When phones act smarter than their owners

We, as a society, have become overly dependent on our smart phones.  They are more powerful than the early generation(s) of desktop computers we all used to own.  They are faster, store more in memory, have more function than all but my last laptops.  And as is human nature, we’ve allowed these small devices to take over many areas of our lives; particularly decision making.

At the Denver Airport, I watched countless people, (literally, I’ve lost count), walk past 8 (EIGHT) signs, the smallest of which are 2 feet by 5 feet.  Then they walk past the 5 flashing, scrolling, eye-catching signs on the train.  They come up to me, and I’m often standing directly under one of the signs, to ask me if “this train goes to Union Station.”  It is the same way at Union Station only that the destination is reversed.

People have opted out of the thinking business.  They have abdicated their course of action decisions to other people.  And I blame the smart phone.  So afraid to accept the answers provided by the little device, they ask overly obvious and idiotic questions to other people so as to affirm what they refuse to believe.

But it goes much deeper than that.  The phones have made people demand to be catered to or pampered by others, particularly those they see as being in the service industry.

I had one woman ask me if I knew where (name the hotel) was when we got to Union Station.  I told her that I had no idea; that I had never heard of the place.  She stopped, and looking and sounding exasperated, said, “Well, how am I supposed to get there, then?” I said, “I don’t know.  Maybe hire a personal assistant.”

 

A man on the train tries to explain why he has no ticket to ride.

Him: “I thought I could buy the ticket on the train.”

Me: “Did you buy your ticket from Logan to Denver when you sat down in seat 12D?”

Him: “No, but there weren’t any signs where to buy a ticket.”

Me: “Yet you walked by 6 ticket machines, 8 signs on the platform, and 5 on the train itself.  Then you look up from your phone to ask me if this train was going to Union Station.  So signage isn’t the issue here, is it?”

Then, while riding, almost everyone is nose deep into their phone.  Most of them scrolling their FaceBook page(s), Instagram accounts, or Tinder swiping, further numbing their minds. And if not that, they have headphones in blocking themselves off from the world—and my instructions.

I’ve had people watch me check fare tickets the entire length of the train, and then look at me with an incredulous look on their face when I get to them as if they have no idea why I am standing before with a scanner/counter.  They didn’t hear ANY of the five or six announcements made to get tickets prepared for inspection because they are absorbed into their own little bubble.  And again, it is usually the smart phone.  (I think I am the only person left on the planet who still uses an iPod.

Another example:  A man in his 20s approaches me and asks the usual idiotic question about if this is the train to Union Station.  He has ear buds in his head and barely looks up at me as I answer.  I notice in his hand he has a Region Discount ticket.  It is a half priced ticket.  I ask him the 4 qualifications for being eligible and he is not.  I tell him to go back to the machines and simply buy another Region Discount ticket.  (It would equal $9.00)  He returns with a Regional ticket, having paid full price for it, and wasting the original $4.50 he spent.  Why?  He wasn’t paying attention to my instructions as it was less important than whatever Buffy or Dirk had posted on FaceBook.

This isn’t going to get any better.  The coming generations would prefer to not be engaged, thinking that others who “are working” will simply cater to their needs and protect them from harm or misguided actions.  They willingly pull back from having to think, reason, or decide.  Having never had to do these things, what will they do when they MUST act, or choose, or decide?  If I’m around, I’ll tell you what.  They’ll do exactly what I’ll tell them to.  Or I’ll pummel them into submission.  They can then post it on social media.

I used to listen to a LOT of AM talk radio.  Limbaugh, Hannity, Laura, O’Reilley, you name it.  Ole’ Bill has gone silent (largely) these days, another victim of the #MeToo debacle.  (another blog coming soon.)  I still like Laura because she mixes it up with varied guests.  Rush is pretty much an entertainer now, though still a reliable lightening rod for triggering the left.  Hannity, is largely just a whiny bitch, repeating the same 6 or 8 things the left has done to provide cover for anything the right decides to.

Hannity is also, like clockwork, a few months before each election cycle to start spouting that “this election is the most important of our lifetime.”  Every two years, for about 3 or 4 months prior, you hear the daily calendar countdown with the ominous warning about how everything, literally everything, hinges on the outcome of this election.

Historically, the incumbent party loses a ton of seats in both houses of Congress in their first mid-term election (assuming the incumbent runs and wins a second term.)  Thus, the media has been predicting this massive “blue wave” coming in November that will swing both houses back to liberal control.  While I scoff at Hannity’s “sky is falling” war cry, I have given it a lot of thought.  It may not be the most important election ever, but there ARE things we, as Conservatives have to prepare ourselves to lose, if the blue wave crashes over our sand castle.  Here is what you can expect the Left to take away from you if you give them back the reigns of power in a scant 27 days.

“Stable” Government.  I use quotes there as the left is anything but stable and their governing style reflects it.  One just needs look at the scorched earth method used against an impeccable judicial candidate to see that this side of the political spectrum will do, say, endorse ANYTHING in order to regain power.  If the left takes over the House of Representatives, they WILL bring charges of impeachment against the President.  Evidence and truth mean nothing to them.  The allegation is enough to convict, even if, in terms of impeaching a sitting President, the charges are squat.  They will bend words and definitions such that his insulting Jim Acosta is beneath the office and an impeachable offense.  And if they win also the Senate, Trump will be impeached.  They care not that Mike Pence would become President.  The Left doesn’t play chess.  They play checkers. They’ll focus on him next.  After Kavanaugh, of course.  If the left wins in November, he’d better keep the moving boxes close at hand.

Trump tax cuts.  Stuttering, twitching, dementia-addled Pelosi called the savings crumbs, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want them.  If the left wins in November, they WILL repeal the Trump tax cuts.  Not only that, but the wealthy can expect taxes to rise to the level seen during the Carter years.  The impact on the economy would be disastrous, but they don’t care.  They’ll blame Trump for the house of cards they’ll say he built.  The left can’t bring America to its knees without your money.  They mean to have it, and will enact laws to get it.  This is a party that will willingly, eyes open, do grievous harm to the country so long as it rolls back whatever Trump did.

Defense.  You also can’t destroy the country while they have a military strong enough and well equipped enough to defend it.  The left will slash the defense budget to insanely low levels.  The left either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care that we’ve never been invaded purely because we’ve always had a technological, equipment, personnel, or financial edge against our adversaries.  We’ve been attacked before, but never invaded (think: Red Dawn).  The left seems to have the mind set that a peace time military is free and needs no sustained budget, let alone increases.  With the budget they’ll provide, the military will have enough to pay the troops, but not enough to train or equip them.  But in their minds, training is unnecessary since we have no realistic enemy—so long as the enemies are blinded by the thinness of our paper tiger.

Healthcare.  Obamacare will come to fruition, totally.  We will have a single-payer system.  It will be one that decides who gets treated and who does not.  And how long do you think it will be before one’s general worth to the collective is considered before precious medical dollars are spent?  How long can the patient be expected to live? Does the expense of the procedure outweigh the value of the patient?  Are they a loyal subject to the crown?

