Devereaux Daily Dose

Time to get off the sofa....

2013-04-18T12:21:00.002-07:00

Do you read biographies? If not, it is high time you do...or at least watch some on the Biography channel.

Watching or reading a Biography does not mean you wish to live your life vicariously through someone else who has "made it " big enough to warrant a biography. No, it is far more important than that. After wading through a few biographies you will find that there is a very strong theme that runs through most of them. It is that theme that we should be looking for, and seeking an understanding of that can be adapted to our own lives and our own success.

If you want to know how to become a rock star, read rock star biographies. A businessman? Read biographies. A great teacher...biographies. Every possible success can be found in Biographies.

And don't forget the old adage, do not reinvent the wheel. If you want to be successful, copy what successful people have done.

OK..so I like biographies. But why do I find them so interesting?

Lets take a quick look at one person who has seen success....Danny DeVito.

Now Danny was the youngest of 3 children, having two sisters 16 years and 10 years older than him. (Maybe a change of life baby?) He was basically raised by his sisters, and went to work as a hair stylist in his sisters salon.

He was very good at it and was much in demand from the customers. His sister suggested he learn cosmetology and he decided that was a good idea, so looked for a make-up school. The only one was with an acting school and he had to qualify as an actor to do the classes in film makeup.

He liked acting so much that he went full time to acting school. He got a role in a small play where he met someone who would be significant in his career. That person was Michael Douglas, and they shared an apartment in New York until Michael Douglas got the gig with Streets of San Francisco. (Even though Douglas was in California he still sent his share of the rent back to DeVito who was still in New York.)

DeVito got his first break when he got a role in the Oscar winning move, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with Jack Nicholson. Danny really expected that the amazing success and critical acclaim of this movie and his role would launch his career, but it was not to be. His career languished for many years, with the occasional bit parts and little else. His stature was an issue for him and he was even told that "nobody wants a 5"0" character actor".

At the age of 34 his career really started with a starring role in the TV show, Taxi. His stature and agressive New York style made him a very appealing character in a show with many stars. When Taxi finished its run after 4 or 5 years, DeVito was again unemployed with a career that appeared to be going nowhere.

But he refused to give up. He wanted to be more than just an actor. He also wanted to be a director and a producer. Michael Douglas was a significant part of the next step in his career. Wanting to produce a movie, Douglas got together with DeVito and did Romancing the Stone, such a huge hit that it was followed with Crown of the Nile. DeVito had really arrived now, and strung together a list of hits including his directorial debut in Throw Momma from the Train.

DeVito around this time was looking at Producing more movies and saw a film by a young relatively unknown director that he found so appealing that he paid the director $900k for the rights to produce the next movie that director was planning. The film that struck DeVito so much that he handed over $900k sight unseen for the next project, was Reservoir Dogs by the relatively unknown Quentin Tarrantino. His next movie, Pulp Fiction was a huge success, produced by DeVito's company.

OK. So, DeVito started as a hairdresser and become a multimillionaire film producer. Did he stop there? No.

He has now gone back to his roots and turned full circle to once again starring in a TV show, "It's always sunny in Philadelphia."

So what can we learn from this short biography of DeVito?

1. stature is more about who you are than how you look. At 5 foot tall DeVito lacks physical stature, but makes it up in ability, determinatioon, and creativity. Never think you can't do something because you are too tall, too short, to heavy, too light, too dark, too white, too bald etc etc. The only people who think that are those willing to live by other people's rules. Live by your own and you never know how you can change the world.

2. every person you meet is a possible ally for you. Never assume that the person you are talking too is not someone who can help you in the future. Treat everyone as if they are important to you, as a person first, and then that will usually come back to help you in the future. Treat someone like crap, and it will usually come back to bite you in the ass when you are not looking! DeVito struck a friendship with Douglas when both were struggling poverty stricken young actors. That friendship paid off big time.

3. from humble beginnings, great things can emerge. DeVito was a hair stylist. His sister gave him the confidence and encouragement to succeed. Just as auctioneers are fond of saying, it does not matter where you start...it is where you finish that counts.

So get off that couch, stop finding excuses, and go be who you want to be.

.....devereaux

Going Galt....

2013-02-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

Disgust.

That is the only word I can find right now.

For the last several weeks I have been thinking very carefully about what this blog should be doing for the coming 4 years…and as I watch the Liar-in-Chief and his machinations in the White House, as I watch his lies, his deceptions and his attacks on the Constitution I am thankful that at least conservatives hold the House and can put up a fight against this crap.

And then I understood.

The House has no more interest in stopping the march toward tyranny than I have in living in North Korea.

We hear the obligatory bleat from Boehner as he finds a way to increase the debt limit.

We hear the conservatives say that by doing this we can regroup and reduce spending next time around.

I hear the democrats laughing their asses off as they watch the GOP disintegrate in front of their very eyes.

Their mocking is loud and clear as the President suddenly becomes a keen shooter…the White House propagating that lie by taking a picture of his highness holding a shotgun as only a person who has never shot a shotgun in his life could.

And meanwhile every possible move is being made to restrict our 2^nd amendment rights.

While the Conservatives in Congress find a way to appoint John Kerry as Secretary of State…notwithstanding his dishonor of the State in the past. How soon we forget that this excuse for a man threw his medals away…or just pretended…either way he is a disgrace to this Nation and has no right to be anointed Secretary of State. Just another liar. And yet, with nary a question he marches to his new role and states “I have big heels to fill”…well, John Kerry, you better come out of the closet, put on your pumps and start selling America down the Muslim Brotherhood path. ‘Cause if you don’t, there are plenty of Obama disciples in the wings who will do that for him…best watch your back and do his will lest you become just another useful idiot discarded in the street, having to learn to dance in those pumps and fishnets just to make a living!

Over these last few weeks I have struggled to understand how America has reached this point.

And frankly, I have no idea.

Education? Maybe.

Intimidation? Definitely.

The “have nots” outnumbering the “haves”? Certainly.

But none of this explains the absolute lack of backbone shown by conservative politicians. None of this accounts for the total lack of political savvy within the minds of conservatives in Congress. None of this accounts for the cowardice, poor judgment, and lack of knowledge displayed by those we have elected to represent us.

And therein lays the problem.

These are the men and women we have chosen to represent us…and we have selected fools and cowards (not necessarily in that order).

There is no doubt in my mind that we get the government we deserve…but to think that we have elected a bunch of Lilly-livered pathetic, inarticulate and scared little children as the men and women we hope will stand up for us is insane.

We are the problem…we elected children to fight liars and egomaniacs. Why would we expect anything different to what we have?

And so I am disgusted.

For once it is not with Obama…he is exactly who 51% of the population voted for, and while I immensely dislike the person, he is who he is by nature. I hate what he has done to the Office…and he will one day answer for the irreparable damage he and his followers, his disciples, have done to this country…but that will not be anytime soon.

No, I am disgusted with the conservatives in this country who continue to elect a core of intellectually and morally bankrupt pretenders to Congress. People who secretly harbor white man’s guilt and love Obama on the throne. They are scared of being called racists…and are terrified of the union thugs.

They no longer know what is right, nor if it is even worth fighting for…the only survival they know is to put on the Nike’s and run as fast as they can when Obama says “Boo!”.

Disgust!

So what can we do?

Well…I for one, am ashamed of the people of this country. I am tired of fighting an overwhelming force of evil. My wounds run deep…my faith in the conservatives in this country is sorely shaken.

I no longer feel qualified to be a part of the charge to rightness, let alone a leader.

I need to regroup…to step away…to accept that this battle is lost and to determine how the war can be won. Being involved on a daily basis does not allow me to see the big picture. Being consumed by doubt, anguish, and yes, fears for the future of this country, does not a leader make.

And so I am letting go for now. Call it going Galt if you will.

I am stepping away. I am licking my wounds to fight another day.

So what will I be doing?

I will be doing what Obama hates most…I will be making money. I will be preparing for the safety of my family. I will not be caught unawares if the shit hits the fan.

Yes, I am arming myself. I am ensuring adequate supplies of guns and ammunition and food and water are available at all times.

I hope I won’t need them.

And I will continue to write…perhaps not here on this blog, although I may from time to time. Certainly not as regularly as I have done.

I will ration my media. Very little news, very little politics will enter my home.

I am becoming the hermit who cares not for the world outside. We have made our choices and now have to live with them as best we can. Life is too short to spend in grief. I am going to live mine by choice…my choice.

Perhaps in doing this I will become the very thing that Obama fears most….a free man.

Perhaps we should all do the same.

…..devereaux

Newsflash! Devereaux supports Obama!

2013-01-11T11:25:00.001-08:00

Well…it seems to have happened.

All my friends warned me that if I keep watching politics it would eventually happen. Leftists have been convinced for years that I would one day see the light…a future I could not only not imagine, but one that would turn my stomach to goop and send me running to the nearest bathroom so I could expel it!

Even my enemies warned me that one day it would happen.

Well…it seems that that long awaited day has arrived.

Before I go any further, are there any volunteers out there who are willing to take a short trip to hell to see if it has frozen over? I saw an advertisement on TV the other night that clearly showed a pig flying, so it appears that weird things are happening.

And the weirdest of them all?

I found something that I and President Obama agree on!

No way?

Yep. Way.

So what is this amazing thing?

Obama has been getting grief over his lack of consideration for race and gender when selecting candidates for his cabinet. Yep…he has decided that neither race nor gender is a good indication of ability. THIS IS WHAT I AGREE WITH.

Unfortunately my agreement seems to stop there.

You see Obama has gone further and determined that neither race nor gender NOR ability is important for his candidates. He is an equal opportunity recruiter of incompetence…but his doting fans are critical of his sexist and racist agenda.

After all…he has just selected four white guys to be his Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Treasury Secretary and head of the CIA.

“Where are the women?” the women scream.

“Where are the blacks?” the blacks scream.

“Where are the Latino’s?” the Latinos scream.

And the stupidest comments of all?

The makeup of Obama’s cabinet should look like America. It should represent the diversity of which America is so proud.

So, that got me to thinking….if incompetence is a pre-requisite for appointment, well, there are a number of things that can be done to assure that the US government looks like America.

Just a little side trip here…for those of you who doubt that incompetence is a pre-requisite….just take a look at Holder, Sebelius, Solis, Chu and Napolitano to name a few.

So, in the spirit of enlightenment that creates a Cabinet that looks like America I have come up with a simple plan of action.

This Obama guy is all about fairness…so my plan builds that into account. It also acknowledges that elections have consequences…so the makeup of the Cabinet must reflect the makeup of the voters that elected the president. Therefore we can ignore anything about people who voted for Romney.

Let’s see what we can find out Obama voters:-

It will be too time consuming to actually do the research but since this is merely an example of “how” my plan would work, estimates are fine…

1. Blacks – Obama got 93%

2. Latino – Obama got 71%

3. Young voters – 60%

4. Women – 53%

5. Jews – 69%

Now we have to make some assumptions for the purposes of explanation.

Let’s assume that Obama’s voters look like this:-

Blacks 15%

Latinos 12%

Women 15%

White men 10%

Students/young people 45%

Old white guys 1%

Others 2%

Remember these are merely an example of what the Obama numbers MAY look like.

SO…lets get back to diversity.

If government was being fair…then Obama’s cabinet should comprise the identical breakdown as his voting base.

We need a new government department…perhaps called “The Department Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments”. This cabinet position will be tasked with ensuring that the Presidential appointments to his cabinet match the same diversity as his voters. (A big advantage is that billions of dollars will be needed to fund this department…and it will employ thousands if not millions of people to conduct exit interviews of all voters so that it can statistically calculate the diversity program at each election cycle.

After all…we must be fair with all government actions.

The Department of Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments is tasked with ensuring the correct diversity.

For instance…there are currently 16 Cabinet level departments.

According to the numbers above the heads of these departments MUST be:-

15% Black (2)

12% Latino (2)

15% Women (2)

10% White men (2)

45% young people/students (7)

1% Old white guys (0)

2% Others (0)

So that comes up to 15….of course a black female student falls into three categories, thus leaving two extra spaces on the roster!

If this was instituted maybe we could get a cabinet that looks something like this?

Secretary of State – someone who is good at international stuff, enjoys travel and can be looked up to on the international stage….ummm….how about Beyonce? She fits those requirements and fills one of the black slots perfectly. Also much easier to look at than that piece of crap we currently have!

Secretary of Agriculture – someone with knowledge of food and where to get it, and how to use it…Rosie O’Donnel is the natural choice…and ticks off one of the women’s slots.

Secretary of Energy – a no brainer…Matt Damon – gets the Hollywood folks on Board and fills the white man slot.

Secretary of Education – not a hard one….just go down to the unemployment lines and recruit anybody with a liberal arts degree to fill the slot .

You see how it will work?

Of course, there are many MANY departments and agencies that have to be treated in the same way…and then the employment within those agencies have to be diversity checked too.

And then we get to the real dilemma…so far, The Department of Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments has an easy job…but what about Congress? Surely Congress should also represent the diversity of America…we need to somehow examine the voters preferences and disbar people that do not meet the diversity criteria….but what do we do to be fair?

This is sticky…so I think the Department of Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments should be given broad powers to prevent the appointment of any elected official in congress if his or her appointment would mean the balance of diversity in each house of Congress is not maintained. In the even that an elected official be blocked by the Department, they have the power to appoint someone of their choosing to fill the vacancy and ensure diversity balance is maintained.

The Head of the Department of Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments is a cabinet level position and therefore appointed by the President.

Elections have consequences!

So, Mr. President, your refusal to allow race or gender to have any impact on your selection of incompetent folk to your cabinet is a good thing.

About the only good thing I have seen to date from you.

But I forgot one thing…

How could I forget this?

How does the Department of Truth and Diversity in Political Appointments deal with the two major groups that swung this last election for Obama?

The illegal immigrant is clearly a problem…as estimates are difficult to obtain of their numbers. To be on the safe side the Department may have to ensure the President goes down to the local Home Depot and recruits Jose while he waits for a day labor job….he can Secretary of Homeland Security! That solves that problem.

The other group is the dead…even harder to be fair to.

Let me see…

I would gladly buy Obama a one way ticket to…the place he is carrying America in his hand-basket…perhaps while there he could count the voters….

On second thoughts…does it really matter? His current cabinet is brain dead already…

So there you have it.

For once Obama got it right….if he didn’t the Department of Fairness and Diversity in Political Appointments would be visiting a polling booth near you and making sure that illegals and dead folk have a say!

Stupid is….

…..devereaux

Ignorance...way to go America.

2013-01-03T13:14:00.001-08:00

Ignorance – “lack of knowledge, information, or education; the state of being ignorant”.

Wake up America!

You have chosen to elect ignorance as your salvation. You have chosen ignorance as your leader. You have determined that a life of ignorance is more valuable than a life pursuing knowledge.

There is no other explanation for the stupidity of the last couple of months.

You elected a man as President who has absolutely no interest in what is best for the country. He neither knows nor cares.

You have elected a Congress that has absolutely no interest in steering the country forward (with a few exceptions)…a Congress that cares only about their re-election prospects.

Other explanations could include lunacy, insanity, greed and selfishness…but I find it hard to believe that so many people would fall into one of those categories (although it is clear that greed and selfishness played a big role in the last election cycle. After all, one candidate promised jobs, while the other promised free gifts. One suggested working for a living while the other said he would look after you. One has a record of job creation while the other has never created a job in his life. And many people said…why should I work for a living? I will vote for the guy that doesn’t want me to work!

They don’t know his name, nor did they care. They just wanted more phones, more unemployment checks and more freebies.

But not everyone who voted for the piece of crap in the Whitehouse today falls into that category.

Many are educated…may have degrees…many are not ill-informed. So why did they vote for Obama?

Ignorance!

You see ignorance is not just a result of being uneducated. It is also the result of poor education…or the result of a planned dumbing down of the population.

You think I am over-reaching?

How about this…

The Common Core standards are an effort to nationalize the standards and assessments upon which every public school in America would base its curriculum. The Obama administration has poured billions of dollars into the effort via federal “Race to the Top” grants. Under the guise of Standardizing education, they are in fact dumbing down the students.

How?

English teachers are being told that 50 percent of their course material must be derived from “informational texts.” (Actually, the informational text requirement starts at a “mere” 25 percent of reading material for kindergarteners. It rises to 70 percent for high school seniors.)

Among recommended “informational texts” on the national standards list we find The Federal Reserve Bank’s “FedViews,” “The Evolution of the Grocery Bag,” and “Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas.” And, roll over “For Whom the Bell Tolls” it’s time to make way for that GSA classic: “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.”

If you have ever read any of these documents you will know that they are not exactly what one would define as literary classics. There is nothing like government publications to redefine the meaning of words, make up new words, and totally misrepresent the truth in every way imaginable.

And the plot usually sucks, the narrative is less than creative and any dialogue is completely irrelevant.

Government publications, or information texts, as they are now described, offer nothing of the creativity or wordsmithing of classic literature.

And this is considered the gold standard for education?

The Obama administration has invested millions of your dollars to promote the use of government propaganda as a replacement for classic literature.

If you are having trouble believing this disgrace, simply Google “Common Core Standards” and you will find more research material than I want to read!

So…starting with the children we not only dumb them down by not concentrating on classic literature in English classes but we are encouraged to indoctrinate them with government double speak!

No wonder we have a generational issue with ignorance.

And the sad but complete truth is that both Democrat and Republican administrations are to blame.

On the economic front we pass a bill that not only raises the tax rate on individuals earning over $400k ($450 for families) but include enough pork to more than use all the increased tax revenues.

This is how the Republicans decide we should resolve the financial cliff issue?

The Republicans have become the party of bend over and take whatever is coming…when the bell rings turn around!

I can’t wait for the next round of serious negotiations over the debt limit.

The only question that remains in my mind is whether it takes until the 11^th hour for the Republicans to wave the white flag…or whether they will just save everyone a whole lot of anguish and just roll over now.

As far as I am concerned, the American people deserve better than the farce the Republicans are giving them….it is not even entertaining or good theater!

But then again….we will always get the Government we deserve.

And when ignorant people vote, we get ignorant government.

Stupid is…..

And there is plenty to go around.

…..devereaux

What to do......

2012-12-20T13:25:00.001-08:00

While the shock and horror of the Newtown shootings lingers, the politicians are screaming that we “must do something”. Obama is blathering that we “will do something” and the liberal anti-gun brigade are using every tired and wrong argument possible.

I hate that so many innocents were slaughtered. My heart goes out to the families, friends and associates of those who lost their lives. My tears for America roll down my cheeks with every thought of what took place in that Newtown school.

And I am convinced that the solution is NOT more gun control.

I have not written until now because I was unable to express my thoughts…and it took until now for me to find someone who was better able to express my own thoughts…that someone is Larry Correia.

Larry Correia is the New York Times bestselling author of the Monster Hunter International series, the Grimnoir Chronicles, and the thriller Dead Six. My next novel, Monster Hunter Legion, will be available September 2012. All of my books are available in eBook format, but currently only from www.baen.com's webscriptions. (cheap and DRM free!) Audio versions of most of my books are available from www.audible.com.

This is what Larry has to say….

An Opinion on Gun Control

Posted on December 20, 2012 by correia45

I didn’t want to post about this, because frankly, it is exhausting. I’ve been having this exact same argument for my entire adult life. It is not an exaggeration when I say that I know pretty much exactly every single thing an anti-gun person can say. I’ve heard it over and over, the same old tired stuff, trotted out every single time there is a tragedy on the news that can be milked. Yet, I got sucked in, and I’ve spent the last few days arguing with people who either mean well but are uninformed about gun laws and how guns actually work (who I don’t mind at all), or the willfully ignorant (who I do mind), or the obnoxiously stupid who are completely incapable of any critical thinking deeper than a Facebook meme (them, I can’t stand).

Today’s blog post is going to be aimed at the first group. I am going to try to go through everything I’ve heard over the last few days, and try to break it down from my perspective. My goal tonight is to write something that my regular readers will be able to share with their friends who may not be as familiar with how mass shootings or gun control laws work.

A little background for those of you who don’t know me, and this is going to be extensive so feel free to skip the next few paragraphs, but I need to establish the fact that I know what I am talking with, because I am sick and tired of my opinion having the same weight as a person who learned everything they know about guns and violence from watching TV.

I am now a professional novelist. However, before that I owned a gun store. We were a Title 7 SOT, which means we worked with legal machineguns, suppresors, and pretty much everything except for explosives. We did law enforcement sales and worked with equipment that is unavailable from most dealers, but that means lots and lots of government inspections and compliance paperwork. This means that I had to be exceedingly familiar with federal gun laws, and there are a lot of them. I worked with many companies in the gun industry and still have many friends and contacts at various manufacturers. When I hear people tell me the gun industry is unregulated, I have to resist the urge to laugh in their face.

I was also a Utah Concealed Weapons instructor, and was one of the busiest instructors in the state. That required me to learn a lot about self-defense laws, and because I took my job very seriously, I sought out every bit of information that I could. My classes were longer than the standard Utah class, and all of that extra time was spent on Use of Force, shoot/no shoot scenarios, and role playing through violent encounters. I have certified thousands of people to carry guns.

I have been a firearms instructor, and have taught a lot of people how to shoot defensively with handguns, shotguns, and rifles. For a few years of my life, darn near every weekend was spent at the range. I started out as an assistant for some extremely experienced teachers and I also had the opportunity to be trained by some of the most accomplished firearms experts in the world. The man I stole most of my curriculum from was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Special Forces, turned federal agent SWAT team commander. I took classes in everything from wound ballistics (10 hours of looking at autopsy slides) to high-speed cool-guy door-kicking stuff. I’ve worked extensively with military and law enforcement personnel, including force on force training where I played the OpFor (i.e. I got to be the bad guy, because I make an awesome bad guy. You tell me how evil/capable you want me to be, and how hard you want your men to work, and I’d make it happen, plus I can take a beating). Part of this required learning how mass shooters operate and studying the heck out of the actual events.

