What to do?

I have never written about this before, but I really like my job. So here’s the story. I run a repair facility, a garage. I am an employee of one of the largest corporations in the world and I am in charge of one small shop. We do maintenance on cars and repair them and sell tires. I enjoy it. I like technicians (a rare sentiment in an industry where they are mostly seen as a necessary evil, the untouchables ... you need them but would never associate with them) I respect what they do, how hard they work, their creativity and their passion for what they are doing. I like the customers (who are routinely thought of just like the techs, as something you need but do not want) I find the personalities and quirks and hangups fascinating and challenging. When I get that phone call, “Ever since you changed my tires my check engine light is on.” I smile to myself ... it’s fun and funny and the different customers and their different expectation of us is what keeps everyday fresh and interesting. I love playing a part in fixing cars, wether I do it my self or come up with an idea or just order the parts...there is nothing in my day that makes my feel more proud of my guys and what were doing that seeing a car come in broken and watching a happy customer drive off in it. Is that corney? It sounds corney when I read it, but it’s true.
So that’s what I like .... and then there’s working for a massive corporation. Most of you can probably relate to this part, the long hours, the insane contradictory messages from the top, the “tps reports” ... most days it feels like there are hundreds of bosses each with their own agenda and everyone the “most important”. Our jobs are to grow the company by taking care of our customers better than the competition, create profit by managing expenses and having sales growth and then they set out to do everything in their power to get in the way and make it impossible. Insert them selves in every decision, slowing down things that need to happen in an instant, centralizing decisions that can only be made locally ... typical corporate nonsense. I’m not perfect, but I’m good at my job and I honestly enjoy it, even on a bad day ... right up until I read my e-mail and find out that having a display is not enough unless photos are taken of it and sent up the ladder, monitoring expenses is not enough and counts for nothing unless the proper form is filled out and faxed off on the right day, creating a schedule for employees and demanding that they work by it is meaningless unless it is on file in an office where it is left in a pile unreviewed except for marking off that it was sent in. Phone calls are monitored, failure to use the right words is punished, regardless of actual results. People are treated with disregard, minor requests are denied because we stand on the marble pillar of “policy”, rules are made and must be obeyed, every new policy needs a signature of agreement and understanding so that every policy violation can result in termination ... only I can’t keep track anymore, there are hundreds of them. Check this box, initial here, sell this thing (but not on these three cars), sign here, this paper goes in this file, and then in this box (but only after you sign off on it), don’t sign in the wrong place, don’t spend money, replace all worn out equipment, satisfy every customer, never give a discount, don’t let the techs take breaks, even when it’s hot out, don’t let them get dehydrated, never let them get hurt, but they need to work faster ... faster ... faster.
What happened to our country, to our companies? What happened to hiring good people and letting them work, it’s still the best way.
So where’s the story? You ask. The story is in the offer I got today to take the good and leave the bad, to keep running a business, to keep fixing cars, to leave all the nonsense behind, to be my own boss. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted and a few dollars stand between me and owning my own business, being independent. So the question is ... why am I thinking about it? Why don’t I jump in with both feet?

When i Grow up.

I have found myself lost in thought time and time again these last few days pondering a single question ...”What do you want to do?” We ask children all the time, “And what do you want to do when you grow up?” So here I am, all grown up, and I look around and I wonder to myself, how did I get here?

I’m not saying that I am unhappy with every facet of my life, not by a long shot, I have more to be thankful for than most. I would even put myself in league with the blessed ... and yet, and yet I am not doing what I want to be doing. Are you? I call out to all you prisoners of the cubicle and ask you, what happed to the plans to be a doctor, lawyer, soldier, policeman, fire fighter, race car driver, actor, model? How did it all go wrong for us all? I work in a place where I watch the homeless, the forgotten, the discarded of our society shuffle past the windows in an endless stream of humanity ... what happened to them? They had dreams once too and I can guarantee that no youngster’s dream is to be dirty, sun burned and hungry walking down Florida Ave just south of Busch Blvd.

So I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but I know what I want more of ... freedom, time with my daughters, money ... mostly I want to work for something meaningful, something other then profit. I feel like I’ve sold out most of the time, like I’ve sold out and the price was far too cheap.

I have been an opinionated loud mouth all my life, I spent more time in trouble for voicing my opinion than I did out of it, and now I hold my tongue to hold my job ... I have mouths to feed before you judge me too harshly. Mouths to feed and school to pay for and shoes and clothes and dentist appointments and minivan payments to make.

How many of us give up our ambitions to change the world to provide for our children when in reality they would be so much better off to be poor and to have a parent fighting for a better world. My children will not be proud of how many tires I sell tomorrow, but they might grow up to believe that anything is possible like I tell them if they saw me doing it. When I start thinking of turning the world on its ear one of the little cherubs comes to me with a smile and a twinkle in their eye and announces that they want to go to dance class, and we buy the dress and the tights and the shoes and the little dear looks so cute with her hair in a bun .... what’s a little more overtime to give the angels their dreams? Less time to think, less time to see them, less time to do anything ... working to get right where we started.

What's the point?

I started the blog because my lovely wife got interested in blogging and I thought I would find out how hard it was to start one and then I starting posting because I thought it wold be fun and then I started doing actual research because something inside me told me that if I was going to spout my opinions I should be able to back it up ... and then it all went wrong.

What had once be cathartic was giving me heart burn. Finding out that the US was going to invade Yemen was stressful, watching the media help by making Yemen out to be evil gave me high blood pressure ... and then when I realized that noone really cared, I had a heart attack. I wrote about and tell people about Bechtel’s involvement in war in central Africa and noone cares. So now I have to ask, why?
What is it about our collective psyche that allows us to worry about sports teams and gas prices and gay marriage and the “immigrant problem” and simultaneously allows us to shrug off the deaths of innocents? Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan ... we deliver death all over the world.
Muslims want to build a mosque at “ground zero” and we are outraged. I don’t really care, but one of the reasons given for the Imam behind the project being a “radical islamist” is because he once suggested that the United States shared some of the blame for 9-11. I’m sorry but if you come to my house and kill my wife and then my kids grow up and decide to kill your kids to avenge the death of their mother you share some of the blame! Do we really think that the orphans we leave behind are going to love the west?
I don’t know. I wish that you cared about war crimes and death, I wish that you could see that your government has used your patriotism and the blood of your children to “open markets” for profit expansion ... I wish you didn’t believe it made any difference who the president was ... I wish you saw that the entire system was broken and desperately needed to be torn down and rebuilt rather than clinging to history and the sacredness of Americanism. I wish you cared that the “news media” kept you in the dark on purpose to pacify you ... I don’t know if there’s any point in writing, delivering a message that you neither want or intend to allow to change your heart or priorities.

Ode to Houdini

I am a sovereign nation state.
I train soldiers to defend me.
I arm them.
I put them in harms way.
And if you hit them with pipes and stab them and throw them off boats I want them to shoot you to death.

Multinational corporations risk the health of the entire earth in the name of profit and wealth and when all goes terribly wrong ... they shrug and buy commercial air time to let you know that they’re responsible. I believe them ... don’t you?

I am a privileged Dutch boy.
I kill girls and my daddy “fixes it”.
I hide,
Behind a smirk and an expensive lawyer and lies.
Until Peru.
Now I go to prison,
Guilty as charged.

The war rages on, soldiers are killed and maimed and terrorized, villagers are bombed, crops are burned to stop the drugs. New President, new party, same war. The nation grinds to a halt ... states go bankrupt, banks stop lending, the factory closed, the mill isn’t hiring and the unemployment check isn't going to cover the bills. New President, new party, same economy. I wouldn’t care if they all didn’t tell me it was Bush’s fault, if they didn’t tell me they would fix it. I know they’re all the same, do you? You can’t vote them out, it’s being “in” that makes them this way. The war rages on, jobs ... gone, and the oil isn’t going to stop flowing.

The media tries to use slight of hand (look, over here, a Dutch boy and Israel, BP ...) Did you see it? The trick? The war rages on with no end in sight, the oil is filling the gulf and congress is trying to get reelected, don’t look now, but it’s all happening.