The Wall.  Goodbye.  The left wants open borders.  Period.  The more people they can let in, the better.  Because most of those people, once inside and on the government dole, will vote Democrat in order to keep their personal slush fund alive.  Hell, the left has IN ITS ENTIRETY co-sponsored Feinstein’s “Keep Families Together” Act.  That’s right.  EVERY single Democratic Senator has signed on to this bill.  Basically, it says that since separating parents from children who illegally cross the border is bad, and we can’t incarcerate the child with the parent in federal jails, we’ll just release EVERY adult who arrives with a child into the general population.  So, all an illegal alien need do is arrive with a child, be it theirs or not.  They’ll be released into the general population to apply for federal benefits and their Democrat voter registration card. 

Guns.  Even the left realizes that dropping the Second Amendment is a bridge too far.  But they will reenact the ridiculous “assault weapons ban” (whatever an assault weapon is).  Look also for insane increases in the fees involved for applying to buy an additional gun, keeping the guns you have, apply for a concealed carry permit, and perhaps even restrictions on owning or buying “military” calibers of ammunition.  Look also for increases in prices or taxes related to buying ammunition of any kind.  They may not be able to stop you from buying the gun, but they can impact your ability to being able to afford to shoot it.  After all, a disarmed populace is an obedient one.

So, boys and girls, there are 6 reasons to motivate you to get out and vote Republican.  It’s up to us.  Franklin said that it’s our Republic if we can keep it.  The left means to destroy it by whatever means necessary.  For no other reason than to do it.

The hapless mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock believes there is no homeless problem in Denver.  I guess he has no windows from his offices looking out over Civic Center Park.  Go by there ANY DAY, and you will see this.

I apologize that the foreground is blurry, but driving by at 20 miles per hour or more is about the only way to keep them from coming into the street to berate ask you for money. 

Note the guy in the red poncho/trash bag outfit.  All of that stuff to his left and above him is his.  Two bikes, and at least six bags of shit.  I don’t know how one person rides two bikes at the same time, so one must ponder the need for the second bike, or how this guy came to be in possession of it.  Think how long he could drink or smoke weed if only he sold one of them.

The huge pile in the immediate foreground belongs to another homeless.  He keeps it covered from the rain with the big blue poncho.  This has two immediate effects.  His worthless crap stays dry, and the poncho kills the grass beneath it as it gets no sun or moisture.  But it isn’t HIS lawn, so he gives a shit. 

This picture is at the street level in front of the state capital.  It is an every day event.  That is, until there is a major festival or celebration coming to town, or a charity walk or run is scheduled.  Then you’ll see police, charter buses, and trash trucks come in force.  They load them up on buses with whatever they can carry and haul them to another part of the city.  What is left is gathered up and thrown away.  You get to pay for this, of course through your taxes.

But that is how Hancock gets away with saying there is no homeless epidemic in Denver—he ships them out to other towns and cities.  These are the sights I personally see all across Denver, but read about in other cities across America.

And most of them simply do not care about their drag on society or culture.  They set up camps where ever it can be advantageous to them.  They do not care about it being private property, or even a business storefront.  And the Denver Police have been directed to not harass them, so it takes a concerted effort by property and business owners to have them removed from their place of business.

The whole thing got me thinking on the genesis of the problem.  Homelessness.  I’ve narrowed it down to just a few catalysts.

1. A major life changing event
2. Drugs
3. Mental illness
4. Choice

By major life changing event, I focused on the loss of a job or primary source of income, be it the actual person’s job, or that of their spouse or parent.  It could also include the loss of the actual spouse or parent through death, divorce, or decree (get out of my house!).  As we age, the loss of a job can be seriously difficult to overcome but should not be unrecoverable.  The longer one is out of work, the harder it becomes to find comparable work (or wage), so getting back on the horse is important.

Losing income has an immediate impact on lifestyle, particularly if the persons involved are like 90 percent of Americans and are living a financed lifestyle.  If you are spending 25-40 percent of your income to pay credit cards down or other retailer’s cards, you are setting yourself up for a long road of shit if you lose some of that income.  Sometimes you can reason with the creditors for a period of time, but they are going to want their money.  If they do agree to forego payments in the short term, you can bet that the long term pay off will be much higher.

Add to credit cards, the car payment (be it a loan or even worse, a lease), then the rent or mortgage.  Before you know it, you are living paycheck to paycheck, with barely enough to continue, let alone eat, or be entertained. Living a life of immediate gratification is going to result in being slammed by a financial tidal wave after usually just a single hiccup.

Watch the transition here.  Lose your job and within six months you’ll likely be foreclosed and then you are living in your car, until it breaks down, gets repossessed, stolen, wrecked, or you no longer have enough money to put fuel in it.  Clearly, you’ll have no insurance on it since there is no immediate payoff making those premium payments.  After the car, now you are lugging everything you own in a shopping cart or a bike with a trailer, or a series of rolling suitcases and back packs.  These break, or are stolen when you sleep or check in to a homeless shelter, or through out right robbery, so your worldly possessions slowly dwindle to the fifteen pounds you can carry on your back.

You eat out of trash cans, or beg on street corners to gain enough to get ten chicken nuggets at Burger King.  You ask for extra sauce so you at least can eat that when you don’t “earn” enough through the generosity of others.  You start selling your blood until they won’t take anymore.  And somehow, in all of this, you forgot how to find a job or gave up trying, the only thing that can reverse the course.

Drugs are an even faster way to the street.  The idiot feel-good politicians of Colorado are still blind to this fact.  So tempted were they are the prospect of money for schools and extra tax revenues, they legalized marijuana use (in your own home).  Dispensaries popped up all over the place.  I have three along a single half mile stretch of one road within three miles of my house.  There has even been a killing in one to steal the money generated over two days.

Here’s another easy path to follow.  You live in an apartment (or own a home) and you smoke weed.  Just at your house, but you like it.  A lot.  A once or twice a week buzz turns into three or four nights a week.  It takes more weed to get you the buzz you like so you have to spend more at the dispensary.  You cancel Netflix in favor of the weed.  Then you cancel Amazon Prime. Then cable altogether.

You are oblivious to the stench that comes with your high.  It is absolutely horrendous but you are immune to it since everything you own smells like burnt rope.  But your boss smells it.  If you are in a job that can mandate random drug tests, you get called out, tested and piss hot.  Depending on their policies, you may get lucky and be offered rehabilitation.  You try it, but like the high better and you relapse.  The boss grows weary of your lack or quality of production and lets you go.

Now you are back to the first reason listed above.  No income, you get evicted or foreclosed. Yada, yada, cycle repeats.

Mental illness.  This one is again multi-faceted.  Sometimes people with an illness are cast away by family because of the pattern of violence, cost of treatment, stigma of association, any number of reasons.  But the mentally ill are shunned away from the family or shuttled off to live with other relatives until their behavior is too much again.  On the streets they go with absolutely no lifeline.

