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.
This idea is definitely in the "sounds good" category, rather than the "good, sound" category where all laws belong. The major reason why many people in the lower income scales are overweight is not from ice cream, cookies and cake, rather due to the cheap, processed foods that are overstuffed with calories, salt and sugar. These "one-pot-add-water-and-it's-ready" meals are okay in moderation, not as a diet staple like they are now for low-income families.
Yet, that's what it is because many of the people on EBT don't know how to prepare a good, healthy meal. Thanks to the death of Home Economics in the 80's where young women were taught how to plan, shop, prepare and cook a balanced, healthy meal from natural (not processed) components, this gave rise to the "Hamburger Helper" et.al. type meals.
Of course, the low-income, working moms are hit hard by these kinds of food as well. They pick up their children from daycare, bring them home, cook a box meal, then ship the kids off to a relatives house or overnight care on their way to their night shift job. That is no way to feed or raise a family.
Restricting any food choices can only lead to worse things. Let's stick to the Conservative ideal of letting the Citizen make their own choices, not Nashville or Washington.
The next time someone flashes a #fightfor15 hashtag, hit them with this.
This is a very simplified and incomplete model of how a physical product is produced. I am using this model to show how a forced raising of the minimum wage will send ripples through the entire chain that goods are produced. Here is a link to a spreadsheet that I used to produce the numbers in this article.
A concept Liberals don’t (or won’t) comprehend is that the pay a worker receives for their part in producing the product or service has to add an equivalent value to what is being produced. Brain Surgeons and 747 Captains are paid very well for what they do. Anybody can be taught how to do brain surgery or how to pilot a 747 in ten easy lessons because 99% of what they do are basic rote actions. The reason why the surgeon and the pilot make way more than a McDonald’s worker is because they know what to do when the patient’s brain starts bleeding, or an engine falls off the aircraft. They are paid the “Big Bucks” so they are in the right place at the right time with the proper training and experience to prevent the catastrophe.
I had a manufacturing job for a short time, assembling 3-D printers, so I got a peek into the manufacturing world. Each printer was composed of six (different) panels for the case, an electronics board, a wiring harness, a heated bed, the actual print head and the various gears, motors and pulleys to move the head and bed to produce what you want it to. There were also screws and other miscellaneous hardware involved as well. All in all, I dealt with about 30 distinct parts, many were used 2 and 4 times (motors, gears, pulleys, etc.) in a single unit. Each part had a different cost from the others, making this a slightly complex product.
The “product” I am making in this example consists of three parts, each made from three different raw materials. In real life, there are more levels, more materials and more sub-assemblies.
Again, this is a very simple model. Please do not fuss over the numbers at all, outside of the labor cost itself. If you do, that makes you miss the point.
The labor for each step is what is necessary to produce enough materials/sub-assemblies for one unit. The same with the transportation. A tractor-trailer can transport hundreds of units, so the labor cost for each unit is very low.
Each raw material costs nothing for the materials (it’s being pulled from the ground) and it takes 15 minutes of work by one person to extract the amount of material necessary to produce 1 part. The overhead is your equipment costs, administration staff, office supplies, etc. All of the things that help the workers bring the materials in and send the finished good out the door. There is also profit to be made.
These raw materials are then transported to another company that uses the materials to make the sub-assemblies. So the sub-assembly companies have to pay for the companies to produce and transport the materials, their own overhead costs and profit. Once each sub-assembly is created, it is shipped to my company so I can use the sub-assemblies to create the final product. I will have my own overhead costs and profit as well.
To keep this simple, I am paying everybody $10 an hour. At $10/hour, each sub-assembly pays $42.00 for their inputs. After labor, overhead and profit, each subcontractor gets their product out their door for $58.50. I pay $64 for each sub-assembly delivered to my factory for a total of $192.00 for my inputs. After materials, labor, overhead and profit I sell one unit of my product for $234. The MSRP/RRP (Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, or Recommended Retail Price in the UK and elsewhere) would actually be higher, as it would likely have to be shipped from my company to a store (Wal-Mart, Target, Brookstone, et.al.) to be sold to you. For this exercise, I’m only concerned about my out the door price.
If a rise in the labor costs is caused by a forced inflation of the minimum wage to $15/hour by legislative fiat, provided all other costs stay the same (they won’t; I’ll explain why in a moment) my sub-assemblies will now cost me $74.75 and my out the door price will jump to $281.25. That’s a $48.25 or a 16.8% increase in price.
In the real world, my price will actually go up more than what these “pure” numbers reflect. What will go up in addition to the labor price is the overhead. Remember, “overhead” is the labor costs of your administrative staff, office supplies and the equipment you use to produce your product. The companies who provide me with goods and services covered under that "overhead" banner will have to increase their prices to compensate for the new minimum wage. The price of everything I use, from reams of paper, staples and all the way up to million-dollar fabrication machines are going to be affected by just like I am. The company that makes the paper, staples or fabrication equipment has the same “tree” as I do. And if everyone has to get paid a minimum of $15, the price of paper, staples and fabrication machines will inevitably go up.
Now, one of the companies that produces my sub-assemblies may not have to buy a new fabrication machine for 5 years, however because the cost of labor is jumping now, that company has pressure to raise his prices now, not just to cover the additional labor but to help save up for the additional price of that new equipment down the road.
Labor also does not exist in isolation. All jobs are connected and dependent on others. In real life, some workers in this chain are paid less than $10, others are paid more. Just to make this clear, let’s look at two workers in this manufacturing chain. Worker A is paid $9/hour and Worker B is paid $19/hour, if/when the minimum wage raises worker A’s pay to $15, you would have to be on a different planet to not realize that worker B will push for more pay as well. Worker B has to fight for his pay to increase about $25/hour because by raising the pay of worker A, you devalue the knowledge and experience that justified worker B their $19/hour.
Because economics is an indirect art form, if we raise the labor costs on January 1st, we will start seeing prices increasing about June. Prices will increase, I promise you. You may not see it, but they will increase.
Real-world examples can be found in your local grocery store. Products contained in jars (peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise, etc.) will decrease in quantity by increasing the arch under the jar to reduce the internal volume while charging the same price. So if you have a 24 ounce jar that costs $2.49 in March, it transforms into a 20.4 ounce jar that costs $2.49 in October, that is a price increase of 15% (it costs 10.375 cents/ounce before, 12.205 cents/ounce after). Boxed products (like breakfast cereals) will retain the same front dimensions (height and width) but make their boxes thinner (less depth) to reduce their volume.
My advice is to be very careful what you wish for. You may get it.
Journalism is what used to be news reporting. People witnessing historic events or interviewing those who had seen it first hand, then transcribing it into such a form for all people to read and learn from. It is meant to be an account from a neutral viewpoint, all facts presented equally to let the reader decide on the matter.
The term "Yellow Journalism" was developed by Erwin Wardman who at the time was the Editor of the New York Press, and was meant to describe the fight between Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal. The "classic" Yellow Journalism ran at its heaviest from 1895-1898. While the concept or practice was not exclusive to New York or these two newspapers, this particular "feud" did not extend beyond New York, simply because the communications network did not exist.
After the turn of the 20th Century, reporting the news returned to being a serious business where reporters realized that there was a great level of trust bestowed upon them by the public who depended upon them for an accurate recounting of events. I remember watching men like Water Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley give the evening news. My Dad was a Cronkite man all the way, but sometimes NBC came up on our TV tuner at 6:30pm.
It was in the 70's that some network executives wanted the news bureau to "make a profit." I think that's pretty much the start of the groundwork for our current news climate. It was the launch of CNN on June 1st, 1980 to start the 24-hour news cycle. Since then, that news network addiction of "being first" (not being correct, or truthful or accurate) let the drive to live and die by ratings. The MSM has also artfully blended actual news with opinion pieces since the 90's makeing them very difficult to tell one from the other. Since the concept and term of "clickbait", most of the news media in the United States has had a resurgence of Yellow Journalism and "fake news."
I bring all of this up because I hear the MSM and everyone who believes their narrative hook, link and sinker, is yelling about "THE RUSSIANS HACKED OUR ELECTION."
