tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13543291659279676292024-03-05T05:53:22.850-05:00A Boy From DundrumJohn James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-61538602347745456552013-05-20T13:20:00.001-04:002013-05-20T13:20:52.229-04:00American Pioneer Spirit<div dir="ltr"> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p class="">I Just love the American pioneer spirit </p><p class="">I have been following the national news a little closer than usual making sure I try to give as much time to Fox as I give to MSNBC.<span style> </span>It has not been a pleasurable experience I assure you.<span style> </span>As a hobby historian, I inevitably find myself comparing current trends to trends of the past in the hopes of seeing some silver in the clouds that are forming overhead.<span style> </span>In my humble opinion we are rolling quickly towards circumstances that may well endanger the very structure and longevity of this once great democracy.<span style> </span>If you believe in Communism or the Tea Party, now is the time to hit the "ESC" key and leave since you will probably not like what I have to say in the following paragraphs.<span style> </span><span style> </span></p> <p class="">There are groups forming throughout the U.S. purporting to be politically motivated and often laser focused on a single facet of what I believe to be socio/poitico/moral infrastructure of this country.<span style> </span>The problem lies in the way they attempt to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.<span style> </span>As an example, because one group has taken a very broad interpretation of our Constitution, I can no longer feel safe in my neighborhood tavern, a dark movie theater, and some cases, even church.<span style> </span>Why?<span style> </span>Because one of these outspoken groups has persuaded the government that there is a need to carry a dangerous firearm into facilities like those noted above.<span style> </span>This need exists even though there is a statistical probability that the dude packing heat is only going to be one of a tiny minority of the other guests.<span style> </span>I, one of the unarmed majority, have no way of knowing what mental state Bubba is in nor do I even have an inkling about his proficiency with the firearm he has so casually tucked into his shoulder holster.<span style> </span>I don't know if he is there to take out a long simmering grudge against someone in the facility.<span style> </span>I don't know whether he has the capability to accurately distinguish me from some perceived threat and cause me to become "collateral damage."<span style> </span>The irony is that the 2<sup>nd</sup> amendment has become sacrosanct that there is no way for a concerned citizenry to answer any of these concerns.<span style> </span>So people like me are forced by people like Bubba to continue, should I decide to stay, to place my own well being at stake, or I can opt to leave and deny me the pleasures I may have been enjoying until I spotted the Bubba's 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment right.<span style> </span></p><p class="">I live in a country that is constantly in a state of economic competition with its neighbors and trade partners throughout the world.<span style> </span>Yet, this nation will have to deal with a generation of young college graduates many of whom do not support even the most basic constructs if the scientific method.<span style> </span>These hyper-religious "flat earth" zealots will have to face competitors who actually know how petroleum is formed over the millennia.<span style> </span>How life and death can be modified at the genetic level and not through the ever evasive soul.<span style> </span>The rest of the world competing with us will not believe that the earth and all of inhabitants have only existed for less than 6,000 years.<span style> </span>We will sit across the tables from our competitors who will barely conceal their amusement at our naivete and will use our rigid standards to their own great advantage.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">To insure some semblance of fairness, the United Sates Government currently has the authority to levee and collect tariffs on trade items entering the U.S.<span style> </span>Of course the U.S. recognizes the right of sovereign nations to set their own tariffs for items we may wish to export to that country.<span style> </span>It is all very complicated but in the end very smart people on both sides work out enough details so that I can buy a BWW and the French shopper can buy levi jeans.<span style> </span>This system has worked reasonably well throughout our history except for a period around the mid-1800s when a smaller group of States decided to dictate terms to the larger majority of States.<span style> </span>The U.S. had levied tariffs on prized U.S. cotton.<span style> </span>A exploding industrialization of England had placed a great demand for our cotton.<span style> </span>Southern growers to sell the cotton without collecting the established tariffs noting they were in competition with Mid-East and Asian cotton.<span style> </span>Beneath this refusal to collect tariffs was a sub-plot to undermine the established government in Washington as a subtle way to demonstrate their own power and selectively rebel against the laws and decrees emanating from Washington.<span style> </span>This initiated a growth industry involved in stealing past U.S. naval blockades designed to stem the growing tide of cotton smuggling between the U.S. and Great Britain.<span style> </span>Ft. Sumpter was one of the small island fortresses set up to enforce the naval blockade efforts.<span style> </span>This Southern policy of ignoring Federal laws became known as "nullification" and as we all know, this Southern policy quickly spread to almost every category of legislation coming out of Washington.<span style> </span>A terrible war pitting brother against brother was just around the corner.<span style> </span>But heh – what has a history lesson from the 1850s have to do with what is going on today in the United States?<span style> <br></span></p><p class="">The concept of nullification has even more potential bad consequences especially if we choose to simply shrug our shoulders and hope the same sort of nonsense doesn't begin to impose its will on my State.<span style> </span>It is easy for someone in Virginia to chuckle at other States attempting to place into law their right to ignore the laws and mandates issued by the Federal Government.<span style> </span>As an individual citizen, I would have little voice in court if my only defense of a crime was that I did not agree with that particular law and therefore as a "Patriot", I chose to ignore the laws governing my violation.<span style> </span>Yet several of the separate States of this Union are currently submitting robust legislative bills expressly notifying the populace in that State that they are no longer required to obey key elements of Federal.<span style> </span>One State went the extra step into lunacy by writing legislation threatening to bring charges against anyone within their span of electoral interest who actually chooses to obey the law of the land pertaining to elements of firearm control.<span style> </span>One only has to look at the long list of legislative actions designed effectively prevent a woman from seeking an abortion even though the Federal Courts have reaffirmed that right on numerous occasions.<span style> </span>States have taken extraordinary care to prepare requirements designed to identify and process illegal undocumented aliens.<span style> </span>The entire process of maintaining a viable immigration system, including policing and oversight of these efforts plainly lies within the purview of the Federal Government and none of these controls and legal oversight have been delegated to any of the individual States.<span style> </span>So where is all of this headed?</p> <p class="">I can't claim to be a seer or predictor of the future.<span style> </span>However I can claim to be reasonably up to date with the news pertaining to this nation.<span style> </span>Based on my well informed grasp of the daily news and a more than passing interest in America's history, I can present some scenarios that might seem a little "out there" but in my opinion, very possible in our near term future.<span style> </span>Here goes…. </p><p class="">It's a warm Spring day in a one of the Great Plains States.<span style> </span>Their legislature has passed sweeping laws placing the Federal Government on notice that any current or future legislation pertaining to weapon possession will be ignored by all State citizens.<span style> </span>To make their point as a sovereign entity within the U.S., their Federal Senators and Representatives will begin to immediately bearing arms inside the Capitol Building while conducting their political duties.<span style> </span>This will bring these individuals into direct violation of Washington D.C. laws pertaining to carrying concealed weapons.<span style> </span>It will also be a direct violation of Federal Laws pertaining to the carrying of weapons on Federal property.<span style> </span>A secondary group of State legislators will attempt to gain entry onto all the Federal properties in their State including the seven U.S. military reservations located within their State.<span style> </span>A Third group of State legislators will attempt to board commercial aircraft enroute to New York City.<span style> </span>If they are permitted on-board the aircraft they will land in New York City and immediately visit the Office of the Mayor where the Mayor will be informed that as of this date, all residents of their State that they will be authorized to bear arms unrestricted in America including any State which may have more restrictive laws that, in the opinion of this great plains State, brings them into violation of the 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">A very large number of weapons are confiscated and in the case of the traveling groups made up of State Legislators, arrest were made and steep bonds were set.<span style> </span>The Federal Legislators had their weapons confiscated but in accordance to the provisions of the U.S. Constitution they were not arrested.<span style> </span>Since many of their staff members also chose to bear arms, these individuals were arrested and the offices located within Federally owned property was searched and all weapons and ammunition was confiscated.<span style> </span>There arose a great howl of indignation crying any number of violations of personal rights and privileges.<span style> </span>Soon other States joined into the cacophony of threats against the current administration and a call to repeat the actions of the Great Plains State was issued.<span style> </span>Several States willingly agreed and dates were set for the actions.<span style> </span>The U.S. Government restated with force the current laws on the carrying and/or concealing weapons on Federal property.<span style> </span>They noted that the Attorney General had issued orders that any similar violations of laws as demonstrated by the Plains State would be handled in a similar fashion with the exception that under the provisions of the "Patriot Act", bond will be automatically denied as a matter of national security.<span style> </span></p><p class="">In the crowds gathered around a group of State Legislators attempting to board a plane for New York City, Bubba sat quietly and steamed within.<span style> </span>He had been raised since childhood to believe that Government was essentially evil and any rules, regardless of how minor, pertaining to the ownership of weapons was nothing more than the first step towards confiscating all weapons in America.<span style> </span>Bubba simply could not let that happen.<span style> </span>He takes aim and quickly kills three ATF Agents wearing their clearly marked black windbreakers.<span style> </span>He then drops two local police officers assisting the ATF Agents.<span style> </span>Sprinting out the door he drops another ATF Agent before he reaches his car and speeds away.<span style> </span>Unfortunately Bubba was only one member of a small but dedicated group of men who distrusted the Government and were seeking a cause on which they could make their stand.<span style> </span>The whole legislator weapons fiasco was a perfect vehicle.<span style> </span>As Bubba-1 sped away, Bubba 3, 4, 5. 6, and 7, were stating similar political positions from the barrel of a gun.<span style> </span>By the end of the day, 12 Federal Agents lay dead next to 14 more local police officials.<span style> </span>About twenty people, mostly innocent bystanders were wounded along with another dozen wounded Federal and local police officials.<span style> </span>Three Bubbas were also killed and two were taken captive.<span style> </span>The living Bubbas told a story of future planned conflicts involving many itinerant groups, both large and small but all focused on damaging if not destroying the U.S. Government.<span style> </span></p><p class="">The Federal Government's subsequent actions were inevitable and totally predictable.<span style> </span>Using the Patriot Act and some quickly fashioned new "temporary" legislation, the U.S. Government moved against those groups named by the captive Bubbas as well as other groups already known to possess similar hate for the U.S. Government.<span style> </span>New pictures and descritions of flaming compounds with scattered bodies and row after row of both automatic and semi-automatic weapons were displayed virtually every night on the national news networks.<span style> </span>New efforts<span style> </span>to limit the purchase and ownership of many of these types of weapons started to gain momentum much to the chagrin of the hundreds and hundreds of Bubbas across the nation.<span style> </span>The violence did not abate but rather it grew monstrously.<span style> </span>New emergency decrees were issued by Washington involving the unwarranted search of homes and offices and seizure of all unauthorized weapons listed in the growing list of decrees from Washington.<span style> </span>The ever expanding list of daily Federal and local official casualties offered the Whitehouse with just enough leverage to force even more stringent laws through a muted and confused Congress.<span style> </span></p><p class="">When several States finally reached their political breaking point, the word secession started to be tossed around more freely.<span style> </span>In the end, three years later, six Southern and Gulf States along with two Plains States opted to notify the Federal Government of their intention to issue a decree of secession.<span style> </span>All of the States in question had considerable military and other Federal assets within their borders.<span style> </span>The Federal Government issued a decree that these facilities would remain in place and it was the intention of the Federal Government to significantly reinforce these facilities with both manpower and weaponry to protect these facilities.<span style> </span>On 12 July 20--, a US Coast Guard riverine craft on the Mississippi River was struck and sank by a rocket fired from a State River Protection vessel.<span style> </span>Later in the day, this same State river vessel open fire on an Army Corp of Engineers office/equipment storage area killing and wounding several dozen of the military and civilian workers.<span style> </span>The Federal Government was given notice by a delegation of all of the recalcitrant States that all uniformed military personnel were to leave their borders and all civil servants would be given the option of remaining at their desks or leaving with the military personnel.<span style> </span>In any case, all equipment, files, stockpiles and similar inventories would remain in place and not be permitted to be evacuated with the personnel.<span style> </span>All evacuations will be completed within ten days after which time any remaining Federal personnel would be arrested as illegal aliens.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">Do I have to go into detail with what happens next?<span style> </span>Oh, yeah, the Federal Government goes to war.<span style> </span>You can bet on that.<span style> </span>They will recover all jeopardized materials.<span style> </span>They do this in less than four months but not before slicing and dicing the U.S. Constitution to the point where another convention had to be held to produce a new Constitution to better suit the emergence of the new U.S. Government.<span style> </span>America will begin to look more like a European nation with no rights to firearms, severely limited States Rights and more centralized Government with a modified type of parliament for the selection of Presidents and limited terms of offices for all Federally elected officials.<span style> </span>States will cede virtually all power to the central government retaining only local police and first responder service.<span style> </span>Schools will teach a universal national curriculum which can only be modified at the national level.<span style> </span>Churches will be taxed and church representatives will be paid as State employees financed by the Federal Government.<span style> </span>States will have local representative bodies to manage routine State affairs and will elect Senators and Representatives to the national government for terms not to exceed three years per election and limited to three elections (nine years) for a lifetime.<span style> </span>There is no ability to shift from one "house" to the other.<span style> </span>You are either a Representative or a Senator.<span style> </span>No law can be passed by one State that is in direct contravention to the laws of all the States nor the Federal Government.<span style> </span></p><p class="">Way to go Bubba.<span style> </span>You did good son…. </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""><span style> </span></p> <p class=""> </p> <p class=""><span style> </span></p> <p class=""><span style> </span></p> </div> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-47239116698581324612013-05-03T16:50:00.001-04:002013-05-03T16:50:27.104-04:00Are you kidding me!?<div dir="ltr"> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Courier New"; panose-1:2 7 3 9 2 2 5 2 4 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Wingdings; panose-1:5 2 1 2 1 8 4 8 7 8; mso-font-charset:2; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 65536 0 -2147483648 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times 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margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-add-space:auto; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-add-space:auto; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-add-space:auto; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} /* List Definitions */ @list l0 {mso-list-id:361830937; mso-list-type:hybrid; mso-list-template-ids:798516272 -1016979374 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693 67698689 67698691 67698693;} @list l0:level1 {mso-level-start-at:0; mso-level-number-format:bullet; mso-level-text:-; mso-level-tab-stop:none; mso-level-number-position:left; margin-left:.75in; text-indent:-.25in; font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;} --> </style> <p class="">Are you kidding me?</p> <p class="">I have seen and done lot in my 69 years on this planet.<span style> </span>I have been shot in war, jumped out of over a dozen different aircraft onto at least that many different drop zones, trained to live "off the land" for prolonged periods of time, graduated with honors from graduate school, married well and helped to raise two great boys into full prosperous and meaningful lives, travelled throughout world spending time in almost two dozen countries five of which no longer even exist and met with literally thousands of people some of whom actually could be called acquaintances.<span style> </span>Not much really surprises me anymore but that does not mean I don't find myself becoming more and more frustrated and angered at the sheer idiocy of the actions of my fellow citizens.<span style> </span></p><p class="">I noted some of the highlights of my own life above to demonstrate that I have periodically been called upon to face fear and desperation but somehow managed to move forward.<span style> </span>Many of the problems in today's headlines are caused by deep seated fears that my fellow citizen is simply too meek and unsure to face in a responsible manner.