has devastated them both more than once.

The George W. Bush commitment to put a missile shield over Poland and the Czech Republic was a warning to Russia that it should stay on its side of the fence. By taking away the threat of Russian nuclear missiles, the shield bought some breathing room for the Poles and Czechs.

And why would we want to do that? Because of freedom.

In 1968, something called the Prague Spring took place, when Czechoslovakia – a Soviet subordinate since the end of World War 2 – tried to give its citizens some measure of freedom. Some bans on the free press were eased, some rights to personal free speech were granted, some ability to travel to different parts of the country to visit relatives was allowed.

The Russians sent in tanks and the tiny country was crushed.

Poland was the champion of liberty and took the steps that began the toppling of the dominoes of Russian domination of Eastern Europe. It was Poland which allowed the formation of the first non-communist group in the Soviet bloc – the Solidarity trade union. It was Poland that allowed people to, quietly and on the sly, attend church.

When Russia threatened the Poles and demanded they crack down, the Poles refused. There was a dangerous, frightening standoff, but in the end, it was courageous Polish love of freedom that allowed that nation to shake off Russian domination.

Shortly thereafter, the rest of Russia’s empire withered, and places like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine were free. Tens of millions of people were liberated from Russia’s almost-genocidal oppression.

It was one of the greatest events of the second half of the 20th Century. And it was cheered by the American people. The Cold War, with its face-to-face stare-down between communism and capitalism was over, and the freedom of capitalism had won.

Maybe that’s what ticked off Obama because now he has distanced the United States from Poland, and capitulated to Russian demands that Poland and the Czech Republic be left unprotected from its missiles.

Tens of millions of people became less secure yesterday, and the cause of freedom in central and eastern Europe was weakened. The only winner was Russia and its dreams of empire.

In the face of an angry and belligerent Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama blinked. Ronald Reagan demanded, “Tear down the wall!” Barack Obama whimpered, “Don’t let me get in your way.” We once directly challenged Russian dreams of domination, now we have – more than anything since the partition after World War 2 – facilitated that domination.

We asked the Czechs and the Poles to be our friends, and pledged our support to them, and then we reneged and threw them under the bus.

They have followed us to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – Poland fields the second-largest number of troops fighting the war on terror – and they have fought and bled by our side.

And yesterday Barack Obama told them to screw off.

The Heritage Foundation has produced a film titled "33 Minutes" which clearly lays out the facts about national defense which we now can no longer ignore, and which the current administration has compromised.

Please take a look at this trailer and consider where we are now and where this administration is taking us.

A Nation of Pansies

2009-09-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have a few words to say about this insidious attitude which seems to be turning this country into a nation of pansies.

Stop whining, stop licking your wounds, stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Don’t be a pansy.

Toughen up. Don’t be a cry baby, don’t play the victim, don’t expect people to feel sorry for you.

We’ve had too much Oprah, too many grief counselors, too much talking about our “pain.” We’ve turned into sniveling narcissists engaged in one giant, nationwide pity party.

How embarrassing.

What makes me think of it is the report that the Army has started a service wide training program on mental-health awareness. Now, I’m all for mental health. I’m all for being understanding and for getting help when you need it. But I notice that mental illness is catching. The more you talk about it, the more people get it.

It’s like one giant placebo effect, a power-of-suggestion phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy. If I give a class on the signs of mental stress, people who thought they were perfectly fine suddenly start showing symptoms of mental stress. After a while, you’re going to have a pack of touchy-feely pansies intent on having the world kiss their boo-boo and feel sorry for them. That’s the last thing that the Army needs.

I’m not sure when it started, but in recent years, American society has been emotionally castrated. We’ve become so comfortable with being “in touch with our feminine side” that we act as if it’s the only side. The traditional male approach to emotional stress – to be tough and shake it off – is ridiculed and rejected. Few things seem more personal than our emotions and how we handle them, yet there is widespread intolerance for how many people do that.

We have chosen an affected emotionality that induces and rewards weakness and breakdown. Like a child whose mother comes running when it falls down and skins its knee, contemporary Americans unconsciously see sorrow and emotional upset as ways to become the center of attention and earn sympathy and even celebrity.

In short, you’re nobody until you cry.

Our culture once admired and rewarded toughness. Americans were strong and stoic. They crossed plains and climbed mountains and fought Indians. They won the wars, endured the depressions, survived the diseases. Now they just cry.

The media feeds into it. If there is a storm or a fire or an earthquake, the camera gets stuck in the face of whoever blubbers the loudest. The steady folks who simply set about picking up and going forward don’t make the evening news.

If there is a bad wreck or a fatal fire or some terrible murder, they put the cops and firefighters on TV talking about how emotionally hard it was for them. Which is confusing, because I thought the dead people were the victims.

With the economic downturn, the nightly news is a never-ending parade of whiners and crybabies, each trying to outdo the other in describing how devastated they are by the downturn. We have become so fond of weakness and victimhood that we embrace it and crave it.

“How do you feel?” has become our national obsession.

And now every soldier in Basic Training is going to get schooled on his feelings. I wonder which real soldier skill they would have taught in the time that is now being devoted to group-therapy claptrap. Instead of equipping soldiers better for the rigors of their duty, it weakens them and opens them to difficulties they likely wouldn’t otherwise have had. So-called “experts” should be honest enough to recognize that their prevention of mental stress actually plants the seeds of mental stress.

Humans are creatures who learn. We are pretty much monkey see, monkey do. And when you tell people that they are apt to have emotional pain and disability, they unconsciously rise to the expectation. Having been taught that emotional disability is an expected result of military stress, they respond to military stress with emotional disability.

If on the other hand, a culture or a class teaches people that they are tough, that they can endure difficulty and stress, surprisingly, they are tough and they endure difficulty and stress.

It is vogue today to mock the old ethic of “suck it up and march on.” It is ridiculed as some sort of unevolved, Neanderthal attitude. It actually was a very useful and very kind ethic. It strengthened people for the challenges of their duty.

Why do you suppose our Army has record-high suicide rates today?

It can’t be because of the stress of their duty. While hugely difficult, it is not unusually so. Compared with the warriors of Vietnam, Korea and the Second World War, even multiply deployed soldiers today are not facing anything their predecessors didn’t face. In some ways, the duty of today is less rigorous than that of earlier generations.

Yet those generations had far-lower suicide rates? Why is that? What has changed? Have the soldiers changed? Are they genetically different? Is there some difference in the chemical make up of their brains?

No. Soldiers are soldiers. They haven’t changed. But their culture has. Whereas their fathers and grandfathers went into the service having been raised in a culture that encouraged and admired toughness, the soldiers of today grew up in a world “in touch with its feelings.” It is not the absence of emotional awareness that contributes to these suicides, it is the abundance of it.

When you raise people in a bath of crying Oprah guests and weeping faces on the evening news, when you warn them that they are going to be emotionally brittle, you cannot be surprised if, in fact, they turn out emotionally brittle.

The touchy-feely psychobabble attitude is not the cure, it is the cause. It’s too bad the Army doesn’t realize that, because it is going to do more harm than good.

Society should realize that. Parents should realize that. We are mollycoddling ourselves and turning into a nation of pansies.

Were You Asking Me a Question, Mr. President?

2009-09-10T09:14:00.001-07:00

The answer is NO!

We don't want you to save us, we don't believe in your plan, we don't trust you to do it for us.

We'd rather be free.

That's what they don't discuss on the evening news. Amidst all the sob stories about expensive pills and death panels, completely overlooked is the principle involved -- and that is that government should not compete with or replace private enterprise. Nowhere in the Constitution or in our history is the federal government authorized to take over or run health care. It is not an enumerated power and it is not an inferred power, it is an assumed power.

And we all know what happens when we assume. (TJ - that's ASS U ME).

The problem with a runaway federal government -- the sort of government we've known over recent years and months -- is that it violates the principles upon which our Republic was founded. It's funny, but the most complex problems are often solved by the application of the simplest of principles. When you get the basics right, everything else takes care of itself. If you untangle and encourage the appropriate function of government and society -- if you turn loose individual liberty and the free market -- problems fix themselves and success comes to both individuals and society.

But that's not how things work today, and that's not what the president is thinking.

Instead of limited government and maximized liberty, what the president suggested last night was empowered government and diminished liberty. And it doesn't really matter how many stories he tells to make us feel sympathetic, or how much money he offers us, or how many songs he sings about justice and equality and compassion, the fact is that the government is not an insurance company and it is not a hospital, and it shouldn't pretend it is. To the extent that it does, it will fail and it will take us down with it.

What the president and many in his party fail to realize is that the purpose of the American government is to safeguard freedom. Our Republic is formed around the premise that liberty is our first priority. It is not meant to protect us from every ill, or take away the possibility of failure, or insulate us from our misfortunes and poor choices. It is meant to protect our liberties. Anything that takes away our liberties must not be embrased even if it is done in the name of "compassion" or "justice."

You can't do the right thing the wrong way. You do not liberate one man by enslaving another. To feed one citizen another citizen's bread, you must first steal it from that citizen. Crime in the name of compassion is still crime.

Each enterprise the federal government puts its hands on turns bitter and failed. Bureaucracy, political correctness and ineptitude breed inefficiency and waste. But the greatest waste is freedom -- the freedom to live the way we choose and do our business the way we choose. Health care is fundamentally a private concern. It is not a right, no more than a haircut is a right. Yes, private charity may provide health care -- as it has from the beginning of our nation -- but public compulsion sacrifices a right for a want and must never be tolerated.

The president thought his TelePrompt-tured eloquence could sway the public, that his magic words would sweep away the will of thousands shouted at town-hall meetings. He thought that his glorified touch would make everything right. But he was wrong.

You can't pick up a turd by the clean end, and you can't do nanny government the right way. He is grabbing power for himself and invoking servitude for us.

Government is not to compete with or replace private enterprise -- that includes insurance companies and hospitals.

It is a first principle of our Republic, explained and exemplified by the Founding Fathers and followed by wise leaders since.

It's not about sob stories, it's about freedom. And, simply put, Mr. President, we don't want what you're selling.

Stay the Hell Away from our Kids

2009-09-08T08:03:00.000-07:00

I, for one, am pulling my kids out today during the school's mandatory Obama brainwashing of America's kids. Like so many others, we don't want Obama talking to our kids.

Why don't we want him talking to our kids? I mean, Reagan did it in 1988. He addressed Junior High School students and they got to ask the President of the United States questions that ranged from what are the so-called "Reaganomics" to how did he feel about gun bans.

So what's the big deal? Why are things so different now?

It’s fairly simple, really.

Tens of millions of American parents don’t trust the president. The upset over this morning’s presidential address to schoolchildren isn’t about the partisan divide, it’s about the president’s arrogance.

After seven months of crammed-down-your-throat Obama agenda, half the country has had a bellyful. After seven months of being told that they don’t matter, half the country is returning the sentiment.

They don’t trust him with their children not because they’re paranoid, but because he’s not trustworthy. He has shown himself to be an enemy to their values and beliefs – to be hostile to their families and their country – and they are merely saying, “Stay the hell away from our kids.”

This isn’t about Republicans, this is about Barack Obama. Specifically, it is about a president who steamrolled and marginalized those who didn’t vote for him and who now is astounded that they won’t kiss his royal backside. He wants to be a rock star but nobody’s buying tickets.

Here’s the background.

The Department of Education sent out talking points for teachers, outlines of lesson plans intended to precede and follow a then-unannounced speech by the president to elementary school students. Troublesome in the wording was a suggested assignment that pupils be asked to write down a plan for how they could help President Obama.

That ticked people off, but that was only part of it. Not only didn’t parents want their kids being drafted into the Obama army, they didn’t want this particular socialist politicizing the classroom.

When you’ve got a classroom being run by an NEA member and you’re piping in Barack Hussein Orwell, all of a sudden the home-school people don’t seem so kooky. All of a sudden it seems like an unnecessary lecture intended primarily to indoctrinate the impressionable into the cult of Big Brother.

Parents don’t so much mind the president talking to their children, but seven months have taught the country to expect propaganda, not talk.

Further, about half the country simply doesn’t trust his basic philosophy. Like the notion that America’s children need a lecture on doing their homework from the head of the federal government. See, the federal government isn’t in charge of my children’s education – I am. And American children don’t need the president to tell them that education is important – that’s what parents are for.

Every child in every classroom has a parent or guardian who can talk to them about doing their homework and paying attention in school. Every student in every classroom has a teacher or two who can talk to them about working hard and setting goals.

For crying out loud, even Bill Cosby is telling children about the importance of education.

We don’t need the Marxist-in-Chief to think that the nanny government has to get in the act. And, no offense intended, but there are a bunch of us who think that “community organizer” is not exactly the role model we want our children following. For a certain portion of America, squealing for a bigger cut of other people’s tax money isn’t particularly noble and it’s not what we want our kids to grow up to do.

Further, we prefer that people who used illegal drugs not hold themselves out as teachers of the young. We are not impressed by the irony that the guy in charge of the military would be barred – by virtue of his teen-aged drug use – from enlisting in the military.

But the bottom line isn’t politics or philosophy – it’s the way he’s treated us. He has treated half the electorate like dirt and has done nothing, through the first eighth of his term, to make friends or earn himself the benefit of the doubt.

Typically, when someone wins an election, he sets out to reassure and woo the folks who didn’t vote for him. Typically, basic decency makes a politician want to show he’s serving all the people.

The Obama Administration and the Democrats who control Congress have had no such disposition. It has been an arrogance unmatched for decades as divergent views have been dismissed and mocked. Half the country feels that the president and the Congress are condescendingly dismissive of them.

He has had seven months to extend an olive branch. He has chosen not to. He has chosen instead to attack people and philosophies different from his. He has chosen to play fast and loose with American tradition and principle. He has practiced scorched-earth politics against the people whose taxes support his grand dreams. He has dismissed anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

And tens of millions of Americans don’t want a person like that talking to their children.

And I’m one of them.

Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Congressman Brian Baird

2009-08-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is off of You Tube and the descrition of this guy's channel

I, David William Hedrick, a member of the silent majority, decided that I was not going to be silent anymore. So, I let U.S. Congressman Brian Baird have it. I was one questioner out of 38, that was called at random from an audience that started at 3,000 earlier in the evening. Not expecting to be called on, I quickly scratched what I wanted to say on a borrowed piece of paper and with a pen that I borrowed from someone else in the audience minutes before I spoke. So much for the planned talking points of the right wing conspiracy.

Utah Believes in the Second Ammendment

2009-08-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

Did you know that you can get a Utah concealed carry gun permit that is good in 30 other states in the Union?

I’d like you to join me in applying for a Utah concealed carry permit.

Let me explain why.

In Utah, we believe in the Second Amendment, so much so that we repeat it and expand it in our state constitution. And our laws reflect that.

For example, if you have a concealed carry permit from anywhere in the country, it’s honored in Utah. And that openness has resulted in an interesting phenomenon – Utah’s concealed carry license is itself accepted in most parts of the country.

Specifically, 30 states will honor a Utah pistol permit. If you have a Utah permit, you can carry in those states.

Now here’s the interesting thing. You don’t have to live in Utah to get a Utah permit. You don’t even have to visit Utah. You can do it all through the mail. You will have to take a class, but you can probably do that where you live, and the rest can be done long distance.

And two months later – if your background is clean – you will have the closest thing there is to a national concealed carry permit. Ironically, it may even be quicker and easier to get a Utah permit to carry in your state than if you went directly through your state government itself.

Now, here's an example of one of the states that does not understand the Second Ammendment – New York. New York doesn’t accept any other state’s permit. And, consequently, few other states accept New York’s permit – even though it is one of the most difficult and time-consuming to get.

And the odd thing is, a New York permit isn’t even good in all of New York. If you go into or through the New York City area, your permit is no good. If you cross a county line you stop being a law-abiding citizen and become a felon.

So a New York permit is good for driving back and forth to work and for around home. But if you’re taking any sort of a road trip, or going on vacation to another state, it’s useless. For holders of a New York concealed carry permit, the Second Amendment ends at the Pennsylvania state line.

Fortunately, though, they can be saved by the Utah legislature. And so can you. A Utah license will instantly create 30 more states where the Second Amendment will apply. It won’t be in all of America – we haven’t won that battle for liberty yet – but it will be 60 percent of the way there.

And while I’m grateful for that, I’m disappointed with a Congress that has failed to protect our constitutional right to keep and bear arms in all 50 states.

Here’s what I mean.

