I have been wanting to write about this since I learned about the walkout by students in Colorado. It just never came out in a coherent fashion until tonight. "History is written by the victors" said Winston Churchill. The word "History" actually comes from "His story," which meant the winners got to tell the tale of what happened. So, there will always be a slant and an agenda in any history teachings. Ben Carson, a possible Republican Presidential candidate for 2016 is now on the record against the AP US History. Here is what Ben said:

“I am a little shocked quite frankly looking at the AP course in American history that’s being taught in high schools across our country right now. There’s only two paragraphs in there about George Washington. George Washington, believe it or not. Little or nothing about Martin Luther King. A whole section on slavery and how evil we are. A whole section about Japanese internment camps. A whole section about how we wiped out American Indians with no mercy. I mean I think most people when they finish that course, they’d be ready to sign up for ISIS. This is what we are doing to the young people in our nation. We have got to stop this silliness. We have to stop crucifying ourselves. Have we made mistakes as a nation? Of course we have. Why? Because we are people and all people make mistakes.”

Now, I personally do not like some of his positions, especially on gun control. Realistically, I will never agree 100% with any candidate, unless I run for office myself.

As in all elections, you have to look at a candidates positions and decide which one is closer to your own values. But I digress.

History is very messy. The people involved are very complex. Famous people in history have done things you might like, other things they have done you might abhor. With the exception of one person in the entire realm of human history, that's just the way it is. Any history course that over-focuses on either the good parts or the bad parts is an inadequate course.

The teachers that use the syllabus have a flexibility in what and how they present the information. I do agree with Ben here. If all you teach is how Americans wiped out the Native Americans, enslaved Africans and tried to exterminate the Japanese people, you are teaching our children that this country is evil. No one truly views themselves as evil, so I can see how teaching nothing but "Evil American Imperialism" can result in some of these students wanting to fight against what they have been told we are.

History is very complex. For instance, let me speak on slavery for a moment. A lot of people do not know this (because it isn't taught), about where the men and women who arrived in America as slaves started. In Africa, wars have been fought for thousands of years over shades of blackness between tribes. Tribe A didn't like tribe B, for the sole reason tribe B was lighter-skinned than tribe A. Not "White vs. Black," rather "coffee colored" vs. "chocolate colored." So, tribe A would attack tribe B and either wipe them all out, or make slaves of them. A lot of these captured men and women would be taken to the West Coast of Africa, where they were sold to Dutch traders and eventually ended up in the United States as slaves.

By the way, slavery is still going on today, this hour, this minute in Africa. Maybe they'll get around to abolishing it next year. Don't complain about ancient history when it's current events.

In case you didn't know it, there were free Black men who were slave owners themselves. There was also at least one Regiment of black slaves who fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War. And just in case you thought slaves were used for dangerous work, quite the opposite. Many Irish offered themselves as indentured servants (which is basically a fancy way of saying "white slave") in order to be able to emigrate to America. The difference was, an indentured servant served for only a period of time, generally five to seven years.

At the end of their term, they became free themselves. One of the most dangerous jobs in the South was offloading the cotton bales from the ships that worked their way up and down the rivers of the South. It was the Irish indentured servants who "caught" the cotton bales being offloaded from the riverboats. If a line broke and a 500 pound bale fell on an Irishman, who really cared? If a slave was injured or killed, the owner was out a significant sum of money, spent in acquiring the slave and the potential income to be derived from the slaves labors.

Concerning the Native Americans, please tell me, when in the history of man where this never happened before? When the Romans moved into what is now Germany and England, they encountered the Germanic Tribes and other peoples like the Picts. Whenever a group of people move into a region where the natives were of a lower technological level already lived, the lower technology always lost. Very few borders in the world today are where they are because of "mutual agreement." They are there because one group took that land, or had it taken from them by force.

When Early Industrial Age Colonists came to America, they encountered a Stone Age society, namely the Native Americans. The Industrial society took the land from the Stone Age society. I am not saying this was good or bad, right or wrong, it happened and all the wishing in the world won't change the past. The United States is not perfect. It was created by flawed men. There are many instances in our history we should be ashamed about. There are also many instances where we should be proud of that we have done.

As a people, we have tried to do the right thing. Our forefathers fought for and created a new type of society, where the government did what the People told them to do, not the other way around. Americans invented the light bulb, plastics, the aircraft and a million other technological advances that changed the world, for the worse and the better.

Teachers and parents should teach our children how to think, not what to think. You do that by talking about history, with all of the known facts and the context of why those people did what they did. Only then will you truly learn the lessons of history.

I've tried to relate before using an analogy how health care in this country works. Here it is again, because this is very relevant to the article I found.

You have a village of say, 1,000 people. The village has 1,000 acres of land to feed the people. The population is pretty stable. Everyone is happy. Then, along come 100 more people. Refugees, migrants, it doesn't matter. All of a sudden there are more people than the land can support. There is no way to increase the usable farmland quickly enough to support the sudden population growth.

In a situation like this, so there are only two options of action. In the first option, the villagers drive off the newcomers until the population is again reduced to a level the land can support. Or, the villagers can welcome the newcomers and everyone cuts back on the amount of food they eat. Essentially, the entire population slowly starves until the weakest die off and the population stabilizes again.

For those of you who don't get analogies, the village people are the people who pay for medical insurance. The food is the doctors and the additional people are the uninsured. A doctor can see only so many patients a week. That is a finite number and there is no way around it. If you increase the demand (the number of patients) then the percentage of those actually seen will go down. Or, everybody will receive less "face time" with the doctor, thus reducing their quality of care. It's simple math and there is no way to get around it. It is currently taking about 10 years of time and at over $250,000 in cash to turn a person into a doctor.

The number of licensed physicians in the United States is growing, just not as fast as the demand for their services. We are already at a deficit of available care and it's only going to get worse. And it only gets worse from there. The article I found, Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges lays this out pretty clearly. The article talks about how the "Affordable Care Act" pays significantly less than even Medicare. For every $1.00 private insurance pays out (for a given test, procedure, office visit, whatever), Medicare pays 80 cents and ACA plans pay about 60 cents. Think about that for a minute. You provide a service, and you normally charge $100 for this service. Your overall costs for delivering this service is about $75. Tom doesn't have a problem with what you charged, and pays you the full $100. Dick is a tightwad, and only pays you $80. You still turned a profit, but you would have to start going the "quantity vs. quality" route to make a profit you could live on. Providing your service to Harry is mandated by the government, and they only pay you $60 for that service that costs you $75 and Tom is happy to pay you $100 for.

What would you do? Medical offices are a business. Most offices today staff multiple doctors because you need nurses, medical technicians, lab staff, staff to perform the transcription into the medical records and insurance specialists to make sure the information is submitted to the proper insurance agency, in the proper form and in a timely manner. So doctors combine their services to share the administrative burden. No wonder almost 25% of doctors are not participating in ACA plans. To jump back to our original analogy, let's say those 100 extra people were "more expensive" food-wise than the original 1,000 villagers. Where the original villagers were at a "one acre feeds one person" ratio, these new people need 1.25 acres to feed one person. This only exacerbates the food shortage if the new people are accepted into the village. The second part of the article is even more chilling than the "below cost" payments.

An MGMA study indicates that 75% of ACA patients that had seen doctors had chosen plans with high deductibles. Given that most of the patients are low-income, doctors are concerned that the patients cannot meet the deductibles and they will get stuck with the bill.   ...HHS requires that insurers cover customers for an additional 90 days after they have stopped paying their premiums: the insurer covers the first 30 - but, it's up to the doctor to recoup payment for the last 60 days. This is the number one reason providers are opting to not participate in the exchange plans. Currently, about a million people have failed to pay their premiums and had their plans canceled.