I have been a competition shooter. I competed in IPSC, IDPA, and 3gun. It was not odd for me to reload and shoot 1,000 rounds in any given week. I fired 20,000 rounds of .45 in one August alone. I’ve got a Remington 870 with approximately 160,000 rounds through it. I’ve won matches, and I’ve been able to compete with some of the top shooters in the country. I am a very capable shooter. I only put this here to convey that I know how shooting works better than the vast majority of the populace.

I have written for national publications on topics relating to gun law and use of force. I wrote for everything from the United States Concealed Carry Association to SWAT magazine. I was considered a subject matter expert at the state level, and on a few occasions was brought in to testify before the Utah State Legislature on the ramifications of proposed gun laws. I’ve argued with lawyers, professors, professional lobbyists, and once made a state rep cry.

Basically for most of my adult life, I have been up to my eyeballs in guns, self-defense instruction, and the laws relating to those things. So believe me when I say that I’ve heard every argument relating to gun control possible. It is pretty rare for me to hear something new, and none of this stuff is new.

Armed Teachers

So now that there is a new tragedy the president wants to have a “national conversation on guns”. Here’s the thing. Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.

Now when I say teachers carrying concealed weapons on Facebook I immediately get a bunch of emotional freak out responses. You can’t mandate teachers be armed! Guns in every classroom! Emotional response! Blood in the streets!

No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.

Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter (often one in rural areas or if help is going to take another minute, because there are a lot of very sound tactical reasons for using two, mostly because your success/survival rates jump dramatically when you put two guys through a door at once. The shooter’s brain takes a moment to decide between targets). The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.

However, cops can’t be everywhere. There are at best only a couple hundred thousand on duty at any given time patrolling the entire country. Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back.

So if we can’t have cops there, what can we do?

The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.

The teachers are there already. The school staff is there already. Their reaction time is measured in seconds, not minutes. They can serve as your immediate violent response. Best case scenario, they engage and stop the attacker, or it bursts his fantasy bubble and he commits suicide. Worst case scenario, the armed staff provides a distraction, and while he’s concentrating on killing them, he’s not killing more children.

But teachers aren’t as trained as police officers! True, yet totally irrelevant. The teacher doesn’t need to be a SWAT cop or Navy SEAL. They need to be speed bumps.

But this leads to the inevitable shrieking and straw man arguments about guns in the classroom, and then the pacifistic minded who simply can’t comprehend themselves being mandated to carry a gun, or those that believe teachers are all too incompetent and can’t be trusted. Let me address both at one time.

Don’t make it mandatory. In my experience, the only people who are worth a darn with a gun are the ones who wish to take responsibility and carry a gun. Make it voluntary. It is rather simple. Just make it so that your state’s concealed weapons laws trump the Federal Gun Free School Zones act. All that means is that teachers who voluntarily decide to get a concealed weapons permit are capable of carrying their guns at work. Easy. Simple. Cheap. Available now.

Then they’ll say that this is impossible, and give me all sorts of terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen with a gun in the classroom… No problem, because this has happened before. In fact, my state laws allow for somebody with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in a school right now. Yes. Utah has armed teachers. We have for several years now.

When I was a CCW instructor, I decided that I wanted more teachers with skin in the game, so I started a program where I would teach anybody who worked at a school for free. No charge. Zip. They still had to pay the state for their background check and fingerprints, but all the instruction was free. I wanted more armed teachers in my state.

I personally taught several hundred teachers. I quickly discovered that pretty much every single school in my state had at least one competent, capable, smart, willing individual. Some schools had more. I had one high school where the principal, three teachers, and a janitor showed up for class. They had just had an event where there had been a threat against the school and their resource officer had turned up AWOL. This had been a wake up call for this principal that they were on their own, and he had taken it upon himself to talk to his teachers to find the willing and capable. Good for them.

After Virginia Tech, I started teaching college students for free as well. They were 21 year old adults who could pass a background check. Why should they have to be defenseless? None of these students ever needed to stop a mass shooting, but I’m happy to say that a couple of rapists and muggers weren’t so lucky, so I consider my time well spent.

Over the course of a couple years I taught well over $20,000 worth of free CCW classes. I met hundreds and hundreds of teachers, students, and staff. All of them were responsible adults who understood that they were stuck in target rich environments filled with defenseless innocents. Whether they liked it or not, they were the first line of defense. It was the least I could do.

Permit holders are not cops. The mistake many people make is that they think permit holders are supposed to be cops or junior danger rangers. Not at all. Their only responsibility is simple. If someone is threatening to cause them or a third person serious bodily harm, and that someone has the ability, opportunity, and is acting in a manner which suggest they are a legitimate threat, then that permit holder is allowed to use lethal force against them.

As of today the state legislatures of Texas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma are looking at revamping their existing laws so that there can be legal guns in school. For those that are worried these teachers will be unprepared, I’m sure there would be no lack of instructors in those states who’d be willing to teach them for free.

For everyone, if you are sincere in your wish to protect our children, I would suggest you call your state representative today and demand that they allow concealed carry in schools.

Gun Free Zones

Gun Free Zones are hunting preserves for innocent people. Period.

Think about it. You are a violent, homicidal madman, looking to make a statement and hoping to go from disaffected loser to most famous person in the world. The best way to accomplish your goals is to kill a whole bunch of people. So where’s the best place to go shoot all these people? Obviously, it is someplace where nobody can shoot back.

In all honesty I have no respect for anybody who believes Gun Free Zones actually work. You are going to commit several hundred felonies, up to and including mass murder, and you are going to refrain because there is a sign? That No Guns Allowed sign is not a cross that wards off vampires. It is wishful thinking, and really pathetic wishful thinking at that.

The only people who obey No Guns signs are people who obey the law. People who obey the law aren’t going on rampages.

I testified before the Utah State Legislature about the University of Utah’s gun ban the day after the Trolley Square shooting in Salt Lake City. Another disaffected loser scumbag started shooting up this mall. He killed several innocent people before he was engaged by an off duty police officer who just happened to be there shopping. The off duty Ogden cop pinned down the shooter until two officers from the SLCPD came up from behind and killed the shooter. (turned out one of them was a customer of mine) I sent one of my employees down to Trolley Square to take a picture of the shopping center’s front doors. I then showed the picture to the legislators. One of the rules was NO GUNS ALLOWED.

The man that attacked the midnight showing of Batman didn’t attack just any theater. There were like ten to choose from. He didn’t attack the closest. It wasn’t about biggest or smallest. He attacked the one that was posted NO GUNS ALLOWED.

There were four mass killing attempts this week. Only one made the news because it helped the agreed upon media narrative.

Oregon. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter confronted by permit holder. Shooter commits suicide. Only a few casualties.
Texas. NOT a gun free zone. Shooter killed immediately by off duty cop. Only a few casualties.
Connecticut. GUN FREE ZONE. Shooters kills until the police arrive. Suicide. 26 dead.
China. GUN FREE COUNTRY. A guy with a KNIFE stabs 22 children.

And here is the nail in the coffin for Gun Free Zones. Over the last fifty years, with only one single exception (Gabby Giffords), every single mass shooting event with more than four casualties has taken place in a place where guns were supposedly not allowed.

The Media

Every time there is a mass shooting event, the vultures launch. I find it absolutely fascinating. A bunch of people get murdered, and the same usual suspects show up with the same tired proposals that we’ve either tried before or logic tells us simply will not work. They strike while the iron is hot, trying to push through legislation before there can be coherent thought. We’ve seen this over and over and over again. We saw it succeed in England. We saw it succeed in Australia. We’ve seen it succeed here before.

Yet when anyone from my side responds, then we are shouted at that we are blood thirsty and how dare we speak in this moment of tragedy, and we should just shut our stupid mouths out of respect for the dead, while they are free to promote policies which will simply lead to more dead… If the NRA says something they are bloodthirsty monsters, and if they don’t say something then their silence is damning guilt. It is hypocritical in the extreme, and when I speak out against this I am called every name in the book, I want dead children, I’m a cold hearted monster (the death threats are actually hilarious). If I become angry because they are promoting policies which are tactically flawed and which will do the exact opposite of the stated goals, then I am a horrible person for being angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t be allowed to own guns at all.

But that’s not why I want to talk about the media. I want to talk about the media’s effect on the shooters.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of these killers. One nice thing about playing the villain and being a punching bag for cops, soldiers, and permit holders is that you need to learn about how the bad guys think and operate. And most of the mass shooters fit a similar profile.

The vast majority (last I saw it was over 80%) are on some form of psychotropic drug and has been for many years. They have been on Zoloft or some serotonin inhibitor through their formative years, and their decision making process is often flawed. They are usually disaffected, have been bullied, pushed around, and have a lot of emotional problems. They are delusional. They see themselves as victims, and they are usually striking back at their peer group.

These people want to make a statement. They want to show the world that they aren’t losers. They want to make us understand their pain. They want to make their peer group realize that they are powerful. They’ll show us. The solution is easy. It’s right there in front of your nose.

If you can kill enough people at one time, you’ll be on the news, 24/7, round the clock coverage. You will become the most famous person in the world. Everyone will know your name. You become a celebrity. Experts will try to understand what you were thinking. Hell, the President of the United States, the most important man in the world, will drop whatever he is doing and hold a press conference to talk about your actions, and he’ll even shed a single manly tear.

You are a star.

Strangely enough, this is one of the only topics I actually agree with Roger Ebert on. He didn’t think that the news should cover the shooters or mention their names on the front page of the paper. So whenever the press isn’t talking about guns, or violent movies, or violent video games, or any other thing that hundreds of millions of people participated in yesterday without murdering anybody, they’ll keep showing the killer’s picture in the background while telling the world all about him and his struggles.

And then the cycle repeats, as the next disaffected angry loner takes notes.

They should not be glamorized. They should be hated, despised, and forgotten. They are not victims. They are not powerful. They are murdering scum, and the only time their names should be remembered is when people like me are studying the tactics of how to neutralize them faster.

Mental Health Issues

And right here I’m going to show why I’m different than the people I’ve been arguing with the last few days. I am not an expert on mental health issues or psychiatry or psychology. My knowledge of criminal psychology is limited to understanding the methods of killers enough to know how to fight them better.

So since I don’t have enough first-hand knowledge about this topic to comment intelligently, then I’m not going to comment… Oh please, if only some of the people I’ve been arguing with who barely understand that the bullets come out the pointy end of the gun would just do the same.

Gun Control Laws

As soon as there is a tragedy there comes the calls for “We have to do something!” Sure, the something may not actually accomplish anything as far as solving whatever the tragedy was or preventing the next one, but that’s the narrative. Something evil happened, so we have to do something, and preferably we have to do it right now before we think about it too hard.

The left side of the political spectrum loves it some gun control. Gun control is historically extremely unpopular in red state and purple state America, and thus very hard to pass bit stuff, but there’s a century’s accumulation of lots and lots of small ones. There have been a handful of major federal laws passed in the United States relating to guns, but the majority of really strict gun control has primarily been enacted in liberal dominated urban areas. There are over 20,000 gun laws on the books, and I have no idea how many pages of regulations from the BATF related to the production and selling of them. I’ve found that the average American is extremely uneducated about what gun laws already exist, what they actually do, and even fundamental terminology, so I’m going to go through many of the things I’ve seen argued about over the last few days and elaborate on them one by one.

I will leave out the particularly crazy things I was confronted with, including the guy who was in favor of mandating “automatic robot gun turrets” in schools. Yes. Heaven forbid we let a teacher CCW, so let’s put killer robots (which haven’t actually been invented yet) in schools. Man, I wish I was making this up, but that’s Facebook for you.

We need to ban automatic weapons.

Okay. Done. In fact, we pretty much did that in 1934. The National Firearms Act of 1934 made it so that you had to pay a $200 tax on a machinegun and register it with the government. In 1986 that registry was closed and there have been no new legal machineguns for civilians to own since then.

Automatic means that when you hold down the trigger the gun keeps on shooting until you let go or run out of ammo. Actual automatic weapons cost a lot of money. The cheapest one you can get right now is around $5,000 as they are all collector’s items and you need to jump through a lot of legal hoops to get one. To the best of my knowledge, there has only ever been one crime committed with an NFA weapon in my lifetime, and in that case the perp was a cop.

Now are machineguns still used in crimes? Why, yes they are. For every legally registered one, there are conservatively dozens of illegal ones in the hands of criminals. They either make their own (which is not hard to do) or they are smuggled in (usually by the same people that are able to smuggle in thousands of tons of drugs). Because really serious criminals simply don’t care, they are able to get ahold of military weapons, and they use them simply because criminals, by definition, don’t obey the law. So even an item which has been basically banned since my grandparents were kids, and which there has been no new ones allowed manufactured since I was in elementary school, still ends up in the hands of criminals who really want one. This will go to show how effective government bans are.

When you say “automatic” you mean full auto, as in a machinegun. What I think most of these people mean is semi-auto.

Okay. We need to ban semi-automatic weapons!

Semi-automatic means that each time you pull the trigger the action cycles and loads another round. This is the single most common type of gun, not just in America, but in the whole world. Almost all handguns are semi-automatic. The vast majority of weapons used for self-defense are semi-automatic, as are almost all the weapons used by police officers. It is the most common because it is normally the most effective.

Semi-automatic is usually best choice for defensive use. It is easier to use because you can do so one handed if necessary, and you are forced to manipulate your weapon less. If you believe that using a gun for self-defense is necessary, then you pretty much have to say that semi-auto is okay.

Banning semi-automatic basically means banning all guns. I’ll get to the functional problems with that later.

We should ban handguns!

Handguns are tools for self-defense, and the only reason we use them over the more capable, and easier to hit with rifles or shotguns is because handguns are portable. Rifles are just plain better, but the only reason I don’t carry an AR-15 around is because it would be hard to hide under my shirt.

Concealed Carry works. As much as it offends liberals and we keep hearing horror stories about blood in the streets, the fact is over my lifetime most of the United States has enacted some form of concealed carry law, and the blood in the streets wild west shootouts over parking spaces they’ve predicted simply hasn’t happened. At this point in time there are only a few hold out states, all of them are blue states and all of them have inner cities which suffer from terrible crime, where once again, the criminals simply don’t care.

For information about how more guns actually equals less crime, look up the work of Dr. John Lott. And since liberals hate his guts, look up the less famous work of Dr. Gary Kleck, or basically look up the work of any criminologist or economist who isn’t writing for Slate or Mother Jones.

As for why CCW is good, see my whole first section about arming teachers for a tiny part of the whole picture. Basically bad people are going to be bad and do bad things. They are going to hurt you and take your stuff, because that’s what they do. That’s their career, and they are as good at it as you are at your job. They will do this anywhere they think they can get away with it. We fixate on the mass shooters because they grab the headlines, but in actuality your odds of running in to one of them is tiny. Your odds of having a violent encounter with a run of the mill criminal is orders of magnitudes higher.

I do find one thing highly amusing. In my personal experience, some of the most vehement anti-gun people I’ve ever associated with will usually eventually admit after getting to know me, that if something bad happened, then they really hope I’m around, because I’m one of the good ones. Usually they never realize just how hypocritical and naïve that is.

We should ban Assault Rifles!

Define “assault rifle”…

Uh…

Yeah. That’s the problem. The term assault rifle gets bandied around a lot. Politically, the term is a loaded nonsense one that was created back during the Clinton years. It was one of those tricks where you name legislation something catchy, like PATRIOT Act. (another law rammed through while emotions were high and nobody was thinking, go figure).

To gun experts, an assault rifle is a very specific type of weapon which originated (for the most part) in the 1940s. It is a magazine fed, select fire (meaning capable of full auto), intermediate cartridge (as in, actually not that powerful, but I’ll come back to that later) infantry weapon.

The thing is, real assault rifles in the US have been heavily regulated since before they were invented. The thing that the media and politicians like to refer to as assault rifles is basically a catch all term for any gun which looks scary.

I had somebody get all mad at me for pointing this out, because they said that the term had entered common usage. Okay… If you’re going to legislate it, DEFINE IT.

And then comes up that pesky problem. The US banned assault rifles once before for a decade and the law did absolutely nothing. I mean, it was totally, literally pointless. The special commission to study it said that it accomplished absolutely nothing. (except tick a bunch of Americans off, and as a result we bought a TON more guns) And the reason was that since assault weapon is a nonsense term, they just came up with a list of arbitrary features which made a gun into an assault weapon.

Problem was, none of these features actually made the gun functionally any different or somehow more lethal or better from any other run of the mill firearm. Most of the criteria were so silly that they became a huge joke to gun owners, except of course, for that part where many law abiding citizens accidentally became instant felons because one of their guns had some cosmetic feature which was now illegal.

One of the criteria was that it was semi-automatic. See above. Hard to ban the single most common and readily available type of gun in the world. (unless you believe in confiscation, but I’ll get to that). Then what if it takes a detachable magazine! That’s got to be an Evil Feature. And yes, we really did call the Evil Features. I’ll talk about magazines below, but once again, it is pretty hard to ban something that common unless you want to go on a confiscatory national suicide mission.

For example, flash hiders sound dangerous. Let’s say having a flash hider makes a gun an assault weapon. So flash hiders became an evil feature. Problem is flash hiders don’t do much. They screw onto the end of your muzzle and divert the flash off to the side instead of straight up so it isn’t as annoying when you shoot. It doesn’t actually hide the flash from anybody else. EVIL.

Barrel shrouds were listed. Barrel shrouds are basically useless, cosmetic pieces of metal that go over the barrel so you don’t accidentally touch it and burn your hand. But they became an instantaneous felony too. Collapsible stocks make it so you can adjust your rifle to different size shooters, that way a tall guy and his short wife can shoot the same gun. Nope. EVIL FEATURE!

It has been a running joke in the gun community ever since the ban passed. When Carolyn McCarthy was asked by a reporter what a barrel shroud was, she replied “I think it is the shoulder thing which goes up.” Oh good. I’m glad that thousands of law abiding Americans unwittingly committed felonies because they had a cosmetic piece of sheet metal on their barrel, which has no bearing whatsoever on crime, but could possibly be a shoulder thing which goes up.

Now are you starting to see why “assault weapons” is a pointless term? They aren’t functionally any more powerful or deadly than any normal gun. In fact the cartridges they normally fire are far less powerful than your average deer hunting rifle. Don’t worry though, because the same people who fling around the term assault weapons also think of scoped deer rifles as “high powered sniper guns”.

Basically, what you are thinking of as assault weapons aren’t special.

Now, the reason that semi-automatic, magazine fed, intermediate caliber rifles are the single most popular type of gun in America is because they are excellent for many uses, but I’m not talking about fun, or hunting, or sports, today I’m talking business. And in this case they are excellent for shooting bad people who are trying to hurt you, in order to make them stop trying to hurt you. These types of guns are superb for defending your home. Now some of you may think that’s extreme. That’s because everything you’ve learned about gun fights comes from TV. Just read the link where I expound on why.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/carbine-vs-shotgun-vs-pistol-for-home-defense/

I had one individual tell me that these types of guns are designed to slaughter the maximum number of people possible as quickly as possible… Uh huh… Which is why every single police department in America uses them, because of all that slaughtering cops do daily. Cops use them for the same reason we do, they are handy, versatile, and can stop an attacker quickly in a variety of circumstances.

When I said “stop an attacker quickly” somebody on Twitter thought that he’d gotten me and said “Stop. That’s just a euphemism for kill!” Nope. I am perfectly happy if the attacker surrenders or passes out from blood loss too. Tactically and legally, all I care about is making them stop doing whatever it is that they are doing which caused me to shoot them to begin with.

The guns that many of you think of as assault rifle are common and popular because they are excellent for fighting, and I’ll talk about what my side really thinks about the 2^nd Amendment below.

We should ban magazines over X number of shots!

I’ve seen this one pop up a lot. It sounds good to the ear and really satisfies that we’ve got to do something need. It sounds simple. Bad guys shoot a lot of people in a mass shooting. So if he has magazines that hold fewer rounds, ergo then he’ll not be able to shoot as many people.

Wrong. And I’ll break it down, first why my side wants more rounds in our gun, second why tactically it doesn’t really stop the problem, and third, why stopping them is a logistical impossibility.

First off, why do gun owners want magazines that hold more rounds? Because sometimes you miss. Because usually—contrary to the movies—you have to hit an opponent multiple times in order to make them stop. Because sometimes you may have multiple assailants. We don’t have more rounds in the magazine so we can shoot more, we have more rounds in the magazine so we are forced to manipulate our gun less if we have to shoot more.

The last assault weapons ban capped capacities at ten rounds. You quickly realize ten rounds sucks when you take a wound ballistics class like I have and go over case after case after case after case of enraged, drug addled, prison hardened, perpetrators who soaked up five, seven, nine, even fifteen bullets and still walked under their own power to the ambulance. That isn’t uncommon at all. Legally, you can shoot them until they cease to be a threat, and keep in mind that what normally causes a person to stop is loss of blood pressure, so I used to tell my students that anybody worth shooting once was worth shooting five or seven times. You shoot them until they leave you alone.

Also, you’re going to miss. It is going to happen. If you can shoot pretty little groups at the range, those groups are going to expand dramatically under the stress and adrenalin. The more you train, the better you will do, but you can still may miss, or the bad guy may end up hiding behind something which your bullets don’t penetrate. Nobody has ever survived a gunfight and then said afterwards, “Darn, I wish I hadn’t brought all that extra ammo.”

So having more rounds in the gun is a good thing for self-defense use.

Now tactically, let’s say a mass shooter is on a rampage in a school. Unless his brain has turned to mush and he’s a complete idiot, he’s not going to walk up right next to you while he reloads anyway. Unlike the CCW holder who gets attacked and has to defend himself in whatever crappy situation he finds himself in, the mass shooter is the aggressor. He’s picked the engagement range. They are cowards who are murdering running and hiding children, but don’t for a second make the mistake of thinking they are dumb. Many of these scumbags are actually very intelligent. They’re just broken and evil.