New York drivers licenses are honored in all 50 states. Ditto for marriage licenses and birth certificates. A divorce decree, or a name change, authorized by one state would be recognized by the others. Virtually all state-issued licenses and documents are honored by the other states – there’s a clause in the Constitution about that – but not pistol permits.

It is ironic that the only one of those things specifically protected by the Constitution is the only one of them not recognized.

What America needs is a national concealed carry permit. It is a keen disappointment that the Republican-controlled and NRA-backed Congress has not supplied that, and we will keep working on eventually getting one.

But until then, Utah is the next-best thing. It doesn’t cover the entire country, but it covers most of it.

Some will see this as a gun-nut loophole, that somehow Utah is opening the door to handgun ownership and carry to a slew of goofballs from all across the country. Some will see this as taking advantage of Utah. I don’t see it that way at all.

I see this as a situation in which the legislature of Utah has a keener understanding of American freedom and a greater regard for the American people than the legislatures of most other states. I see it as a service being provided the country by this freedom-loving state. I’m not taking advantage of it, I’m celebrating it.

I’m holding it up as a good example. I am applauding the politicians and government of Utah for doing what their counterparts across the country should do.

I feel the federal and several state governments have failed to honor the Constitution. Where they have failed, however, Utah has not. And I am grateful for that.

And I’m going to get a Utah concealed carry permit.

And I’m going to be grateful to my state and its leaders for helping more Americans to be free.

Cash for Clunkers Could Lead to Government Bulldozing Homes?

2009-08-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

FORT LEE, N.J., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Inflation Association today released the following statement to its http://inflation.us members:

"The United States government's "cash for clunkers" program, which was just expanded by $2 billion on Thursday, exemplifies the stupidity of politicians in Washington today. It's insane to think that destroying perfectly good and valuable assets, cars that people can drive, will help save our economy. This program is digging our economy into a deeper hole that we will never be able to dig out of.

We do not have an automobile crisis in the U.S., the average American household already has 2.3 cars. The automobile industry needed to collapse in order to build a new viable auto industry from the ground-floor. By artificially boosting car sales, the government is preventing the free market from cleaning out the excesses in the industry.

During the Great Depression, millions of Americans couldn't afford to buy food. With food prices falling and huge surpluses of food building, the government decided to pass the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 which forced farmers to destroy crops and livestock in an attempt to artificially drive up food prices. The plan backfired and led to millions of Americans starving, prolonging the Great Depression for another six years.

The current financial crisis in America was caused by both the U.S. government and American people getting into too much debt. Not only is the government getting deeper into debt by purchasing used cars for $4,500 and destroying them, but Americans are being forced to get deeper into debt to buy new cars. The used cars being purchased and destroyed were owned by Americans outright. The free market would've encouraged Americans to drive these cars until they stopped working, while rebuilding their savings. The government is preventing this from happening and doing greater damage to the economy.

Four out of the top five models of new cars being purchased as part of "cash for clunkers" are foreign cars. Therefore, very little of this newly printed money is going to the bailed out U.S. automobile manufacturers. We are increasing our trade deficit with Japan and other foreign countries at a time when we should be manufacturing cars that we export to the rest of the world, so that we can shrink our trade deficit.

With all of the new government employees being hired to administrate "cash for clunkers", the true cost is over $6,000 per car. Most modern day economists featured by the mainstream media say "cash for clunkers" will be a huge boost to the economy, because it will help lower unemployment and increase our GDP. It's amazing how they can phrase the program as a success, when it is only leading our country further down the path of hyperinflation. The misguided and irresponsible phrase in the mainstream media will encourage politicians to come up with more stupid programs for other so-called crises.

Real Estate prices in America still haven't fallen to below year 2000 levels because the banks that are foreclosing on properties are sitting on these properties and not selling them. After banks get the required infrastructure and manpower in place and begin selling them, Real Estate prices will fall to unimaginably low levels. Will the government repeat their mistakes with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 and "cash for clunkers" and begin purchasing these houses from banks only to bulldoze them?

There have already been isolated cases in places such as Victorville, California, where banks have destroyed nearly complete new homes instead of completing and selling them. In Flint, Michigan, local government officials are promoting "the concept of shrinking Flint in order to make it stronger", by bulldozing 40% of the community. What is to stop the federal government from destroying already built existing homes, to prevent them from becoming listed on the market? It sounds like insanity, and it is, but if the government destroyed food and is now destroying cars, houses are likely next."

Please spread the word about NIA and have your friends subscribe for free at http://inflation.us

About us:

The National Inflation Association is an organization that is dedicated to preparing Americans for hyperinflation. The NIA offers free membership at http://www.inflation.us and provides its members with articles about the economy and inflation, news stories, important charts not shown by the mainstream media; YouTube videos featuring Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, and others; and profiles of gold, silver, and agriculture companies that we believe could prosper in an inflationary environment.
Press Release
Source: National Inflation Association
On Friday August 7, 2009, 2:24 pm EDT

There's Something I Want To Share With You

2009-08-05T07:32:00.001-07:00

There's something I want to share. Something personal and private, something close to my heart.

I had thought to keep it private, to let my family face this alone and unknown, but I couldn't. My wife and I decided that perhaps our experience can help others, that maybe the road we are called to walk down can be of use to someone else. I'm not one of these people to wear ribbons or host telethons or get a colonoscopy just because Katie Couric said to, but sometimes these things just hit so gosh darn close to home that you can't keep quiet. You have to speak out.

So I am speaking out. If my family's experience can shine the light of public awareness on my daughter's affliction, if we can help just one other child, or make the way easier for a single family, then our pain and loss of privacy will be worthwhile.

So here goes. I have something to announce. My daughter has dysrationalia. We have been suspicious for a while, and it was confirmed last week.

We are a family with dysrationalia because when one member of a family has dysrationalia, it impacts everyone. Since the diagnosis, our house has been turned upside down. Every part of our life has been impacted.

Further, dysrationalia is genetic, and when one member of a family has it, there is a very strong likelihood that others in the family will have it as well. And though I don't want to go into too much detail, when our daughter started showing the signs of dysrationalia, I was quick to recognize the familiar tell-tale traits such as the fits and emotional break-downs.

For children in the early stages of dysrationalia there are many signs of what appear to be emotional and psychological disorders. The crying uncontrollably for no apparent reason. Flareups of anger over nothing. Sometimes she will lash out at us. It's hard.

When they get older, when the dysrationalia is more advanced, it can lead to more severe bouts of anger and frustration, as well as poor judgment and decision making. With dysrationalia parents sometimes feel helpless and out of control. Often, they are as frustrated as their affected children. It is a devistating condition.

And this is what our daughter has. Our little girl has dysrationalia.

I'm not saying this to get sympathy, or to collect money. Heaven knows there will be plenty of time for those things later. Right now, I'm just about awareness. It's like when that one TV guy's wife got irritable-bowel syndrome and she told about it on "Oprah," there are times when you show your pain and your vulnerability if it will help other people face the challenges of their lives. We're all human here, and we all face our trials and challenges, and when it's family it's family, and family helps family, and I hope my family can help yours.

Sure, I live a pretty decent life. I'm an IT Professional, I have a network of computers, and I've found I have a talent for cooking (which my wife thoroughly appreciates). I've kind of got it made in the shade. But this sort of stuff happens even to people like me. At the end of the day, we all put our pants on one leg at a time.

And I want my daughter's story to be heard. I want people to know. I want to raise public awareness.

I'm tired of people having to suffer in silence, and if my daughter's story gives one family the courage to stand up and say, "We have dysrationalia, too!" then I will be happy.

It's time for those of us touched by dysrationalia to stand up on our own two feet and make our voices heard. It is time for the government to pay attention to our children, too. It's time for an uncaring society to feel our pain. It's time that we stopped looking the other way when someone with dysrationalia passes. It's time that dysrationalia stopped being the invisible diagnosis.

We waited and wondered for a year, watching for signs. Countless silent families have done the same. Countless silent families have met the same fate.

But we're not going to be silent anymore.

My daughter has dysrationalia.

And I will not hang my head in shame any longer.

Obama's Beer Summit

2009-07-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

As I am sure you have heard, this week the president and vice president sat down with Massachusetts Police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates in the Rose Garden for what some have called a "White House Summit" over a beer. Because after all, the President of the United States has time to just sit down with his old Harvard pal and have a beer, doesn't he. I'm thinking of inviting him over for Monopoly next week... If I have a moment.

But this was no casual beer with his old Harvard buddy. It was an obvious planned and calculated political move.

If I may, I would like to address the absurdity of this meeting as well as the racial ramifications which Obama, who claims to be the new hope for his race, are insinuating.

After the deal at Harvard, where the president assured us – before he “calibrated” his words – that “the police acted stupidly,” all the smart people on television assured us that this incident proves we need to talk about race. Crowley called the meeting "a positive step in moving forward" on race relations.

The assertion is both politically correct and preposterous. It is one more string of meaningless words that are nothing more than a call for yet another racial-sensitivity browbeating. This was exacerbated by Obama calling this a "teachable moment for Americans."

There is no dialog about race in America, there is a lecture. The word “dialog” implies two-way conversation, but the vicious rules of this politically correct society dictate that the conversation will be entirely one way. Every white person in America knows that – with the possible exception of the self-deluded and self-loathing white political elite. Every white person in America knows that an honest discussion of race would bring with it career-ending consequences and social ostracism.

For example, repeatedly over the last week it has been said that people of color predominate in America’s prisons. Essentially it is meant to be documentation for an American apartheid.

A common stereotype, but one that is significantly rooted in fact, and often unspoken, is the possibility that non-whites are more likely to go to jail because non-whites are more likely to commit crimes. Unspoken, because the heavy ax of social censure hangs over the head of anyone who would dare say it. Stereotypical, because society places this in the untouchable realm of political correctness.

Another example of speech restrictions that preclude dialog is the notion that the Harvard professor in question is not just a jerk, but quite possibly a racist. His racial motivation and preconceptions have not and will not be questioned or discussed. The cop is freely accused of racism – of treating the professor different because of the color of his skin – but no one dares venture the argument that possibly it was the professor who reacted based on the cop’s skin color.

These are all valid, logical questions, but so pervasive is the orthodoxy of political correctness that they cannot be spoken, thus, there is no dialog. There is merely another opportunity for society to be lectured on its intolerance and cruelty to non-whites. And that lecture doesn’t make racial problems go away, it engenders them. It makes both sides angry with one another and promotes division instead of unity and amity.

The race dialog envisioned by the talking heads – and the president – is one in which the commonly held black view that African-Americans are targeted and persecuted by police will be passed around with the expectation that everyone will agree. The problem with this approach – which has been used for years and years – is that it makes some whites angry and it makes some blacks feel separate and antagonistic. The identity of victimhood and alienation grows in one group and the resentment of being blamed for something you didn’t do grows in the other, further dividing America. Ironically, it is the racial dialog that flames our racial problems, or at least that’s the way many feel.

Unfortunately, voices and opinions are not welcome in the dialog on race. What some feel, but are not able to say, is that they believe the race dialog is pushed by those who stand to benefit and profit from racial tension. Its objective is not to heal the country but to promote careers, hold political power and make money.

If the goal were unity, the topic would be unity, not a focus on differences and different perspectives, but a focus on shared perspectives and shared values. If you want to unite people, you talk about what they have in common. If you want to divide people, you talk about what differentiates them.

Focusing on the differences of the average white and black experiences in America has a tendency to galvanize people on opposite sides of the color barrier. The talking heads know this. They must, yet they continue their nonsense anyway.

What happened at Harvard is that a man got lippy and made a scene in front of a crowd of bystanders. That’s disorderly conduct. He was arrested. Then the political correctness kicked in and the charges were dropped and the cops got dissed by the governor and the president. It broke down right along color lines. The black mayor and the black governor and the black president stuck up for the black professor. Maybe those three should start the dialog on race – and maybe they can start with the person in the mirror.

And maybe someday this country will be free enough for someone to suggest that those three are the ones with the racial bias.

Excuse me Mr. President, but your race bait is showing….

2009-07-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

Your efforts to take advantage of a friend’s crisis seems to have backfired. What might have worked in a hotel ballroom full of like minded people, has only served to expose your manipulative tactics, and racist attitudes. You’re very deliberate efforts to smooth things over without a true apology does not go un-noticed.

However, it's hard not to be impressed with the attention shift away from the true issue at hand.

-Your power grab with Nationalized Health Care

Considering Linux - Another Option

2009-07-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

I am not a Linux guru. At best, I am what some might call a Linux enthusiast, which is a glorified way to say I know enough about Linux to be dangerous.

But it didn't start out that way. I started in the IT field, like so many others, working with DOS and then going to Microsoft Windows. This was for economic reasons as much as anything. Most IT professionals' career paths often follow the money. You learn and work with the systems and technologies that the industry is using because that is where the jobs are, and where the money is.

I had heard of Linux early on but never gave it much attention because Linux began as such an obscure operating system. Later I became more interested and actually tried installing the system. I will be the first to admit that my first attempts at installing and running Linux were fairly unsuccessful and I abandoned the idea and then went back and tried again several times. The first few attempts with Linux were, at best, hit and miss.

It took time, learning, and a whole lot of patience with the system for me to get the the point where I am able to say I can truly work with Linux.

I have been able to make a comfortable conversion over to the Linux side. This is not to say that I have moved completely from Windows to Linux, but that I have found a balance between both worlds.

Linux still is not, for me a completely flawless and 100% working environment. Believe me when I say I have I have gone through many frustrating difficulties working with the system. Linux is not easy. It is not built with check boxes and buttons that fix everything. Linux has a long history of computer and software development and it is still growing, improving, and being shaped by the community which uses it. But if you think Linux is difficult to work with today, try setting up an early version of Red Hat when it was free, say about version 6 or 7. In those days, we dealt with hardware compatibility issues that make today's Linux a cake walk.

Linux was not originally designed to be a one-size-fits-all operating system, nor does it have the same goals and philosophies of business and customer service that commercial software has. This is my opinion, but in my view, the goal of the Linux community and the software that drives it is to provide the groundwork upon which users, developers, programmers, and designers can build. Any Linux distribution "out of the box" has the potential not only to do amazing things, but also has the potential to fail, leaving it up to the owner of the hardware to have the choice of which kinds of tasks they wish their computer to perform. It is the complexity and the uniqueness of these tasks that dictate how much effort will go into the software.

Microsoft and similar commercial software developers have but one goal - make money. It would be a mistake to perceive them in any other way because they are businesses who exists for this reason alone. With that in mind, it is easier to understand why and how they develop their products, and where their focus and philosophies differ from the Open Source community. One is not better or worse than another; they are just different.

It is, therefore, important to understand what our goals as end-users and developers are so that we can take full advantage of the benefits of whatever tools we wish to use. It is no more beneficial to completely disregard commercial products than it is to give up entirely on Open Source. Both have great benefits, and both are here to stay. I have chosen to take the best of both worlds and try use the best from each.

It is also true that, in general, those who help themselves tend to find clearer and more precise answers from other Linux users and within the Linux community because the struggle to find your own answers to technical questions will narrow down what you are asking. For example, the question, "Why does my video not function?" is a much broader question than, "Can anyone tell me where I can find drivers for my video adapter in kernel version such and such?" The second question indicates that some preliminary research was done before the question was asked. My experience looking for help within both the Linux community and commercial software support has been that the more I have done for myself, the more willing help I have received. And conversely, the times I have obviously not done my homework were the times that I have been told I need to look further.

The process of going from a novice understanding of Linux (or any operating system) to being able to solve your own problems can be a long and frustrating road. I have been at the beginning of that road and have gone through many frustrating hours of not finding answers, both in personal research and with the Open Source community. And sometimes there is no answer. Some things simply do not work. But my experience has also been that finding the answers and fixing the problems has its own rewards. The truth is, no software developer, commercial or otherwise, can really know how to create a tool to work just for you. If that is the goal, then you, the user, will have to build it. To me, there is nothing like being able to customize a computer system to perform the tasks that I need in the way that works best for me. My personal experience is that Open Source provides the most options to allow you to do this, but it does take work and it can be frustrating at times.

If you are interested in learning about the Linux operating system and want to experiment with it I say go for it. The only thing you will have to put into it is time - but it is time well spent. If you are prejudice, however, about Linux and unwilling to consider that there may be other options out there, other than commercial software, my considered opinion is that limiting your options also limits your choices and the Linux philosophy is all about choice and the freedom to use software which suits the user.

Obviously, Microsoft has a different philosophy.

Socialized Health Care or WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!?!?!?!?

2009-07-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Pamela over at Atlas has a great post here
here is an excerpt.