So, these doctors face probably higher costs in the services provided to those with ACA plans, they get paid less than what it costs them, and they will likely have to perform a lot of services "unreimbursed," because it won't be free. I looked into an ACA plan to cover my wife and I when I was laid off back in February. I was receiving $247 a week, or just over $1,000 a month in unemployment. That money paid for what the food stamps didn't cover, utilities, Internet (so I could do job searching), a car payment/gas/insurance so I could make it to interviews and so on. Let's just say I had a lot of month left at the end of the money. If I wanted health coverage, I would have had to pay almost $225 a month just for the premiums, and the plan didn't shell out a penny until I racked up at least $5,300 per person. Um, yeah. That didn't fly. There was no way I could afford the premiums, let alone the out-of-pocket expenses. No wonder 70% of the physicians in California have not signed up with Covered California. If you're one of those "don't bring a problem to me unless you have an idea on how to solve it" crowd, here are my suggestions on how to lessen this.

• Make health insurance portable. Health insurance being provided by the employer as a benefit started in WWII, when wage controls limited how much people could be paid. As an extra incentive, employers started offering retirement and health insurance benefits to "sweeten the pot." You need to be able to buy it on the open market so you can keep the same plan from job to job.
• Make health insurance nationwide. Currently, health plans are limited by state borders. If you can take your health plan with you no matter where you travel across the country, this would help with costs because it would increase competition.
• Limit liability. Limiting the level of liability (otherwise known as Tort Reform) to gross negligence or "reasonably foreseeable" circumstances. Leaving a sponge or forceps in you during an operation is gross negligence. Suing a doctor because your loved one was seriously handicapped or died because of a condition that only five people in the world have ever had it is not "reasonably foreseeable." Medicine is an art, not a science. Scientific methods are used to narrow down what is wrong with you, however it really comes down to the doctor's level of experience and treating your symptoms until the body heals itself. Diagnosis is trial and error at its best. Limiting liability will lower the doctors costs on that pesky insurance, and they can pass the savings on to you.
• Diversify the medical professionals. When you go to your Primary Care Physician's office today, you expect, nay demand, to see THE DOCTOR, no matter what is wrong with you. A medical office is like a Naval Battle Group. You have an Aircraft Carrier in the middle (the doctor), which is surrounded by smaller ships that support the Carrier. The Carrier does not need to be involved in the hunting down of submarines, that's what the Frigates and Destroyers are there for. If you have the sniffles, it would be way more cost effective for you to be examined by a Paramedic, who would diagnose you, then take it to a Physicians Assistant or the doctor themselves for any prescription needed. A doctor, two PA's and four or six Paramedics would provide almost the same level of care to three to four times the patients and a lower cost. You should not see the doctor unless there is something significantly wrong with you.

Regulating the insurance companies on how little they will be paid, then demand how much they will pay out is the best way to ruin them. Which, considering who (as a group) is running this country right now, just might be the object of the exercise.

I've been meaning to comment on this for a while.

Back in the 80's, I was stationed at the Coronado Amphibious Base in San Diego. Two separate incidents while I was out there illustrated how screwed up California really is.

First incident: A bumbling burglar in the process of breaking into a school, broke through a skylight and fell about three floors, seriously injuring himself. He sued the school system (I forget the basis) and won. So, the school had not only had to repair the damage done by his stupidity, they also had to support him and his medical expenses for the rest of his life.

Second incident: Someone made a joking remark to the head of CDOT (California Department of Transportation) about, "How motorcycle riders keep falling off their motorcycles." She got --><-- that close to creating a regulation that mandated seat belts on motorcycles. If you have ever ridden on a motorcycle, I don't have to explain to you why this is an extremely bad idea.

So, now the Marin County DA has sued and won $1.6 Million against Lowe's because their 2x4's are actually 1.5" by 3.5." He sued them under some "truth in advertising" law they have. I'm sorry, but the DA is an idiot. No, I'm not sorry. He's still an idiot. I am 53 years old, and I've known that a 2x4 is actually 1.5" by 3.5" since my dad taught me how to read a ruler when I was seven years old. It's an industry standard, and it has been for longer than I've been around. I am very glad I don't live there anymore. In some ways, it's worse than Guam.

Here you go. If you think you need to go cash only, here is a great reason why: Law Lets I.R.S. Seize Accounts on Suspicion, No Crime Required. In this case, if you consistently deposit less than $10,000 in cash into your bank account, the IRS can take the money. Period. No charges, because you haven't done anything wrong.

The real kick in the guts is, you have to prove a negative, i.e. you are innocent to get it back. And it can take most, if not more of the money that was seized to get it back. Now I am a self-admitted old "fuddy-duddy" who actually reads the Constitution, which, the last time I looked, the 5th Amendment reads, "...nor be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law;" This most assuredly a deprivation of both life and property. You lose your livelihood by being unable to sustain your business, and that cash is your property. Your government at work, folks.

I really don't find this surprising. Survey Shocker: Liberal profs admit they’d discriminate against conservatives in hiring, advancement.

Dan Ackroyd, as Ray in Ghostbusters, said, "Personally, I like the University, they gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."

Colleges and Universities today are money making machines. And young people are willingly turning over a large chuck of their future income to acquire a piece of pretty paper that says they have a degree. Too bad most of the degrees that a student can acquire today have little practical value in the commercial side of the world. Having a Masters Degree in English, with a major in "Comparative Literature" has literally zero use for any job of any worth.

I know of Case Workers who ran up $40,000 in student loan debt to obtain a Masters in Social Work so they could qualify for the Case Worker position... Which earns about $32,000 a year. So, they will struggle with a below average income while having almost a house note on their backs for most of their working lives. So, it is not surprising that those who remain in academia for the "softer" degrees are overwhelmingly Liberal.

They don't have to produce anything of a substantive nature. I have been called mentally ill because of my Conservatism before and I refuse to "return the favor." However, I will say that the views of Liberals have little basis in reality. So, it really is little wonder that the overwhelming majority of the academic staff at our schools of higher learning are Liberal.

And, of course, they have no problem in discriminating against a person for their political beliefs in the workplace. I personally believe if you do your job (in this case impart the necessary subject matter to the students) without political bias, I don't care what your personal political persuasion happens to be. I find, time after time, Liberals have no qualms about doing the same exact actions (discrimination against minorities and females, etc.) that they accuse their opponents of doing. The mental gymnastics they must go through to justify what they decry must make Nadia Comăneci weep.

In 1993, Nathan Dunlap, a recently fired employee of a Chuck-E-Cheeses in Aurora, Colorado shot and killed four workers and injured a fifth. He was caught and convicted and sentenced to death for the heinous executions he committed. He has sat on death row since his conviction.

Dunlap had a date set to be executed in 2013, however the Governor, John Hickenlooper (D) issued a "temporary reprieve." Today, Hickenlooper is facing a serious challenger for the governorship. His response? Basically, unless he is re-elected and "if his opponent makes a political football out of the death penalty or specifically the Dunlap case" his response will be to issue full clemency to an animal who executed four people.

Think about that for a minute. John Hickenlooper is saying, "Keep me in office or I will turn an animal who has no conscience or compunction about killing other people loose into the community." Sore loser, temper tantrum, whatever you call it, he should be removed from office just for implying he would put a community at risk just because he got fired. On some level, John Hickenlooper shares some qualities of Nathan Dunlap. Dunlap shot five people because he was upset over being fired. John Hickenlooper is willing to set a sociopath loose on innocent citizens because he would be upset if he (might be) fired from his job.

SWATing, for those of you who don't know what it means, is to call the police and misrepresent a situation using words like "active shooter" so they respond with maximum force. It seems that some (about 5%) of commenters on places like the Facebook page for Moms Demand Action, or gunfreezone.net (no, I will not link to them) are actively advocating that you call the police and "misrepresent" (e.g. lie) about the actions of a person who is open carrying their firearm. Here is a nice example:

This is somewhat similar to what happened to John Crawford III, where a caller to 911 grossly misrepresented Mr. Crawford's actions, which lead the police to approach with a "shoot first and ask questions later" mindset. Mr. Crawford died as a result of these "mischaracterizations."

