Krispies?

The store that I work in has a large front window, so large that calling it large does it no justice. It consists of about 40 yards of glass along Florida Ave and then turns the corner and there’s another 20 yards of glass fronting the driveway to the WalMart Market. I see all kinds of things looking out those windows, many of them unbelievable at first, and some of the things I thought were unbelievable a year ago, seem very normal now. Every morning a large (30-50) group of day laborers (read illegal immigrants) congregate half a block to the south, sort of between the Home Depot and the WalMart parking lots. Some days some of them get picked up to do some work, some days some of them get picked up by ICE. It’s an odd contrast, when an old E150 or a pick-up truck pull up and stop they all run to it, hoping to get chosen ... I imagine that they have mouths to feed, that they need the work. When the police cars and the ICE cars pull up they all run away from the spot, some of them run to the adjacent bus stop and pretend that they are just waiting for the bus. It doesn’t work. The bus stop is also fascinating, it drops of hundreds of people in generic blue medical worker scrubs, they parade by in small groups all day long, on their way to the school that sits just north of my corner, on the other side of Busch Blvd. Apparently there is a major shortage of x-ray technicians, because this school is turning them out by the thousands. Directly across the street from the bus stop is Chicks, a small yellow building that looks like a little house, but is the neighborhood strip club. Every afternoon a fleet of taxi cabs and boyfriends drop the dancers off in the parking lot. It’s a little far off to say for sure, but I think its safe to say that the girls are all train wrecks. In the median of Florida Ave is where the real characters are, the beggars, the homeless, the mentally ill. They have little signs, some of them sell water bottles that they bought with their EBT for a dollar, some of them just beg for money, most of them use my bathroom. Maybe I shouldn’t let them, but they don’t pee next to my dumpster any more, so I think it’s worth it. Almost every day one of them has a fresh piece of cardboard and comes in to ask to borrow a magic marker. I always tell them I do not have one. Every time they come in they all complain about each other ... they’re all lazy, they all lie on their signs, they all are ruthless and unprincipled ... according to their peers. Their fellow median workers. There’s one, a woman, who loves to talk. She tells us about her boy friend and people that we don’t know, she complains that she doesn’t make enough money, she complains about the heat, she complains when it’s not hot that it hurts water sales, she complains even when someone gives her a twenty for a bottle of luke warm water. The median used to belong to “Happy” the Clown. “Happy” is insane. The other median workers call him simply “the clown” with a sneer. The clown is a disaster, he used to dance on the median for money with full clown face paint, a sleeveless undershirt painted pink and green, white jean shorts painted pink and green, all of it stained and dirty and faded and he held a sign that said “Happy’s my name and clownin’s my game”. His real name is Craig, he’s from New York, but lived in Ohio for a long time. He gets arrested ... often. One of his part time jobs away from the median is stealing bicycles and selling them. At least once a week he rides by on a bike carrying a couple of other bikes, it looks difficult, but he just pedals on down the street. A few months ago he came in and told me he was done with the median. He had found this girlfriend and she had an EBT card and he had his EBT card and she lived with her dad who was old and sick and got social security ... Happy had been living there three days. At first he was excited about it, but as he was telling the tale he admitted that the girl and the dad drove him nuts ... he was going to go and commit himself to take a brake. He just goes to the county hospital and tells them that he wants to kill people and they check him in for a while. Then he laughs (does he want to kill people?) He tells me that he used to say that he wanted to kill himself, but then they watch you all night long and it’s hard to sleep, so he changed his story to being homicidal ... the homicidal get treated with more respect than the mere suicidal, he explains. There are some people who are extremely visible ... like Michael McKinney. Everyone has there own name for him, most people have no idea who he is ... McKinney is an ex-professional boxer who lives in the area and dances up and down the street every day, at least he used to. His dance is part shadow boxing, part praise strut ... would you like to see it? You can, just click here http://youtu.be/3sp6n83YWk8 .Most people think he’s homeless ... he’s not. Most people don’t know that he’s been arrested for DUI more times than anyone can count, that he lost his license years ago ... most people just see him out dancing and think it’s funny. The best part though is that he and the Clown hate each other and when he dances by and the Clown is on the median they scream insults at each other. They each crave the spotlight, even if it’s just being the biggest freak show around. Lately McKinney has taken to pan handling a few blocks north, he still dances, but he stays on the one corner, and what he once did for free, now he’s getting paid to do.
There are others who are invisible ... like “Cup-Cup”. “Cup-Cup” is a paranoid schizophrenic (as far as I can tell) he comes to my store every day for a cup of coffee, and he brings all of his friends ... the one’s in his mind. He’s trapped and he gets stuck on words, which is how he got his name, for a while every time he came in he just repeated the word “cup” over and over at an uncomfortably loud volume. It’s been a while since he did that though, mostly now he argues with his friends and when they get to arguing, “cup-cup” uses a string of profanity that you could not believe unless you heard it. Lately we have decided to try to get through and get him to talk to us ... it’s not working, but today when I said good morning he tried to ask if the coffee was ready. Some days when he leaves one of his friends will stay behind and then he has to  come back and open the door and shout, “Come on! We ain’t got all day.” while holding the door for the straggler to get through.
So imagine my surprise last week when I saw something that shocking out my window ... something that took me completely off guard. If you were to walk out my front door and look to the left there is a WalMart Market (which is grocery store ... WalMart without all the fun stuff), and from that direction a early 90's Buick LeSabre drove into view, it was charcoal gray, and as it came to the stop sign at Florida Ave I noticed that the trunk was open ... and someone was in it. In the trunk I mean. Now, had the vehicle just pulled out onto the street this wouldn’t have been all that unusual ... just another weird thing in a neighborhood that is filled with weird things. But as the Buick was about to pull out onto the street, the man in the trunk jumped out of the vehicle and began yelling at the driver. He was average height and slender but muscular, he was wearing jean shorts and a sleeveless undershirt (“wife beater”), he continued yelling at the driver until he came up to the passenger side front window, and then the driver lurched the car forward. Like a flash he ran to the rear of the car and in a single movement leapt into the trunk. There was a yellow rope tied to the trunk deck that he grabbed a hold of, and the vehicle lurched forward again forcing the trunk deck down on top of his head. He let out a yell and jumped out of the trunk, he stood behind the vehicle with his arms raised out to the side ... and he just stood there for a second. The vehicle jumped back towards him and he reached into the trunk, grabbed a hold of some bags and threw them on to the sidewalk, the vehicle again reversed (the driver apparently trying to flatten the man) but he simply kneeled onto the rear bumper, continued flinging bags onto the ground and when the driver brought the vehicle to a sudden halt he stepped back onto the ground, the vehicle lurched at him again and he kneeled on the bumper again. It was as if they had rehearsed it, a ballet of road rage and man. The Buick then drove forward about 5 feet and the man returned to the front passenger side window. There was no yelling, he leaned over an it looked as if he and the driver were talking, he stood back up and the Buick drove off down Florida Ave with the trunk open, its previous occupant strolled off down the sidewalk as if nothing had ever happened.
We went outside to clean up the mess. As we approached we saw that the bags were groceries from the WalMart Market, a broken milk jug poured its contents into the street, a box of rice krispies was torn apart and the wind was disbursing the krispies like dandelion fuzz, there was lunch meat and cheese, two loaves of bread, yogurt ... food for a family for an entire week was strewn all over the corner, smashed. We got a large black garbage bag and started loading up the mess to take it to the dumpster when a Ford Explorer pulled up to the corner and stopped and an older man shouted from his open window, “What cha’ got there?”
I explained what happened.
“Groceries?” he asked “what cha’ gonna do wit dem groceries.”
“Throw them out.” I explained.
“No need, no need” he leaned over and opened his passenger rear door “load ‘em up here.”
“There’s a broken jug of milk in here.” I said holding up the garbage bag. The car behind the Explorer leaned on its horn.
“They’re gonna learn to wait.” the man said laughing, “now load that bag in here.”
I shrugged and put the garbage bag into his back seat and shut the door.
The man looked past me to the guy behind me, “What cha’ doin’ wit that?” he pointed to an undamaged 2 liter bottle of fruit punch he had under his arm.
“I’m keeping it.” my guy answered.
“No ya’ ain’t.” the man told him. The car behind him honked again, prompting him to giggle again. “Give that fruit drink here,.”
My guy handed it to him. “Thank ya now.” he said. And the Explorer drove off down Florida Ave.
And we went back inside and back to work. We shook it off like we shake everything off, added it to a long list of the odd, and unusual and the down right strange. I don’t tell these stories because no one believes them, hopefully the McKinney video helps, I tried to find a picture of the Clown but I couldn’t.
Hope you enjoyed your minute on the corner of Florida and Busch.

