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Quick Updates

10/13/24: Still here, tomorrow gets a new post, one that I didn't want to write. Many things going on, not enough time in the day. I have a dozen articles that I need to finish. I am working on them. I promise.

The hiatus continues

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.

Missed the point entirely

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 anti-fungible medication

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.

I don't celebrate the 4th of July

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.

On Hiatus

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.

Quick update

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.

Next step for the police state

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.

Follow up to last post

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.

Unions and the Legislature

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:

RI HB5817

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.

Leftist Privilege

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.

Garbage in, garbage out part 1

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..

Tired

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.

Racism is not enough

Okay folks, the Leftist groupthink is out of hand even more than usual. Leftists are now arguing about skin color. Will Smith catches backlash for colorism after being cast as Venus and Serena Williams' father.

First of all, Will Smith was offered and accepted a job. The Producers of this film thought he is the best "bang-for-the-buck." So if you want to accuse someone of "colorism" you might want to look at the director, producers and casting staff first.

Second, does this fall under the banner of "Black enough?" Seriously, you inbred nimrods are openly discriminating against a man, not for his politics, not for his character, not for his race but the shade of his skin. At least you can pick on something he has some control over.

Not too long ago, there was fan talk about Idris Elba being the next James Bond when Daniel Craig steps away from the role. Even though Ian Fleming described (and drew) Bond as a White man of Scottish descent, l I personally have no issue with it. If the producers think Elba would bring in more revenue than their second pick. However, recent events have shown that a "drastic recasting" of hit films does not translate into profits *cough*Ghostbusters* *cough*Oceans Eight*.

How can we move past racism (which the Leftists demand we do) when those same Leftists demanding equality are discriminating against a man over the shade of his skin? This is beyond the pale. Even my loquacious vocabulary lacks the words to adequately describe the idiocy going on here.

The writing on the cake

As opposed to the writing on the wall...

Before I get into this, I want to point out and make very clear, this is the kind of crap that happens when government has too much power. When an administrator or committee gets it into their head about something, a citizen, either inadvertently or on purpose, becomes a target of the government. The government, with its' unlimited resources, can perpetually persecute a citizen until that citizen either capitulates or is destroyed.

If you ever think for a second that Mr. Phillips "had this coming," I pray that you never find out what it's like to have the forces of the government aimed at you, because I promise you will not be so enthusiastic about unlimited governmental power when you are its' target.

Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, might be nearing the end of his journey, with a modestly happy ending. I have written about this before, link 1, link 2, link 3.

The Colorado Civil Rights Commission has abandoned the second lawsuit against Mr. Phillips, now that information of exactly how hostile some of the members of the Commission were towards Mr. Phillips.

In this transcript of a hearing for the CCRC, Diann Rice said this (Page 11, line 25 to Page 12 line 10),

I would also like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the holocaust, whether it be -- I mean, we -- we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to -- to use their religion to hurt others. So that's just my personal point of view.

I cannot disagree that religion has been the vehicle for people with prejudices to force others to do things they didn't want to do. But freedom of religion? I always thought that freedom of religion meant religions (or the lack thereof) could exist side-by-side without warring against each other. I don't know about Ms. Rice, but my history books talk about the Holocaust as the efforts of a secular leader (and a Socialist) of a country trying to exterminate a particular religion? By the way, this was uttered after SCOTUS' 7-2 ruling in favor of Mr. Phillips.

So, Colorado has surrendered on their effort to destroy Mr. Phillips. In return, Mr. Phillips has ceased his lawsuit against every member of the CCRC, the Attorney General and the Governor. Mr. Phillips comes out on the short end of the stick here, as each side will pay their own legal fees. This means Mr. Phillips has to contend with lower sales because of the persecution by the government and he now likely has tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees he must pay off.

Just in case you never read the facts about this, Mr. Phillips refused to create a custom cake for a same-sex couple for their wedding and a transgender woman celebrating the anniversary of her change. Mr. Phillips offered to sell them cakes that were in stock and offered the names of other bakeries that would be more amenable to their needs concerning custom cakes. Mr. Phillips also doesn't do Halloween cakes and a few others, just in case you weren't clear that all of those things, in his opinion, go against his religious beliefs.