If you are thinking of calling 911 to report a visibly armed citizen, just to "ruin his day" and/or "get him what he deserves," all I can say is DON'T. This is one of those "sound good" ideas that isn't a "good, sound" idea. In Tennessee where I live, if you were to see an armed citizen (you honestly don't know if they are properly licensed or not) who is minding their own business and you call 911 and infer an "active shooter" situation where you state the armed citizen is brandishing his firearm in a reckless manner, or shooting other people, that is basically filing a false police report. At minimum, that is a class D felony, punishable by 2-12 years in prison. Under the right circumstances, it can be bumped up to a class C felony, which is 3-15 years in prison. It could also open you up to a personal liability lawsuit by either the person you called the police on, or their surviving family members, which is what looks like is going to happen in the Crawford incident.

So, if you get the urge to teach someone a lesson and you lie to the police, the end result is YOU end up in prison and with a hefty multi-million dollar lawsuit judgement against you that will be awarded to you after you finish your time in "the big house." Good luck with that.

I found this article, Grimes Staffers Suggest Kentucky Dem Lies About Coal Support, and I think it illustrates the problem with politics today.

Alison Grimes, along with her staff and volunteers, showcase what is inherently wrong with the system of politics in this country today. Project Veritas has a video that starts off with a TV commercial, where Alison Grimes is shown firing a shotgun, then she talks about "not being Barack Obama." She implies she is pro-gun and states she is pro-coal, both of which are make-or-break issues in Kentucky. The rest of the video shows her staff making statements in front of a hidden camera where they admit she has to lie about being pro-coal so she can get elected.

This is wrong on so many levels, primarily in the "Do the right things for the right reasons" category. Let's take this apart piece-by-piece.

First of all, the mindset. If you get elected to any office, you are supposed to be a servant and representative of the people from your district. A voice of their wants, needs and desires. You do not misrepresent yourself to get elected so you can enact your own agenda. You are there to do the work of the People, not yourself. During the process of running for office, a candidate is supposed to state what they truly believe in, their values and principles. You also state what you want to do, if you are elected. If your words convince a majority of the people you would represent to vote for you, then you get to represent them. Again, if you have to lie to get elected, you are not a representative of the people who elected you.

When this great country first enacted the present Constitution, the men who ran for public office saw this as a sacred trust. They were humbled and honored to be elected. They were all businessmen of one sort or another, who would do a few terms and then gracefully bow out and go back to their businesses. Today, this is a cash cow for those who get elected. Top of the line pay, easy work hours, big benefits, and lots of companies and organizations willing to donate to an officials "re-election campaign." Of course, if the official decides to retire, he gets his full pay for life, along with that top-tier medical care, and he (or she) gets to keep what is left over in their campaign funds. Not to mention they can then get a cushy “consulting” job at one of the lobbying organizations as well. I do not know what the mix is for the 535 members of Congress, but I am quite sure a lot of them have never had a significant career outside of the political world.

We are, unfortunately, in the era of “Professional Politicians.” Men and women who have created a government so bloated and complex that only they can understand and control it. And the People are all too happy to let it happen.

And who do we elect? People who think Guam will capsize if we put too many people on it, or think the Constitution is 400 years old. I think Patrick Henry said this very well: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” Here’s some of my suggestions:

• No member of Congress is eligible for re-election if a net deficit has occurred during the term of that Congress.
• A Congressperson receives ZERO pay for their work in Congress. They are issued a Food Stamp card like a regular family according to their family income and size along with a free apartment in the Congressional Apartment Building. It’s an 800 square foot studio type apartment. If they need to throw a party or something, there is a communal party area on the roof.
• Congress cannot exempt themselves from any law. Did you know they don’t pay Social Security taxes, as well as a host of other things we have to do that they don’t?
• They must obtain their healthcare through Healthcare.gov.
• They are free to raise as much as they want in re-election campaigns. At the end of every election cycle, any excess funds win-or-lose, are given to the Federal General Fund.
• Any Bills are to be read aloud by the sponsor and co-sponsor(s) when it is introduced. If any amendments or changes are made, the entire bill must be re-read.
• No business can be conducted outside of regular business hours (9 AM to 5 PM local time). This will end those “Midnight bill passing events.”

Those are my “reasonable” ideas. I personally think we should move Election Day to the day after tax day. I won’t specifically say April 16^th because they would just change tax day to November.

This came to my attention this morning:

Now, just to make the best "apples to apples" comparison, I went to Gallup and found out what each man's approval numbers were for their 22nd quarter of their time in office, which falls in this time frame.

Bush had a 38.5% approval rating, while Obama had a 43.2% approval rating. Counting the days between January 1st and August 31st, there are 243 days. Dividing that 243 by the number of reports, we find that Bush averaged a report every 2 days (actually just a hair under at 1.95), while Obama rated one report every 27 days. Again, my math shows that for every report on President Obama's approval rating, almost 14 reports were made on President Bush's rating. I do not have the time to go back and check out all 133 articles to see what the tone and emotional indexes were for each one, but I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts most (if not all) of Bush's articles were of a negative tone, while Obama's were at least neutral, if not positive toned. Despite all of the hammering on Bush (at that 14:1 ratio) his job approval rating was still only 5% lower than Obama's. And the Mainstream Media wonders why they have a big credibility and integrity problem.

Since I started this blog, I have posted on each 9/11 and gave my thoughts on what is going on about this day. I am still angry. Not only against those who caused 9/11, but my own government as well, who have aided those who would hurt us. I purposefully did not watch the President's speech last night. I don't watch TV anymore, and I had more important things to do, like watching paint dry. After reading his speech this morning, I am neither amazed nor disappointed. I am disheartened. He wants to appear to be a strong leader, but his words and actions reveal his weakness. "Targeted airstrikes" will not work. They have never worked.

Now let's make two things clear: ISIL is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL's victims have been Muslim... ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. And it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.

First of all, 99.9999+% of those who belong to or ally themselves with ISIS/ISIL profess themselves to be of the Muslim faith. Radical Muslims to be sure, but still Muslims. The Quran does not have an "Old and New Testament" like the Christian Bible does. There is a lot of death and killing for the glory of God in the Old Testament. The coming of Jesus changed that. It still took until the modern day for Christians to stop killing Christians over the differences in their beliefs (Anyone remember the Troubles in Ireland over Catholic vs. Protestant? I do.)

To be perfectly honest, I don't care what the Quran has to say about anything. It is not part of my personal religion. But if you at least glance through it, you can see the Quran talks about three broad groups, Believers (Muslims), the Kafir or Infidel, (those who reject faith) and ′Ahl al-Kitāb, People of the Book (Christians and Jews). The term "infidel" is often misused and is assumed to encompass Christians and Jews, when it does not.

So, as most of us have known for a very long time, any book that is sectioned like the Bible or Quran, can be used selectively to take things out of context and push whatever agenda the person wants. No constructive religion actively promotes violence. I am not saying Islam is or is not a constructive religion. There are two billion Muslims in the world, and less than 1% of them are the ones causing all of the trouble.

To be honest, I am sick of this war. Too many of our best and brightest have come home in coffins, missing limbs or forever changed because of what they experienced. If anything, the number of radical Islamists has grown. This new generation of radical Islamists have become more vicious and violent then ever before. They have no moral restraint about killing everyone who does not believe exactly as they do.

So, we have two real-life choices, neither of which our Illustrious President has presented as an option. What he promises to do only reinforces the fact that he is a weak, ineffectual man in a position of power.

First, we leave this to the Muslims. You guys work it out. If the peaceful Muslims want to do something about ISIS/ISIL, let them do it. The United States will neither help nor hinder. ISIS/ISIL can rattle their sabers and talk all the talk they want. The next time a Radical Muslim state or organization captures or kills a United States Citizen, we will immediately proceed to the second option.

