A New Declaration of Independence: No You Can't

I am boiling mad right now. Our Dear Leader is continuing his path of destruction through our great nation, while petty thugs and dictators rejoice around the world. Our brave soldiers retreat not because of our enemies, but because sheer stupidity and incompetence (I hope but know better) back in Washington force them to. Our great nation is being dismantled by leaps and bounds, by a tyrant duly elected by my fellow citizens. Those who fight against this tide of stupidity are maligned, silenced and condemned. The bones of the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves, while the First Family maintains their date nights at our expense. The supposed guardians of our freedom drool over each picture of our Dear Leader, and call him a god. It is all too much.
We as citizens do not deserve this, nor should we stand for it. We in a unified voice must shout NO, YOU CAN'T, when they say yes we can. It is time to take back our nation from those who actively and intently wish to destroy our great nation. There can be no other explanation for what they are doing. Sheer incompetence can't explain it. We face the greatest domestic enemy that we have ever seen, whose mission is to humble the Great United States of America because in their minds we are a evil nation, one who does not deserve the providence that Almighty God has bestowed upon us. That being said, I hereby draft a new Declaration, one that states in our righteous anger that we have had enough, and we are not going to take it anymore. It should be ratified by you, the citizens of the greatest nation that our good earth has ever seen just in time for our nation's birthday, a date that the free world holds dear as the day in which the light of freedom was ignited over our world, never to be extinguished.
This declaration reads:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve their outrageous government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These rights and only these rights that in which we have created an imperfect but just union, one whose very nature we find under assault. The government created to secure these rights, has become the very tyranny that we fought to eradicate more than two hundred years ago. It has supplanted our Creator as the creator of rights, and no longer requires the consent of the governed in its machinations. It has become destructive in these ends. That whenever any form of government has done so, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. Prudence demands in our case to take this moral step, because the transgressions that we suffer are neither light or transient, but heavy with burden and permanent. When a long train of abuses and usurpations, as such we have suffered and will suffer, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their current systems of government. The history of the present President of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has called for the defeat of our militaries, and commands them with incompetence and motivation for their defeat.
His government has suppressed the dissemination of vital knowledge to the public debate, and the organs of this government operate outside their constitutionally proscribed duties.
He has passed laws to destabilize and destroy the economy and lifeblood of the citizens of the United States, and used these laws to enrich his servants, noted lawbreakers and felons.
His government and party have disgraced themselves repeatedly, passing laws not desired or needed by the great people of the United States in pursuit of their rights granted not by him, but by our Creator, the god of the Jews and Christians.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither new swarms of officers not necessary for good government.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
The use of foreign law to make law underneath our sacred Constitution, bypassing its structure.
The use of suspect ideas, to suppress our liberties under the auspices of global good, in which our holy freedom is thrown away to protect us from nonexistent devils.
The confiscation of our personal wealth and property, to be distributed as he sees fit, to those who have no right to it, either by the sweat of their brow or claims of grievance and mistreatment.
The abdication of our laws, when it concerns a member of his government.
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments and societies that we hold dear.
For making our own legislatures null and void through federal power, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
For forcing our elected officials through the power of the purse to accept his changes to our federal system, and thus burdening them with unjust expenses, that in turn rob the citizenry of our liberty and denying our pursuit of happiness.
For the suppression of the American ideal, the apology of our goodness, and the support in our name that is given to the vile and evil heads of state that continue to hold those yearning for freedom under iron yokes, all in pursuit of denying rights granted to all peoples by the Lord, our God.
He is at this time moving to confiscate massive amounts of our precious freedom and worth to complete the works of subjugation, reconstruction and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our fellow citizens who are taken in by this tyrant. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our distress and loss of freedom. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the citizens of the United States of America, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these states, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the President of the United States, and that all political connection between them and the federal government, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to allow our citizens the pursuit of which our Creator granted us, full and free of interference from dictatorship in Washington and to do all other acts and things which citizens embodied with the concept of freedom are entitled to do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

With these words, I express the disgust that we hold our abhorrent government, and the things that it does in our name. We do not give our consent to its actions, and desire that it ceases those actions or be replaced by those who will follow the will of the governed. To those who remain with us, your support will be remembered, and rewarded when this government is brought to heel by our righteous anger. To those who oppose us, we will remember you as well, and thus you will join the failed experiments of the past, regulated to a sorry landmark in history as an example of the power of a determined citizenry, and its recourse to those who seek to remove its freedoms and liberties.

She Bangs, She Bangs: Or Why William Hung Rules The World

I was watching VH1's I Love The New Millennium, a worthwhile use of an hour, a few days ago. For those of you who are unaware, VH1 has a number of shows like this that detail culture and other fun little tidbits over the last few decades, starting with the 1970's. They have a number of comedians and nostalgic celebrities (some that only loosely fit that description) that make fun of how people lived during that time and what they found to be cool. And for a short period of time during in the middle of the Aught's, William Hung was cool. He appeared on American Idol, a show that I have never watched, and displayed a complete lack of talent that still astounds the public. He did not advance in the show, but gained much more than a cult following and had a record deal. There are somethings that anyone will buy.
What does this say about people though? Well, people bought the record. The vast majority probably did it as a joke, since Hung was a national joke, but I assume that some did it because they truly liked what they heard. Now, these people probably will not admit it, to anyone other than their confessor, but they do exist. What this says that the old adage beauty is in the eye of the beholder really is true. William Hung shows us that there is someone for everyone, no matter how talentless or ugly the rest of us view them.
How can I say this? I am sure that there was some women out their who found William Hung desirable, which is beyond any logic that I can reach. But, to be fair, there are people that I find attractive that my immediate group of friends would heartily disagree with. Desirability is not a logical process, and we like what we like. That being said, for each person out there, there is someone who finds them desirable, since even someone like Hung was desired. I am not trying to put down Hung, since I am sure he is a decent and nice person, but he is so far out of the modern definition of beautiful and desirable that it is almost laughable.
People often don't see this about themselves. Depending on what day you ask them, they may see themselves as a movie star, and on the next day lower than the scum at the bottom of your shoe. We often see the worst in ourselves. I have often been my harshest critic, seeing all that was wrong or bad about me, and ignoring or not seeing what other people saw as the good. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago, when a friend of mine who I will call Carrie and I talked. We met back in college, and she had to put it lightly a rough road. She made many wrong decisions, often putting her life in jeopardy with drug use and doing quite poorly in school. I tried to be a friend to her, and was there for her when she needed the most help. We lost touch a number of years ago. Recently, I saw that she was online in Facebook, and we chatted for a while. I learned that she had gotten her life together, and she told me that I had been right all those years ago and that she had taken my advice. Now she is truly happy, and things are looking up.
Hearing this made me realize that what I had done was truly good, and in turn made me feel good. Even with all of the things that I had found wrong with me, there was this one thing that weighed heavily towards good, and probably how people actually saw me. How people actually saw me was a much better picture than how I saw myself. This principle applies to desirability as well. My head realizes that there are women out there who would love to be with me, even though I might not have found them yet. My heart tells me that this idea is stupid, but I try not to listen to it. Some days it works, some days it doesn't.
William Hung is a beacon of hope (he never imagined anyone calling him that) for those who can see past the joke and realize that everyone has someone. It might seem like a stretch to see this, but it all makes sense. Don't get me wrong, he still can't sing or dance, and to me has a face that only a mother could love, but that is only my opinion. Simon Cowell ain't objective truth, and there is someone there over the rainbow that dreams of He Bangs, He Bangs each and every day.