Gun Safety Liberal vs Conservative

I've been hearing a lot of PSA's from a website known as End Family Fire [https://endfamilyfire.org/] and I went to take a look at it the other day. The radio PSA’s are a (simulated?) 911 call where the parent is screaming about “the gun was loaded.” I am sure this is meant to stimulate a parent’s worst fears, that of their child being seriously injured or dead. Looking at the site, I am amazed by several things, first of all it actually sounds reasonable. But if you excuse the pun that's a little disarming and that's probably intentional. They have three main points.

Their points are,

  • Eight children are wounded or killed every day in unintentional shootings.
  • You should lock your firearm with a trigger or breach lock, keeping the ammunition separate from the weapon, and;
  • Talk to your children about gun safety.

I will now address these point by point.

Eight Children a Day.

My stats, provided by WISQARS (from the CDC) shows in 2017, the last year for data, for the 0-17 age range (because 18 and 19 year-old people are ADULTS and not children) there were 6,634 injuries by “Unintentional BB/Pellet or gunshot” (0.1% of all unintentional injuries and #20 on the list) and 69 deaths, (1.6% of all deaths and #10 on the list).

According to my math, this works out to 18.3 per day. To cut it to the 8 a day, they would have to only count 2,851 of those non-fatal injuries. To put that into perspective, for every child which received a non-fatal shooting injury, there’s 9 who were injured in an “unintentional pedestrian” event, or 41 for getting hurt on a bicycle.

I will stipulate their stats are accurate because I could not separate the BB gun and firearm injuries. Are they preventable? I can agree to that. My problem with them, as detailed below, actually goes to fixing the problem, not a nebulous “raising awareness.”

Storing the weapon.

Let me specify that I am talking only about weapons meant for immediate use in a home invasion or other such event. Most weapons in the home will be stored unloaded. Ammunition may or may not be near by. The military term for immediate use is “Ready Five,” meaning an aircraft sits on the tarmac (or carrier deck) fully fueled, armed, with crew nearby and can launch in five minutes or less from the order to launch.

In 99% of the cases and reasons for having a loaded firearm easily accessible in the first place is to return fire in case of a home invasion. For as long as I have been a member of the NRA (30 years now) every month I got a magazine (until I went digital) and one page was called The Armed Citizen. The page had about a dozen synopsis' of local news stories where people used their firearm to defend friends and family from Bad People. That means I've been sent about 4,300 of these news articles. The chance of you having your home broken into while you're home is going to be very small. If it does happen, there is a very high chance of serious injury or death happening to you.

End Family Fire suggests that you store your firearm and your ammunition separately. The weapon should also have a trigger or breech lock. For those who are interested in home self-defense this seriously hampers the ability of the homeowner to quickly respond. It would take a significant amount of time (1-2 minutes) to bring the weapon to a usable condition when you only have 10-15 seconds to grab the weapon and engage the invaders. In situations like this, seconds literally do count and 1-2 minutes is too long. You’re dead.

Now, a pin-coded safe I would consider to be superior to a trigger/breech lock, as the weapon could be stored in Condition Two (loaded magazine in the weapon, no round in the chamber), quickly retrieved, brought to ready and used. Not to mention that in a stressful situation, the first thing to go is fine motor skills. Locating and inserting the correct key in a lock, or spinning small tumblers to the correct combination would be a lot harder and time consuming.

Talk with your kids.

This is where End Family Fire totally fails. Okay, “talk with the kids.” What should you say? I’m sure this kind of talk would be up there with “the birds and the bees” discussion. It would have been great if there was a tip sheet with points for the parent to consider, research and discuss with their kids. But there’s nothing to be found.

When my son was a preschooler, he would come and visit me in the garage when I was re-loading ammunition or maintaining my weapons. I had printed a sign that was at his eye level and these were the first words he learned to read. Those words were the four firearm safety laws. He had to recite them every time he came out to see me.

  • A firearm is always loaded.
  • Never point a firearm at something that you do not want to destroy.
  • Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
  • Always be sure of your target and what is behind it.

The only materials End Family Fire has are PSA’s and brochures that “raise awareness” but do nothing to address the issue.

If you really want to stop incidents like this, there are two simple and easy things to do. Defang the serpent and teach them age appropriate things to do when they find a firearm.