Second, we kill everybody in the region. We start off by nuking Mecca, Medina and every population center in the Levant area, outside of Israel. That would be Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. After it cools off, we land troops and we kill every man, woman and child, their goats, camels and sheep. "No stone shall set upon another" kind of desolation.

If we have a leader, a true leader at the helm of this country, we would be at least respected, if not feared. Instead, we have a "community organizer" who was totally unqualified for the position. The President of the United States needs to have a set of brass balls the size of shotputs that go "KLANG KLANG KLANG" when he walks. I would much rather be respected than feared. However, if any group or country wants to do us harm, They need to know in their heart of hearts we will kill 10,000 of them for every death they cause us.

I found this, and had to say something: Student tackled by officers over cell phone tells her side of the story.

What got me about the article was the incredulousness of the reporter, this little princess should have been allowed to do what she wanted to do.

First of all, in the United States, we are a nation of laws. The laws are meant to apply equally to all. If you think there should be a law about something, feel free to petition your lawmakers to have a law made. If you feel that a law (or policy, in this case) is unjust, you are equally free to petition the appropriate agency to change or abolish the law.

I get that the young lady is concerned about her mother. I know what that is like. That being said, she broke a school policy, the consequences are which you lose your phone. She knew this was against school policy, and she knew the consequences of disobeying that policy. I guess she felt either the circumstances would excuse her from obeying the policy, or they just didn't apply to her in the first place. This young lady refused to give up her phone, at least twice. She refused an Assistant Principal and the security guards order once, before she was taken down and it was forcibly taken from her.

I want to be perfectly clear here: You will NEVER win a fight with a police officer. N-E-V-E-R. Their job is to enforce the laws of the land. If they believe you have violated a law, their job is to arrest you. If they say you are under arrest and you fight or refuse, they are authorized to get as many other officers they need to subdue you, using any and all of the tools at their disposal. So, if you want to be shot, tazed or maced, please feel free to resist. If you are unjustly arrested, you cooperate with the officer then and make your case to the District Attorney to drop the charges or Judge to beat the charges later. There is a time, place and method to resist unjust laws and work to change them. Fighting with the police is not that time or place.

I will say, this is NSFW due to language. Listen to what he has to say. Open your eyes, mind heart and ears. There is some deep stuff in this. "There will never be external peace until there is first internal peace."

This came up in my news search: Senate Joint Resolution 19. This Resolution has zero chance of even being introduced into the House, but it is telling that the Liberals have no compunction about distorting the Constitution to further their political ends. They must feel very confident of their victory to move in such an open manner. These Senators (I have given all of the sponsors below) are apparently trying to make a Constitutional Amendment to limit the money in politics. Before we get to the "final version, follow the link above and read what the prior version of the amendment was. It's mind-blowing.

It reads:

Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

Section 2. Congress and the States shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation, and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections. ``Section 3. Nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the States the power to abridge the freedom of the press.''

So, the "power of the press" is not to be abridged. How special. So, the media (newspapers, TV and other media), which are overwhelmingly Liberal, are not restricted in their syncopate prostrating before their next "Chosen." They are free to use their publications and shows to do "fluff pieces" and "positive promotion articles" to speak on the positive aspects of whom they decide they want to lead us. The Liberal Press will also ignore their The Chosen One's "mistakes," like a Felony a few years ago, or their shady dealing that no one knows if it broke the law or not, because the DOJ was told to "lay off" The Chosen One. They are also equally free to do the "tough investigative journalism" to disclose that the opposition candidate once kicked a puppy when he was eight and lead the evening news every night for a week with a hit-piece after hit-piece on "puppy-kicker Jones." The rest of us, we get to have it decided for us how much we can spend or what we can say. Let's take this apart, shall we?

Section 1. To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.

First of all, we are a Republic, not a Democracy. Also the words "...protect the integrity of government and the electoral process..." tells right there that those in power are willing to do anything to stay in power, including perverting the Constitution to do so. To allow those in power to decide who can spend how much insures their grip on power in perpetuity. Those they want to join them in power will be given "waivers" or whatever to make sure they get to spend more than their opponents.

Section 2. Congress and the States shall have power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation, and may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.

This directly nullifies the "corporations are people too" ruling by the SCOTUS (which was more than just that). To insure the capriciousness of their actions, they use the word "may" in the phrase "...may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law..." So exceptions can (and will) be made, and I assure you those exceptions will be at least 90%/10% in favor of those "people, corporations or artificial entities" who espouse Liberal ideals.

Just so you know who is responsible for this corruption of the Constitution, here are those Senators: Sponsor: Tom Udall (D-NM) Original Co-Sponsors: Michael Bennett (D-CO), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jon Tester (D-MT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Christopher Coons (D-DE), Angus King, Jr. (I-ME), Christopher Murphy (D-CT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Al Frankin (D-MN), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Mark Udall (D-CO). Other Cosponsors: Tim Johnson (D-SD), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Jack Reed (D-RI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Mark Begich (D-AK), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Kirstin Gillibrand (D-NY), Kay Hagen (D-NC), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Edward Markey (D-MA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), John Marsh (D-MT), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Harry Reid (D-NV), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Thomas Carper (D-DE), Patty Murray (D-WA), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), John Rockefeller IV (D-VW), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Manchin III (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA) and Carl Levin (D-MI). That's 47 of 53 Democrat Senators, and both Independents. It would have been a shorter list to say who didn't help sponsor the bill.

Remember this come election time.

The word Indoctrination is defined as, "often refers to religious ideas, when you're talking about a religious environment that doesn't let you question or criticize those beliefs. The Latin word for "teach," doctrina is the root of indoctrinate, and originally that's just what it meant." It is a neutral word, meaning it can be used for or against your ideas and beliefs.

In today's lexicon, it is usually referred to as "a training away from where we want the person to believe or think." Children are intellectual sponges. They are raised and trained to parrot back what they have learned until they are able to reason for themselves. This initial training is the foundation on how they will think and perceive the world for the rest of their lives. If a child is taught to think for themselves, or to let others think for them, the first few years of school is where either of these are indoctrinated and instilled into them. Too many parents surrender this foundational indoctrination to the schools. Which is why the following picture is so disturbing:

This is a picture of a child's school worksheet, supposedly produced in compliance with Common Core. It asks the child to use contractions to reword the statement and make it less wordy.

It starts out simple enough, but do you see the shift toward blindly accepting authority?

1. The job of a president is not easy. Yes, I can agree with that. The most powerful person in the world has to make tough choices every day.

2. The people of a nation do not always agree. Again, true. If we all agreed, we'd be part of a hive mind instead of individuals.

3. The choices of the president affect everyone. Three out of three. What he decides to do (or not do) affects everyone in the country to some degree.

4. He makes sure the laws of the country are fair. Umm, no. The job of the President is to enforce all of the countries laws. It does not matter if he likes them or not, he swore to uphold all of the laws. He can veto bills he doesn't like, however under the Constitution, Congress makes the laws and the President enforces them.

5. The commands of government officials must be obeyed by all. BZZZZZZT!!! Wrong answer! If the laws are unjust, if the "commands of government officials" violate the law of your basic freedoms, then hell no are you supposed to obey them!

The power of the government derives its power from the consent of the governed. The Citizen has an obligation to disobey laws that violate the Constitution. The capriciousness of laws imposed on the Colonies by King George III was the very reason why we rebelled in the first place.

6. The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation. Way wrong! No way! If the individual were to be subsumed into the whole, then the very foundation, the very reason for the existence of this country will be destroyed. We are a nation of individuals, all acting in our own best interest. As long as our interests betters ourselves and those around us, without detracting from others, we individually enhance the well-being of our nation.

When you surrender your wants and needs to a government official (which #5 says you must obey) then you are allowing them to think for you. That is an anathema to everything the United States was founded upon.

