Hey All,

I changed jobs last month that got me away from being worked to death (basically, one week in three was second shift, either 8 or 10 days straight). Now that I'm back to an 8-5, M-F schedule, I have more time to write, and boy howdy have I been writing! Also, a programming project which has consumed most of my keyboard time has likewise been completed and will clear my calendar for more writing and research time.

I have managed to write/complete six articles, at least two and maybe a third to be deep dives. The post below popped up over the weekend and I had to write about it. Anyway, I will be working as best as I can to post regularly again. When I started this blog, it was a knee-jerk commentary on multiple news stories a day. It has now evolved (18 years now!) to a more philosophical and social commentary type blog. I hope you continue to enjoy.

I had another article to put up today, I thought this was better: Appeals court tosses Democrats' emoluments lawsuit against Trump. The Emoluments clause of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8) states:

...no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign State."

As one of the first attacks against Trump (the illegal spying of his campaign being the first) was his "profiting" from his businesses when foreign heads of state and other powerful people would book hotel rooms and such at Trump-owned locations. the federal appeals court in a 3-0 ruling, dismissed this case brought by 186 Representatives and 29 Senators for a lack of a better term, "having a hissy fit" (my words). The Congressmen could not raise enough support in their respective Chambers to do anything about it. So, as Leftists are want to do when they can't have their way, they run crying crocodile tears to a sympathetic judge to issue a ruling based on political beliefs, not the four corners of the law.

Now, there are two other emolument lawsuits still grinding their way through the court system, we will have to see how they come out.

But I can poke a hole very quickly in almost any emoluments argument thusly: The overall stipulation that Trump is "profiting" from heads of State, etc. is bullshit on it's face. What would be the profit/influence difference to Trump if a foreign head-of-state spends a week in a Trump Hotel, or I, a regular guy, rent the same rooms for the same length of time? Would that get me "the ear of the president"? Obviously, if I won the lottery and rented 100 luxury suites for a month at Mar-A-Lago, would that give me standing to influence Trump? I would have access to him, because he eats dinner in the dining room and "presses the flesh" with the other people there. But could I start asking for special favors because I rented so many suites for so long? Don't be absurd. Trump makes the same profit every time a room is rented, it doesn't matter if you rent it for a day, week or year. The price is the price and does not go up or down depending on who you are (unless you're racked up enough Trump Points to stay a free night).

I have to gloat a bit here, the Dems are Zero in the wins category with Trump the Honey Badger. The spying failed to turn up anything, Russian collusion evaporated, along with the "Quid Pro No" with the Ukrainians, the impeachment was nothing but empty charges, and now (this) emoluments fight failed.

I think they would have more success if they employed the assassins sent to take out Inspector Clouseau.

I remember the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. He was impeached for lying under oath in a deposition, which is an actual crime. You can look it up here, 18 U.S. Code § 1621. A deposition, I might add, that I agree with Justice Kavanaugh that should never have taken place, because if the President is forced to address civil complaints against him while in office, it distracts him from leading the country.

During that trial and right before the end of the trial, Senator Charles Schumer (D- NY) penned a passionate letter. Here it is, Charles Schumer’s 1999 letter about impeachment comes back to bite him. Replacing "Clinton" with "Trump," "Republican" with "Democrat" and "Paula Jones" with "Ukraine," this letter is very telling and damning against the Democrats. If, of course, they had things like, Honor, Integrity, Morals and Sanity.

I will close with this, from the end of Senator Schumer's letter:

In the eyes of the Founding Fathers, that is a legitimate consideration in deciding whether a President should be removed. And for six months, the American people in every segment of the country have been unwavering in their view that the President should not be removed.

They remain unshakable in their belief that the Congress, the Courts, and the press had gone too far. They were the only, truly rational actor in the whole drama. God bless them.

The people and the founders are the twin oaks that stand tall amidst this sad episode of American history. But if the cycle of political recrimination and scandalizing continues, the American people will become more alienated and cynical and shaken by the political process and they, too, will lose faith in the great instrument the Founding Fathers have given us.

If it gets to the point where the American people become too cynical we could lose it all.

After this is over let’s end the recriminations. Let’s not blame Ken Starr, or bash the President, or scapegoat the House Managers. Let’s instead think about what brought us to this point.

Let us shake hands and say we are now going to forego bringing down people for political gain. Let us understand that our leaders have foibles, and though we must be held to a higher standard, let us not make it a sport to expose those weaknesses.

These are words that the Democrats should take to heart.

When General Soleimani was erased from existence last week by a US missile, he was acting covertly on Iraqi soil, in civilian clothes and had just finished conducting an attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad. He had committed an act of war against the United States and Iraq. For a military person to be caught in non-military clothing while/after committing attacks on foreign powers, is classified as a SPY and is subject to immediate and summary execution.

If you don't think Soleimani was a bad guy, his unit is responsible for training, financing and the supply of materials to terrorist groups around the world. His training, financing and supply of war materials is responsible for over 600 US deaths in Iraq, about 20%. If you still don't think he's a bad guy, you have some serious issues and I hope you seek help.

You and I may disagree on how the issue was addressed, but please remember, he was withdrawing back to Iran after committing an act of WAR on US soil (in case you didn't know it, embassies are considered the native soil from that country. Any foreign forces who enter any embassy without invitation is considered an attack on that country).

And there were Tweets made, words said, threats made, back and forth. As a result, my Leftist friends and acquaintances were covering themselves in sackcloth and ashes, while there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, lamenting that they would soon be called up to fight Trump's Iranian War(c).