To which I say:
The reason why I say this (and use that meme) is because when you use the term "Hacked the US election" (or some other derivative) this implies that somehow the Russians changed the outcome of the election by changing the vote totals. Just to dispel that notion, elections are conducted and certified at a county level in each state, which is transmitted to the appropriate State government and on to the MSM to provide "election coverage." Currently, there are 3,143 Counties (called Boroughs in Alaska, Parishes in Louisiana) in the US. The "Russians" (or whomever is to blame) would have had to penetrate at least 90+% of these counties and on demand votes. Not to add votes, but to record Hillary votes for Trump. Since "they" couldn't know which counties would go which way or how far, this could be pulled off only if the vast majority of systems were successfully penetrated.
What the hackers actually did was penetrate the email system of the Democrat National Committee and pass those emails to Wikileaks. These emails, private communications between high-ranking members of the DNC and their minions, show how they rigged the primary elections against Bernie Sanders so he never had a chance, and worked with major MSM players to provide as many pro-Hillary and anti-Trump "news" articles and opinion pieces disguised as news as possible. Enough of the information in these emails surfaced in the American Collective Consciousness through the truly neutral and Conservative-leaning media to make a difference in changing public opinion enough to put Trump in office.
The US would never, ever do that to another country, right? According to a L.A. Times story:
The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.
[...]
Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.
As a young man, I bruised my forehead rather severely. I inflicted this wound upon myself by repeatedly slapping my forhead over the plain-to-read common sense in the pamphlet Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine in 1776. I kept slapping my forehead because it made perfect, common sense to me when I read it over 200 years after it was first published.
This book, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt has generated a similar self-inflicted wound.
Mr. Hazlitt wrote this in 1946, ten years after John Maynard Keynes wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which is the bible for Keynesian Economics today. Economics in One Lesson lays out plainly yet with elegant prose concepts that explains economics as what I call a "delayed art form." I mean that in this way: In the age old Art vs. Science argument, if you can quantify the elements and reliably replicate action A producing result B, it's a science. Everything else is Art. In economics, action A will more than likely produce something approaching result B, but not always, six months to a year (sometimes even longer) after the initial action. This is because of Microeconomics, the thousands of transactions that occur daily in an economy. It takes time to make all of the transactions that culminates in a person purchasing a product from a business.
Think of putting a decorative cling on your window. Invariably, there will be some air bubbles trapped between the cling and the glass. Even if you are extremely careful, trying to "squeegee" the bubbles to the edge and get rid of them will result in those bubbles moving in almost any direction but where you want them to go.
When God created the Law of Unintended Consequences, He was thinking about economics. Mr. Hazlitt shows plainly using the "broken window" fallacy that when someone, a consumer or a business, is coerced in one way or another to buy a product (in this case, a Baker has to buy a new window because a miscreant broke the original) a great victory is proclaimed because the Glazer (the person who produces glass and windows) has business. But what about the Tailor, or the Plumber, or any other tradesman? Say the Baker was going to buy a new suit because his present clothes are tattered. Or, the plumbing is leaking in his home. The Baker is forced to spend his limited resources to replace the window and thus postpone getting new clothes or his pipes replaced. This story is repeated every time a choice is forced upon a consumer or a business.
Read this book, please. Then you can attend the free, online video course Economics 101 by Hillsdale College and grasp those concepts with a lot more understanding.
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly told Radosh in 2013. “Lenin,” he continued, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon’s fondness for the Russian revolutionary is telling in light of the the recent scrutiny over Russia’s pro-Trump interference in the 2016 election. Vladimir Lenin was the leader of Russia’s Bolshevik Party whose 1917 October Revolution threw a provisional government out of power, leading to the creation of the USSR.
If you read the sentence immediately preceding that quote, you’ll see what Bannon’s objective is:
…Bannon’s goal is to destroy the American system as we know it and replace it with a populist, Tea Party agenda.
I find it ironic that Liberals have since the 60’s have worshiped the bloody revolution that Lenin instigated to overthrow Tsar Nicholas II to bring about the Communist Party and the “workers paradise” that was the Soviet Union. If you’ve ever wondered why that pessimistic fatalism and a total “don’t give a shit” attitude is ingrained into the DNA of almost every Russian, look at their collective lives under the Tsars and Communism.
Also, “Radical Zero” (as opposed to “patient zero”) and Obama mentor Saul Alinsky in his book Rules for Radicals gives an “over-the-shoulder acknowledgement” to the original “burn-it-all down” guy, Lucifer (AKA Satan).
The Liberals of the 60’s wanted to “burn down the Establishment” until they realized that if they could infiltrate the Establishment, they could gradually bend it to their objectives. We are coming to the end of eight years of having a Radical Leftist in the Oval Office.
So “burning it down” can be a good thing, with controlled burns. Trumps Cabinet picks show hints of this. From the article:
Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt — Is a climate-change denier with deep ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Does Mr. Pruitt deny any climate change, or that Man is the major contributing factor in climate change? Remember, Liberals were screaming “GLOBAL COOLING” in the 70’s, and “GLOBAL WARMING” after that up until they realized that no one is listening to them because their predictions were 100% wrong.
Department of Energy Secretary, Rick Perry — In a 2011 GOP presidential debate, Perry listed the Department of Energy among the agencies he would completely eliminate as president.
It seems like the functions of departments like the EPA, Department of Energy, Department of Education are to consolidate power in Washington and interfere with the daily lives of citizens. Severe pruning or amputation of these and other federal departments should be seriously considered.
Department of Labor, Andy Puzder — A fast-food CEO who opposes the minimum wage and whose company has been fined multiple times for worker safety violations.
Forced elevation of wages hurts the people they were designed to help. Simple math and real-world effects clearly show this. Higher base wages than market value force employers to raise prices, lay off people in favor of forced automation and/or requiring the remaining workers to “do more with less people in the same amount of time.”
Department of Education, Betsy DeVos — She’s a leading advocate of school voucher programs.
*GASP*!!!1! You mean parents shouldn’t have the power to choose where their children are indoctrinated taught?
Our history has seen businessmen and farmers temporarily putting their businesses and tools aside for a short period of time to go to Washington and serve the People. In my lifetime, we have seen a political ruling class install themselves in the seats of power and refuse to leave.
Maybe it’s time to divest Washington of the political rulers and restore people who want to improve the country and serve the people rather than line their own pockets.
In the Star Trek (TOS) episode The Savage Curtain, Abraham Lincoln gave some advice to Captain Kirk: "Give your enemy what he wants. Just don't give it to him the way he wants it." I apply that advice to my opponents when I wargame.
The #fightfor15 crowd has won some significant victories to have government force the private sector to double the minimum wage. California and New York have made this state law. But like in all things Economic, the results of actions happen after a delay and can be somewhat unexpected. This one has been foretold since the discussion began. Now the buzzards have started coming home to roost: Thanks To 'Fight For $15' Minimum Wage, McDonald's Unveils Job-Replacing Self-Service Kiosks Nationwide.
The consequences of paying your employees more are either A) charge your customers more (higher prices) or B) have less employees. These changes and their consequences are clearly shown to those who look at the actual numbers and do the math. Frankly, either choice upsets the business-customer equilibrium. If prices go up, sales go down. This is a well-established economic fact, proved by hundreds of years of research on this subject. However, reduction of staff without a "force multiplier" (something that enhances the effectiveness of the employee) will also result in lost sales because the level of customer satisfaction will decrease.
The "force multiplier" discussed in this article are self-service kiosks. This means you will walk up to a kiosk, put in your order, swipe/touch your card and your food will be ready in a few minutes. This will cut the number of employees at an average McDonald's from 15 to about 8-10.
But wait! There's more! There are also machines in development (actually in testing) that will automate the entire store. One or two people will be required to put the materials (buns, meat, fries, condiments, etc.) in one end of the machine. The machine will then process the food order (via the kiosks) from the customer and proceed to cook the food, then assemble, package and deliver the order to the customer without any human assistance.