In the cases that I’m aware of where the shooter had guns that held fewer rounds they just positioned themselves back a bit while firing or they brought more guns, and simply switched guns and kept on shooting, and then reloaded before they moved to the next planned firing position. Unless you are a fumble fingered idiot, anybody who practices in front of a mirror a few dozen times can get to where they can insert a new magazine into a gun in a few seconds.

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a very reasonable democrat) was very hung up on this, sure that he would be able to take advantage of the time in which it took for the bad guy to reload his gun. That’s a bad assumption, and here’s yet another article that addresses that sort of misconception that I wrote several years ago which has sort of made the rounds on firearm’s forums.

http://www.northeastshooters.com/vbulletin/threads/45671-My-Gunfight-quot-Thinking-Outside-Your-Box-quot

So that’s awesome if it happens, but good luck with that.

Finally, let’s look at the logistical ramifications of another magazine ban. The AWB banned the production of all magazines over ten rounds except those marked for military or law enforcement use, and it was a felony to possess those.

Over the ten years of the ban, we never ran out. Not even close. Magazines are cheap and basic. Most of them are pieces of sheet metal with some wire. That’s it. Magazines are considered disposable so most gun people accumulate a ton of them. All it did was make magazines more expensive, ticked off law abiding citizens, and didn’t so much as inconvenience a single criminal.

Meanwhile, bad guys didn’t run out either. And if they did, like I said, they are cheap and basic, so you just get or make more. If you can cook meth, you can make a functioning magazine. My old company designed a rifle magazine once, and I’m no engineer. I paid a CAD guy, spent $20,000 and churned out several thousand 20 round Saiga .308 mags. This could’ve been done out of my garage.

Ten years. No difference. Meanwhile, we had bad guys turning up all the time committing crimes, and guess what was marked on the mags found in their guns? MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE ONLY. Because once again, if you’re already breaking a bunch of laws, they can only hang you once. Criminals simply don’t care.

Once the AWB timed out, because every politician involved looked at the mess which had been passed in the heat of the moment, the fact it did nothing, and the fact that every single one of them from a red state would lose their job if they voted for a new one, it expired and went away.

Immediately every single gun person in America went out and bought a couple guns which had been banned and a bucket of new magazines, because nothing makes an American want to do something more than telling them they can’t. We’ve been stocking up ever since. If the last ban did literally nothing at all over a decade, and since then we’ve purchased another hundred million magazines since then, another ban will do even less. (except just make the law abiding that much angrier, and I’ll get to that below).

I bought $600 worth of magazines for my competition pistol this morning. I’ve already got a shelf full for my rifles. Gun and magazine sales skyrocket every time a democrat politician starts to vulture in on a tragedy. I don’t know if many of you realize this, but Barack Obama is personally responsible for more gun sales, and especially first time gun purchases, than anyone in history. When I owned my gun store, we had a picture of him on the wall and a caption beneath it which said SALESMAN OF THE YEAR.

So you can ban this stuff, but it won’t actually do anything to the crimes you want to stop. Unless you think you can confiscate them all, but I’ll talk about confiscation later.

One last thing to share about the magazine ban from the AWB, and this is something all gun people know, but most anti-gunners do not. When you put an artificial cap on a weapon, and tell us that we can only have a limited number of rounds in that weapon, we’re going to make sure they are the most potent rounds possible. Before the ban, everybody bought 9mms which held an average of 15 rounds. After the ban, if I can only have ten rounds, they’re going to be bigger, so we all started buying 10 shot .45s instead.

You don’t need an assault weapon for hunting!

Who said anything about hunting? That whole thing about the 2^nd Amendment being for sportsmen is hogwash. The 2^nd Amendment is about bearing arms to protect yourself from threats, up to and including a tyrannical government.

Spare me the whole, “You won’t be happy until everybody has nuclear weapons” reductio ad absurdum. It says arms, as in things that were man portable. And as for the founding fathers not being able to see foresee our modern arms, you forget that many of them were inventors, and multi shot weapons were already in service. Not to mention that in that day, arms included cannon, since most of the original artillery of the Continental Army was privately owned. Besides, the Supreme Court agrees with me. See DC v. Heller.

Well we should just ban ALL guns then! You only need them to murder people!

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop.

Clint Smith once said if you look like food, you will be eaten. Criminals are looking for prey. They are looking for easy victims. If they wanted to work hard for a living they’d get a job. So when you pull a gun, you are no longer prey, you are work, so they are going to go find somebody else to pick on.

So many defensive gun uses never get tracked as such. From personal experience, I have pulled a gun exactly one time in my entire life. I was legally justified and the bad guy stopped, put his gun away, and left. (15 years later the same son of a bitch would end up murdering a local sheriff’s deputy). My defensive gun use was never recorded anywhere as far as I know. My wife has pulled a gun twice in her life. Once on somebody who was acting very rapey who suddenly found a better place to be when she stuck a Ruger in his face, and again many years later on a German Shepherd which was attacking my one year old son. (amazingly enough a dog can recognize a 9mm coming out of a fanny pack and run for its life, go figure) No police report at all on the second one, and I don’t believe the first one ever turned up as any sort of defensive use statistic, all because no shots were fired.

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America?

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

Doesn’t matter. I don’t like them. We should ban them and take them all away like a civilized country.

Well, I suppose if your need to do something overrides all reason and logic, then by all means let’s ban guns.

Australia had a mass shooting and instituted a massive gun ban and confiscation (a program which would not work here, which I’ll get to, but let’s run with it anyway.). As was pointed out to me on Facebook, they haven’t had any mass shootings since. However, they fail to realize that they didn’t really have any mass shootings before either. You need to keep in mind that mass shooting are horrific headline grabbing statistical anomalies. You are far more likely to get your head caved in by a local thug while he’s trying to steal your wallet, and that probably won’t even make the evening news.

And violent crime is up in Australia. A cursory Google search will show articles about the increase in violent crime and theft, but then other articles pooh-pooing these stats as being insignificant and totally not related to the guns.

So then we’ve got England, where they reacted swiftly after a mass shooting, banned and confiscated guns, and their violent crime has since skyrocketed. Their stats are far worse than Australia, and they are now one of the more dangerous countries to live in the EU. Once again, cursory Google search will show articles with the stats, and other articles saying that those rises like totally have nothing to do with regular folks no longer being able to defend themselves… Sensing a trend yet?

And then we’ve got South Africa, which instituted some really hard core gun bans and some extremely strict controls, and their crime is now so high that it is basically either no longer tracked or simply not countable. But obviously, the totally unbiased news says that has absolutely nothing to do with people no longer being able to legally defend themselves.

Then you’ve got countries like Norway, with extremely strict gun control. Their gun control laws are simply incomprehensible to half of Americans. Not only that, they are an ethnically and socially homogenous, tiny population, well off country, without our gang violence or drug problems. Their gun control laws are draconian by our standards. They make Chicago look like Boise. Surely that level of gun control will stop school shootings! Except of course for 2011 when a maniac killed 77 and injured 242 people, a body count which is absurdly high compared to anything which has happened America.

Because once again, repeat it with me, criminals simply do not give a crap.

That mass killer used a gun and homemade explosives. Make guns harder to get, and explosives become the weapon of choice. Please do keep in mind that the largest and most advanced military coalition in human history was basically stymied for a decade by a small group using high school level chemistry and the Afghani equivalent to Radio Shack.

The biggest mass killings in US history have used bombs (like Bath, Michigan), fire (like Happyland Nightclub) or airliners. There is no law you can pass, nothing you can say or do, which will make some not be evil.

And all of this is irrelevant, because banning and confiscating all the scary guns in America will be national suicide.

You crazy gun nuts and your 2^nd Amendment. We should just confiscate all the guns.

Many of you may truly believe that. You may think that the 2^nd Amendment is archaic, outdated, and totally pointless. However, approximately half of the country disagrees with you, and of them, a pretty large portion is fully willing to shoot somebody in defense of it.

We’ve already seen that your partial bans are stupid and don’t do anything, so unless you are merely a hypocrite more interested in style rather than results, the only way to achieve your goal is to come and take the guns away. So let’s talk about confiscation.

They say that there are 80 million gun owners in America. I personally think that number is low for a few reasons. The majority of gun owners I know, when contacted for a phone survey and asked if they own guns, will become suspicious and simply lie. Those of us who don’t want to end like England or Australia will say that we lost all of our guns in a freak canoe accident.

Guns do not really wear out. I have perfectly functioning guns from WWI, and I’ve got friends who have still useable firearms from the 1800s. Plus we’ve been building more of them this entire time. There are more guns than there are people in America, and some of us have enough to arm our entire neighborhood.

But for the sake of math, let’s say that there are only 80 million gun owners, and let’s say that the government decides to round up all those pesky guns once and for all. Let’s be generous and say that 90% of the gun owners don’t really believe in the 2^nd Amendment, and their guns are just for duck hunting. Which is what politicians keep telling us, but is actually rather hilarious when you think about how the most commonly sold guns in America are the same detachable magazine semiautomatic rifles I talked about earlier.

So ten percent refuse to turn their guns in. That is 8 million instantaneous felons. Let’s say that 90% of them are not wanting to comply out of sheer stubbornness. Let’s be super generous and say that 90% of them would still just roll over and turn their guns when pressed or legally threatened. That leaves 800,000 Americans who are not turning their guns in, no matter what. To put that in perspective there are only about 700,000 police officers in the whole country.

Let’s say that these hypothetical 10% of 10% are willing to actually fight to keep their guns. Even if my hypothetical estimate of 800,000 gun nuts willing to fight for their guns is correct, it is still 97% higher than the number of insurgents we faced at any one time in Iraq, a country about the size of Texas.

However, I do honestly believe that it would be much bigger than 10%. Once the confiscations turned violent, then it would push many otherwise peaceful people over the edge. I saw somebody on Twitter post about how the 2^nd Amendment is stupid because my stupid assault rifles are useless against drones… That person has obviously never worked with the people who build the drones, fly the drones, and service the drones. I have. Where to you think the majority of the US military falls on the political spectrum exactly?

There’s a reason Mitt Romney won the military vote by over 40 points, and it wasn’t because of his hair.

And as for those 700,000 cops, how many of them would side with the gun owners? All the gun nuts, that’s for sure. As much as some people like to complain about the gun culture, many of the people you hire to protect you, and darn near all of them who can shoot well, belong to that gun culture. And as I hear people complain about the gun industry, like it is some nebulous, faceless, all powerful corporate thing which hungers for war and anarchy, I just have to laugh, because the gun industry probably has the highest percentage of former cops and former military of any industry in the country. My being a civilian was odd in the circles I worked in. The men and women you pay to protect you have honor and integrity, and they will fight for what they believe in.

So the real question the anti-gun, ban and confiscate, crowd should be asking themselves is this, how many of your fellow Americans are you willing to have killed in order to bring about your utopian vision of the future?

Boo Evil Gun Culture!

Really? Because I hate to break it to you, but when nearly six hundred people get murdered a year in beautiful Gun Free Chicago, that’s not my people doing the shooting.

The gun culture is all around you, well obviously except for those of you reading this in elite liberal urban city centers where you’ve extinguished your gun culture. They are your friends, relatives, and coworkers. The biggest reason gun control has become increasingly difficult to pass over the last decade is because more and more people have turned to CCW, and as that has become more common, it has removed much of the stigma. Now everybody outside of elite urban liberal city centers knows somebody that carries a gun. The gun culture is simply regular America, and is made up of people who think their lives and their families lives are more important than the life of anyone who tries to victimize them.

The gun culture is who protects our country. Sure, there are plenty of soldiers and cops who are issued a gun and who use it as part of their job who could care less. However, the people who build the guns, really understand the guns, actually enjoy using the guns, and usually end up being picked to teach everybody else how to use the guns are the gun culture.

The media and the left would absolutely love to end the gun culture in America, because then they could finally pass all the laws they wanted.

Let’s take a look at what happens when a country finally succeeds in utterly stamping out its gun culture. Mumbai, 2008. Ten armed jihadi terrorists simply walked into town and started shooting people. It was a rather direct, straight forward, ham fisted, simple terrorist attack. They killed over 150 and wounded over 300. India has incredibly strict gun laws, but once again, criminals didn’t care.

That’s not my point this time however, I want to look at the response. These ten men shut down an entire massive city and struck fear into the hearts of millions for THREE DAYS. Depending on where this happened in America it would have been over in three minutes or three hours. The Indian police responded, but their tactics sucked. The marksmanship sucked. Their leadership sucked. Their response utterly and completely fell apart.

In talking afterwards with some individuals from a small agency of our government who were involved in the clean-up and investigation, all of whom are well trained, well practiced, gun nuts, they told me the problem was that the Indian police had no clue what to do because they’d never been taught what to do. Their leadership hated and feared the gun so much that they stamped out the ability for any of their men to actually master the tool. When you kill your gun culture, you kill off your instructors, and those who can pass down the information necessary to do the job.

Don’t think that we are so far off here. I recently got to sit down with some fans who are members of one of the larger metro police departments in America. These guys were all SWAT cops or narcotics, all of them were gun nuts who practiced on their own dime, and all of them were intimately familiar with real violence. These are the guys that you want responding when the real bad stuff goes down.

What they told me made me sick. Their leadership was all uniformly liberal and extremely anti-gun, just like most big cities in America. They walked me through what their responses were supposed to be in case of a Mumbai style event, and how their “scary assault weapons” were kept locked up where they would be unavailable, and how dismal their training was, and how since the state had run off or shut down most of the gun ranges, most of the cops couldn’t even practice or qualify anymore.

So now they were less safe, the people they were protecting were less safe, the bad guys were safer, but most importantly their leadership could pat themselves on the back, because they’d done something.

Well, okay. You make some good points. But I’d be more comfortable if you gun people were force to have more mandatory training!

And I did actually have this one said to me, which is an amazing victory by internet arguing standards.

Mandatory training is a placebo at best. Here is my take on why.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/mandatory-training-for-ccw/

In conclusion, basically it doesn’t really matter what something you pick when some politician or pundit starts screaming we’ve got to do something, because in reality, most of them already know a lot of what I listed above. The ones who are walking around with their security details of well-armed men in their well-guarded government buildings really don’t care about actually stopping mass shooters or bad guys, they care about giving themselves more power and increasing their control.

If a bad guy used a gun with a big magazine, ban magazines. If instead he used more guns, ban owning multiple guns. If he used a more powerful gun with less shots, ban powerful guns. If he used hollowpoints, ban hollowpoints. (which I didn’t get into, but once again, there’s a reason everybody who might have to shoot somebody uses them). If he ignored some Gun Free Zone, make more places Gun Free Zones. If he killed a bunch of innocents, make sure you disarm the innocents even harder for next time. Just in case, let’s ban other guns that weren’t even involved in any crimes, just because they’re too big, too small, too ugly, too cute, too long, too short, too fat, too thin, (and if you think I’m joking I can point out a law or proposed law for each of those) but most of all ban anything which makes some politician irrationally afraid, which luckily, is pretty much everything.

They will never be happy. In countries where they have already banned guns, now they are banning knives and putting cameras on every street. They talk about compromise, but it is never a compromise. It is never, wow, you offer a quick, easy, inexpensive, viable solution to ending mass shootings in schools, let’s try that. It is always, what can we take from you this time, or what will enable us to grow some federal apparatus?

Then regular criminals will go on still not caring, the next mass shooter will watch the last mass shooter be the most famous person in the world on TV, the media will keep on vilifying the people who actually do the most to defend the innocent, the ignorant will call people like me names and tell us we must like dead babies, and nothing actually changes to protect our kids.

If you are serious about actually stopping school shootings, contact your state representative and tell them to look into allowing someone at your kid’s school to be armed. It is time to install some speed bumps.

….Larry Correia

Well said Larry….if we could all discuss as clearly as you, the anti-gun lobby would disintegrate.

Well done!

…..devereaux

Union thugs

2012-12-11T16:54:00.002-08:00

I am sure everyone has seen the violence erupting in Lansing, MI…all over the silly notion that people should have a choice as to whether they join a union or don’t.

Before I continue there are a couple of things I need to get off my chest…

1. 1. In watching the few videos from Lansing, I confess to now completely understanding how Obama was re-elected. Never have I seen such a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed, under-educated, slovenly, disgusting, rude and intellectually disabled group as was shown in those videos. I am hard-pressed to find one person in those videos who I would like to hang out with. I suspect it would be impossible to find one I would a conversation with. And certainly none I would care to call family. A pack of misfit losers who don’t even understand what they are protesting against, cannot verbalize it, and know nothing more than how to bully and intimidate anyone who may disagree with them. In other words…union thugs...every one.

2. 2. There are many good people, hard workers; fine folk that I WOULD like to call my friends who are members of unions. Many of them have no choice if they want to work. Many find their paychecks robbed of money to be sent to the unions for support of programs the worker does not support, to buy elections the worker does not want bought, to fund strikes that force the worker to suffer, and to pay salaries and benefits to union leaders that the workers cannot even dream of ever receiving.

The people trapped in group 2 above, are the ones who will benefit from a “right to work’ state.

But before I talk about that I want to talk about the thugs in group 1 above.

These are the people who live in fear that their lazy habits will no longer be protected by the unions. How so? Well…they understand that they are really the minority. Let’s think about the size of the demonstrations today. Could there have been 5,000 people there? Maybe 10,000? I seriously doubt more than that. And this is ALL the union support that could be mustered?

How many people in Michigan are union members? Better yet, how many in Lansing? I would wager that it would be more than 10,000…substantially more. So where are they? If the granting of choice to workers is such a bad thing, where are all the rank and file union members who should be out en mass demonstrating? Instead we get just a handful of goons intent on destroying property and making a lot of noise. When that doesn’t get the results they need they try violence in the hope that that will work.

Here’s a heads up to you goons…violence will not work. End of story.

The bigger story here is the hundreds of thousands of union members who would rather keep the union dues in their pay check than pay for some union leader to enjoy champagne and cigars while plotting who they will buy the next election for.

Where are these people…?

Maybe, just maybe, these are the people that make America strong…these are the people who work hard, who do their best to support their families, who take pride in their accomplishments and who are more than capable to stand on their own two feet. They don’t need some union thug to tell them what to think…they know what they think already. They don’t need some union goon inciting them with drums and bad grammar….they can motivate themselves.

They don’t need to act like animals…demanding what is not theirs, and taking it by force if not freely given…they earn what they have…and in my opinion have every right to choose what to do with their money.

So what is this really about?

Are the unions really scared that some blood-sucking non-union employee will get benefits that the union fights for, without paying dues to the union? Give me a break. If the unions were really looking after their members they would not need to resort to strong arm tactics to keep their membership. If they were really looking after their members, people would gladly pay the dues.

So does this tell us anything about the union membership base?

Let me see…they don’t show up in massive numbers to support the union…and the unions are scared that they will no longer have the bargaining power they once had….hmmm

Could this be because the workers do NOT WANT TO FORCED into the unions?

Could this be because the unions know that without servitude forced on the workers, they will not by choice be union members?

In honesty, I do not know the answer to this. Maybe as we watch what unfolds in Michigan, we may find out?

In the meantime…I want to say a few words to the thugs.

You can use whatever profanities you like. I have heard worse, and probably said worse. You can call me whatever vile, disgusting, and creative names you wish to call me…I have been verbally abused by the best in the business, so yours won’t affect me. You can threaten me, you can get gangs of thugs to threaten me…I don’t care.

But…

If you lay one hand on me, or mine, you will know that I am not scared of you. It will not be pretty.

And it is time for conservatives across the country to take this stand. Words are empty…do not get fired up by the yelling, the screaming, the ignorant babbling and the incoherent ignorance of a bunch of wannabe bully boys.

Their verbal intimidation is to be laughed at. Their physical intimidation is to be laughed at. But when they cross that line, you MUST let them know they have crossed a line that you will not accept. Your right to defend yourself is what freedom is all about.

This looming battle is not just about unions, not just about politics. It is about your freedoms.

And freedom is worth fighting for.

Do not let the unions or the governments take away your freedoms. Do not let them intimidate you. Stand toe to toe with the cowards...do not cower before their numbers, or flee from their intimidation.

This is merely one of many battles to be fought…and each must be fought with bravery, determination and 100% belief in the rightness of your stand.

The union members of Michigan who do not support your union must now stand up and be counted. This is your time. This is your opportunity to take back that which has been stolen from you.

Just look at how weak the union support really is. You actually outnumber the thugs by a mighty amount…time for you to take back the freedoms that are yours by birth…given you by the Creator…and which no man or government has the right to take away.

We must all stand in support of the good people of Michigan in their battle against the tyranny of the unions. Show them your support at every opportunity…encourage them to remain strong, and to walk fearlessly forward in truth.

…..devereaux

Full speed ahead....

2012-12-06T11:22:00.002-08:00

Full speed ahead…stupidity at its finest!

For weeks we have heard of this magical thing call a fiscal cliff that the economy is racing toward at heart stopping speed. When we reach it, we have no alternative to plummet over and economic Armageddon awaits us at the bottom.

We hear democrats saying that we need to make the rich pay their fair share, or that the middle class are being held hostage by the republicans refusal to allow small tax increases for the richest amongst us.

We hear the Republicans saying that taxing the rich will damage the economy and destroy jobs.

So very hard to know the truth…

Both sides of the political divide are saying that the path to oblivion through a financial meltdown is the result of the policies of the other party.

And this is what we get from an administration headed by the great uniter?

The Divider-in-Chief sits on his throne, watching the fun with joy. He knows the truth. He knows that the shenanigans going on are nothing more than fiscal smoke and mirrors.