A few days after Soleimani's erasure, a couple of US bases in Iraq were attacked by Iran, without damage or casualties, and it's been quiet since. Here's why: Swiss Back Channel Helped Defuse U.S.-Iran Crisis.

I said it years ago, Trump is a magician. He does one thing to distract you and does something else while you're not looking. In one week, Trump took out a Really Bad Guy, taught a lesson to the Iranians about strength and restraint, and concluded the crisis by showing mercy and allowing the Iranian government to save face.

All-in-all, an elegant solution, which was resolved through strength. Not by capitulation and giving our lunch money to bullies.

Many people weren't born yet or were too young in the early 1980's to remember the Lebanon Hostage Crisis. Let me give you a history lesson about different approaches on how to address the solution.

Between 1982 and 1992, 104 foreign national hostages were taken by various terrorist organizations, most notably Hezbollah (Party of God). The ransom for these hostages were to stop Western attacks in Lebanon. The victims were 25 Americans, 16 French, 12 British, 7 Swiss, 7 West Germans, 1 Irish and 4 Russians. Five Americans, one French and two British and one Russian were killed or otherwise died in captivity. The ones who were released or rescued usually spent years in captivity. Except for the Russians.

You have never heard about the Russian hostages because the surviving 3 were returned with days of their kidnapping. Arkady Katlov was killed because the Soviets did not acquiesce to the kidnappers demands. After the body of Katlov was found, Colonel Yuri Perfilyev, the KGB station chief in Lebanon, met with Ayotollah Muhammad Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of the hostage takers.

In that meeting, he made an overt threat of a nuclear weapon "accidentally" launching and wiping out Qom, a holy city second only to Mecca itself.

While that was going on, an elite KGB squad captured a family member of a Hezbollah leader. This family member was killed, dismembered and returned to the leader in several boxes. Shortly thereafter, the remaining Russians were "enthusiastically" released, and no other Russian was taken hostage anywhere again by Muslim extremists. The Russians spoke with their actions in a way the terrorists understood and respected.

So you see, you cannot talk peace with someone who wants you dead. When we offer olive branches to terrorists, they whip out a gun and shoot us in the head. When Islamic terrorists shoot Russians in the head, they respond not with words, but by killing their entire family out to their third cousin twice removed and their favorite goat. This is why we get attacked and the Russians don't.

In the movie Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, at the point where the Soviet Ambassador tells the US President, "We have a Doomsday Device that we haven't told you about which will destroy the world if we're attacked." Doctor Strangelove then said to the Soviet ambassador, "The whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost IF YOU KEEP IT A SECRET!"

And so it is with the Democrats. Yes, they voted on Articles of Impeachment this past Wednesday. But according to Noah Feldman in his article Trump Isn’t Impeached Until the House Tells the Senate, the Impeachment is in this kind of "Schrödinger's cat" state until the Senate is made formally aware of the vote.

And make no bones about it, Mr. Feldman is totally in favor of Trump being Impeached and removed from office, so I'm sure that he's a bit reluctant to bring this up because it makes clear just how much of a foolish derphead Nancy and the rest of the Democrats are. I applaud him for his intellectual integrity.

You gotta love it folks. An Impeachment that's not really an Impeachment. Like so many other efforts of Democrats... well, The Bard said it best in Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

The Democrats knew from the start they would never get Trump removed from office. They just wanted to put that little " * " by his name, for the footnote in history that means "Impeached." Except they can't even do that right. And because they don't have the testicles to go down fighting, they won't even get their tiny little asterisk.

I know I have been absent for a while, due to me writing a book and an app for a game I play. The book is done, The app is in it's final stages. I am also starting a new job at the beginning of 2020, and I will be in training for a couple of weeks, this will give me some time to work on the various articles I have been sporadically working on over the past couple months.

I have also updated my Markisms and ringtones.

Hopefully I can start posting weekly again, I'll know by February.

If you haven't read my posts from the start of this blog, I was a Mental Health Counselor for several years. I dealt with people who were in terrible situations, some caused by their own malfunctioning biology, some by external events.

Some of the saddest cases I dealt with were those who engaged in "non-fatal self-injury" known by most people as "cutting." While the reasons that cause this coping skill are different for each person, the reasons why are either the person feels emotionally numb and need to feel something, even pain, or they do it to convince themselves they have control over their body because they are in an untenable situation they have zero control over.

If you know of or find someone who engages in this behavior, NEVER NEVER NEVER try to get them (by whatever means) to stop that behavior. This is their "mental steam valve" and if you take this away from them, while this behavior is not good, worse things will happen. Cutting is a symptom and coping mechanism for a far deeper and serious issue.

I became overjoyed to have this article brought to my attention by a friend: This Girl’s Therapist Suggested Drawing On Her Body Instead of Cutting, And It Worked Beautifully. This is a great solution to the cutting symptom and why you shouldn't try to stop someone from using a coping skill (even a negative coping skill) You redirect the behavior into a positive skill. This redirection allows the person who continue to engage in their coping skill without doing further harm to themselves. The article at the bottom even gives drawing tips, hint and ideas on what and how to draw.

This won't work in all cases, however coping skills redirected from a negative to a positive skill provides the needed coping and redirects it into an empowering direction. Once the self-harm is stopped, help the person to address the reasons for the self-injury.

SPECIAL NOTE: I am still working on the development of an application which is taking all of my creative time and energy. But I just had to get this out...