Another side of mental illness comes from simply being alone all the time and living on the streets.  People, like most dogs, are social animals.  We need supportive interaction with others.  Many homeless I encounter talk to themselves, argue with themselves, or have conversations with their belongings, or an invisible travel mate.  They are dirty, stink beyond belief, and so, no “normal” person will interact with them.

The strong homeless prey on the weak ones, robbing them, pummeling them.  Its only naturally for the psyche to break eventually.  With no tether remaining to connect them to reality, they are doomed to die on the streets, hungry, cold, wet, piss-stained, and penniless.

Choice.  This is the hardest one for me to understand and thus, condone.  They are called the Voluntarily Vagrant– people who actually choose to have no job, rather to live off the social programs made available by liberal politicians, or by begging for money from passersby.  These leeches decided early on that they are entitled to a living paid for by the efforts, wages, and emotions of all the rest of us.  They do not want a job.  They are content merely getting by, begging for food, money, selling themselves, stealing, you name it.

I have a friend who has a daughter who is a business owner.  It is a small restaurant, doing breakfast and lunch.  One day, she came outside her establishment to find a group of vagabonds begging for money.  She engaged them, offering each of them a job on the spot.  One of them could serve food, one could work the back of the place, one might even learn to cook.  All three of them declined her offer and merely moved 200 yards away to another place to beg.  She offered all three a lifeline to a stabile existence and they CHOSE against it.  They don’t want to work.  They must make an acceptable or comparable income doing nothing but sucking off society.  This is why Trump wants people to have to show an effort to get a job in order to continue receiving government assistance. (Oh, and Clinton actually started that.  B. Hussein ended it.)

So what do we do about them?  The feel-good liberals all want to give them hand-outs as they see them as weak, vulnerable, Democrat voters.  The conservatives see them as drains on society, consuming, and not providing—like locusts.

I always remember that sign I used to see when going into a National Park about not feeding the wild animals because they will become dependent on humans for their existence and stop hunting on their own.  If we can’t feed this set of wild animals that are unable to communicate in a language we can understand, what makes it okay to feed that set of wild animals just because they can.  Will they not learn the same lessons about dependency and stop trying to produce for themselves?  I know a guy who feeds a roving herd of wild deer at his farm about an hour south of me.  Within a week, it went from one or two to the whole herd, buck, cows, and fawns.  They all show up for the daily allotment of corn/grain.

Look at any charity around 11 o’clock in the morning and you see the same thing.  People, not deer, and they are expecting to be fed.  And when they finish, just like the deer at John’s barn, they leave behind what they don’t want, or their own personal refuse.  Nice repayment to your benefactor.  Leave your trash right where you stand regardless of the abundance of trash receptacles in the area.  Just like the providing of food for their survival, cleaning up for their comfort is left for someone else to do.

Like most productive, job-holding people in the labor force, I’m trained at my job.  Some of the training came through my career in the military, while some of it was taught to me on the job.  And now, I trade my time doing that job in exchange for money to pay bills and buy things.  These homeless people, whether they want to admit it or not, in all likelihood, are trained in at least one thing.  Before they became homeless, I’d bet they had at least one parent who made them clean their room.  Thus, they are trained in the art of bending down and picking things up.

I say we make the lot of them sanitation engineers so they can put to use that skill set.  They can police the trash in and around the same city blocks they infest and pollute in exchange for food vouchers and/or lodging tickets.  You are paid by how much you police.  Sadly, we won’t be able to do this purely by weight.  It is the nature of the human beast to try to get over on any system and soon enough, these beasts will begin to add to their collection a measure of dirt or rocks to make it heavier.  No, it’ll have to be sorted and then paid by another measure.  Volume, maybe.

I can hear the bleeding heart leftists now.  But, they’ll die.  As Captain Kirk once said,

Let them die.

…then there is the bloated whale, Randa Jarrar, the psychotic literature professor from Fresno State.  She is known largely for her voracious appetite, and for insulting the life and achievements of a woman far better than her—Barbara Bush.  She waited about 12 minutes before tweeting this:

“PSA—either you are against these pieces of shit and their genocidal ways or you are part of the problem.  That’s actually how simple this is.  I’m happy the witch is dead.  Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise the way 1.5 million Iraqis have.  Byyyeeeee.”

 Where to start?  I’m up for this challenge.

 First—she calls it a public service announcement.  The operative word here is service.  This twit actually is so immersed in her own perception of self importance that she believes everything that spews forth (non-food crumb related, of course), is a service to the masses.  We, the cattle, that is.  That a whopping 32 people liked her remark (as of 8:38pm, 4/17/18) tells you she has a far wider swath of fabric around her mid-rift than influence among thinking people.  That was probably the bulk of her students (pun NOT intended in this case) who get extra credit for following her on Twitter.

 Second—the decisive A or B choice she foists on all who read (are forced to read) her banal remarks.  You MUST either be against the Bush family, philosophically, one imagines, or you MUST be part of the problem.  As she says, it is that simple.  It is either this or that.  How utterly inclusive of her, a tenured professor, published author (so am I, you dripping gash), and critical thinker.  You can just taste the frothing of diversity gravy she is warming up.

 Third—calling Barbara Bush a witch.  Really, this woman ranked in the top 3 of most admired women throughout her time as first lady.  She even got applause for a speech given at a liberal woman’s college when she stated that someone in the audience may even be a future spouse of a President, so she wished HIM well.  That’s forward thinking.

 Fourth—that she wishes the rest of the family dies as 1.5 million Iraqis have.  This point is really two.  Is she talking about the untold numbers Saddam killed in his political prisons, or is she merely aping the ridiculous number of supposed Iraqi dead due to the American invasion of 2003?  We already know the answer to that.  I’m being ironic introducing the alternative.

 How loving for her to wish the Bush family actually DIE the way she believes the masses of Iraqi people have.  I have a lot of people in my life I don’t especially like.  I’ve never wished death on them.  And she teaches.  She is a thinking mold for college kids.  We’re so utterly (udderly?) screwed that she stands in front of our kids.

 The Opinion Research Business (ORB) is often the “go-to” source for grossly inflated numbers by kooks too lazy to do actual research.  They use numbers based on interviews with people who “think” someone was killed, or someone who may have fled the country for any myriad of reasons, or simply moved.  This is where the 1.5 million number comes from. This is actually to the high end of their range of estimates, but what the hell?  If you’re going to accuse someone of war crimes, make the death toll impressively high,  right?

 However, these same humanitarians will never point out, or give an ounce of credence to, dissent.  John Rentoul, a columnist for The Independent newspaper, not exactly a conservative flaming torch, has asserted that the ORB estimate “exaggerates the death toll by a factor of as much as 10” and that “the ORB estimate has rarely been treated as credible by responsible media organizations, but it is still widely repeated by cranks and the ignorant.”

 I think I can narrow your choice of what I think of this refrigerator with a head, down to one.

 Other sensitive and compassionate tweets revolved around how Barbara Bush was an amazing racist, and how her only accomplishment was having been the parent to a war criminal.