A teacher is supposed to teach their students how to think, not what to think. This course change is the culmination of years of work in the gradual reshaping of our educational system. The Liberal belief that everybody (other then themselves, of course) is not smart enough to think for themselves. The people below the Liberals, in their twisted way of thinking, must be "reshaped" until they do think and act "correctly." Read Nineteen Eighty-Four and This Perfect Day. If we do not stop this Liberal onslaught, one of these will be our inevitable outcome. Either we will be in perpetual terror, or we will be ants. I do not like either outcome.

I have waited this long before commenting on the shooting of Michael Brown because I like to have facts in hand, not hearsay and suppositions.

So, in what I have read and have pieced together, these are the sequence of events:

1. Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson committed a "strong-arm robbery," where physical violence is used, but no weapon is present. Brown left with a box of Swisher Sweet cigars.

2) Brown and Johnson are then walking down the middle of the street when they are stopped by Officer Wilson.

A point to realize and must consider are the mindsets of these two people. Brown has just committed a felony, and he knows he did so. Wilson has no idea that Brown just committed a felony. Brown thinks the officer is stopping him because of the robbery, so he is going to be very aggressive in defending himself. Wilson is just trying to get two guys off the street and out of traffic.

3) When Officer Wilson attempts to exit his vehicle, Brown shoves the door shut, keeping Officer Wilson inside. Officer Wilson is now at a severe tactical disadvantage for what is to happen.

4) Brown then gets partially into the police cruiser and starts pummeling Officer Wilson, who suffers a fractured eye socket.

5) A shot is fired inside the vehicle.

6) Brown then disengages and runs about 30 feet away.

7) Officer Wilson then exits his vehicle.

He is still at a severe disadvantage. He is probably in a good amount of pain from the fractured eye socket and his vision is compromised, his ears are ringing from the gunshot inside the car (big sound, little space. Think about it) and his adrenaline is pumping. Despite all this, he has the presence of mind to exit the car and command Brown to stop.

Let me stop this again and explain something. First of all, if you are armed, you engage (shoot) any aggressor that is within about 25 feet of you. Why? Because he can get to you and hurt or kill you before you can react and fire. Also, when your adrenaline is pumping, because your body perceives it is in a life-or-death struggle, your marksmanship will drop drastically. That is a physiological fact. Back to the action:

8) Officer Wilson, his ears ringing, his eyesight compromised, sees Brown advancing towards him. Brown is physically bigger than Officer Wilson, so Officer Wilson defends himself. He fires and keeps firing until he sees Brown is no longer a threat. Three autopsies show that Brown was struck by six bullets, four in the right arm, one in the right eye and one in the top of the head. End of encounter.

A handgun carried by police officers usually carry between 14-16 rounds total, between what's in the magazine and in the chamber. To hit with six out of sixteen rounds shows phenomenal marksmanship on the part of the officer. You are trained to shoot into the center-of-mass, basically into your chest a couple inches above your sternum. Considering all of the shots were on the edge of Brown's body shows how much Officer Wilson's marksmanship was degraded. If his weapon was pointed so much as a tenth of a millimeter farther to the left, he would have missed Brown with all of his shots.

What probably happened (I am not an expert on this. However, I have studied gunfights for years, especially when I had a carry license) is the hits walked from Browns hand up his arm and the shot that stopped brown was the one that went through his right eye. He was dead at that point, and as he fell forward the last shot caught him in the top of the head. Again, I am no authority or expert. That being said, with the evidence that I have read, I believe this is a justified shooting. Officer Wilson was at a constant disadvantage throughout the encounter. That he survived is amazing.

I have continued to do research into the troubles in Ferguson, MO and found this to be rather disturbing. First of all, this article: Ferguson's Shameful Legal Shakedown. Second, their budget (look at page 72). Their "Fines and Public Safety" compose 21.8% of their projected budget for the year. When you derive that much of your budget from penalizing your citizens, you look to do anything to keep that "revenue stream" going. The fact of the matter is, I now understand why the citizens revolted. When you have a court system that adjudicates your guilt up to 30 minutes before you are told to be there and they lock the doors before the court finishes so you can't get in if you are the tiniest bit behind schedule, I see why the people are frustrated. The racism stated in the article looks to be pretty rampant.

The immediate explanation is that the bulk of the cases arise from car stops. The ArchCity Defenders report notes: “Whites comprise 29% of the population of Ferguson but just 12.7% of vehicle stops. After being stopped in Ferguson, blacks are almost twice as likely as whites to be searched (12.1% vs. 6.9%) and twice as likely to be arrested (10.4% vs. 5.2%).” [...] “Searches of black individuals result in discovery of contraband only 21.7% of the time, while similar searches of whites produce contraband 34.0% of the time.”

So, the disproportion is way against Blacks. They are more likely to be stopped, searched and arrested than Whites. The telling part is the Whites are 50% more likely to be carrying contraband than Blacks, which makes it more disproportionate by a factor of four. The sad part about it is, most of the people the city is stealing from are ones without the means to pay the fines. Here you go, if you want to see what a Police State looks like, places like Ferguson are where these mind sets of those in power get started. You legislate laws like you are on a commission basis, making hundreds of piddling little misdemeanors that you strictly enforce on your population. You then create a bureaucracy that is impossible to navigate without stepping on at least one land mine. The end result is a populace that is in a constant state of terror from the Police. Look at how well the Soviet bloc was run back during the Cold War. The only difference between them and us, we don't have a "Secret Police." Yet.

The Village Voice, an Iconoclastic Alternative newspaper out of New York, has been until recently a very Liberal publication. You weren't "hip" until you were caught reading the Village Voice. I found this, My Dad Is a Right-Wing Asshole, and I thought the article was awesome. This particular item is a "Dear Abby" thing, and to see the response is very refreshing. The person writes in:

I'm writing because I just can't deal with my father anymore. He's a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics. I'm more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know that people like my dad are going to destroy us all. I don't have any good times with him anymore. All we do is argue. When I try to spend time with him without talking politics or discussing any current events, there's still an underlying tension that makes it really uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I love him no matter what, but how do I explain to him that his politics are turning him into a monster, destroying the environment, and pushing away the people who care about him?

Andrew then proceeds to take the writer apart:

...Try to find a single instance where you referred to your dad as a human being, a person, or a man. There isn't one. You've reduced your father -- the person who created you -- to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to you. And you don't consider your dad a person of his own standing -- he's just "your dad." You've also reduced yourself to a set of opposing views, and reduced your relationship with him to a fight between the two. The humanity has been reduced to nothingness and all that's left in its place is an argument that can never really be won.

Andrew gets better from there. He takes apart the fact that there really isn't a "who's right" and "who's wrong." There is only what is right and good.

My own take on the writer is that they display the classic Liberal symptom of "nothing exists outside of my ears. I'm right, and if you disagree with me you're wrong and evil." I am the first to admit that I lump Liberals into that "big L" pot and I know there is a broad spectrum of people under that banner.

In my encounters throughout life, I have found gun-carrying Liberals and anti-gun Republicans and every kind of facet. Human beings are complex creatures. We are formed by two things, our experiences and our choices. I know a lot of people who express Liberal ideologies. I like and respect many of them. I take great pleasure in debating them. I challenge their positions and they return the favor.

The one line none of us cross is to attack the person. I may think their position on gun control (or whatever) is stupid and uninformed, I do not think the person is stupid. They have their reasons as to why they arrived at that position, just like how I arrived at my position. Those people who start out a debate by calling me a Nazi, or EVIL, my first inclination is to understand them. If I find out it's all knee-jerk reactions and no significant thought was involved, I will proceed to take them apart. As a Navy Chief once said, "You can lead a horse to water, but I'll be damned if I'll pull suction on his ass to make him drink."

I respect your right to have a different belief than mine. I expect a similar respect in return. I give a certain level of respect on the benefit of the doubt. Beyond that, the level of respect I show you, up or down, is based on your words and actions. I think if more people did this, the world would be a lot better place.

I understand, but I guess I continue to be unable to comprehend.