When the Mueller report came out a few months ago, I had an acquaintance totally believe and repeatedly tell me there was actual evidence that President Trump "committed collusion with the Russians." I asked him to quote the page, paragraph and passage in that 448-page report that supported his position. He just kept repeating "IT'S IN THE REPORT! READ IT!!!" Yet, he couldn't point to anything that support his position. Yet, in my perusal of that same report I found (page 10, paragraph 1 of the document, pg 2 of the "Introduction to Volume I"):

"...the [Muller] investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

In case you didn't know it, in this country the bedrock of our legal system is the concept that a person is "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." The lack of evidence (to prove or disprove) is not proof of guilt or a reason to keep digging. Investigations also do not "exonerate" the people being investigated. If there is no evidence that a crime was committed, how could there be a possibility that the investigated person committed a crime that didn't happen, or "prove" that the accused didn't commit the crime? It would be like investigating someone for robbing a bank in a specific city on a specific date, when no bank was robbed in that city on that date. Expecting an exoneration in such a case is trying to prove a negative (e.g., at Noon on a sunny day, prove the sun rose in the East and/or sets in the West. You can't, because at that moment, it's overhead.). I can't lay out evidence that you didn't do something that didn't happen.

Now, let's compare that to James Comey's July 5th 2016 press conference, where he outlined the actions of Clinton and her team:

Yes, it does not include his overreach from the realm of investigator to prosecutor, "no prosecutor would move forward with this." As the investigator, he has no input on the decision to file charges or not. That is the job of the prosecutor. His reaching that conclusion as the investigator clearly exceeded his authority. But that's a discussion for another time.

"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive and highly classified information..."

Whereupon he details about seven email chains that Clinton sent and received,

"There is evidence that to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton's position or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about those matters should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation."

Now, I can point to the laws concerning the handling of classified information, namely 18 U.S.C. § 798 - U.S. Code, section (a),

"Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information--"

Sending and receiving unencrypted emails over the Internet is like sending a post card through the US Mail. Anyone who handles it can read the information written on it. Let me also say, "intent" is not part of the code to determine if the law was broken. If I had during my time in the Navy when I handled classified documents, left one unguarded in a place where people without the proper clearance would have had access to it, it didn't matter if I had left it out by accident or on purpose. I did it and that's all the prosecutor has to prove to convict me. I would have gone to Fort Leavenworth for a very long stay.

You also have some degree of mens rea, which is Latin for "guilty mind." There are 4 levels of mens rea,

1. acting purposely - the defendant had an underlying conscious object to act
2. acting knowingly - the defendant is practically certain that the conduct will cause a particular result
3. acting recklessly - The defendant consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustified risk
4. acting negligently - The defendant was not aware of the risk, but should have been aware of the risk

As Comey detailed above, Clinton and whom she was emailing with unquestioningly met #4, and considering how persnickety the government IT people are about setting up their systems to prevent incidents like this, plus the constant training of workers on this subject, I'd say Clinton & Co. hit #3 as well.

I covered all that to show you the difference between a credible accusation, versus a bullshit accusation.

Credible == definable act, the specific law violated and some level of mens rea.

Bullshit == no definable act, no specific law, just an ambiguous word that implies improper behavior and no mens rea (since no law was being violated).

To illustrate, let's say I have a friend with a birthday approaching. I collude with his wife to throw him a party for the occasion. Did his wife and I break a law if we "colluded" on this project? Also, "quid pro quo" is Latin for "I give you something, you give me something that we both benefit from." If I do work for my employer and he pays me in cash, then I take that cash to the supermarket and buy food, I have engaged in two separate "quid pro quo's." I spent time and effort for my employer and he paid me for that work product, then I paid the grocery to receive food.

Now we have this "Ukrainian scandal" where Trump, during a recorded and transcribed phone call, Trump is accused of offering a "quid pro quo." Please show me in the transcript where that happened. Don't say "It's in there! Read it!" quote me the parts that support your accusation.

With all that being said, can anyone tell me what act did Trump perform, what section of the US code did he violate and did he meet any level of mens rea?

Last point. Biden and his boast about "getting a prosecutor fired" (1:20 point of the video below) was not a quid pro quo. That was extortion. I have to ask, why is the Vice President of the United States, threatening the withholding of a Billion dollars in military aid to Ukraine unless this internal state prosecutor is fired? Why does the United States seriously have an interest in any specific official in another country, unless that person somehow posed a threat to the United States, a high-ranking US government official or a person directly or indirectly related to said official?

"And so it was, on the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month in the Year of Our Lord 1918, that the guns fell silent and the Great War came to an end."

Depending on where you live, today is either Armistice Day, Remembrance Day or Veterans Day. In the US, it is Veterans Day and we honor all who have served and are still with us. I thought about putting up a meme to show how stupid the cause of the Great War was (World War I described as a bar fight if you must), but I decided to go with this instead. I am proud that I can be counted in this group.

Let's not get too excited here.

Yes, I am considering doing a podcast. I am still researching and exploring the costs of equipment, stock production (theme music, voice overs, etc.) and a hundred other logistical issues that need to be solved before I can sit down and hit "record." I am planning on this being a "finite run", i.e. a somewhat small number of episodes. That's because I don't want to add my opinion to the 3,871 other podcasts already doing exactly that. I am not going in any way give people like Tim Pool, Dan Bongino, The Young Turks, Ben Shapiro, etc., a run for their money. I can't differentiate myself from them by doing what they do.

What I am planning on doing is explaining what a Conservative is. We are all for or against certain things (gay rights, abortion, open borders, you name it), but 99 people out of 100 could not explain why they believe in whatever, or how they got to that belief. I hope to change that by holding "extended musings" about my principles on the subject. I have not begun to significantly codify the subjects, but these will be broad subjects like "freedom,"  "government," "drugs," "abortion" and so on. I hope it will be an introspective journey for both of us, as my main goal is to induce a similar contemplation in the listener.