A petition was begun seeking her firing.  She is a tenured professor. Firing her for her remarks made off campus, on a personal account, on her own time, however inane, insensitive, or repulsive they were, would simply result in a wrong termination suit—one she would win—and would result in a couple of things in the immediate.

 One, she’d have a large sum of money with which to continue grazing and with no work required to achieve it.  Two, it becomes a case on the wrong side of the freedom of speech argument.

The college began to drum up fervent support by stating that Randa the Hut was wrong in her assertion that she could not be fired.  The alumni association began making noise about curtailments coming from donors based on the acidity of her remarks.  Let this sink in.  People complain all the time about being offended by what someone said.  And make no mistake—almost everything this bitch says is something I disagree with.  If you want to call that offensive, I can’t stop you. But no where in the Constitution or Bill of Rights does it state that you have the right to never be offended;

People can’t simply be fired because they say stupid things—in theory.  That CEO who had to step down because of his vote comes immediately to mind.  Okay, so Liberals are not fired because of the stupid things they say.  Conservatives are not so protected.  Regardless, if she continues to say stupid things, we do have recourse.  Call her out on them.  Contradict her.  Prove her wrong.  Out-debate her.  If you have an opinion, say so.  I do, right here.  And she can’t stop me.  But stop whining about being offended.

Randa finally spoke up about what she said, and the remarks it brought on.  “I feel compelled to speak up because I want people to remember history.  I want people to known that our country’s actions don’t just disappear; they have real, negative consequences.  If we want a better future, we have to confront our past.”

 I guess her sense of history is limited to only what she considers bad, oppressive, or imperial.  She’s forgotten or glossed over the millions of people that have been liberated by our actions.  She dismisses the entire generations of formerly enslaved masses that are free to choose their societal futures based on our country’s interventions.  All she sees is a politic that enriches itself through blood for oil warfare at the expense of the unarmed.  Such is the affliction of the religion know as liberalism.

 You can’t fix stupid.  Most times, you can’t argue with it with any hope of swaying them.  When these liberal fixtures blurt out their ideological diarrhea, many times, you can only pray for enough ass-wipe to clean out your own personal space.  Peter Leyden and Ruy Texeira wrote an article along these lines.  (The Great Lessons of California in Armerica’s New Civil War.) We are fast approaching a point where each side will no longer abide the philosophy or the other.  One must win.

 Prepare yourself.  This is going to be ugly.

Gun debate 101

Okay, so the other day, I’m leaning against my work car in uniform.  Pistol belt visible.  I’m clearly armed.  A young couple walks by carrying a sign, clearly on their way to some protest.  It was a picture of an AR15 with the red circle around it and line through it.  The text was some blather about guns killing our children—a reference to the Cruz shooting in Florida.  They saw me and my gun and approached me.  At first I thought their intent was to ridicule or goad, but they surprisingly asked where I was on the issue of gun control.

At first I was going to give them the standard “Gun control is being able to hit your target” line, but I opted to try to educate and be educated.  I told them if they had some time, we could try to discuss the issue, but only if we stuck to facts and left emotion and political talking points out of it.  The girl was skeptical, but I think the guy saw it as a challenge.  Being of college age, and probably a former debate team guy, he had an itch to put this Republican in his place.  Follows is the gist of our conversation.

Me:  So you are on you way to a rally or protest.  Are you protesting the actions of the shooter, or that he used an AR15 to commit it?

Him:  Well, both really.  We’re against civilians owning military assault weapons.

Me:  Is it because of their power?  Magazine capacity? Looks?

Her: Yes.  That, and it has only one purpose—to kill.

Me:  Well, isn’t that the purpose of every gun?  But let’s shelf that right now.  How much do you know about the shooting in Florida?

Him:  A deranged guy who used to be a student there went in with an assault rifle and shot the place up killing 17 people.

Me:  Do you know any of the specifics?  How many rounds he fired?  How long the attack lasted?  His method of target selection?

Both:  No, not really.

Me:  Well, I do.  See, that’s what individual research will get you—answers, rather than relying on the media to tell me what I need to know.  Cruz fired over 100 rounds in about 6 minutes.

Her (shuddering for dramatic effect):  That’s a lot and a long time.

Me:  No, and yes.  100 rounds is only four magazines, less than that, really.  But six minutes is a long time when you’re under fire.

Him:  How do you know that?

Me:  Iraq.  2003-2004.  But back to the attack.  100 rounds in 6 minutes.  Sounds like he was prepared for a long fight and to shoot a lot of people.  You think that if he was committed to the act, he would have been prepared, would have had a LOT of magazines?

Both:  Yes, sure.

Me:  I haven’t found out yet how many magazines he had.  But 100 rounds means he had at least 4 (30 rounds each), or that he stopped and reloaded during those six minutes.  I don’t know about him, but that’s not what I would do—reload, that is.  I’d be prepared for a siege.  I could reload magazines after I’m holed up in negotiations.

Both:  (nodding)

Me:  But 100 rounds in 6 minutes.  Averaged out, that is 17 rounds per minute; a little over half a magazine per minute.  One round every 3.5 seconds.  Now, again, we don’t know the specifics of the attack.  We do know that he pulled the fire alarm to get the students evacuating and fired into them in the hallway before he started hunting in particular rooms.  So, he probably fired a lot in the first 2 minutes and tapered off after that as he hunted and searched.  Make sense?

Both: (nodding)

Me:  Do you know the relative costs between rifles and pistols?

Him:  I know an AR15 is expensive, over $1500.  Pistols aren’t that much.

Her:  Yes, most people can’t afford an AR15.

Me:  You can actually buy a basic AR rifle for about $500-$600.  Then you’d need some optics for it and magazines and ammo.  Magazines are about $10-$20 each online and ammo from the same website is $40 per hundred.  A basic 4 power magnification sight runs about $75.  So, $500, $120, $40, $75…less than $750, Cruz could buy everything he needed.

You see my pistol right here?  I bought one a generation older, legally, from a gun store, for $275.  Magazines for it on the same website are $12 each.  They hold 15 rounds.  Ammo on that website is $14 for a box of 50.  I could duplicate Cruz’s arsenal in pistol form for $399, about half price.  One pistol, 8 magazines to get me to the same 120 capacity, and 100 rounds.

Him:  What are you getting at?  It sounds like you are trying to confuse us with a bunch of numbers.

Me:  Only if you are that easily distracted.  No, what I’m saying is his weapon of choice is irrelevant.  I could do the same thing with a hand gun for almost half price.

Her:  But a rifle has greater range, is more accurate!  (Smilingly indignantly.)

Me:  He is shooting into a hallway for the most part, probably 10 or 12 feet across.  If he was smart, and by all indications, he was, he would let them come close so that they’d be bunched up tight.  The 12 feet width of the hallway wouldn’t matter anymore.  I recently qualified with this pistol.  Target ranges were from 7 feet all the way to 45 feet.  The AR has a 16 inch barrel giving it greater accuracy at great ranges.  Then there is his scope.  My pistol has a 4-inch barrel and no optics, just 3 dots to line up.  I shot a perfect 100%.  Cruz missed wildly, obviously as he didn’t hit 100 times out of 100 shots.  He killed 17 people, and wounded 17 more.  34 out of a 100.  That’s one third.  I hit 50 out of 50.