The Ants Are Marching, But This Time They Got Tanks and Nukes

While the world has been distracted by the death of Michael Jackson, there has been a lot going on that makes me think that MJ was lucky now that he doesn't have to worry about it. Not that he did. I could spend all of ten minutes talking about Michael Jackson, but really, in the grand scheme of things he was not very important, just tragic. The actual important events have been going on outside the borders of the United States, in places that many of its people couldn't find on a map.
The first is the home of our Dear Leader's inspiration, The Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il's North Korea. It seems that North Korea is planning nuclear annihilation of the world if the eeevil United States attacks it in any way, or even if a bald eagle farts in its general direction. What are we doing about this? Absolutely nothing. It seems that President Obama is afraid of the pot bellied Dear Leader, and really thinks that he has the keys to shut off the world's internal core sitting next to his Scarface VHS tape. When the brilliant Vice President Joe Biden said that the world would test Obama, and that it would not look like he knew what to do (because he doesn't), we would just have to trust him. Well, my trust is gone. The pot-bellied Dear Leader will continue to rattle sabers, and could at any time start an invasion of South Korea, or nuke Japan, China, Hawaii or the continental United States. The correct response to this lunacy, lance this boil once and for all. The Korean War technically never ended, and North Korea a few years ago repudiated the cease-fire, so we are at war with them. Lets show them what war really is. Bomb his military forces, sink his navy, send black ops to take him out. Make North Korea an example to the rest of the dictators of the world that there is a point that we will not tolerate any more bad behavior. I really think that it should have been about three years ago, but better late than never. Re-unify the peninsula, and liberate the starving and enslaved people of the North. Even if North Korea launches nukes, they have so few (and those are not accurate or powerful) that in the long run it will have been worth the price that we pay today. That price however increases each year as North Korea gets stronger.
The next is the continuing struggle in Iran over the fake elections held there a little over two weeks ago. The Iranian Government has "certified" the election, and stated that the chosen candidate has won by even a larger margin than the 2 to 1 margin shown in the original election. How quaint. It don't find it at all suspicious that in an autocratic police state run by clerics that there is after a "recount" that the candidate chosen by the clerics won by a larger margin. No, it has to be true, since the state-run media has reported this and has clearly moved on to more pressing things like cap and trade (another time my pretties). There is still violence on the streets of Tehran, and people's blood is washed away each morning. When are we going to support them? I would be even willing to concede that the "election" was fair, and the ballots were not switched, destroyed or just plain shredded in the ballot box. We lose credibility in the world if we don't work to undermine the Iranian regime, and help those people it oppresses. This is a perfect opportunity to rid ourselves of Iran's terrorist government, and we do nothing. If nothing is done and Tehran's streets become quiet, our Dear Leader will have failed miserably on the greatest step on bringing Middle East peace, the collapse of Iran. And we will have to thank ourselves for his incompetence.
The third major thing concerns the coup in Honduras, and our commendation of it. Again, our Dear Leader makes the wrong call. The former president of the Central America country had attempted to pull a Chavez, and turn the democracy into a lifetime dictatorship, when their Supreme Court called his actions illegal and the military removed him from power. He ran with his tail between his legs to Chavez and vows to return. Unlike Douglas MacArthur, the people of Honduras won't appreciate it, as he will not be liberating them but destroying all that they have accomplished over the last thirty years. Our Dear Leader has condemned this removal of the president, and other leftist governments in Latin America are going to help force the government and people of Honduras "change their mind". What should be our response to all of this? Well, our support should go out to the lawful government, and even though we don't agree with a military coup in general, this action stopped the corrupt president and we should push that the military allows democratic elections as soon as possible to set things back to normal. But, the likely happening is that our Dear Leader will help this future dictator resume control over his country, and condemn the people of Honduras.
Why are these things important, at least more important than the death of the King of Pop? The world is a dangerous place, and things that happen on the other side of the world can have major effects here. September 11 is a good example of what happens when things are ignored outside our borders, and our Dear Leader appears to have not learned this lesson. We are not pushing for democracy abroad, and are neglecting our duties as the Shining City on the Hill to make the world a better place. In fact, the Obama policy appears to be to replace democracy with socialist dictatorships, which should curdle the blood of any real American. The march of dictatorship is picking up steam, gathering tanks and nukes with each passing week. What we really need to do is to smash the ants, and save the picnic for everyone else.

Sir Florian and the Patient Dragon

Perhaps it is better this way. The age of the knight is long dead, and the old medieval customs of romantic love and shining knights charging across the battlefield are long over, where ladies were pure and men were stout of heart. But the cold hard reality was that ladies were never pure, and many of those knights were bloodthirsty killers. Hard cold reality has crushed our nostalgia once again, and thoughts of better days past were just some fantasy that can never been realized.
Of course, it is all bull honky. Why I say this is because even with the cold poison of reality, fantasies do come true, even with the problems of making them so. Happiness is achievable, which involves some level of fantasy for people. Everyone has them, how things should go perfectly worked out in the ivory tower of our minds. When things don't go perfectly to plan, we become despondent, sinking into despair.
Why then do we still hold onto fantasy as possible reality? Are we all just hopeless romantics, wanting for a better time and place, seeking to escape the dreariness of our lives? My philosophy is that when it comes to finding and keeping someone, the fantasy does exist, and perhaps it truly is indeed worth it. How can I say this? Quite simply because I think most people have their head so far up their posterior most of the time (and this includes me) that they don't see the magic in their own lives. We all want to find, at some level, the perfect person that completes us. The problem with that is while people are searching for the Can't Hardly Wait moment, they miss the possibilities of Sweet Home Alabama. What do I mean by this?
In searching for our perfect person, we often miss opportunities that come along that very well could lead to our very own fairy tale. When I ask someone just what their fantasy is, I am often described a scene out of a romantic comedy, or sometimes a pornographic movie. The real problem is that people put themselves into what they are watching, and don't realize that they in all likelihood miscast themselves, mostly liking even on the wrong movie set. Even if you got the right fantasy, you could be Jon Cryer's Duckie instead of Andrew McCarthy. But on another set, you are cast as McDreamy, playing a nerd cutting the grass (yeah I used Patrick Dempsey's new nickname, only because if you watch his early movies he is nothing like that) who pays the hottest girl in school to date him, and guess what, hijinks ensue and they fall in love.
Why do people miscast themselves? It is often because they see what great things happen to those people in the movie, and want exactly what they have. The trick is to not put yourself into the movie. This is harder that it sounds, as our modern bards Hollywood with all of it faults still knows how to make an engrossing story.
How have I prepared myself for this? Instead of forcing myself into roles, I found the ones that fit me because they are similar to who I am. And if one watches enough movies, who can find a happy fantasy ending for almost every type of character. I am the bumbling Sir Florian, the bumbling mostly drunk knight who no one roots for, because he is not pretty and most think him a fool. But underneath that stained steel, a good heart beats and Sir Florian truly loves his princess, and protects her when she needs it the most. He does the knightly bit, helps the princess escape the evil castle, but tragically dies. Florian is a patient man, and his oafness was only an act. At the moment of her greatest need, Florian makes his move, and his hearts desire is realized. He undergoes terrible treatment and abuse from the evil king, but saves his princess from her personal hell. The truly terrible thing is that the princess sees all of this, and she cannot stop any of it. She doesn't love Florian at first, but after his sacrifice she holds him in a special place in her heart.
Depressing, isn't it? Well, perhaps I need to keep searching then, because for most people Florian's end is not happy. I would beg to disagree, but that is a discussion for another time. In that case, I will just be Preston, who has hair and wears t-shirts, some of the time. You can fight a dragon in that can't you?