More than sixty concerned United States citizens and residents of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District gathered in the parking lot immediately outside Democrat Congressman Tom Perriello’s Charlottesville office today. Organized by Bill Hay and the Jefferson Area Tea Party, the rally’s purpose was to allow attendees a forum in which to express their concerns over the prospect of nationalized/socialized medicine directly to Congressman Perriello (who chose not to attend), or in close proximity to his office.
...
Approximately forty minutes into the event, Charlottesville police were called to the parking lot area. Unconfirmed reports from the scene tie at least one of the complaining phone calls directly to Congressman Tom Perriello’s office staff. While the attending police officers (professionally and politely) compelled the gathered crowd to disperse

there are a couple of videos that are telling and there is a partial list of items in the health care bill that will piss you off...

Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!

Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benes u get

Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTHCARE IS RATIONED!!!

Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose UR HC Benefits 4 you. U have no choice!

PG 50 Section 152 in HC bill - HC will be provided 2 ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise

Pg 58HC Bill - Govt will have real-time access 2 individuals' finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued!

Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Govt will have direct access 2 ur banks accts 4 elect. funds transfer

PG 65 Sec 164 is a payoff subsidized plan 4 retirees and their families in Unions & community orgs (ACORN).

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Govt is creating an HC Exchange 2 bring priv HC plans under Govt control.

PG 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Govt mandates ALL benefit pkgs 4 priv. HC plans in the Exchange

PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs for of Benefit Levels for Plans = The Govt will ration ur Healthcare!

PG 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Govt mandates linguistic approp svcs. Example - Translation 4 illegal aliens

Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Govt will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps 2 sign up indiv. for Govt HC plan

PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specs of Ben Levels 4 Plans. #AARP members - U Health care WILL b rationed

-PG 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Indiv. will b automat.enrolled in Medicaid. No choice

pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue GOVT on price fixing. No "judicial review" against Govt Monop

pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Govt will tell YOU what u can make.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into pub opt plan. NO CHOICE

Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay 4 HC 4 part time employees AND their families.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Emplyr w payroll 400k & above who does not prov. pub opt. pays 8% tax on all payroll

This is a good thing to read if you do not believe me or this post, then look at the bill here

Another Ethics Complaint Filed Against the Governor

2009-07-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

Something tells me that Sara Palin is quite a threat. They are still shooting arrows.....

Another Ethics Complaint Filed Against the Governor
July 20, 2009, Anchorage, Alaska – Once again, an ethics complaint has been filed and publicly released in violation of state law. This is the sixth complaint filed by Ms. McLeod. In addition, she has filed a lawsuit against the Governor's office and multiple public records act requests. All of her prior complaints that have been ruled on have been dismissed. The Ethics Act serves important state interests in ensuring ethical state government and was intended to prevent the various forms of corrupt misconduct that had plagued the Legislature in prior years and which resulted in the prosecution of legislators and others. It is unfortunate that the law has been abused and trivialized in the current manner............

More at www.gov.state.ak.us/pdf/VFpr-July20-2009.pdf

2+2= ???

2009-07-17T14:33:00.000-07:00

Did Biden really say that we needed to spend our way out of bankruptcy? Sounds like basic accounting to me!

It should be illegal for people who can't do simple math to run the country!

Thats ALOT of money

2009-07-17T07:16:00.001-07:00

Dear AARP - I'm Not Interested

2009-07-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Dear AARP,

Before you go to all the trouble of sending me a membership card and a packet with old folks information, please, don't bother. I don’t need it, I don’t want it, you can have it back. I am not retired, I am not old, I am not interested.

And where do you get the nerve to send a letter to my house telling me that I now qualify for your geezer fest and that if I mail in my $16 dues you’ll send me Polygrip coupons? First off, I don’t even qualify for your blue-hair bunch. To join AARP, you need to be 50, and I am not 50. I’m nowhere near 50. Even when I turn 50, I will not be retired. I won’t be close to retired. I’m on the backend of the Baby Boom, that means I get no pension, no Social Security and – after Obama is done with us – no money left in my 401k. I'm looking at another 30 years before retirement.

So write back then. Better yet, bring the card by yourself. That will make it easier for me to punch you in the nose. I’m not interested in your Viagra discounts or your expandable-waistband pants or your hearing-aid clinics. I don’t need to know about the price of condos at Boca Raton or Sun City, I’m not interested in magazine articles about Benny Goodman and I am not going to call my congressman and beg him to pass whatever free-pills-for-grama scheme you’ve got going.

No thank you. Not now or ever.

If somebody wants to join the AARP, they can hire a 13-year-old to look it up for them on the Internet. People who work in nursing homes could be specially trained to sign folks up for AARP. Coupons could be put in boxes of adult diapers. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t disrespect old people, I just don’t happen to be one of them. I have old-people friends. But they all lie about not being old, too. There’s no shame in being old, but there’s no great glory in it either.

Let me set the record straight. Yes, I have been feeling aches in places I've not felt before, I no longer run from one place to the next, and my clothes are starting to show that "middle-aged" look, but I am not old. I’m barely mature.

Being congratulated for becoming eligible for the AARP is like being told you’re the prettiest girl at Weight Watchers, or like being valedictorian of your drug rehab class. It’s like getting your GED in prison. It’s like being congratulated for getting old. In fact, that’s exactly what it is.

And, call me crazy, but I don’t need junk mail to remind me that I’m closer to the grave than I am to the cradle. My perpetual-youth bit is unraveling and the last thing I want is the mailman to make incontinence jokes when he hands me the mail.

Sure signs of age are, first the AARP envelope arrives in the mail, then comes the black balloons and all your moron friends making old-fogy jokes. After that you get no more promotions at work, they put a 25-year-old in as your boss, the music sucks and everybody starts mumbling. In the end, you look like Walter Matthau and smell like Ben-Gay. You find yourself clipping recipes out of the AARP magazine, and save for vacations to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and wonder whatever happened to Shelley Winters.

To which I respond: No thanks. I’m not hard of hearing, I’m ignoring you.

I’m not old, I just have an unusual familiarity with the music of the 1970s, I remember the moon shot, and in the right light Nancy Pelosi is not a bad-looking woman.

I’ve got a moon shot for the AARP. A wrinkly old saggy-baggy moon shot, but a moon shot none the less.

I'd prefer if the AARP would kindly take me off their mailing list. I'm not interested.

Because I’m not old.

Of Pit Bulls and Hockey Moms

2009-07-09T18:51:00.001-07:00

You know the difference between a Pit-Bull and a Hockey Mom?

Lipstick... Sarah Palin

This was, arguably, one of the best ad lib moments of the 08 presidential campaigns. If you do not count B. Hussien's stuttering and searching for words trying not to say what he believes.

I know that Palin has stepped down as governor of Alaska. I know that there is a lot of speculation about why she has done this. I will offer my own humble opinion in this article and do my best to support with facts the suppositions i will advance.

Look at the joke that was told by Mrs. Palin and that will give you a clue. The comparison of Pit Bulls and Hockey Moms was not an accident then and the meaning still applies now. Mrs. Palin stepped down in an effort to save her family from the Maelstrom that they were not ready for. Let’s take a look at some things that support this.

Google Sarah Palin ethics complaints and you will get around 744k hits. Of course this includes news stories and hit pieces by 'news' outlets from the huffington post to cnn to the major 'news' networks.

According to The Christian Science Monitor

Alaska’s response to ethics allegations and requests for information concerning the conduct of soon-to-be-ex-governor Sarah Palin has cost the state $1.9 million...

All 15 ethics complaints against Palin considered so far by Alaska’s Personnel Board have been dismissed, though one resulted in a settlement requiring the governor to reimburse the state for travel costs incurred by her family...

...the governor and her husband are struggling with legal bills that exceeded $500,000.

Yes, there is a defense fund set up that will pay some of those costs but it will not cover all of them. The frivolous and petty ethics complaints have become a distraction for Mrs. Palin and that is no way to spend the time of the governor. Then lets look at the jokes and stories told. there is no end to the hypocrisy and the hate leveled at not only Mrs. Palin but her family. SO WHAT if she has decided she no longer wants to put her family through the meat grinder that has become public life on the Conservative side of the isle. If that is the only reason then you have to respect that decision.

It is said that the Conservatives are the only group that eat their wounded. If there is an allegation of impropriety we resign. If we don't resign we are ostracized. If a Dem is indicted or accused of a crime that actually ENHANCES their resume. We have kicked out, shut out and ostracized so many effective leaders that we don't have many left.

Maybe she has committed political suicide, i am not convinced that she has. Is she out of the public eye? No. Is she through with politics? Maybe. I can guarantee we have not seen the last of her, not by a long shot, and those on the left are scared.

Sarah Palin's Resignation

2009-07-07T15:39:00.000-07:00

I, for one, am sadly disappointed in Sarah Palin. Her decision to leave office was, in a word, dumb. It’s almost as if she’s in a competition to out-stupid herself.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Republican. I was as hopeful and pleased as any of us that McCain chose her. I was thrilled to have her on the ticket.

But she was a one-trick pony and that speech at the RNC was all she had in her. From then to now, she has been on a long, steady slide into buffoonery. And Friday she hit the grand slam of stupidity. At a quickly and poorly arranged press conference, where state troopers oddly kept half the press away, she resigned her governorship in a rambling, disjointed and indecipherable speech.

Halfway through her first term as governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin is quitting, which makes me wonder who she’s spent time with on the Appalachian Trail. Or who’s blackmailing her. Or who’s offered her a million-dollar job. Or something... because there is no way on God’s green earth that what she did Friday makes any sort of sense at all. She gave no reason, she made no sense, it does nothing but make her look like a bigger fool than even Tina Fey thought she was. Part of me wondered if she was having a breakdown.

Let me repeat, I’m not a Sarah Palin basher. I was as enthused as anyone when John McCain picked her. The notion of someone who seemed to be a true conservative being on the Republican ticket was both surprising and exciting. I loved the fact that she was a hunter and an angler and a businesswoman, that she owned trucks and guns, that her husband was a real man and a normal guy. I was glad to see one of us getting ahead.

But she turned out not to be ready for prime time. She also took quite a beating. Seeing that she was the only excitement on the Republican ticket, the Democrat news media attacked her viciously. Following the It-Worked-With-Cheney plan, the Democrats made her personal destruction their strategy. They don’t refute ideas, they destroy and marginalize the people who communicate ideas. She was mocked, ridiculed and dismissed. At every turn, she was made to look like a joke. Unfortunately, she lived up to it.

And though the same Democrat news media had taken to calling her a leading prospect for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, she was never a contender, which was assured Friday. Who is going to vote for a candidate who barely filled half of a gubernatorial term? When a candidate runs for office, there is an implied pledge that if you vote for them they are actually going to serve. Anyone who walks away from office for no good reason, with almost half of the job left to do, is not a free spirit, that person is a quitter. And when that decision and that announcement are made rashly and without explanation, your temperament certainly doesn’t look presidential. To run down to the lower 48 now and begin campaigning for 2012 would show Sarah Palin to be someone who puts her own ambitions ahead of her duty, it would show her commitment to actual service to be pretty low.

There was a negative magazine article about her last week, and then a series of rehashed newspaper articles that talked about Republican sniping, but if that heat chased her out of the kitchen, she had no business being there in the first place. Granted, she made the announcement in the middle of non-stop Michael Jackson “news,” and on the legal-holiday Friday before Independence Day – things which reduced the amount of coverage she would likely receive – but being the second Republican governor to do something really goofy in two weeks is not a smart move.

And inexplicably resigning your office in the wake of the scandal involving the South Carolina governor is going to make some people wonder if something sleazy has been afoot. It was just insane. It mystifies the country, it cheats Alaska, it embarrasses her family.

I just don’t get it.

After two years of running a state that has fewer people than 87 American counties, she is packing up her hair spray and going home. I wish her luck, but I don’t want anybody to be confused about the future of the Republican Party. As much as the Democrat news media wants to appoint Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin as the Republican Party’s leaders, the people are its leaders. It’s not one of the preening many who will determine the direction of the Republican Party, it is the people – the plain old salt-of-the-earth people who belong to the Republican Party or vote for its candidates.

The Democrat news media wants to define the Republican Party as a series of politicians or pundits who can be ridiculed and demonized. But that’s not what the Republican Party is. The Republican Party is a collection of values living in the hearts of the types of people who made this country strong and free. The Republican Party is the living commitment in the American people to the values of the Founders of our nation and the Framers of our Constitution. It doesn’t really matter who represents or advances those values, just that they get represented and advanced.

Sarah Palin made a great speech at the RNC. If the months since have taught us that we don’t want a speech giver, they haven’t done a thing to change the fact that we liked what the speech contained. The Republican Party is about principles, not personalities. And though the personalities will change, the principles will not. At least not if the Republican Party wants ever again to be successful or useful to the cause of American liberty.

So let Sarah Palin be dumb. In a free country, you can do that. What we need to be focused on is trying to keep this a free country.

True local Hero in DesMoines

2009-07-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

This guy is a HERO and HUMBLE watch these two videos and thank God that such men exist.

Sorry i cannot get the videos to embed and you will have to endure the adverts.

Video of the rescue

Interview afterwords

The Truth About Welfare

2009-06-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

You’ve seen it before. You go to the store to pick up a few items, or to do your regular shopping. You get to the check-out and in the line you notice the person paying. They pull out this card. It is definitely not an ATM card from any bank you recognize. It’s a welfare card.

It used to be food stamps. Before the welfare department came out with these quick and easy (debit like) cards, welfare recipients were given food stamps. Initially, in 1962, the FSP (Food Stamp Program) developed by the USDA distributed stamps or coupons with dollar denominations that were used to purchase food. This goes back even further when farms had surplus. The concept of the “food stamp” came from using orange or blue color coded stamps that provided certain benefits. When there was farm surplus, it was given out as “welfare”.

The problem is that the program has changed and is no longer used as intended. The welfare recipient you see buying food isn’t making nutritious and economically sound decisions at the grocery store. They’re buying expensive, prepackaged foods like Lunchables, pizza rolls, ice cream sandwiches and candy bars. It’s twenty dollars worth of crap and extravagance, which, by the way, comes the tax money from people who originally got that money the honest way. They earned it.

The current welfare system is built on theft – the theft of money through taxation that pays for welfare, and the theft of self-reliance that is perpetrated against the “beneficiaries” of welfare. The ruin of America will be able-bodied welfare recipients buying pizza rolls and ice cream sandwiches with other people’s money.

Welfare recipients today, on the whole, are frittering away unearned money on foolish and extravagant “food” purchases - steak, lobster, subs, roasted chicken, prepared foods, chips, dip, soda pop, ice cream, sugar drinks, and expensive breakfast cereal - while activists go on TV to say that poor people can’t afford to eat healthily, and are consequently fatter, and need more government-funded health care.

What a bunch of malarkey. They don’t need more, they need less - of everything. If the government is going to feed those who won’t feed themselves, there should be significant and positive restrictions, to deter waste and to foster frugality. Teach people to make the most of what they have, not to blow their allotment on crap.

The fact is that, in America, people can eat very cheaply, but not if they’re buying seven Lunchables for dinner. Instead, they waste the money so generously given them on non-essentials and on expensive convenience or prepared foods. When you are on welfare, there should be no treats – just the basics - which can be tasty, wholesome, nutritious and inexpensive. A 20-pound bag of potatoes doesn’t cost that much. Neither does a 10-pound bag of rice or a variety of store-label canned vegetables. Round steak and ground chuck can be had fairly reasonably, especially if you buy on sales days and in good quantity. If you’re smart, a food dollar will stretch.

Welfare should be an emergency condition of living, from which you would want to escape as quickly as possible. By creating a false living standard and allowing people to live off the dole as though they were self-sustaining only encourages idleness and a lazy society.

The type of foods purchasable with welfare money should be dramatically reduced to nothing more than inexpensive meat, potatoes and rice, vegetables, bread and dairy. No extravagance, no treats, no rip-off foods.

Either do it by programming those cards to only pay for certain types of items, or by creating welfare sections in supermarkets, where appropriate generic products are available and can be purchased with welfare cards. Either suggestion would substantially increase the buying power of welfare recipients, or open the door to reducing the cost to taxpayers.

Even if a fraction of the money now wasted on welfare food could be recovered, the benefit to recipients and taxpayers would be huge.

We should abandon the ridiculous notion that the “dignity” or “rights” of welfare recipients would be hurt by restricting what they can buy with the taxpayer’s dollar. If they want ice cream and pepperoni rolls, let them get a job. It’s not that hard a concept.