Her:  What is your point?

Me:  I could do worse with my cheap pistol than he did with his expensive rifle.  This Glock was also recently in the running for the US Army’s new standard pistol.  Does that mean it also should not be allowed to be privately owned?  It is a military design, and by my confession, potentially more lethal.

Her:  So, no, you shouldn’t be able to have one of those.

Me:  Well, I also have another pistol in the same caliber with an equal number of magazines.  Should I not have one of those?

Her:  I bet you have a lot of guns.

Me:  Indeed.

Her:  Why do you need so many guns?

Me:  I like guns.  I grew up with them.  My father taught me how to shoot.  He also taught me to respect guns.  They are not toys, but rather, tools.  I taught my son the same way.  He has several, too.  My wife also shoots.  She has a couple and shoots mine quite well.  We belong to a shooting range so that we maintain our proficiency.  Oh, and we’ve never killed anyone.

Her:  That doesn’t answer my question, at all.  You’re dodging my question.  Why do you need so many?

Me:  It is how I choose to protect myself and my family.  What do you do to defend yourself?

Both:  That’s what the police are for.

Me: So the police are to be relied on for protection against the bad guys whenever they decide to break into my home, or try to rob me on the street?

Her:  Yes.  That’s their job.

Me:  Actually, no it isn’t.  Are you aware the police are under no legal responsibility to save your life?  They are there to stop crime from happening, when possible, but even if that is true, why do so many car jackings, home invasions, murders, and robberies occur?  Are you saying the police are inept at their jobs?

Her:  Well, they can’t be everywhere at once.

Me:  So, if they aren’t around, I’m supposed to just let some crack head take my money, or rape my wife?  It’s just a case of bad timing, my bad luck?

Her:  (no answer)

Me:  Do you remember that church shooting in Texas?

Him:  Sort of.

Her:  No.

Me:  Really?  It was only last November.  A guy went into a church and killed 26 people and wounded 20 more.

Her: (interrupting)  See?  My point.  If he didn’t have that gun, he couldn’t have done that.

Me:  Of course he could have.  He’d have just used something else.  But a neighbor heard it, went to his gun safe and grabbed an AR15.  He then ran barefoot to a vantage point and placed two well aimed shots between the body armor plates the killer was wearing and the guy not only stopped, he fled to his car.  Then the hero, still barefoot, got into a vehicle with another passerby and the chased him to make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone else.  No police anywhere around.  The guy killed himself in his car.  Partially to your point, the killer shouldn’t have had that gun or any gun.  He had a prior domestic violence conviction and was barred from buying, even owning a gun.  But he still did.

Her:  So what is your point?

Me:  A good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun, whether he is a cop or a legal gun owner.

Her (with him nodding) What are we supposed to do, learn to live with this killing?

Me:  Of course not.  But we have to get smart about how we defend ourselves and how we stop bad guys from getting guns.

Him:  How?  Where does it start?

Me:  Look at this from a few steps back.  Do you think Cruz would have killed and wounded so many if the armed guard present and on duty wasn’t a coward, and actually entered the building and confronted him?

Her:  So we put cops in all our schools?  Make them all prisons?

Me:  We have cops or armed guards in all our banks.  Are we guarding the tellers and bank officers?  No, we’re protecting our money.  We have very few bank robberies.  Are you saying that our money is more important than our kids?

Both:  Silenced.

Me:  But we started talking about military styled weapons.  Look at these two pictures.  They are two rifles I own.  (A Remington R25, and Remington 700.)  What are your thoughts?  Should I be allowed to own these?

Him:  Well, the green one is probably okay (the R25), but the black one?  No way.  Look at the size of that scope.  That gun is clearly a sniper rifle.  Way too much for a civilian to own.

Me:  Is it the scope, or the color, or the sophisticated stock that disqualifies it in your mind?

Her:  All of that and more.  It probably shoots a mile.

Me:  Well, they are both the same caliber, and it is a bigger, far more powerful than the one Cruz used.  The green one, actually camouflaged, holds twenty rounds, while the black one holds only 4.  I even have a drum magazine for the green one that holds 100 rounds.  The scope on the black one is powerful, but the scope on the green one also has a red dot capability that means I don’t even have to aim it.  The bullet hits where the red dot is.  So, based solely on looks, you’re letting me have a rifle infinitely more deadly.

Both:  (Shuffling a little)

Me:  This isn’t about looks, is it?  You have no concept about guns.  You didn’t bother asking me about the parameters of either rifle. You just don’t like them.  Which makes them evil, and by extension, me. You just want all guns confiscated.  Right?

Her:  You’re an asshole.

Me:  One willing to protect you.  Have a nice protest.

Not content with the flimsy and noncommittal “gender fluid” naming convention, many uber-liberal parents have begun naming their children (offspring?) (spawn?) after various chemicals.  Some have even begun stringing various letters and number together creating monikers virtually impossible to pronoun.

 The phenomenon began with parents, who despite the DNA and obvious sex of their child (based on physical genitalia), began giving offspring names that masked masculinity or femininity.  Names like Skylar, Justice, Riley, and others began climbing the charts of popularity tracked by such organizations as the Social Security Agency, and quite contradictorily, Planned Parenthood.

 These parents often eschew traditional and especially religious names, breaking generational norms such as naming sons after fathers or grandfathers.  Soon to be gone are the Juniors and (name) III.  Instead these spousal units (since “mother and father” are shunned in aggressively progressive countries like Canada) have decided that the child should be free to decide their own gender based on societal inputs and personal impulses rather than norms.

 The first phase of this new naming convention quickly yielded to using precious metals like Gold and Platinum.  However, following the murder of a child named Diamond by the sibling Cubic Zirconium, the parents were each punished for their negligence of slighting one child with a name the other with something obviously of lower intrinsic worth than the other.  The mineral Mica was almost immediately banished based on it sounding like Micah, a purely masculine name and also being a prophet in the Bible.  Any hint of religiosity, especially that of the Christian faith is expressing forbidden.  Given that Micah was likely Jewish was even more of a curse.

Numbers and letters followed in suit, but were quickly ruled out as by their very nature, these names imply order, hierarchy, and thus rank.  As A is before B in the alphabet.  Does that mean that A is superior to B?  Even if B was born first?  Indeed, like the character 7 of 9 from Star Trek fame, numbers quickly lost favor due to the connotation of mathematical value.  Indeed, the differences of odd versus even numbers, ordinal and prime numbers proved too exclusionary

Thus, randomness has become the “order” of the day.  In fact, lottery style name generators have become a boon business in hospitals providing such names as B67F4HJ0, like the VIN of an automobile.

 Mohamed is still quite popular and cherished since it is Islamic despite the prophet Mohamed being a child pedophile and rapist.  Any celebration of child sexual assault and/or pornography is celebrated and encouraged to aid the child in being free to select their gender for any particular phase of life.  The child does not have gender foisted on them by society.  They are free to choose over and again based on how they feel any given day.