He knows that his useful idiots in the Democrat party will continue to blame the rich, will continue to spout fair share nonsense, and will continue to create a class warfare that extends to anyone with more than the individual. He knows his useful idiots will engender jealousy, envy and hate where there should be self-reliance and hope. And he knows that as long as he can keep the fires of envy burning, he can get the support of the people every time he attacks the wealthy.

He also knows that the “right” has no weapon against this. His useful idiots can control the agenda. He knows that the GOP will continue to try to defend the wealthy…putting them on the wrong side of the people who are fed on a daily apportionment of envy.

The GOP on the other hand are nothing more than fools.

Rather than falling back on fundamental truths, they scratch at the edges of convenience…somehow believing that if they just modify their thinking to become more “moderate” they will be able to get the love so often denied them.

Not going to happen!

I am simply astonished by how easily the GOP falls into the not very elaborate traps set by the left. Rather than ignoring the issue of taxation on the wealth and instead concentrating on the issue of overspending by the government, the GOP continually tries to find reasons talk about tax and NOT about spending.

What is up with that?

You would have thought that the Republicans would have learned by now that Obama and his administration do not care what happens to the economy. They care only that they have someone to blame…and the Congressional Republicans are the best game in town to attach blame to.

So…Obama is now in a position where if we go over the fiscal cliff, he can blame the Republicans (and the fools on the street will believe him, because the messiah said so!)

If Obama takes the role of a serious compromiser, and accepts some of the deal that the Republicans all too quickly offer, he has the perfect foil when the policies fail…after all the Republicans forced him to accept a deal…and that is why his policies failed to work.

There is only one way that the Republicans can get out of this.

They state clearly their position. No new taxes. Massive cuts in spending. Spending cuts now, not in ten years time. Take it or leave it.

When Obama says NO (which he will)…the Republicans should demand he bring a bill to Congress for voting.

Republicans should vote neither for nor against said bill, instead voting “present”.

The Republicans must then win the PR war….they must make it perfectly clear that they made an offer to the president consistent with their fundamental beliefs. The President turned down that offer and moved forward with a plan that Republicans could not support. It is clear that Congress has stopped working as it should. It is time for the President to be responsible for his own policies. We will not stand in the way of his implementing them at this time. We will however be ready and prepared to step in and provide solutions when his policies fail. We are currently preparing plans that will address that situation should it arise. In the meantime, we are not abandoning those who voted for us, and will continue to represent them in Congress. We will fight to the end, but when the battle is lost we will regroup and refocus on the war.

It is time for Conservatives to control the discussion. It is nigh impossible for them to control the agenda…but they can certainly choose more wisely than they have to date when it comes to responding to the loony left.

Never going to happen….

Stupid is as stupid says.

…..devereaux

Carny Nation

2012-11-13T16:47:00.002-08:00

Today I am reposting an article by Daniel Greenfield. Daniel Greenfield is a New York City writer and columnist. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and his articles appears at its Front Page Magazine site. (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/50990 )

I hope you enjoy it!

Carny Nation

Come right in and step right up. See the bright lights and the oddities of nature. Inside, folks, for the low price of twenty-two trillion dollars, you can see Binders of Women, Team Big Bird and entire reams of green windmills and fields full of bayonets and horses. Here lies become the truth and everything is full of sugar. And the highlight of the show with be Barack, the Exotic Prince from the Wilds of Indonesia and Kenya, with a special appearance by Oprah and a hologram of JFK. Here in the Carnival of Fools, the party never stops and no one ever has to pay the bill.

“There’s a sucker born every minute,” a famous connoisseur of them once said. And suckers are big business. Very big business indeed. But don’t feel too sorry for the sucker. The sucker is a creature composed of ignorance and greed. He believes in his own specialness. He believes that he can fool other people into giving him their money, when actually he is the one being fleeced. The mark is an aspiring scammer who is too dumb to realize that nothing in life is free and the scam is on him.

If you browse through your email’s spam folder, the chances are good that you will come upon a missive from a Nigerian prince offering you the opportunity to help him cart away his fortune in exchange for a sharp cut of the profits. These scams date back to the dinosaur years of the internet, and though there are occasional elaborations on the theme, the African scammers stick to the tried and true, even though the tried and true has become a cliche that anyone should be able to see through.

Why?

Because the Nigerian Prince scam is a self-selecting group. Anyone who still falls for it after all these years is dumber than your average sucker. The scammers know this and they don’t want to waste their valuable time hooking a difficult fish with a plausible scam. They go for easy marks for the same reason that some men fish with dynamite. Because it’s easier.

America has its own Nigerian Prince. I think you know his name by now. His campaign sent out nearly as many emails as his Nigerian colleagues do, promising fame and fortune to those suckers who would help him transfer some wealth from the 1 percent to the 99 percent. And now that his second term is here, the check is in the mail. And if the government check doesn’t clear, well that’s what happens when you put your faith in Nigerian Princes.

A scam like the Democratic Party needs suckers

A scam like the Democratic Party needs suckers. It needs millions and millions of the dumbest people that can be found outside of specially supervised group homes. And then it needs to appoint people to watch over them, give them the occasional food and minor check, and drive them in vans to the polls after two or four years so that the con artists can keep their manicured paws on the local treasury.

These people have to be stupid, yes, but like all marks, they have to be greedy. They have to be the kind of people who relish taking someone else’s money without working for it. The kind who grin at the idea of putting something over someone else. The kind who think that they are smart because they decided that the world owes them a living. They think that they’re smart, but they’re only the marks in a con. And when the con is done, like the guy depositing a check from Nigeria’s Prince Uscamo, they are going to be the ones left holding the bag.

A con plays on the greed of the mark. And on his stupidity

A con plays on the greed of the mark. And on his stupidity. And in a democracy, you can take over a country if you organize enough motivated suckers to vote for trillions in government money that they will never see, but that they are on the hook for. And if you don’t have enough native suckers, then you import more, taking care that your immigration policies favor the greedy sucker demographic. But unfortunately in a democracy where half the population doesn’t bother to vote and a quarter votes for the scammers, we are all on the hook for the scam.

We have just gone through two lovely elections that were won on the carnival principle. Put up a lot of bright lights, some unusual things for the crowds to gawp at, a few scantily clad ladies of the evening, and a lot of smooth patter, and forget taking any of the issues seriously. Tell jokes, juggle balls and deliver applause lines. And most of all promise the sky while taking the suckers for all they have and will ever have.

It nearly didn’t work, but the extra effort was put in and the vans delivered their cargo loads of moral depravity to the polls, where the poll workers showed them how to vote, and then the vans took them to do some food stamp shopping to remind them of how good life is under the scam. And many other people, the ones who don’t return emails from Nigerian princes, didn’t bother to vote, because they don’t believe in any element of the scam. And that just means the chief scammers have an open field.

And so the reign of the scam continues for another four years. The world will burn and the country will slide closer to the economic abyss. But in their dorm rooms, the Julias will pine knowing that their Nigerian prince loves them (doesn’t he send them daily emails personally addressed to them?) and the vans will go back and forth, and cashiers will run food stamp cards through the machines in neighborhoods which subsist entirely on the scam, and in the hospitals elderly patients will die because health care is free, but treatments are more expensive than ever. And the devil will laugh.

Carnivals have to end sooner or later. And the scam doesn’t look nearly as good in the light of day as it does at night, when everyone has had a few drinks and life seems good and magic can happen. A few of us hopefully thought that daybreak had come, but, no, it was only the light of the carnival and the drunken laughter of fools spending their last dime to hear their Nigerian prince crack a joke, hum a tune and pledge his undying love to them.

“The fool walks in darkness,” said the Chief Executive of a nation called Israel some 3,000 years ago. And for the fools of Carny Nation, who, as he observed, fold their hands and eat their own flesh, rather than work for a living, it is always the midnight hour, always time for another drink, another laugh, another novelty and another spin of the wheel that goes round and round and never stops until sunlight touches it and it turns to dust.

The fools of Carny Nation fancy themselves wise men. After all they eat without paying for it. They get money without working for it.

The fools of Carny Nation fancy themselves wise men. After all they eat without paying for it. They get money without working for it. Every baby they pop out buys them another pair of shoes. When they vote Democrat, the President of Carny Nation sends them a check. And so they put another vote in the machine, get back a few quarters, put another one in the mission, and wait for the day that the redistribution jackpot will give them everything.

Last year in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, the price of three eggs ran to 100 billion dollars. A beer cost 150 billion dollars and a roll of toilet paper, well it was just cheaper to use million dollar bills. We are talking about Zimbabwean dollars here, not American dollars, but eventually there will be no difference. Zimbabwe yesterday. America tomorrow. Money isn’t magic and there comes a point when no amount of words can increase its value. Eventually it becomes cheaper to print out presidential speeches on the bright economic future and use them as toilet paper.

When food stamps start coming in billion dollar quantities, then the sucker bet on Obama, Prince of Kenya, Indonesia and Chicago, may start looking bad. But suckers never realize when a bet is going bad. They double down and begin yammering some more about raising taxes. And why not. We’re sixteen trillion in debt. Why not raise taxes by a few trillion? You have to break a few billion dollar eggs to make a thirty-trillion dollar omelet. And that beer summit, it will cover the entire defense budget.

The grandchildren of Carny Nation will die in the streets, just as they do in their own home countries, but for now their future grandparents know that a baby buys a pair of shoes, 350 dollar Nike LeBron X’s, and that a vote for the Democrats will keep them from having to work or route them into nice government jobs with big benefits and easy hours. And when it all comes crashing down and their children are crying for food, because 100 billion dollar eggs are hard to come by; they will never blame themselves, instead they will blame the people they were scamming all these years, rather than the scammers who scammed them.

Carny Nation is more than just food stamps and welfare checks. It’s green windmills turning slowly in deserts with no wind

But of course Carny Nation is more than just food stamps and welfare checks. It’s green windmills turning slowly in deserts with no wind. It’s banks licking their lips at carbon taxes and consultants lining up to consult on everything from diversity to sustainability to intangibility. They are higher up on the scam pole, but like their van brethren, they’re still scammers who don’t realize that in the end they are the ones being scammed. Their children won’t die in the streets, but their bank accounts will.

Fools come in all shapes and sizes, in all races, religions and bank account sizes. Dumb isn’t measured by degrees or IQ points. Dumb people can absorb a lot of knowledge and spit it back. They can even discuss it incessantly in their best Word-a-Day language skills. The difference between dumb and smart does not come down to literacy or being able to juggle isosceles triangles. Memory is a skill and most people can learn something if they really want to and have the proper background for it. The difference between smart and dumb is the difference between knowing what’s real and what isn’t.

Intelligence is a bunch of brain cells packed by a few lines of DNA into a cranium. Those are mental skills and they come in handy when tackling Algebra or studying the history of the Mayans. King Solomon, that ancient chief executive of a kingdom despised by Carny Nation, wasn’t talking about learning as intelligence, but as wisdom. Wisdom isn’t just knowledge, it’s understanding that knowledge by drawing the right conclusions. The search for wisdom is the search for those right conclusions.

Fools are often very clever. Some have enormously high IQs and office walls packed with so many degrees that there is no room for a window. And they are still fools because they have no ability to draw the right conclusions. Knowledge is cheap. Your computer has access to more of it than all the wise men of history put together could ever dream of. Intelligence is a genetic gift. Wisdom is what you acquire with both or without either. It is the right conclusions that we draw about life from living it.

Intelligent fools are a Zimbabwean dollar a dozen and the Zimbabwean dollar doesn’t buy a whole lot. Carny Nation 2012 Forward to the America of the Super Future on horses and bayonets of irony and binders full of memes was powered by clever, intelligent, technocratic and even cunning fools. And above them all was our own King Fool, our Scammer-in-Chief, our Nigerian Prince, who like all scammers is passing the time scamming us while unable to realize that he is the one being scammed and the time will come, when he will fall beneath the bus under whose wheels he has hurled so many.

“There is no future for those who slander the Prophet of Islam,” our Nigerian Prince proclaimed, as part of his coverup of the murder of four Americans, left to die by his government. A coverup that has resulted in the first political prisoner in generations sitting in a cell. But there is a future for those who disdain Mohammed, that primal scammer who told his followers that they would have an endless supply of virgin girls to rape in paradise if they killed enough of his enemies and stole their stuff in the here-and-now. There is, however, no future for fools. There is no future for Carny Nation.

The Democrats have built themselves a pyramid scheme of Babel and it’s fools, suckers and marks all the way down. This is their Carny Nation and it only sustains itself by demanding greater levels of stupidity from its followers. The worse the storm grows, the dumber and trashier the base of its pyramid grows as vaccination against sudden conclusions from outside.

Popular culture, the media and politics becomes one. A great white noise machine of light and sound, carnival lights, smells and sounds, men throwing flaming torches in the air, shouts and cries, rap stars, memes, ladies of the evening, stars, banners, slogans, cheers and anything else that will keep the fools from realizing that the time is five minutes after five and the time is coming for the scammers to slink away into the night with their ill gotten loot and for the suckers who thought they were scammers and the marks who thought they were cons to clutch their carbon offsets and food stamps and raise their eyes dazedly as the sunrise exposes the tawdriness of the carnival, the false front stalls, the empty baskets and the last drabs of greasepaint on their hands.

And then Carny Nation will end.

Thank you, Mr. Greenfield, for this glimpse of who we, as a Nation, have become.

…..devereaux

Tom kennedy....own it!

2012-11-09T12:02:00.001-08:00

Tom Kennedy…the liberal personified.

Regular readers of my blog understand that I do not back down from attacks, nor do I suffer fools lightly.

I prefer not to delete comments as I am not a believer in censorship, but when the language is sufficiently foul, and the content insufficiently useful, I will do exactly that.

That is what happened to a comment I received from a person claiming to be Tom Kennedy. After fully abusing me, he suggested I could respond on a Facebook page…a page that was not his (he only allows “friends” access to his page)…but instead was a page related to Canadian hockey.

I will not put a link here for that page….if Mr. Kennedy wishes to respond to this post and provide a link to his own page, I will happily list it.

Anyway, moving on….

I had already decided that today I was going to look at what the typical liberal is like. I was prepared to design a composite view of their character…and try to understand where they are coming from and why they believe as they do.

And then along comes Tom Kennedy…his comment on my blog was such a well written comment encapsulating everything that liberals think, that I could not refrain from including it here in full (of course, censored to the extent of the language used).

So…Mr. Tom Kennedy writes….

“Isn’t the internet great. It allows sh**heads like yourself to say sh** that would, in real life get your head cracked open. Hopefully you’ll suffer the same fate f****ng c***. Please turn to the loaded gun in your drawer, put it in your mouth, and pull the trigger, blowing your brains out. You’ll be doing the whole world a favor. Sh***ag. I would love to see a son of a bitch smash your face in until it no longer resembled anything human, fa****.

- Tom Kennedy”

So, what can we deduce about Mr. Kennedy from this comment?

I have to say that it took me a while to get my head around this…I had to pick myself up off the floor and stop laughing before I could give any credence to it.

But I really did try to put my laughter aside and get serious for a minute.

Let me see…he managed to not use any of the typical shorthand we have come to expect from teenagers and young adults…so I would put his age as at least mid-40’s. If he was younger than that, I would have expected more text style shorthand.

He uses punctuation, which implies to me that he is at least high school educated. His sentence structure and use of two, three and even a four syllable word indicates to me that he probably has some college education. However, I suspect that his graduation from high school required him to attend some remedial English classes at college to bring his language skills to an acceptable level. This is not unusual as about 40% of college entrants require this type of remedial coursework. This is far more an indictment on the education system than it is of Mr. Kennedy.

So, we can now start to paint a picture of Mr. Kennedy…

My best guess is that he is a late 40’s white guy, some college education (he failed to complete it) possibly in a liberal arts discipline like government studies. He currently works either as a low level government employee or in a mid-management level at a retail chain store…maybe a supermarket or shoe store, maybe electronics shop.

So, now, let’s look at his demeanor.

There is no doubt that he sees himself as physically intimidating…but that is his opinion. I see a bully disguising the coward inside. He needs to believe that his physical intimidation makes him powerful. He uses language in two ways…to shock and to intimidate. He believes the power of his words will send quakes of terror through my bones. (I might add here that it is clear he has not read many of my blog posts – his first real mistake! Lol)

He is angry. Why, I have no idea…after all his guy won the election…so why is he so angry?

On second thoughts, if I was in my late 40’s and had failed to make a life for myself, with my best hope for the future coming from the handouts the government could give me, I would probably be angry too.

The difference is that I would be angry at the decisions I made that led me to where I was, and would then do something about it.

Tom Kennedy, on the other hand, is angry at the world for putting him where he is…and even angrier at the conservative movement that threatens his future livelihood at the government’s teat.

The final thing I want to look at is his comprehension of the reality of the world.

He seems to think that conservatives have loaded guns at the ready…and that the death of one conservative (me) would change everything that is bad in his life. Or maybe he is simply using me as a means of expressing his anger at all conservatives, and suggesting that if all conservatives were dead, he would become something more than he is?

I am not sure why he goes down this particular path…again, he seems to think that violence is the solution. Whatever. It seems to me that he is simply and purposely seeking someone or something to blame for where he is today…a lack of personal responsibility for ones own actions often leads to the search for someone else to blame.

So now we can draw a more detailed picture of Mr. Kennedy….

He is an angry bully, attempting to dominate me through foul language and overt threats, scared that my opinions will destroy the life he has planned...the parasite sucking the lifeblood from the producers. He is educated, but failed to complete his course of study and also failed to use that education to build a career, rather settling for the easiest way through life.

My guess is that he watches hockey in the hope that a fight starts and he can live his violent life vicariously through the TV set. (He is too much of a coward to actually confront someone in real life.)

He trolls the internet looking for blogs that he can rail against, in the forlorn hope that his angry words will make a difference.

What a sad life Tom Kennedy leads.

So, is that what the 2012 liberal looks like?

With only 15% of the population supporting Obama…and this guy so angry even though he won…I have to question exactly what a liberal is.

Yes, he certainly defines in every way what the majority of that 15% are like.

When I think of liberals today, I think of several descriptives:-

- Crude

- Crass

- Violent

- Moronic

- Undereducated

- Lazy

- Bullies

- Vulgar

- Liars

- And many more

Mr Kennedy, in a few sentences has simply confirmed everything I know about today’s liberals.

He IS what liberals are.

Now, I accept that not ALL are this way…but those who are not are also not distancing themselves from the vulgar and violent. They do not stand up and say “No, this is not who we are”. No, they snicker and laugh and turn away…hoping that the vulgar among them can make a positive difference.

Really?

Is that who you are?

Do you really think that Tom Kennedy represents you and your opinions?

Do you really want people like him…people who wish to use force to prevent freedom of speech…people who believe violence is the solution…people who cannot mount an argument but instead deliver laughable threats….is that who you liberals want to represent you?

If you do not stand up now…you are as bad as Tom Kennedy is. He is you whether you like it or not.

Yes…Tom Kennedy is who liberals are today…he is not a cartoon character…or a figment of the conservatives imagination.

He is YOU. Own it or do something about it.

So, Mr Kennedy…what are you going to say to this? How many vulgar threats can you make? Are you going to get your homies to come beat down my door and make an example of me? I suspect that you will not even respond to this. I suspect that you have moved on in your hit and run style…waiting for the next opportunity to king hit someone when they are not looking.

After all…that is the style of bullies…and liberals.

…..devereaux

Our future......

2012-11-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

By now you all know what America has chosen…

This choice was not just for the next 4 years, but was for the very future of this country, for your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. For the millions of people who are not yet even a twinkle in their parent’s eyes…or their grandparents for that matter.

And America has chosen poorly.

America…the land of the free…is free no more.

Yesterday America decided that she would betray her founders, that she would turn her back on the Constitution and that she would follow economic constructs that have been proven to fail.

Why would America do this?

Well, to start with, only 50 million Americans actually chose this route. Nearly 50 million opposed it. And over 200 million chose not to exercise their right.

Putting it another way…a mere 15% of the population have decided that this is the way America will go.

70% of the population are simply too lazy to care and 15% have fought to not allow this direction.

But America ultimately allowed a vocal 15% to carry the day.

How could 50 million people be so stupid as to voluntarily choose this direction, you may ask?

I ask how 70% chose not to play!

But, at the end of the night when the votes were tallied, we understand that the country has indeed been fundamentally changed…a promise made by Obama 4 years ago…a promise we all thought was not yet fulfilled…close, yes…but not yet there.

We were wrong.

The transformation that started 4 years ago was completed last night.

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Brushing off my crystal ball I see the following:-

- - Tax increases, inflation and less employment will ensure a drag on the economy, perhaps thrusting us into a depression

- - Foreign policy supporting the radicals in the middle east will be expanded, leaving Israel out in the cold (Palestinian peace talk failure will be blamed on Netanyahu while American foreign policy continues to reward our enemies while putting our few friends in the area at risk)

- - Government expansion through both government employment and quasi government regulatory bodies will squeeze the energy industry. More funds will be diverted to green energies regardless of commercial viability, while regulations will restrict and most likely impede total energy independence. Energy costs will skyrocket…and there is potential for government takeover of the energy industry under cover of “the good of the people”.

- - Illegal alien amnesty will be a fact, as the borders become even more unruly and drug cartels continue their takeover of large swathes of border territories both inside USA and outside.

- - Minority groups based on color, sexual orientation and any other way of defining them as not “normal” will be singled out for priority treatment under the guise of “fairness”

- - The rich, the professional classes and the working class who have been responsible will be held accountable for the failures of America. They will be stripped of wealth, and the poor will be granted more food stamps, more free accommodations, more cell phones, computers and flat screen tv’s.

- - Poverty will become the new normal as Galt’s Gulch overflows with producers taking their leave.

- - A new department will be created alongside the new department of business…it will be called some fancy name totally opposite to its purpose…to ensure fairness.