<span style> </span>In a democracy, the rule of law is the foundation for that form of government to continue to exist.<span style> </span>If, on the other hand, you begin to fear the instruments of law within your society, then your society is doomed to destroy itself.<span style> </span>If the citizen believes they must arm themselves with obscene quantities of weapons and stockpiles of ammunition because they do not trust the ability of their designated law enforcement agencies to protect them then they have initiated that road to societal destruction.<span style> </span>I am rather amused by a non-trained weapons carrier touting the need for extended ammunition magazines.<span style> </span>I have spent considerable time in combat environments engaging actually trained and dedicated adversaries.<span style> </span>On those occasions, I used my US Government assigned weapon, a rifle with a simple twenty round magazine.<span style> </span>Though my rifle did have full automatic capability, this method of fire was rarely used.<span style> </span>We all preferred the careful use of single shot engagements to better enhance our chances of eliminating our threats and to preserve not only our ammunition but also the mechanical integrity of the weapon.<span style> </span>I received extensive training on the use of my weapon and was confident I was at least as well trained as my adversary.<span style></span> </p><p class="">Given these well documented facts from actual combat engagements, why do ill-trained and improperly motivated citizens in the US still believe they need more than one rifle to protect themselves from unspecified threats but in fact feel the need to acquire multiple weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition?<span style> </span>Any common sense evaluation of scenarios would note that a threat requiring more than a couple of dozen bullets from a single weapon would indicate a threat which could not be overcome by a single individual even in the most outrageous Hollywood movie.<span style> </span>Why then do our citizens feel the need for extended magazines and multiple weapons?<span style> </span>The simple reason is personal fear.<span style> </span>Even "Rambo" only had one side arm.<span style> </span>The frightened little mind that believes more weapons and more ammunition is the answer has forgotten to take into account the one most disturbing aspect of a "gunfight."<span style> </span>Simply stated – the other person is also armed and shooting back.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">This simple fact is what will cause our frightened little mind to ultimately lose in these types of engagements.<span style> </span>By purchasing multiple arms and crate loads of ammunition, they have already demonstrated a total lack of understanding about self-protection and one-on-one winner take all engagements.<span style> </span>Their fear has already doomed them but the most disturbing fact is that their perceptions and lack of trust with law enforcement have spread their fear to the rest of their immediate society. <span style> </span>I would draw their attention to the activities of the local police forces in Massachusettes following the tragedy of the Marathon bombings.<span style> </span>In a matter of hours an entire town was effectively surrounded and placed under a modified police authority.<span style> </span>Now imagine if the several hundred dedicated and well trained police officers were multiplied to reach the numbers that could be fielded by only one of America's infantry divisions – upwards of 20,000 young, strong, well trained and fully equipped men and women with virtually unlimited fire power at their disposal.<span style> </span>These soldiers will not have to seek "hideouts" or "cache" their weapons but will walk our streets in large well protected numbers with any number of "lists" on who lives where obtained from credit and bank accounts, utility bills, hospital records and previous military service records just to name a few.<span style> </span>They will know whom they are confronting.<span style> </span>Trust me!!<span style> </span>Bubba the Patriot, on the other hand, will have scant information on the mission of this Division, how many troops are available, how they are monitoring his activities and what steps this unit will take to accomplish their mission.<span style> </span>If you think the police officers in Massachusetts were upset because on of their own was killed, consider the steps that a field commander will take if his front line troops are "engaged" by Bubba Patriot and his band of <br> freedom fighters.<span style> </span>It will not be pretty.<span style> </span>Now let's see how many of Bubba's Freedom Fighters want to continue the struggle by heading for the woods and mountains.<span style> </span>Again, I assure you that common field equipment in support of our troops will be able to quite easily find and destroy even the most cleverly concealed lads and lasses who might choose to run for some idea of cover in the woods.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">OK, that's probably enough discussion about these little minded people who believe they are in some way acting out some twisted and convoluted version of patriotism.<span style> </span>If they harbor a sense that they will ultimately be called upon to face off with the entire power and might of a nuclear equipped government, then they have already acknowledged they no longer believe in the concepts of democracy stemming from the ability to elect our governments in free and unfettered elections. <span style> </span>That is the worst type of fear since it is driven also by deep cowardice and ignorance.<span style> </span>They don' want "terrorists" to be tried in our courts because they do not trust our court system.<span style> </span>These same misguided cowards are the ones who yell the loudest about their rights to attorneys, protection of the court and their rights to remain silent when accused of an infraction of the law.<span style> </span>The are quick to point to the 2<sup>nd<span style> </span></sup><span style> </span>Amendment right to bear arms but somehow find it inconvenient to call to mind the base Constitution and the rest of its amendments.<span style> </span>Perhaps if these pseudo-legal experts actually read the document in detail along with the supporting documents and discussions our founding fathers used to formulate this powerful, yet flexible document.<span style> </span>They would quickly learn that The Constitution has been changed and modified dozens of times since its initial printing.<span style> </span>Some amendments were added and later over written by new amendments proving that nothing in our base document is invulnerable to change based on the concepts that change within our society.<span style> </span>We do not authorize slavery, we do authorize the consumption of alcohol, and women can and do vote.<span style> </span>If these monumental changes were made the law of the land in the United States, then it is quite conceivable that as we mature and grow into adulthood as a nation, we will see the need to eliminate personal arsenals by a new amendment as have most of the other civilized nations of the world.<span style> </span></p> <p class="">Where is the reality of today?<span style> </span>It's very disturbing especially to some of us who actually get our daily doses of world news from several sources including, but most certainly not limited to Fox News.<span style> </span>What are the under currents that are ongoing and are actual threats to democracy as we know it in America?<span style> </span></p> <p class="" style="margin-left:0.75in"><span style><span style>-<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>One Southern State attempted to name a single religion as their State religion.<span style> </span><span style> </span>(A clear violation of the 1<sup>st</sup> Amendment). </p><p class="" style="margin-left:0.75in"><span style><span style>-<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>Another Southern State wants to enact a policy of "nullification" whereby it can pick and chose what Federal laws it decides it wishes to obey and which it wishes to ignore or "nullify".<span style> </span>(A clear violation of Article VI of the Constitution.)</p> <p class="" style="margin-left:0.75in"><span style><span style>-<span style="font:7pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>A certain Representative from Texas has indicated he intends to seek the Presidency even though he was born in Canada of an American mother and foreign father.<span style> </span>(A clear violation of Article II of the Constitution).</p> <p class="">Now the latest rumblings indicate that a growing number of so-called Americans believe the United States is headed for another armed civil rebellion.<span style> </span>I would imagine that the cowardice that makes these statements would show their true run and cower nature when the first rounds are fired.<span style> </span>In the meantime, I would ask such "patriots" to consider just what this country would look like following such open hostilities.<span style> </span>Any semblance of personal rights and privileges would be suspended probably - indefinitely.<span style> </span>The Constitution would become an historic relic of no relevance to the surviving form of government.<span style> </span>All elections would be suspended – also indefinitely.<span style> </span>The individual police forces would become "well regulated militias" in support of a powerful and domineering military force.<span style> </span>Bubba, should he actually survive trial and execution for treason, would never again have to be concerned about his right to bear arms.<span style> </span>He, and ALL of his fellow citizens will be forbidden from ownership of private weapons and ammunition.<span style> </span>So go ahead Bubba and threaten the US with armed rebellion.<span style> </span>Your personal dossier will grow and grow as time goes by.<span style> </span></p> <p class=""> </p> <p class="" style="margin-left:0.75in"> </p> <p class=""> </p> <p class="" style="margin-left:0.75in"> </p> </div> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-6694121869692669622012-04-23T12:20:00.001-04:002012-04-23T12:20:18.229-04:00Disgusted <p class="MsoNormal">DISGUSTED</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am rather at odds with my adopted country's terrible fascination with death disguised as "protection."<span> </span>There are currently enough personal side arms in the United States to probably arm the entire adult population with one firearm each.<span> </span>I have listened and spoken at length with some of the most rabid pro-gun advocates in the past couple of months and several facts became evident to me (or at least facts from the folks with whom I spoke).<span> </span>I spoke with perhaps fifty people ranging in age from 18 to 68.</p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt"><span><span>-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>The people I spoke with were about 50% ex-military folks but most of them had performed duties that did not keep them on "front lines."<span> </span>In the military we say that these people were assigned to non-combat arms assignments.<span> </span>Think – mechanics, cooks, clerks, medics, supply folks and key people like that.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt"><span><span>-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>Probably less than 15% had actually participated in combat operations i.e "actually saw shots fired in as anger."</p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt"><span><span>-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>A few had been wounded in combat.</p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt"><span><span>-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>None of them had ever been assaulted or threatened in a one on one situation by another person.<span> </span>No one had ever been mugged, had a weapon pulled on them or felt that their lives were being threatened personally by one or more individuals.</p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt"><span><span>-<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span>Only the former military members had ever killed another human being</p> <p style="margin-left:29.0pt">All of them, to differing degrees, believed strongly that they saw the need to own personal firearms to"protect" themselves and/or their families. </p> <p style="margin-left:0in"> </p> <p style="margin-left:0in">Are you seeing the irony here?<span> </span>These "gun nuts" believe they need the personal protection of a firearm even though none of the folks I spoke with had ever been threatened.<span> </span>They all believed strongly that they would have no compunctions about killing another human being who displayed intentions to do them bodily arms or to steal personal property from them.<span> </span>Each and everyone of them would "stand their ground" and everyone of them believed killing another human being in these situations is not only necessary but in fact, is an expression of personal patriotism.<span> </span>So if someone is seen fumbling around their garage while attempting to steal their five year old Toro lawnmower, they have the right, nay, the "obligation" to kill them.<span> </span>This is what this country has devolved to – a country where a human life is not worth more than a $20 used lawnmower.<span> </span>To insure that they remain protected at all times, they want to be able to carry their weapons everywhere their day takes them including schools, County rec centers, shopping malls, airports and even churches.<span> </span>They also want literally unrestricted abilities to purchase as many weapons as they wish including assault rifles, Teflon (body armor piercing) ammunition, pistols with modified 30 round magazines.<span> </span>Have we, as a nation, become so<span> </span>"wussified" that we think there arte bad people who only purpose in life is to hunt us down and kill us.<span> </span><span> </span>Shame on us as a nation for allowing this to happen.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin-left:0in"> </p> <p style="margin-left:0in">I am combat veteran who wore a "Green Beret" for many years.<span> </span>I have been shot in battle, lived through numerous assaults on the sites where I was positioned and I met my adversary on numerous occasions on the field of battle and came out the victor.<span> </span>Killing never came routine or easy for me.<span> </span>I was trained well and survived the terror and emotions associated with battle.<span> </span>Today I view my former enemies with respect and admiration.<span> </span>I do not share the same respect and admiration for my "neighbors" who seem not only very willing but in fact, very anxious to take a life.<span> </span>For all of you who read this – please note that I am "officially" qualified on over sixty firearms.<span> </span>I have probably fired over a quarter million rounds of ammunition in training and combat.<span> </span>Are you ready for this – I do not own any firearms and will not permit people into my home who carry personal weapons, concealed or open display.<span> </span>The walls of my home arte like most peoples – drywall and wood frame.<span> </span>A bullet would pass through most of my walls before losing its lethality.<span> </span>There will be no "firefight in my home." <span> </span>The most valuable item in my home is my wife.<span> </span>I will gladly assist any thieves who enter my home with the intention of stealing my personal goods.<span> </span><span> </span>But this is just me talking now and I know that more and more of my neighbors can hear thumps in the night and know that they are being sought out by unknown assailants even as we speak. <span> </span>At any rate, please "neighbor" don't count on me to be of any help when "they" finally come to take away your guns.<span> </span>You are on your own when the world collapses and marauders begin to surround your bunker.<span> </span></p> <p style="margin-left:0in"> </p> <p style="margin-left:0in"> </p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-45536267769873738272011-07-20T18:00:00.001-04:002011-07-20T18:00:15.649-04:00Lack of Communication <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p class="MsoNormal">A Lack of Communication</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sorry for having been so quiet for so long but I knew if I got started I would soon become totally irrational given the babble that has been spewing from those who we trust to keep the train on the tracks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>After listening for as long as I could, I decided to put some thoughts to paper and see if I can, in my tiny little way, put some sense to the fiscal issues now facing us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What I would like to do is to address some of these issues from a language point of view rather than a simple ideological standpoint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I get tired of this methodology I will stop and you can all chuckle that I did it again and now I guess "he" (me, will go back into hibernation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">One of the loudest and most imitated phrases is perhaps the most ironic since it originates from the political right whose voice is always there to protect the business persons and entrepreneurs in or society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>See if you recognize it…it goes something like this…"We cannot tax the wealthy because they are the ones who create jobs"… and presumably stop creating jobs if they were taxed the same as everyone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If discussions with my son, a holder of a Master's Degree in Business Administration, the almighty "MBA."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was agreed that rich folks may or may not actually own a business that employs workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If they do own a business, ask them why they actually own their firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I assure you not one of them will say they entered the world of business so they could make jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They entered business so that could "Make Money."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Employees are just one of the tools they use to "make money."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In fact, emerging data has shown that businesses are sitting on $3 Trillion dollars and are many of these businesses are actively pursuing the opportunity that these large bank allow in enabling them to review their work procedures to determine where they can automate or combine functions and thus make even "more money" at the expense of their current work force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So with all the money they are accumulating from extraordinary tax breaks given by our Right Wing polls, they are discovering even more ways to lay off mote workers and not REPEAT not actively pursuing increasing job opportunities for living, breathing worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Here comes another one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"If you raise taxes, you will create even more unemployment."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We listen to this one about twenty times a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'll make this one short since it speaks for itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Under the leadership President Clinton, 31 million new jobs were created even though President Clinton, against the wishes of his Republican Congress, raised taxes three times and still managed to leave office with a huge cash surplus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1"> </span>George Bush Jr., in the period time, eight years, created only three million new jobs while decreasing taxes on almost everyone but especially the wealthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That's 28 million fewer jobs for my mathematically challenged friends, and he did this with a virtual blank checkbook afforded him by his right wing majority congressional support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This once again brings into question the whole idea of giving huge tax breaks to the wealthy to allegedly spur job growth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">"What these country needs is a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Americans do not live by the concept of a balanced budget but folks in the Tea Party goof balls will try to convince you that we do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If you are making payments on a house, car, school loan or credit card account, you NOT living within the precepts of a balanced budget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Actually latest statistics show that over 50% of all Americans are three pay checks away from being homeless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In other words, if they stopped receiving their weekly, bi-weekly or monthly paychecks for the next three pay periods, they would face fiscal destruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So much for living on a balanced budget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now let's look at the Federal Government attempting live with the fact that 3/4<sup>th</sup> of the entire United States agrees with the idea of a balanced budget in the US.