A memo to the memo

I’ll come right out and say it.  I’m not scared.  These assholes do not intimidate me.  The radio hosts and television pundits are afraid to say it.  I’m not.

THIS WAS AN ATTEMPTED COUP DE TAT.

A few select, yet unelected officials within the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conspired either individually or in tandem with others to:

1)      Block the nomination of Donald J. Trump

2)      Adversely effect the election process against Donald J. Trump, or

3)      Predetermine and solidify conditions to advance articles of impeachment against Donald J. Trump.

Never before in the history of our Republic has so brazen an example of the abuse of power been on display.  Nixon’s own crimes (conspiracy and cover-up) pale in comparison.

The background

Let’s look at what has transpired over these past months.  A secret dossier has surfaced that purportedly shows collusion and cooperation between the Trump campaign and select Russian officials to influence the election in Trump’s favor.  The evidence thus far has never be corroborated, even remotely.  The dossier also includes certain personal and salacious details directly connected to the President himself.  These also have not been proven.  In essence, the dossier itself, even while widely being described as credible or that the author himself is, has not been proven valid.  This is the case since its writing nearly two years prior.

Despite this, so desperate was this cabal of (co-conspirators) corrupt politicians, that they used a knowingly unproven (thus false) dossier to dupe the FISA court into granting surveillance warrants against a Trump campaign official (Carter Page).  Not just the initial warrant, but three subsequent warrants.  They hoped to taint to public perception against the Republican candidate; hoping to paint them as colluding with the Russians (!) in the public eye, trying to seize the election from the anointed Hillary Clinton.  If they could sway enough people, they could swing the election solidly in her favor.

They just didn’t count on the email server thing popping back up despite FBI Director Comey brazenly exonerating Clinton prior to the final outcome of the investigation.  But back to the dossier…

The hook

The dossier was authored by a former British spy (whose name I won’t honor him to type).  It was paid for by a company called Fusion GPS and bankrolled by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as well as the Hillary Clinton campaign for the Presidency.  Seeing how the Clinton campaign more or less BOUGHT the DNC, it is hard to, and probably pointless to try to separate exactly whose dollars went where.

Setting the hook

The FBI were given the dossier by none other than John McCain, the closest thing to a Democrat carrying an R behind his name, as well as a proven traitor.  The FBI connect the spy and eventually began paying him as an asset, finding him to be at least partially credible.  Eventually they began to have doubts as the allegations proved to be, well, unproven.

During all of this, the spy also contacted Yahoo News (Micheal Isakhoff) and sold him parts of the dossier which were promptly published.  Using both the ownership of the dossier and the public domain “corroboration” of the dossier, the FBI director Comey, deputy director Andrew McCabe, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein not one, but FOUR TIMES petitioned the FISA court for permission to conduct surveillance on an American citizen—an Annapolis Academy Graduate with no prior criminal record.

McCabe is since on record stating that without the dossier there would have been no FISA warrant even sought.  And without the FISA warrant, there would never have been an investigation.  No investigation means no special counsel.

Throw this one in the cooler

So, recently a memo was released by the Intelligence Oversight Committee.  Its public release was voted on and predictably, went along party lines.  The Democrats were against it, the Republicans for it.  Chairman Devin Nunes even allowed for simple edits to be made to the memo before being sent to the White House for inspection before the President decided whether or not to release it to the general public.  These edits were grammar/spelling/clarity related, and requested by the Democrats.

After being edited, the Democrats complained that the memo being released was altered and thus not trustworthy.

Let that sink in.  The Democrats requested changes to the memo, and then once done, complained that the memo was no longer original material and thus, worthless.  Typical Democrat lying bullshit.

Spices for the filet

Keep in mind the underlying theme.  The Clintons and DNC are saying that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to steal the election.  In fact, what happened, was a British spy used Russian sources to doctor up 16 memorandums implicating but not proving anything.  The dossier was paid for by the DNC and the Clinton campaign.  The spy confided in a former associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ, that he was “desperate for Trump to not be President”, and “very passionate about him not winning”.  The problem was, the Ohr’s wife WORKED for Fusion GPS, the firm that paid the British spy the money supplied by the DNC and Hillary Clinton through their lawyers.  The DOJ and FBI lied to the FISA court to start the whole investigation through the surveillance of Page.

So who is really colluding with the Russians here?  It is already out that associates/contacts/friends of the Clintons were supplying the spy with the information in his dossier.  The guy didn’t even GO to Russia to interview these “sources”.  If you follow the money and the logic, you know the answer.

This, as I started with, was a bloodless coup.  That is until the names of these associates/contacts/friends start to be unearthed and verified.  Then the blood letting will start.  They’ll start dying suddenly at their desk, or in car crashes or planes falling out of the sky, or killing themselves with multiple gunshots in the back of their head.  First rule of a coup–assassinate the assassin.

…so I’m watching Tucker Carlson on Fox.  I know, stunning.

He’s talking to Richard Goldstein, a Democratic Strategist who worked on both of the Clinton campaigns.  This, by itself, kind of dilutes the value and credibility of anything he says. I mean, he lost.  Twice

Tonight though, he is debating Roy Moore, the poor candidate that outlasted all other GOP candidates in Alabama.  Tucker is banging away on the Democratic approach to the campaign advertising in that is always denigrates to the lowest level, that of race.  Goodstein keeps repeating the Democrat talking points that are akin to Roy Moor wearing a pointy white cap.

 I caught this contradiction on the first go-round, and mind you, it was after two tumblers of scotch.  I can’t believe Tucker didn’t scorch this buffoon with it.

TC:  “…wouldn’t it just be easier to ask Roy Moore?”

RG:  “He’s lying about these women!  What do you mean, ask him?”

 So, basically, Roy is lying about one thing, so you can’t believe anything he says.

 Later on,

 TC: “…you don’t think that Roy Moore is for slavery…there’s no evidence that he is a racist..”

RG: “I’m looking at what Roy Moore says!”

 So, basically, Roy is telling the truth about one thing, and other truths can be extrapolated because of this.

 This is why most people hate politics.  Both sides do this, but predominantly, the Democrat side does.  You can discount everything a person says as dishonest until they say something you can twist to fit your prejudiced ideology.  Then you can believe everything they say that fits your narrative.  At that point, these other things are either lies or trivial.   You can have things both ways.  Or just one way.  Or one way, until it is convenient to be the other way.  People’s eyes glaze over until they toss a coin in the voter booth.  Those are better odds that fighting just on the merits of your beliefs.

 Unless they read this blog.

This guy is North of bat shit crazy.

A lot of talk, hand wringing and gnashing of teeth of late—all because of the little fat man-child in charge of North Korea.  He fires missiles towards his neighbors with impunity.  He sets off nuclear bombs with abandon.  And he blusters about our national impending doom.  He claims he can fire off a nuclear-tipped missile at our soil.  Can he?  Will he?