Pioneer Spirit

It was not that long ago that people from all over the world uprooted their families, boarded crude ships, and sailed off to meet the unknown. The suffered through illness and rough seas, bad weather and a long voyage. They were going to America, the land of opportunity, a place where land could be bought, a place where there was no real-estate monopoly controlled by the nobility, a place where a person could make their own way in the world. And still more recently, the exact same phenomenon happened with a westward migration, families traded sailing ships for covered wagons and braved the unknown wilderness to make their own way in the world. In either case, when they arrived at their destination, it was not a town, or city, or established place. They built their own homes from nothing, they planted their own crops, raised their own animals, and not only did they survive, they thrived. I’m not a historical revisionist, there were problems, of course there were. Lack of medical personnel led to other wise preventable deaths from disease, drought, crop failures ... life was not ideal, things were not perfect, survival required hard work and sacrifice, but that is not the point. The point is that the spirit of this nation was founded by these people, “pioneer spirit” means seeking your own place in the world, relying upon yourself to make that place habitable, and in extreme cases, relying upon your neighbors or your church for minor assistance. You are descended from people who took chances, who relied upon themselves, who trusted in the provision of a loving God, who worked hard, who made necessary sacrifices, and who survived. Stop and think about it for a minute, think about the phenomenal determination and strength and sheer will required ... well, would you pack up your family and drag them off through the unknown to the possibility of a better opportunity? Brave the wilderness?
So ... what in the world happened?
What bizarre collection of circumstances could take an entire people group from an extreme rugged individualism to what we have today, let’s be honest with ourselves, the prevailing response to adversity is to look around and see “who is going to handle this for me”. The obvious question has to be how we got from one to the other, and how do we find our way back. We, as a nation, face the economic realities of the “nanny state” and the enviable end to the services that people have come to rely upon. (If you don’t believe this to be true, please do some global economic research ... and no, AARP and the Democratic Party are not sources for truth in this case)There are those who suggest that the journey from A to B is a grand design, a multigenerational conspiracy designed to turn the United States into the Soviet Union ... and I’m sorry, but that’s not what happened. There are and have been people who have that vision, and they surely have advocated for the nation to head that direction ... but there never have been enough of them to do anything alone. I maintain that the American people were dragged off of the frontier and into public housing through a series of short sighted decisions made by weak willed politicians hoping to bring home enough bacon to be reelected ... to then go back to the capital and have to spend their next term figuring out another way to bring home even more the next time, and on and on, right up to the edge of the financial precipice that we now find ourselves on.
Year after year, bill after bill, the government has added more and more to the list of things that they hand out and provide. You NEED them all, right? “What would people do without food stamps/ college loans/ medicaid/ medicare/ disability benefits/ subsidies/ tax credits/ WIC/ etc, etc, etc. They would all starve to death in the street.” I tried to get statistics of people dying in the street prior to the advent of social programs, but couldn’t find any. These programs allow people to disconnect from their neighbors, to stop going to church, be “independent”. They allow the American people to look to Washington DC to search to the answers to their problems instead of looking deep within themselves. Of course God had to disappear ...  Because without God there are no unalienable rights endowed to us by the Creator, there is no need to work hard, to be charitable, to help your neighbor. Government programs rob you of your liberty, of your true nature as a self reliant pioneer child of God, of the money that you could put to good charitable use, and your community of the ability to be proactive and responsible.
I’m quite sure that Social Security sounded pretty neat when they came up with it. It was simple, you pay into a trust fund your entire working life and then when you retire, you get your money back, right? Well ... no, but that is how it was proposed. In reality SSA pays out much, much more than it takes in, and then the question becomes, for how long? There is only one concrete answer ... not forever. And the rigidity of today’s weak willed politicians, their refusal to be the stewards of bad news, their concern with their own political futures, their insistence on letting the next guy deal with it, will make the transition from “nanny state” to forced individualism sudden, abrupt and it will most likely be accompanied by wide spread violence and chaos. You have been told not to worry about saving, that the SSA is going to take care of you, you have been told to buy a bigger and better house, and then a bigger and better one after that, you reinvest the equity, stay in debt, and you don’t actually own anything at all, and medicare has filled a void that the market would have filled. There is no such thing as lifetime health insurance, or retirement health insurance, every insurer assumes that they only have to deal with you until you’re old enough for a little of that “free” health care. The worrisome part in all of this is that you are not a jack of all trades, you have trained your entire life for a career that may fall woefully short of meeting your needs in the future. If it proved necessary could you build your own home, plant your own crops, raise your own animals? Are you so dependant on the modern life and the State that you cannot fend for yourself?
We do not have to wait for the United States to follow in Greece’s footsteps. We do not have to wait for forced austerity measures, we do not have to let the inevitable be a shock to our children. We can reclaim the “pioneer spirit” for ourselves, we can become the rugged individualists that live with in us. Instead of looking around for the State to step in and solve problems and come to the rescue, we can solve our own problems, we can save our own money, we can help our neighbors and family when they need it. I know everyone wants to get their benefits, but what you have to admit to yourself is that you do not NEED them. You are descendent of the great frontiersmen who tamed this land, who made this country great, the ability to look within , to depend on no one and to persevere lives within you. We can choose to make the government irrelevant, to shake them to their very core. If no one applied to receive food stamps and WIC, if no one lined up for unemployment benefits, if we turned to each other instead of Washington in our times of need, if we worked harder, if we sacrificed more ... we could right this ship, we could put the government out of business. It is within our power to choose liberty and it is within our power to restore the pioneer spirit of this great nation and these great people. Washington spends because the people clamor for more, because there is no end to the hands held out waiting for “assistance”, deprived of that it would all come to a halt. The government of a liberated, self reliant people would find little to do and even less to spend money on. We need to have insight into necessity in order to be a free people, look around and do what is required, make do with less, give more and do it cheerfully ... and when we have stood on our own two feet, when the pioneer decedents show that they are an independent and free people, then we can force Washington to change, to rescind the powers it has taken for itself, to return to protecting the life, liberty and property of it’s citizens and nothing more. We must earn the title “Free” and it is bought and paid for with sacrifice and determination. It lives within you.

This and That

This post is brought to you by the strength and determination to spend hours per day, year after year trying to make your paralyzed body walk. Rob Summers, hat’s off to you my friend. Every news account I have seen on this acts like they electrocuted him and he walked. Uh ... no. Try six years of daily intensive physical therapy that began with four years of having people move his feet on a tread mill while he was held up in a harness, followed by the implant and then two more years of therapy ... Rob’s refusal to surrender inspires me. I pray that his dream of running is fulfilled.
Ok, on to the stuff that we have to really talk about. Harold Camping has predicted that the world will end tomorrow. And in 1994. I think that next time he will predict it for after his own death because this has to be getting embarrassing. Harold Camping is an idiot and I am glad that people are having fun laughing at him, still it reminds me that we all need to be sure that we are right with God because we do not know when the end will come ... that said I’ll talk to you all on Sunday.
Borders. Borders change. I promise, they change all the time, and depending on where you are, they aren’t always that clear. Usually borders change following a violent conflict, look at a map of Europe before and after WWI for a good example. Apparently the President of the United States thinks that borders change because he wants them to ... they do not. Let me preface this by saying that I pray every day that the Israelis and the Palestinians will come to a peaceful agreement and that they can live in harmony, whether that be cohabitation or in two separate states, I just pray for peace. I want nothing more than for the Palestinian people to not live in fear of assaults by the IDF, not to live in the poverty created by the embargo, to be an unoccupied, free people. I understand why they lash out and attack the Israelis. I want nothing more than for the Israeli people not to live in constant fear of rocket attacks, or invasion, or of suicide bombers blowing up women and children at the market. I would love for Israel to be a nation of peace. I understand why Israel uses retaliation as a deterrent, in understand why the election to power of an organization that is sworn to destroy them has led to an embargo. Facing the violence of the other they are both right to defend themselves. It gives me hope when they agree to meet and discuss peace, even if it goes no where, both sides are showing that they want peace. I pray that it comes, that they can agree, but as far as the border goes, that is not for an American president to dictate. You have to understand, in the mid 60's Syria and Lebanon tried to cut off Israel’s water supply, In 1967 they fought a war against Egypt, Syria and Lebanon (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Algeria sent troops) and they gained large amounts of land in the process. In 1973 they were attacked and held the borders where they were. And on and on and on. Israeli men and women have fought and died for those borders, for that land ... does President Obama mean to suggest to their families that the fight was for nothing, that the sacrifices were meaningless? It seems that he does. And it must be said that if the President feels that it is somehow wrong to move to a new place, push the natives off the land that they live on and then violently defend that land from their desire to regain it he need not look to Israel to right a wrong. He can call for a return of the 1619 borders here in the United States, return the country to the Native Americans who occupied it before being brutally forced off of it and into the reservations that they still occupy. Just a thought.
RIP Macho Man.
Wasn’t it President Obama who repeatedly said that President Bush was a buffoon and could not possibly be any worse when it came to international relations? That the world hated us because of Bush? That the wars were Bush’s fault? Can someone please explain to me why we are fighting a war in Lybia, why Egypt gets billions to continue repression, why our ally Bahrain is killing its own people, Syria has become an absolute slaughter (much worse than Lybia but with out the oil) our relationship with Pakistan has about completely collapsed (Pakistan just got 50 fighter jets from China, oh goodie) our pals in Yemen are fighting two different civil wars, and Mexico has become the “killing fields” of our generation? Where’s all the great diplomacy we were promised? Honestly I didn’t vote for Obama, we greatly differ on the role of the federal government, but even I thought the wars would really end, that he would build relationships with other nations, not ignore and destroy them. This is out of control.
In investment news, ladies and gentlemen, if a company earns $0.17 per share and shows no signs of building revenue ... that company is not worth $97 per share. Have we learned nothing from Red Hat? Please stop being stupid and allowing your greed to control our economy.
Happy Friday!