The temptation to continue this list is great…but the depression that reading it will cause is counterproductive to what I want to leave you with today.

Yes, the country is heading down a path that cannot likely be stopped.

The people of America have shown they would rather vote for a living, than work for one.

The fundamental change that was promised has arrived.

But there is hope.

With nearly 50 million people already making their voices heard and voting against the tide, we have a strong core of folk who are ready to stand up and fight.

We must not allow this transformation of the country we love to happen easily. We must not roll over with a whimper and let them win.

After 18 months and two BILLION dollars spent on the campaign trail, we are, politically, in the exact same position we were in before the election.

Liberals are walking around spouting such nonsense as “the results of this election provide a mandate for the democrats”…nothing could be farther from the truth. They are stating these things in an attempt to divert you from fighting them at every turn…but that is what we must do.

Conservatives hold the house…and must be encouraged to stop congressional action unless it is in line with their own political beliefs. We must support our House in its battles, not wavering under the blistering attacks that will surely come.

We must force this Pretender-in-Chief to take actions that show him to be who we all know he is.

We must not give up…and we must never surrender.

Friends, fundamental change has arrived…but we have not yet been rendered powerless.

Until that happens, we must fight. We must hold high the principals of conservatism, never wavering in our beliefs, and never accepting the erosion of our God given rights.

Our future depends on us…but more importantly, our children and grandchildren, those not yet born, are depending on us.

God bless you all…and God bless America.

…..devereaux

Katchers are comin'....

2012-11-01T12:16:00.001-07:00

As the election gets ever nearer, I wonder what it would be like should Obama win?

I wrote this piece in March 2012, and reprint it here because, while containing a certain degree of tongue firmly planted in cheek, it conveys some truth about expectations should Obama win.

I hope you enjoy it!

Visions of forests, lakes, waterfalls and bikini clad girls swirl through my mind as the remnants of teenage memories and old man’s dreams efficiently wash away any logic that stubbornly claims ownership of my sleep.

And yet, through the colors and sounds of summer fun on mountain lakes, I recognize a noise that is out of place. My mind struggles to hear the noise between the laughter and raucous shouts of myriad memories. There it is again…a loud hissing noise, perhaps closer to a groan…or a growl? It fills the early morning quiet, and then is gone in an instant.

I recognize Sierra’s voice…distressed, loud…her big girl outdoor voice booming as she runs back and forth along the patio outside our bedroom door. This is not the same voice she uses when greeting the occasional stray dog that trespasses on our yard, and certainly not the voice that she uses to warn strangers that if they enter, they will be eaten….no, this was a voice I had not heard before…a voice full of urgency, pregnant with warning, and vibrating with uncertainty.

I shake my head to clear the cobwebs, mostly unconvincingly. The mercury is creeping past 60 degrees and I know it is going to be another perfect day. One advantage of living here is the weather….beautiful one day, perfect the next. The alarm had not yet gone off, and I took a moment to be thankful that the shrill alarm would not disturb my dreams this day! Sierra’s barking, however, was another thing, bringing me back to almost wakefulness as it matured into a more aggressive warning.

I heard the strange sound again. This time it is closer, louder…and definitely more like a hissing growl than a groan. Very loud. It split the eerily quiet morning like a thunderclap…and then was gone once more. I could smell an odd scent hanging in the air…it was almost like sulphur and ozone, but not quite. I tried to place it as I had smelled it before but that part of my memory had not yet awoken…it was still at the mountain retreat!

Stumbling from bed, I went to the patio door where I was greeted by a very distressed Sierra. She hid behind my legs, shaking and growling. She peeked past me from time to time, the guttural growling raising the hairs on my arms and legs. I looked outside, and saw ….nothing.

Tuesday is trash pick-up day, I remembered…the fog slowly clearing as sleep became a faint memory. Sierra must be barking at the trash man as is her normal Tuesday morning ritual…but if that is the case, why is she cowering behind my legs and not down by the gate where can watch the trash man jump when she reminds him that this is HER place? Nope…it can’t be that…and besides…that doesn’t explain that haunting noise and the odd scent hanging in the air.

There is the noise once more. Closer now. Loud enough to waken the dead….and the scent is much stronger. I take a deep breath and with Sierra close to my side step out onto the patio. I look toward the direction of the sound, briefly wondering why the normal birdsongs are not present, but again see nothing. Sierra takes a step forward and immediately barks and growls, looking skyward. Following her gaze, I finally see it.

Hanging in the sky like it was attached with hooks was …well…as I was about to mouth its name, the earsplitting hissing/growling noise reminded me of dragons of old, and this image was magnified by the fire that was coming from the belly of this beast.

With growling and fire emanating from its belly, it continued to hang there….no more than 20 – 30 feet above our back fence….waiting to pounce if we moved a muscle. The colors in the bright morning light were blinding, such finery as to compete with the finest peacock. And yet, such fearsome sounds.

Sierra looked up at me as if to say…”I told you dragons were real….and now, here is one ready to swoop down and catch the unwary in its talons and take it away, never to be seen again!”

Ever so slowly, the dragon passed overhead….seeming to be no longer be interested in us. Sierra watched intently, growling stubbornly, as it left to find a less protected target.

Just like children, dogs do not need stories of monsters and dragons to convince them that such creatures are real. They already know.

“The “Katchers” were out early today”, I muttered as I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to my government issued height meter. The morning ritual of weighing myself had been enhanced by the need to check my height every day…my very survival depending on my being at least 5ft 10in tall!

Damn that Obama…damn Obamacare…damn “Apart Height” that march to slavery that Obama implemented in his 3^rd term….oh how I wish America had listened back in 2012 when she had the chance to end this tyrant’s power grab…but it wasn’t to be.

Looking at the calendar it hard to believe that it is already March of 2018….just 6 short years since Obama was re-elected for his second term. How could we have possibly been so blind to have re-elected this monster…and how could we have gotten to this point in such a short time?

Being something of a history buff, and needing to record the truth for future generations (the real truth – not the government truth as told by the state run media) I sat at my government issued desk, and pulled out my tattered diary with handwriting using homemade ink…faded and inconsistent, it was hard to make out some of the words …the paper was the best I could find, and the ink was only as good as the last batch I could make from the juices of government provided fruits and vegetables. The art of handwriting had become unnecessary in this utopian age of computers and keyboards….but nothing written on a computer could be kept from the all-seeing eyes of the government controlled media barrons….so for my own protection, paper and homemade ink was the only solution.

Turning to the first page of the diary I note that things happened very quickly.

As soon as the votes were counted on November 6, 2012 and it was apparent that Obama was going to win by a small margin, he leaped into action, calling Congress together and setting out his agenda for the next 4 years.

Three days later, explosions at an oil refinery in Houston killed 17 workers and pumped clouds of noxious and highly poisonous gases into the air. The evacuation process was hampered by Hurricane Samantha which blew ashore as a category 5….never known to have happened at this time of the year before. A day earlier the hurricane had destroyed 3 deep drill oil rigs in the Gulf, spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the gulf every hour, in what is now hailed as the worst oil disaster the world has ever known.

(Some time later evidence was found that may have linked the oil rig disasters and the refinery explosion to a shadowy group known as “Cold Fish”, an eco-terrorist group with ties to Rahm Emmanuel and the Obama administration, but none of this could be proven.)

In any event, Obama sprang into action, closing down all oil operations in the country until further notice. The EPA was instructed to ensure all operations ceased and given authority to close down all refineries, all research activities, all drilling activities…anything that even smelled like it could be related to oil closed down.

The price of oil on the global markets reacted almost instantly reaching a high of $680 a barrel. By the time this oil reached the gas station as gasoline, it was priced at $34 a gallon!

The American economy stopped overnight.

Obama could not believe his fortune…within days of winning re-election he had been handed the ultimate tool for the fruition of his long term goals.

In short order and with the full support of the unions, he nationalized the energy industry, the motor vehicle industry and the finance industry. Farming and food production followed. Education and the media were the second to last to feel the swiftness of his actions.

And finally, medicine was nationalized.

This was left to last as he already had significant control of the industry through Obamacare…and that is where we, the people, made our biggest mistake.

You see, while it was clear that the balance of power had changed…that fewer people chose to work for a living, instead choosing to vote for a living (hence Obama’s re-election)…it was not clear how Obama was going to keep the economy running, even a socialist economy needs workers, and with more and more people choosing not to work, it did not take a Rhodes Scholar to understand that disaster was not far away.

But there was Obamacare…therein was the solution.

With Obamacare it was possible to mandate what level of care should be provided…and what would not be provided.

How could Obama use this to his own ends?

His first thought was that the elderly could be denied treatment until they had served a certain number of months or years working for the government….a neat idea except that he also understood that the elderly and the sick would not be the most productive. No...he needed a better solution.

He needed a way to get control of the lives of the young, the healthy, and the strong.

The solution came to him one night as he was sipping Crystal Champaign and watching the March Madness basketball games.

He noticed that the taller players may have been getting more of the ball, but it was the shorter players that were setting up the plays, had more energy, were faster and really were the engines of the team.

The engines…the engine….his mind saw an opportunity…what if the energy of the smaller people could be harnessed to work in the factories, the farms, the mines….what if we could use these “engines” to drive our economy?

And with that single thought, the tragedy of “Apart Height” was born.

It was simple really….

Use Obamacare to mandate that every person must register with their health provider and that on their 18^th birthday they must present themselves for a government provided free medical exam. As part of that exam, everybody who was under 5ft 2in would be deemed to be in need of specific medical care, including a regimen of physical activity combined with a diet of high proteins, limited starches and daily vitamin supplements.

It was in the best health interest of these short people to be assisted through this health problem….the government would provide all their needs…while they worked to build the cars, the farms, the furniture, the entertainment that a civilized society needs.

Apart Height….it soon became apparent that many people over the age of 18 were also shorter….and Obama had a very elegant solution.

Since the country was now nationalized and everybody worked for the government, there was no longer any need for income taxes…the IRS had thousands of trained agents who no longer could justify their existence as tax collectors. They could easily be retrained as “Katchers” and sent out to locate anybody under the 5ft 2in height limit….catching them and transporting them to the special government facilities that would look after these folk.

And so it was…Katchers were dispatched far and wide in search of short people.

But the people were addicted to stuff…their demands for more and more free stuff became stronger and stronger….and Obama knew that his reign would only last as long as he could keep his addicted people happy.

To give away more free stuff…he needed to produce more…and to produce more, he needed more workers.

But that was a simple problem…it was easy to slowly increase the Apart Height limits…so each year since 2013, the height limit was increased. Slowly it crept up, until today…where it stands at 5ft 10in.

Where will it be next year? I suspect somewhere over 6ft!!

And all the time, more and more people are being taken by the “Katchers” to work in the production houses controlled by the government…while less and less people were tall enough to avoid the forced labor regime.

But an addicted people is a hungry beast…ravenous for freebies, and a never ending desire for more, more, more…

It happened in February 2018….the great Apart Height Escape.

You see, Obama had forgotten that intellect is not dependent on size. He forgot that man strives for freedom and when he is pushed far enough, will do anything to protect that freedom.

Six years of government sponsored slavery was enough time for the short folk to organize, to plan, to create underground railroads ready to spirit them away when the time came.

And on one cool morning while the guards were still sleeping off the excess of the night before, a nationwide jail break occurred.

Short people ran for the safety offered by millions of tall folk who knew in their hearts that Apart Height was wrong….that they would rather die than give up their freedoms that way.

The addicted remained in their drugged haze, too fat and stupid to know what had happened or why….too tied up in the latest episode of Washington Wives to care about their own future, let alone that of their neighbor, friend or even their families. As long as the government teat was offered and they could suck, they were happy.

When Obama learned of the jail break he dispatched the Katchers….armed with automatic guns they were ordered to shoot on sight…and if a tall person got caught in the crossfire, so be it.

He would teach the people of America who was in charge. The benevolent dictator who fed the addictions of his people became the fearsome tyrant overnight.

As the machine carrying the Katchers moved away…I sighed quietly and settled in for a nap before writing today’s entry in my diary…..

Sierra looked up at me as if to say…”I told you dragons were real….and now, here is one ready to swoop down and catch the unwary in its talons and take it away, never to be seen again!”

Ever so slowly, the dragon passed overhead….seeming to be no longer be interested in us. Sierra watched intently, growling stubbornly, as it left to find a less protected target.

As I watched the hot air balloon float serenely overhead, my mind searched frantically for a remnant of a dream ….but could not find it….

….it had something to do with short people…or tall people…or Obama….what was it?

While I don’t remember the details, I know that to re-elect Obama in November will be the worst possible thing that could happen to this great country.

Don't allow this nightmare to even possibly come true...while this is a work of fiction, it shows the "creep"...be it taxes, redistribution or height...the fix will be in and mission creep will take your freedoms, your property rights, and your soul.

There is only one way out....do NOT vote Obama!

…..devereaux

Who do YOU want to be when you grow up?

2012-10-30T16:18:00.001-07:00

Today I am writing to all Americans…not conservatives and not liberals.

Friends, in just one week we are faced with electing the man we want to lead us forward for the next 4 years.

There are many elements we should consider as voters. As Americans I believe we all want to see:-

- America remain free

- America remain great

- America remain strong

- America remain the light on the hill

- America remain the standard against which all others are measured

- America remain a land of opportunity

- America remain just

- America remain compassionate

I truly believe we all want the same things.

One of the great things about America is that we can disagree about how we get “there”; we can disagree about where “there” even is. We can disagree with our neighbor and yet join arms to battle a common foe. We can ague vehemently about policies but will join together to help a nation in need.

So why is it that in the last four years we have seen a division, nay, many, divisions occur in the fabric of our society?

Just some of the divisions I have noticed include:-

- The rich and the poor

- The black and the white and the brown

- Those with jobs and those without

- Those in unions and those not wanting unions

- Those on the government teat and those paying for it

Divisions of race and class have been thrust into our faces for 4 years in an attempt to make us forget that we are, together, Americans.

Political differences have torn families apart, have laid waste friendships that were expected to hold strong forever, and have pit brother against brother in a way not known since the civil war.

For over 200 years American’s have been strong, united and brave. They have held their honor and character as sacrosanct and their work ethic, determination, grit and resolve as the power that drove them forward.

For over 200 years American’s have stood hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder as the world’s evil tried to spread to this country. No Pearl Harbor could break the resolve and resourcefulness of you fine folk. No 9/11 attack by Muslim extremists could defeat your optimism. No financial turmoil of depression could break your spirit.

It did not take anything of that magnitude to degrade you….it did not take a momentous event to break your spirit…it did not even take the passage of time.

No…the American people sold their heritage in one day.

Since then, the decision of that day haunts us all, and will continue to haunt good Americans until that man no longer stalks the halls of power.

Who are you that gave up your freedoms so easily? Who are you that cast hope aside for the promise of change? Who are you?

Watch this video….and then tell me…does this represent who you really are?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=o6G3nwhPuR4

Do you really associate with those who seduce young ladies to vote with their lady parts? Or do you want all Americans to vote after fully considering ALL the implications…not just the sex?

Do you, like me, think this ad for Obama is degrading to the office of the President?

OK.

So who are you really?

Perhaps these people are more like you? After all…they are from the greatest generation. Perhaps they hold the values that you hold…perhaps you can identify with them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f17fWth3YgA

Or perhaps, like me, you find this rude, crude and totally unacceptable as a political advertisement? I do not know about you, but the greatest generation, in my eyes, used to love and honor this country. These people used to be proud of their America…and now?

Who are you?

Are you like them?

Or do you find this ad insulting, and beneath the office of the President?

Perhaps this is more like you? Perhaps the use of a cute child will enable you to identify?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=og35U0d6WKY

After all, children are the future of this country. With the right upbringing, the right support and a good education, these children will one day be handled the mantle of leadership. Is this the leadership you want them to take? Is this the person you want them to emulate?

Who are you?

Are you the first time voter looking for the big “O”, or are you the member of America’s greatest generation making threatening physical violence, or perhaps you the innocent child driven to hurling obscenities through the open window?

If you are a conservative, you must get out and vote. You MUST remove the Divider-in-Chief from office.

If you are a Democrat...you too must get out and vote, but before doing so, you must understand who you are…are you represented by these ads…and the many, many more that the left has produced that paint conservative America as extreme…or are you more like the people who stand for all those things that made America great? You have a tough decision ahead of you…choose wisely.

AS this election approaches, I am asking all Americans to put aside questions of party affiliation, to put aside questions of domestic policy and of foreign policy. I ask you to step outside of the circus that is the political sideshow full of sound bites and media filters.

And I ask you to look deep inside your heart.

I ask you to look at who you are.

Are you more like the Occupy thugs with their demands for free stuff…or are you more like the folk who simply ask for the freedom to achieve their own way? Are you more like the politicians who lie and waste your money…or are you more like the many charitable organizations who wisely spend the money you freely donate?

Are you more like the people who seek forgiveness when they do wrong, and offer forgiveness when they are wronged…or like the people who take no responsibility for their actions and blame others no matter what the situation?

Are you more like the Americans who made this country great? Or more like the Americans who produced those three videos?

Perhaps that question is too hard…perhaps I should rephrase it.

Who do you WANT to be?

Do you want to be the child hurling obscenities, the old person threatening violence or the young woman chasing the “O”?

If that is who you want to be…you know what to do.

For everybody else, the choice is simple….do the right thing!

…..devereaux

Just 8 minutes

2012-10-26T10:46:00.001-07:00

About 8 minutes of your time...and I promise, you will never be the same again....

https://www.youtube.com/embed/gsa4uLmTw0M

.....devereaux

Laughter is NOT the best medicine!

2012-10-25T11:54:00.002-07:00

Much has been said about this upcoming election. We have heard that it is about choices…a choice between two people who have fundamentally different ideas about how to move the country forward.

On one hand we have the current President… pretender with little knowledge and less substance. A man swept to the highest office in the land on the back of a clever campaign pitch. A man who uses the dollars from the Hollywood elite to campaign in 2012 against the wealthy…a man who promised to cut the deficit in half while actually increasing it…a man who was outspoken about healing the earth, stopping the rise of the waters and creating peace and harmony around the world. A man who promised greater transparency in government while doing secret deals behind closed doors, creating bills so large that lawmakers didn’t read them, and pushing through congressional votes in the darkest hours. A man who promised that unemployment would never reach 8% if the stimulus passed, while massaging the unemployment numbers and still not avoiding 43 months in excess of 8%...(he can’t even lie convincingly on that one!) A man who believed that through sheer force of personality he could make our enemies suddenly develop a new affection for the US…who through sheer bravery took out Bin Laden…and, with the exception of those trivial “not optimal” events of the terrorist attacks at Fort Hood and Benghazi…has disabled Al Quaeda and all form of world terrorism.

Yes, this Pretender-in-Chief is one choice.

The other choice is a man who has been a successful businessman, in fact so successful that he clearly falls into the definition of wealthy that is so under attack from Obama. A man who has shown he can successfully govern a state, but not just any state…a left wing state where he had to learn to work with Democrats to achieve any success…and by any measure his time as Governor was successful. A man “saved” the winter Olympics from financial oblivion. A man who cares deeply about this country…and is more concerned with the country’s success than he is for his own legacy. A man who is financially literate, who understands the deep and essential connection between a strong economy at home and a strong foreign policy.

One of these guys has socialist roots….the other a conservative background.

One is a narcissist while the other is not.

But all of these truths seem to be totally irrelevant to the average liberal out there. Why is this so?

It could be because they strongly believe socialism is a viable option…after all, having been educated within a system that decries personal success and has replaced it with a collectivist mantra, it is no wonder these folks are screwy in the head!

It could be because the simply want all the free stuff that Obama gives them. The thought of actually working for a living is anathema to them. The thought of getting educated so they can get better jobs is just downright “stupid”. That means effort…and why should they make any effort if all they have to do is vote for the right guy and all will be given to them?

It could be because they like his blackness…of skin and heart.

But here’s the thing….I think it is something totally different to any of these.

I have been watching Obama closely on the campaign trail and in the debates and have seen what I find a very disturbing trait.

It seems that Obama does not want to be President – he wants to be a stand-up comedian…

His pettiness, and petulance, comes out in every speech….his small mindedness and lack of policy hidden behind 5^th grade humor that wouldn’t get a showing on Comedy Central if he wasn’t the President….but nevertheless he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to make his followers laugh, or the very least, indulge in a chuckle or two.

And there is reason behind this approach.

Laughter is good for the soul. That is why comedians exist. When people laugh all sorts of “feel good” hormones are released into the body and they feel good. This is like a drug…a drug that conceals truth because once that “feel good” hits, nothing else matters.

So Obama’s many appearances with John Stewart are not simply to enable him access to the younger crowd….they are learning experiences…teaching him how to deliver a line, teaching him how to connect on a humorous level and hence undermine any logic that may be preventing the listener from believing his BS.

There is no doubt in my mind that Obama is knowingly using humor to hide the emptiness of his suit…after all, how many people love their spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend…and when asked to explain what it is that they love, the first words out of their mouths is…”He/she makes me laugh”.

The drug of laughter is powerful.

But a word of warning to the addicts of laughter….

Who do you want as president? The class clown? Remember back in high school, there was always one guy or girl who was the comedian. People liked him/her…they usually had mediocre grades but were smart enough to get through without too much work…and relied on their wit and heavy doses of sarcasm to hide their true selves. I know you remember someone like that.

Now fast forward thirty or forty years….most people like that will have matured…will have grown out of the comic persona. Living normal healthy hardworking lives they have moved forward. A very few may make a living from humor…some may do voluntary gigs tinged with humor…but most will have moved beyond those childish ways.

But if they didn’t?

Would you elect the class clown as President?

Could you imagine what it might be like when the class clown was sitting down holding talks with Netanyahu about Iran’s nuclear future…and the clown starts talking about these special ships he has that airplanes can land on….or these special boats that can travel underwater?