American Corporation Aides Genocidal War Criminals

People who actually stand still while I talk (as opposed to running away) often ask me why it is that I am opposed to corporations. After all, corporations are great, aren’t they? They provide jobs, they pay for vital research and development, they donate money for charities, and on their quest for profit maximization they bring some useful things to market. All of that is true. And they also kill, maim and destroy on their quest for profit maximization, they bastardize the democratic process and use their massive wealth to direct our nation, they use their influence to create laws and to create wars. They use the media outlets they own to shift public opinion. It is their absolute moral ambivalence that makes them dangerous.
Nicaragua is one good example, a nation whose government we opposed and overthrew multiple times because of the “restrictive attitudes toward foreign access to Nicaraguan natural resources” ... a nation that we occupied militarily from 1912 until 1933 (is that in your history book?) just so American corporations could profit.
And then there’s WWI (that is in your history book), at the time our President was Woodrow Wilson, an outspoken pacifist who refused to get involved in the European war, or to commit American resources to the effort ... until he changed his mind and we entered the war on the side of England and France, which was no big deal, I mean ONLY a hundred sixteen thousand American soldiers died, ONLY two hundred thousand were wounded. Why the change of heart? JP Morgan had loaned England and France money to fight the war and they were losing, if they were defeated Morgan would be out $500 million in 1915 ($10,474,837,854.01 in 2009 dollars), and wouldn’t you know, all of a sudden, President Wilson wasn’t such a pacifist after all. And if you care, the repayment of the loan was passed on to Germany alone at the close of the war, bankrupted them, created hyperinflation and massive unemployment and allowed a little known architect to become Chancellor in 1933 on the promise to stop paying the loan ... Adolph Hitler.
If you want more examples of corporations acting out on the geo-political stage, read Howard Zinn’s “The People’s History of the United States”
Which brings me to Bechtel. If you want the entire history of the company click HERE but suffice to say that they are a massive, family run corporation with major political ties all over the world and a penchant for secrecy.


According to the Wall Street Journal, Bechtel established a strong relationship with the rebel leader Laurent Kabila during the First Congo War of 1996-7 in central Africa, compiling "the most complete mineralogical and geographical data of the former Zaire ever assembled, information worth a fortune to any prospective mining or oil firm" and commissioning and paying for "U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite studies of the country and for infrared maps of its mineral potential." According to government officials, some of the satellite data provided to Kabila by Bechtel was "militarily useful information." Just to make it clear when a corporation establishes a “strong relationship” with a African rebel leader that means that they gave him lots of money. And if they are willing to pay NASA to take very expensive pictures of the country it means two things; one, they are going to get something in return if Kabila is successful in his revolutionary efforts ... and two, they are NOT GOING TO ALLOW HIM TO FAIL. It’s called return on investment, and you don’t become a massive multinational corporation by making risky investments, in revolution of all things.

Who cares about Bechtel or Laurent Kabila?

Well, lets go back a little further, with out writing a book on all of African history or launching into a course on African geography, remember Rwanda? When you think of Rwanda you probably think of genocide. In 1994 Rwanda exploded into ethnic violence, the ethnic minority (having formed an army in Uganda) invaded from the north and the majority (incited by state radio and community leaders) began a massacre that would leave somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 dead in one hundred days, as the killing went on the perpetrators (nearly 2 million people) were forced out of the country into neighboring Zaire by the advancing rebel army. One hundred days of INSANITY! The war criminals set up “refugee” camps in eastern Zaire and received humanitarian aide from the UN.
Two years later Kabila mysteriously had the resources and the men (after being a revolutionary for 35 years) for the first time to begin his offensive against the entrenched government he despised. The rebels first action was to expel the refugees from the camps, push them back to Rwanda, to an uncertain future (that thankfully turned out to be peaceful). Amid stories of slaughter and torture, 60,000 from the camps went missing at the time and have never been accounted for, you see, his army was ethnically the same as the minority from Rwanda (or at least sympathetic). He received support from the Rwandan government as well as Uganda, and ... his new friend Bechtel. I know that there is no good guy in any of this, war criminals killing war criminals, forming armies, invading countries, overthrowing governments ... but as complicated as politics in central Africa is, certainly we hold American corporations to a higher standard. American companies are not supposed to be financing revolutions to overthrow governments, they are not supposed to give money to armies that slaughter 60,000 people so that they can continue on their rampage, just to get mineral rights to sell to mining companies. NASA is not supposed to sell satellite images to companies that then turn around an give “militarily useful” information to Marxist revolutionaries ... we (as a nation) were part of it too, NASA is us. And then there is the dismal job done by the New York Times reporting on the revolution ... Kabila was the savior of central Africa, all would be right with the world. No mention of Rwanda refugees being killed wholesale, no mention of foreign aide ... it was a populist movement, no mention of Kabila’s previous political activity, his involvement with Ernesto “Che” Guevarra, who left Zaire in disgust at Kabila’s incompetence decades earlier, and no mention of Bechtel, no mention of the satellite photos being provided, no mention of mineral rights. According to the New York Times this was pure. Kabila was the real deal, and upon his victory Zaire would be a paradise.
So the question becomes, why? And although there are many possible answers, the only one that makes any real sense is that the New York Times (and probably other papers) were fronting for Bechtel, paving the public relations highway for them.
So in summary we have an American corporation (Bechtel) giving aide to an army that, as it’s first act killed “refugees” from ethnic violence in Rwanda, forcing the survivors back into the country they fled, the rebels (funded by Bechtel) then overthrow their government and fight a war to do so, killing tens of thousands of their countrymen and eventually installing a non-democratic government in the capital. The New York Times who praised this movement had nothing to say once the war ended, there was no half page expose about the corruption rampant in Kabila’s government. Kabila was assassinated by his own bodyguard less than 5 years later and replaced by his son, typical chaos for central Africa in recent years. An American corporation, who gets sweetheart deals from our government for contracts with regularity, who own airports and builds massive construction projects, crossed the line and financed Marxist revolutionaries (who actually succeeded) then meddled with international politics, they indirectly killed and maimed and displaced people ... all in search of the almighty profit. They never thought twice, it was the means to the end, they wanted those mineral rights and the mapping and the price was money and “militarily useful” information ... you want a cup of coffee and the price is $1.95, and that’s that. Business as usual.

Just FIX It!

So here is how for-profit companies work (for better or for worse), they determine a good to produce or a service to provide and then they make every effort to do so in a way that creates profit. For those of you who do not function daily in a business setting profit is income - expenses. So to achieve the optimum profit such a company would have to maximize income and minimize expenses, right? It is a fine balancing act in a “free” market economy, you can’t charge $4345.78 for a loaf of bread, the guy down the street is selling bread for $2.49 a loaf, and if it costs you $1.78 to bake the bread you can’t sell it for $1.77 either. In a competitive environment cost cutting becomes a key to remaining in business. So, why in the world would an oil company who has the best and brightest business minds on the payroll decide to build a floating city out in the middle of the ocean in order to extract oil? A floating city that is exposed to hurricanes and all the hazards and unpredictability of the open ocean. If you think it is because they have to because that is where the oil is, you are wrong. Decades ago oil companies developed very complex drilling techniques that allow for horizontal drilling, it was done to maximize production out of a single well, but the technique would allow a rig close to shore drill in to a well out at sea. It would be safer and more importantly (for the oil company), it would be cheaper. So why the floating uber-expensive city?

The answer to why a company would spend millions of dollars just to make production more difficult baffled me when I first heard the details of the spill in the gulf. I am responsible for a automotive repair facility (a garage) we fix cars and trucks inside and I would not buy a million dollar elevator just so that I could have my crew fix vehicles on the roof ... it’s not the business way. The business way is how much can we get out of how little, not how little can we get for how much. That’s why there are layoffs, someone decides that a reduction in payroll expense outweighs the loss of production ... and sometimes the someone is right.
So oil companies just decided to drill for oil in the most expensive way possible, in a manner that is rife with risks and peril?
Regulation.
They have to. If they could oil companies would set up shop in the shallows and still drill a mile deep, but they cannot. Regulation forced them out to sea, forced them to buy three different $500,000 emergency shut off valves (that were never tested in the field until the Horizon disaster), forced them to build floating cities, forced them to pay higher wages, buy helicopters to supply the rigs ... forced them to take risks. So it looks like “mistakes were made” and I’m not trying to say that it is the regulation’s fault that the valves failed, that the rig burned and sank, I’m not trying to say that I want to take my kids to the beach and look out and see hundreds of oil rigs ... don’t misunderstand me. But also know that if they could BP would build their drilling site ON the beach and drill from there, I don’t want them to, but they didn’t chose to drill a mile deep in the ocean, they bought and installed the valves that the regulation told them would prevent a disaster like the spill they cannot stop now, all three failed.
Over the past 42 days BP has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to stop the flow of oil, and they have failed at every turn, I am not an oil company apologist, I’m not even a “free market” economics apologist, and of all the oil companies BP is one of my least favorites for an entirely different reason. It has become a balancing act, like so many businesses. Consumers demand oil and oil related products, they demand that they can purchase them at low prices, they demand there be no adverse environmental impact from their mining or use, and they demand not to see any part of that mining or the refining process. The oil company is left to extract oil and make it magically appear in the gas pump with out anyone noticing.
Deep sea rigs operate every day without failure, so we must assume that SOMEONE on this drilling platform is at immediate fault for the disaster (let us not forget the men who died the day the rig burned), we all share in the guilt of forcing them to work in the most difficult circumstances, consumers are at fault, government is at fault and big oil is at fault.
So, now that the blame game is out the way ... let’s figure out how to stop it and clean it up!
I, for one, am not comforted by a speech telling me how terrible oil companies are and how the government is going to “make them clean it up”. Someone needs to resurrect Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller and get this thing fixed. Then give me the speech.