Ahoy Mateys, Captain Conundrum is at the Helm of the Earth Ship

I guess I feel a little nostalgia today. My mind was brought back to my youth, and the cartoons that I remember that took up my time after school. One such cartoon was Captain Planet, which detailed a group of kids saving the planet from eeevil capitalist polluters. Not knowing much about Ted Turner at the time, I remember rooting for the villains almost everytime even though the show made them out to be despicable. I think that I at an early age resisted indoctrination of the inherent "goodness" of the environmental movement, and thus my shouting at the television rooting for Captain Pollution (an early villain of Captain Planet) was how I fought back.
There was a lot to be afraid of at the time. There was war in the Middle East, the Soviet Union still existed, and magazines and television were replete with environmental disasters and problems that would make our world uninhabitable. I remember one specific story about a young boy who lived in a garbage dump because the entire surface of the earth was covered in garbage. Even though my head got past it, such early fear mongering about the environment still lingers, corrupting my heart. Oh, and if one did not realize, the overflow of garbage scare was a bit overblown, as nearly twenty years later I still don't live in a garbage dump, no matter what my apartment looks like.
The environmental movement is full of these scare tactics, absurd predictions and blatant hypocrisy. We have heard that the oceans would boil, freeze, flood our cities and dry up. The ozone hole was going to disappear and we would all fry. Our water would turn to acid and our food would become irradiated. Not to mention the mutant animals that would come from polluted areas, like mutated frogs with six legs, all of which appear broken. We have been told that we must fix this now, or die. Scary stuff for a grown man, not to mention a young child. And that is just the purpose of why these things are said. The environmental movement relies on fear. They tell you that the world will end, and the only way to stop it is to believe them. Powerful stuff eh?
The truth is quite simple. In every case, those who support the environment are wrong, and only out for power. It is a little known secret that environmentalism is the new home for ex-Communists after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Communists for those with a public school education are the true villains of humanity, seeking to enslave people in order to make everyone equal. Of course, this mass of enslaved humanity needs leaders, and this is the place that the Communists have put themselves. Environmentalism follows this same course. They want to remove the modern life, which liberates people from the drudgery and danger of the past, and replace it with a low impact life. Now, they aren't themselves going to do this, but will lord it over everyone else who is required to do so. But, to figure out that the environmentalists are wrong can be done another way. A case-by-case basis can debunk each of their causes, with little effort.
One of the first environmental crisis was overpopulation. Tracing its roots from Johnathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, this idea was that the carrying capacity of the Earth was limited, and that humans would ruin the Earth by outstripping the land of production. Modern agriculture proved this wrong, as we stand today. There is plenty of food for the foreseeable future, with no end in sight. Famine does exist in places on Earth, but their causes are political (wars, forced starvation) rather than there being no food period for the people. Related to this is the availability of other resources, such as oil. It is a common misconception that oil will soon run out. While oil is produced by the Earth very slowly, the vast majority of it remains undisturbed. Many places are untapped, for a number of reasons. The shortest estimates of the world wide supply of oil give our supply at about 200 years, if no more deposits are discovered (which have a tendency to being found at a rate of about every three to five years). The only problems that prevent our claiming of these resources are technological, economic and political. Oil extraction is a safe process, with modern technological progress.
Another recent environmental scares have been the destruction of the land, with acid rain, the ozone hole and garbage dumps. Acid rain was to make our lakes uninhabitable. A simple technology (scrubbers) ended that scare. The ozone hole scare also faded away, when scientists discovered that it was a natural phenomenon, and was cyclical. It seems that over the poles the ozone is naturally thinner, and the extreme cold over the poles during the winter months makes it more so. During the summer months the hole disappears. Banning CFC's had little effect on this natural process. CFC's, an extremely useful compound, only made this effect more pronounced, but did not cause it. The scare over garbage was simply ludicrous, as again modern technology and good ole fashioned capitalism rendered the garbage planet a thing of bad science fiction. If you doubt me, go and find out how much money there is in garbage (salvage). Salvage yard owners are often the richest people around, and the old axiom one man's trash is another man's treasure is especially true here.
A special mention here is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, probably the bloodiest book of the twentieth century. This book was responsible for banning DDT, and launching the environmental movement. Because of the hysteria in the book (and it is hysteria, I have read the book) DDT manufacture was banned in the United States, and malaria deaths skyrocketed around the world, especially in Africa. There is little direct danger to people from DDT, as several people have literally bathed in it with no effects. The other major problem presented by the book were the effects of birds that DDT supposedly had. Even if these were true, more careful applications of this beneficial chemical would lessen the risk. But environmentalists pushed to ban, and thus the primary producer of DDT ceased production. DDT works to remove malaria, and with proper application can reduce the death rate by multitude of orders.
Before we get the big one, there is another environmental concern that bears mentioning. Environmentalists have been on a crusade against nuclear power since its inception, and the benefits that this clean, unlimited power provide. Nuclear power is safe, as the record proves. Nuclear accidents today are unheard of, while our biggest "accident" at Three Mile Island in retrospect in fact had little short or long term impact on the surrounding community. The largest accident in world history happened at Chernobyl. Faulty Soviet safety systems are responsible for the disaster. Reactors in the United States can never meltdown like Chernobyl. The only problem with nuclear power is the disposal of the waste products, which becomes a political issue as the Yucca Mountain facility has been designed to do just that.
Now the for granddaddy - global climate change. A bigger hoax that Y2K, global cooling, global warming and global climate change have been the evolutions of this monster. For those of you who did not take high school biology, the villain is carbon dioxide, which will heat our planet and make it lifeless. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring compound, which plants use for food. It is not the primary greenhouse gas (water vapor is) nor is it a major component of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is absorbed by plants, and the oceans which serve as a sink for it. There are several major problems with the global climate change theory. The first is that climate is not stationary, and changes over time, often in a cyclical fashion. This is driven by solar output (which produces the heat), not the gases in our atmosphere. In fact, carbon dioxide has been shown to follow temperature changes, not as a precursor. Related to this issue is the fact that warmer temperatures at the poles will actually moderate global temperatures. Warmer temperatures globally make storms less likely, and those that do happen are less severe. The planet has been warmer even in human history, as wine had been produced in England in the medieval period (grapes require warmer weather, and England today doesn't have it). This changed with the Little Ice Age, which was a period of colder temperatures and more powerful storms (such as the one that destroyed the Spanish Armada). The depths of this period are evidenced in the Year Without A Summer (1816). Part of the reason of this event are an actual factor in climate change, volcanic eruptions.
The next large problem is determining a global mean temperature. This is far more difficult that it would appear, as just the methodology to do so is up for debate. Most environmentalists when asked could not tell you what the average temperature for the Earth for one day is, much less an entire week. This lack of a foundation is compounded by climate models, which inaccurately forecast future climate. At present, the limit of our knowledge states that over thirty factors effect climate, while the best models use seven to determine forecasts. Therefore, it is nearly mathematically certain that these forecasts would be wrong, as any variation in the variables would produce dramatically different results as the model progressed through time. Climate models are guesses, and not very good ones at that.
Finally, the last major problem with global climate change is determining how much impact humans can have on the environment itself. Even at our most destructive, we pale in comparison to what nature can do. Our greatest destructive device - the Tsar Bomba - had little effect on the global climate. Its explosive power was dwarfed by the eruption of Mount Krakatoa and Pinatubo, which actually had some effect on global climate for a short period of years after. Volcanic eruptions put out far more gas and "pollutants" each decade than humans do in the same period of time. Our miraculous planet finds a way to repair the damage done quite quickly, and does the exact same with our relatively lower amounts of emissions. Our release of carbon dioxide (which is the same carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere long ago) if it were to have any effect, it would be the greening of the planet, as the Earth produces more plant material to remove the excess gas.
Don't get me wrong. I am not for the destruction of the world, and neither is anyone else. Those who fight against the environmentalists do so because we value human freedom, and believe with good reason that our modern way of life helps the planet. Humanity is not apart from nature, but an integral part of it. As any other creature changes its environment to suit itself, we do the same. We aren't cowed by the fear used by the environmentalists, who as ex-Commies seek world domination. This point is made obvious as to what the target of the environmentalist movement truly is, the United States. Here we have some of the most clean and safe environments, while former and current Communist governments like the old Soviet Union and Communist China are dirty, heavily polluted areas. The environmentalist's true aim is control, not protection, and they are not above propagandizing young and impressionable people into supporting them. They are pirates, seeking control over the ship of Earth. For our future generations, we must not allow them to succeed.