A year or two ago, had he the capability, I believe he definitely would have.  Obama was the guy he could have tested and made blink.  I believe had he done so, B Hussein would have tried to convince the nation that we could absorb the damage, swallow the loss of say, Seattle, and the hundreds of thousands of casualties in dead and wounded.  I truly do not believe B. Hussein would have retaliated.  He would have turned the Muslim cheek.

Now though, with Trump in office, it is a whole new situation.  Trump isn’t one to simply absorb body blows or body bags.  Kimmy, however, has heard years and years of lip service and tough talk to the contrary.  It is only natural for the fat bully to doubt that his favorite punching bag on the playground has either the willingness or resolve to defend or fight back.

So, how did we get here?  How did we come to this desolate place of fighting a catastrophic war, or accepting a lunatic with nuclear arms and trusting that he won’t use them?  We’ll have to go back over 50 years and start placing blame at the politicians of old—both reviled, and revered.

1956. The Soviets begin training North Korean scientists, giving them the “basic knowledge” to initiate a nuclear program.

So, if we knew that then, why did not Ike (President) bomb them or threaten the Russians to stop?  Tricky Dick Nixon was VP then, and he wasn’t exactly a peace dove.  Charles Wilson was the SecDef.  Allen Dulles was CIA Director.  This is all 3 years or so after the Korean War stopped.  I say stopped, as basically both sides just stopped shooting.  The undeclared war was never brokered to a peace treaty, rather just an armistice.  We are still technically at war with the DPRK.  Could war weariness in the aftermath of WWII have spurred on this yellow stripe of spineless back down?

1962. Their primary nuclear facility—Yongbyon opens.

Kennedy is President.  Johnson another slobbering war monger was VP.  John McCone was the CIA Director, and Robert McNamara, the statistician, and synonym for dereliction of duty was the SecDef.

1981. The Israelis bomb and destroy the nuclear reactor at Osirak, Iraq.

Using then current date F16 fighters, the Israelis fly through enemy airspace and successfully eliminate the first real non-conventional existential threat to their very existence.  Reagan was President and Bush 41 was the VP.  Admiral Stansfield Turner was the CIA Director and Casper Weinberger was the SecDef.  If ever a blue print was laid out for us, this was it.  They showed us it could be done (unilateral and decisive action) and they did it.  Bear in mind that nuclear reactors do not go up quickly and that ole’ H.W. Bush was the CIA Director from 1976-1977, probably when the plans were set and construction begun.

1989. Satellite imagery confirms that the DPRK is in the early stages of building a nuclear bomb even though additional construction at Yongbyon continued since its inception.

Reagan and George H.W. Bush were President in this time, so both Bush and Dan Quayle were VP.  William Webster was the CIA Director and Darth Vadar himself, Dick Cheney was the SecDef, as well as Frank Carlucci.

1994. The Agreed Framework days.

It was an agreement between the US and the DPRK, born of the Clinton Administration.  The design was to freeze their nuclear ambitions and refinements in exchange for fuel oil, economic concessions (read: bribes), and well as a normalization of relations between the two nations.  Also part of the deal and the crown jewel for the DPRK, was to be bilateral talks between just the US and DPRK to formally end the Korean War.  The DPRK has long sought just such an agreement so that they could then propagandize the war as between just the US and the DPRK rather than the DPRK and the United Nations and its coalition.  And since it would be a treaty, they could claim to have fought the US to a draw.  The DPRK was secretly enriching uranium while “following” the rules of the Agreed Framework as this was not specifically forbidden.

This puts Slick Willy, Algore, CIA Director James Woosley, SecDef Les Aspin (famous also for denying tanks and Specter gunships to the US forces in Somalia leading to the horrific losses at Mogadishu and “Black Hawk Down”) directly into the mix of complicity.  It bears mentioning that SecState Madeline Albright was involved as well.  She was once reported as seen trotting along after Kim Jong-Il begging him to return to talks after he walked out.

The DPRK famously followed and violated the Agreed Framework, repeatedly announcing their intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty unless the US provided more and more concessions.  The DPRK finally and formally withdrew from the NPT in 2003…the Dubya Bush years.

2002. In October, Assistant SecState James Kelly tells DPRK that he has evidence of their uranium enrichment which is against the spirit (but not the letter since we are bad deal negotiators) of the Agreed Framework pact.

14 November. Bush threatens to halt oil shipments if the DPRK continues their nuclear ambitions.

4 December. DPRK rejects calls to open Yongbyon for inspections.

12 December. DPRK states that the oil shipment cessation from the US leaves them no option but to restart their nuclear reactor.

22 December.  Following the IAEA inspectors not removing cameras and other inspection equipment, the DPRK does it for them.

2003. 10 January. DPRK withdraws from the NPT. SecState Colin Powell tattles to the toothless UN Security Counsel.

28 January.  Bush warns DPRK that “the world will not be blackmailed.”

February and March.  DPRK fire two missiles near the land mass of Japan.

9 April.  The UN Security Counsel fails to condemn DPRK from withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

24 April.  In a meeting with Chinese officials it is stated that DPRK has nuclear weapons.

12 May.  DPRK scraps a 1992 agreement with South Korea committing to keep the Korean Peninsula free from nuclear weapons.

9 December.  DPRK agrees to “freeze” (not dismantle) its nuclear program in exchange for a list of concessions from the US.  If the US does not agree (comply/capitulate) the DPRK states it will not enter into any future talks.  US says no to freezing, DPRK must dismantle.

27 December.  Reversing itself, the DPRK enters into 6-party talks (DPRK, Russia, China, US, Japan, South Korea)

2004. In October 2004, former SecState Albright confessions that she knew the DPRK was cheating on the Agreed Framework by enriching uranium.

2005. 5 October. A US envoy directly threatens the DPRK, saying, “They can have a future, or these nuclear weapons, but not both.”

6 October.  DPRK detonates its first nuclear weapon.

Again, George W. Bush is the President, Dick Cheney is the VP.  The SecDef is Donald Rumsfeld, and the CIA Director is Michael Hayden.  None of these gentlemen are slouches.  (Despite the now historically apparent lack of spine.)  The world is a witness to a psychopath joining the nuclear club with barely so much as sputtering objections at the United Nations.  No military strikes were conducted.  No naval embargoes were sailed.  No serious military reinforcements planned or enacted.  Were they distracted by their invasion of Iraq?  Did they take their eye off this particular ball?  Or were they merely incompetent boobs woefully inept and not up to the task?  The next year, the Israelis again were there to show the world the correct answer to those questions.

2007. The Israelis bomb and destroy a nuclear reactor in the desert of Syria.

Using a team of Special Forces on the ground to laser designate the target, a cluster of F15 and F16 aircraft and a flying ELINT (electronic intelligence) aircraft, the Israelis crossed into Syrian airspace, spoofed their anti-aircraft system, and destroyed a reactor that the US had known about for years since shortly after construction had begun.  The SF team even brought back pictures and soil samples to verify destruction and radioactivity of the target debris.