Congratulations! You now have four employees working full time at $15/hour, when you used to have 15 employees working various hours (30 hours/week average) at $7.50/hour. If you've done your math, you can see a 30% decrease in payroll ($7.25/hour x 30 hours/week x 15 employees= $3,375/week payroll vs. $15.00 x 40 x 4= $2,400). The bad news is that the $1,900/week "saved" has to go to pay off the cost of the machine as well as maintenance and repair costs.
So you have reduced employment opportunities for young people by over 60%. Because at least one or two of those four workers will have to have experience and knowledge in maintaining and repairing the new machine. If that machine stops working for whatever reason, the staff on hand won't have time to call the service technician and wait for him to drive across town to get their store working.
I promise you, the 16-year-old that used to get his first job at McDonald's will not have the knowledge or experience to run and maintain that equipment reliably. His opportunity to have that "first job" where he could learn all the necessary skills for his future jobs (arrive on time, dressed properly, do the job as you are told, etc.) just evaporated, and #fightfor15 killed it.
Any job has to add value to the product or service in order to justify the price the customer has to pay for that product or service. If a worker by using his skills does not add a value to the product greater than what they are being paid, the business cannot remain producing that product or service.
The #fightfor15 crowd has gotten exactly what they wanted, a $15 minimum wage. But by losing 60% of that job pool, they aren't getting it the way they wanted it.
I am writing this from a point of personal experience. I would like to declare that a Trump presidency will not be as bad as you think.
There are actually several reasons, the first is the “alt-right” are not Nazis, nor are they going to turn into Nazis because this is not 1934 Germany. The National Socialist German Workers Party was the full name for the Nazis, who were Socialists. You might want to click on that word to see what Socialists really are.
If you look at the times and conditions on how Hitler rose to power, that kind of government and those economic conditions are not present in 2016 United States
Second, the German people were experiencing a systemic economic collapse because Germany was being forced to repay the Allies for war debts and damage incurred in The Great War. This collapse was manifesting itself with hyperinflation of the German Mark, where the inflation was so fast workers were paid twice a day so they could give the money to their wives to go out and buy food before the prices went up.
Third, the German government has very few similarities, if any at all, to the US government. Also, social makeup was built on obedience to power. Hitler’s title, “Führer” is the German word for Leader. As a German, you obeyed whomever was the leader. It didn’t help that after Hitler came to power, those who were critical of him disappeared.
In great contrast, the US as a country, a government and a society was built on maximum individual freedom. Even in the US military, while obedience to the orders from your superior officer is required, every action any service member does is subject their review and that member is obligated to disobey orders that run counter to what is right.
Fourth, which I can speak from personal experience, is that power constrains. As Worshipful Master of my Masonic lodge, I was basically President of the lodge. A lodge will take the direction the Master desires, within certain limitations.
The Master puts forth ideas on what the lodge can do for the lodge or the community. If it’s a good idea, he will have no shortage of brothers willing to help and participate. An example of this would be a quarterly breakfast for first responders in their community. If it’s a dumb idea or counter to the principles of Masonry, a Past Master will probably privately advise the Master of the “inadvisability” of such an idea. If the Master presses forward anyway, he will likely find himself alone at the event.
The US federal government is the same way. The President can try to take a controversial action. His cabinet could be in total agreement and the bureaucratic heads of the appropriate departments can be just as enthusiastic to carry out the orders. However, if anybody anywhere in the entire chain from Cabinet members to the people tasked with carrying the orders out, decides that it’s stupid and detrimental to the country, it won’t get done. This is not to say the consequences of disobedience won’t be severe to them, however it can be done and all the President can do in the end is scream at the top of his lungs from the White House.
Trump could jump up and down on his desk in the Oval Office and scream, “Kill all the Muslims! Deport all the Mexicans!” all day long. He could sign Executive Orders until they fly out his ass and tell his Cabinet to carry out his orders. If those orders managed to make it down to the agents who would carry them out, I wouldn’t be surprised that most of the agents would suddenly be unable to find anybody in those targeted groups.
How will Trumps time in office unfold? I have no idea. I do know it won’t be as bad as many fear.
I heard Limbaugh came up with this from a Renegade Republican podcast.
With all of the butthurt Liberals whining about Trump winning the Electoral vote while losing the popular vote, I thought I would present the issue and purpose of the Electoral College with an analogy.
Baseball. Specifically the World Series.
Because the WS is like the Electoral College. You have a series of up to seven games, which are played until one team wins four games. The score in each game determines the winner for that game only. The runs acquired in one game cannot be "transferred" to a subsequent or prior game to change the result of the other game. Nor can the total of runs in all the games can be totaled (the "popular vote") and that process used to determine the winner.
Because if we use the total runs method, we need to have an 8th game since both teams scored 37 runs across the seven games.
Be thankful for things like the EC. They protect you when you don't realize it.
This is an open letter to all of my friends, because I do not classify my friends by their skin color, their sex, their sexual preferences, their political views or any other method Liberals use to divide us. If we enjoy each others' company and respect our similarities and differences, that's good enough for me.
In the past eight years while Obama has been in the White House, I have been critical of him whenever warranted, as well as supportive of him when he does the right thing. I did the same with Bush 43 and I will do the same with Trump.
I promise this to all of my friends who are scared about the impending Trump Presidency and how it may negatively affect your lives. I will be there and not abandon you. I will be just as publicly critical of Trump when he infringes on the rights of any Citizen of this country. My political ideology is not tied to a political party, it's tied to what's right.
This is one of my personal mission statements. I believe in the maximum freedom of the individual citizen. I believe in the fact we are all human beings. Our differences should be celebrated and used to strengthen the whole, not divide us. Laws should provide justice when someone is wronged, not used as weapons to bludgeon Citizens and advance a political agenda.
I have said for years, I can insult you and several of your preceding generations using words perfectly acceptable at a ladies' tea cotillion. A Liberal made me prove it tonight.
A friend made a post concerning the basics of health care. I commended him on a thoughtful, well-written post. I had to disagree on him concerning the concept of "forcing" those who decline/can't afford to have health care to pay the tax. This one Liberal and I then proceeded to banter back and forth like a tennis match. I tried to stick to the issues. This ...person... repeatedly attacked me personally. When I had enough, I gave this liberal a mild tongue-lashing, about a 3 on my insult scale. R. Lee Ermey is an 8 on that scale. Here's what I wrote:
[Liberal], I have been polite with you. I have spoken about the issue with you politely. I have been respectful to you as a person. Yet you have repeatedly insulted me personally without cause. Since it seems that your whole repertoire consists of insults rather than coherently expressed thoughts back by appropriately verifiable facts, if you want to be insulting, I can certainly stoop to the level above you.
You are a pusillanimous, insignificant and self-important blowhard. You are so narrow minded you can look through a peephole with both eyes simultaneously. You are a vacuous, mealy-mouthed cross-dresser who thinks they know more than they actually do. The lint in my pants pocket is worth more than your opinion or you personally. You are such a closed-minded low-grade moron, each of your friends and family have probably lost at least 15 IQ points because they have been forced to endure multiple sessions of your immense ignorance. Everyone who has personal contact with you agrees with you simply because it gets you away from them quicker than voicing a differing opinion. I personally would rather give myself a root canal with a power drill and a 2" paddle bit in a 7-Eleven restroom than interact with you personally.
I didn't use any curse words above simply because you're not worth it.
I worked for UnitedHealthcare for years. I know the ins and outs of medical insurance. I know about diplomacy and international affairs because I've been a part of it. I've done things in my life you wish you had the courage to put on your bucket list. What most people term as "due diligence" is my initial research.
If you shut up and listen to what people with a different opinion or viewpoint than yours say to you with an open heart and mind, with the intent to understand rather than the intent to reply, you might actually learn something, instead of letting that echo chamber between your ears do all the talking for you.
Like I said, this was a 3. Don't make me go to eleven.
For all of my Liberal readers who want to suddenly rebel against a Trump administration, when Obama has spent the past eight years weaponizing the government (because the EPA needs SWAT teams), when they suddenly realize that the government has lots of guns, and they don't have any.