Vaccines Cause ... Healthy Children

It is Monday and that means ... well, lately it doesn’t mean anything, but it USED to mean that there was a new Pinko’s World post to read. And what do you know, here’s a new post to read.

I had to write about this, it is very close to my heart ... because I have children. Do you have children? Really? Awesome. So anyway, intelligent people have had their children vaccinated against terrible diseases for generations, schools require it, international travel requires it ... and it saves millions of lives (mostly children) the world over. This is how it works, a guy named Jonas Salk figured out that if you take some of the virus that causes polio and kill the cells and inject a little bit of it into a healthy person, that person’s body builds up a natural defense to the virus that has been injected in to them. It’s exactly like actually getting polio except that the virus does not multiply, because it is dead ... so the healthy person does not die. Genius and simple and world changing. So, research scientists set out to create all kinds of vaccines and have done so with amazing precision and results. It is one of the few true success stories of modern medicine.

That was until an idiot from England (coincidence?) came along and told everyone that he had done research and found that these life saving vaccines were the cause of autism. He published a paper in a medical journal and people the world over bought into the idiotic theory, which was presented as fact. Vaccination rates dropped and most notably measles, all but eradicated, broke out all over the developed world. An unvaccinated 13 year old boy became the first person in Britain to die from measles in 14 years. In the aftermath of this widely publicized medical hoax countless medical journals published the work of real doctors and scientists showing that there is no connection between vaccines and autism. The real science was ignored. Ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield is a pariah, a pariah who is willing to put his own fame ahead of the children of the world’s health. Praise God that Britain's General Medical Council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of the right to practice medicine. By the way, Wakefield is not a researcher, he is not a vaccine expert, he is not an autism expert ... he is a gastroenterologist. Unfortunately, there are still people spreading his lies, most notably Hollywood actors, and if you get advice on how to keep your children healthy from Hollywood ... then your kids deserve better parents and you deserve to nurse a measles patient back to health. So let’s make it clear once and for all. Vaccines do NOT cause autism, vaccines do prevent deadly diseases. British doctors who make claims to the contrary are IDIOTS.
I asked at the beginning if you had children, because if you do then someone, somewhere has come to you and told you not to vaccinate them because your child will get autism, right? Well, next time someone does that please slap them so that they will understand that DISEASES kill children, and that VACCINES (composed of dead viruses, remember) DO NOT cause AUTISM.

The Forgotten

You farmed your fields,
You raised your children,
You toiled.
You walked to the ballot box, elected a government.

The leaders democracy chose ,
Chased from the capital,
Retreated to safety,
Remain still, silent, chose peace.

When the throngs arrive,
Bangkok recoils.
When the throngs burn and riot,
The world passes their righteous judgement.

“Unruly peasants.”
“Anti-government protests”
What government?
They legitimize the regime that stole your country.

Your leaders surrender.
Red shirts folded up and put away,
You go home to toil,
Empty handed.

Behind you, in the distance,
Bangkok burns,
News cameras roll tape,
And when the fire goes out, the camera goes home.

You will farm your fields,
You will raise your children,
You will toil,
The ballot box, like you, will be forgotten.

Don't Read this, it has Common Sense in it!

Apparently a long running suspicion of mine has been proven true. We live in a nation populated by millions of morons ... or at the very least a couple hundred thousand really loud morons. The proof to this theory came when Arizona passed a law that made it illegal to be a illegal immigrant. If that does not sound utterly moronic and redundant to you please don’t read the rest of this, we’re going to be discussing things that you won’t understand. Grown folks stuff.


Since the dawn of the nation state borders have been contested and defended against all types of invasion. If you do not believe me ... um, read anything and you will see what I mean. Fact number two, there is no nation on earth that allows completely unlimited emigration (and no that is not a spelling error, it is the opposite of immigration) to their nation. Fact three, there is no nation on earth that allows unlimited importation into their nation. So in summary, it is universally accepted that nations may set limits as they please on both people and products entering their borders. Oh, and if you want to say that Europe allows free movement of people and goods between nations I will point out that they have basically created a nation of many states, a concept that should be familiar to you if you live in the United States of America. While things and people can freely move from Italy to Germany or from Alabama to Mississippi none of the four extend the same courtesy to Uganda.

So the outcry inspired by the Arizona law is that it is inherently racist. Racist. I did not realize that entering a country illegally against their laws was a race. I once lived in Germany and had a 14 month student visa. As the 14 months was coming to a close I made some inquiries as to whether or not I could stay and live and study and work in Germany. I was told by both the American and German authorities that I could do no such thing and that if I desired to do so that I would have to return to the United States at the end of my 14 months and submit a request to return to the German government as their immigration law states. Is that racist? I was told after suggesting that I might just stay anyway that if I was caught I would be deported and never again allowed a visa to enter Germany.

The new law requires police to determine whether a person is in the United States legally. It also requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there is reason to suspect they're in the United States illegally. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon appeared at the rally in support of the protest, calling the law unconstitutional and "just plain wrong. America is a country that is compassionate and that welcomes everyone," he said. "This is not what this country and this state was founded upon."

The following is a very brief time line of American Immigration Law:

1819: The first federal legislation on immigration requires notation of passenger lists.

1875: First limitations on immigration. Residency permits required of Asians.

1891: The Bureau of Immigration is established. Congress adds health qualifications to immigration restrictions.

1906: Bureau of Immigration is established.

1921: The first quantitave immigration law sets temporary annual quotas according to nationality. Immigration drops off.

1924: The National Origins Act establishes a quota system. The Border Patrol is established.

1940: The Alien Registration Act calls for registration and fingerprinting of all aliens. Approximately 5 million aliens register.

1952: The Immigration and Naturalization Act brings into one comprehensive statute the multiple laws that govern immigration and naturalization to date.

To claim that restricting immigration is unconstitutional is ignorant because the constitution does not address the issue. Requiring legal aliens have proof that they are legal is common sense (in Germany I was required to have documentation that I was an American studying in the country) the only change to the existing law is that the local police are now to required to check, if they have probable cause, when in the past it was the sole responsibility of the ICE (formerly INS). This is a non-issue. Either you have a legal right to be in this nation or you do not. If you do not and you are caught you should be deported (just like every other nation on earth), if you are here legally and not a citizen of our nation, you are our guest and are given documentation to prove that we have extended legal status to you. That someone might ask to see the document that affords you the right to come to the United States and live/work/study is not insulting. Simply show the police officer your documentation. In the age of computers in police cars connected to large databases citizens can simply give the officer their social security number and a brief check will show the truth of your citizenship. Simple. The legislature and governor of Arizona have determined illegal immigration to be a problem in their state and have taken steps to address the issue. If you live in one of the other 49 states the ICE will continue enforcing immigration law, this is not your fight, nor does it effect you.
To claim that the founders had not taken issue with immigration is also ignorant. James Monroe was President when the first immigration law was passed. The same James Monroe who fought in the revolution and studied law under the tutilage of Thomas Jefferson and then sat in the Virginia delegation that eventually ratified the Constitution. You can’t get much more “founder” than that.
Restrictions to immigration, right are wrong, are law. Breaking the law is illegal. The police are charged with finding law breakers. People who break the law are punished. Illegal immigrants are deported when caught. I’m missing the racism. Is it racist that the majority of illegal immigrants in Arizona are from Mexico? No, it is not. There are millions of LEGAL Mexican immigrants in the United States. The issue at hand is legal and illegal immigrants, if a couple from France come to Arizona and stay illegally, they will be deported when caught. And I guarantee you that a significant portion of the law enforcement community in Arizona is of Hispanic/Latin decent simply as the natural consequence of decades of LEGAL immigration. So, if a Mexican-American police officer arrests an illegal Mexican immigrant is he racist?
And for the record, I am sure that the out cry from the Democrat Party has nothing to do with their plan to pass a bill offering amnesty to all illegal immigrants currently in the United States prior to the November elections, I am completely positive that they are concerned for the poor immigrants and in no way were counting on all those extra votes to propel them to victory in said elections. Furthermore I am sure that their upcoming effort to restore voting rights to felons is also unrelated to the upcoming elections. I mean, I want felons and illegal foreigners voting and helping to decide the direction of our Nation, don’t you?