It may also pay to look at going back to giving those on the dole commodities, instead of money. We know how to distribute rice and powdered milk to foreigners; maybe we should try the same thing with our own people. And we may also want to explore the idea of having them work for what they get. Welfare recipients can perform services such as picking up litter on the roads, sweeping the floors at city hall, stapling papers in the courthouse - anything to return the dignity of work to the culture of welfare, anything to help them bear the burden of their own support. The way we do it now is a shame.

It is an immoral disservice to both groups – those who have it taken from them and those who have it given to them. It promotes waste and fraud. It destroys dignity and builds mutual resentment. It squanders the wages of the producers to satisfy the rich and unrealistic tastes of the idlers.

What mystifies me is why the people who run our government can’t seem to figure this out.

Iran

2009-06-24T14:09:00.001-07:00

I know, this has been here for a couple of days with no text. Kind of a reminder, a reminder to me that there are people fighting and dying on the other side of the world for what we are giving away hand over fist... Freedom. Not a very popular subject right now I mean how can we focus on ANYTHING but the death of a famous pedophile. Seriously what could be more important than a former star dying of cancer or a comedian dying of natural causes? Yes they were famous, in one case infamous, but they are people that have no impact on the world or its function.

There is a fight on the other side of the world in which people just want their votes to count. They want the freedom to select their own leader. Granted the supreme leader and ruling council have vetted and approved all of the candidates they were voting on but there at least was the illusion that the people were able to pick the man they wanted to lead them. Well that illusion was stripped away when the ruling council decided they were firmly in control enough that they could claim millions of paper ballots were counted in the 2 hours after the polls close. 115% of registered voters were able to cast ballots in that election. ACORN must have been manning the polls and registering voters.

Atrocities are being committed, People are fighting for independence and we are more worried about celebrity death than we are the struggle for freedom. How many of you remember the run up to the 1981 presidential elections? We had a weak president (Jim Carter) that was unable to keep our country safe from foreign aggression and unable to assert enough of a presence and project enough power that hostages were taken in Tehran, Iran and we could not get our people out. Ronaldus Magnus (Ronald Reagan) was elected and the mullahs in Iran decided they should let them all go.

All the blustering and threats came down to the fact that they knew they didn’t have the forces to stand up to the might of the US if we decided we were going to go in and take back what is ours. In Carter, we didn’t have anyone that was willing to exert that pressure. In Reagan we did.

So what do we have here and now? Master Obama, it seems, is just like Clinton on foreign policy in that he tends to put his finger in the air and do what is popular. This, coupled with his domestic policy of, apparently, destroying the private sector, makes this man one of the most dangerous in our history. Now we have a state sponsor of terrorism that is in the process of imploding and we cannot even voice our support for those wanting freedom. If we as a nation, cannot stand up and support the causes that deserve that support… we will fail just on the constipation that will result from the lack of moral fiber in our system.

PBS has Banned God

2009-06-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

Given the piss-poor quality of just about all television programming, our family does, with great scrutiny, watch the Public Broadcasting Station on occasion. I have to be careful, however, with the liberal rhetoric on Sesame Street. I don't want to have to explain why Bert and Ernie are now partners. It's enough to try explaining the whole "Cookie Monster" confusion.

In case anyone is unaware, PBS provides some "educational" and science based programming at taxpayers’ expense. Basically, it’s welfare TV.

Well, in the last 10 years or so, PBS has been ratcheting up their liberal standards. The latest is their move to forbid “sectarian” programming. More specifically, they want God to leave PBS and head to the Internet. The new policies say if you are going to be a PBS station, you can’t have any religious broadcasting. PBS has decided that it will not allow its affiliates to carry any religious shows. If anywhere on their schedule, at any hour of the day or night, a religious show is aired; they are kicked out of PBS.

THAT color isn’t allowed in the rainbow.

This was an issue earlier this week when it looked like five long-time PBS stations were going to be excommunicated for having religious shows. In every instance, this programming went back for decades, but in the new world of acceptance, tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism, religion is, of course, unacceptable.

Four of the stations run what most of us call Mass For Shut-Ins. Every week, a priest comes out to the studio, says Mass, and it is broadcast. Traditionally, this has been for people who were unable to get to church, typically because they were ill or elderly.

Somehow, this offends the liberal minds at PBS. Somehow, an hour of that in the week violates their standards and cannot be tolerated.

The fifth station was KBYU – at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

BYU is owned by the Mormon Church, and for years, KBYU as broadcast devotionals, and excerpts of speeches from the Mormons’ big twice-a-year General Conference. These are religious talks. They are broadcast in a community comprised of a very high percentage of Mormon people. They’ve been doing it that way for decades.

And PBS said it had to end.

Somehow, this offends the liberal minds at PBS. Somehow, an hour of that in the week violates their standards and cannot be tolerated. The new policy states that stations involved must begin the process of moving their religious programming from their TV product to their Internet product. That means that PBS wants the stations to figure out a way to get the shows off the air and onto the web. Instead of tuning in, they want people to have to click in, which, while terribly fashionable, is not practical. No matter what your 13-year-old tells you, people are more prone to watch TV on TV than on some other medium or device.

So what should we make of this, and what should we do about it?

Well, we should see all the talk about diversity for exactly what it is – bull crap.

The political correctness that permeates this most-liberal of all television networks demands what it is not willing to give. In the name of diversity, it enforces orthodoxy. Instead of parity, it wants priority. While preaching tolerance, it practices intolerance. Its species of inclusion does not include the mainstream.

A network that would angrily denounce any sort of “censorship” for its “journalists,” clearly practices censorship on its affiliates. While it claims to practice unrestrained freedom in its work, it refuses any such freedom to programmers or believers.

And once again, religion is discriminated against in American society. Worse, this discrimination is done at taxpayer expense. In a world where the marketplace supports hundreds of channels, PBS still clings to the lie that society somehow needs one channel to provide their standards of programming at the expense of the taxpayer.

Well, it doesn’t. Somehow Nova and Big Bird would still be ridiculously profitable, even if they lost their PBS welfare check.

The bottom line is this: Religious people should return the favor. If they are not welcome on PBS, then PBS shouldn’t be welcome in their homes, their pocketbooks or voting booths.

If PBS can’t give religious people anything, then probably religious people shouldn’t give PBS anything. Maybe it’s time to stop donating money and maybe it’s time to contact politicians and have them stop donating money as well.

Resist the temptation to donate during the telethons, even if they DO put the best shows on during their campaigning, just to get you to pay.

If you think PBS should ban all religious programming, then support PBS. If you think PBS is wrong to impose this blanket ban, and then oppose PBS.

It’s as simple as that.

Liberty

2009-06-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

I would like to bring something to the fore-front.

Liberty's husband has come down with a virus that is suspected to be the H1-N1 or 'swine flu' and they are in need of your prayers. the kids are helping as much as they can but a mother/wife's job is never done as you all well know.

Update 6/17/2009
the verdict is in and it is not swine flu. that is a good thing but Dan is still really sick. please remember them in your prayers.

Hobby Or Career?

2009-06-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

Some of you people (another shamelessly stolen phrase from Limbaugh) have been telling me that I write too many political articles. So here’s something more in the technical realm.

Lately I’ve been involved in some fairly ambitious web projects – as in web design projects. Actually, I have been doing web design for some time now but they have all been my own personal web sites. These recent project have been for other organizations and individuals (see ref. below).

Yes, they are time consuming and keep me up at all hours of the night. I guess I enjoy doing web design because I cannot seem to quit or turn down new projects. Since about this time last year when I began the first Boy Scout web site it has been non-stop.

So far, I have not accepted any monetary compensation for the work. I am holding on to the idea that I get the experience and increase my skills, rather than receive pay. I realize this is, of course, a naïve way to look at it and also I am probably getting taken to the cleaners. I also realize that for some of my work, businesses and organizations would expect to pay several thousand dollars.

Which brings me to the focus of this article. I’d like to ask a question and, by the way, I do not have an answer. When you discover that you have a marketable skill, one that you do not normally use on your regular day job, how do you decide when to take the hobby to a professional level? And how do you do it?

Much of this thought process of mine has been driven by two separate but related events. The first was my experience moving to Utah with no job offers to speak of and no real career outlook here. Here I was trying to find a home and dragging my family out to Utah without any realistic way to earn a living. Why, you ask? Well, at the time it seemed the right thing to do. The “IT bubble” had not yet burst and so I didn’t anticipate too much of a problem securing a job. But I quickly realized once I arrived that not only was the IT field right on the verge of undergoing a major disruption, but also that the job market in Utah has always been depressed.

Four years went by going from one crappy job to another just to pay bills. It wasn’t until the day I was about to put the house on the market that I finally landed the job I have and it has so far worked out well.

The other issue is that the economy is in the toilet and, like you; I am trying to consider my options and try to come up with a plan in the event that I might lose my current employment.

One of the parts of this plan is to leverage any marketable skills I may have. It is fine to say that most people will change careers 3 times in their working lives. It is quite another thing to implement that change. No one I have ever talked to has ever been enthusiastic about changing careers. It is a difficult and costly endeavor. However, because this country has voted for a socialist and fascist president who has already implemented economic policies akin to the European Union and is working hard to dissolve any free market system we have, I felt it best to at least entertain the idea of diversifying my skills and attempt to bring more to the professional table.

My dilemma is when to take the leap of faith. How do I determine when I have the necessary skills to move from a pastime to a career? Like I said, I have no answers, only questions. But I am a realist. A colleague at work reminded me it is a “dog-eat-dog” world out there. The fierce competition in the IT world has grown to new heights. You’ll either make it, or you won’t. And it is even more difficult working freelance. There is always someone better, faster, more skilled, and worth more money. I would be stupid to think otherwise.

Still, I keep getting requests for my work. Either people like what I do, or they like that I don’t charge them, I am not certain which, but one thing is certain. I like doing web design and there appears to be some interest in my work. I still do not know where this will eventually lead. It might be a career change, or it might be just some nice charity work for non-profit organizations. Who knows? But I am having fun doing it.

* ref: samples of Pete's design work - Wood Badge, Sew Sweet Designs, Bartlett Dental

American Capitalism

2009-06-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well it has been said over and over. I personally tell people as often as i can that the sprint to the left since the election of Obama has been impressive. The bail outs, the firing of auto executives by the elected leader of the free world. Now Congress thinks they have the right to tell companies what they can pay their employees. We as Americans should be ashamed that we have allowed this to happen. The left has stolen elections (Ala ACORN) intimidated voters (Ala The new Black Panthers) and our own justice system is unable to take corrective actions beyond telling one of those 'panthers' he cannot display a weapon within 100' of a polling place. Seriously! Is there any doubt about where we are heading? The Department of homeland security has put out document that tell law enforcement that if you are 'pro life, pro gun, religious and ex-military' you are more than likely an extremist and need to be watched.

The kicker is this article in Pravda American capitalism gone with a whimper. Pravda is a Russian News paper. you remember them right? Russia? the folks that brought us the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for 40 years or so after the second world war? Yeah the Communist countries that have been trying out free markets and Capitalism for the last few years. you would think they know socialism when they see it. and let me tell you, they see it. Here is an excerpt:

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

The world sees us shouting that we are the last bastion of free market capitalism. They see us and snicker because they can see the road ahead.

Not so academic Supreme Court Justice?

2009-05-23T19:02:00.000-07:00

"We need a supreme court judge that is not so much an academic. Perhaps a woman, or a minority" - Spoken by Obama early in the supreme Court Justice search. Perhaps a Brittany Spears, in Latina form? Now Does this make any sense. Now based on his recent discussions, the report is that it is sure to be a woman. The Constitution and the idea of the most qualified candidate (regardless of race or gender) seems to be irrelevant. A definite double downing of stupidity. The highest court in the land, and we are looking to dumb it down AND add a dose of reverse racism.

Moving the Marker

2009-05-05T09:36:00.000-07:00

As a conservative, I am livid at the discussion and traction given to the thought that the Republican Party is not liberal enough. How absurd is that! That we are even entertaining the discussion that conformity in the name of growing the party is an option, is outrageous. The Republican principles are clear. (Paraphrasing Reagan), ”You don’t join a club because you want to change it, you join because your values are the same”. Ultimately, moving left, would be trading our values, prosperity, and personal liberty for a vote.

We embrace the right of peaceful protest, but do we protest? We know that the right to bear arms was to protect us from an overbearing Government, but we entertain the leftist argument that its about hunting. We know that our education systems are not only broken, but infiltrated by the leftist ideals with intimidating pressures to conform, yet we send our nations future leaders to be indoctrinated. There are answers to gaining the vote without compromise. Are we willing to make the sacrifices? So far I say no.

We have allowed the marker to be moved in the name of political correctness. We now accept the once unacceptable. The question is: What have we been doing while the marker was being moved right under our noses.

We Cannot Forget - We Will Not Forget

2009-04-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

Please do yourself a favor and read this paper.

I, myself, have forgotten. Yes, I admit that I have not done near enough to pass on the legacy to my children or that I have not taught what happened 233 years ago. Fortunately, there are those that do who serve to remind me.

Because you can be sure that the State will not tell the story. Our schools water it down. Politicians dismiss it altogether. Society sells it in exchange for social programs and government control - much of which was eradicated by the very people now being dismissed and denied in the political arena.

Ironically, of course, it is the very fight for independence over 200 years ago, which our current administration dismisses, which makes it possible for them to have a voice.

Though the Declaration of Independence may be regarded as a relic and dismissed altogether, and the Constitution may hang by a thread, we cannot forget - we will not forget the price that was paid by those who wrote, signed and gave their lives for these documents.

"And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." - The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence

The Liberal Legacy

2009-04-17T08:18:00.000-07:00

There is an excellent article on the American Thinker blog today about the bay of pigs in Cuba. This story, I think, shows the depths that a democrat will go to show that they support Communism and oppose Democracy or, maybe that they will just do ANYTHING to consolidate their power and show that THEY are the ones in charge. A lot of heroes were made that day and we, as a nation, stood by and watched them die.

Here is an Excerpt

When the smoke cleared and their ammo had been expended to the very last
bullet, when a hundred of them lay dead and hundreds more wounded, after their
very mortars and machine gun barrel had almost melted from their furious rates
of fire, after three days of relentless battle, barely 1,400 of them -- without
air support (from the U.S. Carriers just offshore) and without a single
supporting shot by naval artillery (from U.S. cruisers and destroyers poised
just offshore) -- had squared off against 41,000 Castro troops, his entire air
force and squadrons of Soviet tanks. The Cuban freedom-fighters inflicted
casualties of 30 to 1against their Soviet-armed and led enemies.

These are dangerous times. We ALL need to be on our guard.

Pirates or Terrorists

2009-04-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

The items that have been on everyone's mind is the situation off the coast of Somolia and the US Container ship that was taken by Pirates. Well they tried to take the ship and those dang Yankees had the audacity to fight back and actually prevent thier ship from being taken. We have also learned that the captain of the ship offered himself up as a hostage so his ship would not be taken.

First let me say that i an not sure why these ships are not armed to the teeth when they go through this area. We KNOW this is a problem in the area, we know the pirates are there. Why? Seriously, I do not understand. If there is some law that says a merchant ship cannot be armed then it is stupid and needs to be ignored. if more pirates are killed or captured, then that would be a deterrent to recruiting more pirates... right? If the pirates knew that anytime they boarded a ship the crew would be armed and fighting back, they MIGHT think twice about boarding that ship.

well this ended well for the US and bad for the pirates and, in a typical thug mannor of thinking, now they have decided that, because we have defended ourselves, that they will kill americans now. see isn't that just great? it's like when you have the audacity to fight back when you are being mugged or assaulted, the perp may run off or he may try to kill you because you thought that you had the right to protect your self.

The Armed forces of the US is not a police force and we have the right and obligation to defend ourselves and our interests. These ships should be armed against such incusions. if the ship is boarded illegally, the pirates deserve what they get and that should be a short drop and a sudden stop. or a bulltet to a vital region they cannot live with out. these people have preyd on International shipping so long with out opposition, they believe it is thier right.

We need to fix that...

2009-02-27T07:24:00.000-08:00

Glen Beck puts the current economic climate in perspective effectively.

This should scare the crap out of you. if it doesn't you should wake the hell up!!

Commie Smurfs?

2009-02-24T10:58:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. you are telling yourself 'now he has gone off the deep end. i have read a couple of essays today that i would like to share that make the case rather well.