Mr. Jones, Dr. Duck Will See You Now

Normally, I won't put two blog posts in one day, but the recent airing of our Dear Leader's health care plan on ABC News forced my hand. This hour long special, which lost in the ratings to reruns, talked about Obama's plan to "fix" the health care system in the United States by providing a public option of health insurance to everyone. When someone talks about insurance, the general ignorance of the American public is obvious, and thus provides the small basis of support for our Dear Leader's plan.
I used to be in the same boat as the rest of the population. I knew little about insurance, and how it works. I was educated in receiving my first job out of graduate school, as an insurance agent for a large insurance company. In meeting people on a daily basis, I was exposed to the fact that most people have little idea on what insurance is. There are still many things about it that I am unaware of, but my dual insurance health and life licences provide me with a foundation of knowledge which I tried to impart to my customers, and to you now.
The first question is what is insurance, and why do we need it? At its foundation, insurance is a contract that transfers financial risk from you to another entity, namely the insurance company. This differs from how most people view their insurance, specifically health insurance in this instance. The vast majority of people view insurance as something that pays for things that they cannot pay for themselves. Not to split hairs, but while this seems just another way of saying what I just said. It differs in this way. Most people see their insurance as a type of bank account, in which money comes from, and it most certainly is not.
The reason for insurance expounds on this. We need insurance to "cover" us. Coverage entails those events that instead of baring the financial risks ourselves, another will. Insurance companies will pay the expenses agreed upon by both parties in the event detailed in the contract happens. Without insurance, a person must bare these expenses alone. By definition insurance is not a necessity, but a luxury for those who wish to protect their financial well being from catastrophe. Automobile liability insurance is a good example. When someone is involved in an accident, the insurance company will pay to undo the damages caused, setting the parties at an equal footing as if the accident did not occur. Most people cannot do this themselves, and thus pay for coverage to do this.
With health insurance, part of the problem we are having is that people use this bank account to pay for things that they could easily pay for themselves. Insurance companies operate under what is called the law of large numbers, which details the likelihood that an event will occur and truly how much risk that there is involved with certain events. Covering less likely events such as acts of God and lightning striking a person cost less money, as these things happen with less frequency than regular checkups to the doctor. Insurance companies manage this risk by pricing certain things more, using the free market to reduce the risk pool of their insured. Pre-existing conditions fall under this, as does using your insurance itself. Certain medical conditions make others more likely, and thus the risk of these things happening rises.
What do these things mean about the health insurance debate? Well, our Dear Leader's plan is to provide a bank account without regard to risk of health events occurring. Before talking about the specifics of this, it means that the public option will be a financial failure, since the costs of insuring higher risk will not be considered in providing a benefit. It also means that combined with governmental coercive power, behavior will be modified to lower the risk (and thus the cost) to maintain financial solvency.
A private health insurance company cannot force its insured into certain modes of behavior. Its options are to raise premiums for those who engage in risky behavior, cease accepting the risk that these people add, or to dilute the risk with a insurance pool, otherwise called group insurance. The health insurance provided through employers is an easy to understand form of this dilution. The private insurance company lacks the power to coerce behavior, other than through making the cost of insurance higher. Government insurance on the other hand, can force behavioral changes through its legislative and regulation powers. These actions will be forced at some point when the amount of risk accepted by the government outweighs the revenue brought in to support the venture. This can be done in two major ways. One is denial of service, which is the most common method that we see in government health programs. Long wait times for procedures, and the lack of expensive drugs (see Great Britain's denial of breast cancer medication to those who would die without it) reduce the cost borne by the government. The other method is making illegal behaviors that would drive up the risk, such as smoking, drinking and eating "unhealthy" foods. Such laws are already in place in several places, such as New York's anti-Transfat law. As it could be seen, almost every human activity can have an impact of health, and thus could be subject to health legislation because it effects the risk pool of the government.
But, will everyone have to accept this governmental health care? Yes, eventually. Most people rely on their employers to provide them health insurance, a relic from World War II's wage controls. Most employers will dump their private plans, as they will have to pay for both. They rather have someone worry about it, and thus most people who take employer health care will have no choice. For the rest, the old axiom power corrupts applies here. During the "debate" on ABC News, our Dear Leader stated that the playing field will be level because both private and public health insurances will have to operate under the same laws. That is making a blind assumption that the laws will be or remain fair. Can one say with certainty that a do-gooder that wants to make people healthier or someone who despises private insurance will not gain some control over the laws and regulations that govern insurance and tilt them in favor of public insurance, or pass a law that regulates behavior because having a government nanny will make you live longer?
Almost everything suffers under regimes with public health insurance. Far from being free, public health insurance is often the largest expense of a nation. In fact, the only reason that Western Europe and Canada posses such regimes is because the United States Government subsidizes their government by providing military forces for their defense. This lack of a military budget allows them to even consider public health insurance. The biggest failings of public health insurance are all financial. Doctors and nurses receive less money, hospitals don't keep adequate stocks of supplies (these cost money) and extra services are cut to the bare minimum, since all extra money is spent towards covering the high risk areas of the insurance pool.
Most uneducated people when they see medical professionals think that they could do with less money. The problem with this they are thinking of doctors who have been in the field for a number of years, and not those new doctors who are in greater debt than the majority of the population. The high salaries of medical professions are their rewards for long years of studying and financial difficulty when they start. Lower salaries would mean fewer doctors and those who are would be less competent, as the best and brightest would find other work to improve their lives.
Public health insurance only changes the decider in medical questions, from an insurance professional to a government bureaucrat. This is no fix. But, just how can we create a more fair system? First, people need to understand just what their health insurance is, and what it does. Cheap insurance is obtainable for everyone, and insurance companies will often tailor new products for differing groups of people. Furthermore, an insurance company will provide coverage to almost anyone, assuming that they are willing to pay the premiums for the coverage that is asked for. To make insurance easier on the wallet, one must be willing to assume more of the financial risk themselves. The cheapest insurance programs cover specific events, and are narrowly tailored.
Secondly, read your insurance policy the moment it arrives, and review at least several times a year. I realize that insurance is a snooze subject for most people, but the only time that most people read their policy is after something happens, when it is too late. Insurance contracts are VERY explicit in what type of situations that they will insure against, even if it is hard to understand because it is written in legalese. If you cannot decipher it yourself, call your agent and have him explain it to you. It is his job.
Thirdly, only use your insurance for major issues. In health this doesn't mean doctor checkups or common prescriptions. The risk of you using this things is high, and present a low cost to you. Thus it is expensive for the insurance company to provide protection for these things. Catastrophes like cancer, heart attacks and major illness are rare (in comparison) and are much less expensive when looked at from the law of large numbers. These are the issues that you need financial protection from, and to the insurance company since these events are rare, coverage is less expensive.
Fourthly, look at your need for a group plan, such as one provided by your employer. Group insurance works by leveling risk amongst a group of people. Those with high risk have that risk transferred to another with low risk, and thus it becomes less expensive for those with high risk and more expensive to those with low risk. People with low risk spend more money than they normally would if they went out and purchased a single insurance plan.
Fifthly, realize that the high cost of health insurance has mostly nothing to do with you. Insurance companies also bear the costs of those who do not pay for coverage, when hospitals charge them high rates for services to make up for those who don't pay. Poor uninsured people and illegal immigrants fall mostly into those who raise costs for the rest of us. Emergency health care is guaranteed by law, and those without an ability to pay drain resources from the hospital that must be replaced. This is also compounded by malpractice suits, whose exorbitant costs are included in what the insurance company pays, since they are able to do so.
The fix to this system is not the quackery of public insurance, but to reduce the risk and thus the cost of providing payment for health services. It is a not well known fact that hospitals will often charge far less to those who pay with cash than those who use their insurance. If people would use their coverage for things were this is impossible, and pressure our lawmakers to reduce the administrative costs of health care through tort reform, expenses would reduce across the board without a reduction in service. This would have the effect of reducing costs not just for those with insurance, but for everyone. Fewer people would be without coverage, and those who cannot pay would be less and less of a risk to manage. But I am not going to trust our Dear Leader with a stethoscope and a duck bill mask saying that he can fix our system because he says so.

The Truth About Birds and Bees: Or The Undeniable Facts About Pat

There are a lot of topics in America today that are not to be talked about. These topics are so decisive that they separate people because only one side is valid, at least in the minds of those who have decided that only their side is correct, and that any other view is simply wrong. This certainty is usually taken by those who cannot support their position logically, and is their method of "winning" the argument. One of these arguments is the debate over homosexuality.
What is homosexuality? It is the action of desiring sexual activity from a member of the same sex. Until 1973 it had been considered to be a mental illness. Today, we are deluged by people who maintain that this "former" disease is an acceptable lifestyle choice, and entitled to the same benefits as normal relationships. I am not sorry to say that this modern view is completely incorrect, and that if psychologists were honest, they would still call this a mental illness.
Before you start calling names, listen for a minute. First off, by the very fact that the first thing that a defender of homosexuality will do when challenged is call someone a name is a red flag that they cannot support their decision with reasoning. It is called an ad homeniem attack, and it one of the basic logical fallacies.
Next, by looking at sexuality and our modern science of psychology homosexuality clearly is abhorrent and abnormal behavior. Sex is the only medium of producing offspring, and it is the major function of the activity. Lesser functions of it include stress relief, showing love, and bonding two people together. This cannot be denied as when people feel lust (a desire for sex), it is a biological function designed to push you into producing children. Far from being an outmoded view of sex, procreation remains the major reason for it, and is how we work on a biological level.
This thought divorce between sex and procreation are relatively new ideas. This misguided perception resulted from the introduction of the Pill, or efficient contraception in the 1960's. Before that time, people engaging in sex were relatively certain that children would result of it, which kept this product of sex front and center and societal control over sex reflected that. Children needed a stable family unit to provide for their upbringing, and thus sex was reserved for marriage. The Pill allowed people to forget about what sex truly was, and thus various other sexual activities were now permissible, at least for those who embraced this lackadaisical view.
Almost a decade after the Pill is when homosexuality became "normal". All this shows is how much contraception had changed the view and thinking of psychology, but not the reality. This acceptance has grown to states allowing homosexuals to marry each other, and the smearing of anyone that is trying to fight their "rights", such as the supporters to Proposition 8 in California.
Proposition 8, for those of you in public school, bans homosexual marriage in California, and passed with a large majority of the vote. In fact, each time the choice of whether to allow for homosexual marriage has come to a democratic vote, it has been voted to ban the marriages by supermajorities each time. It has been left to the court system to impose these marriages on us, which is how they win the argument.
Marriage is the new battleground for the debate, and as usual the homosexual lobby has not a stick to stand on, so they must force their views on the rest of us. Marriage is and always has been the vehicle to produce and raise children. Homosexuals can NEVER do this, as the production of children requires both one man and one woman. Strange how that works. What they don't tell you is that homosexuals can marry in all 50 states. The right to marry someone of the opposite sex is open to them. They wish to create a new right, marriage of people of the same sex. This new right is for financial benefit, and leaves open the possibility that normal people could marry just to get benefits. This corruption of marriage will make it worthless, and erase it from our society.
The effects of this are for discussion of another day. The evidence is clear, homosexuality is wrong, not just for religious reasons (and these are valid as well) but for biological and psychological reasons. The homosexual lobby's answer to this is to put down those who object with religion, and to show us pictures of "gay" animals, which leads the uneducated to believe that the biological reasons are untrue. We are also deluged with statistics showing just how many people are homosexuals. If so many people follow it, it cannot be wrong. Well, they are still wrong. I am not going to talk about religion here, but each objection to homosexuality is valid. There are many different places to read it in depth, and I encourage you all to do so. Gay animals are an obvious straw man. Here is the shocker: Animals are not people. They don't have the same motivations as we do, and similar behaviors do not have similar thought processes behind them. In fact, most animals don't think like we do. Our thought is based heavily on language, and most animals have limited (vocabularies of 200 words or less) or no language skills. Animals can understand some words, like your dog sitting on command. But it is foolish to say because your dog humps the couch that he loves the couch, in that way. Thus the attempt to show that if animals do it, there can be nothing wrong with it. Well, animals don't have serial killers, psychotics or charity. People act above instinct, and have different reasons for what they do. If homosexuals want to say that they are only animals, well, good luck with that. Finally, the funny thing about statistics is that anyone who has actually studied them realizes that they can be fudged, severely. In fact, the numbers of homosexuals is greatly inflated. The prevalence of homosexuals is at most 5% of the population. Even at this low number, there are millions of mentally ill people.
Why do I maintain that they are mentally ill? Homosexuality fits the classical definition of neurosis, which is according to Merriam-Webster is a mental and emotional disorder that affects only part of the personality, is accompanied by a less distorted perception of reality than in a psychosis, does not result in disturbance of the use of language, and is accompanied by various physical, physiological, and mental disturbances (as visceral symptoms, anxieties, or phobias). Homosexuals evidence the distorted perception of reality, in which they deny the procreative basis of sexuality and are disturbed for their misplaced drive for sex that cannot result in this. A related disorder is transgenderism, which is obviously a psychosis. Turning to the dictionary gives us this definition: psychosis is fundamental derangement of the mind (as in schizophrenia) characterized by defective or lost contact with reality especially as evidenced by delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech and behavior. Transgenders believe that their sex is incorrectly determined, and believe that they are something that they are not. Men believe that they are women, and women believe that they are men. This is the classic delusion, just like a person believing that they are a bird and try to fly. We do them a disservice by accepting their delusion by giving them sex reassignment surgery. For those of you with a public school education, it would be like grafting wings on the bird man because he wanted to fly.
When confronted with this, homosexuals and transgenders respond with visceral anger, just like any another psychotic whose derangement is challenged by those without it. Don't mistake this distaste for this mental illness with a hatred to those who are afflicted. The people who suffer from this need help, even though our current understanding of this problem is burdened with current societal acceptance from certain areas. There are those who try to assist these people into fixing their lives, with some success. One such group is the Promise Keepers. But, until modern medicine can find the key to helping these people, a cure for homosexuality beyond solid faith will be beyond us.
This is the truth about the birds and the bees. Hating it won't change the fact that homosexuality is not natural. Some maintain that since humans are beyond animals in such that they possess reason, biological concerns are negated in determining what is normal behavior. This is a fallacy, and normal existence lies on biological foundations. It is like a house built that extends far beyond the ground on which it lays. With a sudden shake the whole house of cards comes crashing down. We need to properly view homosexuals, if for nothing else to prevent their collapse because they tried to fly without wings.