Defang the serpent.

This one requires some of your time. During your talk with your kids, let them know you will tell them anything they want to know about firearms, within their ability to comprehend of course. If they can inspect (unloaded) firearms under your direct supervision, pretty much any time they want, those firearms lose their allure and the kids lose their curiosity about them.

Age appropriate training.

The Eddie Eagle program, developed by the NRA 30 years ago teaches pre-school and elementary kids four simple steps on what to do when they find a firearm.

  • STOP!
  • DON’T TOUCH!
  • LEAVE THE AREA!
  • TELL AN ADULT!

It doesn’t confuse kids about firearms being “bad,” or they might “go off” or anything like that. Don’t touch it, get away from it (and the person holding it) and tell an adult. This program gives children clear and simple actions that they can easily remember, articulate and perform. It really can’t be any simpler than that. This is what you should talk about with your kids.

As I alluded to in the title of this post, the Liberal way to address this issue is to “raise awareness” among adults by inducing panic and fear, then abandon the parents after telling them they need to "talk with their kids," but not knowing what to say or cover. Which, unfortunately, will most likely be the wrong thing.

The Conservative way to address this issue is to defang the serpent by satisfying the kid’s curiosity so they don’t go behind your back to find and handle the firearms unsupervised, then give them clear and simple actions to do if they find a gun, like when playing at a friend’s house who then pulls out their parents gun.

Instill fear and panic in parents, or teach the children to almost eliminate the problem in the first place. Which do you think you would (or should) choose?

Convoluted Logic

I realize that I have this under "Dumb Laws," however the law it self isn't dumb, it's this ruling.

So the latest monstrosity of absurdity has come to pass: Judge tosses North Carolina mandatory voter ID amendment citing gerrymandering.

Let me break this down so it somewhat is understandable. To be clear, this is nowhere near the four corners of the law.

1. Judge rules that a voter ID law is invalid.

2. The reason why the constitutional amendment (which was voted for overwhelmingly by the people of NC) is invalid is because the General Assembly is "illegally constituted."

3. The General Assembly is illegal because "[The] General Assembly does not represent the people of North Carolina and is therefore not empowered to pass legislation that would amend the state’s constitution."

To show I am not making this crap up, here is the court's ruling.

From my understanding, the Republican district drawings were based on equal population and did not consider race. To me, this is how it should be done. Put a pin in the map where every household resides, with a number on the pin to show how many people the census says live there. Then draw districts that are compact and have no "bulges" or noticeably protruding sections. Below is the US Congressional districts for NC. I have several issues with this map, notably the "intrusions" from 3 into 1, 13 into 6 and 10 into 11. District 4 seems custom made for the Democrat that currently holds that seat.

nc uscong districts

The State House and Senate districts also some some of the same characteristics as the above map. You can see them all here.

But you see, if this judges ruling is not overturned, I have to ask this question:

"If the General Assembly is illegally constituted to the point that it cannot propose amendments to the state constitution, does it not also follow that it cannot make any laws?"

A legislature is like a pregnancy: You are either pregnant, or you are not, there is no middle ground. Ask Schrödinger. If you are illegally constituted enough that you cannot carry out that part of their duties, (propose amendments to the state constitution) then they cannot carry out ANY of their duties under the state constitution.

This is the kind of consequences that happen when judges step outside of the four corners of the law. Properly done, the lawsuit should have tried to overturn the amendment based on the process that put it into place. Did the General Assembly vote to propose the amendment in accordance with state law and the methods of the respective houses? Yes. Did the voters approve of the amendment in accordance with the laws in place at the time of the referendum? Yes. In which case, the amendment is legal and the Plaintiffs are barking up the wrong tree. The legality of the representation of the districts and their makeups are another issue entirely and must be addressed separately from the first question.

Enlightened self-interest

A few years ago, the Panera Bread Company thought they would try a socialist experiment in a capitalist environment. Panera CEO Ron Shaich seems to have coined a new phrase for Socialism, namely "Conscious capitalism." He created Panera Cares, basically a Panera store that operated off of the Marxist phrase, ”From each according to their means, to each according to their needs.” The idea was the menu had suggested prices. If you could pay more, you were asked to. If you couldn’t afford to pay, you were asked to pay what you could. The experiment failed with the closing of the last store on February 15th.