No matter what, this will be at least a couple of months into the future. Most of my time is still being prioritized for family, home and hearth, then in my copious free time I am (still) writing an application to be a game aid for a game I play. I am also continuing to write and edit articles for here that I hope to publish before too long. I also fully anticipate these upcoming articles will be the subjects of podcast episodes.

Yesterday evening, I was reminded of Representative Omar’s remarks, “Some people did something” on 9/11/01.

That’s when I realized… she was right.

“Some people DID do something.”

Hundreds of first responders in New York rushed into WTC 1 and 2, to get as many people out before the buildings collapsed, all while knowing they probably wouldn’t be one of those who escaped.

A couple dozen Marines, after extracting children from the daycare center in the Pentagon, set up a defensive perimeter around those children and were ready to lay down their lives for those children.

An F-16 pilot, flying her unarmed aircraft, prepared herself to take down Flight 93 by ramming it to prevent it from reaching its target.

And a dozen ordinary Americans, armed with nothing more than a beverage cart and the resolute courage of Americans that can be traced back to the Concord Green in 1775, charged the cockpit of Flight 93.

So, YES, “Some people did something.” The something they did was to stand for civilization, for their fellow man and to draw that line that means, “Hate and terror shall not pass this point.”

While debating on even writing this post, it occurred to me that the children who were born on this date, who were the first to be born in a world forever changed, who could really never have a "happy birthday," are now adults.

I remember that day, those moments, watching the second plane suicide into the WTC and thinking about all who died horrible deaths as I watched, just like my parents remembered hearing about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. I cried when the towers fell.

I mourn for all of those we lost that day, and I sincerely hope the 72 virgins each of those hijackers were promised all turned out to be well-armed Catholic Nuns like Sister Mary Stigmata.

I am proud of all of the young men and women who joined the Armed Forces in the days and years following. Who knowingly went into harm's way again, and again, and again. You have my love, my respect and my support.

As the guy said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I'm not dead yet!" (Yes, I know I published something two days ago. I've been working on it for 3-4 weeks)

Despite many things I want to write about on here, my primary focus over the past weeks (and the foreseeable future) is my family, my home and my job, all of which have been running me ragged. On top of that (and most of what is taking time away from here) is that I am writing an application for my favorite miniature wargame. Reacquainting myself with the programming mindset while simultaneously learning a new language (Python, my first Object Oriented Programming language) is no easy task.

I write a few lines of code every day, try to get a new function completed every week or two. Of course, after the application is finished, there are about 4,500 lines in the database for it that I have to add information to, so the application can do it's job properly.

I have been working on a few articles here and there, all "pinned" stuff that go into the specialty areas just under the header. But then again, after you've written in Python (or any programming language), it's hard to write in English afterwards, for a while at least.

I started writing this post about article that was spawned by the mass shooting at the Garlic Festival, but as I have been writing this, another mass shooting has occurred in an El Paso Wal-Mart, another mass shooting in Dayton, OH and a mass stabbing in Orange County, California.

The article is Angry young men continue to be America’s greatest threat by Maureen Callahan.

Ms. Callahan laments that:

"From those mass shooters who have attacked the innocent before, we know it’s a specific strain of anger — deep, repressed, biblically vengeful — felt most commonly by young men, almost always white, who report feeling alienated, dispossessed, misunderstood, victimized and all too often rejected by women."

All I can say, Ms. Callahan, it is way more than that. She lays the blame on:

"...first-person shooter games, violent pornography, through racism and a fascination with guns and violence..."

[...]

"...a president who may be our angriest ever, who unleashes daily a fusillade of threats and name-calling and sexist remarks and racist dog whistles."

Then Ms. Callahan calls for

"...a collective dedication, from the White House on down, to figuring out why young men in the world’s greatest, most prosperous country are so goddamn angry."

I can tell you exactly why, Ms. Callahan, young men are angry. You can see the biggest contributors to this anger, you and all of your ultra-radacalized feminist sisters, by looking into the nearest mirror.

It got a slow start in the 70's when the roots of feminism grew. Feminism, the belief that women are equal to men in every way, is bullshit. I hate to break the news to you, women aren't equal to men. Women are different from men. There are many things men do that are superior to a woman's capabilities in those areas. Just like there are many things that women to that are superior to a man's capabilities in those areas. We are meant to work together, as a man-woman team. If they work together, the team is vastly superior to the individual.

In the 80's, Murphy Brown brought forth and normalized the concept that "a single woman can raise a child just as well, if not better than a mom and a dad together." The 90's brought us the concept of "all male-female sex is rape" and "all men are potential rapists."

Up until the 70's, if a couple got married, they stuck it out for life. Divorce was a social taboo, and it was widely recognized to be detrimental to the kids. Divorces were rare. They usually happened because the man was abusive to the wife and/or children and it was a get-out-or-die situation for her. Today, if the woman decides "I'm not in love with him anymore" she gets to leave and basically take everything and get alimony too. I'm being slightly hyperbolic here, but for the dad to win custody of the children, the woman would have to be smoking meth while pulling a train in the courtroom in front of the judge. A man loses all custody of his children on the word alone of the wife and the inertia of the divorce court system. For the dad to get custody, he has to provide reams of documented police reports, CPS notes, and statements from family and neighbors against the woman that clearly shows her irresponsible behavior towards her children. I have seen multiple friends and acquaintances get divorced. Every time, she gets the house, the kids, at least half of the retirement and alimony, while he gets the credit cards, paying the alimony, child support and every other weekend with the kids.