50 cents

I grew up a long time ago, in a forgotten age, when mothers stayed home with their children and kept house and fathers worked Monday thru Friday and were home in time for dinner. Mothers would prepare ingredients and make a meal and the entire family would sit down and eat together, discuss the day’s events and sometimes even share a freshly baked dessert together afterwards. “When was that?” you ask? Just before the Civil War.
On the weekend my father would start his day with a cup of coffee (decaf, little sugar, little half and half) and the news paper. I would sit and have my breakfast, feet dangling six inches above the floor, and watch and listen. He would read each page, carefully folding the paper in half at every turn of the page, and scoff and “humph”, and “huh” at seemingly every article. I did not understand it then, but his disapproval of the paper’s contents was glaringly obvious. Occasionally the paper he referred to as the “Times Useless” would include an editorial by George Will or Thomas Sowell and my father would have me read it and then explain it’s contents to him. I think it was an exercise in comprehension, but even then he didn’t want me influenced by the left wing of the OP ED universe.
As a grown man I have grown disgusted with newspapers, antiquated disasters of omissions and poorly thought out opinions passed off as fact, chock full of editors’ mistakes and amateur writing ... they are essentially useless. People who hunger for news have wandered from the printed daily and found elsewhere what they were searching for. Their sins are too numerous to list. An 80 word story on page 8 briefly telling that a soldier shot and killed a pregnant woman, in her own home, through a picture window, in broad daylight. Upon his acquittal of all charges a full half front page, above the fold, detailing a riot in the same town. No mention of the cause, no mention of the dead woman and baby, no mention of the murderer set free. The New York Times once published a daily 2 page fluff piece of hero worship for Laurent Kabila, heralding his great civil war in Zaire ... somehow while praising “the great hope for Africa” they forgot to include anything about his lifelong ambition to create a Marxist dictatorship, they failed to mention the atrocities his soldiers committed along their bloody march to the capital, no one felt it necessary to include anything about the American corporation financing the whole thing in exchange for mineral rights ... just “rah-rah Democratic Republic of the Congo” which, once founded was neither democratic nor a republic. And after it was all said and done, after Kabila had become the very dictator he replaced, no apology, no retraction ... and utterly no credibility. I can keep going. I won’t.
I still buy the paper ... I sit and read it, often in front of my kids while drinking coffee (caffeinated, black) I scoff at its contents and laugh at the obvious disaster that it has become. Why do I bother? It comes to this, there is no smell in the world like the mental time machine inducing odor that wafts from a newly opened newspaper. That smell instantly transports me 22 years and 800 miles to my father’s lap, trying to understand George Will’s analysis of the Berlin Wall coming down. Through all the obvious lies and through every editor’s attempt to misinform, through all the tragic writing that passes for journalism, there are only 2 smells in the world that transform me into a contented 10 year old being taught life by one of the grandest fathers there ever was, newspaper and saw dust. It’s a stroll down memory lane that is well worth the price of admission, so the Tampa Tribune can have my scorn ... and my 50 cents.

OPEN YOUR EYES!

The United States Constitution is a document divided into seven sections detailing the rights and powers of government. Once written it could not be passed into law because it did not contain the rights of the people. The American people and their leaders in the 13 state houses would not allow themselves to be subjects again, to go back to living under a government that did not guarantee liberty to the people.
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."
Patrick Henry
 The Bill of Rights was the compromise, it defines in no uncertain terms, the rights of the people. The inalienable rights held by all mankind. You might even be familiar with some by their number, the second amendment is often refered to by name, and it states. “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Which does not say that you have the right to protect yourself from robbers with a hand gun, it says that you have the right to arm yourself and band together with your neighbors to protect liberty from the government! The fourth amendment is also essential and basic, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” It says that agents of the state cannot enter your home, search you, search your things, look through your papers or documents unless a judge issues a detailed warrant supported by sworn testimony.  It says that you are a free person to conduct your private affairs in private as you please, it says that you are to be free from government intrusion, it says that your house and your pockets are all within your castle. Please read them all. They are your rights. It is the document that forms the skeleton of your liberty, and if you are ignorant of the details of your rights, liberty will be stolen from you without protest. What do you think of the Michigan Militia? Or militias in general? Do you think that they are all suspicious of the government? Preparing to fight if necessary? God I hope that they are, we all should be. The state is not your ally, it is the enemy of your liberty.
"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." 
Benjamin Franklin
Do you know how Adolph Hitler went from elected official to Fuhrer? Someone burned the parliament building and he declared that it was the work of communist terrorists, requiring special, temporary powers to return Germany to safety from this threat.
Liberty is not a word, it is not a quaint feeling to place upon a shelf to decorate for the 4th of July, LIBERTY is the soul’s ability to breathe free, liberty is the most sacred think on this earth, it needs to be tended to and cared for and loved and defended ... even to the death. What did Patrick Henry say? “Give me liberty or give me death” and he wasn’t joking around, he really meant that he would fight to the death for liberty, his liberty, your liberty. He wasn’t alone in that sentiment.
 "Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that ever I took half the pains to preserve it."  
John Adams
A century of being spectators to the political process has left our liberty a shell of what it once was, slowly, ever so slowly the state has whittled away at it. They have convinced you that they are not your adversary, that you need them to provide for you. Provide what? We are a great nation of free men, the sweat of our brow is taxed from us and then given back to us and we are to be grateful? We are such fools that we accept these bribes in the place of our liberty? We allow our children to be ignorant consumers?
"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Thomas Jefferson
Lethargy is the forerunner to the death of the public liberty. NFL football and beer and gadgets and computer games and tabloid news and Oprah. When is the last time our rulers were warned that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Sadly there is no spirit of resistance, when the wrongs stack up so high that they block out the nourishing light of the sun we line up like sheep and “vote ‘em out”. We actually believe that it is our only recourse.
Right now, at this very moment, the people of Indiana should be out in the streets, marching to the State House with torches and rifles, the people of every other state should be doing the same in solidarity and as a warning to our own states and courts. Do you even know why? The media that you trust to keep you informed has kept you in the dark. The Supreme Court of the state of Indiana has ruled that the Bill of Rights is null and void, that it is out dated and no longer necessary, they have ruled that your liberty is an antiquated idea that no longer serves any purpose, that you are not secure in your house and that the rights of the State supercede any rights that you might have. Rulers need to be warned!
A man was arrested for resisting the illegal entry into his home by the police, they had no probable cause and they had no warrant. The court found that, “A right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.” Against public policy? It is not only your right to defend you liberty, it is your duty to defend your liberty and the liberty of all of your brothers and sisters. So while the nation sits on the sofa and watches NFL labor negotiations, and American Idol and Dancing with the Stars and the NBA playoffs... The treasure of the republic, the very thing must all band together to defend was stabbed in the heart without any pomp or circumstance.
Do you believe that public policy has any value at all, that it out weighs the very liberty that makes this nation great?. Friends, do not fall victim to the thinking that it is just Indiana, these thoughts and decisions are coming to your state as well and every time they act unchallenged the enemies of the liberty endowed to you by our Creator become stronger and more brash and more bold.
It is not guns that they want to take from you, it is your means to resist. Where they have failed to seize our means to resist, they now look to seize our right to resist. No matter the ruling of the court, it is your duty to resist the state, or agents of the state, making any attempt to invade your home. Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the state. Look around and ask yourself, are we becoming more free as a people or are we becoming less free? Are we free to resist the state?
It is a question that is more important than any other, and it is high time that we drew a line in the sand, enough is enough. I, for one, would trade a whole lot more “security” for slightly more liberty. Every time the state forces its way into your life it pushes freedom out of your life. Please, wake up and demand that your God given rights be held as sacred by your elected officials, or by God, let them know that the will be facing your wrath, the wrath of a righteous, armed, free people determined to preserve liberty for all of posterity.