I will say that all of the information and suggestions contained in the article are good and true. How the author delivers the information in a wonderfully biting and ironic commentary is well past epic. Here is an example:
Now it gets really complicated. And that’s entirely your fault. See, traditionally Democrats don’t like the 2nd Amendment and historically have done everything in their power to screw with it. Your gun laws are going to vary dramatically based upon where you live. It might be really difficult and expensive for you to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, or it might be relatively easy.
But you’re scared rightnow! Well, that’s too bad. Because for the most part Democrats have tried to make it so that citizens have to abdicate their responsibilities and instead entrust that only state can defend everyone… That doesn’t seem like such a bright idea now that you don’t trust who is running the state, huh?
If you think you need to be armed, either against Trump's government or the local gangbangers, I actively encourage you to learn all you can, purchase what you believe is necessary to protect yourself and your family and use said weapons in a responsible and judicious manner.
I have been wondering what to say about Tuesday's election since Wednesday morning. Here on Saturday, I sat down to write this and it hit me.
Shame on you. ALL OF YOU. Both sides of the aisle you.
Because this is what you get when very few people read the Constitution, the very framework of our government. This is what happens when you don't know what it means, or why it was written the way it was, and more importantly the intent and purpose of the men who wrote it.
Democrats are bitching and moaning about "Hillary won the popular vote, SHE should be President!" I hate to break the bad news to you, but the United States is not one country. It is fifty individual countries bound together in common cause. Fifty different experiments in freedom. The States are not provincial territories, subservient to Washington, D.C. They are individual entities who each have their own way of doing things. The way they do things in California will probably not work in Iowa, and vice versa.
We are The United States of America. This country is the United States, which is on the American Continent. To call ourselves "Americans" is a misnomer, because Canadians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Brazilians and all the others can lay claim to the term "American" as well. America (North, Central and South) reaches from the Arctic Circle all the way down to the Straits of Magellan. This is why I 99% of the time refer to this country as the United States, not America.
The Founding Fathers designed this country to have long periods of political discussion, culminating in an election. At that point, our Constitutional Representative Republic (we are not a democracy) would move forward on one course, until the political discussion started up again and another course change after the next election. The Legislative and Executive Branches are staggered in their terms to insure that it is impossible for there to be a radical change in leadership in one election. The President is elected every four years, the entire House is up every two years and Senators are elected for six year terms, which are staggered so only one-third of the Senators are up for election every two years.
So, shame on you Democrats, because with your riots you clearly demonstrate that you are basically little, petulant children. These riots are nothing more than a collective temper tantrum because you didn't get your way. You are directly responsible for Trumps election for the sole reason of your name calling of everyone who disagreed with you. Democrats have for decades collectively called anyone who disagrees with them misogynists, homophobes, sexists, racists and more. The people who have received these denigrating labels for years without justification for the sole intent to shame them into the Democrat camp finally had enough. So, they elected the person who is (to the Democrats) the penultimate misogynist, racist, sexist homophobe.
You think I'm alone in this view? Here you go. This is a six-minute profanity-laden tirade from Jonathan Pie who explains clearly what I just said. If you don't believe me, maybe he can get this point through to you.
Don't be snickering over there Republicans, because you're next.
You Republicans are acting so smug. You just elected "an outsider" who is going to "change everything." Let me pop that bubble right now. He won't radically change things because he can't. You sons-of-bitches need to read the Constitution as well. The "most powerful man in the world" has a whole lot less power than you think, and if you knew his duties under the Constitution, you would know that. The president's main duty is carrying out the laws of the country. Laws passed by Congress. Unlike President Obama who has done his best to enact his own agenda. "I have a phone and a pen" and all that.
But here you are, parading around that Trump won. You are no different than the Black lady who was put on TV Election Night in 2008. She was yelling, "AW, LAWDY, OBABA WON! WE GOTS US A BLACK MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE! HE GONNA GIVE ME A FREE PHONE AND A CAR AND BETTER HOUSING!" Shut up and work with those who disagree with you, if they are willing to respectfully work with you.
And a last note, to all y'all (which is a proper plural noun in the South). The president does not control the price of gas, or how much you're paid in your job, or where you live or any of a hundred other things that are credited to (or blamed on) him. He can influence the conditions under which things might move a certain way, but his influence is one of many conditions which all contribute to the final result.
Please realize the actions of the President of the United States has very little to do with your day-to-day lives. When it comes to solving your problems and making your life better, look away from Washington and to yourself, your family and your friends. It is the choices you make that determines the overall course of your life. Not Obama, not Clinton, not Bush, not Trump.
Many of us have forgotten this and we all need to remind each other to meet everyone we encounter in our lives where and how they are, not where, who and how we want them to be.
As Bill and Ted said, "Be Excellent to each other!"
The Supreme Court recently released a decision that I agree with, yet vehemently oppose the basis of. Here it is, Voisine, et.al. v. United States.
This ruling basically upheld the Constitutionality of the 1996 Lautenberg Amendment to the Gun Control Act of 1968. These two men, Voisine and Armstrong, pled guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence charges and were caught possessing firearms some time later.
I actually support the court in their decision to uphold the law as it stands. The petitioners cries of “it wasn’t on purpose that I hit my partner” rings hollow because these men pled guilty to the original charges. If they wanted to bring up their lack of mens rea (the guilty mind, e.g. intent), the time and place for that was before the guilty plea.
However, the law which formed the basis upon which everything else is built is corrupted because it is a bad law.
A bit of history: In 1968, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968. The initial idea for this was in response to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It never went anywhere until the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. This law created the Federal Firearms License, the banning of firearms sales through the mail and many other aspects of the reality for gun owners today. One of the major parts of this law was the permanent “chilling” of a citizens RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) under the Second Amendment if they are convicted of a felony. I have spoken on the subject of chilling rights before.
There are two basic kinds of crimes, misdemeanors and felonies. What separates these two is the level of punishment. A misdemeanor is punishable by confinement of no more than 11 months and 29 days (less than a year). A felony is punishable by confinement over a year. From 1968 until 1996, you lost your RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) under the Second Amendment only upon your conviction of a felony.
In 1996, The Lautenburg Amendment amended 18 U.S.C. 922 (that part of the United States Code that came from the GCA of 1968) to specifically include misdemeanor Domestic Violence convictions in the list of things that chill your RKBA. This amendment specifically added 18 U.S.C 922(g)(9). Out of the tens of thousands of misdemeanor offenses that you can be punished for, this one alone will cause you to lose your RKBA.
Simple assault is basically an unwelcome contact with another person. It can range from one person touching another person on the arm when they have told the first person not to touch them, all the way up to a semi-serious beating (no weapons used, no broken bones or other serious injuries). Simple assault becomes Domestic Violence when it is done against a family member or the family member of someone the assaulter is in a relationship with.
Example: Everyone meet Ray (Hi Ray!). Ray and his wife Becky have been in a feud with their neighbor Jill. One day, it all comes to a head and Ray went and beat the crap out of Jill. Becky, who saw the assault, started to freak out over the violence. Ray tries to hug her to calm her down and Becky said, “Get away from me!” Ray grabs her anyway and holds her until she calms down. By this time the police get there and Ray is arrested and charged with assault against Jill and domestic violence against Becky. Ray gets 6 months in the County jail for each conviction, however because one of the convictions was domestic violence was against Becky, he can no longer own or possess firearms, even though he beat Jill and didn’t hurt Becky. An extreme example? Kind of, but relevant and realistic nonetheless.
Just so you can be aware, here is the entire list of actions that will get your RKBA revoked, with the Lautenburg Amendment bolded:
18 U.S.C 922 (g) It shall be unlawful for any person—
(1) who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; (2) who is a fugitive from justice; (3) who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)); (4) who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution; (5) who, being an alien— (A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or (B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(26))); (6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; (7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship; (8) who is subject to a court order that— (A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had an opportunity to participate; (B) restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child; and (C)(i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or (ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or (9) who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,
to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.
Another thing that this amendment did was to violate the Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 9, Article 3, “No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.” The term “ex post facto” is Latin for “after the fact,” where a law is passed today that criminalizes an action committed before the law became effective and people are subsequently punished under that law.