The Biggest Whack-a-Mole Game Ever

I know that I have not commented on what has been going on out there for a while. I guess that I was allowing some things to marinate and cook just a bit longer. There have been a number of important and interesting things happening out there, and deciding which one I should talk about is like playing the whack-a-mole game. The continuing violence in Iran, the girl with fifty face tattoos, the disappearance and return of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, the President's Health Care Debacle, sharks hunt like serial killers, and finally Perez Hilton pisses off the gays. With so much going on, I guess I will have to talk about all of it. It really is the only way to beat the mole, get a big enough hammer to hit all the heads.
Iran is easy. To unbiased observers, Iran is being subjected to continuing civil unrest, which is euphemistic for blood is running in the streets. And what is our Dear Leader doing about it? He watches his Rome burn. His facade of a new Middle East, created by his speech at Cairo, crumbles with the violence in Tehran. Through his perfect press secretary Robert Gibbs, our Dear Leader cannot find it in himself to support those who bleed for freedom, or even denigrate those thugs who fire into the crowd. American Presidents in the past have used their bully pulpit in support of foreign people fighting for themselves, and some have even gone beyond that and gave physical support to these brave people. These are the appropriate responses to the violence in Tehran. Saying that we are not going to influence the "debate" in Iran is dangerous in the least. We stand at a rare opportunity to remove Iran as a threat to world peace, and our Dear Leader only wants the violence to end so we can talk to the evil dictator and thugs of the regime. In terms of foreign policy, our Dear Leader has almost instinctively chosen the wrong course, with the notable exception of shooting those pirates. We should support the streets of Tehran, and take this opportunity to strike a blow for freedom in the Middle East. But, alas, we would need someone else running the show to give those people a chance.
The next big thing is the face tattoos of stars. Why anyone would purposely disfigure themselves by tattooing their face is beyond me, but this girl apparently lied to the world press when she stated that her intention was not to cover herself in black stars. Why I think that this story is important is because of what is says about a person's motivations, and that thankfully some things never change. If one follows the news, you can't help but think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, and that traditional values are all but gone. But, this girl lied because she felt shame about what she had done to herself in front of her father. Yes, there was rebellion against one's parents, but the shame is the important thing. People still respect what their parents think of them, no matter what the Left in this country would lead you to believe. Even in a fog of nonsense and crazed news out there, there is a nugget of how things used to be (and still are) that gives me hope that all is not lost, and that people don't change because some government nanny tells them too.
Governor Sanford nearly became this century's Baby Lindbergh, only to return from Argentina claiming that he had cheated on his wife. His disappearance became a obsession for the media, who continue to pile on this tragic figure who is only human. The real story here is can we live without our public figures, when they decide to go gallivanting off hiking or to South America. Life continued as normal for the residents of South Carolina, even without their governor. What this means for the rest of us is we really don't need government at all times in our lives, and if this is true we really don't need them much at all. To some, this represents the depravity of the human condition, but really Governor Sanford's disappearance and its reason are just a view into one man's fragile condition. He is no more depraved than the rest of us, and his absence really shows us that we really don't need him (or any other politician) in our lives, as when they are gone things are completely normal.
Our Dear Leader wishes to remake our health care system, and ABC News is going to promote his policies tonight. Even with this fawning coverage, his plans are in trouble, as the vast majority of people want nothing to do with it, as well as a large majority of Democrats who sometimes must listen to those who elected them. I don't share in the outrage over ABC and how they are treating this issue, only because I see it as them showing their true colors and how far journalism has fallen in our modern times. There is little pretense of objectivity today, in any media form. This is not a bad thing, unless one tries to pass off opinion as objective journalism. This has led to the downfall of the traditional media, and the rise of the alternatives. The alternatives don't hide under the pretense of objectivity, and provide a viewpoint of the majority of people. But, I digress. Our Dear Leader wishes to place a government bureaucrat in charge of your health, and it will cost at minimum One Trillion Dollars to do so. I don't care that it is over ten years. We have had enough of this neo-Marxism from our Dear Leader, and it is here that he will be stopped, if one can read the political winds. His fellow Democrats also see the cliff that our Dear Leader is driving towards, and many of them don't wish to go over the side. There is a crisis in health in our country, but it is not the one that is pushed by our media.
Breaking news, it seems that great white sharks and serial killers are the same. I thought that this story was funny, if only because of the common thread to humanize animals that is often present in today's media. It seems that sharks stalk and select their victims, just like humans. I was shocked, if only because I thought that most sharks were like Jaws and the fish could hear the music when he approached. But it seems that I was wrong, and perhaps Ted Bundy could take a few pointers from the most efficient killing machine in the world. Some pointed heads actually researched this and came up with these findings. I guess it is better than our government researching the mating habits of gays in South American bars and why they get AIDS because of them.
Finally, we come to the bloated Perez Hilton, a gentleman and a scholar who specializes in making girls cry. It seems that he had a bit of a scuffle with some members of the group the Black Eyed Peas. In the midst of this argument, Hilton called one of them a burning pile of sticks. He was immediately chastised by GLAAD, for using that slur, and for generally being a nice guy. Why I include this story in my list is because Hilton holds a special place in my heart, the place where worthless people reside. I knew of him long before his debacle with Carrie Prejean, and have always found him to be a talentless hack, gossiping about other people's lives (which I thought bitchy women would do, not men) and generally being a very rude person.
What do each of these stories have in common? Other than the news of the past week, they all show a glimpse into what we consider to be the mainstream media, and how it reacts to what occurs around us. Some people are enshrined in ivory towers (Dear Leader), others fall from them (Hilton), still others were down in the muck and we need to still cover them in it (Sanford). The media props up those who live their worldview, and denigrates those who don't. It doesn't believe humans are anything special, so animals are just like us. Instead of a story about two crazy scientists, great white sharks are people too. Another person who would loosely fit that definition makes a mistake, calls someone a "dirty" word and will be accepted back into the arms of the media lovingly when he apologizes also makes humanity less special. The Governor, to our fearless media is a lowly human, stained with sin, not because he cheated but because he is a Republican. Yeah he messed up, but it happens. Above all of these lowly people, Our Dear Leader sits on his throne, his words chiseled into stone each time he utters something. He can do no wrong, and it is only fair that people only see his side of things. How can there be another side, when he is a modern god, as some in the media think of him. Those who get in the way, like Republicans and demonstrators in Iran, are not worth another thought, and the media tries to show us just how human they really are.
Why talk about this? If you have been reading my posts, there is a common theme with the political musings that I have made. There are two sides in every war, and media is the side of the Moral Relativists. They care little for humanity, seeing that they are no better than the rest of God's creatures, in fact worse than most. Only those who they pick out as better than the rest; i.e. the Dear Leader, are above this judgement of being human. The rest of us are put into one large pot. It is almost Orwellian, where the worthless are noteworthy, peace is war, and wrong is right. The silver lining that I see is that many people are reaching for their large mallets. We are going to put the mole back into his hole, for good this time. We really want that big teddy bear.