Apology and a Story

I want to apologize. In my last post I said, “ I tell this story to point to the public workers that want so badly to be treated fairly ... we have been your customer, I’m sure all of us have, you get no sympathy because you are what we say you are, inefficient, lazy, unempathetic and you move at the speed of tectonic plates. It didn’t take you 6 months to protest budget cuts, did it?” The point I was trying to convey is that the rules are designed poorly and that procedures make action impossible. I got a bit off topic and I would like to say that there are many passionate and capable people working in public service and I know many of them personally. I apologize for the portrayal of your work ethic and motives in this light. Surely there are lazy incompetents in government and their actions give you a bad name. I shouldn’t add to this and so I am sorry. Ok, are we cool now? Good, here’s a funny story.
Let us take a trip in the “Way Back Machine” to 2003. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, you still had to actually prove you were a good risk to get a mortgage loan. My wife and I bought a house. You may not remember, but in 2003 the facts were as follows: real estate is the safest investment in the world, after getting married and having children you bought a house, in a 10 years, after you had saved some money and the house had appreciated, you would sell it and buy a bigger house, home ownership was a thrilling step in the American Dream. I know that all sounds very quaint and silly now, but in 2003, it was gospel.
The strangest thing happened, in 2004 instead of the usual 5-7% increase in my home’s value it was more like 50% and then in 2005 the value of my home doubled. We didn’t really know what to make of it all. I joked to my wife that we should sell the house, find a cheap apartment and sit on the $120,000 until the whole thing came apart and we could buy a mansion. We laughed and laughed! Fall apart, yeah right, I mean, home values might not increase by as much next year, but they aren’t ever going to go down ... we even went house shopping. Business was good, and with the prices going up so fast we thought we should hurry and buy something before it got so high we could never afford it. And then it all fell apart. We all looked to the banks and the government to do something, to fix it, to stop the collapse. The circled the wagons and took care of each other.
The job losses and the business failures and the foreclosures were staggering. My neighbor’s company folded, he tried to start his own company and it lasted a while, but finally he had to find a job, and he did. In Baltimore. Facing the prospect of losing tens of thousands of dollars in equity if he sold, he decided to rent out his house. The first tenant seemed ok, but after two months stopped paying rent. It took six months to evict him and then my neighbor had to fly back and spend two days fixing and cleaning and painting and steaming carpets. During the time that my neighbor was here fixing his house he was approached by the son of our neighbor across the street. This son is a forty-something father of 5 (or maybe more?) who does  not work, but assured my neighbor that he was about to be getting social security disability and would be able to pay. I feel compelled to add here that the man is not from this country, and has not ever held a regular job the entire time he has been in the United States. My neighbor said no and that besides that he was not making the decisions, as his real estate company was acting as property manager and would find a tenant. However, he could apply and see if he met their criteria. He didn't meet the criteria. My neighbor moved. The house became rented to what appeared to be a normal, nice person. Then about a week later there was the neighbor from across the street living there too! Turned out the person who rented it was a friend of the nieghbor from across the street and he had rented it for them to be roommates. I called my old neighbor to let him know what was going on, he was not pleased. Well, all went well for a couple months until the friend left the neighbor there alone and moved away. Now the man who wasn't qualified to rent the house, had the house to himself. According to my original neighbor (the homeowner), at first he got the rent checks, and then the excuses came as often as payment, and then the tenant stopped answering the phone. This man often came to my door late in the evening to ask if he could borrow my electricity, or my water, and I wondered how my neighbor was managing his own rent in Baltimore and his mortgage down here.
I have never asked him about it, but I think one day he realized that the property was not going to recover, that the housing market wasn’t coming back as they assured us it was going to, that he couldn’t afford to go through another eviction process and he just let the property go. It took a while but eventually the notice came to the house that it was going to be auctioned off. The tenant was angry that he would have to get out, that he didn’t get the proper notice, or maybe just that the gravy train was finally stopped.
While this was going on the neighborhood deteriorated. Little by little the grass in front of the empty houses grew, fences fell down, bushes grew to block doorways. Eventually the foreclosed upon left angry and you would drive by homes that suddenly had no trees in the yard, hedges missing, as if a tiny tornado had come in the night. A business sprung up, a club really. You pay dues and then are provided a list of addresses, locations of empty homes ... a squatter’s road map. So we began getting new neighbors, strange people, strange vehicles, odd hours kept.
The tenant found his own business in this mess, I wonder how common it is. Last week he began moving out. I asked him when he and his children were going to go. As it turns out he moved around the corner, another home owner had to move and needed a tenant until the home values rebound, and so he was going over there. He told a sob story about how he was paying rent and the homeowner didn’t pay the mortgage, he spun himself as the victim of all of it, and her got himself a new start, a new home owner to make excuses to, a new homeowner whose phone calls he will soon ignore. But that’s not the interesting part, or the business. Last night I came home and there was a strange vehicle parked next door. As I was going in a man and a woman came out of the house, my neighbor’s house. They smiled at me, “Hello,” they said, “we’re your new neighbors.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re renting the house from Eddie.” the man informed me.
Eddie is not my neighbor, Eddie is the deadbeat, able bodied disability collecting bum who drove my neighbor into foreclosure ... I thought for a minute if I should let the new residents know that they were being conned, that the eviction notice was coming, maybe any day. I just smiled and went inside.
The SOB has lived rent free for the better part of two years, and now he has turned it into an income property! Talk about profit margins! It’s a scheme that would make Wall Street and Washington proud ... these are some strange times we’re living in.