Looking at what is going on in Ferguson, MO over the past couple of days, I see what is going on. I understand the rage, frustration and anger. What I don’t understand is the self-destruction.

I know for a fact that young Black males (YBM’s) are “disproportionately represented” in our criminal justice and prison system. About 8% of the general population is over 40% of those incarcerated. I also know that a lot of YBM’s are “over-sentenced,” who receive sentences harsher than a White man with a similar record.

There are many factors that force a majority of YBM’s into the bottom of the economic scale. Lack of education, transportation and jobs they can get to make it very hard for the average YBM to move up in the world. A few do, but not enough. He has a lot of obstacles in his way.

Some, however, he creates himself. I have seen where a YBM has to be macho when confronted with an authority figure, be it a supervisor or law enforcement. They can’t take the tactical loss in order to achieve the strategic win. If he is doing something wrong that is minor, he can either accept it (ticket/warning/admonishment) and go on about his business, or he can get all up in the face of the Supervisor/LE Officer. The latter generally results in a firing from a job, or a felony charge which seriously hinders his life afterwards.

In this instance, from what I see, these two YBM’s were walking in the street, which gained the attention of the police officer. I don’t know what happened after that, other than Michael Brown ended up dead on the street, shot multiple times. Now here’s where the part I do not comprehend comes in. You are enraged. A young man was shot and killed by a police officer, apparently without sufficient justification. Regular, mature adults gather together and hold vigils, then protest against the government.

Then there are those who do the immature, stupid thing. They riot and loot local businesses. Let’s think about this for a minute, because the rioters I’m sure didn’t. You are already living in an economically depressed area. There is only independent mom-and-pop shops in your neighborhood because the national chains don’t want to deal with the graffiti, shrinkage (retail store terminology for “theft”) and all of the other myriad problems that you take on in such a neighborhood. You then destroy the mom-and pop shops. You break into them, steal what you can carry and then run off.

In the wake of the riots, your part of town looks more like Kosovo than America, no businesses reopen and then the Black community wonders why their part of town is so bad. Imagine if you will, taking a shit in the middle of your living room. Not just one, but every family member, for a couple of weeks. No one disposes of the waste, it sits there and accumulates flies and other insets. You then wonder why your house smells so bad. Yeah, same kind of thing.

Now, some people on Twitter did “helpfully suggest” that the rioters not burn down their own neighborhoods, but rather go into the “White part of town” and riot and loot there. Of course, a lot of White people in the suburbs are probably armed, so an angry mob might start taking some incoming fire. The bottom line is this: Work within the system. Peaceably protest for a redress of wrongs. Short of overthrowing the whole government, you are not going to win. The police have more resources, weapons and ammunition. If you get into a shootout with law enforcement, they will win. What you want to do is provide political pressure on elected officials to fire the aggressive bullies on the police force and change the laws to be less onerous.

That we had something called common sense. This meant that you looked at a situation or problem and actually engaged in a conscious analysis of the possible benefits, risks and consequences of engaging yourself in that situation or problem before you actually engaged in it. I will use sex in this case, since I want to talk about California's SB-967. This bill attempts to define 'consensual sex.' Otherwise known as the "Yes Means Yes" bill, this is type of sign is instantly what I thought of:

Notice that this sign uses eighteen adjectives when one would do. This bill, and the associated derivative policies will do just what this sign is doing, oversimplifying and defining to an excruciating degree something that should be common sense.

If you let the law define acceptable and unacceptable conduct to the nth degree, you are absolving yourself of the thinking on if this action is a good idea or not. Let's say two (or sometimes more) people want to have an intimate encounter that will result in pleasurable sensations and orgasms for all involved. All well and good. This kind of stuff happens every day. It is what makes the world go 'round.

However, there are many times that this happens and it's not all fun and games. When one does not agree to the encounter, or changes their mind in the middle and the other party continues, that's rape. The sex of the raper and rapee does not matter.

Now, when I was growing up, young males were taught by their male role models (notably fathers and uncles), that you shouldn't have sex until you were married. If you did and she became "with child," You were expected to take on the obligation of supporting your child and its mother. If you play, you pay. You also most assuredly did not take "undue advantage" of her, which means have sex while either one of you were impaired by alcohol or drugs.

A man does not have his way with those who do not (or should not) consent. Likewise, young women were taught (by mothers and aunts) not to put themselves into situations where they could be taken advantage of. That meant double dating with a blind date, and for the next 2-3 dates after that. No alcohol or drugs that would impair your ability to say "no" and mean it. The ladies also had an obligation as well. That was, if they did willingly engage in sex, if they regretted it later they did not make a false accusation of rape.

Let's make this perfectly clear: There is ZERO justification to rape another person. There is also ZERO justification to make false accusations. There are responsibilities on both sides here. Guys, if she's been drinking/drugging, jumps in your lap and starts squeezing your Johnson, tell her, "Yes, when you're sober" and don't let it get any farther. If you get "the urge," and she's passed out/asleep, put something for her to drink when she wakes up on the table next to her and pull a blanket over her. Ladies, if you want to have sex, that's fine. Just don't let the alcohol/drugs say "yes" when you want to say "no." Don't do the "revenge sex" thing either. That's where you get mad at your boyfriend, and to "get even" with him you go have sex with somebody else. Except a day or two later you feel guilty about it, so to save your own hide you start accusing the other poor guy of rape, not realizing that you are ruining the rest of his life.

Even if he beats the accusation, that event will haunt him for the rest of his life. Everyone needs to own up to their mistakes in life. You also need to do your best to avoid situations that will most likely have life-long repercussions for everyone involved. Screwing up is a part of life. We learn by our mistakes. Try to learn from the mistakes of others, and take responsibility for your actions.

WARNING: Wrap your head in duct tape NOW, before you read this article. That way, when your head explodes, you will be able to find all of the pieces.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay absolutely stuns me. You don't normally get into a position of authority and power like this without some kind of intelligence. That being said, the level of absolute, unmitigated stupidity she shows makes me wonder how she is capable of drawing breath.

...U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said to members of the media at an “emergency” meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council that Israel was falling short in its duty to protect citizens in the Gaza Strip from getting killed by its rockets. The U.N. group listed among its reasons for making that claim that Israel outright refused to share its Iron Dome with the “governing authority” of Gaza — which is Hamas, Breitbart reported. Ms. Pillay also condemned the United States for helping to fund the Iron Dome for Israel, but not granting any such accommodations to those in Gaza. “No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling,” she said, Breitbart reported.

So let me get this straight. This supposedly intelligent person, who should be seeing the attacks from Hamas, et.al. provoke the Israeli retaliation, and that Hamas hides their weapons in civilian areas, and launches missile attacks from schools, then has the cojones to demand that Israel gives their enemy a defensive system to protect the civilians who Hamas puts in harms way by hiding behind non-combatants like the cowards they are? The mental gymnastics she must go through to actually say this puts Cirque de Soleil to shame.

You may think I an "just" a Conservative Nutjob who is blowing sh!t out of my ass. You are entitled to your opinion. You are wrong, but you're still entitled to it.

I have played wargames for the past 37 years. I started with Avalon Hill's Tobruk, and moved on from there. I have played tactical and strategic level games, from squad-sized to multiple Divisions. Land, Naval and Space.

I have studied the masters. My library includes books from Sun Tzu, Sun Pin, Clausewitz, Jomini, B.H. Liddell Hart, Genghis Kahn and Miyamoto Musashi. I have refought Thermopylae, Hastings, Agincourt, Waterloo and Bunker Hill. I have won with both sides in Iron Bottom Sound, held off the Germans at Bastogne and many, many others.

I consistently kick my opponents around while I do it. I win a lot more than I lose and on those occasions I do lose, my opponent knows he was in a fight. I have dealt with not only actively fighting forces, I have dealt with the logistical train as well. Making sure the forces have the right equipment and supplies at the right time.