Sedition and Tyranny

Today I’m going to take you back in time ... so hop in the Delorian and let’s get going. It’s December 15th 1791 and these amendments were just ratified, the “Bill of Rights” was added to the constitution because the states refused to join into a union that did not protect state sovereignty and personal liberty. The leaders of 1791 had fresh memories of the abuses laid upon them by England, abuses that their friends had died to end. Each of the 10 amendments that make up the “Bill of Rights” address an actual concern, this is not political theory, the English had done these things and they would only join a government that guaranteed it would never happen again.


Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Forget a degree in law, all you need to interpret this is common sense and a shallow pool of historical knowledge, we’ll break it up. Section 1 says that the federal government can not establish a religion, it says this because the English government had their own religion and charged taxes to everyone, regardless of faith, to fund it. Section 2 say the government cannot stop you from practicing your faith, because ... you guessed it, the English government did not allow certain beliefs to be practiced (remember the pilgrims? They came here, risking life and limb to be able to practice their faith freely). Sections 3,4,5 say that you are permitted to say what you think, print and distribute what you think and assemble in peaceful groups to discuss what you please ... because under English rule speaking out against the government either verbally or in writing was a criminal offense and if a group gathered and was suspected to be discussing such things they would be arrested. Section 6 is self explanatory isn’t it (letter writing, calling your congressman, civil courts etc.).
It does not say that children may not pray in school, that people may not say “Merry Christmas”, it does not limit the freedoms of speech or the press to certain areas, it does not say that certain people may not assemble for certain reasons ... LIMITLESS FREEDOM in these areas is not a mistake, not an oversight, it does not need to be “fixed”. If someone says something that repulses you be glad that person suffers no consequences for it means that you too can speak your mind.

Amendment II
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.

Short and sweet. The government cannot take away people’s guns, nor may they ban the carrying of those guns, furthermore armed people getting together and training for war is NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE. Those militia groups everyone loves to hate and laugh at need not be restricted, but enlarged. A well armed, well trained, involved populace guarantees against dictatorship, and tyranny. They wrote it because when the English got wind of the coming rebellion they seized all the guns they could find and arrested militias when drilling. I know that guns have become unpopular, that patriotism has become unpopular, but in the same way we need the Armed Services to protect us, we need to exercise out true 2nd amendment right, not only arm ourselves, but also drill together.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Super simple, just because there is a numbered list in this document does not mean that these are all the rights of the people. We have unlisted rights.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The great 10th amendment says that the only powers of the federal government are those listed and given to them in this constitution, no more. So the ninth and tenth together tell the story, the rights and powers of the people is open ended and possibly limitless and the rights and powers of government shall not exceed the specific list in this document.
This trip back in time was inspired by my friend Dan posting and article on Facebook, check out the link (HERE) and be sure to watch the clip where these pundits claim that criticizing the government is sedition, assembling is sedition and owning a gun is sedition. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS AND EXERCISE THEM! Don't let people tell you that we have none.

Ode to an Icelandic Volcano

Oh Eyjafjallajokull glacier,
Your miles of pristine ice shine in the sun,
The glimmer of the untouched wilderness,
Sings out to my soul.
And then ...

Rumble,
Rumble,
Rumble,
Rumble ...
BOOM!

Oh Eyjafjallajokull volcano,
Your plume of smoke and ash blasted into the stratosphere,
The sun glimmers off grounded airliners,
The people sleeping in the terminal,
The train stations of Europe over flowing...

 Oh Eyjafjallajokull volcano,
You have made Europe and island again,
Cut off from the world.
"Where will we get food?" they ask.
Where did they get food from before?
Does food grow in Europe?

Oh Eyjafjallajokull volcano,
You will make glorious farmers out of foreign travelers,
You will remand them all to a forgone age,
The age of "no airplanes" ... so long ago.

Nuclear Summit makes World Safer for "Confederate Heritage Month". awesome! Not!

Ok, here we go. It’s Tuesday (almost Wednesday) and we’re just getting to the Monday post and it’s going to be a short one. Here’s the lightning round;


President Obama held a nuclear arms summit where 47 nations sent representatives who all agreed that at some point, later on, in a few years, they will begin to reduce nuclear arms and secure their borders so that terrorists don’t get their hands on them. Of course there are no real details and there will be no enforcement, but they all agreed so the President today announced that the world is safer ... I know I feel all warm and fuzzy.

A woman adopted a Russian child that she found to be out of control once in the United States. So, what did she do? Did she realize that parenting is difficult and work through it with all the selflessness and love of a parent? Did she seek out help realizing that the emotional issues involved for this orphan are too great for her to handle alone? No ... she pulled the old “take the dog back to the pound in the middle of the night trick” and bought the kid a one way ticket to Russia and gave him a note to explain to the authorities there that he was too difficult for her and should be taken back to the orphanage. So the heartless recklessness of this woman has caused Russia to close adoptions to all American parents, way to go you witch! You have single handedly ruined the lives of countless children and potential parents!

A young girl with autism was lost in an alligator infested swamp for days and then found by a man who says that he prayed and God showed him where the girl was. Other than mild exposure and very wet feet, the girl was unharmed and returned to her parents. There was an organized search party that had no success. I would like to take this opportunity to thank God for guiding the man to save this poor defenseless girl. May it be a reminder to us all that when true crisis comes, praying to God with a thankful, open heart is still the best means of finding what you need.

And the governor of the Great Commonwealth of Virginia has declared that April will be “Confederate Heritage” month. He has declared this because his thought that actual suicide would be too messy, so one of his aides suggested political suicide. In response Pinko’s World has decided to declare April “John Brown Is My Hero Month”. How do you like me know confederates?

Ok, this is serious. Does the idea of Americans peaceably assembling (1st amendment) to discuss (1st amendment) their grievances against the government (1st amendment) scare you? If the things that matter to these Americans are an already large government expanding until the top button pops, deficit spending as if tomorrow will never come, printing currency as if no one notices, and ever increasing taxes, do they scare you now? They scare Jason Levin ... to death. He has decided that such activities must be stopped and so he has harnessed the internet to recruit people to go to April 15th tea party events to act stupid and discredit the group entirely. The following is a quote from the site “Whenever possible, we will act on behalf of the Tea Party ... to ... distance them from mainstream America and damage the public’s opinion of them. We will also use the inside information we have gained in order to disrupt and derail their plans.”Seriously? If what you say is true, that America does not believe in smaller government and lower taxes, if America really wants huge, all controlling government and all the insanity that has come out of Washington for the past 77 years then who cares what they have to say? If you are threatened by it then I guess you know in your heart that America will be swayed by them and their simple agenda, their honesty, their lack of political ambition, their justified mistrust of government. Mr. Levin, the governor of Virginia thanks you for being a bigger tool during a week he was a shoe in for “tool of the week”. And with that the award goes to ... envelope please ... Jason Levin, you are “Tool of the Week”!

Happy Wednesday!

Oh yeah, it's Crazy Wednesday!

OK, I know I always try to bring you my opinion disguised as news (I learned it from watching you NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, CNBC etc.), but this really is news. There is a country on earth called Kyrgyzstan. Seriously, I’m not kidding, it’s a real country. Today’s prize winner will be the person who can pronounce it. Try it, Kry-gyz-stan. So, who cares, you ask? Well they had a riot there today ... a riot that overthrew the government ... in about an hour. Wow, that’s a big riot ... or a really small government. So the whole thing is settled already, the protesters took the TV station and the security offices and gave the security office a new boss and announced that a lady named Rosa would be in charge for the next six months while they form a new constitution and have elections. They did this five years ago too, and the president they elected last time is hiding in a city called Osh (with a scarecrow, a lion and the tin man). The next ex-president, although not yet elected, has already made reservations at his post-riot hideaway for 5 years from now.