Give me a break.

Not only is that crap not funny in the debate dialogues, but it would be downright embarrassing in a foreign relations discussion.

But…this is what you have in the President. This is what he is showing you as the next four years come close. This is who he is selling.

The Clown-in-Chief has another problem that we all know about but seem to hide from. The last four years has shown us that the current democratic leadership is more akin to a Ringling Bros circus than to a working Congress…three rings each with its own clown….with Obama acting the fool in the center ring, he is ably assisted and supported by Harry Reid in the senate ring, and Nancy Pelosi in the House ring (although she is no longer Speaker, she remains leader of the Democrats).

Clowns one and all…the clown posse that will make you laugh till your sides hurt while they rob you blind, give away your country to foreigners and appease every bully that comes along…

Friends…in this case, laughter is the wrong medicine.

In 2012 we need a sober leader…a man of character and wisdom…a man who understands the depth of our problems and who promises to deal with them accordingly. A man who does not rely on lofty meaningless slogans like “hope and change”…a man who will roll up his sleeves and get down to work making this country strong again, making your lives easier, providing a real future to your children and grandchildren.

Not a man who laughs at you…who derides you…who garners your affection through laughter. Like all drugs…the laughter drug wears off…and the resulting withdrawal sends the addicted searching for more. While you search for your next hit, the Ringling Bros circus is tilted full ahead to your destruction.

So the choice is bigger than what we have all thought…

The choice is do we want a man of honor as President or do we want the class clown?

I know who I want…do you?

…..devereaux

Not the only game in town....

2012-10-22T14:41:00.002-07:00

About two weeks of electioneering to go before those who have not taken advantage of early voting present themselves at the nearest polling booth to vote for the man they want as President of these United States for the next 4 years.

The two men vying for this top elected position are worlds apart in their economic philosophy, the domestic policy, their foreign policy and in many other ways that will impact the voters’ decision, rightly or wrongly. Some people feel Romney looks more “presidential” than Obama, notwithstanding that Obama has been in that role for nearly 4 years (note that I said been in…not performing!). Some people like Obama’s folksy style, preferring his chameleon qualities to the more sophisticated style of Romney. Some people feel disquieted by Romney’s insistence on keeping his good works as quiet as possible…while others prefer to hear all about the good things Obama has…ooooh...never mind…

One would be forgiven for thinking that the presidential election was the only election happening on November 6^th…the truth is that there are many other elections taking place that same day.

House of Representatives and Senate elections will have a big bearing on what happens AFTER the dust from the elections has settled. State legislative elections are also very important…a fact that Romney has identified and been efficient at including in his presidential campaigns references to and introductions from the local candidates who support the Romney campaign.

You see, Romney understands that by supporting the local candidates in their quests, he is building a base of allies who will continue to support his Presidency. By having a majority in the House and Senate, he will have an easier time of moving his policies through Congress, getting bi-partisan support when necessary. This is the way an elected official works…this is the way politics works…this is the way government works.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, has done very little, if anything, to support the local candidates for House or Senate seats, let alone state legislatures. There could be a number of reasons for this:-

- It is possible that the Obama campaign does not believe that support of local candidates for House and Senate seats will assist in his own re-election (ie. He does not believe that that there are any votes to be had by supporting these candidates. This is a very short sighted view of the world. In my experience there are some folk who simply do not think about federal politics but have a deep concern for state and local politics. These people are there for the taking if a candidate can help them see the connection between state and federal governments and how the two can work together. Simply supporting a local candidate can convert into votes with a little effort. Obama clearly does not think he needs every vote he can get.

- It is possible that Obama does not believe that the House will remain under Republican control, or that the Senate is in danger of falling under Republican control. If this is how he thinks, and because of his narcissistic nature such a view is highly likely, it follows that he would not spend effort trying to assist an outcome that he already believes will be the case.

- A third alternative is that he simply does not care. He does not care whether there is Democrat control of the House or Senate. He does not care whether democrats win elections for the state legislature or for local elected positions. These things simply do not matter to him, so he is not going to waste precious time and resources supporting those candidates.

Of these three possibilities I see only one logical one, the last in that short list.

I believe that he simply does not care….and here is my reasoning.

For the last two years Obama has complained about the intransigent conservatives, the do nothing Republicans. This has served as a nice foil to explain Obama’s failures…and to provide a target for the thoughtless voters. Blame Bush…blame the intransigent do nothing conservatives…blame the tea party extremists. It is them who stopped the progress of my policies since they wouldn’t pass any of them…and on it goes.

Now we look forward to beyond 2012…if Obama wins a second term he does not care who controls Congress because he has already stated that if Congress won’t act, he will.

I believe he fully intends to use the next four years to slowly neuter Congress, slowly disembowel the Supreme Courts and slowly shred the Constitution. If this is his plan, then he will more easily succeed by ensuring that Congress is in fact controlled by the Republicans. If Congress blocks his moves, he will simply blame conservative extremists holding the country hostage, and do what he wants to do by executive order. With a democrat congress, this will be much more difficult to achieve, as he will not be able to blame the conservative movement.

It is very much in his interests to have both Houses controlled by the Republicans.

Should Obama win this election, he will have just 4 short years to achieve the upheaval required to ensure he becomes the dictatorial head of this country. Just four years. He cannot afford to play nice with Congress…and with a democratic Congress, he will have no choice.

Nope…he wants a Republican congress.

And this is why he does not campaign for and with democrats seeking office. It is not because he doesn’t have time or doesn’t want to spend the money. It is much more diabolical than that.

It is because he does not want them to win!

In order to betray this Country, he must first betray his party and the loyal voters who elected him. He doesn’t think twice about that…if you want some indication of what this man is capable of, simply read “The Amateur” by Edward Klein.

There is no big conspiracy here. There is no puppeteer pulling the strings. There is just Obama and his cadre of Chicago thugs ensuring that should they win, they will have power for a long, long time.

Do not look to liberals to understand this end game. The same blinders that allow them to vote for this man also prevent them from seeing the plan he has for America. Their foolish worship at the feet of this man is akin to the wild fervor of the German people when they looked the countenance of Adolph Hitler.

As Bob McLean wrote; “No angel born in hell, could break that Satan’s spell”

While McLean was referring to the Hell’s Angel murder of a fan at a Rolling Stones concert…he could easily have been writing of the liberal/progressives adoration of Obama, and the hold he has over them.

So, in the next two weeks I do not expect to see Obama campaigning for any democrat candidates in any race. If the Democrats retain control of the Senate and win back the House, Obama’s plans for the future will be wiped out!

Something to think about.

Of course, I do not recommend voting for any democrats at any level. By far the best thing to do is to ensure that Obama does not get a 2^nd term!

…..devereaux

Unemployment defined while Obama seeks help.

2012-10-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

I received an email today that helped me understand what is going on with the unemployment numbers…

(I apologize to the author...I could not credit you as I do not know who you are...but thank you for this simple explanation.)

Abbott and Costello could not have said it better!

COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America.

ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It's 9%.

COSTELLO: That many people are out of work?

ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: You just said 9%.

ABBOTT: 9% Unemployed.

COSTELLO: Right 9% out of work.

ABBOTT: No, that's 16%.

COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, that's 9%...

COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?

ABBOTT: 9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.

COSTELLO: IF you are out of work you are unemployed.

ABBOTT: No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed. You have to look for work to be unemployed.

COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!

ABBOTT: No, you miss my point.

COSTELLO: What point?

ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.

COSTELLO: To whom?

ABBOTT: The unemployed.

COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.

ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work stopped looking. They gave up. And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.

COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment roles, that would count as less unemployment?

ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!

COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work?

ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment, do ya?

COSTELLO: That would be frightening..

ABBOTT: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?

ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.

COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?

ABBOTT: Correct.

COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?

ABBOTT: Bingo.

COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.

ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like an economist.

COSTELLO: I don't even know what the hell I just said!

ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like a democrat.

So, now that we understand how the unemployment numbers are calculated, it is time to turn to a more serious matter.

Lybiagate.

There are many questions remaining about what actually happened in Benghazi….

- Did the President know that there was inadequate security?

- If so, when did he know it?

- When did the President know, or at least suspect that it was a terrorist attack and not the result of some pathetic film trailer on YouTube that nobody had even seen before it was talked about?

- Did the President lie?...or was it a simple case of being incompetent?

- What effect will Lybiagate have on the election?

The only question here that Obama cares about is the last one….and in an attempt to prepare for what could be his own Watergate moment, he turned to the only President in recent history to have faced such a scandal…hoping to get some good advice.

Obama: “Hey Bill, Barry here….ummmm…you and I have not always seen eye to eye….and ummm….I know Hillary works for me and is also in the firing line….but ahhhh….ummmm….ahhhh….I wanted to get your opinion on this Lybia thing……ummmm…people are starting to call it Lybiagate…and that can’t be….ummmm….good for my ….ahhhhh….re-election prospects.”

Clinton: “No problem Barry….deny, deny, deny. Just say ….”I did not have sexual relations with that woman”…and sooner or later it will all go away’

Obama: “ummm….ahhhh…what the f***are you talking about Bill?”

Clinton” “I am talking about Monica…you have to deny it…if you really need to you can redefine sex and even what the word “is” is. But the best advice….look into the camera, into the eyes of the viewers and say slowly and clearly…”I did not have sexual relations with that woman!””

Obama: “Bill…this has nothing to do with Monica….she is your problem, not mine…I am talking about Lybiagate…what advice can you give?”

Clinton:’ Oh, Lybiagate? I thought you said “Labiagate”!! Well…I have no experience with Libya…you might like to ask my wife if you can catch her ….I think she may be in Peru or some other African nation….but who knows where that woman goes….you would think that she would tell me where she’s been, so that I would know where to avoid….but no, she thinks that just because she is Secretary of State, she can go anywhere she wants and not tell me…..”

Obama: (frustrated) “Bill, focus will ya? I have a problem here….this whole Lybia thing is likely to blow up in my face….and…ummm…I don’t know what to do about….ummm….it. “

Clinton: “No, I don’t think redefining “it” will help. You could try calling Mitt a liar….that is always good for a couple of days…and don’t forget….”I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is always a good line. Apart from that, you are on your own buddy….now where did I put Monica’s number….the dragon won’t be back from wherever she is for a couple more days…more than enough time to catch up on the good old days!”

So Obama gets no help…and his campaign looks for a way to get out of this tricky spot. Their creative heads exploding with empty ideas until one bright spark suddenly shouts “Eureka”!

“I’ve got it”, he says….”we need to create a “gate” of our own that we can label Romney with…and we have just the thing. Now listen carefully. We all know that our attempts to recruit Big Bird didn’t work…not because it was a wrong strategy but because it was kind of hard to get the voters to be concerned about defunding him, when his company makes a couple hundred million dollars profit a year. Our argument that Romney wants to kill Big Bird just didn’t work. So we need to be more careful this time…we need to think about the voters and who we are trying to encourage to vote for us”

“Get on with it, fool” yelled Axelrod, whose demeanor was not only getting worse by the minute but who was desperately trying to cover up the fact that he was all out of ideas….

“Ok.Ok. I am getting there….we all know that we need the women’s vote, right? Well…Why don’t we create “Bindergate” on the heels of Romney’s comments in the last debate? By showing how badly Romney thinks of women, we are sure to capture the women’s vote.”

What a forehead slapper! Of course…Bindergate will easily negate the impact of Lybiagate….

And it came to pass that the Obama campaign called in their clowns, their apologists and their media…and created a massive campaign based around “Bindergate”.

Everywhere we look we see attempts to ridicule Romney with his own “Gate”…

Unfortunately there are some problems with this approach that the Obama people failed to see….

- Nobody died in Bindergate. The voters wish the same could be said about Lybiagate

- Nobody lied in Bindergate. The voters wish the same could be said about Lybiagate

- The President did not knowingly mislead the voters in Bindergate. The voters wish the same could be said about Lybiagate.

When Obama heard this campaign, he looked in the mirror and started practicing….

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Libyagate will defeat Obama…in the words of Joe Biden…”It is a big f***ing deal!”

…..devereaux

4 simple letters.....

2012-10-16T15:32:00.001-07:00

With a few weeks to the election, and debate season in full swing, it is far too easy to follow the crowd and try to predict what the candidates are likely to say or do in the remaining two debates.

Instead, my mind has been wandering to what it must be like to lose the election…to know that despite all of the efforts made, you are not the one the people want. As I pondered this, it occurred to me that the handover of a Presidency is not only extremely important but could in fact be very helpful to the incoming President.

After all, the outgoing President has a lot of recent experience and learned knowledge that he could impart to the incoming one….

I wonder what it was like in the Obama household when Bush had that final chat…..

(Cue spooky music and wavy picture as we travel back in time to become a fly on the wall of the Oval office as Bush provides some advice to Obama….)

Bush: “Well, Barry, you did it. Somehow you managed to convince enough people that your brand of hope and change designed to fundamentally change America will actually make their lives better. While we differ philosophically, I still feel I have something to offer that I have learned in my 8 years at the helm of America.

As is conventional in American politics, the outgoing President customarily gives a letter of advice to the incoming President. I am breaking that convention by providing you with 4 letters numbered 1 to 4. In these letters you will find the accumulated wisdom that I have gathered over the last 8 years…wisdom which if used correctly, could help your own Presidency. I know you have no reason to trust me….but when the time comes, reading these letters may help you gain perspective and provide direction. After all, I am a citizen of this country and your decisions affect me too…so it is in my best interests to provide the best advice I can.”

With that said, George W. Bush took his leave, leaving Barack Obama, newly ensconced in the White House with nothing more than the much vaunted hope and change of his campaign promises bouncing around the empty space where his brain should have been.

Not knowing what to do next, he opened the first letter from Bush….

“The fact that you are reading this indicates that you do not where to really begin transforming America. My advice to you is to just start. Do what you do best…make speeches, play basketball, and don’t forget the Wednesday night parties in the White House…all manner of artists are clamoring to perform there….you will have no trouble filling your time with these activities.

When the people catch on and see that nothing of significance has changed, and that the economy seems to be declining…open and read letter number two…the advice you find there will be invaluable.

Signed: George Bush”

Obama scratches his head a little and thinks about this advice. After an extraordinary long period of time, Obama straightens up and decides that this is really not bad advice at all. Things are bound to get worse before they get better, he thinks, so why not enjoy the honeymoon while it lasts? After all, my team of advisors are well suited and prepared to deal with the day to day issues of running the country….they don’t need me to do that…yes, why not enjoy myself…why not treat my family to vacations in exotic locales…and I may even be able to improve my golf score. You know…that George Bush may not have been as stupid as I always thought he was…his first letter makes a lot of sense!

So Mr. and Mrs President partied and vacationed and golfed and spa’d and did everything that Bush had suggested. And just as Bush had predicted, the economy became steadily worse. The unemployment numbers were bad news…jobs and job creation were non-existent, small businesses were falling like flies and the banking system was on the verge of collapse.

The transformation Obama had promised was coming to a screeching stop, and the natives were restless…they were starting to demand answers…starting to question whether the Obama choice was the right one.

In a fit of depression and doubt of what should be done next, Obama turns to letter No.2…..

“Dear Barry…running a country is surprisingly difficult, isn’t it? Especially for someone with such non-existent experience as you have. But do not fear…help is at hand. What you need is to convince the American people of a good reason for things to not be as rosy as you had promised. Give them a good reason and they will give you more time to solve the issues.

How about this? I have broad shoulders …after all I am a Texan! So why don’t you blame me? You could say that the economy is tanking because of Bush…the Bush wars, the Bush tax cuts…maybe even my fault that tsunamis happen…get the idea? If you do that, you could maybe buy a year or so before people start to call you on it. And in that time, you can improve your golf game, push through unwanted legislation, and have even more vacations.

Sounds like a plan to me….you don’t actually have to do or achieve anything if you blame me!

Signed” George Bush”

Barry couldn’t believe his luck. Just when he had run out of ideas, salvation was coming from the most unlikely source, being advice from his predecessor. What valuable advice. And amazing that Bush was willing to sacrifice his own place in history by being the whipping boy for Obama’s mistakes…awesome!!

So Obama and his clown posse got together and planned. Harry and Nancy sent out the war cry of blame Bush…a cry that was echoed throughout Liberal Wonderland. Voices were raised in unison across the land…”It was Bush’s fault!”

And Barry and Michelle grinned at how clever they were….they partied harder, inviting rappers to perform at discrete functions for their daughters…and select friends. They travelled more frequently, relying on their surrogates to carry the message far and wide. Their own incompetence, they believed, was now buried deep under the incompetence of the previous administration, almost guaranteed to never see the light of day before the next election. If it came out after that, it wouldn’t matter…they would have the White House for another 4 years. What a perfect plan.

Somewhere deep inside Obama’s addled brain a small voice was asking…”Why would Bush do this?”…but that small voice could not grow under the weight of the talk show appearances, concert nights and vacations that had now become the staple of life for the Obama’s.

Life was perfect. The country was in shambles, but that was Bush’s fault…the economy was failing…Bush’s fault…the foreign wars were failing…Bush’s fault…the dollar is weak…Bush’s fault!

Sometime later the whispers started. It was three years into Obama’s presidency and the whispers were getting louder…questions were being asked…and the liberal base, while still loyal supporters, were asking why it could STILL be Bush’s fault.

Obama could hear the whispers and knew he he had to come up with something before the whispers became a roar that drowned out his re-election prospects. But he was out of ideas…what could he possibly do?

One night while watching replays of the NBA finals, a light went off in the dark recesses of his brain. There were still 2 Bush letters left unopened…perhaps there was some advice in them?

With trembling fingers he opened Bush letter number 3, hoping that the words written therein could help him in his re-election campaign, regardless of the sluggish recovery….

“Hey, Obama….I guess blaming me didn’t get you through your first term…I tell you, the American people are much smarter than you ever gave them credit for. But not to worry….I didn’t think the “blame me” ruse would last forever which is why I wrote this letter for you.

If my calculations are right, you should be about ready to start your re-election campaign…and we all know how difficult it is to fit in a round or two of golf while on the campaign trail. Particularly when your record is so bad that you can’t rely on it to win this election. So far we have been able to work together to get you three years into your first term without your having to achieve anything at all. The task ahead is to get you through the next 9-10 months…and you have no record of success to rely on. This is a bit tricky.

But by now you should know that we Texan’s don’t give up. There is something that you can do…you can explain to the people that while your policies have been working, they have not been working fast enough…so you are re-organizing. You are re-visiting all the problems…refining your policies, coming up with ideas that will speed up the recovery. You can ask the people to give you a little more time to regroup and that in the next term, after this election, your revised policies will bear fruit…not the sour fruit of the Bush years, but fresh, succulent and sweet fruit that will see the economy strong for the next hundred years….

Obama, old pal, this is not hard. A man of your insecurity and lack of motivation can easily hide behind the r0ock that is re-organization.

Signed: George Bush”

Obama slapped his forehead in glee. Of course! What a simple solution…and what better time than now when he needed to give the electorate a reason to elect him once more. So the clown assembled once more. Biden was grinning like the fool he is as he listened to Obama explain the plan. Debbie Wasserman Schultz decided that a spread in Vogue would help polish her message of re-organization. Harry Reid nodded so vigorously that his glasses dropped from his nose, landing at the feet of Nancy Pelosi who looked for all the world like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming orgasm.

The re-election plan took shape. A cunning Obama campaign manager suddenly realized that the combination of a blame Bush punch with a re-organization plan, could produce the knock-out they desperately needed to get the Obama elected again.

And so it came to pass. Obama, convinced that his re-election was in the bag, went back to comedy central to learn the lines he would use in his many campaign appearances. His stand up routine was refined many times…his one liners practiced for hours in front of a mirror…his timing impeccable, he was prepared for every stump speech planned.

Unfortunately, his golf game suffered…so, in attempt to improve the only thing he had achieved since becoming President (his golf score) he started spending more time on the course…he avoided National Security Briefings and debate practice with the same sense of urgency. Every spare minute was spent driving, putting and counting his swings….and then disaster struck.

The first debate was a disaster for the Obama…he showed the world just how full of nothing he really was. Even his hot air fell to the floor with barely a whimper…and his election chances deflated with him.

He knew trouble was around the corner. He sent his VP into the fray with orders to liven the base…but all that happened was that Biden grinned like a fool and left everyone asking the question “How does he get his teeth so white?”.

Seeking inspiration, Obama turned to Bush’s letter number 4.

Nicotine stained fingers slowly opened the letter…and Obama noticed immediately that this letter was much shorter than the previous three. One page, folded in two…clearly not a lot written on it.

Shaking with fear, and excitement, hoping the solution was contained in those few words, Obama tried to read it…but could not bring himself to….

He hands the single sheet of paper to Michelle, asking her to read it to him….

She squints at the small print….and reads…..

“Barry, my boy…it’s time to start preparing 4 letters for the next President! George”

(Cue spooky music and wavy picture.)

Back again. Sorry for the diversion into imagination…I don’t for a minute believe that has happened…but wouldn’t it be a fine thing?

Obama must NOT win this election…and that is firmly in your hands.

Make him write those letters!

…..devereaux

Where did that rabbit go?

2012-10-12T11:49:00.002-07:00

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson could certainly be forgiven for thinking that life imitates art if he had watched the presidential debate last week, followed by last night’s vice-presidential debate.

Of course, Dodgson could not have watched these debates since he passed away long before Presidential debates became a fixture in American politics….in fact, he died in 1898!

So why do I speak of him today?

Because he wrote the tale that best sums up the optics of the two debates so far this season.

A week or so ago we watched the President as his size diminished in front of our eyes…he clearly consumed a bottle of “Drink me” just before he appeared with Mitt Romney to debate the issues.