Honey, The Dog and the Fox are raiding the Hen House

Much has happened over this past week. The fake elections in Iran have been exposed to the world, which is a big duh to me and those who have a brain and/or follow events in the world. A girl has had her face tattooed over fifty times with stars, and the world's two dear leaders have teamed up in trying to push America into doing what they want. The fox, the dear leader of North Korea has threatened to launch a missile into Hawaii, and the dog, guardian of America has decided to protect the American people from the depredations of Cheerios. If you are in doubt, in seems that the cereal has been responsible for ruining lives and economies and now must be brought low.
Why am I am equating these two people? Well, both seem to desire the same from us, to manipulate us into what they both want, which is not that dissimilar. The Fox is a certifiable nut, having named his possibly non-existent youngest relative to replace him when he ascends into godhood to continue to run his prison. He apparently thinks that lobbing missiles at the island paradise of Hawaii will get him some respect. Normally, the Dog, whose job is to protect the hen house, would blown him out of the water and lay waste to his prison. But this Dog has been born without teeth, because it will most likely give a toothless response to whatever the fox decides to do. But, the Dog does have teeth. They are bared at one of the most beloved breakfast foods in America (not by myself, since I think Cheerios are disgusting, but I can appreciate their popularity) because apparently this dangerous drug has been unregulated and now must be taken off the shelves and only bought with a prescription.
I am not going to argue the merits of this case. Cheerios can defend itself, even though the Dog hopes to bluster them into backing down. The clear target is General Mills, who produces the cereal. It seems that the main goal of the Dog is to push around the major corporations which help provide our modern American life, take over them and then give them away to those mice who have been turning the wheels. The Dog has done so with our automobile companies, and possibly has set his sites on General Mills.
The Fox sees this, and has decided it is a good time for a raid. The big guard Dog is picking off hens himself, so he won't mind if the Fox does so as well. The Fox can't just come in and take like the Dog, but shows up, bares his sharp teeth and the hens throw out some of the weaker ones to save themselves. Normally the farmer would shoot the Fox, but he is asleep. That is why we have the Dog.
Are they working together? No, but the Dog isn't doing his job and the Fox only gets more and more dangerous each time he gets a hen. Even though we have only had this Dog a few months, he has seemed more interested in eating the hens than protecting them. The Fox has been around for years, but it seems that he has found an easy way to get what he wants. How should we, as farmers, proceed?
First, put a lock on the hen house and kick the Dog out of it. We are stuck with the Dog for at least a while, but he has no business in the hen house. Getting him out and hiring a new Dog should be the top priority for the farmer as soon as he can. For the Fox, the Farmer now needs to protect the house himself. Shoot the Fox when he appears, and bomb his nest into the Stone Age. The Farmer needs to do this himself, even though it will be tough. Sometimes, he doesn't pick a very good dog, and other Farmers complain if high explosives are used on the farm. But something needs to be done, before the children run out of eggs in the future, and the Fox is running the farm.

Damned if you do, Damned if you don't

Today there is an election going on in Iran. This "flowering" of democracy is all over the news, and our state run media breathlessly awaits the results of the election. But really, this farce of the democratic process is by far one of the biggest jokes on the planet. Why do our so-called perceptive journalists continue to be flummoxed by fake democracy abroad and cry out with calls of fascism and cheating at true democracy at home?
The first answer is quite clear. Journalists are all communists. Now, I realize that this is not entirely realistic, but only communists can really believe this bad propaganda. This farce of democracy was pioneered by them. You could always tell a communist police state by what a country calls itself. The Democratic Republic of Germany, the Democratic Republic of Korea. East Germany and North Korea are (and I will repeat this) NOT examples of free democratic societies. For those of you that have received public school educations, East Germany and North Korea are NOT examples of free democratic societies. You see, blatant totalitarianism became passe after the Second World War, and The Second World (First World - West, Second World - Commies, Third World - Everybody else) sold themselves as democratic communist states. This gave them sympathy in the stupid people of the world, who actually took anything said by Communists at face value. Non-democratic governments in our modern worldview are seen as illegitimate, which is not a bad thing. This view is corrupted by the totalitarians, who only add a facade of democracy.
This tactic expanded beyond the traditional Communist sphere, where it can been seen all over the world, with every crackpot dictator in and out of Africa. This is even further muddled by dictators elected with a real democratic process, and then continue to remain in power. This can be seen in Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who just banned Coke Zero because Coca-Cola is resisting his takeover of all of the infrastructure of the country. People with at least a modicum of education should be able to tell the difference between real democracy and dictators who wrap themselves in it.
This brings us to the second reason for why our media seems confused about it. They engage in intellectual dishonesty for agenda reasons. This disease is most often seen on the left, and fits nicely into their bias against anyone who disagrees with them. This is the reason why that can report on the 99% approval of Saddam Hussien pre-2003 in elections, and the "election" in Iran, tongue in cheek. You see, they know what they are talking about is BS, but promoting it serves their purpose. Before the wall of the Berlin Wall, election returns from Communist nations demonstrated the popular support for these regimes, and this reason continued past that for spotlighted dictators who practice acceptable policies, like Chavez.
But, how can I say that Iran's election is bogus? Well, for starters just look at their official name, The Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is a theocracy, and controlled by the mullahs of Iran. The president of Iran is only a public face for these religious nuts, and they get to pick him. They cloak this is an election, where the ballot boxes contain a shredder inside of them to "change" their votes. The people of Iran "joyfully" engage in this practice, because if they don't they might disappear. Here in America, most of us cannot fathom what it means to live in a police state. They tell you what to do, what to say, what to think. Polling is worthless, and fear is rampant.
Our media and our Dear Leader are using this "election" for their own purposes. Our Dear Leader is taking credit for the increased debate in Iran, no matter what the outcome (determined yesterday). Apparently, his speech in Cairo is a benchmark for the Middle East, much like Reagan's Tear Down This Wall. It also seems that this speech is responsible for democracy in Lebanon, which would be good evidence for time travel. Well, I am not buying it.
What we should be doing is continuing to condemn these bastardizations of the democratic process. It harkens back to Moral Relativism, which taints our true democracy by putting these farces on their same level. If we don't, we continue to leave these people in one of Gary Larson's classic comics. There is a guy standing in hell, and the devil is there. There are two doors, one that says Damned If You Do, and the other Damned If You Don't. The devil is saying, cmon, hurry up and decide. My choice would be Door Number 3.

New Hate For a New Century

Recently there was a shooting at the Holocaust Museum here in the United States. It did not take long to discover just who the murder was, a crazed racist. Some people look at this as a clear example that America is a mean country, and that there still are grave obstacles to those people who are not white to rise high in our society. But really, does this mean anything at all, other than we still have crazy people living here in America?
No, since the home of racism is not new, and its effect is great on our society, but not in the way that many people believe. There are two types of people in America, people who don't see or don't care about color, and those that do. The majority of people who fit into the first group are conservatives, and the majority of people who fit into the second group are liberals. It is strange how we label our political parties and stances in this country. Conservatives do not believe in the status quo, as they do in other western countries. Liberals do not believe in more open government and political freedom. To illustrate my points, I will do something that I will not do again in the future. I don't think it is controversial to say our Dear Leader, President Barack Obama is a black man. This statement means nothing to me, as I really do not care a whit about what color of skin a person has. I think he is shaping up to be the worst president we have ever seen in our lifetimes, but that has NOTHING to do with the color of his skin. That is why I won't ever mention it again.
But, for those liberals, leftists, statists and other commie wackos, the melanin content of our Dear Leader's skin is always important, and is mentioned at almost every turn. I thought it was MLK Jr's dream that we would not see skin color in America. But for our state-run media, criticizing our Dear Leader is tantamount to racism, even if you disagree on the wall treatments that the First Lady put up in their residence in the White House. I never cared about the historical nature of this presidency, since I thought we were passed such concerns. Apparently I was wrong. This obsession of skin color continues throughout the political discourse, and exclusively on the left side of the spectrum.
You can see it when they talked about Clarence Thomas, and Condoleezza Rice. This brilliant people had been raked through the mud because of their skin color. They have been shown as traitors to their race, because they aren't leftists. Condy got it far worse, because she is also a woman (shock!). Anytime a non-white non-male person appears on the conservative side of the spectrum, the left brings out the long knives and stabs until it is dead. Not to get too far off topic, just look at David Letterman's comment concerning the rape of Sarah Palin's daughter at a Yankee's game. The absence of complete outrage that should easily surpass the Don Imus nappy haired comment (Don makes a tasteless hair joke, while David smirks about the rape of a young woman. Neither was in good taste, but only the most deluded person could be confused as to which is far more serious) says it all. Imus was forced out, and Letterman has "apologized". The demonstration is not the fact that these two actually said what they did, but how people responded to it. One attacked a protected group, the other a reviled political figure (at least on the coasts, the majority of the country and her state love her).
Sarah Palin is not the only victim of this racist (and sexist) hatred of the left, just the newest. Anyone who falls into a supposed leftist support group, minorities and women, and actually betrays them for the other side is public enemy number one. Also, any criticism of any loyal member of these groups is immediately racist and sexist. Those of us on the right recoil from these charges, as they are acid to the skin in modern America.
Shouldn't that the be the standard? The new societal lepers are racists and sexists. Doesn't this mean that America has gotten past those things in our past? Fraid not. The new acceptable racism is the paternalism of the left, and the man-hating female superiority of the feminists. We need quotas in TV shows and in collegiate graduation classes, need to take sensitivity classes and diversity classes, and bow down to the little giants of history (while ignoring the real movers and shakers) only because they had the correct skin color and/or genitalia. What is this crap? It is the new racism, even though it is not new. I don't like people for what they believe in, their personality or just because I am having a bad day. I have that right to be a bastard. But, you won't find me doing it because they look different (well, if they have a green Mohawk, they just leave themselves open to ridicule). This needs to be repeated, if only counter the endless stream of vitriol that the right is full of racists and sexists. WE DON"T CARE THAT THEY ARE BLACK. We really don't. Our Dear Leader is wrong because of what he is doing to our great country, not because he looks different.
I recall a joke from Carlos Mencia. I can't do the joke with any justice, but his point makes mine. He is at an amusement park and sees a guy in a wheelchair go to the front of the line because he his handicapped. Carlos bitches to the guy and the people who work at the park. After making a scene, Carlos and the guy become friends, because Carlos did not care about the chair, but treated him like a normal person. The funny part of the joke is that they both abused the park for the rest of the day, getting both the guy in the chair and Carlos cutting in lines for rides. This is how it should be. People should be treated the same, regardless of how they look. Judge them on the basis of merit. The new hate for a new century goes against all of this. We still have to acknowledge color and sex, even if we don't want to. We have to give those who are different a leg up, because they are viewed by the left as not real people. This is the legacy of racism in America.