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Things might seem serene and uncomplicated for a week or two but the first shot fired across our bow by and enemy force will destroy all of those nice warm and fuzzies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Under a balanced budget, where does the Government come up with a sudden expense of about a billion dollars a day to execute our sudden armed conflict?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How about a Katrina sized hurricane, BP oil leak, awarm of mid-West tornados and similar "acts of God."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Where does the money come from to handle these I internal emergencies?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How about another round of Wall Street greed and monetary mis-management.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Whose going to pay the bill for another round of that type of mess?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">OK…put your English grammar books away and take out your Grimm's Fairy Tales and rejoin the world monstrous headlines just oozing mis-information downright lies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sleep well tonight knowing that people like Michelle Bachman really do believe they can actually lead this country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>She has obviously been reading too many fairy tales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I'm done now…</p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-81784798982253356232011-04-21T22:28:00.001-04:002011-04-21T22:28:09.262-04:00The Class Clowns<br> <div class="gmail_quote"><p class="MsoNormal">The Class Clowns</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I recall them one and all and sadly have to admit, that on some occasions, I could not resist becoming one of them.<span> </span>The class clown.<span> </span>Some topics were simply so boring or so poorly presented that interest just slipped away only to be replaced by silly, inane and corny comments from the "peanut gallery."<span> </span>The teacher would get angry and in some of my other classes, so would I.<span> </span>Not that I was ever a hard core learning nerd but some classes were simply more interesting than others and some I actually looked forward to attending.<span> </span>Cheap laughs but in the end, no one was the better for the actions of these silly little boys and girls.<span> </span>Keep those memories in mind as I continue with this latest of my pet peeves.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">There are some places or situations where no matter who you are with or how much you are bored, you simply should not revert back to an old class clown act.<span> </span>Nobody cracks wise-ass jokes in places of religious expression.<span> </span>Nobody appreciates a clown at a symphony or opera.<span> </span>Jokesters arte not really appreciated at funerals except in some circumstances where such outburst would be expected and encouraged by the deceased.<span> </span>Keep this in mind when you attend my own final time on stage.<span> </span>Go ahead, have a ball when they stash my remains. I would expect and encourage it.<span> </span>The rather solemn events listed above are only several of the circumstances where outburst of silly humor and wise-ass remarks are out of place and reflect very poorly on the perpetrator.<span> </span>One other solemn occasion is the active and well prepared participation in our political system.<span> </span>Our system of government, with all of its warts and blemishes, came to us covered with blood and sacrifice.<span> </span>Ever since the first forays onto our shores in the 14<sup>th</sup> century, men and women have risked everything to include their lives to build upon the ideas of democracy so beautifully encapsulated by a tossed together speech at a bloodsoaked battlefield given by the 16<sup>th</sup> ruler of this new nation.<span> </span>Mr. Lincoln perfectly defined democracy when he noted that ours was a "government of the people, by the people and for the people.<span> </span>The founding fathers could not have stated it better.<span> </span>Therefore treating this wonderful institution we call Government with a flippant, destructive, abusive, libelous or with disdain not only exposes the perpetrators own personal ignorance<span> </span>but insults five centuries of sacrifice by those who have continually handed off the baton to the next generation.<span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When people gather to say they are organizing to take back our government, I would ask them when did they lose it?<span> </span>Since they have already demonstrated a lack of teamwork by not accepting with pride the baton of our previous generations, I would ask them what gives them the right to believe they can demand that the government be torn down and replaced with something they have replaced with some joke from the back of the classroom?<span> </span>Those of us who have actually sacrificed greatly on our nations battlefields find this government of ours to be quite acceptable even though its leaders may often be a bit unusual.<span> </span>I personally take with a great deal of insult the presumptions of cult like party members who want to destroy something for which I was prepared to die.<span> </span>Not only arte they attacking our government but they are attacking me on a personal level by intimating that I was wrong to stand my ground in far off jungles, suffer the intrusion of enemy bullets in my body, and carry with me the various diseases and maladies that my Western body was unable to counter in those far off SW Asian jungles.<span> </span>I don't think I was wrong in my willingness to do my duty in the name of my country.<span> </span>58,000 of my closest comrades were not wrong either.<span> </span>Our cause may have been questionable but our devotion to this country was unwavering.<span> </span>So please, Donald. Sarah, Hailey, Mitt, Michelle, or whoever winds up as your party's selectee, before you start showing disdain for our government, first do your homework then realize that your "class clown" antics are NOT appreciated by everyone even though you probably feel all the spotlights are on you at the time.<span> </span>Some people really do believe that we should be a government of, by and for the people.<span> </span>Some of us who have sacrificed in the past are still willing to sacrifice more and really do find it disconcerting to see some who are not being asked to sacrificing anything to see this nation grow strong.<span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sigh…</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> </div><br> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-85767589068679232532011-03-10T20:49:00.001-05:002011-03-10T20:49:51.893-05:00SOME THINGS THAT TORGUE MY CONVERTER <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>SOME THINGS THAT TORQUE MY CONVERTER</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I don't presume to think that anything I say in my blog will change anything or cause anyone to have a "gee whiz" moment.<span style=""> </span>I only know that when I write some of the things I out into my blog, at least I feel better and I guess that will have to be enough.<span style=""> </span>So without further delay here are some of the ducks nibbling at my ankles lately.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">UNION BUSTING:<span style=""> </span>I am not a big union guy.<span style=""> </span>I spent 20 years in the Army and another 20 in US Civil Service so I never had much contact with union type things.<span style=""> </span>I am, on the other hand, pretty cognizant of the rather fantastic historic saga that finally enabled American workers to speak with one voice on matters that actually wound up benefitting us all.<span style=""> </span>Does anyone think that a 40 hour work week would have been the invention of management?<span style=""> </span>How about minimum wage legislation? Child labor laws?<span style=""> </span>Workplace safety?<span style=""> </span>Health care?<span style=""> </span>Pensions?<span style=""> </span>Vacations?<span style=""> </span>Do anyone really believe management was always in favor of any or all of these benefits?<span style=""> </span>Probably not.<span style=""> </span>I also know that votes taken in the dark of night without due representation are an anethema to democracy and undermine and weaken our core structures.<span style=""> </span>The type of votes being foisted upon voters on issues concerning unions are typical of votes taken by banana republic tin nickel dictators.<span style=""> </span>If the people are gathering at your doorstep to protest your actions, then as a leader, you need to reappraise the route you are taking.<span style=""> </span>The South seceded from the Union based on exactly this type of backroom voting and not based upon the universal wishes of the people.<span style=""> </span>How would we react if the next "vote" targeted anyone who did not make a certain amount of money or own real estate?<span style=""> </span>How about a "vote" concerning anyone who belongs to any group opposing pro-life issue or who seek sane gun control procedures?<span style=""> </span>Would we lose our right of access to college scholarships, pension benefits, or Federal health care.<span style=""> </span>That's how Mr. Hitler targeted any opposition groups.<span style=""> </span>"Vote" to cut off their benefits.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">TEN COMMANDMENTS IN SCHOOLS:<span style=""> </span>A few schools in my neck of the world have begun to "encourage" efforts to post the Christian Ten Commandments in schools.<span style=""> </span>So far wiser heads have prevailed especially when they learn just how much the lawsuit will cost them.<span style=""> </span>Now the kids are posting them on their lockers claiming it is their right to do so since the locker and the school belong to them and staging demonstrations during classroom hours.<span style=""> </span>First and foremost they are most certainly wrong on a number of fronts.<span style=""> </span>First and foremost, the Christian scripture enjoins its followers to pray alone and quietly so that their worship is not an excuse to flaunt their flaunt piousness.<span style=""> </span>Nothing quiet and silent about walking around the school grounds carrying posters when they should be taking advantage of the taxes I paid to give them a good education.<span style=""> </span>I want my money back.<span style=""> </span>Next, they want what they refer to as the Ten Commandments posted in schools in violation of Federal Law.<span style=""> </span>Actually the so called Ten Commandments as we know them never existed.<span style=""> </span>There were actually over 600 "Commandments" given to Moses by the Diety ranging is matters of health, slavery, marriage, forbidden foods, taboo customs, and just lots and lots of things many of which are still followed by very Orthodox Jews.<span style=""> </span>The whiley and sneaky Christians whittle those hundreds down to ten easy to follow rules only three or four of which are actually against civil law the remainder being faith based only.<span style=""> </span>If you're going to post the Commandments of the Pentateuch at least have the courtesy to post them all.<span style=""> </span>There is the issue of who actually owns the school and its properties and who actually has "rights."<span style=""> </span>The courts have fallen clearly on the side of the school and its property belonging to the taxpaying citizenery.<span style=""> </span>Not many high school teeny boppers qualify as citizens having not yet reached 18 and therefore they don't really exist in the eyes of the law.<span style=""> </span>Their lockers are not their private property as evidenced by any drug shakedown that might go on in the hallways where they will find their lockers opened and searched.<span style=""> </span>Finally, how about simple courtesy for your fellow students and school cadre who may not believe as you do and do not wish to have your beliefs shoved into their face.<span style=""> </span>I don't like NASCAR but I don't post signs in my yard telling everyone.<span style=""> </span>I don't like the British Government much either but again no signs in my yard and no bumper stickers.<span style=""> </span>Maybe our kids should concern themselves more with clean air and water but again do it on your own time and not on my taxpayer time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">TAX DISPARITIES:<span style=""> </span>I won't harp much on this one since the data is actually there for anyone to see unless being a sheep has blinded you to what is going on anywhere else except the sheep butt in front of you.<span style=""> </span>If not taxing the wealthy is a sure road to economic prosperity how come the six separate tax breaks the wealthy received under Bush II resulted in a collapse of the US economy and 10+ unemployment rates?<span style=""> </span>Why is that people making $70K and below pay well over 80% of the taxes while over 90% of the actual wealth of this nation is held by less than 3% of the population who rarely pay any taxes at all?<span style=""> </span>Why is that Congress wants to cut out NPR, Federal funded scholarships, health care, EPA issues, programs for the less fortunate etc. while awarding $700B in tax cuts to the wealthy?<span style=""> </span>Shame on us!!!</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">ABORTION RIGHTS:<span style=""> </span>First and foremost it is the law of the land.<span style=""> </span>That should be the end of it.<span style=""> </span>However, if the Conservatives wing of the American populace want to ignore the real issues that we face in this country to sermonize their beliefs (see a couple of paragraphs above), then at least have a woman do the sermonizing.<span style=""> </span>Abortion is not a male issue anymore than prostate disease is a female issue.<span style=""> </span>Yet, I ask you when was the last time you saw a woman deeply involved in the whole abortion issue.<span style=""> </span>When Mitch McConnell or John Boehner begin having menstrual cramps then they will have earned the right to discuss female procreation issues.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">MUSLIM HEARINGS IN CONGRESS:<span style=""> </span>What the heck does Rep. King think he is doing?<span style=""> </span>I had almost forgotten how to spell Joseph McCarthy and up pops this old IRA supporting clown from New York. I know that is there are any Muslims in America who have become disaffected, King's (et. al) hearing should suffice to tip them over the line to a full blown threat.<span style=""> </span>I have Muslim friends, but then I have conservative friend as well, so I am pretty open to differing thoughts and logic trails.<span style=""> </span>I can assure you that what King is doing has no respectable goal and will only foment hatred and mistrust and make us worse for the exercise.<span style=""> </span>Like I said, I had almost forgotten how to spell old Joe McCarthy's name.<span style=""> </span></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-60896651735649982672011-02-15T16:20:00.001-05:002011-02-15T16:20:06.150-05:00Doncha jus luv em" <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Doncha just luv em"</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">If my conservative friends and fellow citizens were not so silly and pathetic, I could almost get upset at their rantings and ravings.<span style=""> </span>Unfortunately I find myself in the crazy position of actually being able to read and to use my own mind without the need to jump into a line of other sheep who will gladly do my thinking for me.<span style=""> </span>I just find it more to my liking to be able to first hear a story, then do a little research and then, and only then, actually use my own mind to make my own decision on whether to accept the initial story.<span style=""> </span>And….I do this without even one person forcing tea down my throat.<span style=""> </span>Here are just a few of the items I have had a chance to mull over in the last few weeks.<span style=""> </span>Please dear friends note that I am not proselytizing in the big conservative tent.<span style=""> </span>I am only voicing my own opinion without the need for sheep to follow, tea merchants, or any preconceived notions about my own superb intellect or the failing and faltering mental capabilities my dear and cherished conservative buddies.<span style=""> </span>OK, here goes:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The tragedy of 9/11 resulted in an immediate death toll of almost 3,000 of this nations citizens and non-citizens who were doing nothing more earning a living as best they could.<span style=""> </span>Now over a decade later, there is another statistics that is surprising.<span style=""> </span>In the US during this time period over 250,000 of those same citizens died as a result of the free exercise of our 2<sup>nd</sup> amendment rights to own handguns.<span style=""> </span>As a result of 9/11 Americans have been frightened into surrendering many of their personal rights and sense of privacy.<span style=""> </span>We now accept that our phone lines, computers, medical records, library records, personal mail and bank accounts are a matter of free discussion now among our Government employees, all for the loss of 3,000 of our cherished men and women.<span style=""> </span>However after a quarter million bloody deaths our answer has been to even further ease any remaining restrictions on the purchase and carrying of handguns.<span style=""> </span>In Virginia they want to allow concealed weapons in churches. <span style=""> </span>I am not sure what "protection" a citizen needs in church but if it that tough maybe they should consider another church or bible studies at home.<span style=""> </span>But, hey, as an old War Vet whose does not see the need for any weapons in my home, what the heck do I know.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My conservative buddies see the issue of abortion to be so overwhelmingly important that in the face of financial collapse, they chose to argue the issue of direct and indirect funding for abortions to debate.<span style=""> </span>This debate goes on even as we was continue to have one a health system that now is rated right along with other third world nations (#23 in the world), failing educational preparedness for our next generation, endemic hunger for our most vulnerable citizens, the poor and the aged, collapsing infrastructure for our transportation systems, 30 million unemployed, and the list goes on…but interfering with a women's right to make her own decisions simply flies in the face of a political policy that demands lockstep allegiance for all of its policy's.<span style=""> </span>With whatever few dollars that fall out of the wallets of the very wealthy tax break recipients, I hope someone can amass enough money to at least begin to clean up our alleys.<span style=""> </span>Women will be using them a lot more in the future I fear and I would hope that they can be cleaned up a bit first.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I saw the President's budget hit the street yesterday and literally within a matter of minutes, it was being universally attacked by my conservative buddies.