This terror-inducing state of living in a minefield where the man is in constant fear that at the woman's whim he can lose his children, his financial assets and his major possessions has rightly spooked men away from any long-term or serious relationships with women.

WARNING! STEREOTYPICAL AND SEXIST LANGUAGE AHEAD. You have been warned.

Women want a man to be "Handsome, virile, strong, sensitive, attentive, a good provider, someone she can talk to and confide in, good with kids, and can fix things and change flat tires."

Men are looking for women who are "breathing, naked and offering them alcohol." Men want someone whom they can provide for and who is happy to see them when they come home exhausted after a hard day at work. Give us just that and we will happily work 60 hour weeks to make sure the family does not want. A system, by the way, that has existed throughout most of recorded human history.

A man does things. He solves problems, builds things, fixes when when they break, breaks other things and in general gets things done. He has built society. A woman communicates. She talks with others, shares information, builds relationships and encourages man. She is the glue that holds society together. Both jobs are equally important and very different.

END OF STEREOTYPICAL AND SEXIST LANGUAGE.

Men are by default confused and scared when it comes to women. We simply do not understand how women work. When women tell men, "I can do anything you can do just as well!" to a man, he takes her totally at her word, says "Go ahead" and gives no further consideration to the subject. When the woman demands he do the difficult jobs (changing a tire, killing a spider, moving heavy furniture, etc.) that she doesn't want to do, this causes a mental 38-car pileup in our heads. "Wait a minute. You can do this, you just demanded that I let you do this, but now when you find out what that really means, you don't want to do it and want me to do it instead?" To be totally honest, this confuses men to no end.

I refuse to lay the blame on women themselves. The feminism movement, the driving of societal force that drives women out of the home and into the business world because the "Feminist Movement" incessantly tells them, "You can be a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company!", but doesn't tell them about the 60-100 hour work weeks they have to put in to get there. Constant time away from home and family that doesn't leave time for child-rearing, being their for your children and husband, building relationships and keeping society together as a whole. This bill of goods they are being sold conflicts with their base nature and (IMO) contributes to the erraticness of women in general. No, I do not think women should be kept barefoot and pregnant. I fully believe that women should do what they want, either stay at home and raise kids, or climb the corporate ladder. But they're not fully taught the consequences of climbing the corporate ladder.

This attitude and inconsistency by women has laid the groundwork for the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement to gain traction. It has also spawned the term Incel as well.

In the end, we have a lot of men, who are lonely, terrified of women and with zero chance of interacting with a woman in an emotionally healthy way. This fear can turn over time to anger. In some, it can lead to violence.

How to solve this? Simply (not easily) walk women back from the edge. Explain to those that don't understand, that women are not in competition with men. I am not saying or implying that woman are to be submissive and obedient to the man. The woman should use her skills and strengths to cover his weak spots, and let the man use his skills and strengths to cover her weak spots. That's how we got society to this point. Why tear it apart now?

Abortion is one of those "third rail" subjects. My personal belief on the subject is no one should have the power to tell a woman how to handle a pregnancy. You can use every contraceptive method simultaneously and still end up pregnant. I understand that an unplanned pregnancy can ruin a single woman's or her families life. I also understand that if she is forced to carry the child to term, the child might end up abused because it was unwanted. I don't have any answers, let alone any good ones. All I can do is encourage the mother to choose the life of the baby.

This article is a month old, but this is the first I've heard of it, since the MSM refuses to cover certain things. NYC Rejects Federal Funds Over Abortion Doctors' ‘Gag Rule’.

It has been federal law for several years now that "federal funds cannot be used to pay for abortions." The Trump administration decided to change the regulations to make sure this is not happening.

There is an economic term called "Fungible." Let's say I have three sources of income. One source has a requirement that those funds cannot be used to purchase tobacco or alcohol products. But all three sources deposit their payments into the same bank account. This means the requirement cannot be enforced, because the money is fungible. Once all of the dollars are inside the account any dollar is indistinguishable from any other dollar. You can't be certain that "this dollar came from the income with restrictions and this one did not." The only way to eliminate this issue is to not mingle the money with the restrictions with money without restrictions. I would have to have a second bank account that receives no other deposits other than the restricted income. Then and only then can the "no tobacco or alcohol" restriction be traceable and enforceable.

I am sure you've heard Planned Parenthood's "Abortion is only 5% of the services we offer." If you count it PP's way, Helping a woman fill out the admissions paperwork, counseling her on this decision, handing her some brochures about family planning, taking her vitals, performing a routine medical exam, performing an ultrasound, carrying out the procedure that aborts the baby, take her to recover in Post-Op and provide grief counceling and then escort her to the vehicle taking her home, that may be one visit, but it's actually ten different billable procedures. While a baby's life was terminated, the actual abortion was "only 10% of the procedures performed on that patient."

This change means, going forward, that abortion clinics must have a separate facility where only abortions are performed. That center has to be profitable on its own and cannot receive any payments from the parent facility. If the provider accepts federal funds and an auditor can trace any amount of money spent on the abortion clinic that originates with the bank account where federal funds are deposited, lots of people will be in big trouble. I assure you, this would be a severe bookkeeping nightmare, not to mention costly for the center. So, most, if not all of the abortion clinics that formerly accepted federal funds are now declining those payments.

Abortion is still legal, the access is still there, but until the next Democrat president gets into office and alters the regulations, it will not be paid for by taxpayer funds. Those clinics will have to stand on their own economic two feet.