As we watched, he became smaller and smaller…a small man, with small ideas. A man unable to “reach the key atop the table”…a shrinking violet…shrinking away from every challenge, every idea and every jab thrown by Romney.

Is this the man you want as President? Or do you buy the litany of excuses thrown out by the left for the diminished performance of the liar-in-chief? He was effected by the altitude…or he was black…or he was too polite….give me a break! It is clear what happened…he couldn’t resist the “drink me” bottle!

Now, last night, the vice-president appeared in his debate with Paul Ryan. He clearly also partook of a substance before the debate but rather than the “drink me” bottle, he consumed the “eat me” cake!

As we watched he became larger than life…his obnoxious and rude interruptions were, by some reports, numbered in the 80’s! His gestures, finger pointing, lecturing and inappropriate grinning were reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat but in reality reflected no more than the “eat me” cake he must have consumed before coming on stage.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, would surely be forgiven for thinking we had followed the white rabbit down the rabbit hole and landed in “Liberals in Wonderland”!

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland written in 1865, and much loved by adults and children for nearly 150 years, starts with Alice following the white rabbit….going down a rabbit hole…and into a fantastical land…a land populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. A land where nonsense rules…and reality has no half-life!

Watching these two debates, I could not help feeling that I was in Wonderland…or at least part way there….

A smaller than life Presidential attempt to convince you to vote democrat was followed by a larger than life Vice-Presidential attempt to induce you to vote democrat.

Is this really where the democrats want to be?

By all accounts the President was not himself…at least that is what the pundits and talking heads say. The general consensus is that he had a bad night…really? Really? A bad night?

It was horrible….let’s not beat around the bush here…this man was not there…he offered nothing other than absolute proof that Clint Eastwood was right when talking to an empty chair!

Is this the man who you want leading the country?

And then the bottom half of his ticket comes out with both guns blazing. He was arrogant, rude, bullying, disruptive and offensive. What did amaze me was that he seemed to have some substantive things to say…and I agreed with a couple…but his delivery? That is another issue altogether.

Do you really want this arrogant old fool as your VP?

Ok…so I think the answer to both questions is a resounding “no”…but I am not stupid and understand that the people that you saw in these debates are not the people who share the leadership of this country…after all, they had both consumed items found in the rabbit hole before speaking.

But that fact simply begs another question….

If the people we saw in the debates were not the real people…were not honest or accurate representations of what we will get when they are re-elected…how do we know what we WILL get? Who are the real Obama and Biden?

We hear Obama mouthing off about which Romney he should expect at the next debate…we hear the democrat talking points being no more positive than “Romney lies”…we hear excuses…we hear racism…we hear continued obsessions with millionaires and billionaires….but we don’t hear any substantive discussion…unless you consider the blanket statement “Romney lies” as substantive.

So here we are…a few weeks out from an election of vital importance to this country, and we see the current leaders of this country treating it as a game…a trip into fantasy…their arrogance so great that they do not feel it necessary to bring honesty and their real selves to the front and center.

Why could that be?

Could it be because the truth is stranger than the fictional characters they portray?

Next week we will see Obama once again hit the debate stage. I confess to being intrigued as to which fantasy character he will become…could he be the Cheshire cat? I doubt that…Biden grins like a fool and that is better suited to him….

Perhaps we will see Wily Coyote…that is certainly better suited to his policies. Failure at every turn, and being hit by the anvil every time.

Maybe we will see the resurrection of hope and change…after all, that worked 4 years ago!

Whatever we see in the debate, I am certain it will not be the real Obama…no matter how ludicrous the character he adopts; it will not nearly represent the truth. This man is a chameleon willing to sacrifice truth on the altar of the rabbit hole…

I implore you, do not be deceived.

Liberals have long ago left common sense behind and have followed Obama and Biden down their progressive rabbit hole…where fantasy allows the impossible to make sense. Do not follow them.

Retain your sanity…and vote for the person who shows themselves as a true leader. A person who stands tall in the face of adversity…a person who does not need the “eat me” cake or “drink me” bottle…a person who presents real options.

Rabbit holes are everywhere…beware lest you fall in. Democrats make them…democrats live in them…democrats want you to follow them to their oblivion disguised as progress.

Who knew that Alice could morph into two people?

But then again, I guess anything is possible when you ignore reality and live in a progressive Wonderland.

…..devereaux

Common dreams - a cult of personality!

2012-09-25T11:54:00.002-07:00

I have long considered liberalism to be nothing short of a mental disorder. While I have met some democrats who are clearly deep and careful thinkers and therefor prove that such creatures do exist, the sad truth is that most liberals have cast away the hard work of thinking and replaced it with blind acceptance. Every mind numbing picture that degrades a conservative is treated as manna from heaven…gulped greedily until their liberal minds are suitably paralyzed …and their eyes greedily seek the next dumb statement with which to feed their addictions.

As recently as a few days ago, I may have thought that statement a tad unfair…surely living, breathing humans have more intellectual capacity than that?

And then I stumbled upon Commondreams.org. (http://www.commondreams.org/ ). No further proof of the truth of my statement above is needed.

This page is nothing more than a smattering of mind numbingly stupid captions, user created stories, and liberal double speak. This is what the conservative movement is up against…an army of blind followers with the combined mental powers of an aging Orc from Middle Earth.

Don’t believe me?

Just go to that page and read some of the comments. You will find perhaps a smattering of conservative posts from people who either think they have some chance of penetrating the stupidity of the masses, or want to at least make a conservative stand in a forum that is clearly hostile to any attempt at clear thought. However, if you were to read the guidelines for authors you would find that this organization, while supporting the rights of free speech advocates, very clearly does not support free speech…as evidenced by their requirement that posts should be “progressive”.

My journey into the wastelands of liberal understanding was a disturbing event more akin to a nightmare than an enlightening adventure. I am by nature a seeker of experience, of new ideas, of new thoughts, an adventurer of both body and mind. I often enjoy the debate as much for the formulation of my own thoughts as for the consideration of my opponent’s ideas. It is for this very reason that I often seek out and visit web sites where thoughts that are opposite to mine are freely expressed.

I frequently return from these sojourns feeling a little better educated…a little clearer in my thinking. Rarely do I change my opinions…although the act of challenging them is always enjoyable.

Not so with Commondreams.org . Rarely have I found myself in such intellectual wasteland….a place bereft of originality…a place that is not only bereft of thought but is proud of it. Hostile to new ideas, this page and the lemmings that frequent it are the very proof I needed that liberalism is indeed the mental disorder I have long suspected.

Quite frankly, a primordial swamp has more intellectual honesty than this place.

I must be a sucker for punishment, because against my better judgment, I read more of the comments than a sane man should (at least without risking not only his sanity but the contents of his stomach, as the digestion of stupidity affects the bowels in the same way as an overdose of laxatives!)

After returning from this less than enjoyable visit with the mentally challenged, I felt like I needed an enema for my mind and Pepto for my stomach…although I doubt how effective they would be in removing the stench from my nostrils (another side effect of mental numbing!)

Anyway, when my head started working once more, I started to wonder just how otherwise intelligent people (and I am giving the benefit of the doubt here)…how otherwise intelligent people can so willingly cast aside common sense and salivate after Obama like a horny dog after a bitch in heat.

By contrast, Republicans and conservatives in general, do not worship at the feet of Romney…they are fully aware of his weaknesses….they do not deny them, nor make excuses. But the Obama followers? A totally different relationship exists.

Obama is, to his followers, not one step removed from the Messiah…he IS the Messiah…the One who will roll back the waters, heal the planet, create world peace, fix the economy….and if he doesn’t succeed in all of these…well he can always blame Bush.

He is the One…

I could make some comments about flies here…or polished turds…but I will refrain from such childish comments. (Please forgive me…I suspect I still have mental artifacts from my unfortunate journey into stupidity at the Commondreams pages! )

As I considered these things it occurred to me that what is happening is simply the cult of personality. The cult of personality is a very powerful thing. It is impossible to know just what it is…or exactly how it works…but there have been numerous examples of it throughout history.

In order to be fair to my liberal friends I decided to go to a liberal source for a definition of the cult of personality….

Wikipedia defines it as follows:-

“A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized, heroic, and, at times god-like public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. …. A cult of personality is similar to hero worship, except that it is established by mass media and propaganda.”

Wow…could that have been more accurate?

The cult of personality has been used by many people throughout history….

- Karl Marx

- Joseph Stalin

- Adolph Hitler

- Eva Peron

- Chiang Kai Shek

In current days…Vladimir Putin is one of two obvious examples.

The other is Barack Hussein Obama…a man who has hidden his history and created an image about which willing participants’ prostate themselves in worship.

When the people indulge in hero worship of this nature, they are willing to bargain away their God given common sense in exchange for the perception that the object of their worship will deliver them from all the travails of modern life…and will solve their every problem and grant their every wish.

Deep down inside, they know this is not possible, so even as they choose to believe, they instill in their minds all the necessary protections for when failure occurs (as they know it will). These defenses are so powerful that even when the people know their hero is leading them forward to things that do not sit well with their own conscience; they do not hesitate to follow.

This is why Hitler was able to lead an entire nation to believe that the extermination of Jews was good for them…even though they knew in their hearts that it was not only wrong but would jeopardize their national soul for decades to come.

Their minds were numb…

- Numb to truth

- Numb to logic

- Numb to manipulation

- Numb to free expression

- Numb to original thought

The cult of personality can be so powerful that anything that even hints at disagreement is filtered, spun, into the type of stupid, illogical and uncompromising comments that one finds in the mental wastelands of cultist blogs.

There is no way to defeat this.

The only way is to eradicate the personality around which the cult fawns. And in a Republic such as ours…that means at the polling booth.

In November this year we can all go and start the process of eradicating the personality that has enslaved so many in stupidity.

Your vote on November 6 could set free millions of people currently captive to the cult of personality. I doubt they will thank you…but over time, they may regain their senses…although it could be a generational thing.

In any event, we must start somewhere…after all; I believe I REALLY will go insane if I have to engage with Commondreams.org again…please, no!!

…..devereaux

Cedrick wins the lottery -a tale of redistribution!

2012-09-20T12:41:00.000-07:00

An interesting week in politics…we have the media going crazy about a “leaked” video of Romney telling the truth about a large portion of the American society…and literally ignoring a video of Obama telling the truth about what he believes.

I find it amazing that the media chooses to select the words of Obama and call them truth when he lies, yet ignores his words when he speaks truth.

Are you confused yet?

I sure am.

What is it about Obama’s continual references to his belief in the redistribution of wealth that gets the media so hell-bent on ignoring it?

SO…today we are going to go back to school for a few minutes and look at redistribution of wealth.

In today’s lesson we are going to find a way to remove all elements of opportunity differences, equality differences, economic differences, color differences, political differences etc, and look at redistribution of wealth WITHOUT all that crap getting in the way.

Now, folks, remember as you read this…this is what Obama believes in.

“Listen while I tell you ‘bout a man named Jed,

A poor mountaineer,

Barely kept his family fed,

And then one day

While he’s shooting at some food

Up from the ground came a bubblin’ crude

Oil that is

Black Gold…Texas tea”

Well, the next thing you know

Old Jed’s a millionaire

His kinfolk said Jed, move away from here

Said Californi is the place you want to be

So he loaded up the ruck

And moved to Beverley

Hill that is…

Swimmin’ pools.movie stars”

So what does the Beverly Hillbillies have to do with what I am talking about today?

It is simple…luck…pure unadulterated luck was what happened to Jed.

And today’s lesson on redistribution of wealth starts at that point.

Let me introduce you to a friend of mine…his name…well…let’s call him…ummm…Cedrick.

Cedrick could have been an educated man, but he didn’t work hard at school…or he is a highly educated man who is a powerful captain of industry…or he is a lazy assed cocaine addict. You see…it doesn’t matter who Cedrick is…he is everybody and nobody.

But Cedrick has a dream…he has a dream of obtaining great wealth…and he religiously goes down to his corner store and does the one thing that he hopes one day will bring him the wealth he dreams of…he buys a lottery ticket.

This lottery ticket is the equivalent of Jed Clampett’s bubblin’ crude….one ticket…one day when luck smiles on you…and Cedrick ‘s numbers come up. He wins $87 million cash value…and after the tax authorities take their share…he stands to get around $50 million!!

Cedrick does not think twice about where his winnings came from. He spares not a thought to the schoolkids who benefit from lottery profits, or the thousands of people who bought tickets so that he could get their money….nope...he thought only about what he was going to do with this money.

Cedrick suffers from greed…he wanted something for nothing….he wanted to get rich through just his own good luck. He didn’t think about how a lottery is nothing other than the redistribution of wealth…he didn’t think that taking small amounts of money from a large group of people and then combining it to give it to one person was actually redistribution of wealth.

In fact he didn’t think at all…but he was sure going to learn fast.

You see…while Cedrick was planning on how to spend his money, a group of vocal people were planning on how they could get some of it.

Starting with his family, and then his friends, and acquaintances, and ending with charities and total strangers…everyone was putting out their hand wanting a part of Cedrick’s good fortune. After all…he didn’t earn it, he didn’t work hard for it, he didn’t study for years to get it…he was just the recipient of dumb luck.

These greedy people wanting to share in Cedrick’s good fortune did not spare a moment to think about the kids that were helped when Cedrick bought his lottery ticket along with millions of other people (including them). They didn’t think about the fact that had, because of their own greed and desire to get something for nothing, provided the pool of funds that Cedrick now enjoyed. Nope….these people were captured by greed and envy and just wanted to get a part of Cedrick’s new found wealth…after all what right did he have to be lucky?

Cedrick is a good and generous man…he helps his parents by paing off their home, he gives his sibling a lot to help with their lives. He finds several charities that he wants to support and gives them some.

But this is not good enough for the angry throngs who populate the internet screaming that Cedrick should do more. Demanding that he should give more away because he doesn’t need that much. After all, how many cars does one man need? The clamor for their share of Cedrick’s good fortune did not go unnoticed…

Sitting on his throne in the Oval Office, Obama hears the cries of the greedy….

He sees Cedrick as a target…a way to show that redistribution of wealth, which he believes in, is right…it is morally good…and if Cedrick won’t willingly do it, the government will be forced to step in. After all, it was just dumb luck that resulted in Cedrick having that money in the first place.

And…we must always remember that the government knows much better how to use Cedrick’s money than Cedrick does…especially when someone of the intellectual capacity of Barack Obama, the smartes President in history, is at the helm.

SO Obama sees an opportunity …an opportunity to start the process of making the rich pay their fair share. He sees that he can get public support for greater taxation on lottery winnings…that he can push higher taxes on lottery earnings because since it was just dumb luck, nobody could claim that the government was “stealing the hard earned labor of the tax payer”…just dumb luck.

So with the approval of the 47% of non-taxpaying Americans, Obama raised the taxes on lottery winnings as a separate element of income…first to 50%, then to 75% and finally, to the delighted howls of the masses, to 90%!

And the lottery died instantly. Nobody would buy tickets.

Nobody wanted to support the children through their ticket purchases. Schools lost their funding, and, as is often the case, the schools in the poorest areas were hardest hit.

No longer was the lottery attractive…not only were lottery winnings taxed inordinately, but the size of lottery prizes, which are a direct result of numbers of tickets sold, decreased almost overnight.

You see the greedy didn’t want their winnings redistributed by the government…the risk/reward scenario no longer made sense to them. Even dumb luck now resulted in their luck being stolen from them.

And the students paid for this with reduced funding.

The moral to this story is simple.

The only people who believe in the redistri9bution of wealth are those who can take it from somebody else. The greedy. The jealous. The myriads of people with their hands out…begging government for something for nothing, begging the Cedrick’s of this world for their wealth.

The hard truth s that redistribution of wealth is the surest way to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

You see, trying to keep this simple…when you steal wealth, you can only steal what is in existence at that point in time. So you have to do it again…and again…until at some point the wealth creators simply stop creating. The ones relying on dumb luck, simply stop buying tickets.

This is what our President believes in…

I am not against the lottery (although I never buy a ticket because I do not want to be inflicted with the psychological damage that comes with wanting something for nothing)…and I feel good for those that win.

With sudden wealth comes sudden responsibility that many are not prepared for…and they become nothing but pawns to those who would steal their wealth.

Redistribution of wealth does not, in any way, raise the poor from their lot in life…nor does it cut the wealthy down to size since they will ultimately find a new land in which to ce=reate…a place where wealth does not get taken from them. No…redistribution of wealth simply creates powerful governments and elitists who rule over their subjects with no thought other than of their own position. In a country that redistributes wealth, there are but two classes…the poor and hungry, and the fat government elitists.

It can work no other way.

It is time to believe Obama when he says he believes in redistribution of wealth,. And it is time that we all understand what that actually means.

It means the destruction of opportunity, the destruction of choice, and the destruction of freedom.

If you want that, Obama is your man in November…for surely he WILL give you what you want. For everyone else…Romney may not be your preferred choice, but at least he can slow the decline…and does not believe in redistribution. He is the only choice you have.

…..devereaux

When all else fails - try truth.

2012-09-18T16:28:00.002-07:00

The political world is all agog about the secret tape of Romney saying some pretty harsh things about a portion of Americans….

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what.”

………………………………..Mitt Romney, May 17, 2012

OK…let me first say that this is clumsy…the point is accurate but not well made. And Mitt is having to pay for this piece of political clumsiness…but in some schools he is being strongly supported for stating truth...albeit in not the best terms.

And this confirms in my mind just exactly what is needed in order to win in November.

It is clear that, to use Mitt’s percentages, 47% of the American public are not now, nor ever will be, voting for him. The demands of the addicted are such that any talk of budget constraint (ie. spending cuts) will send these folks running even faster to fall on their knees in supplication to their lord and master, Obama…hands outstretched pleading for a few words and some dollars.

In other words…these voters are not his market…and he should waste no time trying to convince them.

Where he should be spending his time is with the existing base and with the undecided…a fact that he and his team already know and understand.

What they seem to miss, however, is exactly what it will take to encourage the undecided to fall his way, or to encourage the conservatives to rush the polling booths in such numbers that the result cannot be denied.

There are a few things that are certainly true of this and most other elections:-

1. Sound bites rule the day. Short clever sayings will get more airtime than long convoluted explanations

2. More publicity comes from “outrageous” comments than from good explanations

If Romney wants to incite the conservatives to get to the polls he needs to change the nature of the discussion…something that is easy to do but is bound to totally tick off the 47% who will never vote for him anyway…so why not try it?

What is this secret weapon?

Truth!

It is time for Romney to grow a pair and state in no uncertain terms the following:-

“This election is not just about who has the better plans to move the company forward. It is not just about who will generate employment quicker. It is not just about who will implement strong fiscal controls and efficient government with less waste. No! It is about far more than that. This election is not even about the philosophical differences between the left and the right.

This election represents a choice you have to make. A choice that will shape the future not just for yourself but for your future generations. Make no mistake, the decision you make on November 6 will dictate the direction of America for decades to come.

So what is this choice?

It is too east to say that it is a choice between philosophies. It is too easy to say that it is a choice of personality…or party preference.

The choice you are making is whether the USA will become a communist nation or whether she will roll back the ravages of liberalism and once more return to the roots of her constitution…a land of freedom, minimal government intrusion and economic strength. There is no half measures this time. Obama has told you where he wants to take this country …and I have spoken of the need to return to constitutional government. The differences could not be clearer.

Vote for Obama and you are voting to usher in a fundamental change to communism. Is that what you want? Because that is what you will get!

Make the right choice!”

When Romney is attacked for these statements, as he certainly will…he has many avenues to further point out his evidence…

- He can remind people that Obama campaigned on fundamentally transforming America in 2008

- He can remind people that 20 years in Rev Wrights black theology church informed Obama’s current thinking

- He can remind people that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn are lifelong friends…that Dorhn was instrumental in bringing Obama and Michelle together….that their communist beliefs were a huge part of their relationship

- He can remind people that his father figure was Frank Marshall Davis, a card carrying communist

- He can remind people that Obama has spoken many times of his belief in redistribution of wealth

- He can remind people that Obama does not think the Constitution is an important document but rather one that simply gets in the way

- He can remind people that Obama has no qualms about ignoring congress

- He can remind people that Obama has used the department of justice to prevent the course of justice, not to ensure it

- He can remind people that the Obama administration has not produced a budget in 4 years…and that the budget Obama produced did not receive a single vote in Congress

- He can remind people that the EPA is out of control

- He can remind people of the Obama administrations desire to choose which industries should succeed and which should fail

- He can remind people of how Obama ignored bankruptcy law and stole assets from the bondholders of GM and gave those assets to his union buddies

- He can remind people of the abuse of the trust they placed in him 4 years ago

Will this tick off the Obama voters? Sure it will…you will hear their screams of “foul” all the way to Chicago…but that does not mean this should not be done.

Nothing will stop the Obama machine quicker than an attack on who Obama is...as shown through his own words, his own autobiographies, his own statements. You will have gasps of horror from those of the left…you will have 4 inch headlines in every major newspaper demanding he recant…you will have hordes of ignorant masses demonstrating in the streets. You will have the left showing you who they really are.

And you will mobilize the conservative movement. They will applaud the strength, honesty and bravery of this candidate. They will sigh with relief that at last somebody is willing to stand up and say what they all know to be true.

Most importantly, Romney will have given a reason for the 53% of Americans who are not in the bag for Obama to go to their polling stations and cast their vote for America.

You see…this is not an election to see whether Democrats or Republicans hold power for the next 4 years…no…this is an election to see whether America survives or sinks into a communist oblivion.

Choose wisely.

…..devereaux

Nineteen....how many more?

2012-09-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

It is now 9/14…and the lessons from that fateful 9/11 of 11 years ago have been ignored by the current administration. A President who feels he is smart enough to understand security briefings by glancing at a daily summary…without any attempt at questioning or discussing the conclusions with those entrusted to prepare the briefings…is a President who has failed in his sole duty as President…to protect the citizens of this country from dangers both home and abroad.