<span style=""> </span>This is a document that is literally measured in pounds and not pages, yet my buddies were apparently able to speed read that multi-thousand pages of unbelievably complex mathmatics and bookkeeping jingo and to form opinions on the worth of this document all in a matter if minutes.<span style=""> </span>Yet, this is the same group if electorates that noted they were not given sufficient time to read the 2,000 pages of the health care bill with which to make a knowledgeable decision.<span style=""> </span>They only had a little over nine months and that did not seem sufficient but a document three times that size and far more complex required only minutes to completely study and research enough to make broad statements concerning the documents worth.<span style=""> </span>Ya just got to luv that kind of stupity… Oh well I am sure they have a better solution.<span style=""> </span>I mean they have had over a year to produce a solution considering that this is a document that was suppose to be submitted in September 2010 and contains the budget for fiscal year 2010-2011.<span style=""> </span>This would have been before the November 2010 elections so my liberal buddies have to share the blame but only until November.<span style=""> </span>Since then it has been all a Conservative dog and pony show and I am sure they have their own budget document ready to go…What's that – They Don't.<span style=""> </span>I mean they have had over a year.<span style=""> </span>Well when will they be ready to submit a budget for the year that is almost half gone now?<span style=""> </span>According to the good old boy in the GOP – look for it around April.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>That's pretty good since three months after that, the budget for 2012 will be due.<span style=""> </span>Good luck Tea Party girls and boys.<span style=""> </span>But heck since most of you newbies are sleeping on cots in your office you should have plenty of time on your hands.<span style=""> </span>Now there is dignity for you – a cot in a Federal building…Tough living on $176,400 a year plus benefits.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">But like I said…these are only my opinions and unlike my conservative friends, they reflect my thoughts and my thoughts only…no poking from the sidelines or cue cards in the back row.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-83630322027185323192011-02-09T12:01:00.001-05:002011-02-09T12:01:16.051-05:00All "new" ideas <style>@font-face { font-family: "Times"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">NEW BLOG STUFF</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">Sigh…it seems that the politicos in this nation have not had a new idea<br> since the founding of this country. Here a few "ideas" that have hit the<br> media circuit recently and unfortunately as a hobby historian I am usually<br> struck rather dumb at the ignorance that seems to accompany this comment.<br> <br> Texas, yippee kai yeh…has tossed around the term "secession from the Union"<br> as though they made up the concept themselves. In fact, secession is not<br> specifically forbidden by our Constitution and in fact, the 18th Century<br> Confederacy was in fact, within their rights to peacefully withdraw from the<br> United States. However, the way it was done was anything but peaceful –<br> just ask the beleaguered soldiers at Ft. Sumpter. Also lest anyone believe<br> this was a popular decision fully approved by the people of the new<br> Confederacy I refer you the tons of documents published on both sides that<br> positively prove otherwise. In fact, it was small groups of wealthy landowners and<br> slave owners met in rooms in hotel lobbies and South Carolina State Houses who<br> spoke FOR the citizens without any type of vote or popular acclamation and<br> decreed their intent to withdraw from the Union. Other States followed suit<br> but not even one of them made any attempt to exercise any form of common<br> suffrage. The Union did over reach its authority but at least in the<br> beginning initial actions directed at the Confederacy were to avenge<br> military actions taken on the part of the Confederacy and an attempt by the<br> Union to reclaim and secure national properties lying within this new group<br> of States. Now Texas wants to pull that rip cord again but it is obvious<br> they have not given due consideration as to the consequences. Just give a<br> quick thought to the three or four dozen US owned military facilities that<br> lie within Texan borders. Now toss in the hundreds, if not thousands of<br> Federally owned properties, office buildings, Parks, etc. the "Union" would<br> have the right to reclaim and secure.<span style=""> </span>Pretty soon Texas would only have Gilley's </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">and the old set for Dallas to call their own.<span style=""> </span>I personally would not miss Texans</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">nor their rather obnoxious citizens.<span style=""> </span>On the other hand dealing with a million Lone </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">Star guzzling idiots with huge belt buckles and silly hats is not something I would </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">find to be enjoyable even if it probably would not take more than a long weekend</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">to complete.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">In my own "hme State" of Virginia (at least for tax purposes), they are hell bent </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">On reliving another wonderful aspect of the pre-Civil War days – the idea of </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">"nullification." In the mid-1980s, the forming confederate states, though still part </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">of the Un ion, decided that they did not have to accept laws originating from the </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">central government in Washington.<span style=""> </span>Originally these efforts were directed at</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">tariffs being levied on Southern cotton exports but eventually spread to the whole</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">concept of slavery and all things they chose to lay under the single mantel of</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">"States Rights."<span style=""> </span>Virginia wants to enact its own version of nullification that would</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">give the State broad based authority to disregard any and all laws originating outside </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">of Virginia which they chose to ignore.<span style=""> </span>Right now the law is targeted at the </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">administrations health care law but would also apply to other areas already mentioned </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">such as<span style=""> </span>prayer in school and other public facilities, equal rights provisions, </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">abortion rights and virtually all aspects of<span style=""> </span>EPA imposed regulations.<span style=""> </span>Here is </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">another State that needs to do a little historic research before it lets its mouth overload</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">its arse.<span style=""> </span>You don't play by our rules, we (the US Government) would simply take our </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">ball ($$$) and go home.<span style=""> </span>Most mega-mouths like the Virginia Attorney General<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">Mr. Cuccinelli) have no idea just how much financial support the separate States receive</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">And just how much of that money is based on compliance for continued support.<span style=""> </span>Make </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">no effort to enforce traffic laws and watch how quick the States lose millions in fuel</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">tax money.<span style=""> </span>Refuse to fulfill national norms in education and you might as well close</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">all of your schools since the Fed provides literally billions to school systems that </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">would have to be made up with increased real estate taxes.<span style=""> </span>Decide to ignore EPA</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">guidelines and rules and the State would soon become unlivable in terms of water</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">purity, air waste management.<span style=""> </span>Good Luck with this Virginia but don't look now –</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">there are evil liberals hiding in your State who are prepared to remain loyal to the</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">United States and would make your life rather miserable in the process.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">Yes, lets all look back to the really great things that the Confederacy gave to the</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">World and United States in particular.<span style=""> </span>Let's try emulate their wonderful ideas so</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Times;">That we can again relive that great time in our history.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Yeh- right!!!! </span></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-88605399715380545342011-01-13T14:36:00.001-05:002011-01-13T14:36:44.112-05:00Apologies to Ms. Giffords <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">It's a New Year and with it comes new hopes and unfortunately new fears of what an unstable future might hold for all of us.<span style=""> </span>A troubled and young man facing his own demons approached a demonstration of our version of democracy and callously and with great malice aforethought, took the lives of six innocent bystanders and wounded almost two dozen more.<span style=""> </span>They were there to meet with their elected spoke person who represents them in the Halls of Congress.<span style=""> </span>His actions pointed out some of the problems this Nation faces as we move forward.<span style=""> </span>Can we permit our elected officials to appear in forums that allow open and unregulated participation by the people?<span style=""> </span>Can we continue to permit the unfettered distribution of firearms with legalized modifications that permit these firearms to become weapons of mass destruction?<span style=""> </span>Can we continue to permit all citizens of this Nation to use their rights under the first amendment (freedom of speech) to incite and urge violence upon other citizens?<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As a declared liberal let me voice my view on the matter, fully understanding that my conservative colleagues have opposing views with equal merit.<span style=""> </span>OK, let's go.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Can we permit open forum meetings with our elected officials?<span style=""> </span>Actually that goes straight of what caused our forefathers to rise up against their ancestral rulers.<span style=""> </span>Less we forget.<span style=""> </span>Our Revolutionary War was based not on the high ideals of democracy but rather as an opposition to economic oppression – "Taxation Without Representation,"<span style=""> </span>"The Boston Tea Party", "Forced Quartering of Soldiers", "Involuntary Servitude".<span style=""> </span>– Remember?<span style=""> </span>Even after the last shot was fired, and the debates began, we still had to decide what type of government we wanted and among the choices were a new royal family, a type of dictatorship, a form of anarchy and of course the growing mushroom that would EVENTUALLY grow into this thing called democracy.<span style=""> </span>Through it all, the founding fathers never lost sight of the need for some sort of representative governmental forum, be it a Parliament, a Congress or just empowered group of the rich elite.<span style=""> </span>With any type of representative governing body, the need to receive input from the governed is a necessity.<span style=""> </span>How do we, in today's cyberworld of technology, exercise our right of input to our elected representatives?<span style=""> </span>The answer, of course, is not a single method but one or all methods open to us as citizens, NONE of which is more important or less viable than the other.<span style=""> </span>We can email our representatives, post letters to them, run ads for or against their positions, "de-elect": them in the next campaign, and finally we can address them face to face either by personal appointment or at public forums where our representative appears.<span style=""> </span>Deny personal access to this individual and you are admitting that a faceless entity that might or might not be a "committee" or cyber-intelligent machine is sufficient for your needs in having someone or "something" representing your wishes at the centers of government.<span style=""> </span>So I am sorry to say that there MUST be some way for me to address my issues to my representative in forums that also permit me to hear my fellow voters expressing their vices as well.<span style=""> </span>At $18,000 a year, a US soldier excepts the fact that he or she has voluntarily signed onto a job that can make them assigned targets of an adversary on the field of battle.<span style=""> </span>They do this with great honor and commitment and provide an indispensible tool for maintaining the freedoms of this country.<span style=""> </span>Our Federal level Representatives receive $176,000 a year for their voluntary service.<span style=""> </span>They unfortunately must accept the inherent dangers of their service including reasonable unfettered public access to these individuals.<span style=""> </span>OK, let's move on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Firearms in a nation that sees them as steel alloy sub-dieties that require unquestioned support and worship.<span style=""> </span>"It is my right under the Second Amendment" is only partially true though legally supported as of last year.<span style=""> </span>Most advocates of the Second Amendment do not consider themselves to be members of any type of "militia" yet the Second Amendment applies to the rather obscure terms "militia" and not specifically to some bubba who thinks it is really neato to strap on a pistol and walk the streets of Laredo.<span style=""> </span>Actually I am not concerned about Bubba.<span style=""> </span>He or she is generally a poor marks person with little or no actual experience or training with firearms and carries "iron" to make them seem cool or whatever.<span style=""> </span>I am more concerned with the individual who buys weapons and then virulently opposes any efforts actually register or control the use of the weapons on the grounds that they "fear our government."<span style=""> </span>This type of person also argues their right to cache as much ammunition as would be needed to overthrow a small nation and their inalienable right to modify their personal weapons so that they may fore an unbelievable amount of ordnance such as the 30 round magazines that can be used in side arms.<span style=""> </span>Now just ask one of these individuals why they would need a thirty round magazine and you get two types of answers, both as silly as the other.<span style=""> </span>Answer number one is "for personal protection".<span style=""> </span>Sigh…If someone needs thirty bullets to protect then a pistol is not the weapon of choice. They need a gatling gun.<span style=""> </span>Answer number two is even more obtuse…"I use it for target practice."<span style=""> </span>Once again I need to remind them that if they need thirty bullets to hit the target, they have chosen the wrong weapon.<span style=""> </span>I would also remind them that the additional weight of thirty rounds of ammunition will totally any ability to apply their expertise to a smaller capacity sidearm.<span style=""> </span>Sorry guys and gals, you know and I know that you want thirty round magazines to impress your friends and to make you even more cool than you now think you are.<span style=""> </span>So keep worrying about a mean old government using registration files to confiscate your weapons when "they" take over, whoever they might be.<span style=""> </span>However be ready convince me that your political paranoia , which is not based on any US historical event, is not at least as dangerous as any other individual who harbors unfounded fears of some sort of dangerous plot by unknown entities to take something from you.<span style=""> </span>If you can't, then you, according to the law, should not be able to buy or possess weapons.<span style=""> </span>Hmmm????</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Finally, let me – MY OPINION ONLY – address the issue of whether words can be dangerous.<span style=""> </span>Witnesses on my behalf include, the pre-Constantine Ceasars who spoke so eloquently about the dangers of Christianity, the whole Inquisition crowd who first coined the phrase "Blood Libel" to describe why they had to torture and murder Jews and Moslems throughout the Dark, Vladimir Lenin who saw the need to urge his followers to kill thousands of Czarist to purify the goals of his new revolution, Adolph Hitler who convinced his countrymen that the wholesale butchery of six million Jews, homosexuals, gypsies , Slavs, and other "impure" people was absolutely warranted since, "they had been asking for it for centuries anyhow" and if I can persuade them to join me, the boys and girls from the Khmer Rouge who starved and murdered half of their country for being too smart.<span style=""> </span>The question posed to them will be simple.<span style=""> </span>"Do they think words can make people hurt other people?"<span style=""> </span>REALLY!!<span style=""> </span>Do I actually have to ask them?<span style=""> </span>Does anyone actually need convincing that painting gun targets over a congressional district map could cause an unstable or highly "paranoic" individual to respond with violence?<span style=""> </span>Could phrases advocating death, injury, or violence of any sort to be directed to a political opponent not arouse active support from a follower who only believes their actions are nothing more than their way to show support for a political viewpoint.<span style=""> </span>Under the First Amendment we already know the courts have noted that yelling fire in a crowded theatre is an illegal abuse granted by the right of freedom of speech for the simple reason that it could cause serious injury.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Can we not impose the same guidelines on public figures who choose to advocate violence against others – be they Muslim, Hispanics, Jew, Christian, or simply the other political party.<span style=""> </span>If we can't impose the law could we at least call upon them to use common sense and back that up with financial support or lack of support for media coverage.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>Better yet, if we can bleep profanity on the media, why can we not bleep out such words when they are used on the media.<span style=""> </span>That many "bleeps" would make Rush Limbaugh's show even more annoying than it is now.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">My opinions only. <span style=""> </span></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-16965962674332666562010-12-29T20:26:00.001-05:002010-12-29T20:26:23.799-05:00Chicken Little has friends in Congress <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Chicken Little has a strong following in Congress</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As we enter the New Year and a new form of government – government by clowns – I am preparing myself for a flood of doom and gloom rhetoric that will especially emanate from the new disciples of mirth and silliness.<span style=""> </span>Before the coming of Spring rest assured we will be told of the pending destruction of the United States if the "people: don't immediately hit the rewind button on President Obama's two year reign as a secret foreign born Muslim pretender.