All of that being said, how about we let individuals make the choice to help fund those procedures. The federal government has been paying about $260 Million annually to approximately 90 providers that offer abortions as a portion of their services. I am sure if Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Susan Wojcicki, George Soros and Larry Page collectively opened their wallets, they could each pay that kind of money by themselves out of their pocket change. If they decided to split the bill, that's a paltry $44 Million each. They probably spend more on company lunches.

I will never be against letting a person decide what organizations they want to support. If you think abortion is that important, start a Kickstarter, get someone famous to get on TV and plead for donations. What I am against is having someone who wants government funds "donated" through subsidies or for any reason that does not directly return a good or service to the government. No matter what the program, I promise you there is someone who does not want the government freely giving money to any given company or industry. My morals say that person's beliefs and choices should be respected. Just because I want the government to support something does not grant me the power or authority to let the government point a gun at the other person and take his tax money to be spent on programs I like but he abhors, "Concentrated Benefits and Diffused Costs" be damned.

We celebrate New Years Day, MLK Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Patriots Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the 4th of July. I don't celebrate the 4th of July, because I could just as easily celebrate the 3rd of August. A date by itself does not communicate the reason why that date is important. So, while I do not celebrate the 4th of July, I do celebrate Independence day.

It was actually today, July 2nd, not July 4th, that 56 Radical Old Rich White Angry Men put their names to a piece of parchment that explained to their King why they were telling him to fuck off. The last words of that document explained quite clearly the price each man was willing to pay to grant the 13 American Colonies the freedom they desired.

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.

Many of those men paid that price and more. They died, lost their fortunes, their families and sometimes more. I have to ask you, would you be willing to do the same as these men did?

Here I present you a reading of the Declaration of Independence, read by a variety of famous people. If you are unmoved by this, then you don't desire to be free.

I am sorry to say that multiple factors have come together to demand enough of my time to force me to put my posting here on hold.

I will be continuing my efforts to add a "CIO" section and maybe get some book reviews out, but I cannot promise a schedule or timeline for these.

Thank for reading, keep checking back.

Sorry for no post last week and this week's post being delayed. I have had a lot going on lately and none of it has been good. I have been working on something that is long and requires a lot of fact-gathering. It should be up later in the week.

This should terrify you. If it doesn't, you're not paying attention. This Conversation Between A Passenger And An Airline Should Absolutely Terrify You.

I have said for years, "If you want to know what living in a police state is like, go hang out at the airport."

Basically, a JetBlue passenger was able to board her flight by just getting her face scanned. No boarding pass, no ID. A JetBlue camera scanned her face, the data was sent to TSA and her identity was verified. The passenger did not voluntarily give this data, nor permission to be in this program. Of course, she can "opt-out" of the JetBlue program, but her face is already in the databases of the federal government.

I am scared beyond belief over this.

A camera connected to the internet, any camera that can catch your face can send that image to Homeland Security and tag who you are in seconds. "All well and good, but I'm not a criminal. It's not my concern." I have a one-word answer to that. BULLSHIT.

Because if somebody can get into that database, that data can be altered. With access, a person with nasty intentions toward you can either flag you as someone else (say I copy your biometric data into some living super criminal's record), or I copy their criminal record into your file. Either way, every time you get your face scanned, every alarm goes off and police are dispatched immediately to that location. You get arrested, spirited away and it might be a few hours, a few days or never, before (or if) the government figures out that both you and them are the victim of a cruel prank.

A well-timed example just came to my attention: Apple face-recognition blamed by New York teen for false arrest. This shows how such a "confusion" can happen.

Ousmane Bah, 18, said he was arrested at his home in New York in November and charged with stealing from an Apple store. The arrest warrant included a photo that didn’t resemble Bah.

The story here is Mr. Bah lost a non-photo learners permit. Someone else used it while stealing from an Apple store, so the thief's face (his facial recognition profile) ended up on the record of Mr. Bah, who was arrested and charged with the thefts. Mr. Bah is now suing Apple for $1 Billion. I personally think the damages should be twice the entire net profits of the company for the year.

A government with that kind of capability can be nothing but repressive. China with its' Social Credit System is heading there at full speed. Here's some punishments if you cause trouble, like walking your dog without a leash. And if someone gets mis-scanned and their offense drops into your record, you're screwed. I am sure there is no process to get bad incidents off your record. We have already seen that with the "no-fly" list. If your name and data ends up on that list, I am positive that it would be easier to transmute air into gold than to get bad data expunged from your Homeland record.

Think about that.

In my previous post I wrote about how the teachers' unions in Rhode Island are blocking a proposed law that would make it a crime for school personnel to have "intimate relations" with a student over the age of consent but still not a legal adult. I am neither for or against a law like this, I am upset because this is enough of a problem that a law has to be considered to address the issue.

When I shared the link to the article on my FB page, I paraphrased Darth Vader by saying, "I find their lack of morality disturbing." Several times in my life, I have said something off the cuff that did not make sense until later. This has been bothering me all week and I finally was able to articulate it. Here it is:

A person who is in a position of authority, of leadership, a professional in their field, is burdened with the responsibility of a certain code of ethics. The finer points of the ethics differ from profession to profession, but the major shared points are these:

• An obligation to do what your employer tells you to do, within legal boundaries and ones own morality.
• An obligation to your customer, to give them the best good or service you can for the price.
• To do no harm to those in your charge, be they employees you supervise or those you mentor.