The Smurfs Were Communists! by Dave Morgan Says the following:

Smurfs shared everything. The food in the Smurf village was stored away in those mushrooms the minute it was harvested and then equally distributed to all the Smurfs throughout the year. No one "farmer Smurf" sold his crop to a "consumer Smurf," or saw his labor exploited by another. It was understood that the crop was for the entire Smurf population, not for the sale or profit of one Smurf alone.

That in it's self is compelling even if you do not read the rest of the piece but, consider this:

The most compelling evidence that the Smurfs were communists comes from their relationship to the arch-villian Gargamel. If you remember, the only thing that Gargamel wanted the Smurfs for was for his own profit. In the first four or five seasons, Gargamel's master plan was to catch the Smurfs, boil them, and turn them into gold. For some reason, in the later years when the show was dying, they started saying that he wanted to eat the poor blue creatures, but for the most part he wanted to turn them into gold. He didn't care about the Smurfs themselves, their culture, or their well-being. All he cared about was getting gold. His only interest in how to get rich, and nothing, nothing would get in his way.

Gargamel was a capitalist.

There are other fine points on this page as well for example Kristen M. Sonntag, Esq said in Are the Smurfs Closet Communists?

In the Comunist Manifesto, Marx says, "In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a simple sentence: Abolition of private property." Well, all Smurf lands and territories belonged to all of the Smurfs, and there was no way in Hell that any single Smurf could even think of getting away with claiming a plot of land for himself or his own personal benefit or profit. Emphasis mine

Read the whole page there are bound to be other aspects of early morning cartoons that are little more than indoctrination of our children. (one reason why i didn't like Captain Planet or Barney and refused to let my Son watch either)We are entrusted with little skulls full of mush and, half the time, we do not know what gets put in thier brain.

Obama and Change

2009-02-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have watched the events since the coronation of our new messiah with great vindication. You will have to take me at my word that I find no comfort in the fact that i and many of the Conservative pundits were right about this guy. In fact i think we were all wrong. This guy is more liberal than any of us would have ever dreamed. and one of the first things they do is pass a power grab so huge that Joe Stalin would blush. The sad part is we, the American people, are bending over and saying "give it to me! we NEED this enema" It seems we were wrong about the conservatives being the silent majority in this country. Of course toward the end of the 08 campaign, Obama sounded more like Ronaldus Magnus (Ronald Reagan) than the Republican candidate did.

I am disheartened at the level of complacency that we show toward our Government. We seem to have forgotten that WE, the people, elect the government. they work for us not the other way around. They should rely on us. Instead we have politicians saying what we want to hear in order to get elected. There seems to be no integrity in the process anymore. We rely on a national press core that pushes it's own agenda to vet our candidates for national office and, this election cycle, we have allowed them to choose the candidates they wanted to run. I am not sure that we will be able to elect anyone that will have the testicular fortitude to roll back the changes that will be made when the Spending bill gets through Congress.

I hate to sound defeatist. I REALY do but, I believe they will ignore the will of the people that put them there in the arrogant notion that they know what is best for you. Better than you know your self. I really think we could flood the halls of congress with calls, faxes and letters expressing our displeasure at the ‘stimulus’ bill they are trying to enact and it would make no difference what so ever.

That being said, I will not be one that will call for an armed revolt. There are many that think it is the only way to fix the mess. I do not think there is a need for that. For the last 200+ years we have had a peaceful transfer of power. I believe the Democrats will be beaten in 2012. If that happens and the transfer does not happen, we can talk about it. I do know that in 2010 the Republicans will make great strides in regaining the control we have lost over the last few years.

I do hope that we have learned a lesson and will run as what we are. Small Government, Strong National Defense and safe Homeland Conservatives. As far as a remedy, we are doing what we should be. Call Congress, your representatives, email them fax them. inundate the switchboard with messages that they are on the wrong track and we do not need socialized health care! I am just afraid there are not enough of us to make a difference.

Obama Wants Nationalized Car Emission Standards

2009-01-29T14:02:00.000-08:00

You should, at the very least, be concerned with the latest shenanigan Obama is trying to push. President Obama wants to put California in charge of mileage and emission standards for the rest of the country. This proposal completely rejects a 200 year-old form of government called Federalism which was abandoned by our forefathers. Obama proposes to create a situation where the most extreme of states makes the decisions and regulates the mileage and emission standards for the entire country.

Maybe he’s just going to put in place all the stupid stuff at the beginning of his term so that he can spend the rest of the four years making good decisions. That would make more sense if he intends to serve a second term. Or maybe his philosophy is to screw the country up completely in the first week or two and then blame everything on George W. Bush.

Contrary to the assertion that this is a free country, it has been our law for quite some time that the federal government gets to tell automobile manufacturers how many miles per gallon their vehicles may get and how much pollution they can emit. Something which seems like it should be a function of science, the marketplace and consumer demand has been replaced by federal government dictate.

This is all done in the name of protecting the environment or freeing us from oil or some other pretense which basically translates to nothing more than a smokescreen for another government power grab. The problem the liberals face, however, is that every now and then a Republican wins an election and so the fuel and emission standards stay within somewhat reasonable standards.

The Democrats would have everyone walk, ride bikes or use public transportation. For whatever reasons, private transportation seems to freak these people out. Perhaps their enmity toward freedom makes them resent the freedom Americans enjoy from getting in their own cars and going wherever they want. If there has to be cars, the Democrats figure, make them hybrids and plug-ins and give them a top speed of 40 mph and a range of 60 miles.

Again, I digress (I am still not quite sure what that word means – probably something like stop jabbering and get back on topic).

Back to the new president.

He called on the federal government to rethink its refusal to allow California to set its own highway and fuel standards. When California asked the Bush Administration for that right, to go outside the congressionally established system and put its own demands on vehicles sold in its state, the answer was a resounding "No." Now that Bush is out, such an idea sounds pretty good to Barack Obama. Have you noticed how he is systematically trying to reverse any policy set down by the Bush administration?

It is, of course, an idea that isn't practical. An idea which could easily push the car companies the rest of the way into bankruptcy. If it passes, it will impose the will of America's most liberal legislators onto the entire country and functionally gives California authority over every other state.

“How can this be?” you ask. Good question.

Answer -

Detroit can't engineer different cars for every state. Fuel efficiency is a function of a car's weight primarily, and you get better gas mileage by taking some of the metal off a car. It makes it more fuel efficient, but it also makes it more dangerous. Either way, a car company couldn't afford to make a car to California's standards, and then a car for everyone else's standards. Or maybe California would have one standard and Florida another and New York a third. Does anyone seriously think that it would be possible for any car company to tailor its products in such a specific way? Would assembly lines have to be completely retooled for each state? This is ludicrous, absurd, and it is simply not possible.

Car companies would have no choice. The state which came up with the highest standards would be the one that got to set the nation's standards. Especially if that state was California or New York -- two of the country's largest and most liberal states. No manufacturer could afford to lose either one of those markets, so they would comply.

That means that the California legislature, easily the most liberal in the country, trumps the U.S. Congress when it comes to vehicle standards. And it means that people who live in the other 49 states, who have no vote in California, will be burdened by the decisions of the California government.

That is nothing short of tyranny, a cunning manipulation which allows Barack Obama to cripple our car industry without having to take responsibility for doing so. The entire plan empowers the most extreme voices in our society, which is exactly what it is intended to do.

Further, it creates a competition among politicians and states, each eager to pretend they are some sort of national leader. Governors bucking to make names for themselves and Democrats hoping to gain national reputations for upping the ante of car standards.

It is chaos. It destabilizes our already endangered automobile industry. It will make cars more expensive. It will take choice away from consumers and power away from the people. This is exactly what Barack Obama wants to happen.

Maybe he's been inspired by Castro. All the subjects of the communist government in Cuba drive around in ancient cars. Maybe that's what they want for the subjects of the communist government of America. They're doing everything they can to make us a politically correct third world country.

And this idea is just the beginning. This guy still has four more years to go.

B. Hussien Obama = Saviour?

2009-01-22T07:01:00.000-08:00

I tell you, from the outside, the great unwashed see a savior in B. Hussien Obama. Being Christian, my wife and I think this is scary. Our President is a rock star, no offense intended to rock stars. He is like the Teflon Don. Nothing sticks to him. We know he associated with known terrorist Bill Ayers. We know he got campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants run by the government that all but forced the banks to make questionable loans and now need ANOTHER bailout. He got a ‘sweetheart loan’ from countrywide, another bank that needs a bail out, all of which he was in favor of. He won his Congressional seat by challenging his opponents petitions and getting enough signatures disqualified that they were removed from the ballot and so he ran unopposed.

Obama is hailed as a visionary yet, he fills his cabinet with folks that have all been there before. He promised an end to corruption yet has not proven that he is even a citizen. He promises to end the recession and yet he vows to raise taxes and expand government.

Dick Morris has written a piece for thehill.com here that warrants your attention. He describes the first term of our current President. With any luck, he will grossly over reach and Conservatives will regain some lost ground. I am hoping this happens by 2010. Either way, I fear that Dick Morris is right. Obama will change the landscape and economy of our country forever.

President Obama's Inaugural Address

2009-01-21T10:49:00.000-08:00

Like much of the rest of the country, I had to go to work the morning of January 20th, 2009 instead of sit in front of the TV and watch the inauguration speech. But I have read it through, watched the commentaries, and listened to my favorite conservative radio talk show hosts dissect it, rip it apart, and attempt to make sense of it.

My general opinion about it was it was a good speech; not a great speech, but a good speech. That’s my honest assessment. I’m not talking about his legislative record, I’m not talking about his campaign promises, and I’m not talking about his cabinet appointments. I’m talking about an inaugural address that I have printed out and put in a folder next to the copy I saved of Ronald Reagan’s address of January 20, 1981. I go back to President Reagan’s first inaugural often to remind myself of what I value and how our government should be ordered. In the future, I may also go back to Barack Obama’s address of January 20, 2009 to seek inspiration.

This is almost hard for me to write, not only because it goes against my normal reactions to a president which I believe has some seriously dangerous policies and concepts, but also because I know it will anger some people, and leave some other people confused. I am a conservative Republican and he is a liberal Democrat. I fear the great mischief he and his Democrat Congress can do to our country and our freedom

But that talk gave me hope. To the extent he stays true to that inaugural address, he will have my support.

Granted, I don’t agree with his global warming references, and I’m a bit annoyed with denunciations of things related to George W. Bush, but in large proportion it was a talk that is consistent with my conservative principles and patriotic bent.

It was a talk that, if it had been given by a victorious John McCain, we Republicans would have applauded.

Before I go on, I can definitely say that I’ve not caught the Obama lust that seems to grip all of American’s news media. I personally don’t think he’s a particularly good orator, and I think his accent is an affectation. And the inaugural ceremony was a mixed bag.

Rick Warren’s prayer was directed at the audience, not God. Joe Biden did a good job getting sworn in – his voice was strong and enthusiastic. The poet was an absolute illiterate idiot, just a complete embarrassment. The fact she is a Yale professor says a great deal about hiring priorities at Yale. The guy who gave the closing prayer was a racist and his swipe at white people was a disgusting end to the ceremony. Aretha Franklin was simply outstanding. The “Simple Gifts” performance was very strong, even if they did have to add two unnecessary instruments – piano and clarinet – to beef up the racial diversity.

And somebody ought to slap Chief Justice John Roberts. When all you have to do is say the oath, and you goof it up twice, you belong on the idiot list (or the ID10T list for us IT folks).

But back to the new president’s talk.

He quoted the Bible and George Washington, and he made repeated reference to the Founding Fathers and the founding documents. He specifically applied “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to today and he spoke of our military and our military history in admiring tones.

He made the case that the imperatives of our Republic’s founding and history still apply today. He said that though our problems and tools are new, the solutions aren’t – we need merely apply the principles the Founders put in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Those are all things I believe and hope that our President will embrace, not just give lip service to.

He told our enemies they could never defeat us, and he offered the hand of friendship to all who would take it. I especially liked the analogy of offering our open hand, if those to accept it will “unclench theirs.”

He said we wouldn’t abandon our lifestyle. He recognized that nations which blame their problems “on the West” are mistaken. He spoke directly to Muslim nations, but didn’t kiss up to them.

I loved the way he praised America’s heritage, and its generations of solid citizens. He described those who settled our country in heroic terms, and he praised the men who fought at Concord.

All of those things are right in line with what I believe.

I was also grateful that as the first black president gave his inaugural address, he spoke with reverence of the nation’s history and origins. So much of black-activist thinking seems to be disdainful of American history and that has swept into the classroom and the culture.

For Barack Obama, this new hero of black Americans, to describe George Washington as a brave and great leader – instead of as a slave owner – is a wonderful thing. And the fact that he looked over and over to our Founders and founding documents as the definers and originators of our liberty is almost a slap in the face to the politically correct crap that passes for history these days.

If Barack Obama is a role model and example for admiring young people, yesterday he told them in no uncertain terms that patriotism and admiration for the United States are essential to being a good citizen. And I don’t know the last time a Democrat or a black leader did that. The fact that he did is something I am grateful for.

I don’t know how he’ll govern. I’m still worried about some of the people around him. I hope he stays in the center and doesn’t swing back to the left.

But one thing is certain, he gave a pretty darn good speech. And while I might not agree with him tomorrow, I do today. And if I’m going to criticize him tomorrow, I’m going to praise him today.

I’m planning to save that speech because a lot of it says what I believe.

The reason behind the Middle east conflict

2009-01-16T14:46:00.000-08:00

The reason behind the Middle east conflict. in 10 minutes or less

State Governors - Are They Really Necessary?

2009-01-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

Does every state need a governor? Seriously, with all the out-of-work McDonald’s managers, can’t we find people to handle some of a governor’s administrative responsibilities on a part-time, hourly basis?

Wouldn’t we save a lot of aggravation that way?

Which gets me thinking about a statement issued on Friday, January 2nd by a useless organization called the Western Governors’ Association. Apparently they couldn’t get into the same country club as Arnold Schwarzenegger, so in hopes of reminding people just how “special” they are, they formed their own little group - like in school when the loser kids pretended they were speaking Klingon.

The Western Governors’ Association is comprised of the governors of Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming and Colorado. Mostly the organization tries to deal with jackalope overpopulation and those cheesy bets governors make when one state’s football team is playing against another’s. But that’s not sufficient reason for the Western Governors’ Association to exist, because even governors with cowboy boots have egos - giant egos. And giant egos will always make you do dumb things.

Which gets us back to Friday, January 2nd. On January 2nd (the day after New Years for those of you in Rio Linda*) (*shamelessly stolen saying from Rush Limbaugh) the various egomaniacs of the Western Governors’ Association issued a statement on the Middle East. Specifically, the current chair of the association, Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr., decided the world needed to know what he felt about the fighting going on between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Huntsman Jr., who prefers to be called “Jesus”, had such a bad case of “I want to be president someday” that he had to issue a press release. It’s the day after New Year’s, it’s the deadest spot in the news calendar, absolutely nobody cares, and yet he fires off a press release.

In other words, on the day everyone else in his state was fired up about the University of Utah playing in the Sugar Bowl, the governor was pretending he was Jimmy Carter!

Oh, and by the way, yes, I’m a resident of the Great State of Utah. No, I didn’t vote for Governor Huntsman Jr.

Here’s what this bright bulb had to say –

“The recent increase in hostilities between Israel and Hamas is evidence that lasting peace in the region is an elusive goal. The deaths of innocent civilians on both sides of the border as a result of the hostilities are proof that we must continue to work toward peace, rather than resolving our disputes through aggression.

”We support the right of Israel to defend itself from aggressors and to ensure the peace and prosperity of its citizens.

”We, therefore, are calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hamas and the establishment of a lasting and meaningful cease-fire. For this process to begin, Hamas must end its series of rocket attacks into Israeli sovereign land. The two sides must then work together in good faith to work toward peace in the region.”

For those who have lives, what’s happening over there is this: The Palestinians elected some terrorists named Hamas – the Arab word for “Democrats” – to run their country.

To Palestinians, that means “kill more Jews.” So, while they figured all the world would be busy on Christmas break, the Palestinians started firing missiles into Israel. Part of the calculation was that with the United States between administrations there’d be nobody to tell them to cut it out.

But there was a problem. The Israelis know about the new president, too, and they apparently figured that it might be easier to defend themselves before he takes office. So they fought back.

Let me repeat for the governors: One nation attacked another. The attacked nation fought back and the attacking nation has had its lunch handed to it.

This got all the world’s marching liberals ticked off. That’s because of their anti-jewish-itice (yes, it's a word... deal with it.). For liberals it is a simple equation: Israelis can do no right, Palestinians can do no wrong.