A Labyrinth of Love

I just finished watching the movie He's Just Not That Into You. Far from being a normal romantic comedy, it was my impression that for the most part it really nailed many of the problems with getting together. Usually after I watch a movie that I like, I check out the Internet Movie Database to see what the movie snobs have to say, and they did not disappoint. The decried the anti-feminist sentiment and the apparent contradictions with the main message of the movie and its ending. However, as per usual, the snobs got it wrong.
Almost anyone can relate to some of the events in the movie. We have all not called someone, or misinterpreted the signals we have received from the opposite sex. It is part of life. I am going to lay it out plainly. We have some much trouble in finding love because it is supposed to be hard. If it was not it would not be worth it. Men and women are different, but both human. We all suffer throughout life, but hope keeps us alive to the point when we can share and thus lessen our pain. This cannot be done alone. The modern perception of being alone is okay is quite wrong. We are not meant to be alone. If that were the case, we would not have such strong feelings towards our opposites, and dream each night of fulfilling that void until we have done so.
There are some ways in making this easy, which is what the movie (and I believe the book, even though I have not read it) attempts to do. Men and women project their fantasies on real life each day, often building them up from small parts of reality. Often these fantasies might be quite different, but they are geared to fulfilling the same goal. The real challenge is making your fantasy into reality, and deciding if this particular fantasy is truly what one desires.
There are some ways to make this easier. The first is knowing the correct signals. If someone wants to willingly spend time with another, they will make the time. Of course since we are dealing with people, there are caveats, not exceptions. In the movie, Gigi goes from guy to guy, trying to determine just who likes her. Alex gives her actually some good advice, and she acts on it. When a man finds a woman that he likes, there will be no excuses or vagueness. The caveat to this sometimes the man will not admit it to himself, or is too nervous to actually say anything. This is where words can really be thrown out. He might not say it, but if he is spending every night with you or seems to replace your best friends in amounts of time spent, he is into you. He might never say the words, but you can be sure that he means it. This applies for both caveats. The internal liar will eventually figure it out, as Alex did, and nervous guy has planned it out in his head probably a million times but hasn't the guts to do it yet.
The second is the awkward message. We all have left awkward messages. It is that message that you have rehearsed over and over before you make the call, and you end up not sounding cool on the phone. When someone cares about the message, it is nearly impossible to sound cool on the message. Believe me, I have tried. There is a world of difference in a one minute message from someone who cares and someone who doesn't. I have specific training in this. For my job I had to call several people that I had never met each day and set up an appointment with them to meet the next day. When I started, I was self-conscious and felt like I needed each person to say yes. Needless to say it did not go well. When I lost that need, my phone calls went smoother, and almost everyone said yes. When it comes to love, and looking for it, we have been programmed that cool and smooth are desirable, when all they signify is a lack of emotion. It is when we try to achieve that, and fail miserably, that should be the flag that people look for.
This problem is evident in two different ways. Men need to be macho, and women are crazy. As guys we think that women prefer the cool guy, and this is reinforced with our own eyes. The pricks get the chicks. Women think that these emotionless men are what they should be looking for, and this makes them crazy, trying to make them human and not robots.
The next solution derives from this, openness. This is probably the most difficult one of them all. Ben and Janine are not open with each other, and thus their relationship falls apart. Janine forced Ben into their marriage, when Ben was not sure. His fear of being without her forced his hand. This was brought out when Anna appeared on the scene, and tempted him. I am not saying that they did not love each other. What I am saying is that they were missing several elements of a truly good relationship. Ben could not tell Janine that he truly did not want to marry her, and that he had resumed smoking. His heart was not committed. Janine knew this, in her heart, but was not honest with herself until it her facade came shattering down. This goes back to the first rule, people don't do things they don't want to do willingly. It was not a real willing choice to marry Janine, so they were doomed to failure. Neil and Beth were honest and open with each other, with the lone exception that Beth did not tell Neil the impetus for their breakup. However, it did not matter and this brings us to my last point.
The greatest principle you have to remember is that love is greater than anything. Neil's principle against marriage meant nothing compared to his love for Beth. If people truly care for one another, they cease their concerns for themselves and wholly work towards happiness for the other. This othercentric goal is what true happiness really is. As a recap, Alex and Gigi solved their problem by using all four principles. They desired to be together, showed emotion, were finally open with each other and themselves and when their true feelings were obvious to themselves, let nothing stand in their way. Ben and Janine did none of this, and were thus split asunder by the end. Neil and Beth had much of the foundation of a relationship built, but finished their construction by the end.
How does any of this apply to us in the real world? Being open is difficult, almost impossible for some. Some people have a massive difficulty in placing someone else above their own needs and desires, partially due to selfishness and partially due to the modern misconception that you are the most important person to yourself. Many are uncomfortable putting themselves out there each day, looking for the fairy tale and disappointed when they don't find it. Well, in general, the fairy tale is finding that one person who "gets" you and you fall madly in love with them and live happily ever after. The problem with the fairy tale is that people grasp at it, clutching blindly at any possible straw to get there. The fairy tale exists, and does happen, but you have to be patient. You can't convince yourself that you don't need it, because you do.
Speaking from experience, I have over thought almost every romantic situation I have ever been it, molding it to how I would want it to go. It never does, but that does not mean that it never will. The interesting thing is that with each new woman that catches my eye, the fantasy changes in part, and I think that eventually it will resemble actually what occurs before my eyes, not just behind them. All that is required of me is to keep trying, and to keep looking. If I follow my own advice, who knows what will happen.
Cynics will say that I am being naive and unreasonable. Well, love has nothing to do with reason. We are all entitled to have our fantasy, and achieve it as well. Some people fall into it, others make their reality their fantasy, and others still settle for something less. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be settled for.