<span style=""> </span>We will be told over and over that all of the laws and new regulations signed into law by this regime were done in complete secrecy and totally without the consent of the governed.<span style=""> </span>Even though this electorate generated more filibusters and 60% cloture votes than have been presented in the last half century.<span style=""> </span>Still they will want you to believe that Congress was never consulted on any of these rather earth moving new laws designed to benefit Americans and their children and strengthen social safety nets.<span style=""> </span>This type of "2012" destruction rhetoric, of course, has as much factual basis as does the Mayan "2012" predictions but it's nothing new.<span style=""> </span>Let me take you back to some of the previous doomsayers who saw total collapse in the Government's efforts to seek laws that directly benefitted our citizen's. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>"We are forcing all citizen's, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program.<span style=""> </span>It is socialized medicine, and one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."<span style=""> </span>(Ronald Reagan)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>"The Federal Income Tax," a Senator from New York said a century ago, "might mean an end of our 'distinctively American experiment of individual freedom.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>"Social Security is actually a plan to Sovietize America."<span style=""> </span>(Chairman, US Chamber of Commerce, 1935) </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>"The minimum wage and mandated overtime pay are steps in the direction of Communism, Bolshevism, Fascism and Nazism."<span style=""> </span>(National Association of Manufacturers, 1938)</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>After Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, 101 members of Congress signed a statement calling the ruling an instance of 'naked judicial power' that would sow 'chaos and confusion' and diminish American greatness.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.75in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span>In 1964, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal described civil rights marchers as "asking for trouble" and civil rights laws as being on "the edge of constitutionality."</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The various bills laws signed into by Mr. Obama have, for the most part, joined this list of prophetic doomsayers.<span style=""> </span>I guess we should all begin digging our bunkers now and stocking up on food in preparation for the inevitable.<span style=""> </span></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-80608858022851711442010-12-20T12:57:00.001-05:002010-12-20T12:57:34.392-05:00Investment in the future <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Being that I am one of the fortunate citizens in the United States to be the recipient of one of the best investments I ever made – Social Security payments.<span style=""> </span>Investment?<span style=""> </span>Have I been hitting the eggnog a bit too heavily or what?<span style=""> </span>Nope actually, I have been taking my son's advice.<span style=""> </span>As a licensed engineer, he has always extolled me to "do the math Dad.<span style=""> </span>Do the math first!!!<span style=""> </span>Well I did and was I ever surprised.<span style=""> </span>Now I doubt what I am about to lay down will convince any of my conservative friends that Social Security is not, in fact, an evil communist or at best, socialist plot, to enable our government to take control of our lives but I can lay down some math that is hard to debate.<span style=""> </span>Here goes.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Like most of my upper middle class senior friends, I receive around $1600.00 a month from an account in which I paid around $80,000 during my 40 + working years.<span style=""> </span>I would have received about $2500.00 a month if I had chosen to wait until I reached full tenure around my 67<sup>th</sup> birthday.<span style=""> </span>I chose man early pay out option beginning at 62 since it is always a turkey shoot whether I would still be kicking at 67.<span style=""> </span>The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that I would probably live until I was 82 with a 25% chance that I would live until I was 90.<span style=""> </span>They did not take into account the bullet holes, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's et. al. that have made a home in my body.<span style=""> </span>I did take these into account and chose an early option.<span style=""> </span>I will continue to receive this monthly annuity until I die whenever that might be, and I can look forward to slight annual increases to boot, and yes, it is all taxable income so I do pay some of it back.<span style=""> </span>But, and this a big "but", my Social Security annuity is guaranteed by the US Government.<span style=""> </span>Okay "Free Marketeers", le's see what your private firms are offering.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">First and foremost virtually none of the available public annuity firms offer annual re-looks and annuity increases based on any facet of the US economic profile.<span style=""> </span>According to ImmediateAnnuities.com, a 66 year old man would have to pony up just over $128,000 into an annuity account to guarantee him an annual annuity of just $10,000.<span style=""> </span>Twice that amount for an annual annuity of $20,000 with no protection for inflation.<span style=""> </span>New York Life will give you a 0.3% annual increase as an inflation hedge but that same 66 year old man would need to cough up $180,000 for that cushion.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>For those hardcore conservative "do it myself" crowd well look at these numbers.<span style=""> </span>The Employee Research Institute, a think tank specializing in retirement programs, notes that fewer than half of all US employees have saved even $25,000 towards their individual retirement plans, and only a third of these folks have saved $50,000.<span style=""> </span>Forty percent have saved less that $10,000 and a fourth of these good people have saved nothing at all.<span style=""> </span>To put these numbers in perspective, someone with $25,000 can buy into an annuity (with a .3% annual bump) that will return $1400 a year in benefits.<span style=""> </span>Increase that to a $50,000 account and your annual benefits jump to $2800.00 a year – or an income of about $54 a week.<span style=""> </span>Good luck with that.<span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">So when<span style=""> </span>we started to look for tax cuts it is amazing that we chose Social Security as the one major program to cut into with a taxpayer decrease.<span style=""> </span>Less money into the program means it will suffer even more than it is now which I detect might be the true rationale of the conservatives in Congress who sincerely hate this "benefit" program.<span style=""> </span>If they have<span style=""> </span>now decided to use the Social Security program as a political football, I thin it is only fair that they give us back the "football.<span style=""> </span>Since Ronald Reagan hit on the idea, the US Government has used the Social Security trust fund as a bank of first choice to balance out the books.<span style=""> </span>Reach in and jerk out a few billion and then issue some Federal Bonds as security for repayment.<span style=""> </span>OK – PAY US!!! And no more bonds please.<span style=""> </span>If the Federal Government would just pay back what it "borrowed" from the trust fund, the Social Security system would remain solvent for a century or more even with the ill-advised tax cut.<span style=""> </span>Are You Listening Out There All Of You Bubble Headed Tea Party Clowns?<span style=""> </span>The big bad government is doing big bad things to money that is not theirs.<span style=""> </span>Sic em!!!</p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-79249668814121177392010-12-11T14:55:00.002-05:002010-12-11T16:23:31.171-05:00A few things nibbling at my psyche<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">A few things nibbling at my psyche:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The voters have spoken and they have decided that the folks who put us into the economic mess we are in would, by some odd logic, be the best people to get us out. Oh my! Am I being unfair to the right? Maybe but let's look at the numbers. Ronald Reagan, the great spokesman for "trickle down economics," entered office in the blustery winter of 1981. He called for a balanced budget amendment but he himself never submitted anything resembling a balanced budget. In fact, he entered office with a national debt of $1.3 trillion dollars and by 1992 when he left the Whitehouse he had steered the country into a $4.17 trillion dollar indebtedness – a nice cozy four hundred percent increase. Nice going for the conservative smaller government party. Clinton took the reins in 1992 and to be frank, under his watch the government debt did increase but only by a mere $1.1 trillion dollars to just at $5.19 trillion. He spent a good deal of his Presidency answering to his sexual missteps but he still was able to pay down a big chunk of the national debt before leaving office but it was to no avail since George W. Bush managed to surrender any of Clinton's savings in another demonstration of "trickle down" that took the $5.19 trillion dollar national debt and raise it to – are you ready for this - $12.3 trillion dollars in just eight years. This is what Mr. Obama was given on inauguration day and in less than two years he has not been able to wipe out what twelve years of conservative trickle down economics managed to build. Shame on him for not being a magician. The answer, as noted above, was to elect the same type of economic blunderers that created this monstrous international embarrassment. In light of what has happened under the previous miscreants, here is what the new crew sees as the solution to what is in fact, their problem. First they want to insure that the wealthy in the US continue to get wealthier by extending tax breaks enacted by Bush – the guy who took us from $5 trillion to $12 trillion in indebtedness. This will add $700 Billion to the national debt under the trickle down theory that if the wealthy are made richer they will invest it wisely in industries that will hire us measly peons and everyone will be happy. This raises an obvious question – at least obvious to me – if that theory is so valid why did Mr. Obama enter office with thousands a citizens a day being laid off. The Bush tax cuts had been in effect for eight years and during that eight years there was no burst of entrepreneurism, no withering of unemployment lines and no sudden burgeoning of this Nation's industrial base. On the other hand the rich did get richer – obscenely so - and the poor did get poorer, tragically. In spite of these obvious and easily obtainable statistics, the GOP has held fast in their demand that the JP Morgan's of America deserve to become even more wealthy. To push our nose into their mess even further, they want to eliminate the inheritance tax settling, as it turned out, for a compromise of 35% tax on all inheritances valued at $5M or more. This affects less than 10,000 Americans. So much for a government "of the people." Can you think of any other bill that affected only l0,000 people and tied up congress for so long? Of course not unless it's their absolute panic at the thought of having homosexuals serving in the defense of this nation. The number is probably not 10,000 but even if it were more, so what! I have served with men and women whom I knew to be homosexuals and if their job performance were less than exemplary I would have taken appropriate action based on their performance alone and not what they did in the privacy of their personal lives. I know of one General Officer, now retired, whose homosexuality was a commonly known fact but his battle expertise was unquestionable. Nobody seemed to care about his private life. Yet we can spin Congress up to a fine pitch by even mentioning such an unforgivable prospect. This same Congress wants to cut back on Social Security while disapproving unemployment benefits. Who benefits by these national safety nets? Nobody on Knob Hill I can assure you so why not eliminate them altogether since the "trickle down" from their tax breaks will most certainly fill the gap. Do you really believe this? It is going to be a long hard winter especially when the real clowns move into their new offices on Capital Hill. I think we should all cash in our savings and invest in Brazilian bananas or anything more secure than our own economic future in the US. </div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-90080261555162283792010-11-12T12:06:00.002-05:002010-12-11T16:28:28.133-05:00Now Who Can We Gut Next!!!<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I have been following closely the growing debate on the movement to cut back the national debt so kindly left to us by the previous administration. They arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with a SURPLUS and in eight years they had been able to dig that SURPLUS into a 1.5 trillion dollar debt. Not too bad for a guy who supposedly had a degree in business from the Ivy League. In less than two years the current administration has managed to wrangle this debt back a few billion dollars even in the face of the various non-funded mandates left at the doorsteps of most Americans. The medicare pharmacy program – UNFUNDED. Heck the two wars in the Middle East were UNFUNDED instead relying on special Congressional allocations requested as needed. As usual, the very wealthy were exempted from feeling these growing tax burdens. Now the citizens have once again demonstrated their total lack of long term memory and have decided that the entire problem is a creation of the current administration and have voted in virtual carbon copy of the boys and girls who caused the mess to occur in the first place. These folks carry various banners calling for shrinking the government and elimination of all sorts of government programs. Some of these new patriots have even called for the preparation of a forceful overthrow of the established government using weapons actually authorized by that same government. Irony does not seem to bother them at all. These are the same folks – Left and right, who find newspapers such as US Today to be so enticing since it manages to crush even the most complex issues into one or two paragraphs… "World War III broke out today. Pictures on page three." OK, now watch, here comes another one of those ironies. The current administration formed a group of very smart people to look into ways to cut the budget obligations and went to great pains to make certain this Commission remained as politically neutral as possible. Some members were old hardcore conservatives and some were tried and true bleeding heart liberals. They have recently released a few of their ideas and as expected you could hear the cloth rending and ashes flying all over the nation. OMG, they attacked virtually every sacred cow at the alter except of course the wealth of the very rich…Nope, that cow went untouched. The middleclass were gored and re-gored again and again from proposals to increase Social Security retirement age to 68 to increasing co-pays for Medicare services. Toss in a healthy proposal for a .15$ a gallon increase in gasoline taxes and mix well with the elimination of the middleclass' only REAL tax deduction – mortgage interest payments, and the aged and hardworking middle class are being asked again to shoulder the excesses of the public debt, little of which did they benefit from when it was being created. In addition, they are proposing a 100$M cut to the Defense Department paid in part with a total freeze on military pay raises for a few years. It was not stated but this would also entail a similar freeze on promotions for these men and women who have been asked to sacrifice so much already. Actually this bit about whacking away at the military was copied almost intact from a previous axing of the military conducted by another President – Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yep, old General Ike froze pay raises and promotions across the board for almost the entire term he was in office – eight years. I was a young boy at the time but my Dad was a career soldier and a WW-II and Korean War vet. Now that the Bush wars are winding down, our military is being asked to sit down and shut up and take whatever scraps our Congress may decide to toss their way. Kipling said it best when he wrote the haunting paragraphs in his poem entitled "Tommy":</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">O It's Tommy this, an; Tommy that, an; Tommy Go Away,"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But it's "Thank you Mister Atkins,' the band begins to play.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">O it's 'Thank you Mr. Atkins,' when the band begins to play." </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">An hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out the brute!"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But it's "Savuour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">An 'it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool – you bet that Tommy sees! </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course the new faces on Capital Hill have screamed as though stuck with a poker as well as lots of the old crew. Obviously they would appear to have other places where they can fin a few trillion dollars lying about. Whatever!!! It is such a great show to watch and would even more interesting if it were not so serious. If just a few of the Commission's ideas are adopted and blended in with the REALLY crazy ideas tossed around by the Tea Party whackos, we are ALL in for a great deal of fiscal pain. Get ready my friends…Mr. Bush's bills are coming due.</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-81968497519033943162010-11-11T19:30:00.004-05:002010-12-11T16:51:06.865-05:00As I recall<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">As I recall …</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It's 11/11 again and we are honoring our military members posted at some of the most glamourous locations and some of the most frightening and terrible places in the world. We are actually celebrating the cessation of hostilities to end World War- 1 that had been touted as the war to end all wars. This was touted as the war to end all wars but of course in about 25 years we were at it again. My Dad was an infantry soldier in World War-II who participated in the Italian campaign and later, as a "second waver" at Omaha Beach in Normandy. Six weeks later he was wounded in France and evacuated back to England and later to Ireland where he met my Mother and…well you fill in the rest. Dad didn't get much a respite from the horrors of war since he was still on active duty in 1950 when he was sent to Korea for the next three years. He arrived as a Master Sergeant and left with a battlefield commission and promotion to Captain. Dad made the leap to Army Intelligence soon after Korea where he continued to confront the enemies of this nation as a silent warrior. My time in hell began in December 1966 during my first tour of Southeast Asia. I survived the Tet Offensive but I got in the way of an AK-47 30 Caliber rifle serving with Special Forces near the Ashau Valley in the northern border regions of Vietnam. I returned for a second extended tour in 1970 and was there when we began the process of ceding significant portions of the country to the enemy forces of North Vietnam. When I left in 1973, the war was actually over except for the final push by the North Vietnamese which happened with full evening TV coverage less than 18 months later. Ironically it was my Dad's last war experience. He was actually one of the many people who boarded helicopters on the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon. It was the first time America actually lost a war and make no mistakes, we lost it – simple as that. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Let's examine some of the myths from our participation in Southeast Asia. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><ol><li>Our loss in Vietnam was caused by a lack of support in Congress, the Press, the man on the street (Pick one). NONSENSE! We went from several hundred "advisors" to over 500,00 men and women in less than ten years. We were supported by every non-nuclear weapon in our arsenal including Naval Carriers, Air Force heavy bombers, and ground force main battle tanks and long range artillery. Our forces received generous pay increases virtually every year of the war. No one ever said no to any legitimate strategy presented by our Generals except for missions that were clearly targeted at civilian economic infrastructures as forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Congress rubber stamped everything.</li>