On to South African news. I was going to give you my opinion of this story, but I’ll just lay out the facts and see if you agree with me or not. Please tell me what you think in the comments section (if you don’t have a google account just pick anonymous and comment anyway). Quick history: South Africa was ruled by Apartheid, a system which allowed an all white government in a country has a super majority of blacks. To simplify, it was basically like the American south prior to the Civil war. Blacks were not given rights and systematically brutalized and kept in utter poverty. A group called the ANC was formed to fight this system and the whites formed a group called the AWB to violently oppose the ANC. Since 1994 the apartheid system is gone, but tensions remain. The AWB still exists and still fights (sometimes violently) for an all white republic. Which brings us to today. A man named Eugene Terreblanche was beaten to death by a 15 year old black boy while lying in his bed. The boy turned himself in and the police think that he did not act alone, as they found two murder weapons at the scene of the crime. The unnamed boy claims he murdered the man for his brutal treatment and because he refused to pay the boy for the work he did on Terreblance’s farm. So that’s all pretty cut and dry. Bad murderer, good farmer. Right? Except for this, Terreblance is an outspoken member of the AWB, active it seems, in all areas of their campaign, and if that weren’t enough he has been convicted in the past of attacking black farm hands, and served six years in prison for his brutality. And for icing on the cake, just last month a very popular ANC youth leader led a large group of students in a song that encouraged them to “kill the Boer (white farmer)”. Needless to say the AWB is blaming the ANC for the man’s death and ramping up hostilities in the wake of the slaying. All this ten weeks before the largest sporting even in the world, soccer’s World Cup, comes to Africa for the very first time as it is set to be held in South Africa ... good times. So, what do you think? Good farmer, bad murderer? Or, not.

And lastly, in adding insult to insult to insult news, Russian President and sometimes Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended a memorial in Poland honoring the 22,000 Poles slaughtered by the Soviet secret police during the final stages of WWII. After the solemn ceremony was concluded Putin shook hands with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and then turned to the cameras. Putin went on to tell the press that Stalin had the Poles killed because he felt responsible for the 32,000 Red Army soldiers that were captured from his command and starved to death in Polish prisoner of war camps in 1920, and it was out of guilt and a sense of revenge that Stalin had the thousands of Poles executed. Forget forgiveness and healing, i love me some justification! Way to go Vlad!
 
Happy Wednesday!

Dear Haiti, please text some money to Mexico, thanks.

Some of you might worry that getting your news from Pinko’s World is leaving you less informed that your friends who get there news for more “legitimate” sources. Well, here are the headlines from MSN.com tonight 1) “Boy Short Panties Bring out Your Playful Side” 2) “Reinvent Your Space for Under $200" 3) “What’s the Hottest Lip Color this Spring”. I think you may be much better off getting your news from us. Well, unless you need to know about lip colors, then you may want the “legitimate” news.

Ok, I’m no end of the world theorist, but in the past few months there have been major earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Turkey, Indonesia, Japan, Chile again, and now Mexico. That seems like a whole lot of shaking going on. I looked at global seismic data and learned that there are dozens of small earthquakes all over the world every day, but it sure seems like there have been more major quakes than normal. And Haiti got all the money. What number do I text to to send $10 to Indonesia? Mexico? Japan? Nope, Haiti got all the money, the lesson of which is that if you’re going to have a massive natural disaster be sure to go first, if your country get shaken to pieces right after Haiti, there is no help coming, there’s no money coming. You’re on your own.

In war news, militants exploded four bombs in quick succession Monday close to the U.S. Consulate in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, police and witnesses said.Close isn’t really the right term to use here. The bombs were set up 20 feet outside the front door. Earlier Monday, at least 19 people were killed and more than 100 injured when a suicide bomber attacked a political party rally elsewhere in the northwest. Suicide attackers detonated three car bombs near embassies in Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 38 people and wounding more than 200 in back-to-back bombings. Authorities said they foiled two other attacks aimed at diplomatic targets.The bombings came two days after a chilling execution-style attack by gunmen who raided homes south of Baghdad, killing 24 people, many of them believed to be anti-Al Qaeda fighters. So, while everything is “going great” and we’re winning the war, the war rages on and the innocent are killed. Mr. President bring the brave men and women of our armed forces home.

In “no one ever told me that” news, Israel performed air strikes on the southern region of Gaza, you know the usual. Targets included a refugee camp workshop and a cheese factory. According to an eyewitness, the cheese factory has been bombed before ... really? I guess Jews hate cheese, who knew? Ok, this is how complicated Israeli/Palestinian relations are. Israel starts building a neighborhood within their own country, Palestine objects because that’s where they want to live. Palestinians fire rockets at Israel in response which prompts Israel to scramble the fighters and bomb the cheese factory. Here’s where it’s all stupid. Israel was building inside Israel, it would be like the United States building a apartment complex in Michigan and the Canadians getting so mad that they fired rockets into the United States. The only good part is that the Hamas fighters are so bad at firing rockets that they didn’t actually hit Israel ... they all fell short of the border. Ok, Israel is a small country, but it is a COUNTRY, how bad are you at rockets that you can’t hit a nation with one? But Israel doesn’t want them thinking they got away with accidently bombing themselves so they called in the cheese factory air strike anyway. That’ll show them.

So, happy Monday to you all, and as a PS I would just like to mention that the value of the US Dollar dropped so far that today it is equal in value to the Canadian Dollar. I used to go to Canada and live it up for 4 days for about $200 US, we’re talking hotel, dinners out, drinks out ... the whole nine. Those days, it would seem, are over!

So sleepy!

Today’s post is brought to you by morons who think that Jesus wants them to kill police officers and then set off bombs at the funerals of the officers. Really? In case you haven’t heard, 9 idiots were arrested this weekend and charged with sedition (revolt ... kinda like “almost treason”) ... apparently these geniuses thought that they were preparing for the end days and their plan was to kill a few police officers and then bomb their funerals to start a war against the government. They had formed a militia and the most inclusive sphere on earth, the American militia movement, completely rejected these nuts a couple of years ago for being crazy. That’s the sign, in case you were wondering, if the militia movement thinks your crazy ... go ahead and check yourself in. What super spy equipment did the FBI use to catch these pillars of the community? None, the leader of the group sent out e-mails diagraming his plans to the members and they responded by e-mail and by talking in great detail on recorded phone lines. They deserve to be in prison just for that ... c’mon, that’s breaking the law 101, get it together you nut jobs. And yes, you read it right, the nine of them were going to go to was against the United States of America ... I’m sure that would have worked out great.


As an aside to all that, the group’s leader, David Stone’s ex-wife was called to testify to a grand jury about the activities of her former husband ... fellas, if you drive your wife to leave you by being a gun toting, bible mis-interpreting screw ball ... she will testify against you and ex-wives do not make good witnesses for the defense.

Second aside, all of the anti-government maroons selected to be represented by federally funded public defenders ... I guess the government ain’t so bad if you’re looking at life in prison.

And also this weekend, in apparent attempt to regain relevancy, Ricky Martin decided to announce something that we all already knew ... that he’s gay. I heard it on the radio and the first thought to enter my mind was, “Didn’t he admit he was gay 10 years ago?” Well, I looked it up. He did not. So, you were right when you saw the “Livin’ la Vida Loca” video and thought to yourself, “What’s that gay guy dancing with all those women for?”

And now it is time for the lightning round; the catholic church is under attack as investigations in the sex scandal cover ups now are reaching all the way to the pope (I’m completely shocked, aren’t you?), Greece went belly up and Germany floated the Greeks a “couple a bucks” to get them to payday ... which we’ll be doing for Germany when Greece proves unable to pay, the Somali Navy (pirates) has asked the international community for money to fight the pirates ... so they want money to commit suicide? And the country that the New York Times declared to be “fixed” with the accent to power of Laurent Kabila in 1997 (now spends his time in Paris counting the money that he stole from the Congo) was the sight of another massacre at the end of 2009. I’m just glad to see other people get along so well, way to go Zaire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo! Now if you pick one name, it’s way easier!