Now that I have displayed my qualifications, I want to say this: The one thing, the only thing that wins wars is the total defeat of the enemy, the object of the exercise is to beat your enemy down until they are unable to conduct offensive operations against you. You do this by destroying their equipment, their logistical tail and their will to fight.

No war has ever ended with both sides intact. One side has to be crushed before the other side can be considered the winner. A lot of you who think you know history will point to Korea and say, "See? There's a conflict that ended with a negotiated settlement!" BZZZT!! WRONG! A cease-fire agreement was signed on July 27th, 1953 at Panmunjom, which brought active fighting to an end. A state of war still exists over there and the conflict has transferred from the battlefield to the negotiation table. There are still "incidents" to this day.

So, looking to Israel and the rest of the Middle East. The Jewish people have been in that land for about 2,500-3,000 years. They pre-date the Arab peoples in that area. In 1948, the United Nations created the State of Israel. It is surrounded by enemies on all sides. The governments of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon have all at one time or another, sworn to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish people. The day after Israel was created, it was attacked and again in 1967. Now, every time, every time Israeli military forces have moved, it has been in response to an active sustained attack, or the imminent threat of an attack.

Days of missiles launched into Israel, or multiple suicide bombers always precede (that means happen before) an Israeli offensive campaign. Let's put it into a more personal perspective. This is an analogy, which means it won't exactly translate, but it is close enough for illustrative purchases. You purchase a plot of land when nobody lives nearby. You build a house and commence to live there. You then have to move away. When you return to your home, squatters have moved in, as well as neighbors in the adjacent properties. It turns out the squatters are friends and family of the neighbors. You have the squatters kicked out of your house, and you start rebuilding your home.

The neighbors don't like this very much, so they all band together, swear that they will get rid of you one way or the other and come at you and your family. You fight them off, killing a few in the process. The squatters have now taken up residence (and continue to live) in tents on your various neighbors property. The squatters have no problem with using your lawn as a toilet, and being aggressive every chance they get. They bully your kids, poison your dog, throw rocks at your house that break your windows and so on.

When you call the Police, they do nothing to the squatters. The friends and family of the squatters refuse to build permanent housing for the squatters on their property and have no problem with getting the supplies the squatters need to harass you. When you try to throw the rocks back at the squatters, they hide behind their kids and call the Police of one of them gets hit. When you get really tired of the harassment and go into the neighbors property to put the beatdown on the more aggressive squatters, then the Police show up and take the side of the squatters, telling you to get back to your property and ignoring your broken windows, torn up fence and spray-painted graffiti on the side of your home.

What can you do? In this situation you have very few options. Moving somewhere else is not an option. All of your neighbors have promised to kick you out of your home given the chance. You have tried being nice, or at least conciliatory. It doesn't work, what they want is your home and land and nothing short of that is acceptable to them. You can't change their heart against you.

My first instinct is to pick a neighbor, shoot him, his wife, his kids, his dog and every squatter on the property. Then burn his house and everything else on the property to the ground as an example for the others. Fear is a great motivator, but it is only a stop-gap measure at best. Anybody who moves in afterwards will probably still be friends and family of those who were there before, and the new ones will probably join the pack and hate you as well.

The only way this conflict will end is if they change their own hearts and stop hating you. All you can do is be gracious when they do so and kill everyone that crosses your property line.

I found this today and it is the best explanation I have found to date to describe what is going on with and around Israel. I can see why the Liberal media perfunctorily ignores 372 Hamas rocket attacks into Israel, then screams at the top of their collective(ist) voices when a single Israeli tactical aircraft heads over to take out the site where the rockets are coming from. No one screams "cease fire" while Hamas, et. al., fires dozens of rockets into Israel, but they sure do as soon as a Militant Islamist gets a skinned knee running from an Israeli tank. If you want to get a good, clear explanation of how it started, and how it could end, watch this:

As he says, it is easy to define, not so easy to solve. As long as one side wants to kill the other, this will continue. When the Muslims stop wanting and trying to wipe out the Jewish people, then and only then will it end.

Liberals seek control. Total control. Of everybody. Not only of your actions, your thoughts as well.

We saw that in the Soviet Union and other Left-Wing Totalitarian states. They do that by changing the language and using your own social mores against you. If you let them set the structure of the conversation by defining the terms, you are already defeated, because inside their structure, there is no way to defend a position contrary to theirs.

Words have what is called, for a lack of a better term, an "Emotional Index." This means that a word or term will cause an emotional response in the person hearing or reading the term. The word "Friend" produces a positive index because we think of our friends and our connection with them when we hear or see the word. Likewise, "Enemy" produces a similar number but in the negative direction.

So, when Liberals try to convince you to like something you don't like, they will change the terms, from words that have a strong negative index, to words with either a less negative index, or even a positive index. If they can, they will use words outside of the vocabulary of a average person, then define the word how they want it defined, rather than what it really means.

Case in point: "Illegal Aliens," used to denote citizens of other countries who are entering the United States without following the laws and procedures established for the orderly processing of people who wish to become Citizens of the United States. Liberals don't like that term, because, "People are not illegal." So, they want you to use the term "Undocumented Immigrant."

When we use the term "Alien," we are talking about definitions like,"a foreigner, especially one who is not a naturalized citizen of the country where they are living," or "relating, belonging, or owing allegiance to another country or government." To prefix the term "Alien" with "Illegal" you are stating that a citizen of one country has moved to another country and is now living in the second country without going through the process as defined by law to renounce their citizenship of their former country.

Now let's take a look at the second term, "Undocumented Immigrant." Both of these words have way lower negative index scores than the first term. After all, the United States is a nation built on immigrants, wasn't it? So, we switch from "Alien," which also means unfamiliar, while also invoking at least some fear, because people instinctively fear that which is unknown, or alien to them. Thus we change from a big negative index, to a neutral or even a positive index. Then the prefix adjective, "Undocumented," which means "not supported by documentary evidence."

We can rationalize this by saying, "If I'm driving my car and don't have my drivers license when I get stopped, I'm undocumented." Or you can think about that "undocumented expense report" because you didn't provide the necessary paperwork to justify your claim. You can almost begin to think that the Undocumented Immigrant belongs here, they just haven't made it through the bureaucratic red tape to become full citizens yet. Again, when comparing the indexes between "Illegal" and "Undocumented," the index is way lower for the latter.

So, by getting you to accept their term of "Undocumented Immigrant," you have already lost the argument because you have stopped using a term with a great negative index, to one with a slight positive index. You are now taking a position against someone that you yourself would feel favorable towards, because of the change in the term.

If you have ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, you read about Big Brother changing the language. If you can change the language to eliminate words like "Freedom, " "Individual" and the like, how can someone conceive of these ideas to challenge who is in control? Don't play their game. Use your terms and definitions, and communicate them clearly and often so people know what you are talking about.

When you are clear and consistent in your message, while your opponent is trying to obfuscate what they are saying and changing their message as facts against them become evident, most peoples BS meter will start to go off. Just remember, you can only win people over to your side who are open to new ideas and concepts. If someone has their reputation entrenched and they are heavily emotionally invested in a position, you won't win them over. Your object is to win those who are watching the conversation to your point of view.

I have two related stories, one of which I have been sitting on for a while. The first is: The Results of a Seattle Suburb’s Minimum Wage Hike Deserve a Big Fat ‘We Told You So’ and the other one is: Seattle Businesses to Fight $15 an Hour Minimum Wage. The first article lists these points:

• Managers have taken more responsibilities on themselves, instead of hiring more workers.
• Businesses have laid off workers, or eliminated their plans to hire more.
• Area parking now comes with an added “living-wage surcharge.”
• Hotels have cut employee benefits, free food, and overtime

Hiring has dropped to negative numbers (nobody is hiring, some are letting people go), benefits are cut and prices are going up. I really don't see a problem here, this is what Liberals do, destroy the economy in the name of "helping the people," which ends up causing them more grief.