<li>Disaffection on the part of the civilian populace in the US demoralized the soldiers actually fighting the war and encouraged our enemies. "Long haired hippies" were as much a joke and item of derision among soldiers as they were in mainstream US. We had AFN radio and the Stars and Stripes military sponsored newspaper and not much else in the way of new coverage from the U.S. The enemy didn't even have either radio or press coverage for their forces. They most certainly could not use demonstrations or similar activities in the U.S. as morale boosters. They were motivated by a deep mistrust of non-Asians and a certain degree of deep rooted nationalism. I participated in numerous interrogations of captured enemy soldiers but I never found even one who was a "card carrying" communist. They were there because it seemed the right thing to do in support of their country. </li>
<li>Soldiers returning from the war were routinely spat upon, hit with Umbrellas, mugged, insulted etc etc. as they walked down the street. Nonsense! This simply did not happen and anyone who says so will always preface their statements with the caveat that they knew someone who had this happen to them. I wore a Green Beret and had a boatload of ribbons on my uniform. I wore my uniform proudly in many, many cities, towns and villages and never once was I accosted or personally insulted. Even proven "baby killlers" such as Lt. Calley never reported being accosted or otherwise insulted or confronted on our streets. </li>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well that's all I have to say on the topic. We MUST remember that we must never confuse the war with the soldier. I was "for" Vietnam during my first tour but wide awake to the eventual unsuccessful outcome during my second tour. I still went and served proudly since that was my duty. My personal beliefs had no impact on how I conducted myself in the "woods." I don't ever recall meeting a soldier who was in Vietnam to stop international communism or to answer a demand from his diety. If I had met such people, I would have refused to have them on my Special Forces Team.</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-13091193798749368632010-10-26T19:26:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:35:19.544-05:00Separation of Religion and State<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Normally in any election cycle the issue of religion in school comes up in some form or the other. This year Ms. O'Donnel from New Jersey had a problem with Constitutional precedence pertaining to the intention of the founding father's when they penned the First Amendment to that great base document. Other candidates have touched on this electrified issue. Oh well…I am not going to get into the deep implications of the need for separation of religion from national politics since it will only cause people to get all huffy and silly in their standpoint on the issue. Instead I will tell you my own little story of growing up in an America that did not keep their eyes on the impact of this issue on the people it was suppose to "protect." I came to America from Ireland, a small country which can certainly boast being one of the most religiously biased nations in the world for lots of good and bad reasons. I grew to adulthood in Southern California in a relatively small town atmosphere where virtually all of the larger religions were represented by its residents. Religion was not something that was a normal topic of discussion except for the occasional crude or ugly stereotypical jokes passed between friends about one or more of the major religions. This was in the mid-1950s so religion was in fact, a topic of instruction in the classroom normally handled by a weekly one two hour block of instruction presented by a visiting cleric of some sort. To accommodate the non-Protestant students such as myself and my good buddy, Virgil Applebaum, on those days in which religion was taught, all non-Protestant students were led outside to waiting buses and vans and driven to our respective instructional sites. The Catholic boys and girls were taken to St. Michael's Catholic Church for our weekly Catechism classes. Virgil and other Jewish students were taken to their Synagogue for Hebrew Schul. Sounds like a solution right? Here was a simple solution to accommodating all religions while keeping religious instruction part of the school curriculum. Well it wasn't all twittering birds and soft breezes by any means and wound making causing all of the non-Protestant children the strongest advocates for absolutely no religious instructions during regular school sessions. Why? Well here is what really happened. Protestant children were told that Christian religious training would be provided in school on such and such a day. Non-Protestant children would be provided transportation to their respective religious training site. Remember now you are talking to pre-teens! Here is what they hear. "Christians who believe in God will be given religious training on such and such a day. The children who do not believe in God will be taken out of the classroom and sent some other mysterious place that does not believe in God." When we "pagans" returned to class to rejoin our classmates you can just imagine the remarks, taunts and personal insults that we endured on the playground. When we entered middle school and later on high school formal religious instruction was no longer provided in any form but by then the die had been fully cast among my classmates. I, like all Catholics, believed in some other type of God that was not Christian and very mysterious at best. Same for Jewish students but even more so since they "denied" certain aspects of Christianity. Do we really want to fill our children with these types of confusing images? Just think what we went through for the six years that we were California elementary school students. Now you know why I am so very very strongly opposed to any type of prayer or religious training in our schools. </div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-40751066275336626652010-10-19T13:01:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:36:50.298-05:00My Choice For Oppression<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">An exerpt from an article written by:</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sharon Davis</div><div class="MsoNormal">Professor, Ohio State University and author of</div><div class="MsoNormal">"Rising Road: A True Tale</div><div class="MsoNormal">of Love, Race and Religion</div><div class="MsoNormal">in America"</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">…..A radical religious group, lurking inside the country, owing loyalty to a foreign power, threatens America. No one denies that its members have a right to worship as they please, but good Americans, patriots, feel compelled to call for curbs against the menace they present. Because of the number of Americans sharing these fears, calls for restrictions on the religion are voiced openly and unapologetically, even proudly……The holders of such beliefs (are) not just some fringe crazies safely outnumbered by clear-eyed religiously tolerant neighbors. To the contrary, widely popular (opposition) literature spilled from newsstands across the country like Sen. Tom Watson's Jeffersonian out of Atlanta and The Menace of Aurora, MO., whose subscriptions dwarfed those of the largest newspapers in New York City and Chicago combined. Elections (are being) won on promises to oust (this threat). Only true Americans should hold such positions, (goes) the warning, not (this threat) who *are) loyal first to their religious leaders (in foreign countries)….</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The article goes on to describe with blistering details the various Federal and State attempts to circumvent the Constitution to counter this alleged threat. The article also details the many acts of violence and death meted out to these people by these same "true Americans." It is written by a noted professor but it is not about Muslims in contemporary America. It is about Roman Catholic Americans in the 1920s. Numerous laws on warrantless searches of Monasteries, nunneries and churches were written by several States. Various murders of Catholic clerics and Congregationalist are drawn from various newspaper accounts. Jews, Catholics and virtually all foreign émigrés were added to the hate roster of the burgeoning Ku Klux Klan. In much the same manner as the forced incarceration of thousands US born Asian-American in the US, grand an elaborate apologies for our ignorance and shortcomings have been numerous but let's not forget we are not talking about ancient history here. We are talking about several decades ago. Will we continue down a similar road of ignorant blind hate towards our Muslim neighbors and then "make it all better" twenty or thirty years from now with some erudite apologetic blather about different times and different people? Probably! Then I am sure we will find someone else to hate since the American psyche does not seem to be able to function very well without someone to despise. Whose next? Latinos – nah, they are already pretty much on the scope as targets already. Maybe we will fall back on Eastern Europeans – they were always fun to tease. Blacks? Probably not – hell they fight back and that is no fun. I vote for those sneaky Canadians. Nobody can be that nice without some ulterior motive. We need to start watching all of those Canucks now before it is too late. Never trust anyone from Saskatchewan. No way!!! Yep, they are my choice and besides, we could actually drive to the war front when we invade those insidious folks from Montreal. </div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-19907021586643563892010-10-18T22:49:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:38:13.665-05:00I Just Know They Would Not Lie To Me<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I find myself looking forward to the world after 2 November. The people of the United States will cast votes for "change" in much the same manner that Germans cast votes for change in the 1930s. Anything just has to be better somehow than the people they elected last time. Yes, they seem to forget that little fact – virtually everyone of the key players on Capital Hill were put there by the same people who are screaming for change now. At any rate, we will probably turn over the control the legislative body to the "other side" by close of business on 2 November and if we are to believe the millions of dollars worth of campaign propaganda being poured out over our media, by 3 November everything should be OK again in America. The evil liberals will have been vanquished and the true patriots of the conservative party will now steer us to a new horizon of wealth and prosperity. I personally will not accept anything less from them. I mean they did promise me didn't they? I guess I will learn to get along without my Social Security annuity and of course without the new health care law, I will have to learn to get along with less coverage since I probably will not be able afford the premiums what with my Social Security being cancelled and Medicare being downsized and all. I am a 100% disabled Vet so I am excited about the idea of full privatization of the Veteran's Administration. That should be really neat. With no continuation of extended unemployment insurance, the soldiers returning from the end of the ten years of Mideast war might have a little bit of a financial burden to deal with but with all of this new instant prosperity, they should be able jump right into this new prosperity. Banks and lending institutions will be able to shrug off any new rules under the new folks and before long even the poorest and most humble in our society will be able to commit to a 3500 square foot home with in-ground pool. It will be so neat. Of course by undoing the last two years of legislation, it will result in a bit of a roadblock on Capital Hill but the conservatives have spent the last two years training the American public to accept total cryonics in the legislature so we will not be surprised to see everything continue to freeze up. Won't that be fun? Of course Muslims, homosexuals, Latinos, and the mentally challenged in America will find things to be a little cool for a while but all they have to do is renounce all of those bad things and act like the rest of us and everything will be OK. I am sure it will be really neat. Of course if the conservatives and their Tea Party cultist do fail to succeed in their promised Eden, they will insure a second term for the current Chief Executive. All he would have to do is point in "their" direction for any failures in not solving the recession, the crashed housing market, the unemployment problems, "bailouts", health care programs, trade deficits, and social welfare problems. But I am sure they would not lie to me and they do in fact have some sort of secret plan to fix all of these things in the next two years to prevent a second term by the current POTUS. I am sure of this since they certainly would not lie to me! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-52406252664537193262010-10-03T14:44:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:42:02.914-05:00Interesting Times<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I am 66 years old and have survived a lot of things in my life including over a dozen US Presidents. Except for the first couple (Truman and Eisenhower), I recall each of their terms in either lesser or greater detail. Through all of their tribulations, I still recall many of their momentous decisions, good and bad in terms that caused my current political ideology to grow and become part of me. I was a soldier in Vietnam when I voted for Nixon's first term and probably BECAUSE I was a soldier in Vietnam I could not foresee another minute let alone another four years with this person in charge of my future. One President, Johnson, was so immune to the trappings of power that he chose not to seek a sure second term knowing that our involvement in foreign entanglements was so dangerous that the country needed someone else with a clearer understanding of those complexities. I recall an old Chinese saying that explains how I feel now – "May you live in interesting times." My father, a fluent Chinese linguist and cultural Chinese expert noted that this saying was actually more of a curse than a casual greeting. He was right. I have lived in interesting times some of which were so frightening and filled with anxious foreboding that I honestly believed at the time that my "interesting times" were rapidly coming to an end. Through it all, I considered myself a true patriot willing to make whatever sacrifices necessary to insure the continuation of this nation's great promises to itself, its citizens and the rest of the world. The funny part was that I considered almost everyone I knew to be equally motivated to work towards the noble goals of this nation. I was never afraid of my government not because I was naïve but rather because I understood and firmly believed in the security afforded to my fellow citizens by the string and viable system of checks and balances. I understood democracy and saw it as a beacon of hope for the entire world and the people lucky enough to live in this country. There were scandals involving some of our elected officials usually involving greed or sexual misconduct but after we stopped tittering like school children we usually managed to take the appropriate steps to punish or censor these misdeeds and I trusted in the system to carry out these punishments on behalf of the citizens of the US. I felt great distress for people forced to survive under "banana dictatorships." I was amused at actual democracies having a devil of a time maintaining any sense of dignity as they elected and then ousted their leadership almost monthly. I cannot actually ever recall watching a nation attempting to maintain its own form of leadership and laughing about their stupidity and blundering ineptitude. I took all forms of government serious even the flawed ones. They were NOT laughing matters because they, regardless of how small or large, affected us all. Now I am witness to the greatest nation in the world doing its utmost to become the laughing stock of all nations, good or bad. We are preparing to go to our polls to elect individuals to the "greatest deliberative body the world has known" and with such a great responsibility facing us, we have managed to assemble a veritable Barnum and Bailey side show of candidates and seem totally incapable of stopping this tragedy from occurring. Consider that these dozen or so side show freaks have at least one thing in common – world class hypocrisy. All of these dancing bears are vowing to hate big government and want to emasculate ot to something resembling a national level receptionist desk whose only function is to wait for someone to call and challenge us to war. In the meantime what is left of the government should not have any voice in any matters pertaining to its citizens thereby forever burying Mr. Lincoln's belief in government of the people, by the people and for the people. Yet these same pseudo-anarchist are spending literally millions of dollars each to insure they acquire a seat in this hoped for waddling eunuch that used to be a beacon of hope. Just a quick review of what these dozen or so freaks and geeks are seeking:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">1.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span> Abrogation of the US Civil Right Act and all legal precedence involved in this nations attempt to bring equality to its citizens. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 49.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span> The dismantling of the US Social Security system and its role as a safety net for its aged and disabled citizens.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">3.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>The dismantling of the US Department of Education and the ceasing of its role in insuring that even the poorest school districts receive assistance in educating our greatest assets – our children. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">4.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>The dismantling of the Medicare system which currently enables our citizens the ability to receive at least emergency and necessary health care. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">5.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>The dismantling of the US Department of Transportation thus eliminating this nations capability to move its commercial goods and security machinery across this great country. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">6.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>Dismantling and in a couple of cases the actual elimination of the US national taxation system. No money will mean no government. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">7.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span> Eliminating or at least severely limiting the ability of emigrants to enteer this country thus stagnating our ability to learn from the great wealth of experience these cultures bring to a nation. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">8.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>Elimination of any US national department or agency that does not pay its own way, inhibits any type of commercial ventures or does not actually add to the national GDP. No support to the fine arts, national parks system, any programs overseeing potential pollution and quality of life issues. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">9.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span>All welfare programs (naturally) thus putting millions of our citizens out on the streets to fend for themselves, even those citizens suffering from mental or physical disorders that may well make them a danger to themselves and those around them. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"> Oh heck, why go on. It's in all the newspapers. I just have to imagine a junket to one of the NATO countries by one or more of these dozen or so clowns. Imagine the Prime Minister of England trying to conduct a meaningful dialogue with the Belle Of Delaware and her past as a dabbling witch. How would the Chancellor of Germany react to conversations with the Darling of Nevada who would try to explain the concepts of trading chickens for health care. Well you see where this could lead. We may well have to spend at least fifty years just trying to regain some semblance of dignity in the world. Have a nice day – and please please please Vote! </div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-56304972563500936382010-09-25T21:39:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:43:52.575-05:00A Note To MY Teabag Friends<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I am watching the upcoming November mid-term election scenario with a great deal of interest and amusement. In typical Ugly American form, if someone does not understand you, then you must yell louder. Anyone who has traveled outside the US and have seen our noble citizens in actions know exactly what I mean. If you ask a German for directions and they may well shrug their shoulders noting that "Ich kann kein Englisch sprechen. Es tut mir sehr leid." Often as not the American response is to first enunciate each English language word slowly and with great emphasis and grotesque lip movements. This is then followed by continuing to speak slowly and with great emphasis but only now they increase the decibel level and continue to do so until out of frustration they note how stupid the Germans are for not being able to speak English even though their country as existed for several centuries longer than the US and its wonderful citizens. That same warped logic train for communicating has now become the norm for some of our emerging political sects. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">First is the assumption on the part of these emerging political cults that they, and only they, are capable of divining the true word and all other political groups are not just misguided bit in fact totally wrong and are using this ignorance to destroy the very essence of America. Everything that the current administration is doing is wrong even if that administration is simply carrying out legal mandates proscribed and approved decades earlier. With an almost religious zeal they arrogantly call upon the "people" to support their attempts to seize the government in the polls and voting booths so that they can put a stop to the current administrative policies, abrogate policies decided upon by the majority of Congress and to begin dismantling this thing we call the Government into a much smaller, weaker and less expensive form of management. These groups and sects feel no need to provide any substantive ways to either replace or modify these programs except to say they will "cut them." Their list of "bad" programs that they would "cut" include the entire US Department of Education; Social Security and Medicare; the Department of Health and Human Services; support for civil rights initiatives; most of the Department of Internal Revenue; almost all arts and entertainment subsidies; farm subsidies; all financial oversight programs; and by projection loads and loads of staffers and support personnel in all branches of the government. They offer no "replacements": so we are left with the planned removal of all of the above listed support programs. Some have even called for greater emphasis on returning power back to the States making the US a country of 50 competing self-governing entities with little if any loyalty to a central government. Fifty little min-counties with competing political and social views who supposedly will no longer need Federal highway dollars for their roads, Federal funds for their schools, Federal support for their internal health systems. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It would be nice if these cultist would explain how current support to US citizens would be modified or deleted completed. I receive lots of benefit checks from my almost 40 years of public service. Some of those benefits include disability payments for wounds and injuries received while on active duty as a soldier fighting for this Nation. Which one of these benefit programs are they going to attack? My military retirement? My Social Security monthly allotment? My Veteran's Administration Disability payment? My military educational benefits so that both my wife and I can gain additional training? Which one do they believe I no longer deserve? Which one? Tell me before I enter the voting booth so I can make a knowledgeable decision and not a decision based solely upon you increased volume of yelling.</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-1319663154193054342010-09-08T11:05:00.002-04:002010-12-11T16:44:11.173-05:00Burn Baby BurnNothing so clearly demonstrates a sense of biased , prejudice and deeper down, fear and anxiety than the whole concept of book burning. When a leader of a nation or a small cjurch decides to burn a specific book they do so because they are unable to intelligently discuss the merits or lack of merits of the book. There are a number of books that I find to be of questionable merit, integrity or worth to mankind as a whole. My opinion is drawn from the fact that I actually read these books and compared them to my own I f to belief system and past experiences. Based on my actual knowledge of these books, I am prepared to argue my point of view but only to the point that I accept the fact that my adversary may also hav e a conflicting point of view, no matter how silly I may think it is, and fore that reason, I may shake my head in disbelief and frustration but I would never interpose myself in any plan that would attempt to restrict others to draw their own conclusions. In other words, no matter how stupid I think a piece if literature may be, I could never support any attempt to restrict someone from reading it. The Quran is a religious document with as much historical bonafides as the Christian New Testament or the Hebrew Pentateuch. No one knows who actually wrote the books of the new testament with the exception being the works of Paul. The other books of the new testament were written from oral traditions finally captur3d in written form by scribes and other nameless religious leaders. If the nee testament were a contract, no court in the land would accept it as valid/ The five books of the old testament, while being more strictly controlled in their transcription process are written anonymously. The Quran, on the other hand makes a point of notifying the reader that these are the words of a prophet who was illiterate and therefore the words were passed on verbally to scribes and relatives after the events in question. No one, therefore, has the monopoly on blind ignorance following written words by people who are not the original authors. Who then gave either of thew major religions the right to claim absolute authority on what is right or wrong. As it turns out, from reading all three versions of religious dogma, none of the big three claims absolute authority and all make considerable room for dissenting ideas and provide for systems of tolerance of these dissenting ideas. It is only when we turn over the concept of interpretation to individuals do we encounter problems. All of a sudden we find individuals who have apparently set up a private email address to the deity and now become the deities private spokesman to the exclusion of all others. No debate, no dissension allowed and no ability or wish to use anything even resembling human intellect in the entire process. I am sorry that this miserable little minister is so afraid of the written word that he feels the need to burn it. It is a shame that he cannot see that such intolerant acts have such grim and brutal historic precedence. I doubt his educational background is notable and his concept of the Christian religion is certainly very lacking. If his act of conducting a mass burning of the Quran leads to violence and deaths against the men and women serving in Islamic nations, then he must bear full responsibility and answer to their families and hopefully to a saddened and angry God. John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-32708110014391922672010-08-19T15:16:00.001-04:002010-08-19T15:16:12.437-04:00OMG - the sky is falling!!!<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font> </p> <p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">Sighhhh!!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>America, must you go out of your way to make yourself a public embarrassment? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As someone who has spent a considerable time living outside the U.S.A., I have grown weary of what America says about itself and not what people outside the US say about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We are our worst PR enemies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I speak another language well enough that I am often mistaken for a European (Hollander, Dane, etc) but NOT as an American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You would be surprised what folks at a beer table say about "Yanks" when they believe there are no "Yanks" at the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I can only surmise from these past experiences what is being spoken about concerning America's latest obsession with "hallowed" grounds. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Let me first note that the entire issue on the "hallowed" ground surrounding ground zero is a New York City issue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Five blocks away from ground zero there is an already existing Islamic Mosque.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It has been there for over fifty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>No one has asked them to move from this location since 9/11 and no one has accused the congregation of being wild eyed terrorist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But of course that Mosque is FIVE blocks away and not THREE blocks away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now the Islamic believers want to use a building that they own located three blocks away from ground zero as an Islamic Cultural Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It will not be a Mosque but more like a recreation site for believers in Islam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The fact that it is two blocks closer (and shielded from ground zero by an entire city block of high rise buildings) has somehow created a mysterious power to corrupt and somehow threaten the people of New York City. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Incidentally the power of Islam to impart supernatural powers on its followers was the only legitimate reason that the Guantanamo prisoners could not be tried in New York City. Obviously these powers would have given them the opportunity to overpower 8,000 New York police officers, at least that many Federal guards and 12 million citizens of New York and escape into the darkness to reign terror on all of America. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Them Islamic folks are one powerful group of wizards. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So now we are all upset about people in the US exercising their right of free worship and the unobstructed free practice of their religion not for legal reasons but rather because it is "insensitive." <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Of course, American "true blooded" Yanks who carry insulting banners at the funerals of fallen soldiers is OK and we cannot prohibit their right to commit this rather "insensitive" act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>How many streets, buildings, homes etc. have good old white America built on native American "hallowed" grounds?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Did we ask them first?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Does the "Trail of Tears" ring a bell about what happened when native Americans had the audacity to complain about the abuse of their ancestral and "hallowed" grounds? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Chicago, Los Angelas, Tucson, Miami, are just a few of the US major cities built on grounds once held entirely by proud native American entities. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If American wants to honor "hallowed" grounds, might I suggest Selma, Alabama and its civil rights abuses or all of Texas and it's wanton and illegal confiscation of land belonging to another sovereign entity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Incidentally, being "hallowed" ground in New York City has not slowed the promulgation of new peep-shows and porn shops surrounding ground zero but that is OK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Obviously, nothing more American than a peep-show.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Yes America, we all know how much you honor our "hallowed" grounds if only you could just once actually read the US Constitution you might be surprised at just how legal these Muslims are acting on this issue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-5779229703887686692010-08-04T13:11:00.002-04:002010-08-05T21:40:02.790-04:00Stupid Outdated Constitution<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I think it is time someone speaks up in favor of the US Constitution and not as a critic. When the NRA was finally able to get the courage to actually bring the matter of gun ownership to the attention of the Supreme Court, I waited quietly for their decision. In all of the huffing and puffing that both sides have demonstrated on the issue, this was the FIRST time that the NRA decided to test their stand in court. I was not surprised that this Court voted in their favor since it is top loaded with some rather extreme activist Judges as evidenced by other decisions oozing out of their minds. In the end, they decided that our fore fathers meant for all Americans to be armed to the teeth as a matter of self-protection. In reading the various documents of that era, it was pretty obvious that arming themselves as a "well regulated militia" was designed to provide a ready reserve military arm to counter threats from the government and from foreign intrigues. As much as I disagreed with this decision, I respected the Court's authority in this matter and began my own style of peaceful protest. I do not own a firearm so the forearm companies will starve if they are depending on me. I will not remain in a retail outlet if someone enters bearing an openly displayed weapon and I tell management why I am leaving. If their business is more preferential than mine, so be it. If I see someone with an openly displayed weapon enter a Federal facility (Federal Courthouse, Federal lands, etc.), I report the violation immediately to the police. I am a real nuisance but all I am doing is obeying the law and assuring that the law gets obeyed by others. You see, I really appreciate the presence of the US Constitution and it's legal arbiter, the Supreme Court. Keeping this personal position in mind, I find our lawmaker's latest assault on this wonderful document to be not only abhorrent but bordering on treason since they are attacking the basis for which this nation was formed. I am speaking of the assault on the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment to the Constitution which was first proposed on 13 June 1866 in the ashes of the Civil War. It was ratified by 2/3<sup>rd</sup> of our Congress two years later on 9 July 1868. This was not, therefore, rush to judgment but the result of due deliberation. Our forefathers knew what the impact of this law would be and voted it into law. At the time there was great concern that we would turn into a mongrel nation and that a flood of Chinese workers would overwhelm our electorate. In actuality, the thrust of the law was to provide citizenship privileges to slaves recently released slaves from the former Confederate States by noting simply that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State in which they reside." Pretty simple language and the various predictions of overwhelmed electorates never came about. It has been the law of the land for almost 150 years and has served us well. As noted in the above quote from the Amendment, diplomats would not have their children covered since they are not "subject to the jurisdictions" of the United States. Now several Congressmen from several States want us to change the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment to preclude children of undocumented aliens from being considered as US citizens. Unless your white hood has baked your mind in the hot sun, it is obvious who this change movement is meant to target – our Latino/a brothers and sisters from the South. 12,000,000 illegals will marry and have kids and these kids will then become a voting bloc. If you have spent a career opposing the presence of these people in a nice white America, such a voting bloc could present a real job security threat. Do you think "illegal" Canadians worry about their kids being accepted as Americans? I doubt it. This effort to push for changes in the 14<sup>th</sup> Amendment did not occur until we started seeing more and more Hispanic surnames holding office in the various States throughout this country. OMG, if we don't do something quick, democracy will enable almost anyone to hold public office and majority groups will now be able to set policy. We simply cannot have such a situation in a democracy so let's alter our perception of what constitutes a democracy. We should be very proud of these lawmakers since they have taken the stand that they and only they really know what was going through our fore fathers's minds. We probably need to begin looking at freedoms of religion next since those evil Moslems want to build a Mosque on private lands in New York "near" ground zero. After that let's check out freedoms of the press, speech and protections of our persons places or things – you can never be too careful you know. </span></span></div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-38613125884776037972010-08-01T10:30:00.004-04:002010-08-05T21:41:24.226-04:00Doncha just luv it??!!<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">I am dropping this entire article into my blog noting that it relieves me immensely to realize that I am not the only person who believes America has gone a little short on common sense and integrity. I am writing this even now as the news is reporting some Baptist minister is sponsoring a Burn a Quran Day at his "church". I can only shake my head and recall that my brother was murdered in Ireland in 1988 for being a Catholic. I hope (and excuse me for saying this) that this "ministers" church is scheduled to be on the evening news as the typical seasonal report noting that his building in town was the only building wiped out in a small tornado that didn't kill or hurt anyone...you know the story...we see it all the time...</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In my own State the Attorney General. Mr. Cuccinelli, is suing the US Government to oppose the recent health care reform. Again, a separate State deciding on which "laws of the land" they will chose to obey. Break out the grey uniforms and we might want to think about reinforcing Ft. Sumpter. </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">...and yes I am worried about this country...</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 19.5pt;">The state of America? Hysteria</span></div><ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">Tim Rutten </span></li>
</ul><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11.5pt;">Hysterical moral panic seems an apt description for our fevered political condition</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">ByTim Rutten</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><i><span style="color: #930000; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 8.5pt;">July 31, 2010</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="display: none; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">la-oe-0731-rutten-20100731</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">If you reengage the American media after a month out of the country, as I've done this week, it's hard not to conclude that hysteria is now the dominant characteristic of our politics and civic conversation.<br />