Predictions, Dems lie and Government Stinks

Here’s the short, short version of a personal story. My daughter was sick as a baby, we took her to the doctor over and over and over and over and ...(you get the idea?) The doctor told us it was allergies and then it was a cold and then allergies and when the fevers started it was an ear infection and prescribed amoxycillin. When the fevers got worse and her breathing deteriorated we took her to a different doctor who sent us to the pediatric ER. We were worried about the fevers and the breathing (it turns out the breathing issues were caused by double pneumonia, RSV and the fever) and had no idea that the whole ear thing was caused by a VIRAL ear infection. The ER doc shot her up with steroids, sent us home with oral steroids, and prescribed steroidal breathing treatments. Also told us to go to an ENT to have her hearing checked ... tests revealed she was stone deaf, and probably had been for most of the 7 months we were taking her to the idiot doctor. Not so short story short, she is ineligible for the Olympics and can hear fine (little surgery fixed that) and is 3 and has speech issues. But that’s not what I came here to tell you about The county we live in offers “free” speech therapy to PK age children. We took her in November to be evaluated. After making twice weekly phone calls for 4 months we got her a second evaluation in March. She failed both. The 5 to 6 weeks until she would meet with a therapist turned into 9 weeks, a multitude of phone calls later we were told that the first appointment was in 18 days. “Can’t we bring her sooner?” No. There is a rule, you see, parents must be given at least 14 days notice of a child beginning speech therapy. “Can we wave that?” Yes, yes you can. You could come in tomorrow if you want to. REALLY! Come to find out we need a million documents to enter the school, birth certificate, SS card, shot record ... would have been nice to know in November ... or March ... or last week. So the county offers a program that taxpayers pay for, of which I am one, but the rules make it impossible to actually receive the service with out badgering county employees over and over and over and over ... and even then they are off in the summer, so while she failed the evaluation in November and could not have received 6 Months of therapy, instead she will get 4 WEEKS of therapy. I tell this story to point to the public workers that want so badly to be treated fairly ... we have been your customer, I’m sure all of us have, you get no sympathy because you are what we say you are, inefficient, lazy, unempathetic and you move at the speed of tectonic plates. It didn’t take you 6 months to protest budget cuts, did it? Oh, and I guess the first part is for doctors, most of you stink too!
I’m going to let Kevin Glass tell you about the Democrats “Democrats are constantly railing against "the rich" and Wall Street, but the biggest "fatcats" are some of their biggest donors. One of the heaviest hitters is Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, who maxed out donations for John Kerry, Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln, Chuck Schumer and others. Disney CEO Robert Iger and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also went big for Democrats. The two in the past gave $75,000 combined to the festivities surrounding Barack Obama's nomination and their giving was heavily slanted this election cycle toward Democrats. In fact the top twenty CEOs invested heavily in Democrats, giving 55% more in campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.” So do you still think that they’re serious about getting all that “dirty millionaire” money and giving it to the poor? Oh. Yeah, I’m not so sure either. I don’t think that CEO’s are going to support anyone without some assurances. Can you say BAILOUT?
But now what you’ve all been hankering for, my predictions for the next year. That’s right it’s time for the first annual prediction post! Ihey ’m no Nostradamus, but here goes. Greece’s economy is going to completely collapse and they are going to default. This will prompt Ireland and Portugal to do the same thing, the value of the Euro will plummet and in full on panic mode response the EU is going to kick the three of them out and there will be huge bank runs because nobody wants to get stuck with the worthless Kroner. Riots, chaos, you know, the usual. The revolts in northern Africa are going to settle back down and the people there will go back to being ruled by crazy people and there will be no democracy and there will be no civil rights. The UN will have had enough of Quadaffi and authorize a full scale invasion to remove him. Lybia will rejoice and then elect a leader who will be replaced in a coup de e’tat by their next dictator for life. Bloody civil war will break out in The Ivory Coast, or Chad or Zimbabwe or Uganda or Somalia or all of them... But Sudan will come to a peaceful resolution and divide into two nations that live in harmony. Obama and Hillary Clinton will continue to say that we will not invade Yemen (18 months after we invaded Yemen) while we deploy more and more special forces “advisors” to Saudi Arabia’s neighbor. Let’s not forget sports, everyone loves sports! Phil Jackson will unretire, the Mets will continue to bring shame to NYC and the Yankees will not win the world series. For all my Tampa readers, the Bucs will lose the 12 games they should have lost last year ... and all the games will still be blacked out.
Happy Tuesday!

Bin Laden is Executed after Short Trial

So this week US Navy SEALs did what they do best, better than any fighting force in the world. They swooped into a foreign country, a hostile place, and in darkness, entered an unknown building and killed the most evil terrorist in history. I was fascinated by the reactions when the news broke ... both extremes were unexpected. The people who went to the White House to celebrate and brought a beach ball to throw around, and the people who were deeply saddened by his loss. Saddam Hussain was a violent, repressive dictator who killed and tortured his own people at will, gassed the Kurds in northern Iraq, allowed his sons to make Baghdad their own personal real life Grand Theft Auto game and fired missiles at Israel in a vain effort to destroy them. He would have been more successful with that last bit, but firing SCUDS out of the trunk of your Volvo isn’t all that accurate. He was captured, tried for crimes against humanity , convicted and executed. I honestly do not recall anyone being sad about it, mourning the loss of life. Osama Bin Laden wanted to kill you. He was the unrepentant killer of thousands of people all over the world ... it wasn’t just America he hated ... Saudis, Jews, Shia Muslims, and heretics (a fairly large and extremely subjective group) all were on the hit list.
It dawned on me that people were not aware who he was, that they did not know his history, so here’s the quick version. Osama Bin Laden is the son of an extremely wealthy Saudi construction giant, he was educated in Saudi Arabia and as a young man traveled to Pakistan in order to help the people of Afghanistan fight against the Soviet Union (they had invaded in 1979). Even then, he was not on the front lines, but instead used his families money and influence to recruit fighters to go to Afghanistan. This is during the cold war so of course the United Stated sent money and supplies to “Pakistan” where the ISI (Pakistani secret police) turned them over to Bin Laden and his fighters, provided training and unleashed them on the Soviets. After a decade of futility, with the Soviet Union nearing collapse, the Soviets withdrew and Osama returned to Saudi Arabia where he was greeted as a hero. And then a year later when the Saudis allowed the US to enter and use Saudi territory to fight against Iraq, Bin Laden turned on his king. His ensuing rhetoric against the monarchy got him deported to Sudan and got his passport revoked. He then set out on his next plan, to assassinate the president of Egypt (Hossani Mubarak, remember him?) which failed. He forms a group with his new Egyptian friends and they set out to kill by bombing ships and embassies and civilian targets ... when Sudan decided they didn’t want him around either, he went to the only place on earth that actually wanted the guy around, Afghanistan. Which is when he came up with and executed the 9/11 attacks. And the rest I hope you know, we invaded Afghanistan to root out all the terrorists that had been flown there from all over the world by Bin Laden so they could hide out and 10 years later he was found and was executed.
He never relented from his views or his intentions, he was an unrepentant perpetrator of crimes against humanity, there was no trial necessary, he admitted it multiple times, he was proud of it, and he, having publically plead guilty, received his sentence. So I don’t get the mourners.
On the other hand, he has been hiding and running for a decade, and you know people ... the other terrorists from his group couldn’t go near him, nor did he want them to, it was too risky. So although his organization continued unabated, he was not involved in what was happening, he was trying to stay alive. Al quaida exists and wants you to die a violent death whether Bin Laden is alive or dead. So I don’t get the rejoicing. His death represents the delivery of justice, but in no way changes anything. The war rages on, Islamic terrorists are still scattered all over the globe and are plotting carnage and destruction ... Bin Laden has been out of the picture ever since he became the most wanted man on earth. So, while I certainly do not mourn his loss I do not either rejoice in his death. My brothers and sisters are still half way around the world, in a hostile country, risking their lives every minute in the effort to keep the terrorists from killing my children, or you, or your mother. Which, make no mistake, they want to. America and her sons and daughters represent evil to these people because of our “fornication, homosexuality, intoxication, gambling and usury”, not to mention our decades of meddling in the affairs of Muslim countries. Cold war remnants.
So, where’s the conspiracy in it? There isn’t on. Bin Laden was found and was killed and was tossed off the side of a naval ship once his identity was confirmed. Clean, simple, the picture of American military efficiency.
The interesting part is this, while we are all looking at the successes in the east, the facts are coming out about a tragedy in the American South West. It seems that the Justice Department, an arm of the executive, had their stepson the ATF conduct an operation in an effort to bring Mexican drug cartels to justice. The plan goes like this, recruit US gun distributors to sell to Mexican cartel mules, then track the weapons they purchase and arrest cartel leaders. Great plan. But it all went south, they lost the guns and the cartels used them to kill a multitude of people including two US Border Patrol agents. Well done. So, what does the Justice Department do when it comes to light that US dealers sold the weapons recovered at the scene? They do what any honest, honorable person would do ... publically condemn the dealers that they recruited, call them out by name, besmirch the reputations of the men who objected to being involved in selling assault rifles to foreign criminals ... well, now the truth is coming out, and it looks as if the plan and the coverup may go all the way to the top on this one. Maybe it’s a coincidence that just as congressional hearings looking into the botched operation were set to begin we have some attention grabbing news ....................over here. Or maybe the executive would like for you to talk about something other than the Justice Department assisting in the murders of two of your fellow Americans, the Justice Department’s attempted cover up and their refusal to hand over subpoenaed documents that show who was aware and who authorized this debacle of a mess. Don’t worry, the out of touch, ineffective, figurehead of global Islamic Jihad has been brought to justice... jihad will go on, and the cover up of the cover up will work if you let it.
Politicians operate with complete immunity from their crimes because you let them, their games work because you look where the media tells you to look. Your government is directly responsible for the deaths of two men attempting to serve this nation, and rather than admit it, they are trying to hide it and hoping you don’t notice. Please notice, please care, please don’t elect more of the same every time you go to the polls.

Unemployment? What unemployment?