The Israelis had evidence suggesting the Iran had added financing to the project; as much as 2 billion dollars.  Evidence suggested that as many as ten DPRK soldiers were killed in the raid.  The US declined to conduct the attack or even provide support to the Israelis fearing world and Arab reactions.  The Israelis believed that so long as they did not overtly brag about their actions, Syrian President Assad would not retaliate.  The Israelis kept quiet and Syria quietly buried the site.

It is later revealed that the design and technology, even layout of the reactor facility in Syria matched almost exactly to that of the Yongbyon reactor in DPRK.

I could go on for pages more detailing the overt and blatant actions of the DPRK and the subsequent meek and useless reaction from the world and the US.  The simple fact remains.  They now have nuclear bombs.  They have proven capable of missile technology that can reach all of our Pacific region bases, if not portions of the continental US.  They just recently detonated their most powerful device giving credence to their assertions that they have graduated from fission bombs (atomic) to fusion bombs (H-bombs.)  It really is just a matter of time before they develop the expertise to marry an H-bomb warhead to a missile with enough range and sophistication to survive re-entry, such that they can deliver untold destruction to our soil.

There is an old saying something about, “Tis’ better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees.”  That is something the Israelis understand.  They do not fear political fallout or sour poll results.  They already know that probably 80 percent of the world already hates them, and that the UN will condemn them with every resolution brought forward to do so.  Israel does not care about perceptions or resolutions from spineless bigots.  The Israelis will preemptively attack to protect themselves. They know they if they were to choose life on their knees, the blade for their neck swiftly follows.

Quite the opposite, the US does care about world opinion and perception.  We want to be liked and don’t understand it when others show that they do not.  We’d rather people have favorable opinions of us that to be feared, even respected.  We turn the other cheek to insults and attacks so often as to make even our enemies dizzy.  We do not take strategic unilateral actions like the Israelis do.  We fire off missiles now and again, but those are limited in both scope and results.  We burn enormous amounts of energy trying to build multinational coalitions so as to make others feel equal to us and included in world decisions.  When all along, at the core of things, the world wants strong American leadership since they can’t do it themselves.

Our options:

1. Do nothing.  Accept North Korean having nuclear weapons, continually threatening us and our allies.  They will continue to expand their nuclear and missile knowledge, eventually resulting in their definitive ability to strike the US mainland in its entirety.  They will continue to threaten their neighbors and continue to fire missiles to both intimidate and to learn.
2. Sanctions.  This has not worked in nearly thirty years.  China is the DPRK’s largest trading partner, with nearly 90% of their imports and exports.  While China doesn’t especially enjoy their antics, they do reap some benefit from the angst it causes us.  So, China is not going to cut off trade.  Any nation that does, China will likely pick up their slack.  Sanctions can also have an unintended effect in that the DPRK, strapped for cash, oil, (pick your resource) may decide to export their nuclear technology to other anti-American nations (like Iran).  They may do this even if we select option 1.
3. Limited military strike.  As surgical as our weaponry is, we cannot hope to decapitate the regime and destroy all of their tactical and strategic military forces in one fell swoop.  If our bombs fall, Kimmy will strike Seoul, South Korean, with whatever he has left.  Basic artillery, through nuclear weapons, the city will cease to exist, killing millions of people.  Keep in mind, he doesn’t have to marry a warhead to a missile.  He has a fleet of slow, wooden Russian aircraft that are so antiquated as to not show up on radar.  They can fly a warhead over the border at treetop level.  He just has to get close to Seoul to destroy it.
4. Assassination.  Reports in the news have Seal Team 6 training South Korean operators in this type of mission.  Again, like dominoes falling, even if successful, the remaining military leadership will launch retaliatory strikes against the South.  They will likely strike Japan, Guam, and really try to prove they can hit us with a missile.
5. Full scale attack.  China has already stated they will respond if we attack first.  Would they?  Not knowing the answer is enough to keep our leadership from acting largely at all, let alone decisively like this.

Don’t look at me.  I don’t have the answers either.  Our window for acting without real risk of repercussions ended decades ago.  I just repacked my bug-out bag for when Kimmy sets off an EMP over us and knocks us back to the 1800’s.

Monumental Farce

–Baltimore: removes 4 statues honoring Confederate leaders in the dead of night.  Workers wear masks to protect their identity.

–Durham: Protestors tore down a statue dedicated n 1924 “in memory of the boys who wore gray.”  It wasn’t even of a specific leader.  Takiya Fatima Thompson was charged with 2 felonies, and 2 misdemeanors. She said the statue was pulled down to show solidarity with anti-racist activists in the wake of the violence at Charlottesville.

–Chicago:  Pastor James Duke (presumably no relation to David) wants George Washington Park and Jackson Park renamed.  In GW Park, he wants a bronze statue of our Nation’s Father removed because of slavery. He, (Washington) is no hero to the black community, says Duke.  He wants to rename it after former Mayor Harold Washington (black?).  The park has been around since 1870.

He also wants Jackson Park renamed after Michael Jackson, a drug abuser and pedophile who killed himself, or after Jesse Jackson, an extortionist and man guilty of inventing his heroism at the killing of MLK.  This park has been in existence since 1893.

See, these are black people and I guess that’s the only color people in this community can see without also seeing red (when coached thusly by racist leaders).  Duke says he is not trying to erase history.  But black communities should have a voice in who they honor in their communities.  One presumes they’ll all be black. Sounds very pro-segregationist to me.

–Georgia: A Gubernatorial candidate (Stacey Abrams) called for the removal of the faces of Confederate leaders from the carved face of Stone Mountain.  These carvings, stopped and started several times since 1914 are 90 feet tall.  Good luck.  They are protected by state laws.

So where does this end?  When do we start burning books?  Remember who did this before?  Who will administer the coming thought police?  Will we bring back gold stars to sew on the clothing of people identified with “wrong” ideology?

I know, let’s tear down every monument to Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.  See, he threatened to shoot black soldiers in the back during the final charge up San Juan Hill in that imperialistic war against the Spanish in Cuba.  He didn’t threaten to kill white soldiers if they retreated. Doesn’t that make him a racist?(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wike/rough_riders)

How about this one?  Arlington Cemetery–where we’ve laid our honored dead for decades–it once belonged to Robert E. Lee, the same Confederate General we are removing busts of, and even that pansy Bubba Watson painted over the flag of on his car, dubbed the General Lee from Dukes of Hazard.  He (Lee) was a slave owner and fought against the country.  We can’t bury our heroes on such tainted ground, can we?  How soon can we expect exhumations to begin? (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/History/History-of-Arlington-National-Cemetery)

You can’t atone for the ugly portions of our history by eradicating all physical monuments to it.  You can’t exact social justice for the inhumanity of the slavery years (and they included good ole’ Irish people as slaves too) by destroying landmarks.  Bad things happen through every era of man’s history.  Cain slew Able in mankind’s first murder.  Do we delete the book of Genesis because murder is wrong?

Far better it would be to have a more robust civics program in schools.  TEACH what happened and why it was immoral rather than deny it happened.  Of course we’d need teachers who actually know history and would be allowed to teach it as it happened and not according to the talking points.  That is a whole other issue.