Happy Monday!

My Favorite Places

I was inspired by my lovely Wife's use of pictures and the post of a really good blog that i follow to include this. The blog post in question is about how wonderful cemeteries are, and while i do not necessarily think that all of them are wonderful, the cemetery in St. Remy, NY where my mother's family has been laid to rest is one of my favorite places on earth.

The front gate is just perfect.

It is quiet there, St. Remy, NY has about 15 houses, a church and a volunteer fire department ... and this perfectly serene old cemetery.

The grass is lush and green in the summer time, the grounds are kept up by volunteers, it is quiet and peaceful and calming.

I met many of my relatives there, my mother read me the names and told me their stories. Who they were, how we were all related.

My heart smiles thinking about it. I've only ever seen my Grandfather there, my sweet Gram is there ... it's where i go when i want to talk to them, to see them. So while i do not love all cemeteries, i do love the little cemetery in St. Remy, NY.

Click HERE to see my lovely wife's use of pictures and HERE to see the other cemetery post.

Happy insomniac Thursday!

Rebels of the World Unite!

There was a time that I was very out spoken against Rush Limbaugh. That he is an ideologue is obvious to everyone, he is a broken record of anti-“liberal” ramblings who grabs on to sound bites and plays them and tells his audience that whatever they just heard proves he is right. Sometimes they are taken out of context, sometimes he IS right. What I specifically criticized him for was not appearing in public, for never going on other shows, for never debating his opinion. I used to argue that this proved his position was weak and that he could not defend it. I argued this until this week. One thing that slowed my criticism is that currently, he is right, the country is opposed to what the Democrat party is doing, the country agrees with Limbaugh. And then came the epiphany ... I attempted to debate the proposed health care bill with people on both sides of the issue ... I now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, why he does not emerge from his cocoon to debate issues.

I am not a Republican, I am not a Democrat, I am not a Libertarian ... my views diverge from every organized group of people I have ever met. I have called myself a communist for most of my life, but that stems from academic study of Political Science and no actual interaction with “communists”. While in college I met some “communists” and realized that I did not know how to classify myself, but I was not whatever they were. I agree with Steve Krug, Karl Hess and if you really listen to what he says, Glen Beck. I believe that government is inherently corrupted, I believe that people are smart and are able to govern their own lives, I believe that freedom is the single most important value on this earth. I believe that government has too much power, I believe that government has given corporations too much power, I believe that decisions should, (with the exception of the common defense) be made at a very local level. I believe that only minimal taxes are necessary and the revenue should remain locally. I believe that people do actually care about each other and that, given the opportunity, will make decisions to benefit the group (if it is small enough). I believe in the supreme power of the community ergo I called myself a communist.
The “Health Care Reform Act” may or may not do many things, but what it does do, with out a shadow of a doubt, is strengthen and swell a swollen federal government and feed private insurance corporations 26 million new customers. Health care related stocks are up, and you need no further proof that this law is good for corporate America, and when it comes to corporate America and the American people it is almost always a zero-sum game. In the past week I have heard people I respected say some of the most morally repugnant things I have ever heard ... and by morally repugnant I mean things that go against all that I aspire our nation to become. Politicians who lie cheat and steal their way into office (I mean all of them) and then spend their entire term lying and making smokey back room deals to maintain their power, all the while ignoring the will of the American people ... and let’s just forget about one of them having a sliver of respect for what the people have intrusted them with ... well, Jesus said it best in Matthew 7:17-18 “Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. A good tree can not produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit.”So when a body of corrupt law makers get together to pass legislation that is supposed to be good for their nation what comes out of the process is corrupt, evil. They justify it all to themselves, it’s ok for special exemptions and considerations for unions, Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida, they rationalize that it’s fine to go against everything they have ever stood for to “pass the bill”. Those whose electorate demanded true government run healthcare back down, those whose electorate demanded that the sanctity of life be taken into consideration reverse course and when millions of Americans stand together and protest with a unified voice, the politicians and the news media paint them as loons who are too stupid to understand how great it all is. And yet there are those who think it is a great leap forward ... people who claim to despise corporations are gleeful that insurance corporations are getting new mandated customers, people who reject Nazism are calling for more government control ... they don’t think it goes far enough. People who have spent no time researching what the law actually contains argue that it is great for their nation. It is not without it’s positives, and maybe you think that the negatives are outweighed by them, maybe you think it is great that the law nationalizes student loans. I don’t know, I just know that the reason that this is the greatest nation on earth has nothing to do with people’s standard of living ... it is true that our poor enjoy great comfort (when compared with other nations) ... what makes this nation so great is the basic principles that are its foundation. Corney quotes you hear all the time, “... we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ...” or the purpose of our government “... to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity ...” When the Constitution was done the states rejected it, no debate, just a simple no. Why, you ask? Because the document allowed for the future possibility of a central government that was too strong, so the bill of rights were added. Read them. Read them and understand the fears of the people 230 years ago. They trusted their neighbors with guns, guns to defend them against the government, they demanded rights for the accused, churches, dissenters and individual states. That is what makes this nation great, and every step away from a castrated central government, every reduction in freedom, every assault on liberty, every attempt to control the great people who make up this great nation robs us of the once secure blessings of liberty that were to be bestowed upon us and then granted to our posterity. In America you were to be free to make your own way, to succeed or fail of your own efforts ... you were not to be servant to the nation or corporations. Anything is possible, and acceptable, if it honors the principles our nation was founded upon. You want to be an atheist? A Christian nation that believes in freedom and liberty says that you can be of any faith you wish, even no faith at all. But it is still a Christian nation. And to those that say the principles of our founding are corrupted by the times, or by the misadventures of the founders ... Albert Einstein was a womanizer and the theory of relativity is no less true. Their purpose for establishing this great nation was true and their motivations were honorable, they formed a good tree and good fruit, we dishonor them and their purpose and we hand our liberty to men and women not worthy of the honor. Our nation’s survival is tied forever with the individual liberty of our citizens, so debate all you want but remember, please, to not trust a powerful government, restrict them at every turn, make them afraid to try to control you, afraid to ruin our collective futures ... let us all agree that things can improve without empowering the federal government, that we have the power to enact meaningful, positive change upon our nations healthcare and countless other areas and that we can maintain our liberty and our individual power at the same time. I now believe that Rush Limbaugh speaks only on his radio show because it is impossible to debate someone who believes something fundamentally different than you do. You cannot explain your opinions to someone who shares none of your values, and America I pray that you will remember the rebellious spirit that was forged on July 4th 1776 and has been the cornerstone of each and every one of our great moments as a nation.

Project Children

"Show Us Your Life" favorite charity edition- Ireland is near and dear to the hearts of my parents ... as it is with many Irish-Americans. My grandfather told people he was Irish (born in New Jersey) even after he served his nation proudly in the European theater of WWII. I’m not sure what it is about the Irish in America, wether the circumstances that brought them here bind them to their ancestral homeland ... or is it possible that there is some truth to what I heard from the time I was very young, that Ireland was in my blood? A famine that starved millions brought the Irish to our shores in droves, and the escalation of a violent conflict that had waxed and waned for 800 years divided the country in the early 1920's. The aftermath of the division was sectarian violence, civil war and mahem.

As “the troubles” (as the conflict was called) raged out of control in the 1960's in Northern Ireland, Irish America watched closely and longed to help, to stem the tide of violence, to bring peace to their homeland. Some chose to involve themselves financially (both sides in the war were funded from private American donations) and then in 1975, as the nation decended into bombings and assinations, two brother’s who themselves had immigrated from Ireland to the United States came up with an idea. Denis and Patrick Mulcahy were New York City police officers and the situation in Northern Ireland broke their hearts. The plan that they came up with was to find families in America that would agree to take in Irish children from neighborhoods touched by violence for a summer. The first six children arrived in the summer of 1975 and stayed in Greenwood Lake, NY. They were careful to chose 3 Protestant children and 3 Catholic children to not only show them that there was a more peaceful place in the world, but that they could get along and befriend one another. A year later my parents volunteered to take in a child and Mark McAuley came to stay for the summer. There were others over the years, but Mark was loved by everyone in the small village my parents lived in. He came back three times, once the Fire Department raised the money to pay his way, and eventually he settled in New York City as and adult. He is my oldest brother as he was 8 when he came and my parents first born was only 9 months old. In the ensuing years Project Children has taken 14,000 children from the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, shown them another way of life and touched as many American Families as they have in Ireland. Their goal when it all began was to get the children away from the violence, their hope was that by removing them from it that they would become champions of peace. I do not think that it is a coincidence that 23 years after those first 6 children returned home that the first serious peace talks began and that those talks have evolved into a lasting peace. The children whose lives were touched by Denis and Patrick’s vision had come of age, and a new way of thinking and relating with “them” had dawned in Ireland. There are many charities that do great things, but Project Children touched my life and the lives of everyone in my family, it touched the McAuleys of Belfast, and it was an important part of ending a war that had raged for almost 900 years. Project Children continues to this day to break down walls in the minds of the Irish, they still bring over 600 children to America every summer, they sponsor internships for Irish university students on Capitol Hill and they put on programs that bring Protestant and Catholic families together in Northern Ireland. To read more, check out their web site HERE. And click HERE to check out Kelly's Korner who sponsors all this, and from there you can check out all the other favorite charities.