" In March the unemployment rate fell to 8.7% even though 158,000 jobs were lost and 143,000 jobs were created."
That is a quote from my last post making fun of the math used to determine the unemployment rate. i was trying to point out that when you have more new unemployed people than you do new jobs in a given month then you have MORE unemployed people, and yet the government says the rate comes down. Because they think that we are STUPID.
So, i'm wrong right? Sorry, no, i'm right. Here's the actual quote from the jobs report, "The government says applications for unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to a seasonally adjusted 412,000 for the week ended April 9. That left applications at their highest point since mid-February." So that's really bad right? Unless companies hired more than 412,000 people the unemployment rate went up, and that would prove that the recession was continuing unabated. here's the rest of the report, "Companies added more than 200,000 jobs in March for the second straight month, the first time that has happened since 2006. The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent and has dropped a full percentage point since November." Do you see what they did there? 412,000 new applications for unemployment and 200,000 new jobs means that there are nearly a quarter of a million more unemployed people that the 1st of March! It does not mean that there are less unemployed people!!!!! 200,000 - 412,000 = BAD
In other news you have been betrayed by your leaders ....... AGAIN! The budget deal is a total con-job, there are no real cuts to spending, a little "enron math" here and some fuzzy rounding there and a pinch of salt and then bake the whole thing for two weeks in the heat created by threatening to shut down the government and what do you have .... the same crap you had before. Awesome. These guys are seriously just crack addicts, but their crack is spending money on non-sense. I told you that voting them out wouldn't work because it's being voted in that makes them this way, you didn't believe me, but here we are, same ol same ol, no end in sight.
Unemployment answers. Everyone wants to know what is going to fix unemployment, and there are all kinds of false claims and bad economic theory floating around out there. Republicans say that if you don't tax rich people and corporations that they will run out and hire millions of people at great salaries and with great benefits. Democrats say that if you raise taxes on rich people and corporations and give that money to people who do not work for it that somehow jobs will magically appear ... oh, wait i remember, the people will spend the money at walmart and then walmart will need new cashiers. Except if you've been to walmart then you know that it does not induce them to hire when they see 40 people in line at one open cash register ... i think they think it's fun.
So what is the answer? Well, there isn't one answer that works all the time. Wars sure help, but not the kind of war we're fighting now, to fix unemployment with a war you need tons on increased military factory work and in order to sustain the employment rate after the war ends you need lots of soldiers to die. I am not advocating that. I love our soldiers, but that was a big part of the post WWII economic boom in the middle class, a reduced labor force drove up wages, it's a simple supply and demand curve, pure 8th grade economics. If there are a total of 10 jobs in the entire economy and there are 30 applicants, the 10 people hired will not be paid well, and if they don't like it they can be replaced by one of the other 20. If there are only 8 applicants for the same 10 jobs then the picture is different, companies are then competing for the available workers and wages and benefits will be higher. Make sense? I hope so. Which brings me to my solution to the current unemployment problem. I maintain that it is not in fact an unemployment problem, it is instead a reduced household income problem. The problem is not lack of jobs, the problem is that people can't pay their bills due to income reductions and the obvious inflation that the government keeps denying. In most households you have two people competing in an over saturated labor market separately, each one being low balled by their employer. So here's the fix. I need about 50 million people to resign from their jobs. I know that sounds crazy, but the sudden creation of massive numbers of job openings will create a hiring may-lay that will result in people being offered huge salaries and great benefits. So if you are currently married to someone who has been unemployed for 2 years and you have been supporting him, you get to be part of the 50 million and he will get a job that pays as much as you used to make combined. No new jobs, but your finances will be as healthy as ever. The real dirty secret of all the talks in Washington is that you cannot "create" jobs. Demand created jobs, demand for products and services. A restrictive tariff might created jobs, stimulus will not. I know that in the current climate it is the height of misogynistic rhetoric to even suggest it, but if we were a nation where the majority of people only were married one time, and one of those people excluded themselves from the work force, i maintain that we would have no economic crisis. Demand would be less and less production would be required. That all people are entering the work force is driving down the price of labor on the market and at the same time driving up the price of all other commodities. So, there, i said it. The solution to our dilemma is single income families with a stay at home parent ... a return to the way it used to be. A return to the old way, stores closed on Sunday, hands on parenting ... first you just have to realize that toughening up women, emasculating men, having cool gadgets, allowing a generation of children to be raised by day care providers and completely withdrawing from your community into your house, into the digital world, none of it is actually progress. They told you it was progress so that you would consume more ... what could sell cars like getting women to go to work? Gas? Mac and Cheese? It's not progress, and the truth is just beneath the surface of all of our problems ... it's the great leap backwards.

Reid, Boehner, Obama ... Get a clue!

Ok, so I didn’t really want to get involved in this because I think I would have to write a book to really explain it all and there have been quite a few complaints that my last couple of blog posts were too long and people were falling asleep while reading them. This becomes a huge problem when you factor in that 12% of pinkosworld readers read while driving and then they fall asleep and crash. I know that you’re wondering how we know that ... we just do, OK?
This week’s post is brought to you by Speciation ...the study of species separated for long periods of time, subjected to vastly different environmental conditions, then brought back together where they do not mate and then some scientists declare them different species and pat themselves on the back for proving evolutionary theory. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the Federal Budget ... unless the government is funding the experiments, which they probably are, so it’s not as bad of a segue as had hoped for, but I hope you’ll agree that it was pretty bad.
Ahhh, the Federal Budget. Let me just say this, I researched this post for one hour (not as long as a normal news post, but I have been really sick and there is so much information out there that I could write ten posts from what I learned in that hour) so in no way does this paint a full picture of what the government spends money on, but my hope is that it is shocking enough to make you really, really angry. I did not get into Social Security or Medicare, I know that that is where most of the money goes, but like I said, I’ve been sick and ... whatever, if you want me to solve those two somebody is going to have to start sending me a paycheck, suffice to say we spend a lot of money on the elderly, we loooove the elderly. $1.6 trillion love.
Here are some of the obsurdities I uncovered in 60 minutes of really hard work, there is a Bureau of the Public Debt ... and they’re on twitter. So that’s reassuring, along with the Office of Thrift Supervision ... wow.
The Department of Education gets $92.9 Billion per year spends $15 billion on “Accelerating Achievement and Insuring Equity” $393 million on “Supporting Student Success” which seem to cover some of the same areas to me and then I have to wonder how effective they are, how much over lap they have, do they both have an administrator and a staff? Oh, and did you know that we spend $234 million per year to fund Howard University? A private college. It doesn’t say why, I suppose it has something to do with historical prejudice at universities, but I went to college and didn’t see much of that still going on. I could be wrong. $234 million? Wow. They spent $750 million to fund “English Learner Education”. Is that ESL? Does the government really spend 3/4 billion dollars to teach people English? Not to brag, but I learned German for the cost of a plane ticket, and a year’s time, but I assume that the beneficiaries of this program are already here, so what’s the money for? They need to go out and mingle a bit. And let us not forget the $1.76 billion for “Salaries and Expenses”. Wow. Double wow. Does that mean that the salaries of the people teaching English in the “English Learner Program” aren’t included in their number?
The Department of Energy gets $30 billion and either don’t publish their budget (required by law?) Or they make it really hard to find.
Here we go with the Department of Labor did you know that your tax dollars insure the pensions of private workers? Seriously, if a pension fund goes broke from mismanagement or graft or whatever the reason, you’re backing it up. The “Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation” gets $7.2 billion per year and spent $2.8 million on supplies and materials and another $8.3 million on equipment. Seriously. $10 million on paper and staplers and laptops and photocopiers and dividers. Wow. There’s a law, you may have heard of it, the Family Medical Leave Act, in case not it basically says that for certain reasons you can leave your job and it must be there for you when you return, which I have always been in favor of because the worker who left would not be paid in their absence which insures as short a leave as is necessary. Not for long, the 2012 DOL budget proposes $23 million for “State paid Leave Fund”. If states want to pay people out on leave, people protected by FMLA, the feds are going to help pick up the tab. That’ll go great, no one is going to abuse that bit of genius. I could never afford paternity leave when my first three children were born, but if you’re going to pay me to hang out with my family for 6 months or so I might seriously consider having some more kids. You know the people who lie every month about unemployment? You know how they say it’s going down because the work force is shrinking (translation-if you’ve been unemployed too long we don’t want to count you anymore so you don’t exist) they get some money too, $655 million for the Office of Labor Statistics. Seriously. I will save the government $654 million dollars and make up some phoney numbers at my kitchen table, I’ll start right now. In March the unemployment rate fell to 8.7% even though 158,000 jobs were lost and 143,000 jobs were created. Where’s my million? But all that waste explains why there is only $ 48 million left over for Veterans Employment and Training. They don’t really need that do they? The Army recruiter said that you would learn something that would be great for you once you got out of the Army, who needs training? Oh, there’s no position open for someone who is exceptional at recognizing enemy combatants in an urban setting? Accuracy with a rifle? Avoiding IED’s? Calling in air strike coordinates? Oh ... sorry, we spent all the real money making up some numbers that help no one, so you’ll have to go work at McDonalds, or you could ... stay in the Army and go back to war.
And I really tried, but I can’t Find Heath and Human Services Budget, which is cool, they only get $854 billion ...no biggie. I will say this, from spending far too much time searching their web site for some answers, the Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, really loves herself. Check it out, there’s a whole lot of Kathy on www.hhs.gov.
With all of this I’m just trying to show you that government spending is stupid. There is no oversight, no one is watching to make sure that 15 people aren’t doing the same job ... no one asks, “Is this necessary?” or “Is this the government’s job?”. It’s just yee haw! Let’s do some spendin’!
So as the powers that be sit around Obama’s office and argue about a couple of billion dollars for the rest of the year and hang the pay of the bravest men and wonmen on planet earth in the balance ... I just want to say to them that I am ashamed of each and every one of them. I am ashamed that our nation is run by people who do not care one bit about the American people, I am ashamed that my President has sent my brothers and sisters to fight and die in the four corners of earth without first making sure that their families would be taken care of back home, I am ashamed that the argument is about cutting a few dollars. Do they not see? I spent ONE HOUR analyzing their budget and have found exactly what I thought I would find. Washington spends our money in ways that none of us ever would, Washington passes spending bills with out forethought or afterthought, just vote “yea” and go home. Most of all I am ashamed that they have been able to pacify all of us and do it in front of our faces. Tonight I pray that all of the people serving this nation do not have to worry if their children have food on the table back home, that the leaders of out nation would get this one thing right, and I pray that these same leaders will be inspired not to change the amount they spend, but the entire way they govern.
I hope it was short enough, and you 12% ers need to wait until you get home to read ... or at least until you get to a red light. Happy Friday!