What Panera (and Marx) failed to consider was the “enlightened self-interest” of people. It is a cornerstone of the human condition to pay as little as possible for anything, be it time, energy or financial resources.

When you have a set price for a good or service, people decide to buy on their judgement of, “is what I am getting worth what I am paying for it?” If a customer decides that the product isn’t worth what they have to pay for it, they don’t buy it. If you have no set price, I would be surprised if anyone paid anywhere close to the “suggested” price, let alone more. Most people would pay something, just out of social guilt or wanting to be fair. I would be very surprised if more than 5% of the customers paid more than the suggested price.

The problems with this concept were easily predictable and numerous, right from the start. The stores needed people with additional means to pay for those who didn’t have the means to normally eat there. So you have someone who is well dressed and groomed, while at the next table is a homeless person who was more concerned with making it to the next sunrise than hygiene. This made both people uncomfortable. One person didn’t want to eat sitting next to someone who smelled like a dumpster in the Summertime, while said smelly person didn’t want their odor (and things) intruding on the other person. Then you had drug use in the bathrooms, or people who didn’t want to use the toilet, so they did their business on the floor and so on.

By the time the last one closed, the homeless were prohibited from eating there more than a “couple times a week” and the only ones attending were starving college students. The revenue of these stores never got above about 70% of the expenses, so they were big money holes.

Again, the basic flaw in the plan should have been easily predictable to anyone who has a faint idea of how humans operate.

Socialism inevitably comes down to the muzzle of a gun because only the most naïve will willingly surrender the fruits of their labor to those who will not likewise produce. The major Communist states (Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea and more) had to convince its citizens on a daily basis that they were living in a “workers paradise.” And if you didn’t believe them, they either shot you or starved you to death.

Socialism will never work for any length of time on its own accord. It must be constantly pushed forward by those forced to live under the system, with the muzzle of a gun in their back to “inspire” them to keep pushing.

Push, push, push the agenda

With two notable major media stories going south (for the MSM) it only shows their lack of integrity and willingness to sacrifice any ideal (or person) on the altar of "DESTROY TRUMP."

First, we have the Nicholas Sandmann incident, where he and his fellow Covington High School classmates were wearing MAGA hats after a pro-life rally. Sandmann calmly stood his ground as he was approached and berated. The media, taking out-of-context video segments from a larger and continuous video that did show the context, vilified Sandmann and his classmates as the instigators and aggressors in the incident, when the opposite is true when you see the interaction in context. The MSM's insistent efforts to provide a distorted attack on this young man, and Trump by extension, has showed me their disgust on anyone who is even remotely a Trump supporter.

This has now come to bite them in the ass.

Through legal representation, Sandmann is currently in the process of suing the Washington Post (I like G. Gordon Libby's term for them, the Washington COM-Post) for $250 Million in damages. I hope he wins, because hopefully it will scare the MSM away from the "being first to break the news," to "let's take a day or two to get it right" kind of journalism.

The second story encompasses the phony "hate crimes," the most recent of which involves Jussie Smollett. It starts off bad, with someone allegedly at Jussie's direction committing a federal felony (sending threats through the US mail is a federal crime under 18 U.S. Code § 876), then Jussie paying two men to "attack" him, then lying about it to the police. For his efforts, Jussie has been charged with "disorderly conduct for filing a false police report," a Class-4 felony (maximum 18 months in a state facility), As soon as the FBI gets through with their investigation, Jussie may face to to 10 years in the federal system.

All the way up 5 minutes before the Chicago DA announced the charges against Jussie, the MSM was adamant that he was "a victim of a vicious and heinous hate crime."

Compared to the "hate crime" hoaxes, the true crimes where stereotypical hate is involved are invisible. Has there been any real, documented assaults where the victims racial or sexual preferences played a significant reason for the attack? I can think of none. If you know of any, please comment them below and I will update this post with them.

The hatred of the left

When I say hate in the context of the title of this article, I am not being hyperbolic, nor am I exaggerating. Let me explain why.