This failure of a President has chosen to attend fund raisers rather than attend security briefings.

And the Muslim world looks at his lack of interest and pounces as a cat pounces on its prey.

Much has been said about the Muslim world reacting to some stupid movie about Mohammed…really? Do you really think that has inspired attacks and demonstrations against America in 19 (yes…19 as of this moment) countries around the world?

Right now the list includes:-

- United Kingdom

- The Netherlands

- Morocco

- Algeria

- Tunisia

- Nigeria

- Libya

- Sudan

- Somalia

- Syria

- Yemen

- Iran

- Iraq

- Pakistan

- Afghanistan

- India

- Bangladesh

I daresay that by now the trouble will have spread to even more countries as the Muslims, emboldened by the pathetic response from this Administration, seeks to take even more advantage of a weakened America and show that the Great Satan is not only a pathetic caricature of its former greatness, but does not have the will to defend its own belief in free speech.

Nor does America have the will to defend its sovereign land (embassies) from rampaging mobs, or to protect its citizens serving in Embassies and Consulates around the world from the aggression of these mobs.

Rather than protecting their sovereign lands themselves, embassies and consulates are relying on local law enforcement to provide the security. Has nobody considered that in many cases the local security forces could be more supportive of the mobs than they they are of the US occupants they are supposed to be protecting?

Since when has America subjugated its right to defend itself to other countries?

Insanity.

And now we discover that the Marines in Cairo defending the Embassy were not permitted to have live rounds in their guns? Incredible madness!!

Look…this is not about some stupid movie. This is the outcome of the Arab Spring…and without America making it clear that she will support free speech and WILL DEFEND her people from ALL AGGRESSORS…we are seeing what is only the start of the Muslim attack.

Obama is MIA….Clinton is making all sorts of noises that amount to nothing more than apologies and empty words…and in the meantime American interests abroad remain vulnerable.

A true leader would stand strongly and make the following clear statements:-

1. America supports the constitutional right to free speech and will NOT be dictated to by foreign mobs who simply do not like what they see or hear.

2. America will not cow before pressures from foreign mobs and will protect her sovereign territory from aggressors of all kinds.

3. America will protect her citizens at all times.

4. Any attempts to attack or threaten Embassies or Consulates wherever they are located in the world will be greeted with the full force of America’s defenses. While the reponse will be measured, it will also be appropriate to the threat. Mobs scaling walls and trespassing on American soil will be met with whatever force is necessary to deter them, including deadly force where required.

5. America will not rely solely on the security forces of foreign nations to protect her citizenry and sovereign lands.

OK, Obama…are you willing to say these things?

Are you willing to stand up to the mobs? Or are you nothing but a scared little boy running away to hind behind the skirts of your next fund-raiser? Are you really that scared of the results of standing up to bully mobs?

Indeed you are pathetic.

I have heard it said that we must support our President in times like these.

Really?

Even when he acts like a coward and in doing so puts our citizens at greater risk?

The muslims attacking America now do not care about civilized actions. They do not care about words. They do not care about life.

The only thing they care about is killing Americans.

And this fool we have as a President lets them do it.

It is time for America to protect her own. .. and for the world to know it!

…..devereaux

The Chicago way....the Cincinnati result...

2012-09-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

So…does anyone else feel like the “Chicago way” has erupted into a group of angry, ignorant, intolerant group of people who hold our children at ransom while demanding more money, better benefits…and a refusal to be held to any standards evidenced through a process of job performance review?

After seeing video of the striking teachers, all I can say is that I am glad my children are not being educated by this group of tyrants! Let me say this. I know of many teachers who are good, no…great teachers. Teachers who love their kids, who want them to succeed, who want them to grow up with a strong sense of self, knowledge of history, basic life skills…kids who are prepared to not only survive in society but contribute in ways that benefit everyone. Great teachers and great students provide hope for society.

The people in Chicago are NOT great teachers…they represent the dark underbelly of failure protected by thuggish unions and bullies. It is time for the great teachers to make a stand…to get in the faces of their unions and demand the change they want. Union bullies must be disposed of…and the teachers unions returned to the hands of those whose interests are more closely aligned with education rather than power and feeding at the trough of the taxpayer.

I personally find it insulting that the teachers unions refuse a 16% pay increase, refuse to be held accountable for their teaching results, demand more benefits…and then demonstrate with the argument that by not giving them these things, our children will suffer!! What a load of BS. This type of thinking just shows how badly our society has collapsed…we must not allow this type of thinking to permeate our brains any further.

It must be stopped!

“The teachers average $76,000 a year in the salary. That is the highest of any big city in the country. The average person who pays taxes in Chicago, their average salary is $47,000. Teachers are making 50 percent more than those supporting them, on average.

They have been offered a 16 percent hike in wages at a time of high unemployment, desperation. And they turn it down. Why? They don't want tampering with the health benefits, and they don't want any system of the teacher evaluation so you can get some idea of who is not a good teacher.”

-- Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

That about sums it up. If I was Mayor Emmanuel, there would be no discussion. There would be a simple statement…be at work in 60 minutes or do not bother to come back. Simple.

The threat of a prolonged strike is meaningless when it is clear that our children are not getting the education they deserve under the current system anyway.

As proof of this statement, let me refer you to this story that appeared at Cincinnati.com yesterday….

“I am honored to be a daughter of Cincinnati and am humbled to have grown up in such a wonderful community. I attended St. Margaret of York grade school and then matriculated from the reputable Ursuline Academy. After high school, I earned degrees from Miami and Xavier universities. Because of my local education, Cincinnati is more than my hometown – she is the mother who raised me into the woman I am now. I am Cincinnati.

My pursuit in excellent education is rooted in a value system that promotes progressive thought for the betterment of the individual as well as society. Education is a core tenet and vested interest of the functioning democratic society. Upon that basic assumption and principle, I am overwhelmingly incensed by the silent epidemic of crippling student debt.

At 25 years old, I have $188,307.22 in student debt, all of which is my sole financial responsibility.

That exorbitant number was abetted by easy lending with a co-signer, negligence and lack of awareness, over-borrowing and the exponential growth of tuition.

I work both a full-time and part-time job, and abide by a strict budget. Yet, I still sleep in my parent’s basement and am dependent for food, gas and health insurance.

I am told I am not alone.

However, this particularly sensitive conversation is being ignored by our mainstream consciousness. Perhaps I should be ashamed for buying such an unaffordable education and internalize my debts as personal failures. Perhaps my mistakes warrant pained silence. But silence breeds apathy, and in regard to the welfare of the American economy, I want to humanize the numbers and give voice to this reprehensible problem.

Due to reckless neglect, student debt will be the financial ruin of my generation, and there is an incredible need for a public discourse addressing this reality and its grave consequences.

I want answers and clarity as to why this happened. How did I arrive at this position in life so financially handicapped and disenfranchised? I followed societal expectations, earned an education and am employed. I will gladly repay my debts within the comfortable reason of affordability. Yet, my wants and needs are disproportionate, and I can barely afford a PB&J sandwich, let alone the peace of mind to sleep at night.

There is great irony in pursuing freedom through education only to be shackled by crushing debt. My current financial situation prohibits any fantasies of owning a home, getting married or starting a family.

My future and dreams are six feet under, and I am still digging my grave. I want to fight and reclaim my American and Cincinnatian identity, even if the only thing I can afford is the sound of my voice and tears.

I am owed answers simply because I have the right to pursue happiness. And since I am not alone in this debilitating epidemic, my peers deserve their voice as well.”

…..Katie Brotherton, Cincinnati.com, September 10, 2012

I need to make a few comments on this piece of stupidity.

While Ms. Brotherton does not state what her degrees were in, several talk shows have identified the degree as being in English…this may be true, but I hope it is not, for the lack of quality in the expression of her ideas indicates little more than a high school education to me.

You may well be critical of my writing and expression…God knows I am no writer…and I do not have two degrees or $180k plus in debt to show for it! Any criticism of my writing ability is accepted with humility…but not so the rant penned by Ms. Brotherton.

It is clear she is attempting to express ideas beyond her understanding, and failing miserably. But let’s not get carried away by the value of any English degrees she may have earned.

Let’s look at the knowledge she gained from her $180k education, shall we? After all…education is about knowledge, right? It is intended to prepare you to not only survive but contribute to society by being a valuable member, isn’t it? A certain degree of basic knowledge is expected from [people with a university education, right? Or am I wrong?

So...what does this super educated lady have to say to us?

Her first paragraph sets the scene she wants us to use as a backdrop to her plight. “I am Cincinnati” she writes. Really? What an outrageous claim to make! I am sure that the many Cincinnati residents who have lived, worked, played and contributed to the Cincinnati community for 50, 60 , 70 or more years might have a thought or two on that. Now…if she had said that Cincinnati was “in her bones”, that would have made sense. Ms. Brotherton, you are no more “Cincinnati” than I am…an outrageous claim to commence your rant. If you truly are an English major ( or any other educated scholar) you certainly did not succeed at logic or reasoning!

Typical of poor education…the mere statement of a claim, a fact, does not make it so…and Ms. Brotherton clearly missed the mark on this one! (I won’t even go into the claim that Cincinnati was her mother….sheesh!!

Her second paragraph attempts to qualify why she has a right to make this rant. Apart from the poor English, she has poor reasoning.

“My pursuit in excellent education is rooted in a value system that promotes progressive thought” and “Education is a core tenet and vested interest of the functioning democratic society” are interesting ways to say that education should be free. What she is actually saying is that progressive thought is required for a functioning democracy. Really? Does she not understand that America is not a democracy but is a Republic? Is her expensive education so weak that she fails to understand the difference?

And I am sure that many Conservatives will agree that education is a good thing…that it in turn leads to human advancement and greater knowledge, building better societies and economic growth. But progressive thinking is not what education is for….nor is it necessary to function in a democratic process (not a democracy). What you wrote is inane crap that sounds good but means nothing, Ms. Brotherton. Fail.

“At 25 years old, I have $188,307.22 in student debt, all of which is my sole financial responsibility.”

Really?

If you see it as your sole financial responsibility why write this next sentence?

“That exorbitant number was abetted by easy lending with a co-signer, negligence and lack of awareness, over-borrowing and the exponential growth of tuition.”

Firstly, I am quite sure that the suckers who co-signed your loans have a thought or two about your financial responsibility! After all, they are on the hook for what you, in your own stupidity, did. And the excuses…what carefully thought out excuses as to why you find yourself in this position.

I guess it is not your fault because it was too easy to get loans with a co-signer. The lenders abducted you, held you captive until you borrowed their money, right? It was their fault?

Negligence and lack of awareness? Of what? By whom? Did you not understand that student loans needed to be repaid…where is this negligence? Over-borrowing? That is easy to do when you don’t think it has to be repaid! The exponential growth of tuition? I imagine you mean the exponential growth of the cost of tuition but I won’t split hairs here…again…you have choices. You have two degrees…did you think they were free?

Oh….that is what you are pushing….the right to free education, isn’t it, Ms. Brotherton?

She then goes on to say that she lives in mom’s basement, has to rely on others for her health insurance and costs of living, works two jobs…blah, blah, blah….

Sorry, but I have heard all these violins before…and I don’t feel an ounce of pity for you or your dashed dreams.

You are no different to the fools who accept every credit card offer that comes in the mail, and then cry when they can’t pay the bill…when bankruptcy is their only option. I understand student loans are different, but just because they are easy to get does not mean you should get them!

At 25 I had two degrees, no debt, and was traveling the world. How did I do that? By working…by working a 40 hour plus night shift while attending full time university. By taking second jobs during break rather than spending summers on the beach in exotic locales. By not taking out loans and living the college high life.

Choices, Ms. Brotherton, choices.

“There is great irony in pursuing freedom through education only to be shackled by crushing debt.”

Really?

Is that what you were doing? Pursuing freedom?

I thought you said “My pursuit in excellent education is rooted in a value system that promotes progressive thought for the betterment of the individual as well as society.”

So now it is freedom through education?

Ms. Brotherton, freedom comes through being a serf to no man…it comes from a work ethic that allows you to succeed when all those around you fall by the wayside…it comes from making good decisions, and when you make bad ones, by taking responsibility. It comes from the longing of the heart, not the manipulations of the mind.

You saddled yourself with that debt…you made the decisions…you received the education you paid for. The fact that that you overpaid is neither my problem nor the topic for today’s blog.

Suffice to say that you should be asking for a refund because the $180k you claim to have spent did not provide you with a dimes worth of value in the free world.

Which brings me back to where I started with today’s blog.

Education.

There is no doubt in my mind that education in America is way behind that in most western civilizations. And the question I ask myself is, why?

The answer is not so difficult to understand. I could go on for pages about how education policy in this country has led to the dumbing down of the general population. I could point to the illegals slithering across the borders. I could point to the poverty in large cities and the failure to properly address that.

I could speak of money, of waste, of administrators, of a whole level of management within the education system that does not but steal taxpayers money and prevent it going to the true educators.

Yes, I could do all that….and that would explain a lot about how Ms. Brotherton came to find herself writing rants to local newspapers.

But I won’t do that…

I will simply point to Chicago and the angry mobs demanding more money, less accountability and more benefits…claiming that if the taxpayer does not do this, then the taxpayer is hurting the kids.

Friends…do you really want THESE people educating your children? Do you REALLY want your children to end up writing rants in online newsletters?

Or do you want your kids to be strong, well balanced individuals capable of handling whatever the world throws at them.

Look to Chicago and decide.

In every city, in every state, there are hundreds and thousands of great teachers who deserve your support…help them win back the respect they deserve…and get rid of the tyrants and bullies who now run the education system.

Just like our Republic faces huge challenges this November, your children face them every day.

It is time to remove incompetence wherever it is found…in the White House...and on the streets of Chicago…and everywhere in between.

Nothing less than your child’s future...and his children’s… is at stake as we head toward November 6.

Do the right thing!

…..Devereaux

Ain't technology grand?

2012-09-06T17:32:00.003-07:00

I love technology.

Technology is the greatest driver of economic growth and prosperity. People have often asked me “what was the greatest invention of mankind?”. While there are many answers to this question, and I certainly have my opinion on that, the reality is that every advancement of human civilization has been the result of technology. Oh, we may not have realized it but that does not mean it isn’t so.

For instance, the ability to control fire was a very early technological advance.

The ability to grow and cut hay and feed for horses was a technological advancement that led directly to man’s mobility. No longer was he restricted in where he lived.

In current times, the silicon chip has become more capable, faster and cheaper….technology.

Cars have become more fuel efficient, more powerful, and safer…technology.

Mattresses have become softer, firmer, and adjustable, longer lasting and providing better sleep….technology.

Virtually every part of our lives is affected by technology on a daily basis.

In our modern civilization the commoditization of computers, and cell phones and the ubiquitous ipad is a visible sign of the impact of technology…and the changes are more rapid and more life effecting than ever before.

Just this last week, a colleague of mine was showing me a new app he had downloaded for his ipad. It was a technological marvel. It was a translation app…you could speak in one language and it would instantly translate into another language and speak that translation back to you.

Of course, it could not handle all languages in spoken form. When I tested it and showed off my worldly knowledge by speaking in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) it could not actually “speak” the English translation but instead wrote it in English.

SO…to test this I simply said “Good morning Mr. Smith ” in Indonesian…and the translation was more than interesting.

In bold letters on the screen emerged the words….

“sluts and cigars”!!

I don’t actually know why this translation instantly got me thinking about the DNC conference happening right now…but it did.

I guess for some reason it conjured an image of Bill Clinton…the eagerly awaited ex President, the one who doesn’t yet understand the definition of “is”…the one who indignantly proclaimed “I did NOT have sexual relations with that woman”…yes that Bill Clinton.

On second thoughts…maybe that is a very appropriate connection…Bill Clinton and “sluts and cigars” seem to go hand in hand….

But I digress….

This man who is widely believed to have referred to Obama as an amateur (by the way, that book, “The Amateur” by Edward Klein is a very good read. If you haven’t read it yet, you must…it will help put Clinton’s comments into perspective)…this man who sees the only hope of saving the Western world as being nestled in the bosom of his gum-chewing wife….this man who for years was considered as the first black president (until a half black man came along and was quickly pronounced the first black president)…this man is going to nominate the DNC nominee for President of the United States.

And who is he going to nominate?

The very man who stopped Hillary’s chances to become the first woman president. The very man who he calls an amateur. The very man he loathes with every bone in his body.

So, I have to ask…what happened?

Did Slick Willy have a sudden epiphany? Did he decide that if he can’t be the King he may as well as try to be the King maker?

Or he is still dreaming of “sluts and cigars”…and will sell his soul for a run at the White House in 2016?

To be honest, who knows what races through that political mind of his. But you can be certain of one thing….it will never be what you think it is. Clinton makes Obama look like a kindergarten kid when it comes to politics.

And so Clinton stands up in front the crowd…the crowd hoots and hollers…he proudly nominates Obama...and says all the things the sheep in the crowd want to hear. And there is much rejoicing in the land because the anointed one has once again been anointed…this time by the most beloved of all democrats.

I want to throw up!

Really?

One lying political “has been” is nominating another lying political “never was”…and the crowd expects that this time he will stop the rise of the waters and start to heal the planet.

Give me a break!

Folks, we are heading into the season of stupidity. Many things will be said…many lies will be told (unfortunately from both sides)…and you all must be on your guard and willing to do the hard work to research every attack, every attempt to slander and deflect the Republican position and nominees. The left will not hold back…their stupid attack dogs, Wasserman-Shultz, Reid, Pelosi and others, will continue to make false accusations and propagate the lies distributed as talking points from the White House.

Yep…it is going to get nasty, folks.

Real nasty.

I was planning to avoid writing about the RNC and DNC conferences because many commentaries have been written by people much smarter and more politically savvy than am I…but I guess I failed in that regard.

Over the next 60 days we must all be prepared to do what it takes to see a conservative victory in November. I don’t care whether you feel Romney is too moderate, or Ryan too scary, or whatever problems you see with the Republican ticket. Right now it does not matter. What matters is that we get Obama out of the White House…replace him with whatever we have…and go from there.

We must not make the same mistake twice…we must not allow the left to cruise to victory.

I love technology…without it my ramblings would be little more than words written in a book that were read by nobody…technology allows others to see what I am willing to show.

I have tried…really I have…I have tried to get into Clinton’s head…to understand him…to get past the surface. But every time I spend more than a couple of minutes with him, my brain feels dirty…it needs a cleansing…

Sluts and cigars…..

Ain’t technology grand?

…..devereaux

Words have meaning!

2012-08-16T09:59:00.002-07:00

I have written at length and on many occasions about how the left has manipulated the meanings of words to their own ends. I have stated that words have meaning…unless of course the words are spoken from the left (in which case the words are totally bereft of any meaning at all!).

Included below, in its entirety, is an article written by Michael Minkoff and published at politicaloutcast.com (see here for full article as published http://politicaloutcast.com/2012/08/why-i-am-a-radical-liberal-progressive/).

Why I Am A Radical Liberal Progressive

The left is always sugar-coating its real positions with misleading nomenclature. They never use the term “pro-abortion” for instance. It’s always “pro-choice.” They rarely say “homosexual.” It’s usually “gay” (they’re all very happy, after all). I’m sick of this. They call themselves radical… liberal… progressive. What does that mean? That we are superficial, narrow-minded, and retrogressive? That’s what they would like people to believe. Words and labels are important. And, as usual, they’re abusing them.

Radical comes from the root “root.” Being radical is getting to the root of things, assessing the nature rather than just the appearances of things. But is the left radical in this sense? No. They do want to change the fundamental nature of America, but they have not really looked all that deeply into the reality of what America is and was. All of their solutions are short-sighted ones—aimed at treating symptoms rather than addressing root problems.

Consider the welfare “cure” for poverty. It might give a little more money to some people who currently have little, but leftist “radicals” have failed to understand why most people are poor. It’s often not because they are “under-privileged.” It’s usually because they are lazy. And welfare doesn’t curtail laziness. In fact, it promotes it. That’s like thinking precipitation hurts the bug population just because you don’t see many mosquitos while it’s raining. So, leftists aren’t radical.

How about “liberal”? Well, the word originally applied to what we would call libertarians (Adam Smith and Edmund Burke were self-labeled liberals), and it has become about the most useless word around (next to nice and lolz). I like to be liberal when I’m applying mayonnaise to a BLT or tipping at a restaurant. And, whatever the left may say, so-called “liberals” are some of the most intolerant and close-minded people around. Need I mention Chick-Fil-A (for the googolplex to the infinity-eth time)? On the other hand, people who believe in smaller government tend to be much more open-minded. Think about it. They want you to be able to do what you think is best for yourself more often than they want you to be forced to do what their representatives think is best for you. “Liberals” don’t really care what you think is best for yourself. They want government to tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, believing, saying, etc. both inside and outside of your home and business. Doesn’t sound very liberal. Really, when they say “liberal,” they mean morally lax. But that isn’t for your sake. It’s for theirs. They just want to do whatever they want without anyone telling them it’s not a good idea… even if it makes everyone else miserable.

How about progressive? Nope. Under the “innovative” programs of social(ist) crusaders, the only things that have progressed are illiteracy, poverty, crime, injustice, and tyranny (to name just a few social ills). And the policies that have gotten us into this mess aren’t all that novel either. People have been attempting them against all sound judgment for millennia and they have never worked. Ever. Leftists aren’t progressive either, then.

We shouldn’t be allowing them to do this. The fact is that reasonable, freedom-loving patriots have always been the most radical, most liberal, most progressive people around. And though we may have to give up these labels because they have been tainted by malapropist double-speakers, I just thought someone should set the record straight.

……………………………………………Michael Minkoff, politicaloucast.com, August 15, 2012

Congratulations Mr. Minkoff! Well said!

…..devereaux