As an example, say last year you chopped down your neighbors’ tree because it irritated you immensely (its leaves landed on your property, it blocked the afternoon sun on your porch, the neighbor refused to trim the tree, pick one or more). For some reason, at the time it was not against the law for you to do so (it was partially on your property, whatever). Your enraged neighbor then starts petitioning the government and gets a law passed last week criminalizing what you did. Today the County Sherriff knocks on your door and arrests you for violating that tree-chopping law. That is an example of ex post facto.
The document about the Lautenberg Amendment above says this about this “not violating the ex post facto law.”
[T]he court [Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit] explained that the Lautenberg Amendment, by prohibiting post-enactment possession, did not criminalize conduct that occurred prior to its effective date. As such, the court held that the Amendment was not retrospective and, therefore, not violative of the Ex Post Facto Clause. This explanation referred to Hiley v. Barrett.
This “reasoning” is utter bullshit for this simple reason: If someone committed a crime in 1976 (20 years before the law became effective) and completely paid their debt to society in 1977, yet when this law became effective in 1996 they lost their RKBA rights. Their reasoning this isn’t ex post facto? The Lautenberg Amendment does not punish you for your firearm possession between 1978 and 1995, only your possession after 1996. The loss of rights for a person today, for having committing an act before this law was passed, who paid the debt assigned upon conviction at that time is the very definition of ex post facto. “I did something bad years ago and I was punished for it. Today, I am penalized more for something where I have already paid my time.”
These two reasons are why 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9) is a very bad law. This section needs to be abolished, or domestic violence needs to be elevated to a felony status. The ex post facto part of it needs to be revoked as well.
If you have been paying attention to the events going down in the Dakotas, this is the primary reason why the Second Amendment exists. This is why the RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) is an integral part of the American world view, our culture and our fundamental Rights bestowed upon us by our Creator. It is why the unarmed man is a Subject (as in Subject to the Crown) and the armed man is a Citizen.
Recently, Citizens have had three major clashes with the government. The first two protests, the Bundy Standoff in Nevada and the Oregon Standoff, where a government building was captured, were performed by well-armed Citizens who protested unwarranted government excesses. These armed Citizens stood up to the government. As a result of their being armed, they were treated with respect by government agents, no one was hurt and the government ultimately backed down. The Citizens involved in the Oregon event were arrested, charged, tried and acquitted of all charges brought against them by the government.
Currently, we have peaceful, unarmed protesters in the Dakotas trying to prevent an unwanted pipeline from passing through their lands and over sacred burial grounds. These unarmed citizens are being tear-gassed, shot at and the riot police push them around like children. There are reports of snipers picking off protesters and animals, with agent provocateurs trying to provide the reason for the government to move in on the protesters.
This is an unattributed quote, possibly from George Washington. However variants of this has shown up throughout history:
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
A fire properly contained in the fireplace provides light, heat and the ability to cook. When a candle is lit from that fire, if not properly attended it can set the entire house on fire.
When the government is moral and has a conscience, peaceful protest can work. I have no problem with peaceful protests. This is why Gandhi was able to win Indian Independence from the British. If Gandhi had tried that against the Nazis when they occupied India, they would have simply shot him and any supporters in the head and that would have been the end of it.
The last eight years has shown a great increase in the excesses of governmental power. Agencies make up regulations with the force of law, which relentlessly encroach on freedoms. The speed and scale of encroachments with continue to accelerate when not opposed by armed Citizens.
Stand up. Arm yourselves. Be a Citizen, not a Subject.
Over the years I have developed a practice of not commenting immediately on things, but this is blowing up FB.
I don't watch TV, so I have only heard to references that Trump during the debate last night that he (if President) would order his Attorney General to investigate Hillary.
My question is, why is ordering the AG to fully investigate a person and to bring charges and prosecute when evidence of violations of the law are discovered bad, versus ordering the AG to not bring charges when clear evidence exists is acceptable?
The law that Hillary falls under concerning storing classified emails on an unsecured email server does not require intent. If you do it without knowing that the information is classified, guess what? You're still guilty because laws like this does not require mens rea (the evil mind, legalese for intent). There have been multiple instances of military members convicted and serving prison time for inadvertently releasing even small amounts of low-level classified information.
I guess the rules are different when you're running to run things.
There is a mental disorder called Borderline Personality Disorder. It is best characterized by the phrase "I hate you don't leave me!" There is no comma in that phrase as common English grammatical rules would call for because there is no pause when someone with BPD says it.
Other characterizations include very black/white thinking. You either intensely love and or adore someone/thing, or you just as intently hate or despise the same person/thing. There is no in-between and vacillating from one side to the other can be rapid and random.
No person is 100% angelic or demonic. The most famous people in history, either beloved or reviled had done both wonderful and horrendous things in their life.
I bring this up because I see this in many people concerning the current Presidential horse race. They revere without reservation one candidate and revile with equal emotion the other candidate.
As Dave Ramsey says, "Pull your head out of your politics." Both of the major candidates have serious issues. Don't vote for a person because of what party they ascribe to, nor their personal plumbing. I suggest your take Mrs. Corsale's advice.
Mrs. Corsale was my Geometry and Trigonometry teacher in High School. When she was in college, she had three suitors after her hand in marriage. Being the extremely analytical math nerd she was, she used math to decide which suitor to pick. She wrote a list of every quality she wanted in a husband. She then wrote a list of every quality she didn't want in a husband. She gave each suitor a point for every quality they had on the first list, then deducted a point for every quality they had on the second list. She married the guy with the highest total.
We are going to be stuck with either Trump or Kane for the next few years. If what I have been reading about Hillary's condition is true or pretty close, if she gets elected she won't survive her first year in office. While what she has in and of itself is not fatal, it will probably kill her through complications, one of her "falls" or she will deteriorate to the point she won't be able to perform her duties.
All I ask is you look at their accomplishments. If you don't like either, consider the Libertarian or Green Party. Think for yourself and don't let soundbites from either side make up your mind for you.
This particular article has been running around in my head for a while. It wasn’t until recently that I found the video clip below that I felt I needed to drive home the point I want to make.
Just to be clear, when I talk about “Global Climate Change” (as in Capitalized) I mean the “Man-made climate disaster” kind of thing.
To start off, I would be a fool if I did not believe in the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing. The climate as a whole is changing every day, like a shoreline. The climate ebbs and flows, just like the ocean tide coming in and going out twice each day. It does, trust me. I’m a sailor and have navigated boats and ships upon the ocean.
I would also be a fool if I believed that mankind alone is the sole or major player in that climate change. A change of a few degrees of temperature on the Sun, or the eruption of a volcano has at least the same and probably more impact on the global climate as all of us put together.
I admit that Mankind burning all of these fossil fuels does have some impact. How much, I don’t know. All of these climate scientists can’t agree themselves and they have a lot better access to the data than I do.
I have been watching this debate since I was a teenager in the 70’s, I have discovered that published data supporting Global Climate Change to be very suspect. Over the years, I have seen reports about a single weather station and its data “proving” climate change. The bad news is that several years of the data in question was “reported” by that station before it was even built. I have seen other reports that satellite data has been “massaged” to support the “climate change” theory.
You see, I remember when these Global Climate Change scientists were yelling about Global Cooling in the 70’s. Their “solution” was to spread carbon dust over the poles to absorb more heat from the Sun. In the 90’s, Al Gore started to raise the alarm about Global Warming. Imagine how much worse that Global Warming would have been if we actually had covered the poles with carbon dust in the 70’s. Because these crackpot scientists really can’t make up their minds on if the Earth is warming or cooling (it’s actually doing both, at the same time), they did agree on finally calling it Global Climate Change because then it means whatever they want it to mean.
The weatherman on our local daily newscast uses the best climatological models and software money can buy, yet they have great difficulty predicting with any accuracy what the weather will be for a specific city more than three days in the future. I really have to ask, if these professionals can’t have more than a 30% accuracy for a specific location more than 72 hours into the future, how can other professionals be able to predict with any certainty what the climate will be like in fifty to one hundred years? I can assure you if the sunspot activity on the Sun drops or jumps dramatically, or there’s an unanticipated volcano eruption that these Global Climate Change scientists didn’t predict, all their models go right out the window.