A moment away from politics

Darwinism, once banned from public schools in this country, is now accepted as fact. Secular academia is arrogant and pompous and in their effort to be all knowing and a pillar of knowledge they have hitched their wagon to Darwin’s theory and are letting it run. In the early days it was considered blasphemy, then it was debated and then somewhere along the way it has been introduced as the new creation-ism (no evidence, but must be believed), and it requires a whole bunch of faith to believe in evolution.
I do not believe that it is blasphemy to study and ask questions about how the earth functions and how it came to be as it is, I’m not even going to go so far as to say that my opinion is correct (obviously I think that it is), but certainly all you scientists and amateur scholars of atheism could come up with something better in the past 150 years, couldn’t you?
First we must, as in all things, question the source. Where does the information disseminate from and what to the vocal supporters have to gain from spreading their theories as fact. In some cases it is money, if you are looking for grant money and donations to find “the missing link” it sure helps if the whole world believes that there is something to find. If Darwinism is a fact then there must be, it becomes a simple problem of finding it. In other cases there is an alterior motive. Godlessness. If you want the world to reject God, to move forward past “silly superstition” them you have to replace creation and God Himself with something. Evolution and science slide in to some pretty big shoes and if they are presented at the right angle, they appear to fill them, but they don’t.
Before you get all excited and have to breathe into a paper bag let me explain something, natural selection (the basis of Darwin’s theory) exists and it does cause slow and dramatic changes within species. This makes sense and is used as the jumping off point for the rest of the nonsense. If there is a population of giraffes with varying neck lengths and they suffer from environmental hardships in the form of a food shortage, in the ensuing years this giraffe population eats everything with in reach of their little mouths, it stands to reason that eventually only the longest necked giraffes will get to eat and therefore be strong enough to procreate and if these conditions continue long enough the short necked giraffes will be bred into non existence. Not extinction, and this is an important distinction, they were all giraffes and their physical appearance has changed, but they are still giraffes. Natural selection like this can be caused by a variety of circumstances, slow cheetah eventually cannot catch enough food to survive and do not reproduce, dark colored polar bear can not stalk their prey, tuskless elephants cannot defend themselves sufficiently (this one actually is playing itself out in reverse as you read this. Poachers have decimated the tusked African elephant population and the offspring of the remaining elephants are being born without tusks) and on and on and on. For every imaginable external stress an organism can be put under there seems to be a universal ability to rise up and meet the challenge, to adapt and continue. This is the universally undisputed portion of Darwin’s work ... and from there the proponents of evolution ask you to make one heck of a leap. The odd thing is that it may not sound crazy to you, there was a time when it made perfect sense to me, it was what I had been taught and I never really thought about it. The leap is from adaptation to evolution. From species slowly changing better meet the challenges that a population faces thru selective breeding to species actually becoming different species. You have evolved from monkeys, your salamander evolved from dinosaurs, or is it prehistoric fish? I’m not really sure which ... and neither are they. They talk about “the missing link” and what that is is the blended human, an organism that is more human that neanderthal man but less human that you are. Finding this organism would prove their theory correct, not that they need to prove it at this point, it is being taught in every educational institution on planet earth as gospel. What they fail to mention, the dirty omitted little secret is that they haven’t found the missing link for any current organism. When you begin to really think about all the verifiable facts that are presented there are huge gaping holes in all of it. The dinosaurs suffered a massive extinction and they also evolved ... huh? Did they die off or did they evolve into something else? I know that a really smart Darwinist will say both, some dinosaurs died off and some evolved into ... something else. It wasn’t just dinosaurs that died off, it was everything, plants, fish, birds ... and they all evolved? Really? At its core, the idea that life began in the ocean and thru millions of years of environmental stress developed the ability to breathe air and grew legs is asinine! To suggest that it was some sort of crazy accident of probability is just reaching for anything to fit the theory, a desperate attempt to tie up the loose ends, to drown out opposing view points. It is very difficult to perform a population study of a million generations to see what anomalies might present themselves. But I will say this, if legs and breathing air are just a silly accident, in order for things to be as they are today you would need billions of silly accidents. Live birth of mammals is a sticky one, a female of a species would simultaneously have to accidently carry its offspring to full term and also accidently develop the ability to produce milk. That’s a tough one, it would have to be a single organism ... not gradual. Any species with unusual fertilization processes would require a male and a female to have the same billion to one accident simultaneously, for example the red velvet mite, which is as big as one of the letters in this sentence, has a peculiar mating habit. The male releases its sperms on small twigs or stalks in what scientists call the "love garden", then lays down an intricate silken trail to the spot. When a female stumbles upon this trail, she will follow it to seek out the "artist". If she likes his work, then she will sit on the sperm. However, if another male spots the garden, he will trash it and lay his own instead! Did they have a meeting and decide that from now on this would be the new way? The un-leap-able hurdle of evolutionary theory is that one species cannot become another species, sure there are changes over time, but a giraffe is still a giraffe ... and will never become a hippopotamus. Even if we wait a billion years.
So, if a fish cannot become a land walking, air breathing mammal/bird/reptile/insect then of course an amoeba cannot become a fish. And that kills Darwin. The book he wrote, his life’s work was entitled “Origin of the Species” and that is what he was theorizing, he used his extensive study of slight changes in populations over time and the idea of natural selection and he made the leap that human beings used to be monkeys and then of course that monkeys used to be something before that and that thing used to be something else and you can continue to traced it all back to the oldest fossils ever found which are single celled organisms. And that was the beginning.
That a single celled organism could evolved in to the immeasurably diverse ecosystem doesn’t seem strange to you? That organism evolved chlorophyll and became a plant and also evolved a brain and muscles and bones and became you and also evolved an exoskeleton and became a butterfly?
Which gets us to the biggest hole of all, don’t ask a Darwinist for the answer to this one, because you will either get a response so stupid that you will get a headache or they will tell you that their theory that explains everything that has ever happened with every creature on the entire planet for all of history, hasn’t found the answer yet. Where did the single celled organism come from? It’s the old chicken and the egg dilemma ... the two most common explanations of Darwinists are these, lightning struck “ooze” and thus formed the ooze into a simple lifeform, or that life was introduced to the planet by extraterrestrial means. Lightning? Struck the ooze? And formed a cell wall, a nucleus and digestive capabilities? Really? I’ve never seen lightning build anything before, or even organize it ... that’s a good one.
I’m not even going to get into Mr Dawkins extraterrestrial nonsense. But I will say this, if the origin of life on earth is life on another planet you have not dodged a bullet, you still have to explain the life on the other planet. Maybe there is more constructive lighting on that planet.
I propose this to you, I know it is old fashioned, and considered the height of ancient ignorance, but I propose it anyway. God created the universe, the earth, everything on it and He did so intentionally. The bombardier beetle is not an accident ... “The spray is produced within a pair of chambers in the beetle’s abdomen. One of these chambers contains hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone. The other chamber contains two enzymes called catalase and peroxidase. If another insect threatens the bombardier beetle, the beetle will respond by mixing the two chemicals. The enzymes cause the hydrogen peroxide to decompose into water and oxygen. This chemical reaction releases heat, which raises the fluid and gas inside the chamber to 100 degrees Celsius - in other words, boiling. The boiling temperature causes the oxygen gas to expand. The expanding gas forces the fluid out at the offending predator.” Really? An insect developed the ability to create chemicals inside of its body and also developed the physiology to store them, mix them and then excrete them thru a series of happy little accidents?
I see the Creator’s hand everywhere I look at the natural world, the balance of ecosystems in a world ruled by entropy, the perfect beauty of countless creatures, the immeasurable usefulness of the most unexpected actors. Maybe you don’t see it how I do, maybe the Creator is not obvious to you, and that’s fine with me, I don’t even consider it blasphemy ... but for God’s sake come up with something better that Darwinism, come up with a theory that explains something, anything, God knows that Darwin didn’t.