Back by Popular Demand

And the Wednesday conversation with Winky returns! For those of you that are new to Pinko’s World, Winky is my 4 year old middle daughter. She has a unique combination of talents, exceptional verbal skills and what can only be described as “instant creativity”. If you want to get a feel for her style, scroll down and check out the old Winky posts.

Today i had to come home from work early due to some not so severe head trauma, the short version is that i’m tall and i wasn’t looking where i was walking and my head slammed into a truck that was up on a lift and i knocked myself foggy. So, after sleeping for a couple of hours, my lovely wife had to go to work and i made dinner for the girls. In between mouthfuls of lasagna Winky said to me, “Daddy, you don’t play with me all the time.”

Me - “I don’t?”
Winky - “Well, you do go to work a lot.”
Me - “Yeah, I know.”
Winky - “You should play with me more.”
Me - “Well, I’m trying to get paid for writing so that I can write for work and not sell tires and then I would be home more.”
Winky - “I can write you a song, would that help?”
Me (laughing) “It might.”
Winky did not pause for so much as ten seconds before she began to sing her new song ... as far as I know the first song she has ever written.

“When the chicken crossed the road, a bear followed him,
The penguin chased the penguin,
The polar bear chased the squirrel,
When they have to go,
They have to go, go, go.


When the frog chases the cow,
moo, moo, moo
moo, moo, moo
The panda goes after the frog,
And the penguin chases the squirrel,
Wee-ha, wee-ha, wee-ha
And the moose didn’t chase his babies.
Taaaaaa Daaaaaaa!”

Me (again laughing) “That’s a great song buddy.”
Winky - “Daddy! I’m not done!”
Me - “oh ... I’m sorry, go ahead and finish.”
Winky - “a-hem ... Theeeeeee Ennnnnnddddddd! There, now it’s done”

So there you have it ... Happy Wednesday!

Birthday = Inability to think?

So here’s a conundrum, if a democrat congressman resigns in shame after it comes to light that he groped male staffers, and that same congressman decides to bash the administration on his way out the door, can you believe a single word he says? I mean the guy’s a loon, but to be honest, he sounds like he’s telling the truth.

Quick review of the last couple of days, NJ women were hospitalized after paying a stranger to inject their butts with hardware store calk and Vaseline (sounds like a good idea to me), a Korean couple went to an internet café to play an on-line game where they nurtured a virtual child for 12 hour stretches at a time ... only problem being that their real infant died at home of malnourishment and neglect while they were out ... they say that they’re sorry (I say starve them to death in isolation), Dan Rather said that President Obama “couldn’t sell watermelons on the side of the road even if he had a state trooper stopping traffic for him” on national television (holy latent racism batman!), and there were a bunch more earthquakes which I’m sure Pat Robertson thinks are caused by secret devil pacts (Hawaii and Turkey, we’re on to you and your devilish ways!).
So that’s all on the news front, it’s been a slow week, what can I say. I could probably rant for hours on the whole Korean parents story ... or any of them for that matter, I just don’t feel like it.

Winky has had a funny couple of days ... after watching a couple of strong men break bricks, rip phone books and bend steel, she told me, “Hey Dad, those guys are strong like me.” She was completely serious. Today at school she slipped on a dustpan, smashed her head into the corner of a table, was sent to the nurse’s office and didn’t mention it to anyone. Her injuries were discovered when my wife found a note from the nurse in her school bag ... I asked her, “Winky, did you fall and hit your head today?”
“Yeah Dad, but it’s ok, I didn’t break the table.” She has a big lump on the back of her head and could not possibly care any less.

And in personal news I turned 31 today ... and I don’t feel anything about it, it doesn’t depress me to be 31, and I’m not excited to be 31. I do not feel compelled to buy either a motorcycle or a corvette, it feels like another day, like nothing will be different tomorrow, like I’m a day older rather than a year older. Frankly, I’m much more concerned with my impending baldness than I am with my increasing age. I refuse to try to hide or reverse the fact that I’m going bald, I’m just not sure how to embrace it with out looking bad during the in between time.

I realize that this post has been all over the place, but my brain is all over the place right now, I can’t seem to create a thought and see it through ... which equals really bad writing. So that’s my apology if you hated this post, but maybe it’s honest enough to have some value. Either way, we’ll be back to normal tomorrow with a quality Wednesday post for your reading pleasure!

Happy Tuesday and Happy Birthday to me.

"Show Us Your Life" - A Kelly's Korner Carnival

It was suggested that I should participate in the “Show Us Your Life” blog carnival ... it was started by Kelly and you can check out her blog if you click HERE. The idea is to blog out the schedule for your typical day ... I’m not quite sure that anyone would actually be interested in this, but maybe ... anyway, here goes.


My day starts at 5am, I get up, pour a bowl of Raisin Bran and eat it while checking facebook and my e-mail. By 5:30 I’m stretching my back out (a daily requirement since herniating 2 discs and being diagnosed with spinal stenosis) and at 5:45 I get into the shower, shaved and dressed by 6:15 I head out to work. And that’s when the fun begins. Every morning my friend Carlo gets to work before I do, and every day he complains that I am late and that he doesn’t know why he got out of bed so early. “Denny,” he’ll say, “if I knew you were going to be so late I would have gone and had breakfast.” I laugh, but I don’t think he’s kidding. We open the store (money counted, coffee made, lights on, doors open, etc) by 7:30 my boss will find the one thing I didn’t get done the day before and want to know how it is possible that couldn’t do whatever it is the previous day. I will apologize. Once he’s gone Carlo will mock him, “Denny, how come you can’t do your job?” By 8 one of the other guys will come to complain that he didn’t get paid properly the previous day which will result in the one millionth explanation of how their pay system works, "Denny, why can't you pay me right?" while all this is going on we are taking in customers and getting their cars fixed/maintained/tires replaced, by 8:30 something will go terribly wrong. Some days tires are sold that we don’t have, some days parts are delivered late, some days parts are not delivered "Denny, where are my parts?", some days someone forgets to order a part, some days someone forgets to tell me that a car has arrived, some days we brake something ... and I deal with that. Basically between 7am and 6pm I am involved with the servicing of 50 cars/trucks/SUVs, (talking to technicians, talking to customers, talking to sales guys, ordering parts, figuring out what needs to be done when) at some point during the day the sales guys will complain to me about each other, they will complain about the technicians, the technicians will complain about each other, and they will complain about the sales guys ... I always agree with them and at some point EVERYONE will come to me to complain about Carlo (because he delights in aggravating anyone he can), and I will agree with them then too. Every day I am amazed at how much work the guys can do ... they really are incredible and I’m lucky to work with them.

By 6pm (if nothing goes wrong late in the day) I will finish up paying the bills for the parts we ordered, let the late guy know what’s going on in the shop and head home. Once home, my wife Angela and I will do dinner/bath/bed with my three beautiful daughters ... who will each find 5 different reasons to get out of bed (potty, more hugs, more kisses, “I need a glass of water”, etc) and then we’ll clean up the house. If I’m lucky enough to not have a project going on in the house I’ll either read or watch TV while Angela blogs (link HERE)/facebooks/reads e-mail ... unless the Bachelor is on, then we switch and I use the computer while she watches TV. By 11:30 or 12 we’re in bed and it all starts up again 5 hours later. Some where in all that I watch Philip DeFranco on youtube (he is really funny, link HERE), write my own blog and I think I even have some friends I keep in touch with.