I personally believe we are like fleas jumping up and down on the back of an elephant. We think we are affecting things but really we are not.
To those people who believe that we should either drastically cut back or stop entirely our use of fossil fuels, I want to give you a Magic Button that will instantly stop all production and use of all fossil fuels. I am not going to use half-way measures like the Kyoto Protocol because that will not stop the damage, only prolong it.
The following clip is from the 1952 movie Above and Beyond. The man in question is Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets, the man who piloted the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb Little Boy on Hiroshima Japan. I have edited this clip, which is why it jumps.
Lt. Col Tibbets pressed that button on the incomplete knowledge that he could stop WWII the next day by pressing that button, killing over 100,000 people in the process. He didn’t know how it would be done, only that it became a very real possibility if he pressed that button.
I now offer you that button, giving you the knowledge that if you press it, the current ecosystem will most likely survive as is and could recover. There will also be large-scale human deaths involved. If you don’t press it, things will go on the way it’s going right now.
Now if you don’t press the button, I would have nothing further to describe, so for the sake of argument, let’s say you do press the button and stop all production and use of fossil fuels. To start off with, cities of any size are for lack of a better term black holes. Every city has to pull in everything it needs every day from the surrounding area at a minimum and the world as a whole because it cannot provide basic necessities for human life without outside resources.
So when we press that Magic Button, the first thing we notice is the lights will go out. That means no light at night beyond candles, no heat when it’s cold beyond burning wood in your fireplace and certainly no air conditioning when it’s hot. Yes there is nuclear, solar and hydroelectric power generation methods, but in the United States they are a small fraction of the total power output and thus not worthy to mention.
No power also means no computers, no Internet, no Television. Oh, sure, some things that are battery powered will go on for a day or so, unless you have a solar recharger to keep it charged. And really what good will that laptop, cell phone or tablet do for you for you if there is no cellular network and no Internet?
The second thing you will notice is deliveries have stopped. That means no more Amazon packages delivered daily by UPS, FedEx or DHL. No more mailman. No more trucks delivering food and the thousand other sundry items you use every day without noticing into your city or town. Once your pantry is empty, what are you going to do? All your money is in the bank, tied to your debit card. Since the cash registers and ATM’s don’t have power, you can’t buy food.
By the way, the government is not coming to help you. Instead of being exempted from burning fossil fuels, your Magic Button affected them as well. There is no cavalry coming over the hill in the nick of time to save you.
You, and millions of others who are used to the city life now face two choices. You can either starve to death in place, become bandits killing others for their supplies, or you can migrate on foot out to the rural areas where you will likely die on the way by the hands of bandits or others fleeing as well. If you’re lucky you might make it to a farm to become serfs of the farmer. You work and tend his crops for a share of the food. You better hope if you’re female the landowner does not know what droit de seigneur means.
If you live in an area without farms nearby, you might survive off the land long-term, but the odds are against you because there are thousands trying to do the same thing.
By pressing that button, you have realistically killed over 200 million people in the United States alone. World-wide, most of the people in cities and developed countries will die.
Out of the 7.2 billion people living on Earth right now, you would kill at least 3-5 billion people, condemning them to death from food riots or starvation, all because you want to “stop Global Warming.” You would knock us back to a pre-Industrial Revolution way of life.
Congratulations! You have outdone many times over the total efforts of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot put together. You should be proud of yourself. You name will be remembered for the rest of Mankind. I do not know if your name will be remembered with praise or as a curse.
I started writing this post at the beginning of the month. Due to blog issues it was lost twice. One last try, because this is important.
The start of July 2016 saw the deaths of two Black men which were partially caught on video. One was a career criminal, who was killed by police while resisting arrest. One was a positive influence in his church and community, who died due to a tragic miscommunication between himself and the officer. I grieve for these dead men, the officers involved and all of their families and communities.
While I do not fault the Black community for being outraged over these two deaths, I have to ask this: every week, forty-eight Black people are killed across this country in Black-on-Black violence with nary a peep from social media, nor the national-level media. Even the local media covers it like "Yeah, another 3 Black people were killed and 12 wounded in weekend violence. Stay tuned, we'll report this again next week." I then see the local Black leaders hold prayer vigils and call for the end of violence.
And not a damn thing happens, except more young Black people are killed. If you want to solve a problem (i.e., the scores of Black deaths), I suggest you break down the problem and then with all of your effort go after the biggest issue.
The federal government cannot solve this issue. Nor can the state government, nor county/city government. They can be part of the solution, however the People must take action if this is truly to be solved.
This is what I see:
A Black culture that glorifies violence in its many forms.
A Black culture that punishes advancing in life.
A broken prison and parole system.
A community who fails its citizens.
A surplus of idle hands.
I refuse to paint this issue with a broad brush. This is not "all Blacks" or any other nonsense. This is a very specific segment of the Black population. To change how society handles them is a task that falls on all of us. To changes themselves, that must come from within them.
I want to start out saying the majority of Black families (single-parent and nuclear) want and push their children to learn, gain knowledge and succeed in life. These parents are to be commended for their actions.
When I hear Blacks roll by me in their cars, blaring Rap music I get sad. Most of the Rap music I hear uses all kinds of derogatory and dehumanizing terms towards women, as well as advocating violence and illegal activity. I understand this music is a reflection of their daily lives. That does not preclude those same Rap artists from focusing on the positive aspects of the lives of those people. When it comes to advancing in life, there is a portion of the Black population that punishes other Blacks for wanting to succeed. If a Black schoolchild is studying to be a professional (either white-collar or skilled), they are punished by their peer group for "wanting to be White." The result, an untrained young Black person lacking the foundation of knowledge to operate effectively in this society and is unhireable for anything more than grunt work at minimum wage. The males are forced into illicit activities to provide income, thus dying early in gang violence or spending most of their lives in prison. The women survive by popping out babies to get on Welfare.
Make no mistake about it, what I have just described is a small percentage of the Black community. That being said, it is this sliver of the population where most of the violence and lawlessness comes from.
The ideas I am about to describe to you will not be easy. Nothing worth having ever comes easy. It will not be a fast solution. This is a "crock pot" solution versus a "microwave" solution. If the proper effort is consistently applied, it will take at least 20 years before meaningful change happens.
The prison system has to change. The current prison system is not designed to rehabilitate. It is designed to crush the mind, spirit and body of the prisoner. Yes, there are isolated programs to teach felons trades, but they are just that, isolated. A trade school program to certify these men and women in lucrative, marketable skills is essential, both in High School (so they don't get into the justice system in the first place) and prison (so they have skills to keep them out of prison).
The parole system has to change. Right now a felony conviction ruins a person for the rest of their lives. It cuts off most of their opportunities and relegates them to the low-paying, unskilled labor which almost guarantees their re-entry into the justice system. There needs to be a universal incentive for businesses to hire first-time felons who acquired those marketable skills and put them to work.
Society has to "disavow" its criminals. Up until the Civil War, miscreants (defined as depraved or villainous) who caused too much trouble in a town or village were "ridden out of town on a rail." Let me show you want that meant.
This is a fence rail. notice how the top rail is actually pretty much square in its cross-section.
Because our colonial ancestors didn't have the time or equipment to make their fence rails fancy, the old-fashioned and simplest way was to quarter a log, like this:
So when someone was "ridden out of town on a rail," the townspeople stripped the miscreant naked, then carried him to the edge of town on said fence rail, lifted upon the shoulders of two men. The rail was positioned with the point upwards (as shown) and the miscreant straddled the rail. I think the terms "extremely painful" and "wood splinters in the genitals and crotch" would be accurate regarding said ride. Tarring and feathering (coating the miscreant with liquid tar then covering him with feathers) usually accompanied the "traveling by rail," either before or after. Below is an image from the book Huckleberry Finn describing such an incident. Notice the miscreant has already been tarred and feathered.
The whole purpose of this exercise was to "encourage" the miscreant to either conform to the socially acceptable behavior of the town or move on down the road to the next town.