On Why Unions are to Blame for Wisconsin

When I was 16 years old I read the Communist Manifesto and it forever changed my outlook on the world. Before, I knew things were made, but it never occurred to me to think about how they were made, by whom, and to who’s benefit. It never occurred to me to consider labor a commodity, and while I always was sympathetic to the working poor, I guess I just assumed that they always had been and always would be. Marx’s words opened my eyes to the possibility that something could be done about it, real change could be made, real people could have a better future. I searched for people who saw things as I did, and found them ... in dusty old books, and no where else.
When I was 18 years old I went to college and discovered the proverbial pot at the end of the rainbow. There was an organization there call the Student Labor Action Coalition (hereafter SLAC). I had discovered Poe’s el Dorado, I was a student and labor action was a passion that I had been waiting to unleash for two long years. I gleefully joined and went to the first meeting ... I sat quietly and listened, at first in apprehension expecting to hear wisdom and bravery and big plans and big action, then in horror as I sat and listened to bickering and nonsense and inane plans to boycott Disney and picket the local Disney store in solidarity to Costa Rican factory workers making Aladdin pajamas.
When I was 19 years old I was the President of SLAC, for the first time I would be manning the helm, there were 12 dedicated soldiers in my SLAC army and I knew that we would march on to triumphant victory ... I reversed course and set out to do meaningful things. At our first meeting I announced that we would not be involved in any more boycotts nor would we participate in the “Free Tibet” rally, instead we would be moving to organize the cafeteria workers and the cleaning service employees of the college. We would be getting them full time status and health benefits and actually improve actual people’s lives. The announcement was not met with the passionate excitement that I had expected, I looked out to the blank stares of the 12 soon to be ex coalition members. It was the last SLAC meeting.
When I was 20 I met Joe. Joe was an organizer for the AFL-CIO ... he had no address, he rode an old motorcycle, he wore a leather jacket and jeans and a t-shirt. I wanted to BE him and settled to know him. Between stints riding his motorcycle off into the sunset to deliver equality and a living wage to the working poor all over our great nation he would come to town and tell me what was going on out there. We would drink coffee on a little terrace and he would chain smoke Drum that he rolled himself and I would ask rapid fire questions, just soaking the poetic romance of it all.  When the time came for him to ride off again I would go back to studying International Labor Relations and Statistics and Calculus and I would stare out the window imagining Joe walking through the fields of a Georgia peanut farm, workers gathered around, giving speeches that would fit perfectly into a John Steinbeck novel. That spring I was beyond words when I was invited to come to South Carolina to help organize the resort workers of Hilton Head , golf caddies and valets and bell boys, room maids, laundry workers, waiters and bartenders. To my utter dismay we did not ride off into the sunset on matching motorcycles but instead in some weird guy’s Dodge Caravan, the two young rabble rousers, the old weirdo and the lingering odor of a dead wet dog that seemed to get worse the further south we drove. The third day of handing out fliers I was approached by a newly organized union member with a minor, legitimate, complaint. He had already gone to his rep and was ignored and wanted to know if I could help. “Of course I can” I knew I could, I knew people, real union people, people who were as passionate as I was. That evening I went to my contact at the AFL-CIO with the young man’s issue, I was sure that it would be resolved and I fantasized that the lazy rep would be reprimanded or maybe fired ... instead I was told to “forget that non-sense” and worry about getting more people to sign up instead. I won’t repeat all that was said because in my heart I still hope that he was only speaking for himself, even if in my head I think that he wasn’t. The next morning I took the bus back north, I never saw Joe again.
When I was 21 and working in a bakery in Atlanta I was standing next to a young, pregnant, Mexican (legal) co worker when a pan that was just out of the oven slid off of a rack towards her and she instinctually caught it with both arms, giving her 3rd degree burns. After the boss told her she had not worked there long enough to qualify for worker’s comp and sent her home, about an hour later, I was fired for telling her the truth, giving her the number to call, sending her to the clinic and then telling the boss what I thought of him and what he had tried to do.
For the past 10 years I have worked for one of the largest corporations in the world, day in and day out, with skilled labor. Never, in my entire life, have I seen anyone as concerned with the well being of workers health, safety and treatment as the faceless multinational corporation I work for. Managers who neglect their workers education and development are chastised and disciplined for it, the workers receive annual reminders of their benefits and options, they are encouraged to invest in the matched 401k, the company offers scholarships for their children and God help the manager who oversees workers who are hurt at work. No, it’s not benevolent ... the faceless corporation knows that these people are valuable assets in need of protection, thru experience they have found that treating workers right and paying them a living wage is the best way to keep them working, productive. Over the past decade as the workers benefits have improved, management’s have been slowly stripped away. We no longer have a pension waiting for us at the end, it became too expensive to fund it any more. Our health insurance covers less and less every year while it costs more and more ... and we’re not special, so it goes at most companies all across our nation.  The American people have lost hope in retirement, private pension have gone the way of the dodo, and the ponzi scheme of social security has shown its ugly face, unsustainable, not long for this world.  Tonight, as the sun sets, workers all over the country will go to be well cared for with no hope of a pension and with the understanding that with each year that passes their remaining benefits will cost them more that the year before.
Except union workers. Their pension are contractual and will be paid until the pension funds go bankrupt ... which will happen. Except government workers, for them the pension fund is tax revenue and they will collect until our nation goes bankrupt.
Unions have spent 100 years fighting for wages and benefits for their members, making production so expensive that it is now cheaper to make things in China/Costa Rica/Burma/anywhere, then ship them here, even with the tariffs designed to discourage companies from outsourcing. American cars are built in Canada and Mexico, Korean cars in Alabama, Japanese cars in Tennessee, German cars in South Carolina, but the UAW is looking around confused, telling its members, the laid off, foreclosed upon masses, that it’s the greedy companies’ fault.
So now the government workers benefits are under assault and there are no cries of support form the country at large, the rest of the country is watching in scorn as the protesters march because they’re only being asked to do what we were asked to do a long time ago, work harder, produce more, and get less in return. Frankly, we’re sick of paying for it, sick of paying for something that we will never have, the unions missed the boat, because when it was happening to us, they were fighting to get their people more, as economic forces have cost me half my pay and forced 14 million Americans into unemployment and made my benefits more expensive the government workers have gotten cost of living raises ... where was the AFL-CIO and SEIU when my pension was canceled, the same place they are now that it’s their turn. The unions have turned their back on America by ignoring reality, by enforcing sweetheart contracts through their friends in government, by refusing to allow for the fact that the world had changed. When unemployment and foreclosure and property tax default soared years ago, the writing was on the wall, cuts were coming and the unions did not act. No suggestions, no plan ... just get what we can while we can, full speed ahead.
In Wisconsin the governor had choices to make and he proposed an end to the collective bargaining rights of unions or layoffs to close the budget gap, and the union shouted NEITHER! NO! America is not outraged on the union’s behalf just as they were not outraged on our behalf, it is high time that the medicine be taken. So, although I dearly love teachers (both those who taught me, and my friends and family who teach) and I dearly love police and firemen (friends and family who serve their communities) and I dearly love those who work in government (my Aunt) .... if the money is not there, then the money is not there. In 2010 I made half of what I made in 2005 and my benefits now cost double what they did then, I work the same 60 hour work week and have the exact same job ... and I know I am among the lucky ones who have a job. Public union members, be glad that you are only being asked to pay a bit more, that you are only being asked to give up a little, the rest of us have had to give up much, much more. Now, put your signs down and get back to work.