What these teachers are doing violates all three of the above core ethics. These "teachers" destroy the trust of the customers (the parents) in their employer (the school system) and the teacher themselves, by having a "teacher's pet" the quality of services to all of the students suffers. The "pet" will have certain benefits and attention, while the others will not. The "do no harm" is the worst of all. This will give the "pet" the impression that if they sleep with whoever is in charge of them, they will have an easier time in life, plus it will provide encouragement to those struggling to try that path to improve their lot in life. I promise you, that never ends well for anybody involved.

In the context of a professional field, a union who wishes to maintain the air of professionalism needs to have a severe form of self-policing. Many other professions already have these mechanisms in place. One story like this puts a negative light on every other member of that profession unless the board of ethics deals swiftly and fairly with the matter. If a violation has been found, then the offender should be disbarred from the profession, no matter where they go. Right now if a teacher is terminated for such an event, they lose their job and their state license to teach. This "teacher" can then move to another state, obtain that state's teaching certificate and be back in front of students.

To know the unions will not uphold a minimum level of ethics and morality in their members, or worse yet actively run interference for their immoral ways, makes me want to never deal professionally with anyone in that profession again.

I have several other articles that I want to get out, however I feel this is the most important of the set.

I came across an article about Rhode Island House Bill 5817. An Act Relating to Criminal Offenses -- Sexual Assaults. This is a bill to make it a Third-Degree Sexual Assault felony to a school employee who engages in sexual relations with an under-18 year-old student. Because under current law, a teacher can legally "get it on" with a 16 or 17 year-old student, due to the legal age of consent for sex in RI is 16.

This is what caused the uproar: James Parisi of the Rhode Island United Federation of Teachers and Patrick Crowley of the Rhode Island National Educators Association registered to testify AGAINST the bill.

Let me say that again. The two biggest unions that represent teachers and other educators in Rhode Island testified their opposition to a potential law that would criminalize a teacher having sex with minor students who have achieved the age of consent (16 years-old).

But don't take my word for it:

Just to check up on the status of the bill, I went to the Rhode Island Legislature's bill tracking website (you have to manually enter "5817" in the Bills field) to check the status of the bill. It is currently set at "Committee recommended measure be held for further study." Which, in Robert's Rules of Order terminology, is to "Table the bill," or put it into a suspended state for reconsideration at an unspecified future meeting. If the bill is not brought back up before the end of the legislative term, it dies a quiet death. In other words, many bills that are tabled die in committee, never to be heard from again.

Teachers unions notoriously donate large sums of money to Democrat legislators. Perhaps a marker or two that accompanied the donations was called in? Just something to think about. This kind of law should be a slam-dunk. What sensible adult would be against the criminalization of an act that a person who has at least a modicum of morals would find abhorrent? To have a person of authority over a minor engage in intimate acts with that minor, no matter how willing the minor is or is not, is a level of depravity that does not sit well with me at all.

I’ve been sitting on this for a few days, just to make sure one more thing didn’t pop up.

Mr. Jussie Smallett is a clear example of Leftist Privilege. I will explain.

Just in case you haven’t heard, Jussie Smallett, a cast member on the TV show Empire, for whatever reason, mailed to himself two threatening letters, then paid two Ethiopian brothers, one of which has a minor role in the same show, to dress up in whiteface, wear MAGA hats and “assault” him, putting a noose around his neck and shouting “This is Trump Country!”

The police took this hate crime seriously, and once the facts came out, Jussie was charged with 16 felonies.

Police Commissioner Eddie Johnson, in a press conference, laid out the case against Mr. Smallett point by point when charges were filed, kind of like when James Comey laid out the case against Hillary on July 5th, 2016. Except Commissioner Johnson did not hamstring the prosecution like Comey did.

Then, last week, Kim Foxx, the State attorney “in charge” of the case, drops all charges against Mr. Smallett. Both Police Commissioner Johnson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel were not told about the dismissal. They saw it on the news. So, Commissioner Johnson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a joint press conference, and both were plainly upset about this turn of events. Mayor Emanuel stating that Mr. Smallett should reimburse the city for all of the costs of the investigation.

Then we find out Ms. Foxx had an ex parte conversation with Smallett’s family. Then we also find out that Ms. Foxx also received a phone call from Tina Tchen, the former Chief of Staff for Michelle Obama about the case. Because of this, Ms. Foxx recused herself from the case due to an appearance of impropriety. Except that she didn’t really recuse herself, because she’s the one who made the decision to drop the charges.

I want to be clear, there is no evidence of this, this is the wandering of my own mind. Why would Ms. Tchen contact Ms. Foxx, if not at the behest of Ms. Obama? This does not pass the smell test.

All-in-all, what we have here is a clear case of Leftist Privilege. Because Mr. Smallett faked a hate crime that blamed Trump supporters, gets a pass on sixteen felonies. Depending on how many he would have been convicted on and how they were stacked, Mr. Smallett could have spent up to 64 years in jail. In reality, it probably would have been a total of 18-24 months.

One last twist, the other day, Mayor Emanuel totally reversed his position, now blaming the election of President Trump as being a motivating factor in Mr. Smallett perpetuating this “hate crime” upon himself.

The good news is, this is a long way from being over.

First of all, remember the threating letters Mr. Smallett mailed to himself? Yeah, sending threats through the U.S. Mail is a federal offense, not under the control of Ms. Foxx. Also, Ms. Foxx is now in her own vat of hot water, the Illinois Prosecutors Bar Association issued an extended statement slamming Ms. Foxx for her actions.