Today, we lack the necessary plethora of strong men and fence rails. That being said, the mother of a criminal who performed a drive-by should not be on TV saying, "He's a good boy!" Your "good boy" shot 20+ bullets into a house full of people because he didn't like one of them, killing three including a toddler. This criminal, violent sub-section of our society needs to be forcefully ejected from town and be told in no certain terms, "Don't come back." Everyone in the neighborhood knows where the drug houses are and who the gang-bangers are. I also know the gang-bangers are well-armed and have zero compunction against shooting you in the head, then sitting on your still-warm body and eating lunch. The gang-bangers will be run out of town when the people in those neighborhoods throw them out despite their fears.
I am not advocating violence except as a last resort. If you can run the gang-bangers out of town without anyone getting hurt, I'm all for it. Absent that outcome, the most extreme option might be for our neighborhoods to gather together at 2 am to throw Molotov cocktails into the windows of every drug house and shoot everybody who escapes the flames. Gang-bangers are a cancer in our cities and towns. Surgery to remove the cancer must be performed, amputation if necessary. I understand the actions and consequences of these actions and I do not say this lightly.
Once the criminals are flushed, then businesses can come into the depressed neighborhoods and start offering jobs. The jobs can be right there or shuttle service could be offered. I don't know how exactly it would play out. When the Black population from these poorer neighborhoods divest themselves from the criminal element, acquire a positive and drug-free attitude, the jobs are there. I know of one factory in my city that is short-handed, simply because many of the job applicants can't pass a drug screening.
Learning must be equated with prosperity. Once these prior changes are well into effect, then the Black culture needs to start associating learning, knowledge and skills with success and affluence rather than just sports ability or how well they can write and perform Rap music.
I for one want everybody to succeed without regard to their skin color, sex, ethnic heritage, socioeconomic background or anything else. Everybody has a different vision of success. While some want to strike it rich, become a CEO and make a Billion dollars a year, others may want to meet their monthly expenses, save for retirement and spend every evening at home with their family. I'm all for you deciding what you want.
I am actually going to quote the last paragraph first, because what it says is very important:
The reality is that we don’t know exactly why men are exponentially more prone to violence. If we are going to reduce mass shootings, officer-involved killings and the culture of violence in America, however, we need to talk about it.
I bring this up right away because this paragraph is full of fallacies. I will break it down to show you:
The reality is that we don’t know exactly why men are exponentially more prone to violence. Yes, we are pretty sure and the author hits the nail on the head earlier in the article:
Some evolutionary psychologists say that more aggressive men have historically been able to procure more women, food and land.
I have said this before, the preservation and expansion of one’s genetic heritage is our base biological reason for existing. Men do this by wanting to impregnate as many women as possible, thus ensuring their genetic heritage by quantity. Women preserve their genetic heritage by trading unrestricted sexual access to one male in return for the protection by that male of themselves and their children, thus preserving their genetic heritage through quality of breeding and increasing the chance of the individual child to survive to adulthood.
If we are going to reduce mass shootings, officer-involved killings and the culture of violence in America… This is not an American problem, it’s a world-wide issue. You want to talk about a “culture of violence”? Shall we talk about Honor Killings? You may also not realize this, chattel slavery is happening right this second. Over six million people are currently chattel (permanent property, as opposed to Indentured for a number of years) slaves across the globe. Don’t whine about ancient history (antebellum slavery in the United States) when it is current events.
When we talk about “officer-involved” killings, the causes are extremely varied. From the “You’ll never take me alive copper!” kind of criminal to the resisting arrest that escalates to deadly force, to the miscommunication between the police and citizen that leads to the death of the citizen. When a police officer invokes violence or death upon a citizen, it should be investigated and upon conviction in a court of law, harshly punished.
… [W]e need to talk about it. The issues and societal causes that lead to these outcomes are varied, complex and should be talked about.
You better buckle your seatbelts, because that’s pretty much the end of my agreement with Ms. Melissa Warnke, the author of this article.
Let me quote the first paragraph of Ms. Warnke’s article:
On Thursday morning, a fire alarm in the Los Angeles Times’ building went off. Fortunately, the dozens of office alarms I’ve heard over the years have always been drills or misfiring systems. For the first time, instead of begrudgingly grabbing my belongings and traipsing downstairs, I was afraid. For the first time, the thought in my mind wasn’t “drill” but “shooter.”
I am currently analyzing all of the data from the Mass Shooting Tracker website and I have all of their data on “mass shootings” from 2013 until a few days ago. I am currently going through the news articles related to over 1,200 incidents from 1/1/2013 on to “drill down” and get more information beyond the date, city and the numbers of dead and wounded.
I will say that out of those 1,267 incidents, 231 meet the current FBI definition of “Mass Shooting” (3 or more dead). This was over a period of 1,287 days, which works out to be about one every 5.5 days. Out of a population of 300+ million Americans, this means the chances of someone being involved in an “active shooter situation” is extremely remote. Armed with this knowledge, I believe an instant association between the fire alarm and “active shooter” borders on the irrational.
Could it have meant “active shooter?” Yes, because anything is possible. Was it likely? To tell you the truth, an "active shooter" situation in the LA Times building is more likely than that building getting hit by a meteor, which is very, very remote. Should you prepare yourself mentally and physically for such an event? Yes, because being prepared that way will also be of benefit to you in many other situations as well. If you are able to carry a weapon in your state/city, should you? That is something you have to decide, I won’t tell you that you should or shouldn’t. I do believe you should, however, have that option available to you.
Ms. Walke then goes on to mention in passing an article by author Ta-Nehisi Coates titled “the enduring myth of black criminality.” I assure you, I found this intriguing and worthy of much analysis and comment to come later.
The main thrust of Ms. Walke’s article then states:
What we don’t talk about is how the greatest predictor of violence isn’t religion, occupation or race. It’s gender.
In the United States, 98% of those who commit mass shootings are male; 98% of the officers who have shot and killed civilians are male; 90% of those who commit homicide by any means are male; and 80% of those arrested for all violent crimes — murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault — are male.
She then talks about how few times women kill. I will agree with her points here somewhat. Women by and large kill only out of that biological imperative to preserve their offspring. Because they are less strong as men, they use guile and cunning (or superior firepower) to bring their victims to their deaths.
I can only conclude from the main point of the article that “men are the source of all of the violence in the world.” I get the impression that in her perfect world, we must eliminate all testosterone from all men (that evil, aggressive hormone), or failing that, just eliminate men entirely.
This idealized view of men and women belies and denies the base nature of each sex. To ask men not to be aggressive and violent is like asking a hunk of granite rock to not be solid, hard or heavy.
Men for the most part are aggressive and violent only when necessary. Women for the most part are nurturing and communicative. These aspects in isolation do not advance or enhance our progress and society. When these aspects are combined, when we work together, the synergistic effects are fantastic.
I think Ms. Walke and I can agree that unchanneled aggression is where the major problem lies. An elimination of those societal aspects that leaves men idle would be instrumental in the significant decrease of that unwanted aggression.
These people insist that citizens not have the right to defend themselves, yet think it's perfectly acceptable to have armed security to protect them.
And just so all y'all know how the Australians regard personal security, I present this section of an ad from their buy back program after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996:
"Under the latest gun laws, personal and property protection are not longer considered acceptable reasons to possess any type of firearm..."
So, in Australia and Great Britain, you do not have the right or legal ability to defend yourself against any kind of aggressor. I don't think that concept will fly too well in the United States.
Warning: if you are easily upset from aggressive words and actions, run away, take refuge in your safe space and don't read this post.
Seriously, if seeing someone get shot or wounded upsets you, your time is better spent elsewhere.
In the wake of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I present to you two videos, where lay (untrained) people (an activist and two reporters) go through what are known as "shoot/no-shoot" scenarios. When I had my CCW, I got the opportunity to train with systems like this. It is bone-chilling scary how quickly things can and will go south.
First video, a civil-rights activist and the reporter covering the story go through scenarios with people:
Second video, a reporter uses a system similar to what I used:
These videos should give you a better appreciation on what kind of situations police officers face every day. On how they have fractions of a second to decide who lives and who dies. Hesitation will kill the officer every time. The officer doesn't have the luxury to yell "DO OVER!" and try different methods. Once the perpetrator decides to take aggressive action, it's all instinct and reflexes.