And this concerns very serious people on the evening news. And that concerns governors with too much time on their hands, which is how Friday’s statement came to be made. And all of that happened because the governors had their heads in a dark and unsanitary place, namely, they were sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.

Let’s review. Governors are elected to run states, even small states that pretty much run themselves. A governor of Utah, for example, would be in charge of Utah – if the Legislature is feeling generous. When something happens in Utah, that’s something the Utah governor would look into.

Now let’s review geography. The Middle East, though it is kind of dry and barren, is not in Utah. Actually, it’s not even close to Utah. In fact, it’s in an entirely different country, across an ocean, on another continent.

In other words, it’s none of Utah’s damn business. Same goes for Idaho, Colorado, Oregon and Wyoming.

No disrespect intended, but this is like a pre-schooler giving daddy driving advice. These governors are way out of their league. They have moved far beyond their responsibilities. They have presumed for themselves a relevance which they simply do not have.

Nobody gives a flying fig about what the governor of any American state thinks about some foreign war. All we have here is a display of comical self-importance.

Governors whose states have budget deficits, whose roads need paving and whose highway patrolmen need paying, who are facing increased gang violence and welfare dependency, those governors have decided to weigh in on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They ignore problems at home to opine on problems abroad.

Which honestly makes me wonder if they are necessary. If these states can get by with part-time legislatures – and all of them do – maybe they’d be better off if they also had part-time governors.

Rumors of Layoffs

2009-01-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

Layoffs hang like a dark cloud on the horizon. They are a storm which will come and pass, but where they will strike before they do, and whom they will take with them when they go, we cannot know. We are powerless in their face, we cannot stop them or avoid them, and they are not in our control, though we are very much in their control.

There are tens of millions of Americans who today know the truth of those words because there are, today, tens of millions of Americans who face the possibility of being laid off. It is the scourge of the season. It is whispered about at my work, it is whispered about at your work, it is trumpeted on the evening news.

But the one aspect of this that we do have control over is how we react, because if we react poorly, we make things worse. We weaken ourselves and our workplaces, we create needless angst and anxiety, and we spread a feeling of fear and hopelessness. And that is just the exact opposite of what we need. In times of uncertainty, confidence and courage are your best companions; worry and fret are soul-destroying poisons.

So here's the bottom line. Either you are going to get laid off, or you aren't. That's the way it is and there's nothing you can do about it. That's not fatalism, that's reality. It's a recognition of the fact that while it's OK to worry about things you can control, it is insane to worry about things you cannot control.

The layoffs rolling across our country are a reflection of general economic weakness. In many cases, those who lose their jobs won't deserve to lose their jobs - they personally will have done nothing wrong - so they are not at fault or to blame for getting fired. That fact is both torturous and liberating. It is unfair to be fired when you're doing a good job, but it is good to know that your own screw up didn't cost you your career. It is just dumb, blind luck, and the calculations of bosses with businesses to save.

As layoffs loom, people naturally speculate and theorize, trying to figure out who will and who won't be cut. These speculations can grow to near constant topics of conversation and can dominate one's thoughts. But they don't accomplish a thing, and they don't mean a thing. All they do is rile up and roil up; they spread a conspiratorial anxiety across a workplace. They sometimes create divisions that wouldn't otherwise exist, as people look at their co-workers and make an argument why one should go and another should stay.

It is an exacerbation of the dread, a group deathwatch that saps spirits, kills morale and hurts productivity. There's not much point in talking about it because nobody really knows, and no one will until they start calling us in. And when that happens - to ourselves or to others - the test of character begins. We will have to respond with maturity and grace, class and courage. Most importantly, we will have to avoid anger. Specifically, we will have to avoid being destroyed by anger because it can be a cancer that spreads like sewage in a stream. It can overtake and dominate our consciousness, and hurt us more than the loss of a job.

It is also unjustified because these layoffs are not punitive, they are not malicious. They are necessary. That's what makes all of this different. There is no corporate profit-taking going on. There is no outsourcing or union busting; this isn't about our companies turning on us.

This is about our companies fighting to survive. The economic model is being tested and strained, and right now some things just aren't working. And each company has an obligation to survive - too many people depend on them.

For many of us, our companies have employed and enriched us for years. As workers, we have been partners in great enterprises which have brought prosperity and sustenance to many. But now, some of those enterprises will go on without us, in order that they can go on at all.

That will be heartbreaking to some but beneficial to many. It will allow businesses to go forward, to employ who they can, and to be ready to grow and expand again when the economy straightens itself out.

So that's what we know about these looming layoffs. They are necessary and they are beyond our control, and ultimately our companies and our country will be better for them. We can't stop them, we can't predict them, we will ultimately benefit by them. And whether they hit us or our friends, we will all be better if we meet them with courage and confidence instead of fear and worry.

I don't want to get laid off, and neither do you. But let us have courage and go forward with confidence. There is a dark cloud on the horizon, but it's not the end of the world.

And we shouldn't act like it is.

Global Climate Warming Change?

2009-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Thomas Lifson over at American Thinker has put together a post that, think would be a real eye opener for anyone in the throws of global warming guilt.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/12/documenting_the_global_warming.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/documenting_the_global_warming_1.html

Talks about the placement of the sensors used to gather the data used to measure Global Warming. or, as they are calling it now, Climate change.

Quality Time

2008-12-11T09:43:00.001-08:00

Ya know what I hate? Well hate may be to strong a word. Lets try despise, ya, that works.

Ya know what I despise? I despise when real life gets in the way of either my Blogging time OR Gaming time. Of course i have to work a full time job, I am married and this takes alot of time my job takes 8 hours a day so that is a third of my day. I have to sleep.

I know I know... sounds like excuses, you say, welcome to the club. Ya know its not that i hate real life or my life for that matter. I have a lovely wife that i love more than anything else and a great kid who is in college at the age of 16. Very proud of him.

We at one time had a game night. Once a week we would gather arround the table and play cards, Poker, pitch, Canasta, hold 'em or a board game. we have a game we call marbles, kind of like a Sorry or similar game. You roll dice and move around the board till you get 'home'. Good Times.

Statistics show that Families that spend more 'quality' time together tend to be happier and have better relationships. That make sense, don't ya think? How much conversation do you get sitting arround a TV? Think about it i'll wait...

...

Well let me tell you. when we are engrossed in a show there is no conversation, as a matter of fact, there is a concious effort to squelch conversation so we do not miss anything happening in the lives of a character in a fantasy world based on events real or imagined.

connect with your Families. Read together, read the same book, not nessasarily the same copy but the same book. Get arround the table and play a game. Talk for God's sake. You may be able to fix something you didn't know was broke.

PC Gone Amuck

2008-11-26T14:28:00.000-08:00

I have said for a long time, Longer than i have been publishing to this blog, that PC will kill us all. Well now it seems that it is not only not PC to be a white male, but if you are such they want you to die as well.

Cystic fibrosis too 'white' for Ottawa fundraiser
The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.
Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it.

I guess you do not deserve help if you are a white guy.

You know what? I will cling to my God and my Gun and those 'antiques' will see me through what ever else may come. Frankly, i do not want any one's help. There are always strings.

Government

2008-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

This is what happens when corrupt Government targets certain industries for oppression. One man stood up for freedom and was gunned down for his trouble. Whether you agree with what he was doing or not, this is what tyranny brings.

Gordy Wheeler's strip clubs, bars, restaurants — and prostitution stings at his business — made him a regular visitor to the halls of Morrison County government, its courtrooms and its public record.

So it was only slightly unusual that Wheeler, dressed in long underwear, bib overalls and a Camp Bar cap, sat quietly in the audience as county commissioners started to put the wraps on their meeting that sweltering June day.

More unusual was that the board's agenda that day contained no business regarding Wheeler. The county and Wheeler first bumped heads in 1982, and met numerous times in contentious commission meetings and court hearings during the next 25 years. The legal docket had been lopsided and not in Wheeler's favor.

A jury convicted him of promoting prostitution, and he spent thousands in legal fees and fines to pay for civil actions brought against him by the county for zoning and health violations. Now banks had taken one business and a letter informed him they would claim the other.
At 60, he had slipped into financial ruin and blamed a vast government conspiracy targeted at him and his businesses.

As commissioners considered a motion to adjourn the June 24 meeting, Wheeler calmly rose to his feet. Before the vote could be taken, and the public record closed, Wheeler cocked the hammer of a 9 mm Beretta pistol.

He had brought his business to the board that day, and they were going to listen.
"What are we going to do about the Camp Store, boys," Wheeler asked, "and all the corruption?"
What followed were the last 21 minutes of the life of Gordon Kenneth Wheeler Sr. A man universally described as litigious but respectful, hard-headed but thoughtful, would hold those four commissioners and three other county officials hostage, forcing three law enforcement officers to make their most difficult professional decisions.
It was a desperate choice and a violent end for a nonviolent man whose family watched him tire from defeat after defeat. His countless battles with the county over his businesses, accompanying liquor licenses and criminal activity left him with nothing to lose, he told commissioners that day.
They had taken everything from him and couldn't put it back, he said, as he held the gun to the head of the county administrator. As his options dwindled, the walls squeezing in on him for years had begun to collapse.
Making money
Gordy was a local boy who learned early how to make a quick buck.
He and his brother, Don, were youngsters when they would hitchhike from the Little Falls area to Camp Ripley and shine shoes for soldiers.
Gordy enlisted in the Navy Reserves in 1966, when he was in high school, and he served on the USS America before being honorably discharged in October 1970.
He worked for a time in the Twin Cities but always wanted to return to start a business in the Ripley area. In 1981, he got his chance when he bought Camp Bar, a bar within walking distance for soldiers at the camp.
With an eye to the fast buck that could be made from all those soldiers, Wheeler offered lingerie nights, then topless dancing.
It wasn't long before it prompted citations for indecent exposure at the bar.
An ally in the early days of Wheeler's clashes in court was Judge George Wetzel, father of Michel Wetzel, who is now Morrison County sheriff.
It was Judge Wetzel who dismissed indecent exposure charges against Wheeler, when he determined that laws at the time didn't allow the township to enact ordinances against nude dancing.
It was a decision that kept Wheeler's bar in the business of nude dancing, a polarizing and politically divisive issue at the time.
"They came after him immediately," said his son, Gordy Jr. "And over the years, they beat him down with everything because they couldn't close him down the first time."
Don Wheeler, Gordy Sr.'s brother, sees it the same way.
"It seemed like every time he turned around and went to the county for a permit to do this or that, it always seemed like they gave him a hard time."
Building problems
Gordy didn't always abide by the terms of permits, though, and when he built an addition to the Camp Bar under the guise of it being a "storage shed," the county tried to halt construction.
Wheeler completed the structure in 2001 and applied for an after-the-fact land-use permit for a walkway to connect the two.
The county denied the request. Wheeler ignored the county's letters and built it anyway.
In late 2001 or early 2002, Wheeler began operating the Krazy Rabbit sports bar adjacent to the Camp Bar.
At about the same time, the county imposed a one-year moratorium on new adult businesses, which eventually was extended to two years.
Wheeler saw it as a direct attack and pushed back. As the moratorium was about to expire in November 2003, Wheeler tried to open Lookin' Fine Smut and Porno near Swanville.
"They had been on his case so bad," said Don Wheeler. "How did he rebel? He brought in X-rated magazines. That was his attitude. 'You don't like it, fine. Then I'll bring in this stuff.' That was his logic in trying to deal with them when everything else had failed."
He never got Lookin' Fine open, and days later, the county amended its adult- use ordinances and imposed setback requirements that Wheeler and his attorney argued were tailored to prohibit only Wheeler's business.
"He gives the county board a bunch of grief and then they deny him permission to develop his main property (at Camp Ripley) the way he wants to, so he writes a letter to the county board saying he intends to open a second use," said Randall Tigue, Wheeler's lawyer. "And within two weeks, the county board passes a moratorium saying no new adult uses anywhere in the county. He was about to develop a perfectly legal use at his existing location. The county rewrites the ordinance … to make it just large enough so his proposed use is prohibited."
The county also used septic system health ordinances to prevent Wheeler from operating Lookin' Fine.
Above law
In April and August 2005 Wheeler would be arrested twice in a five-month period in prostitution stings at Camp Bar. A Morrison County jury convicted Wheeler on charges from one of the arrests and found him not guilty on the other.
"The one thing you could get definitely from Gordy during his testimony (at trial) is that Gordy seemed to think he was ever-so-slightly above the law — not Nixon-above-the-law type of thing — but that he was just clever enough to do everything he had to to skirt the edge, and that he was smarter than we were," said Todd Kosovich, the assistant county attorney who prosecuted the prostitution cases.
Listen to prosecutor Todd Kosovich discuss his perception of Gordy Wheeler Sr. in court.
"He couldn't imagine why we were bothering him. This is a guy who really doesn't care what the rules are."
The rules weren't applied evenly to all county residents, Wheeler's family said. In fact, they argued that certain anti-nudity laws were tailored for Wheeler's businesses alone.
Wheeler spent several weeks in jail for the prostitution conviction, which also branded him a felon. As such, he couldn't get a liquor license.
The legal losses piled up. "He felt he was victimized by bigoted government officials, and the judiciary turned a blind eye," Tigue said.
Morrison County wasn't out to get Wheeler, said former County Administrator Tim Houle, who left in July to take the same position in Crow Wing County.
"They were out to have him follow the same rules that everybody else is expected to follow," Houle said. "It was never about being moralistic about what he did."
If Wheeler had followed those rules, he likely would still be in business, Houle speculates. "But he saw it as an effort to persecute, so he resisted at every turn."
Listen to Tim Houle: "He continued to lose the significant issues..."
Pushing limits
The legal and financial losses piled up and weighed on Wheeler, said his wife, Kathy.
"Gordy was pretty spunky. And toward the end, I used to watch him. He'd be walking around out there," she said, motioning to the land outside their house, "and I thought to myself, 'My God they've just brought him down to, like, a little old man.'"
Listen to Kathy Wheeler discuss the toll the legal losses took on her husband.
Don Wheeler, who like Gordy Sr. was battling diabetes, could also see the changes. He recalls watching Gordy's nervous habit of bouncing his foot off the ground when he sat.
"I saw that it was getting worse. He couldn't stop the leg from moving," Don Wheeler said. "I knew this was eating at him."
Nobody who knew Wheeler saw a violent side to him. Kosovich, who prosecuted the prostitution case, thought Wheeler "would litigate us to death" rather than resort to violence. "I didn't expect he'd bring a gun," Kosovich said.
Listen to prosecutor Todd Kosovich talk about Wheeler's nonviolent nature.
Neither did Kathy and Gordy Jr.
"He was no different that morning than he was any other morning," Kathy Wheeler said. "He was not different the day before or the day before that or the day before that. He was Gordy.
"Let's face it. We knew he was down in the dumps. You can't deny that. He was losing everything. (But) we could sit around and talk, and we would laugh, and kids would come over and we would have fun."
Tigue says he also wouldn't have predicted Wheeler's actions. "I guess there's limits on how much persecution a guy can take."
Targets
Commissioner Tom Wenzel had known of Wheeler for three decades.
That June day in the boardroom, Wheeler recalled a visit he once paid to Wenzel's Randall farm to discuss his business issues.
Wheeler was never rude or threatening, Wenzel said.
During a 10-minute board recess earlier in the day, Wenzel passed Wheeler on the stairs as he headed to the restroom. He noticed the red bandanna in Wheeler's hand.
Wenzel said good morning.
There he is, Wheeler replied.
When Wenzel reached the bottom of the stairs, he looked back up.
Wheeler was staring down at him.
The bandanna concealed the handgun that Wheeler soon would be waving around the boardroom.
"I think the first thing that hit me is that this cannot be happening. Shock and disbelief is what I felt," County Attorney Brian Middendorf said. "He's simply not a violent person. He's never been a violent person, has no history of violence."
It surprised Houle as well.
"I think we were aware that the walls around Gordon had continued to get smaller and smaller and smaller," Houle said. "That said, he had given absolutely no previous indication of a tendency toward violence ... I kind of liked Gordon. I didn't agree with Gordon, but he was never disagreeable."
Middendorf had even helped Wheeler once, after a man was convicted of assaulting Wheeler.
Wheeler was seeking restitution from the man, and Middendorf asked Wheeler questions during a hearing to determine what the man owed Wheeler.
Now Wheeler was holding a gun near the heads of Middendorf and Houle and the county was a target.
In an interview this month, Middendorf declined to discuss his thoughts and feelings at that moment. It's not something he wants to dwell on, he said, and not something he cares to discuss with the media — or privately.
But his words to a Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator in the hours after the standoff ended capture the desperation and fear inside the boardroom that day.
"I thought about my family," Middendorf told BCA Senior Special Agent Brian Marquart, "and my wife and my daughter and … how this could be the last day of my life. I thought about dying, and those were the two things that kept circling in my mind."
"My place was beneath you, but now I am above and now I send you a message of love. I know I'm headed for the bottom but I'm riding you all the way." -- Soundgarden.

yo...