Prosecutors must be held to the highest standard of legal ethics in the pursuit of justice. The actions of the Cook County State’s Attorney have fallen woefully short of this expectation. Through the repeated misleading and deceptive statements to the public on Illinois law and circumstances surrounding the Smollett dismissal, the State’s Attorney has failed in her most fundamental ethical obligations to the public. The IPBA condemns these actions.

My take on all this? If the state charges had gone through, the federal charges would probably not been pressed. Now they most likely will, and upon conviction, the maximum penalty of 5 years will be applied. Ms. Foxx will likely never appear in a courtroom again, except as a defendant. She should be disbarred from the legal profession entirely.

This is what happens when you don’t do the right thing. You get your ass barbecued by the dragon before he eats you alive.

I am a rational person who separates their facts from their principles and their ideologies. Facts can cause me to modify my position on subjects, however my principles do not alter how I treat these facts.

Let me say up front and clearly, I now believe that Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW for short, or man-caused global warming) is real. Don't get too excited, read on:

The title of this post "Garbage in, garbage out" is an old computer term, meaning if you run a computer simulation and the base data or the assumptions are garbage, the only possible results will be garbage data.

It seems to me I hear we're going through Global Warming on odd-numbered weeks, and Global Cooling on even-numbered weeks. Because the scientists can't agree, they agreed to say "Global Climate Change" because then it can mean what each scientist wants it to mean. I have never denied that the Earth's climate is changing. My main sticking point has been, "Is the root cause of this change the direct and unequivocal fault of man?" I cannot tell if anything untoward is happening because I see reports about climate data from stations before they were built, using ships to collect ocean temperature data, guessing the temperature because the station in question didn't provide the data and out-and-out altering the data to make it fit the hypothesis.

Then I stumbled across this article, The Skeptic's Case by Dr. David M. W. Evans. This article gave me a significant "A-HA!" moment. Let me explain.

Earth's ecosystem is complex almost beyond human comprehension. Every last part of our ecosystem (air temp, the color of the surface, ocean temp, ocean salinity, cloud cover and a thousand more variables) interacts with every other part to some degree. if something changes (like atmospheric CO2 levels rise), then it will affect multiple other variables ("1st level variables") in the biosphere. Those 1st level variables will affect more and different variables ("2nd level variables").  If some of those 2nd level variables affect the 1st level variables, making the 1st level variables increase even more, which then increase the 2nd level variables even more, this is called a "positive feedback loop" (the article refers to it as just "feedbacks"). Think of the squeal that come out of a loudspeaker when you get the microphone for that speaker too close to it.

This positive feedback loop is a major component in most, if not all of our Global Warming climate models. Here is an image from the article:

To put it simply, if the Carbon Dioxide levels double, this will increase the global temperature 1.1 degrees C. The computer models have an assumption that a positive feedback loop will occur and the end result would be an increase of +3.3 degrees C.

Here are several important things to consider:

• The Earth has had this kind of climate for millions of years,
• Our CO2 emissions throughout human history have been pretty steady, and they started to skyrocket only about 1946,
  
• We have only been collecting accurate weather data for the last 150 years, and
  
• We have only been collecting accurate deep ocean temperatures for 20 years.

It was explained to me years ago the difference between and "graceful failure" and "catastrophic failure." Think of a coffee mug. If it's a ceramic mug and you hit the lip with a hammer, it shatters into a hundred fragments in a "catastrophic failure." That mug has ceased to exist as a coherent unit and it can no longer hold liquid. If that mug was made out of metal and you hit the lip with a hammer, you would dent, but not destroy the mug. It would still be recognized as a mug, meant to hold liquid and depending on how hard you hit it would determine how large the loss of capacity would be.

The Earth in every aspect of its existence is a "graceful failure" due to it's robust systems, which like the human body, it heals its wounds. If you have ever been in the hospital for an extended stay with an IV line, you will know that the nurse has to relocate the IV every 3-4 days, because the body will start "healing over" the IV tube, blocking it. The Earth can take a drastic change (say, a dinosaur-killing meteorite) and stabilize the climate after a period of time. It does this by "dampening" any changes, which is essentially a "negative feedback loop."

The other image from the article:

To put it simply, if the Earths temperature jumps by 1.1 degrees, instead of the change being +3.3 degrees because of the alleged positive feedback loop, we find the change to be only about +0.5 or +0.6 degrees because the Earths ecosystem dampens changes like this.

The climate scientists are not disagreeing about the CO2 increases, nor the 1.1 degree jump in temperature which is the result. The argument is over the multiplier in the feedbacks. The Al Gore and AOC crowd are on the "X3" bandwagon, while the skeptics (including myself) are under the banner of "X0.5".

If you look at the other graphs in the article, with actual, properly gathered, complete (no guesstimation) and "non-fudged" data, the numbers clearly show the dampening scenario, not the multiplier.

Until this article, I have been unsure on this because I found too many instances where data was altered to fit the AGW narrative. Things like, data from a weather station with time stamps from years before it was built, or the area around the sensor changed drastically with trees and other growth near the sensor. This is why airports usually collect data, they are large and flat areas of land. Then you have ships collecting water temperature data, while generating heat that throws the sensors off. I have spoken before of weather bureaus guessing the data because the station did not provide the data, or just out and out altering the data to "prove" AGW.

I was unsure if we were like fleas on the back of an elephant or not, in that we really could affect the global climate. Now I know. We are affecting the climate, but Mother Nature and her robust systems are protecting us, but only to a point.

In part 2, I will discuss our options and the consequences of each of those choices, including doing nothing..

I just put in 40 hours of work since Friday. And it's only my Wednesday (I work until Wednesday of this week). Needless to day, I'm tired and didn't have time to research and write anything.