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How else to explain the fact that questions like secession and nullification — issues that were resolved in blood by the Civil War more than a century ago — have come alive again and are routinely tossed around, not just by fringe figures but by Republican officeholders and candidates?<br />
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For example, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/zach-wamp-PEPLT006903.topic" title="Zach Wamp"><span style="color: #666666;">Zach Wamp</span></a>, a Tennessee congressman who opposes the recently enacted healthcare reforms and is running for governor, told an interviewer that he hopes "the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government." Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/parties-movements/republican-party-ORGOV0000004.topic" title="Republican Party"><span style="color: #666666;">GOP</span></a> candidates for statewide office in various Midwestern and Southern states are promoting the notion that states ought not to enforce <i>any</i> federal law not approved by at least two-thirds of their state legislators. It's as if John C. Calhoun suddenly had risen from the grave and had a talk show.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% white; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 10.5pt;">In Nevada, the Republican candidate for the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/u.s.-senate-ORGOV0000134.topic" title="U.S. Senate"><span style="color: #666666;">U.S. Senate</span></a> has discussed abolishing Social Security and darkly mused over whether Washington's alleged overreaching may require a "2nd Amendment solution." That means guns, a prospect that could be facilitated in one state after another by an outfit called Appleseed, which holds weekend seminars whose participants are given a mix of Minuteman pseudo-history and instruction on marksmanship.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, attempts to repeal sections of the Constitution continue apace. The so-called 10thers, who want to roll back 100 years of federal law and regulation in order to assert rights under the<b> </b>10th Amendment, are almost unremarkably ubiquitous in the GOP. Candidates across the country<b> </b>pining for "tea party" support have endorsed repeal of the 17th Amendment, which would end popular election of U.S. Senators and return their selection to state legislatures, a step that theoretically would "restore states' rights."<br />
<br />
The most popular such movement involves abolishing or gutting the 10th Amendment as a way to deny American citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. Even the ostensibly moderate Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has signed on to that one, while Rep. Louie Gohmert (R- Texas) speculates that such children actually are terrorist moles planted here to grow up as U.S. citizens as part of a long-range plot.<br />
<br />
Nothing quite tops the anti-Muslim hysteria, which has led people to organize opposition to the construction of new mosques in places from Lower Manhattan to Temecula. One candidate for statewide office in Tennessee — somebody should examine their water supply — argues that the 1st Amendment does not cover Muslims.<br />
<br />
Some inclined toward therapeutic explanations of history might attribute all this to a kind of collective post-traumatic <a href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/health/behavioral-conditions/stress-HEBEC000014.topic" title="Stress"><span style="color: #666666;">stress</span></a> syndrome engendered by the lingering, still-unresolved aftermath of the horrific events of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/unrest-conflicts-war/terrorism/september-11-2001-attacks-EVHST000001.topic" title="September 11, 2001 Attacks"><span style="color: #666666;">9/11</span></a>. Others might point to the dislocating effect of electing an African American president to govern a society in which strong currents of racial anxiety still eddy beneath the surface of everyday life. Perhaps both forces act in unseen concert.<br />
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Back in the early 1970s — an era whose tumult we yet may come to regard as benign — social scientists here and in Britain coined the term "moral panic" to describe what can happen when groups of people are seized by an exaggerated fear that other people or communal forces threaten their values or way of life. The scholars described those who promoted the panic's spread as "moral entrepreneurs" — a term that takes on a deep resonance when you consider the commentators and politicians who have attached themselves, and their interests, to the "tea party" and its attendant movements.<br />
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In the midst of moral panic, inchoate indignation stands in for reason; accusation and denunciation supplant dialogue and argument; history and facts are rendered malleable, merely adjuncts of the moral entrepreneur's — or should we say provocateur's — rhetorical will. As we now also see, a self-interested mass media with an economic stake in the theatricality of raised and angry voices can transmit moral panic like a pathogen.<br />
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Looking around the United States in the summer of 2010, hysterical moral panic seems an apt description of our fevered political condition.<br />
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<a href="mailto:timothy.rutten@latimes.com"><span style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">timothy.rutten@latimes.com</span></a> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-17566435714109219122010-07-22T19:48:00.000-04:002010-07-22T19:49:01.765-04:00Where did all the oil REALLY come from?<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><font face="georgia,serif">I don't have any answers to the issue I am going to raise here but I just wanted you to think about a problem that has bothered me for some tome now. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It goes right to the heart of another issue – how easy it is to promulgate a lie on the American people. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>To best understand what I will cover you need to begin thinking in very large numbers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>OK here goes nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Imagine a Jurassic era world with an unusual trait. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It seems all of the animals in this area are gathered in about a dozen places in this world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They are not just gathered at these sites but they packed in almost shoulder to shoulder for miles in all directions. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They live their lives in this manner and die virtually at the same site in which they were born. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These are not little barnyard animals but rather behemoths weighing in at over fifty tons adult weight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They have been gathering at these sites for millennia in a world that must have been simply overcome with enough flora, fauna and fresh water to feed these millions of animals and the supply of food and water has been continuous for the same number of millennia that the animals have existed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When they die, they apparently do so in similar close order fashion and apparently with each succeeding death stacked on top of the preceding death. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Then something in this strange world happens that causes these huge piles of cadavers to become covered with some substance that prevents these bodies from simply withering away into dust. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead they are completely covered and shi4elded from the natural influences that would shrivel these bodies into nothing but rather they continued to sink deeper and deeper into the earth where pressure and other natural forces drains and coverts the hydrocarbons from these bodies and deposited them into deep pools to await harvesting by man millions of years later. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That is how we are supposed to accept the formation of deep oil in our mantel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now let's look at this fairy tale a little closer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>One dinosaur under the most perfect natural conditions would produce a couple of barrels of oil. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now that presumes that no other predator ate some of the deceased dinosaur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It also presumes that the body was not allowed to be exposed to a week or two of sunlight and air which would greatly decompose the cadaver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead it presumes that the dead lizard gets buried under a very deep covering of protective silt almost immediately and then be subjected to just the right amount of heat and pressure to cause the chemical change required to covert the rotting corpse into petroleum. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Now since our oil deposits are found in only a few narrow geographic areas of the world, this dead animal would have to have been accompanied by billions of like animals all of whom died, got covered immediately and were then exposed to the identical chemical and physical processes needed to convert them to oil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This fairy tale also assumes there was enough of these well handled cadavers to produce the billions of gallons of oil that we have harvested in the last century or so at a rate of about one hundred gallons per adult beast. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Oh oh…now that pesky thing called math takes over. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Even if you can accept that in about ten places of the world over a period of about a million years, all the animals of the world came to one of these sites to die and be covered over completely the number requirements simply does not compute. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There simply were not enough animals to produce the amount of oil we have thus far harvested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Remember these brutes would have eaten tons of food each day and the billions of animals that would have had to exist at one time just so maybe a couple of hundred thousand got a "proper burial" does not conform to what we know or surmise about how they lived and roamed the earth. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So if billions of dinosaurs gathering in Prudhoe Bay, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia or Odessa, Texas didn't produce the oil what did? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>A Russian astrophysicist named Andre Velikov came up with a much more believable solution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Let me know if you want me to let you in on his theories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They are really fascinating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></font></p> John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1354329165927967629.post-18510109244831022462010-07-22T13:16:00.001-04:002010-07-22T15:57:14.903-04:00Let's look at some "facts" instead of hype<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In the following few paragraphs, I am going to try to I am going to try my best to be as neutral as I can noting only the facts as I see them or have read about them in various media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The topic is the current administration and how it has been treated by the press and my friends and neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will undoubtedly make a mistake or two especially in regards to actual numbers and statistics but look past these errors for what I am really trying go convey in the message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">To begin with, it was a monumental vote that placed a black man at the helm of this great nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much of what has happened since then is that simple fact in itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not only has a liberal moved into the Whitehouse, property often thought to belong only to the Conservatives, but a black liberal on top of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A person holding a political office in rural West Virginia confided to me that although she was a yellow dog democrat she simply could not bring herself to vote for a black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I heard this not once but literally dozens of times from all sorts of voters during the election and though I may have at first attempted to take the time to explain Mr. Obama's agenda, I soon realized that this door was closed and that was that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since taking the Whitehouse, America has allowed its 1950s style fears to once again take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama was not looked upon as a prominent lawyer who sold over two million copies of his book BEFORE he ran for national office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nope, he was the reincarnation the Black Panther, Black Muslim, civil rights marching radical extremist who somehow illegally stole the office of the Presidency and now, that he is there he has some secret socialistic jihad agenda to destroy America.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far he has not sought to take anyone's weapons away from them and has not decreed Christianity forbidden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has won all of his major actions by clear majorities and in most cases super majorities of Congress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He eschewed backroom politics in favor of presenting his issues openly and in some cases to public forums and at none of these did I see a single leather coated black beret body guard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet even though the voice of the people as expressed in its Congress has spoken in favor of his major policy decisions, a very loud minority within the Congress has in essence said that the people are wrong and that they, this very vocal minority, will speak over the wishes of the people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Let's look at just a few of the half truths or outright deceptions being given out as fact to the American people by this vocal minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The President will pay for his health care reform by cutting Medicare for the aged.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Truth</b>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama noted he will help pay for his health reforms by eliminating <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>$500M from Medicare in the form of attacking waste, fraud and abuse in <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Medicare. Last week he conducted a seven State raid and stopped $250M in</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">such abuse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another six or seven States and he will have met his goal and no </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">money will have been cut except money being paid to criminals.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">2)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama must accept a lion's harem of the responsibility for not taking immediate steps to stop the BP oil spill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Truth</b>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under Federal law passed under George W Bush, when an oil disaster <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>occurs, the offending oil company is the action agency to halt the spill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">US Government does not have any indigenous oil spill equipment in its arsenal <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>and must rely on private industry to react accordingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would sending 10,000 or<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>even 50,000 National Guardsmen have helped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not likely since they are trained <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>for population control and not oil spill cleanup. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The US Coast Guard was on site w</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">ithin hours and stayed there until even now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>National assets (satellites and spy type planes) were put at the disposal of the cleanup effort the same day. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama visited the site within seven days but note that the presence of the<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>President at such catastrophes is not a help but rather a hindrance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Security p</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">rocedures, dog and pony shows and low level politicians seeking photo ops do not assist anyone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Think back on every time you saw the President and all of the toadies who gathered around him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not much beach cleaning was going on was it?</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">3)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Obama should have out his best brains on the problem to stop the oil spill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><strong>Truth</strong>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did and guess what? Brain trust advised against most of the gimmicks n</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">ow being put into place by the same toadies who gathered around the President.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sand berms?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are using sand from the ocean bottoms right off shore which deepen the harbors and dramatically change the tide patterns <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ESPECIALLY during tidal surges that accompany hurricanes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good luck </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">New Orleans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The berms are also made of sand which will at first soak up the o</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">il then when the first hard wind comes and sloshes over the berms they will dissolve in the rush of the oncoming water and release their soaked up stored</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>oil much further inland now driven by this tidal surge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good luck upper <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>Mississippi River basin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Bobby Jindal knows more than all the scientist </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">so the berm building goes on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">Those are just a few items from the current headlines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Undoubtedly the Tea Party will be able to conduct its scare campaign against blacks and liberals and gin up a lot of spit and vinegar but in the end – inside the voting booth, the American people have a way of shoveling their way through the cow dung and I expect they will do so this coming November as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they do fall victim to the hype, much like a bad haircut, it is only a matter of time until they can see what they have unloosed upon our nation and allow the same voting booth fix the problem.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>John James Kieltyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221907930650484073noreply@blogger.com0