2008-10-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

Testing... Testing... Is thing on? I'm not getting feedback from the microphone... Hey! Did somebody plug my mic on?

The systematic suppression of political speech

2008-10-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

Over the past months there have been many reports of Campaign signs being defaced, threats being made, albeit indirectly, and then we learn of a couple of assaults that have happened over campaign signs. I truly believe that there are those people that would suppress political speech for personal gain.

Intimidation

The reports of campaign signs being defaced and stolen, The Democratic presidential nominee telling his followers to 'get in their face', speaking of people that do not agree or would not vote for him. He would like his followers to aggressively argue his case. In and of itself, this is not bad. I tend to get passionate about my political leanings, my Family and my God. I will try my best to get you to see my point of view and change your mind. If I cannot we will agree to disagree. At least I will. There is a story of a man being assaulted in a restaurant when he cut of a political discussion. The affiliations of those men are irrelevant. That was a violent attempt to silence an individual's political speech. A man was attacked because he disagreed with another’s political view point. A campaign manager's house was shot up; it is suspected, over the campaign signs in his yard in support of McCain/Palin. In the news for about a week, we have heard political Pundits warn us that since Obama has a ‘massive lead' in the polls that there will be 'trouble in major cities if the One is not elected. These are subtle attempts to intimidate people to vote in a certain way, to intimidate you and me into either voting for Obama or staying home. The news reports and poll results are all geared to get you to stay home and not vote. They tried this in o4 when we elected Bush by a narrow margin. They will do the same thing this year. They do not care that they are shooting their credibility to hell. A Socialist state is their goal and I think they may have a chance this year of electing another Jimmy Carter.

Suppression of free speech

As a case in point I would point out the Democrats discussion and apparent desire to reinstate the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine would move talk radio back to the era of shows on how to fatten cattle, your favorite carrot cake recipe and farm and market reports that dominated the news cycle. Another example was actually perpetrated a couple of years ago in the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform act. This act restricts the amount of money and who can give what. The SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The United States) has since equated money and political speech and has struck down portions of the law.

Voter Fraud

This is another attempt to suppress political speech but, more than that, it is stealing. There are many allegations against the group ACORN for voter fraud. They have attempted to register Mickey Mouse and Nadda Realperson. They have claimed many times they cannot vet all of the registrations they receive. I see this as a transparent attempt to deflect blame to their employees, employees that the employer is ultimately responsible for. Now we get the word that GOP Election Board members have been tossed out of polling stations in at least half a dozen polling stations in Philadelphia because of their party status. This is a direct violation of a court order but, apparently, the law does not mean much in Philly.

Crazy McCain and his (welfare) Mortgage Deal

2008-10-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

Did you watch the debates? What is wrong with John McCain? I’m still voting for him, but he’s out of his freaking mind.

At the last debate McCain brought up this new “plan” he has to solve the mortgage crisis. As if things weren’t bad enough already, it looks like he’s figured out a way to make it even worse.

Proud as a peacock, in response to the first question, he popped out his new plan. On the night he needed to draw blood – or make vacation plans for January 20th – the best John McCain could do was try to out-socialize Barack Obama. And that’s a pretty tall order, but John McCain managed to pull it off.

Here are the details. John McCain said that, if elected, he will have the government buy up all these troubled mortgages. Then he would have them renegotiated, lowering the amount of indebtedness to the current market value of the mortgaged properties. That would lower – probably dramatically – the amount owed and the interest rate paid.

Oh, and it would screw the country, which seems to be a pretty bipartisan objective.

Let’s think through what would happen if Insane Johnny got his way. First of all, American taxpayers would get totally reamed. Just a week after the liars promoting this bailout told us that the government would probably make money on it, by reselling the mortgages after they appreciated in value, my candidate decided to make it so that the government – by which I mean “the taxpayer” – would lose money on each and every mortgage.

Here’s how: If you buy it at a price that reflects the total amount owed, and then you reduce the total amount owed – and consequently the amount paid back – you lose money.

It’s that simple. The government absorbs the difference between what it buys the mortgage for and the price it then reissues the mortgage at – it just writes it off. It is an immediate and certain loss which will not be made up, no matter what happens to the market.

Look, you don’t buy a $10,000 car and then resell it for $8,000 and then expect to be happy about the deal, would you? (For those of you in Arkansas – that’s a $2,000 loss)

That’s Major Flaw No. 1.

Major Flaw No. 2 is that the plan rewards irresponsibility. If you were dumb, crooked or greedy enough to buy more house than you were willing or able to pay for, John McCain would save you by giving you the house at a price lower than what it cost when you moved in.

Say you live in a neighborhood where homes went for $300,000 two years ago when your neighbor, who delivers pizzas for a living, moved in. Surprise, surprise, he’s delinquent on his mortgage. And the economy is in the toilet, and the most you could get for a house in the neighborhood right now, if you had to sell, is $150,000.

Enter Nut Job Johnny.

He would take your bum neighbor, who is defaulting on a loan for $300,000, and save him from foreclosure. Further, he would reissue the loan for the current value of the property -- $150,000.

See where I’m going here? As you know, the mortgage payment on $150,000 is a whole lot less than the mortgage payment on $300,000. And, in the midst of a financial crisis, the interest rate is a whole lot lower.

So your punk neighbor is living in the same neighborhood and size house as you are, only he’s making a far smaller payment with a far smaller debt, all because of John McCain. And the fun part is that you, paying full price on your home, are going to be taxed to pay for your bone-head neighbor who can’t come up with the mortgage payments. In other words, those who make their mortgage payments will be taxed to pay for those who don’t.

And we don’t even want to get into how many of these defaulted-on homes were “bought” by illegal aliens or as part of social engineering programs intending to increase home ownership by the unemployed and welfare dependent. But I digress.

Nut job McCain will not only bail out these failed buyers; he will give them new mortgages at bargain-basement prices. What a deal!

But wait, there’s more.

What happens when the value of homes goes back up? Let’s say in five years, when the economy gets back on its feet, the homes in your neighborhood regain their value, and are selling for $300,000 again, what happens? Well, you – who kept your word and paid your mortgage – will sell yours for $300,000 and walk away even. And your neighbor, who defaulted and got the new mortgage at the bottomed-out price, will also sell for $300,000 and make $150,000 on the deal.

WOW! Thank you again, John McCain.

But wait, there’s still more.

There’s still Major Flaw No. 3.

And that is that anybody with half a brain – and no conscience – watched the debate and decided to stop paying their mortgage. Seriously, the value of your home right now, in most parts of the country, is less than what it was when you bought it – less than what it was when you took out your mortgage. So stop making your payments. Fall behind a little bit. Become a troubled mortgage. In a few months, the government will rescue you. And John McCain will give you a new mortgage, for the depressed value of your home. It’s like saving tens of thousands of dollars at the stroke of a pen. All you and McCain have to do is rip off the taxpayers. Apparently, he’s perfectly willing to do so.

Repeating for emphasis: People who paid their mortgages will labor under higher taxes and government debt. People who didn’t pay their mortgages will get a giant gift from the government. Responsible people will be punished and irresponsible people will be rewarded. The people who contribute to America get hosed and the people who tear down America get to raid the Treasury.

Thank you, John McCain.

As if the bailout con job wasn’t bad enough, Crazy Johnny found a way to make it worse.

But I’m still voting for him.

Here’s why: First of all, I'm a Republican. Other than that, the idiot who wants to give people welfare mortgages is a little bit better than the idiot who thinks health care is a right. One will tax me to give my lazy neighbor a house nicer than mine, and the other will tax me to pay for people who are so lazy they won’t even work to hire a doctor to take care of their families. It’s the lesser of two evils.

Would someone please answer this question: In a country of 300 million people, how in the heck did we end up with these two idiots as our presidential candidates?

Thats it i am now a Deamoncrat

2008-10-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

THIS VIDEO HAS CHANGED MY MIND!! specially the guy that wants change cause it promotes hope and hope that invites change.... Ya look it

Fannie and Freddie

2008-10-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

There is a great piece on 7.62 justice. may show on the side bar. It gives a time line of the creation and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. here is an excerpt.

1938 - Roosevelt got Fannie Mae through
a Democrat-controlled congress.
1970 - Freddie Mac was created by Democrats
in congress 57-43 Senate and 234-192 House.
1977 - The Community Reinvestment
Act was passed by the democratic congress (61-39 Senate and 292-143 House) and
signed into law by Jimmy Carter. It encouraged banks and mortgage lenders to
loan money for housing to people who would not otherwise qualify (with Freddie
and Fannie backing same by taking the paper).
1995 - President Clinton signed
the executive order mandating lenders expand their lending for mortgages to
sub-prime borrowers (that means people who would not qualify under any criteria
in a sane world). Failure to do so would result in the lending institution not
having access to federal funds or the quasi governmental Fannie and
Freddie.
1999 - Republican Senator Phil Gramm pushed through congress
deregulation laws (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) removing Depression era laws
separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities. The vote in the Senate
was 98-1-1. McCain was the one who did not vote, another Republican was the lone
no vote. Biden and Harry Reid, who are now saying it’s all Bush’s fault, voted
for the bill. Even Obama this week places the blamed on Gramm, but fails to
mention that his running mate voted for it, and Clinton signed it into
law.
2003 - President Bush tried to get congress to amend Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac rules to disallow loans to people who would not qualify under normal
lending institution rules for making loans.

ARE YOU DEMOCRAT, REPUBLICAN OR REDNECK?

2008-09-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

Here is a little test that will help you decide
You're walking down a deserted street with yourwife and two small children. Suddenly, an Islamicterrorist with a huge knife comes around the corner,locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, praises Allah,raisesthe knife, and charges at you.

You are carrying a Glock Model 23 (40 caliber), andyou arean expert shot. You have mere seconds before hereaches youand your family. What do you do?
==================================
Democrat's Answer Well, that's not enough information to answer thequestion!
Does the man look poor! Or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that would inspirehim toattack?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knocktheknife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Is it possible he'd be happy with just killing me?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he becontentjust to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could myfamilyget away while he was stabbing me?Should I call 9-1-1 ?
Why is this street so deserted?
We need to raise taxes, have a paint and weed day andmakethis a happier, healthier street that would discouragesuchbehavior.

This is all so confusing!I need to discuss with some friends over a latte andtry tocome to a consensus.
==================================
Republican's Answer:BANG==================================
Redneck's Answer:BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

Click....
(sounds of reloading)

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!click

Daughter: 'Nice grouping, Daddy! Were those theWinchester Silver Tips or Hollow Points?'

Son: 'You got him, Pop! Can I shoot the next one?'

The following wes suggested by Pete
Pop: 'Sure son... Run get the shotgun and extra ammo out of the truck'

Wife: 'You are not taking that to the taxidermist!'

I know that glock has a 14 round clip...
I do not advocate killing anyone but... I must be a redneck

Those Stupid Converter Box Commercials

2008-09-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Americans are dumb, or at least the government thinks we're dumb.

Television is going digital in February, 2009 and if I see one more condescending, insane TV ad, “informing” me about the change over from analog to digital, I'm going to go postal on my big screen. OK, technically I don’t have a “big screen” It’s a 15 yr old 32 inch analog, not HD, TV. But I digress, whatever that means.

How this got to be this important, I don't understand. How we've gone this long, with all these “reminders,” without having an armed revolution, is beyond me.

These are the ads that will show up during a show on TV. All of a sudden your screen flattens a bit and some sort of scrawl will go across the bottom like those emergency broadcast messages.

The first time I saw that, I thought Jesus had come back. But it wasn't Jesus. It was Beelzebub, or his modern incarnation – the federal government.

Due to federal dictate, like the time they told us how many gallons of water could be in a toilet, the government has decided that on February 17, TV will change. Not all TV, just antenna TV. That's the kind your grandparents used to watch when they were sharecroppers. You had a TV and it had some wires and tinfoil sticking out of the top and if you turned them a certain directon, or had your portly cousin Louie touch it with his tongue, you could get snowy pictures, sort of, from a couple of counties over.

Apparently, some people still use antenna TV. My guess is that they're Dave Ramsey fans trying to pay off their debt. In America, the poor people have digital cable. The poor people working under the table, so as not to lose their welfare, have satellite.

The only ones left with an antenna are the ones who are worried about the FBI reading their brain waves. Or the ones who bet their brother they could live for a year watching nothing but Sanford and Son.

Anyway, apparently antenna people are really stupid, because they need to be told 80 or 100 times a day that they have to get a converter box by the middle of February. There is a website, there are television commercials, there are pamphlets, movie stars will remind you, it's on the radio, probably before long, members of Congress will come door to door to make sure people know.

Of all the things to make a public-information priority, how did we get this? Not disease prevention, not avoiding consumer debt, not avoiding e-mails from con men in Nigeria, but TV converter boxes.

It seems to me that people would be motivated to take care of this on their own. If they don't want their TV to go blank, they'll do what's necessary to keep it from happening.

It's as if this whole annoying thing is directed at the dumb and lazy. Make sure your TV keeps working. If not, it'll turn off. This is kind of a no-brainer. And it's kind of an individual responsibility.

Which is why I wonder why I have to pay for it. Not only does the nanny government keep reminding you to get a converter box, the nanny government is willing to pay for it. Each household can get vouchers for $80 to pay for converter boxes.

It's welfare for TV. I wonder, when they outlawed horses because of their carbon footprint, and we had to start using cars, did the government send around vouchers?

What possible responsibility is it of the taxpayer to pay for other people's entertainment? It's bad enough some people lay around the house all day watching Judge Judy, must I be taxed to give them $80 for their converter boxes?

I'm just frustrated by this. It is the biggest non-event since Y2K. And just as disruptive to what I want to watch on TV. Honestly, if I have to see another one of those annoying commercials I'm going to go around the neighborhood and start breaking down antennas.

Except there aren't any.

Are We Winning The War

2008-09-11T06:13:00.000-07:00

I know this will be a popular subject today. I probably will not say anything that has not been said before. But i think it is important to realize that where we are today is a result of where we were yesterday.

Has it really been 7 years?

I remember that day. My wife had been in Louisville Ky. for a week at the National Quartet Convention and was due to fly back that day. My son was at his Grandmas because, for some reason, poppa couldn't get him to school and back to work on time. It was early (we lived in Denver at the time) and i was ready for work and turned on the TV for the noise and sat down to check my email. I glanced at the TV and saw the north tower burning. I thought it was weird to have a movie on at this time of day on the major networks. i half listened as i checked my mail until i heard the familiar voice of Peter Jennings on the TV. I looked again and watched flight 175 hit the south tower. I think i was a little slow almost caught up in the mundane things of day to day life enough to ignore the big picture. i realized that this was not a movie but something was going on. i grabbed my phone and tried to call my wife, understandably the phones were overloaded and i could not get through.

I called my boss and let him know that i would not be in till i talked to my wife. He understood and told me not to worry, there were A LOT of people out that day. I tried repeatedly to call my wife, thinking I had to warn her not to get on the plane. Of course all planes were grounded and diverted in order to get out of the sky as soon as possible. News came in about flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, then flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. I, along with most of the nation, watched those buildings fall and thousands of people die that day. We all watched as these attacks were celebrated in the Middle East. The realization later that some of the debris falling from the buildings were humans throwing themselves out of windows rather than waiting to be burned or buried alive was horrifying.

I did not talk to my wife till later that evening. I was blubbering like an infant and she chided me for being worried. It was another week and a half before I saw my wife again. She was able to ride with friends that she flew out with. They rented a car and drove back.

That was 7 years ago today. I didn’t loose anyone in those attacks. Nor did I know anyone who did. As the years have passed there have been wars started, other terror attacks, in other countries how ever, there has not been a major attack on American soil since that day. I believe there have been terror attacks here. There have been shootings and attacks against Jewish organizations shootings at Shopping malls by people sporting Islamic names. For some reason, we are led to believe that these are random acts but, that is for another post.