The second article talks about a consortium of business to "modify" the $15 minimum wage back to a relatively less-painful $12.50 an hour. They interviewed a bar owner, who gives some hard numbers on his situation: He operates on a net profit (that's what's left after all expenses have been paid) of about 5%. If you do the math, his business would have to make $1,000,000 in gross sales for him to make the national average of $50,000. His labor costs run around 30%, and if the $12.50/hour goes into effect, his labor costs will go up to 40%. Now, the businesses that supply him with goods and services are going to take that same hit, so his non-labor costs will probably jump about 10% as well. His expenses just jumped 20% and he's working on a 5% margin. What do you think his prices are going to do? Go up, of course. The business owner will have to pray that he keeps the same level of sales, or he will have to cut that labor cost by letting people go.

Here's something a lot of people don't know, outside of HR, Payroll and Small Business Owners. The true tax rate for Social Security/Medicare is not the 7.65% that you see come out of your paycheck, it's actually 15.3%. The employer "pays" half of that as part of his administrative costs. So a worker who is paid $8.00/hour, it actually costs the employer $8.61/hour. If the business has to pay that worker $15/hour, it now becomes $16.15. That is a difference of $1,123 per full-time employee per year. So, let's say you have a business that employs ten full-time employees (or twenty part-time) at $8.00/hr. If the minimum wage goes from $8 to $15.00/hour, total labor costs will jump from $179088 to $335920, a difference of $156,832 a year.

At $1 million annual gross sales, and a 5% profit, you just went from profiting $50,000 to losing $106,000 a year. To stay the same, your prices will have to go up 16% and you hope your sales don't go down, or you have to cut 25% of your workforce. Those are glorious choices, aren't they? That's the reason for the title of this post. Raising the minimum wage will be like a 300 lb person doing a cannonball into a kiddie pool. The person makes a big splash that will force most of the water out of the pool, and when they leave, there will be only a little bit of water left. If this $15 goes into effect, I'm moderately sure in 10 years Sea-Tac (Seattle-Tacoma) will look like Detroit does today, economically depressed because there are no jobs.

On July 4^th 2014, Robert Reich, the ever illustrious all-knowing Expert on Economics (he really is, just ask him) posted the following on Facebook:

True patriotism isn’t simply about securing our borders from outsiders. It's about coming together for the common good. True patriotism requires taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going, not finding tax loopholes and squirreling money abroad. It’s about preserving and protecting our democracy, not inundating it with big money or paralyzing it with partisanship. True patriots don’t hate the government of the United States. They’re proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to preserve it. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve the government, not destroy it. And they don't pander to divisiveness; they don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divides; they aren't homophobic or sexist. To the contrary: True patriots seek to confirm and strengthen the “we” in “we the people of the United States.”

Okay, I have several issues with this post.

1) Bob says, ”True patriotism requires taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going, not finding tax loopholes and squirreling money abroad.” Half of the households in this country pay NO income tax. Z-E-R-O. In fact, a lot of them get more money back than what they paid in. Is that a “fair share?” The richest 1% pay more in taxes than the entire GDP of Albania. Nobody likes paying taxes. If someone says they do, they are an idiot. I do so because it is the law and would go to prison if I didn't.

Now, if the law says that you pay less taxes if you have money in foreign banks, that is not a “loophole.” IT’S THE LAW. A loophole is defines as, "an ambiguity or inadequacy in the law or a set of rules." If you don't like it, contact your Congressman and tell him to change the law. Ulysses S. Grant said, "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution."

2) Bob again, “It’s about preserving and protecting our democracy, not inundating it with big money or paralyzing it with partisanship.” The United States is NOT a Democracy. No way, no how, never has been. We are a Constitutional Representative Republic. A Democracy is where everybody votes on every decision the government must make. With over 200 million possible voters, that would make sure nothing gets done. And if 51% want to take your possessions, they get it and you can't do anything about it but move out. The majority has spoken. A Constitutional Representative Republic is a government that has a clearly defined structure, as in our Constitution, the People elect representatives from their district to carry on the business of government according to the will of the people in that district. A Republic means the rule of law is in charge of the land. The law binds all people equally, no matter if they are a homeless person or the President. I love that word, “Partisanship.” I define it as, “Standing fast, not compromising your character and holding on to your moral values.” When Liberals say “Bipartisanship ,” they are saying, “Let’s compromise and do it our way.”

3) “True patriots don’t hate the government of the United States. They’re proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to preserve it.” I LOVE my country so much I put my life on the line for 13 years to protect it because I love the concepts of personal freedom and self-reliance that the United States embodies. Today, I FEAR my government because it seeks on a daily basis to abridge my basic human rights, some of them are spelled out in the Bill of Rights. Big Difference.

4) “But true patriots work to improve the government, not destroy it. And they don't pander to divisiveness; they don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divides; they aren't homophobic or sexist. To the contrary: True patriots seek to confirm and strengthen the “we” in “we the people of the United States.” This is so ironic it is sad. Looking between the Conservatives and Liberals, I see one side looking to categorize and demonize everybody who is different from them; to exacerbate rifts between social and religious groups; to decry discrimination in public, then commit that same discrimination in private. The group that is the most guilty for each of those statements are Liberals. The only part of this diatribe I agree with is, “True patriots seek to confirm and strengthen the “we” in “we the people of the United States.” I don’t care about my neighbors skin color, his political leanings or his religion. I will show him the level of respect that I would expect from him. There were a lot of responses, but this one kind of leaped out at me:

I don't support government. I'm not a patriot. I don't believe in America nor do I support it. But I also don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divides. I try to let people see that we are all just human, and should not only respect our neighbors, but have a responsibility to respect each other. I try to keep the mind of my opponent open to new ideas in hopes they will see that narrow minded and goal oriented views are fundamentally flawed. I try to enforce my belief that a system built on a flawed system will never work., no matter how much you want it to. A nuclear bomb is just that, and can be nothing else, no matter how much we want it to end hunger, or cure cancer. And those who can make a difference, don't. For every doctor who finds a breakthrough in clinical science, 9 more release a new anti depressant or erectile dysfunction pill. And we, as a people, allow this behavior by not standing together and telling these corporations, these people who would have us sell out for materialism and false hopes, to shove off and act right, or we will make sure they are shut down permanently. To me, patriotism is just a lower, less obvious form of prejudice. Why show love for country when you can show love for world? Why show your patriotism when you can show your unbiased love of the world. Everyone sees only where they live, what they do. We are all part of something bigger, and until we see it for what it is, and start focusing on what's important AS A SPECIES, we are doomed to repeat all the mistakes made in the name of a lesser goal. I don't seek to destroy a country, but to reconnect a world. I don't seek to condemn those who served, I seek to elevate those who have and those who haven't, to serve on a global level. If you want to know what's wrong with the world, it's simple. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Earth is the house. We are the tenants. And if we can't start seeing humans instead of democrats, jews, mexicans, poor, or any other label meant to define us in a specific way, we will never make any progress. I agree that capitalism can be a successful venture, but until the world begins to work together, through responsibility and personal accountability, it will fail every time.

You know, it simply amazes me that people like this person want to live here. He says, "I don't believe in America nor do I support it." Yet he has no problem living under the protection of this country, enjoying basic rights here that don't exist in other parts of the world. I think the ideas he espouses would be better received in Iraq, where Sunnis are gunning for the Kurds, the Kurds are shooting the Shi'ites and the Shi'ites are bombing the Sunnis. The only time they stop killing each other is when they band together to kill Infidels that try and interrupt them. Or he could go to Iran, where the label of "gay" gets that person killed in a messy and painful way. I personally have nothing against global peace, in fact my service helped preserve that global peace during the Cold War. My readiness to wage war upon any aggressors ensured that peace. This guy operates under the mistaken assumption that "peace" is the opposite of "war." In truth, the opposite of "war" is "slavery." Because if you are not willing to fight and protect your home and family, you are a slave to the person who is ready to kill you if you don't bow to them.