Fear and Loathing in the Midwest

I met one of my friends this weekend for lunch and he arrived tired and wiped out. After twisting his arm, he unfolded a story about his weekend, and how it had bruised his soul. I exaggerate, but only about the beating he had taken. He recounted a story considering a mutual friend of us, a certain Nancy, who had all in one weekend been broken up with, became absurdly drunk, broke/sprained her ankle, lost her keys, went to the ER and probably woke up with a massive hangover from dehydration of body and wallet (ER's visits are expensive). Oh, and for the cherry on the top, her car had been towed and impounded. Obviously, this is an example of kicking someone when they are down, almost to an absurd length.
Why recount this tale of woe? I bring it up for a number of reasons. First, pain shared is pain lessened. I care for Nancy quite deeply, and I guess by talking about it maybe there is something that I can do to lessen her fear and loathing. Secondly, I can look into myself, which introspective bastards like myself do when things happen to other people. Possibly therapeutic, or maybe not.
Nancy obviously cared about her ex-boyfriend. If one did not know her, her feelings about him were obvious by the pictures that she had placed on the Internet. She was obviously happy, and spent a fair amount of her time with him. People don't spend their valuable time engaging in activities or people that they do not enjoy, or like on some level. The ending of this was obviously painful, as she followed this by some obviously self-destructive behavior. In saying this, I am not disparaging her in any way. She gave a human response. I am sure that many people have been in the same situation before. Losing someone is always hurtful. You may put on a strong face, saying that you want to go out on the town, and have some fun in being newly single. This facade is just that, and really you want to feel something different.
I have often been in the same situation, but my method is far more damaging. I hold in the pain, stewing in its juices until it becomes comfortable like an old baseball glove. This glove curdles one's soul, and deadens you to the world. Almost everyone has to deal with it in their own way at some point in their lives. We need other people, as a function of the human condition. It is messy, placing you in a roller coaster soup of emotion, breaking some and strengthening others.
I hope that the self-loathing doesn't remain with her. There is always some, especially if you were not the impetus for the break, but even if you were, your mind can play tricks on you. From this self-loathing can come fear. Fear of being forever alone, fear of further rejection. This can be a self-fulfilling spiral if you let it cripple you.
Where do you go from here? Well, if I can answer that definitively, I would make millions. Since I don't have millions, my best will just be a guesstimate. First, the hardest part is to forgive yourself. People are always hardest on themselves, as they cannot hide what they think are their faults as they can from others. Even if it is your fault, forgive yourself. Second, know and care that others care about you. This is harder than it looks. At least for myself, it is the relationships that I cannot have or no longer do that I care about most. Finally, it helps that if you can find it in yourself that that quite possibly there is someone else who is going through what you are, and that people have survived the fear and loathing before, and found true happiness later.
In the end, this cuts to our greatest fear, fear of being alone. Some people overcome this fear early in life, others later, and others still never do. This fear has crippled me at times, at others disappeared and finally I settled into some level of acceptance of it. It is the fear that lies at the heart of women who won't leave their husbands who beat them, the crazed stalker hopeless in love with the actress, and the elderly man hoping for death after his wife of 50 years passed last year. We don't want to be alone, and strive to our utmost to avoid it.
My final question for myself is it all worth it? Even though my experiences would lead me to say no, the spark of optimism still pushes to the affirmative. Even though it is pain, it is living. Life is full of strong emotions, highs and lows. What makes us real are feelings, and the passions that drive them. Often in movies they speak of the true death of a person, the death of hope. In my mind it is the death of feeling, where you could easily be replaced by a automaton, ceaselessly moving through biological existence like a cog in a machine. To my few readers, embrace the fear and loathing. Conquer your fears, and continue to live the human experience. Such painful bumps in the road are worth it.

Our Answer To Infamy

June 6. A date which should reside in history for all eternity. For those of you that received a public school education, June 6, 1944 is perhaps one of the most important days in American history, and today is the 65th anniversary of that day. The events of that day are immortalized in such films as The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan, and in the graveyards that dot the Normandy landscape. Even nearly seventy years later, the lessons of D-Day reverberate through our lives.
By June 5, 1944, war had raged throughout the world for nearly five years (seven in Asia), and the legions of the fascists had faltered, but had not been utterly defeated. America's war had started in the Pacific, with the Date Which Will Live in Infamy, an event immortally described by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We had pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific, engaging bloody battles across idyllic Pacific islands and massive naval air battles at Coral Sea and Midway. In Europe, our brave sailors had fought across an Atlantic red with our blood against Hitler's wolfpacks. We had pushed the Axis out of the sands of North Africa, smashed them in Sicily and General Mark Clark had reached the gates of Rome in our drive to liberate Italy. In the East, the German armies had been pushed west by hordes of Soviet troops and tanks and the great tank battle of Kursk and the siege of Stalingrad had gone in our favor. However, the Nazis had not yet been defeated utterly, and the outcome was still in doubt.
New German tanks and super weapons were being produced, things such as the King Tiger tank, and the V-1 Rocket, and the ME-262 Jet Fighter. Our bombing campaign had not destroyed the German's industrial base, and our forces in Italy were engaged with a master of defense in the mountainous terrain, General Albert Kesselring. The Nazi death camps operated at full capacity, and the German soldier remained confident.
This all changed the next day. With the landing of American, British and Canadian troops on the beaches of Normandy, Hitler's coffin had been built. The largest sea-borne invasion in history had begun. Unlike the Normans who left these shores in 1066, the Allies who returned came not for land and power but to drive out those who had done so. Great stories of heroism can be told about the actions of our brave men who stormed Hitler's Europe on that day. Many of them would never see home again. It was our Allied Troops that won the day, and the day after that, and the day after that and so on. General Dwight D. Eisenhower had written two letters that day, one for victory and the other if the landings had been turned back. He knew what could have gone wrong, but also knew that the spirit of the free soldier of the Allies cannot be resisted. Through our blood and grit we took Hitler's Europe, and freed an entire continent and world from the evils of Nazism.
Hitler had been doomed following D-Day. Even with his super weapons, he could not defeat the Allies on two fronts. His last gasp came in the winter of 1944, with the Battle of the Bulge. With Hitler gone Imperial Japan was doomed, and with the bloody conflicts Iwo Jima and Okinawa won we bombed Japan into dust.
Why do we still remember that day, all of these years later? The answer is simple. Without it, the light of freedom very well might have been extinguished. D-Day was quite simply America's finest hour. With our British and Canadian allies, we anted up, and decided to do something about the evil in our world, something permanent. In no way does this take anything away from any other soldier, sailor or marine who fought elsewhere in the war. There were bloodier battles, outcomes more in doubt, but D-Day serves as a symbol. This symbol is that the forces of democracy and goodness can and will save the world. Even to those who despise war, thinking it always as an unnecessary evil, and to those who despise America, D-Day cannot be tarnished. World War II presented the clearest representation of the dichotomy of good and evil. The forces of good consisted of America, Great Britain and their allies, and the forces of evil were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Even Moral Relativists have a high level of difficulty in explaining away the Holocaust and Japan's treatment of captive populations away without using such moral terms. The Soviet Union makes this dichotomy muddled, as clearly being a force of wretchedness in the world, but the Cold War and the culmination of it finished placing the Soviets on the correct moral side and the victory of good over evil.
There are dates that will be remembered by a people for as long as they retain themselves as a group. For Americans three of these dates are December 7, 1941, September 11, 2001, and June 6, 1944. Even the ends of the wars are less important. The first two dates belong together, as they are the same event, the surprise attack on unassuming good people by the forces of evil. The third is our first day of our inevitable victory over those same forces. Could we have a second D-Day over our current vicious enemy? If it is to be so, such is our answer to infamy.

Epic Battle By Computer

Spike TV's new show, The Deadliest Warrior, is one of my new favorite TV shows. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the show takes some of history's most famous combatants and puts them into a fight to the death scenario to determine just who is the most effective warrior, in an attempt to answer one of the most long standing locker room questions. So far we have seen Viking Berserkers, Spartan Warriors and Ninjas all fight it out. Other than some mindless fun, is there a point to this show? Almost unbelievably, the answer is yes.
First and foremost, the historical component is key. The show places each warrior in its historical context and talks about their backgrounds, ethos, and standards in fighting. Now while this information is very general, almost all of it is valid and educational. The period weaponry is the largest portion of history explained in the show. They use replicas (often made of the traditional materials) and test their effectiveness in battle. This side of history is often overlooked in traditional histories, and shows the effectiveness of older technologies on the battlefield. With the use of modern forensics and ballistics, the killing power of claymores, axes, and flintlock pistols are tested.
Secondly, this show demonstrates some philosophical points. The first is that technology kills. More often than not, the warrior with a higher form of technology wins. The underlying concept is that more advanced technology is better. While not normally a controversial position, it can be when one applies it to the modern world. The Green movement and the Pacifist left decry advanced technology, both on and off the battlefield. This point made by the show implies that to stay on top advanced technology is the most important piece of the puzzle, which is in direct opposition to these two movements. The next point is that technology is the only key to success. With their computer simulation, the Deadliest Warrior team tests only the weapons, not the men behind them. This tries to eliminate the human variable, and make the historical comparison easier. What this says is that technology is the highest measure of goodness in their world, namely the battlefield in this case. This is reinforced at the end of the show, with the combat loser decrying that the man, not the weapons make all the difference in battle.
Finally, this show demonstrates a new way of education. It combines these two elements with the so called mindless fun, and viewers get educated, often without their own knowledge. An interesting educational technique used to circumvent the widely believed short term attention span of the American public, the "mindless" fun holds your attention as the lecture continues. Perhaps these techniques could be used more widely in TV, giving more credence to those who call it an educational tool.
Most of all, the Deadliest Warrior is fun. It is fun to watch both sides talk crap about each other, and the macho bravado concerning their respective warriors. If you are watching with several people, often the crap talking enters the living room, engaging the viewers in the show, rooting for their respective warriors to win. The end battle is often drawn out, with all of the weapons used in the show demonstrated in the last battle. A final howl marks the victor, and shouts of enjoyment or disgust by the audience complete the end of the show. This show doesn't end the discussion though, but merely starts it as the audience continues to support their warriors, winner or loser. In this way, the epic battle starts the spark of debate, something that many modern television shows do not do.