An adage I follow is "keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer." When Air America was on the air, I listened to it. In small doses, mind you, but I did regularly tune into that radio station. A couple of weeks ago, I added The Young Turks into my podcast list. I listened for an hour for three consecutive days, and I haven't activated my podcast app since, I was so revolted by the hate, the ignorance, the distorted mindset and the vitriol that spewed from my speakers. Two "events" came to mind as I was thinking about this post.

The first was one of TYT called Mitch McConnell "evil." I don't know about you, but "evil" implies a lot of things. When Harry Reid was the Senate Majority Leader of the Senate, I can hardly think of a subject or stance I could find common ground with him. I think Reid was a devious, underhanded, unscrupulous, kind of guy, but I would stop well before I would use the term "evil" with Senator Reid. But TYT had no problem using it. By applying that label to someone who only has a political or philosophical difference with you, that cheapens the value of the word. I'm sure that we can all agree that people like Adolph Hitler, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and a few others really are "evil." When you throw Mitch McConnell into that group, you actually make the others sound 'not so bad.'

This is the second one. I actually found a video of it:

It should be understood that Aero Mexico wouldn't show someone who said no, because that would undercut their ad. In fact, there were 4 individuals and one couple asked at the beginning. The two people that expressed interest, one wasn't asked if they would go to Mexico. He didn't explicitly say "yes," it was an implied "yes" because he asked if his wife could go. The second person to imply a yes put a condition on it, "if there were Taco Bell's on street corners down there." I don't know if this gentleman knows there is very little in common with real Mexican food and what's on a Taco Bell menu. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he knows there are no Taco Bells south of the border. To say what he said, knowing there are none down there I can only interpret as a big "screw you" to anyone who believed he would go there.

I am more concerned with how Mark Thompson, Helen Hong and Brett Erlich (L to R, as they sat facing the camera) spoke of and judged these people. Mark said, "These people don't have passports, they're not going to the next state over where Bubba lives." While Helen said, "Those people live within a 20 mile radius from where they were born." Later on, she mocks them (in a forced Southern accent), "The only thing I love more than my racism is discounts." I couldn't take it after, "I've been to Mexico and the best thing about Mexico is those people are not there."

This is not funny, this is not political commentary, this is an intentional and repeated mocking of people who live in "flyover country" and who don't agree with the talking heads.

Quite frankly, it's this attitude and mindset that sickens me. This is what I fight against, the belief that these elitists know better for other people, even better than the people know themselves. I am all for personal choice and personal responsibility of accepting the consequences of their choices. Why Leftists can't accept that, I guess I will never know.

Housekeeping

Just a bit of clean-up behind the scenes. No post this week due to hectic swing shifts over the weekend. I promise multiple articles next week.

My "Memes to Consider" over there to the right has grown to almost 200 items. I was feeling bad that you might not be seeing all of them, so I have set it up so a smaller group of about 30 memes for each weekday and another 30 for the weekends.

I will also update my linkroll with some more podcasts, stand by to stand by!

A case study for stupid laws

To paraphrase Darth Vader, "The idiocy is strong in this one."

The Hawaii State Legislature is considering H.B. 1509, introduced by three legislators, to increase the minimum age required to legally buy cigarettes, until you have to be at least 100 years old. I did not mistype that. One hundred years old. IF enacted (and it's a pretty big IF), the legal age to buy cigarettes would jump to 30 on 1/1/2020, then every subsequent year it would jump to 40, 50, 60 years, then all the way to 100.

Now let me explain to you the Aircraft Carrier-sized holes in this law:

  • This only affects the sales of cigarettes from stores.
  • It does not regulate possession.
  • It only restricts cigarettes, not pipes, cigars and so on.

So, I can see 60 year old people profiteering (because the only state law on profiteering relates to gasoline; I checked) by buying cartons of cigarettes and selling to their family and friends. I can see vacationers flying in with multiple cartons to sell. I can see family and friends on the Mainland Fedexing cartons. Then you have all of the people just switching over to the other forms of tobacco usage to keep their nicotine levels up.

Then we will also have the black-market running a healthy profit. My wife's grandfather was a stevedore and she has told me some stories about him. In-line with this, I found the Hawaiian Libertarian, and specifically this post: The Illusionary Rule of Law.