I believe that we had elected the right man for the job of leading this country through this time. I also believe that last 7 years is proof of it. There are those that will tell you that George Bush is a warmonger and started wars because he could but let’s look at s a partial list of Foiled Terror Plots Against America Since 9/11. There are many that say we just got lucky and that may be true. I believe, however that it is not luck but, the military action taken in Afganistan and Iraq, the policies, laws and directives implemented by this administration.

Bush had the political will and courage to do what was best for this country. I do not think The Obamassiah will have that same will.

I do believe we are winning but, the the left in this country has a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

I Wonder If She'll Wear White

2008-09-05T08:11:00.000-07:00

Some days you don't know who pulls the strings on whom. Do the Democrats control the media or does the media control the Democrats? Is there any demarcation at all anymore in the march of the left? Some call themselves journalists and some call themselves politicians but they both bleed Democrat blue. And they both hate Republicans.

And Sarah Palin's daughter walked into both barrels of that. Never has a teenager in trouble been held up to more scrutiny or scorn. The party that facilitates out-of-wedlock birth has decided to call the kettle black.

So let's get things straight. There is a right way in life, and a wrong way. We all know what the right way is, but a fair amount of the time we still do things the wrong way. For example, you're not supposed to have sex until you're married. Some people live up to that standard, and some people don't. And sometimes those who don't will get pregnant. Sometimes those people will be young, even teen-agers. At least that's how it was in my hometown.

Sometimes you'd think the bride looked a little plump or the wedding seemed a little rushed or the baby, at 8 or 9 pounds, seemed a little big for just four months gestation. Sometimes it went that way. And nobody had a problem with that. If you screwed up in the first instance, there were additional expectations so that you hopefully didn't screw up in the second instance. The wrong thing is to do what it takes to make a baby. The right thing is to then do what it takes to make a family.

They used to be called shotgun weddings. And I've bought golden-anniversary presents for people who had them. It might not be quite according to Hoyle, but in the real world, it's how it sometimes works out. And though it sometimes comes with a little regret and repentance, it can also come with joy and family. Experience teaches us that it can come, over time, with a lot of joy and family.

Of course, they're bashing the girl's mother because she believes in abstinence education in the schools, and because it's a church-going family, and because she's a Republican. For political points, they choose to see the girl as a referendum on her mother's politics. And that's not fair to either.

Every mom and dad hopes and prays that their children will avoid life's pitfalls and traps. It is a season of worry as children enter middle school and adolescence and progress into their 20s. There is the fear of drugs and alcohol and dangerous driving and squandered educations and inappropriate sex. Life presents so many temptations to damage or destroy a young life. And not every child comes through unscathed.

Home life can help pull a child in one direction or another, for good or for bad, but ultimately we are all free, and so are our children, and people make their own decisions. Even if those people are in our home, under our roof.

There's nothing wrong with having a child when you're 18. Barack Obama's mother was 18 when he was born. My mother was 18 when I was born. But Barack's mother was married and my mother was married, and so might the governor's daughter be.

And regardless of this situation, or one's views on this situation, the larger and more relevant issue is out-of-wedlock births. There is a catastrophic cascading of out-of-wedlock births in this country, a dramatic cultural shift, and it carries with it a crushing social cost. Will the governor's daughter be part of that? We'll have to wait and see.

But all – from the left and right – must be part of an effort to curb out-of-wedlock birth. Nothing – not race or income or where you're born – has a statistically more negative impact on a little baby's life prospects than being born out of wedlock.

It is, tragically, a huge indicator for a long list of very bad things – educational failure, welfare reliance, criminal conduct. Whether you believe in cutting out-of-wedlock birth by handing out more condoms or by teaching more abstinence, there must be agreement that it is bad even if you're the governor's daughter.

The right thing is to keep your pants on. If you don't, and there's a baby involved, the right thing is to get married. That's how it was in my hometown, and apparently that's how it is in Alaska.

And beyond that, it's none of anybody's damn business.

Sara Palin

2008-09-02T08:59:00.000-07:00

OK...

it has been said that McCain's VP Pick unqualified, inexperienced and an unfit mother. There are several things at work here and the left really is exposing itself to the American public. The Feminists are strangely quiet about, not only the dismissal of Hillary Clinton but the history that was made by the McCain campaign.

Think about it, if they were REALY so worried about getting a woman into office and a woman being able to do ANYTHING. Any job a man can do, a woman can do better! That is what they believe at least, that’s what they want you to believe. If that was the case, where are they when this woman is attacked? *listens intently* Yeah, i'm not hearing it. I am listening believe me! I think it would be refreshing if someone on the left actually thought of more than the selfish need for power and the compulsion to do what it needs to do to keep it.

Dems had a historic opportunity not only to nominate a woman as their Presidential nominee and when she was defeated, to place her on the ticket as Vice President. Obama declined to do that and, if you believe everything you read, he didn't even vet or look at her seriously as a running mate.

So then we have a woman VP pick for the Republicans and the same ol same ol. FOR PETE"S sake (sorry Pete) OBAMA chose an old WHITE GUY... i though that with as America's first black nominee he would have chosen a Hispanic running mate if he was not going to choose the woman (Hillary) that ran such a great campaign against him.

Well I am not sure I can make that point any more clear. If you want to look at who is more progressive look at the tickets. If you want to look at who is more tolerant, look at the substance of the attacks and where they are coming from.

The Boy Scouts of America – Something Worth Fighting For

2008-08-13T12:07:00.000-07:00

Where are your kids, right now? What are they doing? Do you know? Really? Of course, they told you they were headed to McDonalds or Burger King or whatever to meet some friends. Are you certain that is where they actually went? You have only their word to go on. Of course you trust them! So do I (trust my kids). If they said they are at Burger King, I am sure that is where they went… I think.

At least I know that when my kids are at Scout Camp, I know where they are, who they’re with, and what they are involved in. I know because I am a Boy Scout leader. I know because I know the value that the Boy Scouts of America place on the youth in their program.

Actually, I have all girls. That’s O.K. because they have decided that the best youth program they have encountered is the Boy Scouts of America. I know what you’re thinking… and get your mind out of the gutter. It’s not the boys they are interested in (yet). It is the fun they have.

Boy Scouts are really all about fun. The founder of the Boy Scouts of America, Baden Powell, said, “Scouting is a game with a purpose.” He talked a lot about giving boys fun things to do while we, the adult leaders, provide moral and ethical lessons weaved into their fun. The boys are often not even aware they are learning something. That is the point; teach the boys principles and concepts without them knowing they are learning it. They key is to let them have fun!

On with the rant…

It’s been a while now, and like 911 people have generally forgotten the hype about the Supreme Court’s decision on the BSA’s policy against gays; or at the very least it has slid down the drive-by media’s hot list. But as a trained and registered Scout Leader I have personally taken some flak from that from time to time so let’s finally set the record straight.

The Boy Scouts have this fixation about “morally straight” and that translates, in this regard, to straight straight, as in not-gay. If you’re gay, the Boy Scouts of America doesn’t want you to be an adult leader in its organization.

The Supreme Court is cool with that, but such a rule goes counter to the required fanny kissing of the day. For some reason, gay people are America’s favorite minority. We love gay people. So we put them in sitcoms and we wear ribbons for them and we pretend that the whole thing doesn’t nauseate us.

And to prove we’re not bigots we go out of our way to show how accepting we are, and we become willing accomplices to a perversion which disgusts us. So we turn our back on the good to advance the bad. And the institutions of power in this society are turning against the Boy Scouts of America.

It’s time to hit back, and hit back hard. It’s time to fight a war like Dick Cheney and Colin Powell did; to overwhelm and smother and prevail. They bombed. We can boycott - purposefully, loudly, and viciously. We can boycott the cities, states and philanthropies which have targeted the Scouts.

But such an effort must be resolute and even ruthless. And it will require sacrifice. Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale, for example, must come off our vacation list. Perhaps the entire state of Florida should be targeted. Ditto for Connecticut and the businesses which are headquartered there. And we should stop contributing to or through the United Way.

Is any of that fair? Probably not. But it could be effective. And this is about winning. The tourist industries of Florida probably have nothing to do with the spurning of Boy Scouting. The same goes for the businesses of Connecticut – or Tempe and Tucson for that matter – or the vast majority of United Way chapters.

Sometimes you make a man sweat by pestering his neighbors, and if the consequences of anti-Scouting initiatives are spread out, that will simply create more people with an interest in having the anti-Scout measures reversed.

Opposition to the Scouts must come at a price; a high price. So high that the wave of prejudice against Scouting can be reversed.

Boycotts are tricky tools. They usually don’t work. They seldom have sufficient economic impact to even be noticed. But when a large and committed group of people withhold their business and monetary support, and there is an aggressive public information program associated with it, good things can be done.

The parents and supporters of Boy Scouting are legion and affluent. They tend to be the doers of society; the movers and shakers and if anyone can pull off a boycott, they can. But there will need to be an organization and orchestrated action. In fact, it may have to be so confrontational as to be uncomfortable for some of the people who typically are involved in Scouts.

Boy Scouting, however, is worth it. Check that. It’s not actually Boy Scouting which is so valuable; it is the values which it instills. This really isn’t about the Scouts; it’s about the society in which they will live as adults. We are not teaching youth how to camp. We are teaching them how to be husbands and fathers, mothers and daughters, and leaders.

And that is worth fighting for.

So think it over.

See if this is something you want to start.

Amil Imani - Telling the Truth is Islam Bashing?

2008-07-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

You have got to read this piece from Amil imani exile in Persia. He is lone voice in the lion's den speaking truth about islam here is an exerpt.

Question: Does Islam get a pass because it is a religion? Who says Islam is
a religion? Millions do? What is the evidence? The words of masses of
brainwashed carriers of the Islamic virus, transmitted to them by their parents,
are worthless as evidence. What counts is the irrefutable fact that this creed,
claimed to be the one and only religion of Allah, has been and continues to be a
source of great suffering for non-Muslims as well as the ignorant masses of
Muslims themselves.

I will share with you just a few of thousands of
horrific things that Muslims do to people of other religions or those without
any religion at all. In model Islamic states such as Saudi
Arabia and Iran, for instance, women don’t dare complain about their
Allah-decreed chattel status. If they protest in the least, they are beaten by
their husbands. And if they dare to demonstrate in public for equal family
rights with men, they get severe beatings by the police and hauled to jails for
additional indignities and violence.

Please read the rest of this here and pass this on.
http://www.amilimani.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=112&Itemid=2

The OBAMASSIAH

2008-07-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the cover of New Yorker Magazine? It is hillarious!

But wait!!! Obama is out raged! he does not like this depiction of his extreamest views. Well Phooey. He needs to lighten up and learn how to laugh at himself. This is quickly becoming the public perception of him and his wife. and i am sure there will be more of this in the future. One can only hope that Democrats do not take to the streets and riot as the Islamists have done when their Profit has been depicted in Satire. I would not think they would, to become violent at protesets and destroy the personal property of others is to.... umm... never mind, what was i thinking?

British knife ban

2008-07-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

I just saw this on the American Thinker, They are actually trying to ban ‘pointy’ knives!!! Because the only people that need 'pointy knives' are professional chefs... That has GOT to be the stupidest thing i have ever heard. I am not ashamed to say that I was sceptical so, I looked. I found this:

Kitchen knife ban sought May 27 2005: James Meikle Accident and emergency doctors today call for the banning of long, sharp kitchen knives, arguing they account for at least half of all stabbings.

And this:

British Medical Experts Campaign for Long, Pointy Knife Control

This is all about taking away the ability of someone to defend them selves. Guns have been taken away from the Brits a long time ago. According to Jon Dougherty © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com 'Britain, Australia top U.S. in violent crime' course that was a couple of years ago so look at this site it has a map of the countries with the highest crime rates. Notice that the countries with the highest crime rates are the countries with strict gun control laws. The same can be said of US cities that have enacted gun control laws.
God bless the 2nd amendment…

Of Men and Mice

2008-07-07T12:32:00.001-07:00

Ok… ok… OK….

You cannot even call the inactivity on this blog a lapse since there is no track record. That and the folks that I have tapped to write for us have dropped the ball. Pete has a GREAT article in the development stages. Course it has been for 3 weeks now.

EVERY one is talking about oil prices and generally the cost of getting by. Ok so it is expensive. Every thing else will catch up at some point. Yes we need to drill for more oil and find more efficient ways of using it. We also need to find alternative forms of energy and, when they are economically feasible, they should come to the market and then the free market will decide if they are worthy. With one candidate advocating the policies that got us to this point(not encouraging local energy exploration) and the other flip, flopping on the same issue (McCain now would like to open the outer continental shelf to drilling but still opposes drilling in ANWR) the choice is getting clearer in the POTUS race. I REALLY wish Rush Limbaugh would run but he has said many times he does not want the pay cut. Sean Hanity I am not sure would run and Newt has turned into a tree hugger. ‘Our list of allies grows thin’

The supreme’s (SCOTUS) has confirmed an individual’s right to own a fire arm to protect them selves and their families. That is a good thing though the margin was a little closer that I would have liked. It is like the left in this country has decided that we peons deserve only the rights they say we can have. We should eat what they tell us, believe what they tell us, possess what they tell us we can possess. When the reality is, the Bill of Rights is a list of rights the Government has no right to limit or take away. Justice Joseph Story(Appointed to the supreme court in 1811 at the age of 32) said – Consider the right to keep and bear arms “the palladium of the liberties of the republic,” which enables the citizenry to deter tyranny.

Lets see what else happened since my last post… Rush Limbaugh has signed a contract through 2012 for $400Mill everyone is jealous and many want to shut him up just for his beliefs and his audience base. The FCC looks at the fairness doctrine again. So now we are looking at officials that are not elected, curtailing our freedom of speech. Just like the bureaucrats at the EPA can tell you what you can and cannot do with your private property. NICE....

Common Sense

2008-06-11T08:16:00.000-07:00

I think I have a good title for posts on this Blog. THINK. If there is anything I would have you take away from reading these few words on this piece of the net it would be that I made you think. I do not necessarily mean you thinking hmm... he’s right on the money but, maybe also to challenge you to dig deeper. Such as there has been a series of posts over on 7.62mm justice called Kyoto – A Perspective (Hat Tip TonyfromOz) about how we in the USA generate electricity and how, if we were to adopt the principals of the Kyoto treaty, our nation would be drug, rather quickly, back into the 1800’s. That has made me think about how we as a nation use energy and what we could do different and that has lead to MANY ideas about energy efficiency and alternative fuels.

Ideas will always lead to discussion and discussions will always lead to some type of discourse and THAT my friend is one of many things that have made this nation great. The 56 original members of congress did not sit down on July 4th, 1776 and write out and sign the document that has shaped our nation. This did not just happen! We all know or, rather, should know the story of our fight for independence. There were years of subjugation to the crown in England. There were unjust searches and seizures, Taxes levied with out the input of the Americans (Taxation with out Representation), forced billeting of troops in private homes. When the fighting actually started in April of 1775, the shadow governments that had been in place in all of the 13 colonies took control of their colonies and deposed the royal officials. The desire for full independence grew and in January 1776, Thomas Pain published his well known pamphlet ‘Common Sense’. The second Continental Congress appointed 5 men to draft what would become our founding document those men included Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and Samuel Adams. Many changes and additions were made to this document, for example Franklin himself made at least 48 corrections, including changing the slogan "Life, Liberty and Property" to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness before it was presented to the main body of the Congress on June 28th 1776. I was not until July 4th 1776 that the document was approved and sent to a printer. John Hancock was the first to sign as the elected President of the Congress. It was not till August of that same year that the rest of the delegates signed the Declaration of Independence.

I went through that short history lesson to show you that the idea that all men were created to be free created a discourse and that discourse led to the birth, with all the pain and suffering I cannot call it created, of the United States of America. But to have that discourse, you have to have ideas, to have ideas you have to be able to think. Now there are those that say that thinking should be left to the experts. Some say I am not paid to think, I am paid to follow instructions. Anyone that has a brain can think. I believe it is a sad state of affairs when someone in TV or radio studio has to tell us what a speech just made by this politician or that world leader means and how mad or happy we should be because of it. Think for yourselves! I believe there is a nefarious scheme behind the decline in our ability to think for ourselves but that is for another post. Think! Read! Learn! This is how we will retain our freedom. This is how we come up with ideas that make us money and keep our economy strong. This is how we keep informed and know when to stand in support of or against ideologies that threaten our liberties or our way of life. In America we live in the greatest secular country on earth. There are few that even compare.

Thanks to all the veterans for the sacrifice they have made, God Bless you everyone!