So that’s pretty much a day in the life ...

Only YOU can Fix California!

Government is expected to perform certain functions. I’ve never seen someone go to the store and buy concrete, mix it up and fill in a pot hole in the street. Fire departments, police departments, military defense, snow removal, disaster relief and schools. Most of us expect that those things will be there when they are needed and even though the idea of public school is fairly new (first public school in US was Boston Latin founded in 1635, but it wasn’t until the middle of the 1800's that it even reached all of Massachusetts) it may be the government function we feel the most strongly about. It effects our children, and any changes that are viewed as negative bring a strong response from one end of the spectrum or the other. Which brings us to the recent meeting between the state of California and reality. It’s not something that happens often, but in true California fashion, when met with reality ... the Californians have decided to protest ... and be violent. “If I smash the windshield of a random stranger’s vehicle then the government will listen to me and do what I want!” Or, you might go to jail.

BASIC CIVICS LESSON: States and municipal governments are not able to print currency ergo, cannot operate beyond their means and must balance their budget every year. The federal government, on the other hand, sees a couple a trillion dollar budget shortfall as mere details to ignore.

So, in California they are about to go bankrupt. Tax revenue has declined tremendously and the demand for the state’s resources has not waned ... and so after two years of the “recession” they’re broke. California operated budget projections off of the notion that revenue would continue to climb for eternity and so that they could pass spending increases to their hearts content. Projected 2010 revenue was $113 billion, and when 2010 rolled around their actual revenue was $75 billion. Oops. The trend will continue into the rest of this year and they’ll end up $60 billion in the hole ... which they can’t actually do, so the Goven-ator suggested some ideas to save money and the ballot referendum to enact them was defeated. Basically California voted to destroy itself. Here we are, 4 months later and tough choices are being made ... and the Californians are protesting. I get it, I mean I don’t want my kids to go to a school with no resources and no teachers either, but if you pass a law saying that 40% of the state’s revenue has to go to schools (prop 98), where do you think the cuts are going to come from .... maybe 40% from schools? Crazy, right!

So, I’d like to hear from you on this. Where do you think that the money should come from? Cuts (what would you cut?”) or extra taxes (what would you tax?). I’ll use your comments to fix California in the Monday post. Stay tuned ... oh, and happy Friday.

Kid Takes over JFK, Greece is Broke and Betty White is Dead?

Today’s post is brought to you by the International Olympic Committee and the European Union, who both apparently hate Greece. After Greece was conned into hosting the Olympic games for the sake of some sort of nostalgic ancient Greece moment, and the global economy collapsed leaving Greece between a rock and an Olympic sized debt ... the EU swooped in and demanded that Greece cut their national debt in order to remain a member state. So Greece announced today that they have cut spending and raised taxes ... and the unemployed people of Greece cheered because they enjoyed hosting the Olympics so much that they want to pay extra taxes FOREVER.

In celebrity news, Betty White (from the Golden Girls) died Tuesday. No, I’m kidding, she’s fine. No, really, she’s dead. Drug overdose. It’s tragic. No, she’s alive and well ... or ...a website called “Oh No They Didn't” posted a screenshot of what appeared to be a TMZ story stating that Betty White had died of a drug overdose and foul play. And it hit all the major news networks. It’s nice to know that the legitimate news outlets use gossip spoofing websites’ parody bits spoofing other gossip sites to get their information. Tonight on NBC Nightly News “This just in, The Onion reports the Nancy Pelosi has climbed to the top of the capital dome and is refusing to come down ... more at eleven.” Oh, and Betty White is fine .... really.

Following Vice President Gore’s lead from yesterday, President Obama is also ignoring facts and the desires of the American people and today urged Congress to schedule a vote on health care reform in the "next few weeks," declaring Wednesday that it's "time to make a decision" on the package. The president described the “bipartisan” summit held last week in Washington (the one where he ignored everyone who disagreed with him and talked a lot and accused Sen McCain of campaigning) as the last leg of the health care reform debate. He said all arguments have been exhausted and that Congress owes the American people a final "up-or-down" vote. "We can't just give up because the politics are hard. I know there's a fascination, bordering on obsession, in this media town about what passing health insurance reform would mean for the next election and the one after that. ... I will leave it to others to sift through the politics. Because that's not what this is about. That's not why we're here," Obama said. "They are waiting for us to act. ... I do not know how this plays politically, but I know it's right." I assume by “they” he means us. And if he know that “they” are going to vote all of his friends out of office if he passes this, how is it possible that the same “they” want them to act? Well, I want all of them to act ... I want them to act like responsible adults who know that all the money they are spending ($50,000 for flowers in Rep. Pelosi’s office) does not actually belong to them ... I want them to act like they serve at the pleasure of the people ... I do not want them to act like the treasury is a bottomless pit and I do not want them to act like they know what’s best for us, we’re just too stupid to know what we want.

The following is an excerpt form a transcript recorded in the JFK air traffic control tower. I tried to post the audio (I tried to figure out how to post it here because it’s priceless, but alas I am a techno-idiot). So, the gist of this is it’s a little kid, in the tower, talking to airplanes on the runway, and they’re talking back.

Child: "Jet Blue 171, clear for takeoff."

Pilot: "Clear for takeoff, Jet Blue 171."

Child: "Jet Blue 171, contact departure."

Pilot: "Over to departure, Jet Blue 171, awesome job."

Child: "Aeromex 403, contact departure, Adios."

Pilot: "Contact departure, Aeromexico 403, Adios."

The story everyone else is running is the terrible things that could have happened. "How dare they let a child in the tower? Don’t they know what could have happened?" And on and on and on. I say NO! That child was perfectly competent ... what’s my proof? He spoke to the Mexican pilot in Spanish. Did you catch it? He never missed a beat, that kid (whoever he is) is at the top of his game! I agree with Jet Blue 171, awesome job junior!

Happy Wednesday!

After experimenting with some personal stuff we get back to the NEWS

Today’s post is brought to you by Vice President Al Gore who today won the Nobel prize for sticking to your guns even in the face of irrefutable evidence that you are wrong. The research that “global warming” was based on has been proved to be fabricated, the scientist whose research provided all the projections of future catastrophes has admitted that the earth has not warmed at all since 1995 and the current winter filled with record cold and snow all over the world is not enough for Mr. Gore. On Sunday Gore had his response to all this published in the New York Times, he states that we should ignore all that “evidence stuff” and not miss the “climate change for the snow storm”, and idiotic play one the old expression “do not miss the forest for the trees”. The difference is that in the forest there are trees and in the snowstorm there is no climate change. Way to go Mr Gore, a captain should always go down with the ship ... sink away good sir.


In financial news, the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has decided that he is going to continue to throw caution to the wind and print massive amounts of money. He has joined ranks with the President on this, the two men believe that there will never be another day of reckoning, that we can just live in irresponsible bliss for eternity. Of the many ways that an economy can be stimulated, our leaders have chosen increasing the money supply and inflated government spending as the way to go. And that will probably work out just fine ... right up until the value of the dollar collapses on the world market and the government goes bankrupt. Here’s the brief overview of those two concepts ... when the rest of the world decides that our currency isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, it will “devalue”and for a country that imports EVERYTHING this is a major cause for concern. If our money becomes worthless all the stuff we used to make here (that is now made all over the third world) will be so expensive that we can’t afford it. Imagine a $400 dollar Barbie doll, or a $600 pair of Walmart shoes. The government will go bankrupt when foreign countries and private banks decide to stop lending them money ... so that’ll be fun.

In global disaster news, Haiti is still in ruins and they’re having rain induced flooding, there is massive flooding in France and there was a 8+ Richter Scale earth quake in Chile (which prompted tsunami warnings all over the pacific rim). Pinko’s World tried in vein to reach Pat Robertson for comment. I guess he was busy, but we’re assuming that LOTS of countries made deals with the devil at their founding ... maybe all of them.

And finally tonight in insane genocidal maniac news, wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, defending himself against charges of Europe's worst genocide since the Holocaust, told judges Monday he was not the barbarian depicted by U.N. prosecutors, but was protecting his people against a fundamentalist Muslim plot. He claimed that his actions (slaughtering over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims) were “holy and just”. He went on to say that the Muslims started it and so what else could he do but kill all of them to “defend his people”. Clearly he’s not a threat to anyone and is very remorseful. Wow! I hope that they don’t waste any time putting that loon to death.

Happy Monday!