The long-term effects of this are numerous. Another law that will have a drastic negative effect primarily on small businesses, a big boost in sales (and profits) for the already rampant black market, an exploding gray market, a drastic fall off in state revenues from the "sin tax" on cigarettes, a further disregard for the rule of law by the people, do I really need to go on?

This clearly illustrates the point of "Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. Just because it's illegal doesn't make it wrong."

The hypocrisy of #BLM

I wholeheartedly suggest you watch this video first, all 12 minutes and 37 seconds of it. My comments will be below the video.

This young man explains very clearly a deep and glaring hole in the Black society. Kudos to him. If you didn't watch the video, let me summarize:

A child is killed in a drive-by shooting. Grieving Mother points out "White man with blue eyes" as the shooter. The community marches, demanding justice. Famous People Get Involved. The Young Turks and other Leftist talking heads lament about "hate crimes" and "racism."

Then the police investigate and arrest two YBM's (Young Black Males), one for driving the car and one for pulling the trigger. Further investigation shows the mother and the shooter are connected through Facebook and the event that caused the shooting might have been drug related.

That's when the marches and calls for justice die away. The Young Turks delete parts of their show related to this incident. Because "Black people don't snitch on Black people."

Let me get this straight. If a Black child is killed by a White person, the Black community marches and demands for justice are made. When a Black child is killed by a Black person, the Black community closes around the killer with a ring of silence. Not snitching on a YBM is obviously more important than making sure another child doesn't die in the crossfire of people who can't resolve disputes without gunfire. Matthew 7:3-5 and all that. For those of you who don't study the Bible, that's the parable of "Why do you want to remove the speck of sawdust in your brothers' eye but ignore the plank in your own eye?"

And people actually wonder why thousands of YBM's are killed by other YBM's every year. Get a grip people. Unless and until the killer YBM's are taught violence is not an acceptable first response and expelled from the Black community, and society as a whole, the mounting pile of bodies will not stop growing.

Abortion done correctly

Last week, Governor Mario Cuomo signed into law a bill from the New York State Legislature implementing what he calls "a full Roe v. Wade". I find this admiring and reprehensible at the same time I find this admirable because I believe that this is about how the issue of abortion should be settled. I mean this should be a state level issue that is voted upon by either the representatives of the people in that states legislature or by a referendum of the people directly.

I find this method far preferable to the method of how we arrived at Roe v. Wade. Just in case you don’t know, Roe v. Wade is the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion on demand throughout the United States. It was a decision for one case of one woman who wanted an abortion and couldn't get it because the laws in her state made the practice illegal. The matter was decided by nine judges who were not elected by the people and “by precedent” forced upon all 50 states.

I support New York's action to do this legislatively because I think each state should, either through the legislature or by popular referendum, decide as a state on passionate issues like this. So while New York may pass something like this, Nebraska may not and it should be perfectly fine either way. I support this because this is an ideology consistent with my position that the states are actual independent countries and need to decide internal issues such as this on their own and not have the federal government, which is supposed to regulate the states and not the actions of the people in the states. So I applaud New York for taking such a step.

I personally find the the action of aborting a child to be reprehensible, spiritually, morally  and ethically. I can and do moderate my position because I do not have the power and I do not want the power to regulate a woman's body or any aspect of any other person’s life. I will always advocate for the woman to deliver the child, however in the end, that decision (and the karmic debt) is hers to bear alone.

When you look at the New York abortion bill, the particulars of it are a total abortion on demand at any point in the pregnancy for any reason. Which means that pretty much as long as the baby is not in the process of coming out on their own (i.e. the mother is in labor), the mother can decide to destroy the child.

There are three general exceptions under which most people agree that abortion is acceptable. They are:

  • In cases of rape or incest;
  • For the life of the mother;
  • The child would be malformed (a known severe mental, developmental or physical birth defect)

According to Gallup, public support is in the majority for an abortion in the first trimester if one of those conditions are met. Down Syndrome is at 49% (and within the margin of error), but “for any reason” is at 45%.

In the same poll, the people were asked the same questions about the third trimester, respondents still gave a majority support for life of the mother and rape or incest. Everything else dropped under 50%, with “for any reason” at the bottom at 20%.