And for those of you who didn't think the guy with a grilling skewer was a threat, the below picture is the kind of things that happen in a knife fight:
In this past week, two men were killed by police on video. Yesterday, a sniper killed five Dallas police officers.
This shit has to stop.
I am going to give some initial commentary on the two men who were killed by police. First, however, I am going to tell you things you may or may not know in your brain, you need to know these things in your heart. I have spoken multiple times about the function of the police, this time I am speaking about the person behind the badge.
A police officer is a human being. This means they are imperfect and can make mistakes. They have the same day-to-day stresses and problems that you and I have.
This officer wants to serve his community. You don't go through a police academy and then strap on body armor as part of your work clothes on a whim.
They want to go home at the end of their shift. This means that they will do whatever to protect themselves as best they can.
Officers are trained to establish control in every encounter. If the officer loses control of a situation, there is a good chance they will be killed. They do this to protect themselves and others. The police also cannot lose a fight, ever. If an officer loses a fight, other officers may pay the price.
With every encounter, the officer takes his life in his hands. a 90 year-old white lady can pull a gun just as fast and render that officer just as dead as a 16 year-old black male. The officer doesn't know if you and your family are out for a drive with your family, or if you and your girlfriend just knocked over a liquor store with the baby sleeping in the car.
When it all goes south, when the fists and bullets start flying, the officer will take it from both sides. From the criminal who wants to kill him, and his political superiors who have the luxury to parse every millisecond of the encounter from their easy chairs. The criminal can only take the officers life. The politician can take his livelihood, his character and his dignity.
Take these to heart.
In both of these cases, not all the facts are out yet. I am commenting on what I do know and what I can infer from what has been presented.
The first man to die, Alton Sterling, was well known to the Baton Rouge PD. Although the officers who responded to the call didn't know Alton, he (Alton) knew he had an 18+ year record and he was wanted for failure to register as a sex offender. People in that kind of position do not welcome any kind of police encounter and will do anything to get out of that situation. This led to a scuffle, then a fight. When you start to be aggressive with the police, there will be an immediate escalation on their part.
It is currently unknown why the officer drew his weapon and shot the man. I'm sure something will come out about what happened.
For the other man, Philando Castile, this man is a polar opposite from Alton Sterling. It sounds like Philando was a fine young man, an upstanding member of his community. It seems his mistake was too much enthusiasm. It seems Philando initially did the right thing, which was to inform the officer up front that he had a weapon. The evidence is currently unclear, but having legally carried a weapon in the past, I am conjecturing that Philando reached for his wallet quickly and/or without the officer telling him to do so. When a person who has a weapon rapidly and without direct orders moves their dominant hand to their hip, it can be for a wallet or a weapon. The officer can only think it can be for a weapon, else the officer will be dead. I can move my hand from the steering wheel, grab the weapon on my hip, clear the holster, bring it to bear on the officer and fire in less than 0.75 seconds. Say this out loud, "one one-thou-" because that's all you're going to get out before I put a bullet in you. At arms length, the officer can only react and that will likely be too late.
In response to these tragic events, a lone gunman decided to shoot multiple people, killing 5 Dallas police officers. Officers who were providing security for a Black Lives Matter rally. You know, where they shout about wanting dead police officers.
I am sad. Sad for both Alton and Philando as well as the wounded and killed in Dalas.
Over the past few years, information has leaked daily about Hillary Rodham Clinton's email escapades. Let's put this into perspective.
While Secretary of State, Clinton had a private email server in her home. She had zero security on it, making the Internet equivalent of a public message board at your local supermarket as far as anyone could read any messages on it. Because Her Eminence did not want to be bothered with all of the security requirements of her position, she ordered her staff to transcribe highly classified information off a government network that has no connection to the Internet at all and send that highly classified information over an unsecured connection on the Internet to a unsecured server so she could read it.
The information that passed through this unencrypted email server was sensitive beyond belief. Let's just say for a moment that we got into a conflict with Russia or China. The Secretary of State would be a major player in resolving the crisis, so she would have had military and political information (both sides) available to her. Things like what forces were available to both sides, what our objectives were in resolving the crisis and how far we were willing to go in the crisis to reach those objectives. If the bad guys had this information also, don't you think this would give the enemy a great advantage to resolve the issue to their benefit and not ours?
If you don't think that the enemies of the United States weren't reading her emails as fast as she did, I have a bridge in Memphis I want to sell you. Cheap. There is no way professional State-sponsored hackers could miss the existence of this email server and then gain access to it in seconds. Mind you, the last I heard was 110 emails were classified so highly they couldn't even release redacted versions.
Then on June 20th, Bill Clinton met with the Attorney General Loretta Lynch as the two were "passing each other" on the tarmac at the Phoenix airport. Bill was waiting and after she landed, Bill got aboard her aircraft and they had a 30 minute private conversation "just catching up, talking about grandchildren and things like that." There is no way this meeting was by chance. If you believe that, I have another bridge next to the first one I can sell you. Package discount. Considering the importance of AG Lynch, her schedule outside of the Beltway is tightly controlled and regulated. For security reasons, they have to limit her "exposed" time (not in a secured and controlled area) to a minimum. That 30 minutes had to be figured into her schedule.
And today, two weeks after that meeting the FBI releases a statement that they do not recommend any charges against Hillary. Of course AG Lynch will "follow the recommendations of the FBI" and not file any charges against our next presumptive President.
The evidence in the public domain alone against Hillary is the equivalent of her on video executing a citizen just because the citizen dared speak to Her Eminence without permission. Her guilt is unquestionable. A first year law student could successfully prosecute the case. Yet, FBI Director James Comey stated:
"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 information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."
I'm sorry, intent is not the issue. The actions are the relevant issue here. Like a punk street racer, who didn't intend to lose control of his car while racing which caused him to run over and kill an entire Girl Scout Troop, his actions made it clear he did and that punk should face at least manslaughter charges. Likewise, Hillary may not have intended to divulge the deepest secrets of the United States, however her careless actions let that happen. These actions have put every man and women in uniform at a grave unnecessary risk, and compromised the general security of every Citizen of the United States. She needs to be judged by Citizens of this country (because, you, know, no one else is her peer) and tried for her actions.
Not a lot of people have noticed this on a conscious level, but there is a movement afoot for something nefarious. There are long-view plans underway, and many are just falling in line without questioning.
We celebrate holidays like New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.
And then we have this weekend, The 4th of July. What ever happened to calling it Independence Day?
Someone, somewhere is trying to divest us of this notion of being independent. Because if we think of this holiday as just "The 4th of July," why not make it "The 24th of July?" I have no emotional attachment to the phrase "The 4th of July" but I (and I am sure many of you as well) attach great meaning and significance to the words "Independence Day."
Never before in history had a group of people successfully broken away from the government that had control over them, especially the most powerful country in existence. Never before had a government been formed by the People with the concept that the People told the government what to do, instead of the other way around. A concept that the powers of the government were limited to specific and declared areas and the government was in no way to infringe upon the freedom of the People.
Someone wants us to forget those concepts. Someone wants us to forget our legacy and not think about how our natural condition as citizens of the United States we are not to be unduly encumbered by our government as we perform our daily lives.
Think about that the next time you say "Happy 4th of July."
On 7/1/2016, a new law takes effect in Tennessee. One that will make businesses liable for their anti-gun policies. Tennessee Senate bill 1736.
Starting 7/1/16, if a CCW license holder enters a place of business (or while in their parking lot traveling to/from said business) that by their own policy (meaning the business is not required by law to ban firearms, such as schools/Government buildings, etc.) bans firearms and is robbed/wounded/killed by a criminal, the CCW holder has the right to sue the f'in crap out of that place of business.
What this means is that if a business that doesn't have to restrict a citizens ability to defend themselves, that business will be held civilly liable for any injury incurred by another unlawful act sustained by the CCW holder or those with them.
I doubt this will not cause any "NO WEAPONS" signs to come down until after the first couple of multi-million dollar lawsuits.