While a proper full term white pregnancy is 40 weeks, medical technology today deliver a baby as young as 25 weeks with a 50% chance of survival. That baby will have many lifelong medical conditions because it is not fully developed. A child can be delivered at 27 weeks (which is seven months, the beginning of the third trimester) with a 90% chance of survival and very little if any medical intervention or life-long medical issues.

The current dividing line between “fetus” and “child” is, “The child is ‘completely expelled’ from the mother” and one of these conditions are met:

  • Breathes;
  • Has a heartbeat;
  • Pulsation of the umbilical cord;
  • Voluntary muscle movement.

Which leads us to the “late term” or “partial-birth” abortions. I'm sorry to be gruesome here, but in a partial birth abortion, the doctor induces labor and brings the baby out feet first, leaving the head still inside the vaginal canal (so “it” still meets the first condition above and is legally a fetus and not a child). While the head is still within the mother the doctor pierces the back of the “fetuses” skull to scramble and destroy the brain, then removes the brains through a suction tube.

As of this moment, in the state of New York, that is perfectly legal, all the way up to the second before the child wants to come out on their own.

I now have a question, very serious question, because this has happened at least once that I can find. If, during the initial stages of a partial-birth abortion, the “fetus” pops out all the way, be it through its’ own random movements or the doctor flubbing it, could the procedure continue and the “clump of cells,” now a child is terminated? I guess in New York State, the answer is “yes.” Now, do the people of New York agree with this law? I don't know. I do know we will find out during the next state election cycle when the legislators who voted for it are either ejected from, or returned to office

Writing this article wounded my soul. My soul cries out against the action while my mind praises the process it was arrived at. This has been one of the hardest articles I have ever had to write and I’m angry and sorry it had to be written in the first place.

Who's the obstructionist here?

No one is blameless in this matter. I blame the feckless Republicans of the 115th Congress that couldn't carry out their Constitutional duty to create an annual budget, I blame the 116th House for being stubborn and obstructionist because Trump is breathing, and I blame Trump for trying to uphold the duties of his office and protecting our national security.

Now that the shutdown has entered its' 31st day, unless you read past the headlines of "TRUMP REFUSES TO SIGN BUDGET," you won't see that Trump has extended multiple compromises to Nancy Pelosi, all of which have been refused. He has offered to reduce the amount of funding he has asked for, as well as temporary protections for DREAMers (which was an Unconstitutional program by Obama, BTW).

So now I have to ask, "Who are the real obstructionists here?" Trump is asking for physical barriers along "high priority sections" of the border, and what he is asking for is, compared to the totality of the federal budget, a "rounding error." Look at it this way: $5 Billion is 0.5% of the deficit, and 0.12% of the total budget.

I respect both President Trump and Obstructionist Pelosi (I'm using that title from now on instead of "Speaker") for making their respective stands for what they think is right and important. They are also teaching most every American exactly how much they "need" the federal government. Yes, many families are affected (including my own and those close to me) by the restriction of federal government operations. The good news is, many will learn just how much they (don't) need the government. In reality, the longer this shutdown goes on, more and more Democrat voters will realize they can get along just fine and maybe better without government assistance. When those people discover this, they have a good chance of leaving the Democrats.

I also found out while writing this post that after 30 days (which was yesterday), the government can permanently lay off furloughed workers through a Reduction In Force (RIF) program. Why is this critical? Because the bureaucrats who are interfering with President Trump from advancing his agenda aren't in the office screwing things up.

This article from The Daily Caller from a "Senior Trump official" says the following:

Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.

Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily. [Emphasis mine]

In other words, the vast majority of "the swamp" that have interfered with Trumps agenda has been out of the office for the past month. And thanks to Obstructionist Pelosi, most of them are now gone permanently. Pelosi has just drained the swamp for Trump by being stupid and goadable.

In the long term, "Obstructionist Pelosi" is hurting her own power base and her desire of the expanding power of government more than helping it. So, keep holding out Nancy, you'll only destroy any chance the House will remain Democrat or win the White House in 2020.

Busy on things

I have been overly busy on multiple fronts the past week. I have been working on a deep dive article, but because it's heavy with math I'm trying to write it so it's not a "TL;DR" kind of article. Please keep visiting and remember, this is a one-man operation in his spare time.

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